128 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



west-southwest. This latter feature may possibly be one pe- 

 culiar to the northwest portion of the Bay of Bengal ; and 

 Blanford especially guards himself against being supposed 

 to extend these views to the case of any other area than that 

 which he has especially dealt with. Fhil. Trans. JRoyal Soc. 

 of London, CLXIV., 563. 



DEY THUNDEK-STORMS. 



A correspondent in Oregon, Missouri, states : " When 

 the earth has become dry, parched, and very warm, I have 

 often, on the occasion of thunder-storms, noticed for hours, 

 while it was thundering very hard, a mist falling from the 

 storm-clouds, and roll back, after nearly reaching the earth, 

 in the form of lighter vapor. I think this rain or mist in 

 falling passed down to the stratum of very hot air on the 

 earth's surface, and became a steam ; large volumes of white 

 vapor, forming suddenly, and rolling back and up. Now I 

 am confident that if the earth had been shaded by trees this 

 rain or mist would have fallen on the ground. This phe- 

 nomenon can be seen here every hot, dry season. My atten- 

 tion was called to it by a question asked while one of these 

 dry thunder-storms was prevailing the thunder rattling 

 overhead, and not a drop of rain falling. The white mist is 

 not easily observed overhead, where all is light, but oppo- 

 site the sun under a dark storm-cloud it is very plain, and 

 must attract attention." A^Ji^leton'' s Popular Science Mo7ith- 

 Zy,IX., 765. 



TEMPEKATUKE OBSEEVATIONS IN ITALY. 



The distribution of temperature in Italy is the subject of 

 an elaborate memoir by Ragona, as published in the supple- 

 ment to the Italian Meteorology for 1876. 



Starting with the annual movement of the sun, Ragona 

 passes to the remarkable formulae that have been published 

 by Liaias, Schmidt, Waltershausen, and others, by means of 

 which the distribution of temperature over the whole earth 

 is represented in a very conspicuous manner. The still more 

 remarkable work of Forbes on this subject seems to have 

 been unknown to him. The detailed study of temperature at 

 Modena from the observations of ten years afibrded him an 

 opportunity to make many interesting connections between 



