Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/714

696 are vividly sketched. Owing to various delays the edition was not issued till 1846.

Nuttall returned only once to America. As lie could not be absent more than three months in any one year, he took the last three months of 1847 and the first three of 1848—not a very desirable season for a botanist's outing. Nevertheless, he managed to do some congenial work. He studied at the Philadelphia Academy the plants brought by Dr. William Gamble from the Rocky Mountains and Upper California, and prepared a paper on them which was published in the journal of the Academy.

His death occurred on September 10, 1859. In his eagerness to open a case of plants received shortly before from Mr. Booth he overstrained himself, and from that time steadily declined until he died. Through his love of Nature, joined with untiring industry and great firmness of purpose, he had raised himself from the condition of an unknown artisan to the foremost rank of American men of science. No student begins upon the study of systematic botany without being struck by the frequency with which his name is met. His friends and colleagues. Profs. Torrey and Gray, have testified to their appreciation by attaching his name to a beautiful genus of the Rosaceæ. Elias Durand said of him immediately after his death: "No other explorer of the botany of North America has personally made more discoveries; no writer on American plants, except perhaps Prof. Asa Gray, has described more new genera and species."

the Kayans of Borneo, according to Mr. C. Hose, when a child is born, the father and mother sink their own identity and adopt the name of their offspring. Supposing a man named Jau becomes the parent of a son to whom he gives the name of Lahing, the former would no longer be called Jau, but Taman Lahing, father of Lahing. If his child were to die, he would be called Ozong Lahing, or Ozong Jau; if his wife dies, he adds the prefix Aban (widower) to his name; if a brother or sister, Boi, and he is called Boi Lahing. Should he attain the position of being a grandfather, he becomes Laki, adding thereto the name of his grandchild; so if the latter is given the name of Ngipa, the grandfather is no longer called Taman Lahing, or by any other name but Laki Ngipa. A widow is called Ballo.

considering temperature as a factor in the distribution of marine animals, Dr. Otto Maas, of Munich, said, in the British Association, that the great ocean currents were primary elements in limiting the distribution of free-swimming forms, very few species being found both north and south of them. The influence which had been ascribed to pressure might often be more correctly attributed to change of temperature, as in the case of deep-sea animals which died on being brought to the surface in the Atlantic but not in the Mediterranean. In conclusion, attention was called to the corals and the geryonid jellyfish as illustrative of the principles laid down, both having a similar distribution, though the former are fixed, the latter free swimming.