J. P. MAHAFFY.

THE COMING PUBLISHING SEASON. MESSRS. GRIFFIN & Co.'s list is as follows:'A Manual of Botany, Theoretical and Practical,' by Prof. McNab, M.D.,-"The Student's Mechanics an Introduction to the Study of Motion and Force,' by Walter R. Browne, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,-'A Manual of Marine Engineering,' by A. E. Seaton, of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, - 'Poisons : their Effects and Detection,' by A. Wynter Blyth, M.R.C.S., The Teeth: how to Preserve Them and Prevent their Decay,' by S. H. Linn, M. D., -'The Story of the Bible,' by Charles Foster, Schiller's 'Maid of Orleans,' translated by Lewis Filmore, and some new editions.

Mr. Elliot Stock announces the following antiquarian works :-A fac-simile of the first edition of 'Robinson Crusoe,'-'The Civil War

in Hampshire and the Siege of Basing House,' by the Rev. G. N. Godwin,-"The History of Lambeth Palace Library,' by S. W. Kershaw,'Place-Names of the West Riding,' by the Rev. Nicholas Greenwell, The Woodcutters of the Netherlands,' by W. M. Conway,- Kingsthorpiana; or, Researches in the Church Chest of Kingsthorpe,' by the Rev. J. H. Glover, Historic Notices of the Borough and County Town of Flint,' by Henry Taylor,-and 'The History of Old Dundee,' by Alexander Maxwell. The same house will also publish 'The New Medusa,' a volume of poems by Mr. Lee Hamilton,-and 'Verses of Varied Life,' by H. T. Mackenzie Bell.

Mr. T. Fisher Unwin will publish on November 1st an édition de luxe of Miss Helen Zim

mern's stories retold from the 'Shah Nameh' of

the Persian poet Firdusi, with etchings by Mr. Alma Tadema, R. A., and a prefatory poem by Mr. E. W. Gosse. Among other works in progress Mr. Unwin announces The Roman Students; or, On the Wings of the Morning,' a tale of the Renaissance, by the author of The Spanish Brothers,' 'Heroic Adventure,'-'Tales of Modern Oxford,' by the author of 'Modern Oxford,'-Poems and Hymns, by the Rev. G. T. Coster, Geographical Questions,' by R. H. Allpress, The Illustrated Poetry Book,'-The Children's Bouquet of Verse and Hymn,''Dick's Holidays,'- Ephemerides: a New Christmasse Annualle,' edited by Edward Walford, -and new editions of Modern Missions,' by Robert Young; 'Industrial Curiosities' and Labour and Victory,' by A. H. Japp, LL.D.; 'Wise Words and Loving Deeds,' by E. Conder Gray; and 'Footprints,' by Sarah Tytler.

Messrs. Masters & Co. will publish The Polity of the Christian Church of Early, Medieval, and Modern Times,' by Alexius Aurelius Pelliccia, translated from the original Latin by the Rev. J. C. Bellett, Thoughts on Holiness,' by W. A. Copinger,-A Commentary on the 119th Psalm,' by Dr. Littledale,-'The Diamond Ring,' by Mrs. Mitchell,Other People,' by Stella Austin, and A Collection of Counsels for the Young,' from the French, by

the translator of Gold Dust.'

·

THE supply of copies of Canon Farrar's new work, The Early Days of Christianity,

6

Words of Thomas Carlyle on Trades Unions: Promoterism and the Signs of the Times.'

MR. J. W. EBSWORTH, than whom no one is better fitted for the task, has in preparation

an elaborate edition of 'Hudibras.'

MESSRS. TRÜBNER & Co. announce a 'History of the Pacific States of North America,' in twenty-five volumes, by Mr. H. H. Bancroft. The first three volumes will be devoted to Central America; vols. iv.-xi. to Mexico. Vols. i. and iv. will be ready on the 20th inst. On that day the same publishers will issue The Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast of North America,' by Mr. J. S. Hittell.

THE PROLEGOMENA TO ETHICS,' edited by Mr. A. C. Bradley, will probably be out by the beginning of January.

