There is good news for eaters of fish, for the government of Newfoundland have recently ascertained from the survey made by Professor Hind, under their authority, that the fishing-grounds off the coast of Labrador cover an area of more than seven thousand geographical square miles; about a thousand more than the Newfoundland fisheries. And there is good prospect of duration, for the Arctic drift brings down infinite quantities of the infusorial animals on which the cod-fish delight to feed. Owing to the higher latitude, the fishing season varies from that of Newfoundland; and it is found that the cod approach the shore one week later for every degree of latitude, going northwards. The coast of Labrador is described as similar to that of Norway, bare and rocky, and cut by fiords, some of which penetrate seventy miles inland. A summer cruise along that coast would be an interesting adventure for some of our yachtsmen.
The Smithsonian Institution at Washington does not confine itself exclusively to science, but makes itself useful in other ways. One of these ways is fish-culture; and we find from a recent Report, that in three years 1873-75, the Institution distributed forty millions of fish. Among these, shad and two kinds of salmon were the most numerous. The distribution is carried on under the superintendence of Professor Baird, an American naturalist of high repute.
A recently published part of the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal contains a report of a meeting held some months ago in which Sir H. Rawlinson stated that from the further investigations that had taken place there was reason to believe 'that the Hittites were really the chief people intervening between Egypt and Assyria, and that to them we owe the intercommunication of the art of those two countries.'
At the same meeting, Professor Monier Williams, in giving an account of his visit to India, mentioned that while there he had heard the learned men speak Sanscrit with astonishing fluency; and that in his opinion the day is approaching when Sanscrit will be as much studied in England as Greek.
One of the English delegates who took part in the International Statistical Congress held last September at Buda-Pesth, remarks on the disadvantage under which the Hungarians lie in their isolation from other nations by their language. It is a serious obstacle to their development; and as antipathies of race prevent their adoption of German, he recommends that they should take to English. In this he says: 'There would be no race difficulties, and the use of English would aid the Hungarians in more ways than one, and secure for them a predominance on the Lower Danube.'
If the present enthusiasm for African travel should continue, Africa will, before many years are over, cease to be an unknown country. Travellers from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Portugal, are either actually at work or about to commence their explorations, in addition to the Englishmen who are always pushing their way into the interior. And now that Colonel Gordon (Gordon Pasha) has been appointed by the Khedive of Egypt governor of Sudan, facilities for travel in the equatorial regions may be looked for, and Æthiopia will cease to be a mystery.
We are informed that the use of leather belts for transmission of power in factories is more widely spread in the manufacturing districts than is implied in our paragraph on that subject ([ante, p. 63]), and that in the Anchor Thread Works at Paisley, where the belts were adopted four years ago, two thousand five hundred horse-power are transmitted by means thereof.
We take this opportunity of correcting an error in our recent article on Austrian Arctic Discovery. Lieutenant Payer's farthest point north ought to have been 82° 5′ instead of 85° 5′.
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