THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1875

A GERMAN MANUAL OF SCIENTIFIC

INQUIRY

unexplored parts of the world and on geographical features generally; and Kieppert contributes an article on Flying Surveys. Von Richthoven, of Chinese celebrity, writes a memoir on Geology, throughout which the special turn of mind of an accomplished traveller is conspicuous; and the African explorer, Schweinfurth, gives one on the collection and preservation of plants; while Dr. Gün

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N estimating the merits of a work like this German Manual, we must bear in mind that ordinary treatises are not what a traveller asks for. These are primarily written for the use of students, not for that of investigators, and the stand-points of the student and of the investigator are wholly different. The student takes a position in the very heart of the great continent of established knowledge, and his aim is to familiarise himself with what is already known, but the investigator places himself on the frontier of that continent, and is always directing his thoughts into the illimitable regions of the unknown. It is therefore obvious that the books needed by a traveller must be composed in a different spirit to those intended for students. They must summarise, so far as possible in the small space that is available, the most advanced knowledge of the several sciences; they must dwell at length upon what is not known, and they must explain how processes, commonly carried on at a table, with abundant appliances, may be undertaken in the open air, amid the manifold discomforts of a journey and in the isolation to which every traveller is necessarily obliged to submit. The satisfactory combination of these three requirements is hard to accomplish, while it is scarcely possible for anyone who has not himself been a traveller to do justice to the last of them.

Dr. Neumayer informs us that the present work, of which he is the editor and to which he has himself contributed an important and well-illustrated memoir on Hydrography, took its origin in a meeting of scientific men at Berlin. They recognised the merits of the English Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry," which appears to be much appreciated by German navigators, but they felt that a more elaborate work might advantageously be supplied, having special reference to German culture and needs. The result of the conference has been the production of this volume. It contains contributions from twenty-eight men, all experts in what they write about, many of them of the highest distinction, and many of them travellers. It is therefore impossible but that such a compendium should be of sterling worth. Unfortunately it is equally impossible for us, in a short review of so encyclopædic an undertaking, to give more than a partial idea of it.

The authors, as we might expect, have treated their subjects in very different ways, so that there is much individuality in their writings, and perhaps some disproportion in the spaces allotted to the several subjects. Again, some of the best memoirs are on topics where one would have least hoped to meet with interesting matter; thus, Dr. A. Meitzin has drawn up an exceedingly instructive memoir on Political Geography and Statistics, and Dr. Friedel one on Medical Science. There is a masterly and original treatise by Dr. Koner on the VOL. XI.-No. 278

In short, all the branches of zoology and botany are excellently represented. Dr. Steinthal has contributed a very instructive paper on linguistic inquiry, showing, among other things, the sort of conversation that a traveller should encourage in order to procure synonyms and nice distinctions of words; also to obtain correct ideas of construction. Thus he has pages of such words or phrases as these: "The sky; clouds; the sky is clear, is cloudy. Wind, the wind blows; storm; whirlwind. The sun is risen, is set, burns hotly. The moon, new moon; there is no moon; stars; comet; meteor," &c. This ought to afford an excellent guide to persons desirous of compiling vocabularies of hitherto unwritten languages. The only paper to which exception might be taken is that on fixing geographical positions; for, however sound it may be, it is written from the point of view of a University professor, and omits the matters connected with the carriage and manipulation of instruments under the difficulties inseparable from rough travel, which are precisely those about which the traveller most needs information.

The volume contains almost seven hundred pages, large octavo, in a rather small but readable type. Thanks to its being issued on paper that is neither thick nor heavy, it forms by no means an unwieldy book. There can be no doubt that it will become a standard work for all travellers who can read German. It wants an index, because, although it is divided into twenty-eight sections, it is by no means easy to hunt out a required passage, especially as the memoirs necessarily encroach upon the provinces of one another; if the book be translated into English, this want ought to be supplied. Again, it is only to some of the memoirs that a list of special works of reference is appended. These lists are extremely useful to persons preparing for a journey, and all the memoirs should have been furnished with them. If such lists should ever be compiled, and if the works to which they refer were freely added to the libraries in the capitals of the various colonies, they would be of the greatest assistance to travellers, temporarily resident, while completing their preparations for a start, or in putting their materials into order in the interval between two journeys.

