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ARMSTRONG COLLEGE,

NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.

Complete Courses of Instruction are provided for students of both sexes proceeding to the University Degrees in Science or in Letters, and for the University Diploma in Theory and Practice of Teaching. Special facilities are offered for the study of Agriculture, Applied Chemistry, Mining, Metallurgy, and all branches of Engineering.

Matriculation and Exhibition Examinations begin September 25.
Lectures begin October 3, 1905.

Prospectuses on application to F. H. PRUEN, Secretary. LONDON (ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL) SCHOOL OF MEDICINE FOR WOMEN, 8 HUNTER STREET, BRUNSWICK SQUARE, W.C. The WINTER SESSION begins on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 3. Entrance Scholarships, St. Dunstan's Medical Exhibition, value £60 for three years, extendable to five years; School Scholarship, £30. Fees for Lectures and Hospital Practice, £135 to £140. Fees for Preliminary Scientific Classes, £25.

The Prospectus, giving full information as to Entrance and other Scholarships, can be obtained from the SECRETARY,

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The LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL invites APPLICATIONS for the appointment of a DISTRICT INSPECTOR, under the Chief Inspector (Education). He will be required to inspect public elementary day schools and evening schools, and, if necessary, any other educational institutions within the district allotted to him.

The salary is £400 a year, rising by annual increments of 25 to a maximum salary of £600 a year.

The person appointed will be under the control of the Chief Inspector, and will be required to give his whole time to the duties of the office, and will in other respects be subject to the usual conditions attaching to the Council's service, particulars of which are contained in the form of appli

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The County Hall,

Spring Gardens, S. W.,

G. L. GOMME,

Clerk of the London County Council.

WORCESTERSHIRE EDUCATION

COMMITTEE.

(1) SECONDARY SCHOOL AND PUPIL TEACHER CENTRE AT EVESHAM.

(2) PUPIL TEACHER CENTRE AT HALESOWEN.
(3) PUPIL TEACHER CENTRE AT KING'S NORTON.
(4) SECONDARY SCHOOL AND PUPIL TEACHER
CENTRE AT STOURBRIDGE.

(5) SECONDARY SCHOOL AND PUPIL TEACHER
CENTRE AT BROMSGROVE.
The Worcestershire Education Committee require the services of
Teachers for the above, as follows:-

(1) SECONDARY SCHOOL AND PUPIL TEACHER
CENTRE AT EVESHAM.
HEAD-MASTER. Salary, £250 per annum.
FIRST ASSISTANT (Woman). Salary, £130 per annum.

(2) PUPIL TEACHER CENTRE AT HALESOWEN. FIRST ASSISTAN (Woman). Salary, 130 per annum. SECOND ASSISTANT (Man or Woman). Salary, £100 per annum. (3) PUPIL TEACHER CENTRE AT KING'S NORTON. TEACHER (Woman). Salary, £140 per annum.

(4) SECONDARY SCHOOL AND PUPIL TEACHER
CENTRE AT STOURBRIDGE.

TEACHER (Woman). Salary, £140 per annum.

(5) SECONDARY SCHOOL AND PUPIL TEACHER CENTRE AT BROMSGROVE. TEACHER (Woman). Salary, L130 per annum.

Any candidate applying for more than one post must send in separate applications for each post.

The candidates appointed will be required to take up their duties on the opening of the Centre, and in any case not later than October 1, 1995. Applications must be sent in to the undersigned (from whom all further particulars may be obtained), together with copies of not more than three recent testimonials, not later than Tuesday, September 5. S. G. RAWSON,

County Education Department, 37 Foregate Street, Worcester, August 1, 1905. (K 1]

Director of Education.

METROPOLITAN WATER BOARD.

LABORATORY ASSISTANTS.

serve under

It is proposed to appoint the following officers to Dr. Houston, the Director of Water Examinations, viz. :(a) A SENIOR CHEMICAL ASSISTANT. Salary, £300. (4) A SENIOR BACTERIOLOGICAL ASSISTANT. Salary, £300. (A JUNIOR CHEMICAL ASSISTANT. Salary. £175. (d) A JUNIOR BACTERIOLOGICAL ASSISTANT. Salary, L175(e) TWO LABORATORY ASSISTANTS. Salary, £75 each. The officers will be required to give their whole time to the service of the Board, and the appointments will be held during the pleasure of the Board. Applications for the appointments must be made on official forms, which may be obtained from the undersigned on the particular form desired being clearly stated.