MR. GOMME is engaged upon a work on The Early History of Municipal Institutions in England.' In a contribution to Archaologia some two or three years ago Mr. Gomme traced out many of the primitive land customs of the village community in the land customs of the municipalities, and he has now gathered together a great deal of evidence establishing the primitive village system in other branches of municipal institutions.

THE Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge has in the press 'The Teacher's Prayer Book,' a work which was announced in the Society's Report some time ago. It consists of the Prayer Book with notes and comments by well-known specialists. The historical introduction is by Dr. Maclear, who also contributes the notes on the

Morning and Evening Prayer and on the Thirty-nine Articles. The other contributors are Canon Bright, Prof. Lumby, Rev. R. Sinker, Rev. F. E. Warren, Rev. C. C. Mackarness, Rev. E. J. Boyce, and Rev. E. Wensley. The work is enriched by a full concordance to the Prayer Book, including the Psalter.

MESSRS. HURST & BLACKETT have in the press With the Connaught Rangers in Quarters, Camp, and on Leave,' by General E. H. Maxwell, C.B., author of 'Griffin Ahoy!' The same firm will publish during November I have Lived and Loved,' by Mrs. Forrester, and 'Exchange no Robbery,' by Miss M. Betham-Edwards, each in three volumes.

MISS BRADDON's Christmas novel, written for the next issue of the Misletoe Bough, will be called Flower and Weed.'

MR. JOSEPH HATTON'S new novel 6 A Modern Ulysses' will be commenced in today's Leeds Mercury.

A NOVEL called 'A Chelsea Householder," announced by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co., is, we understand, by a new writer.

'STUDY AND STIMULANTS' is the title of a work in preparation by Mr. A. Arthur Reade.

THE Delegates of the Clarendon Press will issue in a few days Prof. Buchheim's annotated edition of Lessing's 'Nathan der Weise." Besides fully commenting on the text, the editor aims at calling special attention to the artistic value of the poem.

MR. EFFINGHAM WILSON has in the press a new edition, the thirteenth, of Fenn's Compendium of the English and Foreign Funds.' The book has been rewritten and enlarged by Mr. R. L. Nash.

MESSRS. REEVES & TURNER will shortly publish a new and original work upon the

Law and Practice in Divorce Proceedings,' companion volume to the 'Law and Practice by Mr. W. J. Dixon. It is intended as a in Probate Proceedings' of the same author a second edition of which is now in the press,

MR. WILLIAM BROWN, of Edinburgh, wil issue immediately reprints of 'Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott,' by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and the Norwegian Account of Haco's Expedition against Scotland,' which was originally printed in 1782. Two hundred and fifty copies of each of the books, which have long been out of print and scarce, will be printed on vellum paper.

MESSRS. ABEL HEYWOOD & SON, of Manchester, have in the press a Lancashire story with the title of Acquitted though Guilty.' It will be dedicated to the Earl of Derby.

THE article on Manchester in the forthcoming volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica' will be contributed by Mr. W. E. A. Axon, of that city.

THE volume of the Folk-lore Record for

this year is nearly ready. It will contain Mabinogion Studies,' by Mr. Alfred Nutt; Notes on Roumanian Folk-lore,' by Mrs. E. B. Mawer; 'Agricultural Folklore Notes,' by Lieut. R. C. Temple;

Bibliography of Folk-lore' (part i.), by Mr. G. L. Gomme; some American Indian stories reprinted from the Geological Survey publications of the United States, besides other papers of more or less importance. To the first part of the monthly issue of the

Folk-lore Record, commencing on January 1st next, Prof. Sayce will contribute a note on 'Ancient Babylonian Folk-lore'; and the Rev. J. Sibree will probably commence some of his Malagasy folk-lore papers in the same number.

THE FARM IN THE KAROO,' a new story of colonial experience in South Africa, by Mrs. Carey Hobson, will be published immediately by Messrs. Juta, Heelis & Co.

AMONG other improvements which are about to be made at the National Library, Paris, it is hoped that the electric light may be successfully introduced.