In concluding these remarks, attention may serviceably be directed to a desideratum, not only of scientific travellers, but of all who, having been well grounded in science, occupy themselves occasionally in scientific research; namely, a book that shall contain the principal constants and formulæ of every branch of science, each accompanied by a short reminder, as it were, of the method by which it was obtained. Such a book, suitable to the state of knowledge at the bygone time when it was written, is actually in existence, namely, Carr's "Synopsis" (published by Weld). The condensation, elegance, and precison of its style are worthy of the highest commendation. It was a vade mecum of the late Mr. Babbage, to

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The Sandwich Islands lie upwards of 2,000 miles southwest of San Francisco, and consist of fifteen islands, of which only eight appear to be inhabited, viz., Hawaii, Mauai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Molokai, Oahu, Kaui, and Niihau. The total area is about 7,000 square miles, and the native population is under 50,000. There are besides upwards of 5,000 foreigners, the Chinese being more largely represented than any other nation, Americans and British coming next. There is, however, a large native white population, descendants of American missionaries and others who settled in the islands years ago; most of the Government offices for the Sandwich group has a Constitutional Monarchy-being filled by whites of this class. The islands have for many years been professedly Christian in religion. They extend from 18° 50' to 22° 20' N. lat., and from 154° 53' to 160° 15 W. long. Their official designation is the "Hawaiian Islands." "Their climate for salubrity and gen: ral equa

bility is reputed the finest on earth. It is almost absolutely equable, and a man may take his choice between broiling all the year round on the sea level on the leeward side of the islands at a temperature of 80°, and enjoying the charms of a fireside at an altitude where there is frost every night of the year. There is no sickly season, and there are no diseases of locality. The trade winds blow for nine months of the year, and on the windward coasts there is an abundance of rain, and a perennial luxuriance of vegetation."

So says Miss Bird, whose delightful book we recommend to all who wish for a full and graphic account of the present condition of the Sandwich Islands and islanders. She spent seven months of the year 1873 on the islands for the sake of her health, rode and sailed

and climbed about fearlessly everywhere, using her eyes to the very best advantage. The result is, that in less than 500 pages she gives a panoramic picture of the various phases of nature and life in the Sandwich Islands, which leaves little to be desired.

The largest of the islands is Hawaii-its area is 4,000 square miles-but the capital, Honolulu, the headquarters of one of our Transit expeditions, is on Oahu. Hawaii Miss Bird calls a huge slag, and the same, we fancy, may be said of most of the other islands; everywhere there are unmistakable signs of the fiercest volcanic outbursts, and every now and again are the inhabitants reminded of the instability of the foundations of their lovely dwelling-place. Nevertheless, nobody in Hawaii troubles himself with the thought

of the terrible possibilities that may at any moment happen. Natives and foreign residents appear to resign themselves unreservedly to the perpetual "afternoon" influence of the land, where there seems to be little need of "taking thought for the morrow."

Miss Bird gives us many glimpses of the luxuriant vegetation which is to be found almost everywhere on the lower slopes of the islands; a mere list of the various trees to be met with would occupy more space than we can afford. Almost all the roots and fruits of the torrid and temperate zones can be grown on the islands, though the flora is far scantier than that of the South Sea groups. The indigenous fauna is small, consisting only of hogs, dogs, goats, and an anomalous bat that flies by day. There are few insects except such as have been imported, and there is no great variety of bird-life.

In Hawaii, as well as in others of the islands, the coast line is everywhere broken by deep "gulches" or ravines, often from 1,000 to 2,000 feet in depth, running for miles into the interior, clothed from top to bottom of their nearly perpendicular sides with almost impenetrable vegetation, and having the narrow valleys below raked by torrent-like rivers, which are often swollen to many hundred yards in breadth.