The latest time for receiving applications is Thursday, September 14,

1905, at 10 a.m.

Canvassing Members of the Boa d is strictly prohibited, and will be regarded as a disqualification. A. B. PILLING, Clerk of the Board.

Savoy Court, Strand, W.C.,
August 9, 1905.

BOROUGH OF SWINDON.

EDUCATION COMMITTEE.

The Committee REQUIRE the services of an ASSISTANT SCIENCE
DEMONSTRATOR in the HIGHER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Candidates must be accustomed both to Class Teaching and Laboratory
Work. Commencing salary £120 a year, increasing by £5 a year to £159.
Forms of application, which must be returned by September 15, may be
bad from
W. SEATON, Secretary.

Education Office, Town Hall, Swindon.
August 29, 1905.

KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.

(UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.)

The Council invite applications for the post of JUNIOR DEMONSTRATOR in ENGINEERING.

Applications should be sent in by Friday, September 15, 1905.
For conditions apply to

WALTER SMITII, Secretary.

KING'S COLLEGE.

(UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.)

DEMONSTRATOR in ZOOLOGY wanted for October, 19705. Salary, L150. For further particulars apply to the SECRETARY, King's College, Strand, W.C.

For other Scholastic Advertisements, see pages clxviii, claix,

and clxxi.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1905.

BRITISH MOSSES.

The British Moss-Flora. By R. Braithwaite, M.D.,
F.L.S., &c. Pp. x + 315;
268; 274 + plates.
(London: L. Reeve and Co., 1887 to 1905.)

WE

WE offer to Dr. Braithwaite our most sincere congratulations on the completion of this work on his favourite class of plants. Begun, as regards publication, in 1880, it reached completion by the issue of the last part with index and supplement in May of this year, so that the course of publication has occupied a space of some quarter of a century. In the last number Dr. Braithwaite takes leave of his readers in a postscript in which he expresses his regret that he is unable to include the Sphagnaceæ in the work; but he finds that to study these again at the age of eighty-one, and to draw some twenty-five plates, would be hopeless. All lovers of mosses will share in this regret, at the same time remembering that they owe to Dr. Braithwaite an interesting monograph on the peat mosses of Europe and America, published in 1880. The author concludes the whole matter with a quotation of some lines (little known, we suspect) by Ehrhart, which are interesting as disclosing the mental attitude of the venerable author at the conclusion of his labours; they begin thus :—

Vernimm's und siehe die Wunder der Werke, Die, die Natur dir aufgestellt! Verkündigt Weisheit und Ordnung und Stärke Dir nicht den Herren, den Herren der Welt?" The three volumes of Dr. Braithwaite's book are illustrated by 128 pages of plates, giving figures of every moss described, with enlarged designs of parts of the various species. Every one of these plates has been engraved from the drawings of the author himself, and together constitute a remarkable monument of his skill and industry. Indeed, the illustrations may be regarded as perhaps the most distinctive feature of the work. In some cases a whole page is devoted to a single species, as Schistostega, or to two species, as in the strange genus Buxbaumia; but generally four or more plants are dealt with in a single plate. So far as we have compared the figures of our author with nature, we have found his drawings accurate, and the magnified parts very valuable for the purposes of identification.

If we were inclined to be adversely critical on the plates, we should say that to some extent strength has been sacrificed to elegance. If you turn from the drawings of Braithwaite to the plates of old Dillenius, you are conscious of a marked difference of treatment; the old figures are more robust and graphic, and the general facies of the plant is more forcibly impressed upon the mind. But this difference is perhaps an inevitable result of our advanced knowledge of the distinctions between kindred species; the earlier artist was not haunted by the perception of minute details which make the later artist at once more timorous and exact.

waite is that of Prof. Lindberg, by which the cleistocarpous mosses are no longer treated as a group by themselves, but are introduced into the stegocarpous families, and are regarded as imperfectly developed forms of more highly organised stegocarpous congeners. There can be no doubt that the distinctions based upon the presence or absence of a peristome and on the number of teeth in the peristome received an exaggerated amount of attention from many bryologists; they were for the moss flora somewhat as the number of stamens and pistils was in the hands of Linnæus for phænogamous plants.

Whenever a genus contains more than one species, Dr. Braithwaite gives a clavis to the species, arranged dichotomously, and this appears to us to be very carefully and well done-a fact which increases our regret that the author has not given similar guidance between the families, subfamilies, and genera of the whole group, so that the student might have been conducted by the use of the necessary differentiæ from the summum genus to the ultima species. But where so much has been given, it would be ungracious to complain that something is still wanting.

