METEOROLOGY. 393 



of rarefied atmosphere upon the animal system. He concludes that the 

 rarefaction influences the metastasis by depriving- the blood and the 

 tissues of some of their necessary oxygen, and that this want of oxygen 

 entails an excessive destruction of albumen, the constituents of which 

 are in ])art deposited as fat. {Nature, xxvii, p. 101.) 



431. S. A. Hill, of India, has investigated the connection between 

 statistics of death and crime and the variations of the weather in that 

 country. He finds that a mere rise of temperature has comparatively 

 little effect and the eflect of varying humidity is still less, while the va- 

 riations of diurnal range in temperature are quite appreciable. The 

 most prevalent fatal diseases are the malarial fevers, and these are 

 doubtless increased by the rainfall, so that dry years are healthy and 

 wet ones unhealthy. Cringes of violence in India may be said to be 

 l>roportioual in frequency to the tendency to prickly heat; that excru- 

 ciating condition of the skin induced by a liigh"temperature combined 

 with moisture. {Xafure, xxix, p. 338.) 



432. N. Alcock discusses the effect of climate on the color of the hu- 

 man skin, and maintains that the effect of great sunshine upon the pig- 

 ment is to intensify the skin color and cause the intense blackness of 

 the races that live in the tropical regions where the chemical power is 

 intense for a vertical sun. {Nature, xxx, p. 401.) 



433. The glaciers of the Straits of Magellan are described by W. J. L. 

 Wharton {Nature, xxx, p. 177), who has made measures upon their 

 dimensions and movements. 



434. Prof. F. Simony, in a study of the glacial formation of the Karls- 

 Icetield, the largest glacier in the Austrian Alps, finds that during the' 

 last thirty years a steady diminution has taken place in the average 

 quantity of ice, and at the present rate only twelve or fifteen years more 

 will be required to bring it back to the minimum condition which local 

 report said it had attained some three hundred years ago. It would 

 seem, then, proper to assume that long prevailing secular changes in 

 climate take place that are best shown by sucli phenomena as the 

 glacier changes of corresponding long periods. {Z. 0. G. M., xix, p. 

 127.) 



435. W. B. Browne presented to the Eoyal Society in 1882 a very 

 suggestive paper on the causes of glacial motion, which however seems 

 not to have been printed until a year after, and which should be read 

 in connection with the following. {Nature, xxviii, p. 235.) 



436. A. Irving, in a paper on the mechanics of glaciers, states that 

 there is as yet no explanation of the fact that the movement is greater 

 by day than by night and greater in the summer than in the winter. 

 This he attributes to the fact that the solar rays entering into the inte- 

 rior of the glacier are there transformed into heat and melt the ice, whose 

 variations have thus a daily and annual period. {Nature, xxvii, p. 

 553.) 



437. Dr. li. von Lendenfeld has made a survey and study of the gla- 