A CORRESPONDENT Writes :"The Novoe Vremya, in a long article headed "The Legendary Russian Knight,' speaks in high terms of the recently published biography of the late General Skobelef by V. I. NemirovichDanchenko, the Russian war correspondent who saw so much of the general in the field. One of the anecdotes it cites is very remarkable and thoroughly Russian. At Plevna Skobelef lived in a small house, in which the Emperor Alexander II. expressed his wish to breakfast one morning on the occasion of a review. The breakfast took place, but the general was not invited to partake of it. After the meal, how ever, the Emperor asked him to show him over the house. This was done, and when the imperial guest and his host were alone together, the Emperor embraced Skobelef, saying 'Thanks, Skobelef! For all for all your servicesthanks!' and a second time kissed him. Skobelef felt all the more delighted with this honour inasmuch as it was conferred on him in the absence of his rivals. They already hated and envied him on account of his courage, his popularity, his independence, and above all his success. If they had witnessed the Emperor's act of grateful appreciation they would have hated the White General' all the more. M. Nemirovich-Danchenko attributes the general's untimely decease to the effect of one of the two contusions which he received at the time when, packed in eighteen boxes, and are soon to be according to his own account, he was courting death at Plevna."

OUR Correspondent at Athens writes:"Some months ago I announced that some manuscripts had been sent from the Thessalian convents at Meteora to Athens, to be placed in the National Library. It was then said that the Greek Government intended sending a commission to the Thessalian convents, to collect the manuscripts which were kept there and bring them to Athens. This plan has just been carried into execution. Two professors of the University of Athens, Spyr. Phinticles and Archimandrite Kalogeras, were entrusted with this mission to Thessaly. They collected no fewer than 500 manuscripts in the large convent Tôn Megálon Pylon on Mount Pindus. These were

sent to Athens. The National Library, where they will be deposited, will thus gain a considerable increase in its wealth of manuscripts,

the number of which has hitherto not exceeded 500. The new manuscripts are written some on parchment, some on paper. There are said to be classical authors among them. In particular a fifteenth century manuscript is mentioned which contains two tragedies of Sophocles and two of Eschylus, with interlinear translation and marginal notes. Some of the manuscripts are said to be adorned with very beautiful miniatures. The delegates of the Government have unfortunately not succeeded in bringing the manuscripts from the Meteora convents to Athens. Both the monks and the inhabitants of the neighbouring hamlets Kalambaka and Castraki have protested against the removal; but as a law of the year 1834 especially requires the removal of all books and manuscripts found in the convents to the National Library, we may hope that the manuscripts from Meteora may also be sent to Athens. As soon as the Thessalian manuscripts arrive and are examined I shall send a special account of them." PROF. S. BEAL is to lecture at University College, Gower Street, on Tuesday and Thursday next. The subjects are: (1) The Chronology of Buddhism illustrated from Passages in the Chinese Version of the Tripitaka'; (2) The Effect produced on Later Buddhism by Foreign Trade with India.' The lectures will begin at three o'clock; admission free.

acknowledging the compliment of honorary membership paid him by the Pushkin Society, M. Tourguénief, whose health, we are glad to say, is greatly improved, wrote thus:

Ir is stated that Khan Enayat Ali Khan, brother of the ruling prince of Maher Kotla, is about to publish a history of his princely house down to its political relations with the British Government at the present day. He is also about to publish a translation into Urdu of Sir Garnet Wolseley's 'Soldier's Pocket-Book,' for the use of native soldiers of the imperial army and of the feudatory states.

SCIENCE

The History of a Lump of Coal. By Alexander Watt. (A. Johnston.)-The idea of this little book is good, and its full title will show that it embraces a very wide and a varied field. The title is "The History of a Lump of Coal, from the Pit's Mouth to a Bonnet Ribbon.' This is to us objectionable-being, in the first place, too evidently constructed to catch the idle reader; and, in the second place, it does not faithfully represent the subject treated of. The history does not begin at the pit's mouth, but, very naturally, with the coal bed formed deep beneath the earth's surface, and it concludes with the manufacture of aniline dyes, which, as our author tells us, sively employed in dyeing all kinds of silk and woollen fabrics and even cotton goods," and not confined especially to the bonnet ribbon. The him to render his descriptions of gas making author's acquaintance with chemistry has enabled and the treatment of the other coal products fairly instructive. But when in his first page he informs his readers in italics that coal is "the fossil remains of trees and plants," and in the third he explains that "a great deluge must have occurred" (the italics are again the author's), and

"" are exten

that "the former vegetable growth of ages befossilized organic matter which we now call came converted into vast beds of petrified or coal," we feel compelled to express our wish that he had confined himself to explaining how the brilliant hue of the fascinating bonnet ribbon is derived from that nasty, sticky, black, strong smelling, odious coal tar.