...

Mr. Dixon, in his preface to his "Student's Handbook of British Mosses (1896), referred to the book now under review as "Braithwaite's splendid and elaborate work . . . which has done so much to stimulate the study of these plants in our country and which will doubtless remain our standard work for many years to come." In this generous appreciation by one botanist of the work of another, we cordially agree, and we rejoice for ourselves, as well as for the author, at the completion of a noble piece of honest work.

Before we part from the book we wish to make this review the vehicle of a thought that has frequently occurred to us

In the last number of Dr. Braithwaite's book we find a notice of Catharinia tenella-which has been found near Goudhurst, in Kent, by that keen bryologist Lord Justice Stirling-mixed with Catharinia angustata. This is only one instance of a common fact, viz. the coexistence side by side of two kindred species.

Thus, turning over at random some pages of Wilson's "Bryologia Britannica " (a book more easy to use for such a purpose than the luxurious pages of Braithwaite), we find that Fissidens viridulus is recorded as growing with F. exilis, Hypnum Swartzii as growing with H. praelongum, Hypnum chrysophyllum as found with H. stellatum, Hypnum resupinatum in like manner with H. cupressiforme, and Hypnum elegans as often growing with H. denticulatum; and in all these cases the two species are so nearly akin that they stand next to one another on Wilson's pages. A further search would, we feel sure, bring to light many similar cases, including those in which forms recognised only as varieties are found side by side with the normal form. This fact seems to us to be worthy of further attention. Is it due solely to the suitability of the same

The classification principally adopted by Dr. Braith- spot to several species of the same genus, or is it

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EXPERIMENTAL MORPHOLOGY. Einleitung in der experimentelle Morphologie der Tiere. By Dr. Hans Przibram. Pp. 142. (Leipzig and Vienna Franz Deulicke, 1904.) Price marks. HIS volume is divided into thirteen practically independent sections, and represents the "fast unveränderte Drucklegung " of a course of lectures delivered by the author during the session of 1903-4 at the Wiener University. The author has been induced to publish these lectures by the belief that all previous works of a general nature dealing with experimental embryology have either been written wholly in support of particular theories (e.g. Driesch, Haacke, Herbst) or only deal with a portion of the subject (e.g. Davenport, Hertwig, Korschelt, Maas, Morgan, Wilson, Ziegler). The present work is intended, therefore, as an introduction to the whole subject from an impartial standpoint.

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In the first section, which deals mainly with the scope of experimental morphology, the author, after weighing the various names which have been proposed for for the science-Entwicklungsmechanik, Entwicklungsphysiologie, kausala Morphologie, &c. -adopts Davenport's name, experimental morphology," but defines it as including not only the experimental study of the factors determining form in ontogeny, but also in phylogeny (Umvandlungsphysiologie), so that Driesch's term "rationelle Morphologie" would seem to be more appropriate.

The uncertainty as to the proper scope of the science which this considerable choice of names exhibits is in part due to its recent growth, but it is also due in no small measure to the close connection in which experimental morphology must always stand to the other sciences.

That the author has not been more successful than his predecessors in determining suitable limits to the

subject is very clearly shown by his treatment of the section dealing with the "Specifische Bestimmung." In this section the author describes the influence of . relationship in transplantation experiments, and the persistence of specific characters in the transplanted tissues. He then refers to Heape's experiment, in which normal development of an Angora rabbit is obtained, though transplanted shortly after fertilisation into the uterus of a Belgian rabbit, from which, however, the author's conclusion that transfusion of strange blood has no morphogenic influence hardly follows. Following this is an account of immunity and blood relationship experiments. If it is difficult to see why these subjects should be included in a science ostensibly dealing with the factors determining form, this difficulty is still greater when the author proceeds to consider the distribution in the

animal kingdom of the various proteid substances contained in muscle fibre.

In the fourth section, "Die Bewegung-Taxis," the author gives a series of very far-fetched comparisons between the behaviour of unicellular animals and of the higher Metazoa. The sensation of thirst is compared with the hydrotaxis of the Mycetozoa, and Davenport's example is followed in regarding as rheotaxis the behaviour of fish in swimming against the stream, the only position in which they are able to breathe. Finally, the "Thigmotaxis " exhibited by an oxytrocha moving round a spherical egg, unable to leave its surface, is compared with the retreat of a cat into the corner as a dog approaches, or to the preference shown by many people for those seats in a restaurant which have their backs to the wall!