No doubt the principal attraction to the scientific reader in Miss Bird's narrative will be her account of the visits which she was brave and determined enough to make to the volcanoes, active and extinct, on Hawaii and Mauai. All the principal islands of the group, being of volcanic origin, are more or less mountainous, ranging in extreme height from 400 ft. in Kahoolawe to close on 14,000 in Hawaii, the loftiest island in Oceania. As our readers,

no doubt, know, there are on the island of Hawaii two active and at least two extinct volcanoes; indeed, almost everywhere in the interior evidence of former volcanic action is to be met with. "To the south of the Waimea plains violent volcanic action is everywhere apparent, not only in tufa cones, but in tracts of ashes, scoriæ, and volcanic sand."

Mauna Loa, somewhat to the south of the centre of the island of Hawaii, is the highest active volcano in the world, rising to a height of 13,760 feet. The whole of the south side of Hawaii, down to and below the water's edge, is composed of its slopes, its base being 180 miles in circumference. "Its whole bulk above a height of 8,000 feet is one frightful desert," though vegetation, in the form of grey lichens, a little withered grass, and a hardy asplenium, extends 2,000 feet further up. During Miss Bird's visit to the summit, the thermometer regis

tered 11° of frost. The crater Mokuaweoweo, is six miles in circumference, 11,000 feet long, 8,000 feet wide, with precipitous sides 800 feet deep. The crater appears to be in a state of constant activity, and at times overflows, carrying destruction to the lowest levels of the island. Miss Bird tells us that since white men inhabited the islands there have been ten eruptions from Mauna Loa. Of the condition of the crater, the following description, by Miss Bird, of what she saw on her visit, accomplished amid hardships that few men would care to undergo, will give the reader a vivid idea :

"When the sun had set, and the brief red glow of the tropics had vanished, a new world came into being, and wonder after wonder flashed forth from the previously lifeless crater. Everywhere through its vast expanse appeared glints of fire-fires bright and steady, burning in rows like blast furnaces; fires lone and isolated, un

winking like planets, or twinkling like stars; rows of little fires marking the margin of the lowest level of the crater; fire molten in deep crevasses; fire in wavy lines; fire, calm, stationary, and restful: an incandescent lake two miles in length beneath a deceptive crust of darkness, and whose depth one dare not fathom even in thought. Broad in the glare, giving light enough to read by at a distance of three-quarters of a mile, making the moon look as blue as an ordinary English sky, its golden gleam changed to a vivid rose-colour, lighting up the whole of the vast precipices of that part of the crater with a rosy red, bringing out every detail here, throwing cliffs and heights into huge black masses there, rising, falling, never intermitting, leaping in lofty jets with glorious shapes like wheatsheafs, corruscating, reddening, the most glorious thing beneath the moon was the firefountain of Mokuaweoweo."

On the east flank of Mauna Loa, about 4,000 feet in height, is the crater of Kilauea, which, Miss Bird says, has the appearance of a great pit on a rolling plain.

"But such a pit! It is nine miles in circumference, and its lowest area, which not long ago fell about 300 feet, just as ice on a pond falls when the water below it is withdrawn, covers six square miles. The depth of the crater varies from 800 to 1,100 feet in different years, according as the molten sea below is at flood or ebb."

We wish we had space to quote Miss Bird's fearfully vivid description of what she saw during the two visits she made to Kilauea, descriptions which, were they not evidently written on the spot with a truthful pen, would

almost deserve to be called sensational.

She also made the ascent of Mauna Kea, to the north

of Mauna Loa, the highest peak in Oceania, perpetually covered with snow, a dead volcano, whose top consists of deep soft ashes and sand.

On the west side of Hawaii is another extinct volcano, Hualulai, 10,000 feet high, which has only slept since 1801, when there was a tremendous eruption from it, which flooded several villages, destroyed many plantations and fish-ponds, filled up a deep bay twenty miles in extent, and formed the present coast.

