they are met with: but are rarely associated with the foliage figured as S. Sternbergi, none having been found at such important localities as Sotzka, Häring, Monte Promina, and Bilin, where foliage abounds. This absence of cones is very strong negative evidence against their foliage in the above localities at least being Sequoia, and in favour of their being Araucaria. The cones of Araucaria are few and large, shaken to pieces by the wind almost as as soon as ripe, and when carried by water the flotation of the winged seeds and of the foliage would differ enough to lead to their being separately imbedded. The foliage was described for years as Araucarites, and a well-defined immature cone of Araucaria was found in the deposit at Häring and figured by Sternberg1 and by Goeppert 2 as Araucarites Goepperti, and afterwards considered by Unger and Ettingshausen to belong to A. Sternbergi. Another small Araucaria-like cone is figured by Massalongo from Chiavon, which was found associated with foliage identical with that from Bournemouth. Similar foliage, but still nearer to Araucaria, is found at many places in France, and in England at Sheppey, Bournemouth, Bracklesham, the Isle of Wight, &c., but also always without any Sequoia cones, although I have found an Araucaria cone at Sheppey.

3

Against all this evidence we have to set the fact that a branch with compressed cones attached has been found in the Upper Miocene near Turin, and that Sequoia cones are found in the same strata with somewhat similar foliage in Iceland. In both these instances however the foliage differs materially from the typical S. Sternbergi of Sotzka. If we consider that foliage of existing species of Araucaria, Sequoia, Cryptomeria, and Arthrotaxis can with difficulty be distinguished, and that species which have died out may have approached each other still more closely, the evidence upon which Heer has changed the determination of all the Austrian and German specimens must appear insufficient. The possibly accidental similarity, not identity, of foliage occurring in deposits far apart and of widely different age, does not, I hold, outweigh the other facts I have advanced.

This type of foliage, whether it belong to one or many genera, has not been found of Tertiary age north of Iceland, nor in the newer Miocenes of Central Europe, if we set aside two more than doubtful fragments from Oeningen. It abounds however in England, France, Germany, and Austria in Eocenes and Oligocenes, and recurs, as an Upper Miocene form, in Italy only.

The British Eocenes have been credited with several Sequoias, as S. Sternbergi and S. Bowerbankii from Sheppey, S. Langsdorfii from Alum Bay and Bournemouth, S. du Noyeri from Antrim, &c., &c. There is, I believe, no good evidence yet of the presence of any Sequoia except S. Couttsia, confined to Bovey, Hempstead, and perhaps Bournemouth, in any Tertiary rock of Great Britain. This question however cannot here be profitably discussed. S. Couttsia was originally described by Heer from Bovey Tracey, where it literally abounded. The foliage resembles that of S. gigantea, though smaller and more delicate, and must have been very graceful; but Heer's restoration of it, since copied into other works, is very stiff and unnatural. The foliage in the "Flora fossilis arctica" is much coarser, and should not have been referred to the same species. Saporta describes a beautiful variety Polymorpha" from Armissan, in which the ultimate branchlets take on the sempervirens character. S. Couttsia seems to have been capable of supporting considerably greater heat than any of the other species, if we may judge from the associated plants.

66

The leading facts known to us respecting the_past history of the Sequoias may be summed up thus. They are not known to be older than the Cretaceous, when they

I "Verst.," vol. ii. p. 204. Pl 39, Fig. 4.

2 "Monogr. foss. Conif.," 1850, Haarlem Trans., p. 237, Pl. 44, Fig 2. 3" Flora von Häring," p. 36. 4 " Specim. Photogr.," pl. xxi.

were principally a northern form. The differentiation of the existing types has progressed from that period to the present, being slight in the Cretaceous (e.g. S. Reichenbachii); more pronounced in the Eocene (eg. S. Coutisia v. polymorpha); yet more so in the Oligocene and Miocene (S. Langsdorfii), and most so at the present day, though even now there is a tendency to approach each other. The number of fossil species should be considerably reduced, and much of the supposed Sequoia foliage transferred to other genera. The genus is known to have ranged as far south as Central Europe during the Cretaceous, seems to have retreated north during the Lower and Lower Middle Eocenes, re-occupied its former habitats in the Upper Middle Eocene and Oligocene, first through S. Couttsia, and then through S. Langsdorfii, and ranged into Italy during the Upper Miocene. It was well-nigh exterminated during the Glacial epoch, and has been strangely preserved in two isolated spots, perhaps beyond its original range, where the moderating influence of the Pacific enabled it to survive on, or occupy at a remote period lofty mountain spurs between the sites of ancient glaciers. Fixed on exceptionably favourable stations with congenial soil, the existing species may have slowly adapted themselves to a temperature far more genial than that supported by their polar ancestors, and, in adapting themselves to an always increasing mildness, have acquired that stupendous habit of growth which makes them the giants of vegetation.'