66

"I thank you for the honour conferred upon me by the Society, with whose aims I fully sympathize. I hope to be in Petersburg this winter, and of course look forward to the A Catalogue of the Collection of Birds formed pleasant duty of assisting at your meetings. I by the late Hugh Edwin Strickland, F. R.S., &c. do not doubt that the success of your enterprise By Osbert Salvin, F.R.S. (Cambridge, Univerwill be worthy of the great name which heads it."sity Press.)-A generation has passed away since

the late Deputy Reader of Geology in the University of Oxford was suddenly snatched from an active and useful life at the early age of fortytwo, and the majority of scientific workers at the present day will probably think of him as having been principally, if not entirely, a geologist. Like many others, however, who have subsequently done good work in various branches of science, it was as an ornithologist that Strickland made his first studies in natural history; and although in after years he to a certain extent relinquished this for other and less worn paths, yet his taste for collecting birds continued unto the last. The first specimen bears date August, 1822, and a considerable portion of the collection now catalogued was got together in 1853, the very year of his untimely death. On the labels of the specimens appear the names of such contributors as Andersson and Petherick, the African explorers; Blyth, Hodgson, and Jerdon, the pioneers of Indian ornithology; Baird; Boys; Brandt; and Gosse, the author of the Birds of Jamaica. The entire collection, consisting of 6,006 skins, was presented to the University of Cambridge by his widow, Mrs. Strickland, in 1867, under certain conditions, Mr. O. Salvin being appointed curator. In the classification adopted in this catalogue Mr. Salvin has generally followed that of the 'Nomenclator Avium Neotropicalium,' published in 1873 by Mr. Sclater and himself, literary references are full and, what is of more which is based upon the system of Huxley. The

history of the genera being of unusual value. importance, correct, some of those giving the Every specimen seems to have been catalogued, and the species recorded, including the addenda, amount to upwards of 3,120. Mr. Salvin may be congratulated on having brought to a successful close a task which must have involved a great deal of scientific labour and no small amount of drudgery.

Indian Meteorological Memoirs is the title of a volume produced under the direction of Mr. H. F. Blanford, F. R.S., being occasional discussions and compilations of meteorological data relating to India and the neighbouring countries. The volume contains six memoirs by Mr. H. F. Blanford; four by Mr. S. A. Hill, Meteorological Reporter of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh; one by Mr. J. Eliot, Meteorological Reporter for Bengal; and another by Mr. F. Chambers, Reporter for Western India. These memoirs are illustrated by thirty-three diagrammatic plates, which are of great interest and utility in explaining the meteorological phenomena treated of. This first volume of 'Indian

Meteorological Memoirs,' consisting of 426 quarto pages, is in every respect a valuable contribution to meteorological science, and it gives much information as to the climates of the localities

brought under observation. A mass of information is here gathered into a focus and placed in a permanent form, so that after a few more such records we may hope the Director or some other master mind may be enabled to establish the laws by which the great movements of the atadvance our knowledge of the causes producing mosphere over India are regulated, and thus the climatic phenomena of an immense section of the globe.

Atkinson, B.Sc. (Tokio.)-This elaborate essay The Chemistry of Saké Brewing. By R. W. forms one of the memoirs issued by the scientific department of the University of Tokio. Its author held for several years the position of Professor of Analytical and Applied Chemistry in country had ample means of making an exhausthe University, and during his residence in the tive examination of the Japanese method of brewing. It is true that papers on this subject have been published in the Transactions of the German Asiatic Society of Japan; but Prof. Atkinson's investigations have enabled him to explain with greater accuracy than had previously been possible the various chemical changes involved in the manufacture of saké. Notwith

standing the fact that tea is the national beverage in Japan, the subject of brewing is one of no small importance to the State. During the year 1880 the quantity of alcoholic liquors, principally saké, produced in the country amounted to 5,207,970 koku, or 206,756,409 gallons, yielding a revenue of 6,459,570 yen, which, taking the yen at half-a-crown, would be equal to 807,4461. Prof. Atkinson enters into a technical discussion of the several stages of the manufacture, and gives analyses of the various products, from the original rice to the finished saké. His essay is undoubtedly one of the most solid contributions to science which the University has yet issued.

GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

Mr.

THE project of a land trade route between India and Western China is again to the front, its advocate being Mr. Charles H. Lepper, F.R. G. S., M.R.A.S., who read a paper recently on the same subject before the British Association. Lepper has now laid his plans before Government, and they have formed the subject of correspondence between the home authorities and the Governor-General. Mr. Lepper maintains that former failures, like Mr. Cooper's, for instance, have resulted from attempts being made in the wrong direction. To try to reach China by the north of Assam was first to encounter the uncompromising Mishmis, and beyond the impracticable Tibetan question. The more feasible route undoubtedly lies via Makum, and crosses into the Irrawaddi basin by passes none of which exceeds 2,500 ft. above sea level. The particular advantage, however, which Mr. Lepper claims on behalf of his route lies in the fact that it traverses the country of the Singphos, whom he can certify by personal experience to be a peaceable and extremely well disposed race, while the Khamptis to the north are just the opposite. Another point of importance is that the railway from Dibrugarh will eventually be constructed right up to Sudiya and Makum, to which point steam communication will thus be available all the way from England. The precise advantages which will accrue to British commerce are rather lightly touched on by Mr. Lepper, though, of course, the introduction of our goods by an easy route into Western China may open up an important market in process of time. The prospect of importing cheap Chinese labour into Assam by the new route is certainly very attractive, for, as Mr. Lepper points out, that province, with a rich soil and ever bountiful rainfall, has still probably two-thirds of its area under forest growth, infested with wild beasts and pestilent from malaria. To reclaim these tracts, to work the coal mines, and to save the important tea industry from its present serious difficulty in getting an adequate supply of labour are matters calling for the earnest attention of the Indian authorities. Mr. Lepper's proposed expedition at the Government expense may involve a certain outlay, the exact amount of which is a matter for consideration and arrangement; but whether Mr. Lepper's theoretical views be correct or not, a thorough examination of the region in question is very much wanted. We may hope that the project will not be looked upon unfavourably by the Government of India, to whom the Secretary of State has referred the matter.

Those interested in the question of the development of Africa will be attracted by a paper by Mr. G. Grenfell in the last Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. The writer was sent out to the Cameroons river by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1874, and since that time has traversed a great deal of territory between the Cameroons and the Congo, of the resources and geography of which he is therefore qualified to speak. Eastward of the Cameroons, he observes, there stretches a vast unexplored area,

partly accessible by means of the river, which furnishes an available waterway of seventy miles or so into the interior. On the slopes of the mountains which lead up to the interior the soil is mainly of volcanic origin and very rich. Coffee and india-rubber are indigenous, and cacao has been planted with success. Fruits are raised in great variety, and there are various timbers-such as ebony, African oak, a kind of teak, and a wood resembling mahogany and barwood-which might be profitably exported. Unfortunately there is great difficulty in penetrating into the interior from Cameroons, mainly owing to the jealousy with which the coast tribes reserve to themselves the monopoly of the direct trade with the European. So determined are they to preserve the boundaries that Mr. Grenfell was brought back by a party of armed men on one occasion on endeavouring to penetrate inland. With respect to the people, many of them are capable and faithful, notwithstanding that the African as a rule is very degraded, owing in great measure to the educational effects of the slave trade and gin at less than five shillings a case. Were the coast monopoly once broken down, however, Mr. Grenfell is confident that a promising future would be in store for the country and its people. An interesting paper by Mr. H. E. O'Neill, H.B.M. Consul, on the coast lands and some rivers and ports of Mozambique, furnishes curious details regarding the plan adopted by the Portuguese in the early part of last century for colonizing the rich country on both sides of the Zambesi, by offering parcels of land to well-dowered Portuguese women on condition they married Europeans of Portuguese extraction and dwelt on their holdings. The creation of this feudal system, however (for such it was), gave rise to insupportable abuses and disturbances, and in process of time the extinction of the export slave trade from the district helped to abolish it.

