July 6, 1876] 



NATURE 



209 



OUR BOOKSHELF 



Fatmnes in India ; their Causes and possible Prevention. 

 Being the Cambridge Le Bas Prize Essay, 1875. By 

 A. Lukyn Williams, B.A. (London : Henry S. King 

 and Co., 1876.) 



We have in this prize essay a very creditable digest of a 

 mass of blue books touching on a subject of the greatest 

 importance to India, and to ourselves. Mr. Williams has 

 first sought to interest his readers by recalling famines 

 nearer home and their dreadful consequences ; he has 

 then divided his subject into two parts, the first occupied 

 with the causes, the second with the possible prevention 

 of famines in India. 



The chief causes producing a failure of crops are to be 

 found in the land having too little or too much water, — 

 in the failure of the seasonal rains, or in floods from 

 overcharged rivers ; to which must be added the wants 

 due to the difficulty of conveying food from places where 

 it is abundant to those where its production has been 

 destroyed. There can be little doubt as to the common 

 causes of famines in India ; the important question is 

 how they are to be prevented. 



Is it possible to be prepared for a failure of the seasonal 

 rains, that is, can we foresee by ©ur present knowledge, 

 that a year, half a year, or even three months hence there 

 will certainly be a great deficiency of rain over a given 

 district or country ? This, we have to confess, is at present 

 beyond our power. Meteorology cannot yet be called a 

 science ; it is a series of fragmentary facts ; a mass of 

 undigested observations ; a groping after laws through 

 false hypotheses which have gained their position through 

 celebrated names. As long as men like Galileo were 

 satisfied with the hypothesis that nature abhorred a 

 vacuum, all progress in hydrostatics was impossible. 

 Although we have got over that, the spirit which kept 

 Aristotle alive is still above ground, and meteorology will 

 scarcely advance unless facts are studied independently 

 of the views of any master as to their causes. What here- 

 after may be possible in the way of prediction is too wide 

 a subject for this notice. 



Failing the foreknowledge required to be prepared for 

 the want of rain, there remains the very practical process 

 of being provided with water, through canals and aque- 

 ducts connected with the many perennial sources of India. 

 Mr. Williams appears to have referred little to the views 

 of Sir Arthur Cotton on this part of the subject, though 

 these are of the highest value. When both rain and 

 aqueducts are wanting, good means of communication 

 with more favoured districts are essential (these are indeed 

 essential in any case), great central railways are required 

 for our hold, and proper government of the empire, but 

 these are too costly to satisfy for many long years the real 

 requirements of such a people and of such a country. 

 Wherever they can be made, canals, which serve as great 

 lines of communication and feeders of aqueducts for irri- 

 gation, are apparently best suited to the present wants of 

 India : these, with large reservoirs, which could frequently 

 be constructed at moderate expense, would diminish to a 

 great extent the possibility of famine. 



That forests retard the discharge into rivers of the 

 fallen rain, and diminish the height of floods, is a fact now 

 so well known that the planting of trees and the preserva- 

 tions of woods, especially on steep slopes, has been 

 recognised as essential to the protection of every land 

 subject to inundations. Mr. Williams has treated of these 

 and many other matters, including the improvement of 

 agriculture and land tenure, in a way which shows he has 

 mastered the reports of several highly distinguished 

 officers who have studied these questions on the spot ; 

 and the essay will give readers interested in its sub- 

 ject a. very satisfactory idea of the facts connected 

 with it. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[The Editor dots not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications J\ 



Lectures on Meteorology 



Most people conversant with the subject will agree with 

 '' Spes " (vol. xiii., p. 169) that meteorology should now be con- 

 sidered as much a separate science as mineralogy or geology, 

 and be taught as such ; but I would suggest whether without 

 waiting for the foundation of sp ;cial chairs in the colleges, im- 

 mediate steps might not be taken with advantage to bring it 

 before the class of persons not usually to be found in colleges, 

 to whom it is of essential importance, by means of the Science 

 and Art Department Organisation. 



Physical Geography, which may be considered as a somewhat 

 kindred science, is, I believe, one of the most popular amongst 

 the candidates for the South Kensington certificates, and by Sie 

 directory for 1875 it appears that in that year this subject was 

 taught in 686 classes to 17,720 students, thus heading the list of 

 science schools, for the next two subjects in popularity ; Ele- 

 mentary Mathematics and Electricity, only numbar 537 and 485 

 classes, with 10,502 and 12,515 students respectively. 



Dr. Hooker, P.R.S., the learned director of the Royal 

 Gardens, Kew, in arranging the science lessons given during the 

 winter to the young gardeners training in that establishment has, 

 for the past two years, caused a course of lectures on Meteoro- 

 logy to be delivered in addition to the lectures on Botany, 

 Chemistry, &c., and examinations have been held and certificates 

 awarded for proficiency in this science equally with the others. 



The movement to spread the knowledge of the principles of 

 meteorology must be a strictly educational one, for experience 

 proves that it is useless to attempt to popularise it by means of 

 lectures to institutions, &c. ; for although offered gratis to com- 

 mittees and managers, these are as a rule very reluctant to accept 

 them, as from the absence of brilliant experiments or optical 

 illustrations, they fail to attract large audiences. 



The steps taken by the British Meteorological Society during 

 their last and previous sessions, which have resulted in the 

 addition to its ranks of so many ofiicers of health and civil 

 engineers, show that interest is not wanting in the science j and it 

 is only to be regretted that "Spes "has brought forward his 

 proposal so late in the season, that no opportunity can occur for 

 bringing it before the society before their next winter session. 



The want of text books on the science now felt would soon 

 disappear, as pubUshers would at once bring out works on the 

 subject, were a demand for them to arise. 



Richmond G. M. Whipple 



The Axolotl 



When, in 1873, Mr. Mivart published in your pages, in his 

 papers on "The Common Frog," an account of the Mexican 

 Axolotl, I arrived theoretically at conclusions which are, I 

 think, identical with those reached by Weissmann, whose re- 

 searches, recorded in the Zeitschrift fUr Zoologie, you published 

 in abstract on the 8th inst. Mr. Mivart says : "Its mature con- 

 dition was considered to be established by the discovery that it 

 possesses perfect powers of reproducing its kind ;" thus seeming 

 to admit that its metamorphosis from the Siredon to the Ambly- 

 stoma form proves it to have been really a fertile, persistent, 

 larval form. He then used this metamorphosis of a larval into 

 a mature form as a fact in favour of his hypothesis of sudden 

 development ; as if the Axolotl and Amblystoma were actually 

 of distinct genera, and not merely the subjects of a mistake 

 arising from partial knowledge, analogous to those by which 

 the larval Nauplius and Zoea were constituted into genera. Sir 

 John Lubbock's remarks on Chironomus ("Origin and Meta- 

 morphosis of Insects," p. 76) are relevant He says : "It seems 

 to me possible, if not probable, that some larvK which do not 

 now breed, may, in the course of ages, acquire the power of 

 doing so." Persistent larval forms would seem to have origi- 

 nated from adaptational causes, which. Sir John Lubbock remarks, 

 may act through natural selection ; and the power of reproduc- 

 tion to have been in time acquired. Any subsequent cases of 

 perfect development from a previously persistent larval form, 

 such as the metamorphosis in question, would seem, as indi- 

 cated by the absence of sexual power in the resultant A*nbly- 