The moral to be drawn from the history of the Sequoias is that we should not place implicit credence in the minimum temperature of the so-called Miocene Greenland, Spitzbergen, Vancouver's Isle, Sitka, and Arctic America and Asia, as settled by Heer. Such bald argument, as for instance that because Sequoia now requires such and such a temperature, therefore former but different species must have required the same, is entitled to but little deference; yet Heer's facts and opinions are quoted as axioms by a wide range of workers. When examined they are seen to be disputable, whether taken as physiological, geological, palæontological, or any other data. Provisionally they were of use, but the questions depending on the accuracy of the data are so important and the evidence so intricate that they should not be deemed settled until some greater amount of care has been bestowed on them.

WE

J. STARKIE GARDNER

GEOMETRICAL TEACHING 2

WE are glad to see that the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching has been by no means idle, though no report has been issued since January, 1878, but that there has been a good deal of silent work going on in the way of sub-committee discussions upon the several syllabuses of solid geometry, of higher plane geometry, and of geometrical conics. All who know the president will heartily sympathise with him in his bereavement, and will understand how unfitted he must have been for any other work than that which his position at Harrow imperatively required of him. has now thrown himself with much energy into the cause, and proof of his interest in the labours of the Association is manifest throughout the interesting address which is printed on pp. 12-17 of this Report. It is well known that he has long advocated an extension of the scope of the Association, and in this address he takes the opportunity of putting his views well forward.

He

"It was doubtless well at the outset of our work to concentrate our attention and confine our efforts to the definite field, in which perhaps the need for improvement

If we can really trace back the history of S. gigantea to fossil forms, it becomes curious to notice that it is only now approaching S. Couttsia, the type which there is reason to believe formerly supported the highest temperature of any Tertiary Sequoia.

Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching. Seventh General Report, January, 1881.

many valuable specimens to the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. Amongst these was an example of the present animal-a female, not quite adult-which was described and figured by M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards in his "Études pour servir a l'Histoire Naturelle des Mammifères" (Paris, 1868-1874). The celebrated naturalist, Père David, also seems to have met with this monkey in the same district, as he includes it in several lists of the Mammals of Northern China which he has recently published.

For their pair of this scarce monkey now living in the Regent's Park, the Zoological Society are indebted to the kind exertions of one of their Corresponding Members, Dr. S. W. Bushell of H.B. M. Legation at Pekin. Dr. Bushell obtained these animals in 1880 from the Yung-ling, or Eastern Mausoleum, of the reigning Manchu dynasty, situated about 70 le from Pekin to the north of 40° N. L. The Tcheli monkey belongs to the same section of the group as the well-known Rhesus monkey (Macacus

rhesus), but has a shorter tail, and is generally of a more rufous colour. It is also readily distinguishable by its dense coat of short thick fur, adapting it to endure the bitter winter climate of its native hills, where the thermometer often descends 10° below zero. Like most of its congeners it is rock-loving in its habits.

5. The Water-deer (Hydropotes inermis) is another Chinese animal which has only lately become known in Europe.

Until of late years it was supposed that the annual production of deciduous bony processes (antlers) from the frontal bones was an invariable characteristic of the males of the deer-tribe (Cervidae). In some cases these antlers might attain enormous dimensions, as in the Wapiti (Cervus Canadensis) and the Elk (Alces machlis); in others they might consist only of diminutive points, as in the Pudu-deer of Chili (Pudua humilis). But they were always present to a greater or less extent. The discovery of this little animal served to confirm, however,

the truth of the axiom, that in Nature at least there is no law without an exception. Here we have a deer complete in everything except its antlers, usually the most characteristic feature in the males of these animals. In place of antlers the buck Water-deer is provided with other organs of defence in the shape of two long exserted canine teeth, which grow to a considerable size in the adult, and give him ample means of exercising his pugnacious powers.

For our first knowledge of the existence of this singular deer we are indebted to the exertions of the late Robert Swinhoe, who, during his residence in various parts of the Chinese Empire, added so largely to our knowledge of every part of its fauna. Mr. Swinhoe obtained his first specimens of the Hydropotes in the market of Shanghai in the winter of 1879, and described it at one of the meetings of the Zoological Society in the following year.

"In the large riverine islands of the Yangtsze above Chinkiang," Mr. Swinhoe tells us, "these animals occur in large numbers, living among the tall rushes that are there grown for thatching and other purposes. The rushes are cut down in the spring; and the deer then swim away to the main shore and retire to the cover of the hills.

"In autumn, after the floods, when the rushes are again grown, they return with their young and stay the winter through. They are said to feed on the rushsprouts and coarse grasses, and they doubtless often finish off with a dessert from the sweet-potatoes, cabbages, &c., which the villagers cultivate on the islands during winter.

