B. TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS AND METEOROLOGY. 71 

 DRYING UP OF THE ISLAND OF SANTA CEUZ. 



The Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club contains a sug- 

 gestive paragraph in reference to the influence of trees upon 

 rain and atmospheric moisture, as shown by the experience 

 of the island of Santa Cruz in the West Indies. This island 

 is said to have been a garden of freshness, beauty, and fertil- 

 ity twenty years ago ; it was covered w^th woods, trees were 

 every w'here abundant, and rains w^ere profuse and frequent. 

 The recent visit of a gentleman who had known the island 

 in its palmier days, revealed a lamentable change, one fourth 

 of the island having become an utter desert. The forests and 

 trees had been cut away, rain-falls had ceased, and the process 

 of desiccation, beginning at one end of the island, had ad- 

 vanced gradually and irresistibly upon the land, until for 

 seven miles it had become dry and barren as the sea-shore. 

 Houses and plantations had been abandoned, and the advance 

 of desolation w\is watched by the people, wholly unable to 

 prevent it, but knowing, almost to a certainty, the time when 

 their own habitations, their gardens and fresh fields, would 

 be a part of the waste. Indeed, the whole island seems 

 doomed to become a desert. This sad result is owing en- 

 tirely, according to the belief of the inhabitants, to the de- 

 struction of the trees upon the island some years ago. Bull. 

 Torrey Bot. Club, 1872, III., 38. 



ELECTEIC STORM OF JANUARY 7-8, 1873. 



Some interesting electric phenomena were noticed on the 

 occasion of a recent storm in the Northwestern States, and 

 as the extended net-W'Ork of telegraph lines affords opportu- 

 nity for studying similar occurrences w^henever they recur, 

 it is to be hoped that attention may be more generally given 

 to the accurate observation of these electric storms. Except- 

 ing a notice in the Chicago Tribune, the only account that 

 we have of the phenomena is that communicated by Mr. Sim- 

 mons to the Chicago Inter-Ocean, of January 22, from which 

 we make the following summary : 



At 2:25 P.M., January 7, while a severe storm was raging 

 in Minnesota, and a high southwest wind, with light snow 

 and very low temperatures, prevailed in Central Iowa, it was 

 noticed at the telegraph oftices in the latter district that at- 