The largest extinct volcano in the world, Haleakala, is in the centre of the island of Mauai, lying to the northwest of Hawaii. It is 10,200 feet in height; its terminal crater is nineteen miles in circumference, 2,000 feet deep, and contains numerous subsidiary cones, some of which are 800 feet high. Miss Bird of course visited it, and, as usual, her description is exceedingly graphic and full, and is considerably helped out by an excellent map of the crater. It seems that very few of the usual volcanic products are present in this extinct crater.*

Volcanic action in the Sandwich Islands would seem to have died out from west to east ; this is inferred from the state of the lava and the great depth of soil in some of the western islands, as in Oahu and Kauai, the latter the most westerly of the inhabited islands. Some very remarkable instances of the powerful effects of weathering in causing degradation are to be seen in this island. The Punchbowl, a crater behind Honolulu, was in 1786 observed to be composed of high peaks; but atmospheric influences have reduced it to the appearance of a single wasting tufa cone; and the cone of Diamond Hill, to the

According to Mr. Brigham, the products of the Hawaiian volcanoes are native sulphur, pyrites, salt, sal ammoniac, hydrochloric acid, hematite, sulphurous acid, sulphuric acid, quartz, crystals, palagonite, feldspar, chrysolite, Thompsonite, gypsum, solfatarite, copperas, nitre, arragonite, Labradorite, limonite.

south of the town, is also, from the same causes, rapidly diminishing.

The native population of the Sandwich Islands, which belongs to the Malay or Malyo-Polynesian division of Oceania, is fast dying out, at the fearful rate of something like 1,000 per year; so that unless some counteracting circumstances intervene, it must in a very few years become entirely extinct. Cook calculated the population of the islands in 1778 to be about 400,000; now the native population is under 50,000. That the decay is to a considerable extent owing to contact with whites there is no doubt.

But when every allowance is made for the effects of such contact upon the native population, it is questionable whether this will account completely for its rapid decrease. A similar decrease seems to be going on all over the Pacific islands, even in places where the whites have always been extremely few. From this point of view M. Leborgne has recently turned his attention to the small Gambier group, which consists of four islands. Magarévə, the most important island, had in 1840 a population of 1,130; it is now only 650. Dr. Hamy, in an article in La Nature, ascribes the prevalent diseases mainly to consanguineous marriages, a cause which is likely to obtain in many of the other isolated Pacific groups. This may have something to do with the diminution of the Hawaiian population, as also the fact that the careless, happy, and extremely sociable people seem to be almost devoid of anything like parental affection, taking little care of their

children, and readily parting with them to anyone willing die in infancy. Another point to be noted is that in 1872 to take them; the consequence is that a large proportion the males exceeded the females by 6,400 souls.

At all events there is no doubt that the populations of most of the Pacific islands are rapidly disappearing, and that ere very long the only tenant of their lovely homes will be the omnipresent white man, who has foisted on them an exotic civilisation which seems to have unmanned them, to have completely checked their natural development, and whose invariable concomitants have been disease and widespread destruction.

to the favourable notice of our readers. A small map We again recommend Miss Bird's most attractive book of the islands is prefixed, and the few illustrations are beautifully executed.

OUR BOOK SHELF Sun and Earth as Great Forces in Chemistry. By Thos. W. Hall, M.D. (London: Trübner and Co.) THE author of this work, professing himself the preacher of a new doctrine, theorises, to use his own words, "on the phenomena of chemistry... considering the whole of chemistry as but heat acting on matter." The sun is considered to exert some subtle chemical influence on matter, but, unfortunately for science, these effects, we are told, cannot be studied experimentally, "yet we can do so theoretically to a very useful extent." After carefully perusing the twelve chapters in which this eminently theoretical treatment is carried out, we are driven to ask ourselves whether Dr. Hall's views are not more of the nature of complication than of explanation. It may be safely affirmed that the phenomena of chemistry are far more easily explained by existing theories-imperfect though they be-than by the obscure reasoning based on perfectly gratuitous assumptions in which the present