ASTRONOMICAL NOTES.

THERE can be little or no doubt that the great comet which has been distinctly visible to the naked eye for some days past in the early morning is the same as that found by M. Cruls and by Capt. Markham on the 12th of September (although there are probably some numerical errors in the places as telegraphed). It is certainly the same as that seen by Mr. Common at Ealing near the sun on September 17th, and which, it now appears, was also seen on the same day at Coimbra by Prof. Sousa-Pinto. Mr. S. C. Chandler, jun., of Harvard College, Cambridge, U.S., has computed the elements, according to which the comet passed its perihelion on the 17th of September, at the very small distance from the sun's centre of 0.0035 in terms of the earth's mean distance, which is less than 400,000 miles-less, therefore, than the sun's radius, indicating, if accurate, that the comet actually entered within the sun's surface, and emerged with the consequence only of an immense development of tail. The elements, indeed, bear (as Mr. Chandler did not fail to remark) a great resemblance to those of the first comet of 1880, which were at the time noticed to be very similar to those of the first comet of 1843. Hence it has been suggested that the comet, from approaching the sun so nearly at each perihelion passage, is, in fact, being drawn continually more towards it, and will ultimately be absorbed by it. It must be remembered, however, that there is no reason why different comets should not be moving along the same, or nearly the same, orbit at very considerable distances from each other. Should, however, the theory in question be true, and the three comets be identical, another return to perihelion will probably take place before many months are over. Mean time Dr. Copeland has computed from Mr. Chandler's elements an ephemeris of the comet for midnight at Greenwich, from which we extract the places for next week as follows:

The Comptes Rendus of the French Academy for September 25th reports announcements from various places in France, Italy, Spain, and Algeria, that the great comet was noticed at them in the daytime either on the 17th or 18th of that month. That from Rome states:-" Le dimanche, 17, à 10h du matin, les habitants s'arrêtaient avec étonnement sur les places pour admirer la comète, visible près du soleil vers 15 à l'ouest. Elle était si brillante qu'on l'apercevait à travers de légers nuages." MM. Thollon and Gouy examined its spectrum at Nice on the afternoon of the 18th. The interesting circumstance about it was the existence of the sodium bands (respecting which they write, "Les raies brillantes du sodium D, et D étaient données à la fois par le noyau et par les parties voisines"), presenting a similarity with the spectrum of Wells's comet, so much the more remarkable as no previous comets had ever shown those bands.

In the Athenæum for August 21st, 1880, we referred to the supposed discovery of the duplicity of Saturn's ring by Mr. William Ball and his brother Dr. Ball (the real location of whom appears to have been Mamhead, near Exeter; see Mr. Pycroft's letter in the Athenaeum for October 9th, 1880), and pointed out that they did not announce the discovery as a certainty, but only requested attention to a drawing made by them on the evening of October 13th, 1665. This was in a letter to some friend (probably Hooke), who was induced by it to write to Huyghens, asking him to consider "whether the present appearance of the planet "be to him as in this figure, and consequently whether he there meets with nothing that may make him think that it is not one body of a circular figure that embraces his disc, but two." In a letter to the Observatory for the following November (1880), Mr. Lynn remarked that the drawing in question was in some unaccountable manner omitted from the Philosophical Transactions. He now writes to the current number (October, 1882) of the same periodical, and states that there is an engraving of it in Lowthorp's abridged edition of the early volumes of the Transactions; also that it shows no appearance whatever of duplicity in the ring; so that one cannot help suspecting that by "two bodies of a circular figure were meant either the two ansa of the ring, or the ring itself and the dark space between the planet and the ring. Cassini's drawing, on the other hand, shows very clear indications of duplicity in the ring, and the view, held for nearly two centuries, that he was the first to notice the principal division is probably correct after all. The late Admiral Smyth was, we believe, the first to attribute the discovery to the Balls in his well-known 'Celestial Cycle,' published in 1844; but some astronomical