"They cannot however do much damage to the latter, or they would not be suffered to exist in such numbers as they do; for the islands have their villages and a pretty numerous agricultural population. Fortunately for the

deer, the Chinese have an extraordinary dislike for their flesh. They are therefore only killed for the European markets, and sold at a low price. The venison is coarse and without much taste, but is considered tolerable for want of better; it is the only venison procurable in Shanghai. The animal itself gives sport to the gunner; and numbers are slaughtered every winter by the European followers of Nimrod in the name of sport. Their numbers however do not appear to get much thinned." Another most remarkable characteristic of these antler

less deer is their extraordinary fecundity. Mr. Swinhoe states that according to the testimony of the natives the mothers have four or five young at a birth, and that this is corroborated by Europeans who have killed gravid females and found the like number of embryos in the uterus. This account is to some extent confirmed by observations on the Water-deer in captivity in Europe. Although the Zoological Society have not succeeded in inducing this animal to breed in the Regent's Park, this feat has been accomplished by M. Josephe Cornély of the

Château Beaujardin, near Tours, in France one of the most successful "acclimatisers" in Europe. In M. Cornély's beautiful park one of these deer produced three young ones in the spring of 1879, two of which, it is believed, lived to attain maturity. There can be no doubt therefore that the Water-deer is much more fruitful than the rest of its congeners, which certainly never produce more than two at a birth, and for this reason at least would be a valuable animal for domestication.

The adult water-deer standing reached at its shoulder

ARCHIPELAGO

NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE COREAN THIS

HIS archipelago, which consists of a number of smaller groups of islands separated by a depth of water varying from twenty to fifty fathoms, lies off the south-west coast of the peninsula of Corea. Whilst many of the larger islands vary from two to six miles in their extreme length, they are all of considerable height: their highest summits attain an elevation generally ranging between 600 and 1000 feet above the sea-Ross or Alceste Island, in the south-west corner of the archipelago, reaching to a height of as much as 1935 feet. The large and naked masses of rock which crown their summits give to these islands a somewhat rugged and Made during a brief visit of H.M.S. Hornet to these islands in October, 1878.

a height of about twenty inches, and is generally of a pale fawn-colour, paler below.

According to Mr. Swinhoe the "Chinese at Shanghai call this animal the Ke; but at Chinkiang it is named Chang-the classical term for the Muntjac (Cervulus Reevesi). The Chinese dictionary, compiled under. authority of the Emperor Kanghe, describes the Ke as stag-like, with feet resembling those of a dog, has a long tusk on each side of the mouth, and is fond of fighting.""

uninviting aspect; and their quaint inhabitants view with ill-concealed dislike the presence of foreign ships within their waters.

I was enabled to land on two occasions on the Island of Mackau-the largest of a group of islands bearing that name. About six miles in length, it possesses some halfdozen lofty peaks, which range in height from 800 or 900 feet to 1400 feet above the sea. Naked masses of quartzite or quartz-rock crown the summits and often compose the upper third of the hills, whilst a thick and dense growth of creepers, shrubs, and mimosas clothes the hill-slopes for their lower two-thirds. The quartzite passes insensibly into a compact quartzitic sandstone underlying it; and lower down this rock assumes a coarse-grained texture,

ccasionally containing pebbles of quartz embedded in it. From the nature of the ground it was difficult to find

trustworthy signs of bedding in these rocks. Cropping out in the lower third of the hills-from the cliffs and the slopes immediately above them-are beds of a highly micaceous rock-greisen-and a gneissose rock sometimes approaching in its characters the typical gneiss; these beds are inclined at an angle of 15° to the eastnorth-east. Veins of quartz are observed to traverse both these rocks, whilst occasionally a layer of quartzan inch in thickness-separates contiguous beds.

I had no opportunity of landing on any other islands of the archipelago, many of which in their general appearance resemble that of the Island of Mackau.