In the twelfth section, "Die Vererbung," the author, after giving a brief account of the current theories of heredity, shows how these are in "schönster Uebereinstimmung " with our recent knowledge concerning the constitution of the nucleus. This agreement is obtained by assuming reduction to consist in the elimination of whole chromosomes during the maturation divisions, the view that this process represents the belated union of the paternal and maternal chromosomes not being mentioned.

In the final section, "Die Artwandlung," the author discusses the influence of external factors in causing transmissible variations.

The wide range covered by the book, the thirteen sections of which only average ten pages each, has resulted in a somewhat superficial mode of treatment, and neither in point of comprehensiveness nor of impartial treatment can the book be said to fill the want which, according to the author, has been left unsatisfied by all previous workers. G. C. C.

ATLAS OF EMISSION SPECTRA. Atlas of Emission Spectra of most of the Elements. By Drs. Hagenback and Konen. English translation by Dr. A. S. King. Pp. v+70 and plates. (Jena G. Fischer; London: Wm. Wesley and Sons, 1905.) Price 275.

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HIS atlas comprises the results of an investigation of the spark, arc, and flame spectra of most of the chemical elements. Twenty-eight charts are given showing heliographic reproductions of photographs taken with the aid of two small Rowland concave gratings, each of 1 metre radius and 20,000 lines to the inch. One of the gratings had a ruled space 9 cm. broad, and was used chiefly for the region of shorter wave-length. The other had a breadth of 5 cm., and was used to photograph the less refrangible portion of the spectrum. For each group of metals two charts are given, one showing the normally visual part of the spectrum, the other the violet and ultra-violet region. The dispersion given by the gratings is such that the length of spectrum from the K line of calcium (A 3934) to the D lines of sodium ( 5893) is about 4.5 inches, or 11 cm., each scale division on the reproductions corresponding to

ten tenth-metres. The region of spectrum studied ally transmitted to a distance when converted into an extends from about A 2500 to

7000.

In the production of the arc spectrum, rods of the metal were used as poles whenever possible, though in many cases carbon electrodes were employed, and scraps of metal or salts of the metal volatilised on them. The selection of carbon as electrodes seems to us a very unfortunate one, as it is next to impossible to disentangle the real spectrum of a substance from the structure of the carbon bands. Surely a better method would be to use poles of some inexpensive metal the spectrum of which is a fairly simple and characteristic one, such as zinc, aluminium, or silver. Among the spectra represented in the charts are several, such as boron, arsenic, the rare earths, the platinum group, phosphorus, selenium, which are reproduced here for the first time. The previously existing records relating to some of these were very meagre, and those now published will be distinctly useful. For some of the gaseous elements vacuumtube spectra have been obtained.

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The authors have not given-and it seems necessary to do so-complete lists of wave-lengths,

but have confined themselves to a selection of the most characteristic lines for each element. The wavelengths of these are given only to the nearest Angström unit or tenth-metre, which is scarcely of sufficient precision for modern spectroscopic research. A chapter of notes is given at the end of the text, touching on such points as varying numbers of lines, kinds of spectra, character of lines, division into pairs, triplets, and series, lines specially prominent in any particular light source, &c.

Notable amongst the few elements not investigated by these observers is scandium. This is unique among the rarer metals in the prominence of. its lines in various celestial spectra-notably the chromosphere and stellar types of intermediate temperature and a reproduction of its complete spectrum would therefore have been of interest.

The reproductions are generally excellent; exception must be taken, however, to that of the solar spectrum, which, apparently included as a reference spectrum, is practically useless. Upon the whole, the production of the atlas is very creditable to the authors, and without being in some ways of so elaborate a nature as Crew's or the recently published atlas of Eder and Valenta, it will, through its uniform treatment of all the elements investigated, be useful, as the authors surmise, to the physicist, chemist, and astronomer. F. E. B.

OUR BOOK SHELF. Précis d'Hydraulique-La Houille Blanche. By Raymond Busquet. Pp. viii+375. (Paris: J. B. Baillière et Fils, 1905.) Price 5 francs. THIS book forms one of a series of little volumes which are being issued under the title of "Encyclopédie Industrielle," and treats of the principles of hydraulics and their applications, which possess an enhanced importance in view of the recent great extension of the employment of water-power for industrial purposes, resulting from the discovery that it can be economic

electric current. Thus, by the development of electrical transmission, it is now practicable to use watermountain valleys, as sources of power for towns, of falls and water stored up in reservoirs, in remote which the Falls of Niagara, supplying electrical energy to Buffalo, furnish so notable an instance; and the author has given the name of "La Houille Blanche," or white coal, to this source of power.

The subject is discussed in five chapters, dealing successively with fundamental laws, flow of liquids in pipes, flow of liquids in open channels, hydraulic motors, and creation of a fall of water; and the text is illustrated by forty-nine diagrams and drawings. The hydraulic problems relating to the utilisation of water-power are solved by aid of arithmetic and simple geometry; and the author's aim has been, by making the book neither purely descriptive nor wholly didactic, to render it serviceable to a large number of persons. In the chapter on motors, the different forms of waterwheels and the various types of turbines are described; and, finally, the principle of the hydraulic ram is explained, as being distinct from motors, and yet transforming the fall of water into useful work by raising some of the water to a considerable height. Though reservoirs have been, and are being, formed by constructing high masonry dams across narrow gorges in the valleys of mountain streams, with the object of furnishing water-power, the final chapter of this book relates exclusively to the erection of a masonry weir across rivers, with the necessary sluiceway, closed by wooden panels, for the discharge of floods, by which the ordinary water-level of the river is raised so as to enable water to be drawn off into a branch canal for supplying water-power; and it deals mainly with the requisite calculations of the flow of the river, the discharge through the sluices, the pressure on the panels, the fall available, and the section of the branch canal and of its side retaining walls. The author entertains great expectations as to the future of water-power, and considers that, whereas last century was the century of steam, the twentieth century will be called the age of water-power, or white

coal.

Catalogus Mammalium, tam viventium quam fossilium. By E. L. Trouessart. Suppl. part iv., Cetacea to Monotremata. (Berlin: Friedländer and Son, 1905.) Price 8s.

We have much pleasure in congratulating the author on the completion of the first quinquennial supplement, whereby an absolutely invaluable work is brought well up to date, or, rather, as nearly up to date as is possible in undertakings of this nature. We notice that in the part before us references are given in the case of well-known species to passages in which cannot fail to be of the greatest assistance to which they have been recently mentioned-a plan

students.

In accordance with the recent changes in nomenclature, the titles adopted for several genera differ from those employed in the original issue, as, for instance, Orcinus in place of Orca, on account of the In the case of the preoccupation of the latter term. Edentata, the list of names proposed by Dr. Ameghino for South American Tertiary forms looms very large, and, we fear, occupies much more space than it is really entitled to claim. In this connection it may be noted that the author follows Dr. Wortman in classing the North American Eocene ganodonts as ancestral types of the true edentates, Prof. W. D. Scott's recent opposition to this view probably not having been published in time to receive

notice. The classification of the ground-sloths is much more complicated than the one adopted by older writers, the Megalotheriidæ being now split up into a number of family groups. Very noteworthy is the inclusion among the Monotremata of an extinct South American family, the Dideilotheriidæ, with four generic modifications, as if this be justified it has a most important bearing on former land connections between the southern continents. We confess, however, to a certain amount of hesitation in accepting the determination of these South American fossils until it has been confirmed by a palæontologist of unquestioned authority. In retaining provisionally the South African Tritylodon among the mammalia, Dr. Trouessart is in accord with opinions lately expressed by Dr. R. Broom.

R. L. How to Know Wild Fruits: a Guide to Plants when

It

not in Flower by Means of Fruit and Leaf. By Maude Gridley Peterson. Pp. xliii+340; illustrated. (New York: The Macmillan Co.; London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd.) Price 6s. 6d. net. "YE shall know them by their fruits " might well have served as the fore-word to this little volume. deals only "with those plants which bear attractively coloured fruits," and might, therefore, be classed by the reviewer among that very large class of books which are made to look at rather than for any more serious purpose. The very first chapter, on "Adaptations of Fruits and Seeds for Dispersal and Protection," serves to dispel that notion. It consists only of some half-dozen pages, but those pages are instructive, and, better still, suggestive. Then comes a list of "definitions," few in number, but adequate to a book of these pretensions, especially as it is supplemented by a glossary at the end. "A Guide to the Plant Families Represented" comes next in order, and consists of an analytical table by means of which the several families may be discriminated by the observation of the variations in the character of their fruits. This seems to be carefully compiled, and is, so far as we have seen, accurate, but its value can only be tested by actual use in the field.