NOTES

H. B. GUPPY

THE International Medical Congress which it is proposed to hold in London in the beginning of August will be the seventh of its kind. The previous meetings have been held biennially in the principal university towns of the Continent. At the last meeting in Amsterdam in 1879, a general wish was expressed that the next should be in England, and the wish having been informally communicated to the Presidents of the College of Physicians and the College of Surgeons, they called a meeting of presidents or other delegates of all the Univerities, Medical Corporations, Public Medical Services, and the Medical Societies. The proposal to hold the Congress in London was heartily agreed to, and an Executive Committee was appointed under whose direc tion, and, especially, by the energy of the General Secretary, Mr. MacCormack, a very large scheme has been arranged for the discussion of the most interesting questions in all the divisions of the Medical Sciences. The Meetings will be held in fifteen sections, in rooms of most of which the use has been granted by the University of London, the Royal Academy, and all the learned Societies at Burlington House. Others have been engaged at Willis's Rooms. The officers and councils of the several sections include, with very few exceptions, all the chief and most active teachers and workers in the several subjects of medical science and practice, not in London alone, but in all the universities and great towns in the United Kingdom. In so far as general consent to the design of the Congress may be regarded as a promise of success, all looks well, and the agreement of our own countrymen is well matched by the assurances of co-operation already received from a large number of the most distinguished medical investigators and practitioners in both the Old World and the New. About 4000 invitations were issued, and it is expected that the roll of members will include at least 2000 names. Of course there are large arrangements for receptions and various hospitalities, and for making London as agreeable and instructive as may be in August; but if the design in the programme of the Congress be fairly fulfilled, a great quantity of hard and useful scientific work will be well done.

Ar a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences held in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 12, the Rumford medal was conferred on Prof. Josiah Millard Gibbs, of Yale College, for his researches on Thermodynamics.

WE regret to hear of the death of Prof. James Tennant, F.G.S., the well-known mineralogist. Mr. Tennant was the assistant and afterwards the successor of Mr. Mawe, author of "Travels in Brazil," and of a "Treatise on Diamonds," and by adding to the series obtained by Mr. Mawe many fine specimens from every part of the globe, succeeded in thus forming a very large and valuable collection of minerals. Mr. Tennant was an excellent authority on gems, and his advice was taken by the Government with respect to the cutting of the Koh-i-Noor and other crown jewels. Besides holding the office of "Mineralogist to the Queen," Mr. Tennant was for many years Professor of

Geology and Mineralogy in King's College, London, and after he resigned the professorship of the former science, still retained the post of Professor of Mineralogy, which he held at the time Ansted and the Rev. W. O. Mitchell, wrote the treatise on of his death. Mr. Tennant, in conjunction with the late Prof. Geology, Mineralogy, and Crystallography for Orr's "Circle of the Sciences," and he was also the author of some smaller educational works. Mr. Tennant did much useful work in preparing collections of minerals and fossils suitable for educational purposes; and by popular lectures and in other ways he aided in disseminating a knowledge of those sciences in which he was so greatly interested. Mr. Tennant had reached the age of seventy-three at the time of his death.

PROF. MARTIN DUNCAN, F.R.S., has been elected president of the Royal Microscopical Society.

THE Daily News Naples correspondent writes with reference to the Zoological Station at Naples that the average number of naturalists working in the laboratory was formerly about twentyfive, but this year it will be above thirty, adding to which the permanent staff of the station, there are altogether nearly forty naturalists bent upon promoting original research into marine zoology and botany, while enjoying the most unusual facilities and elaborate technical arrangements that have ever yet been contrived. The use of the diving apparatus has enabled the naturali ts to find marine plants hidden in cracks and crevices and on the undersides of overhanging rocks, which otherwise would never have been brought to light, for the ground-net cannot reach them. By this means many interesting botanical problems have been brought nearer to a solution.

COLONEL PREJEWALSKI has just returned to St. Petersburg with a fine botanical collection he has made in Kansu. Dr. Maximowicz states that upon a cursory examination his previous impression is strengthened that we have to do here not with the flora of China, but with an altogether different one, belonging to the border of the great Central Asiatic plateau. There are no Chinese forms of trees or shrubs whatever, not even an Acer. The general character is entirely high alpine and cold. Dr. Maximowicz thinks that this Central Asiatic plateau has a flora with a distinct individuality of its own, and proposes to call it the Tangut flora, from the name applied by its first European explorer, Marco Polo, to the people inhabiting this inclement and inaccessible region.

THE arrangements for the international medical and sanitary exhibition of the Parkes Museum of Hygiene, which is to be held at South Kensington from July 16 to August 13, are now complete. The exhibition is to comprise everything that is of service for the prevention, detection, cure, and alleviation of disease.

THE Clarendon Press is about to issue a new edition of the late Admiral W. H. Smythe's "Cycle of Celestial Objects,” a book which by universal consent has done more to promote popular astronomy in England than any other work of the kind. The new edition has been edited by Mr. G. F. Chambers, F. R.A.S., whose "Handbook of Astronomy," another Clarendon Press book, is well known. This volume, though professedly only a new edition, may be regarded as almost a new work. Whereas the original edition comprised only 850 objects, the new one comprises no fewer than 1604. But it is not merely in the number of the objects dealt with that the usefulness of the new edition will consist. It will be found that Mr. Chambers has cut down here, expanded there, and revised everywhere, Admiral Smythe's printed matter, so as to embody the progress of the science down to the year 1880. What this means in the case of hundreds of double-stars annually undergoing re-measurement, and many of them annually undergoing change, can only be