In the second table the families and species are grouped according to the colour of their fruits. Thus the monocotyledonous families are arranged according as the colour of the fruits is red, reddish-purple, green, black, or dark-purple, or blue. Of course, this is a highly artificial mode of grouping and one subject to exception, but if these circumstances be borne in mind the table will be found useful.

Coming now to the individual plants, which are all North American, the author gives a pretty full description of each, beginning with the fruit and passing on to the foliage and flowers. These descriptions might have been materially abridged and comparison rendered easier by the omission of unnecessary particles and verbs. In this matter the example of the author's fellow-countryman, Asa Gray, might have been followed. Moreover, they are not always botanically accurate; the “ fruit" of the yew, for instance, is only remotely drupe-like, and is certainly not a drupe, as it is said to be in the same paragraph. Conversely, the leaves of the yew are really spirally arranged, but appear to be disposed in two planes only.

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It would obviously be unfair to treat this book as if it were intended as a botanical text-book, but as a help to the beginner and a means of stimulating observation it may be commended. It is well got up, remarkably free from misprints, appropriately illustrated, and provided with an index of vernacular names and one of the Latin designations of the plants described.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. No notice is taken of anonymous communications.]

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The Kangra Earthquake of April 4, 1905. THERE have been certain papers on Indian geological questions recently published in the Neues Jahrbuch and associated Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geol. und Pal. (Stuttgart), in which either the data or the deductions, generally both, have been unsound. In most cases the authorship alone has been sufficient to enable us separate those papers that are worth careful study from those that are not even worth the time necessary to read. But in the latest production one of the editors of the journal appears as a joint-author, and one wonders consequently whether the papers we have been discarding in India as untrustworthy are, after all, normal or accessory constituents of a periodical which all geologists have regarded hitherto as essential to a working library.

The paper I now refer to appeared in the Centralblatt No. 11 (June), entitled "Das Erdbeben im Kangra-Tal (Himalaya) von 4 April 1905," by E. Koken and F. Noetling. The authors take eight pages of text and a map to demonstrate the unusual features of scientific interest shown by the recent earthquake-the time of its occurrence, the remarkable variation in the rate of transmission of the earthquake waves in different directions, the peculiar distribution of the isoseismal lines, and the exceptional shape of the meizoseismal area. The whole of this scientific discussion is built on a few newspaper cuttings, in the collection of which the authors have not been sufficiently industrious to escape certain tell-tale misprints which appeared only in the newspapers of the Presidency farthest removed from the earthquake centre. One example will be sufficient to illustrate the care exercised in collecting and checking their data.

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The authors on p. 336 refer to a town named Tagarmalli as only very slightly damaged, and they consequently adopt this point, which they determine to be fifty miles from the epicentre, as the maximum extension eastwards of the meizoseismal area. As a matter of fact, no such place as Tagarmalli exists, and no such name appears in any of the gazetteers of India; the most casual attempt at verification would have shown the authors that they were basing their elaborate deductions on a misprint which appeared in one newspaper only. In one of the Lahore papers the names of the two places Nagar and Manali, twelve miles distant from one another in the Kulu valley, became contracted by the printer's devil Nagarmalli, and in this form it was telegraphed to Bombay (Times of India, April 14) and to Calcutta (Englishman, April 14): but by the accidental omission of a single Morse's dot the word reached Madras as Tagarmalli (Madras Mail, April 15, and telegraphic summary, April 14). Having found the clue to the authors' source of data, we find it easy to explain other equally remarkable statements in the paper. In an earlier part of their paper (p. 334) they refer to the complete destruction of the place Nagar (Naggar), without suspecting that it was one of the roots of their mythical Tagarmalli; but on this occasion they have removed the little capital town of Kulu, and, for purposes of seismological reasoning, have carried it over the snowy range into the Kangra valley. To base a series of scientific deductions on a few newspaper cuttings may satisfy the devotee of precision (alias accuracy) in Germany, but to neglect the simple means of verifying their facts provided by the splendid maps of the Punjab, the complete gazetteers, or even the fourpenny postal guide obtainable in nearly every village. shows a carelessness that deserves the contempt of every scientific man.

But, after all, it is not the basis of data so much that is at fault, though even the purchase of a few more newspapers would have saved the authors from most of their pitfalls; it is the scientific superstructure that is so discreditable. When the authors noticed that the earthquake was recorded by the Bombay seismograph ut

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