350 



NATURE 



[January ii, 1912 



Explosive Hail. 



On the afternoon of Novfnibor ii, 1911, there was a 

 brief Hturm of explosive hail at this placn. 



The morning had been unst^asonably warm; -'»-.■.• "-wm 

 there were the usual signs of a coining thm 

 heavy cumulo-nimbus clouds with a gusty \«. > ' ii 



bc*gan about 3.jo p.m. with a slight inhower of heavy rain- 

 drops ; shortly afterwards there were two or three flashes 

 of lightning and thunder, followed by a fall of large hail* 

 stones, which on coming in contact with the windows or 

 walls or pavement in many instances explodixl with a 

 sharp re|Kjrt, so loud as to be mistaken for breaking 

 window panes or a pistol shot. As the hail fell, the frag- 

 ments sprang up from the ground and flew in all directions, 

 looking like a mass of *' popping corn " on a large scale. 



The fall lasted two or three minutes, about half the 

 hailstones being shattered, the ground in some places being 

 nearly covered white with the stones and fragments. 



Of the unbroken stones, seventy were gathered. They 

 weighed, roughly, 225 grams. A few were ellipsoidal, the 

 longest axis about 25 mm. in length ; most of them, how- 

 ever, were nearly spherical, and somewhat smaller, from 

 15 to 20 mm. in diameter. 



Practically all of them contained a nucleus. In a few 

 of the stones the nucleus was porcelain-like, raspberry- 

 shaped, surrounded by almost colourless spherical layers 

 of ice, for about five-sevenths of the diameter, and then a 

 shell of porcelain-like, snowy ice. 



A fair proportion of the stones showed, in addition to 

 the spherical, a radiate structure, which was very apparent 

 as the stones melted in a flat dish, showing the cross- 

 section with great distinctness. 



The writer noticed a similar fall of explosive hail about 

 eighteen years ago at Lexington, Virginia. The stones in 

 this fall were much smaller, and attention was directed to 

 the stones by the peculiar way in which they seemed to 

 rebound on striking the ground, which was also due on 

 that occasion to their breaking into fragments, without, 

 however, any noticeable explosion. 



\V. G. Brown. 



University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo., 

 December 27, 1911. 



THE BEGINNING OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION.' 



THESE two great volumes take up the knowledge 

 of the northern regions from the dawn of history, 

 and starting from Homer they have only reached the 

 voyage to Newfoundland of Caspar Corte-Real in 

 1503. The reason for this is thus explained, not in 

 the preface, but in the " Conclusion " : — 



" If we would discover how a watercourse is formed, 

 from the very first bog-streams up in the mountain, we 

 must follow a multitude of tiny rills, receiving one fresh 

 stream after another from every side, running together 

 into burns, which grow and grow and form little rivers till 

 we come to the end of the wooded hillside and are 

 suddenly face to face with the great river in the valley 

 below. 



'* A similar task confronts him who endeavours to ex- 

 plore the first trickling rivulets of human knowledge : he 

 must trace all the minute, uncertain, often elusive 

 beginnings, follow the diversity of tributaries from all parts 

 of the earth, and show how the mass of knowledge 

 Increases constantly from age to age, sometimes reposing 

 in long stretches of dead water, half-choked with peat and 

 rushes, at other times plunging onward in foaming rapids. 

 And then he too is rewarded ; the stream grows broader 

 and broader, until he stands beside the navigable river." 



Dr. Nansen takes us with him as he traces the 

 head streams of the earliest knowledge of the north 

 in the misty uplands of the past, and leaves us just 

 where the historian can advance with some assurance. 

 He points out how the early peoples had vague ideas 

 of shadowy regions on the edge of the habitable world- 



* " In Northern Mist* : Arctic Exploration in Early Times." By Prof. 

 F. Nansen, G.C.V.O. Translated by A. G. Chater. Vol. i., pp. xii-f-384 ; 

 Vol. ii., pp. iv+416. (London: Wm. Heinemann, 191 1.) Two volumes, 

 30*. net. 



NO. 2202, VOL. 88] 



(iiiic, and how, though now and again a vuya;^ 

 placed solid facts on record, such r' • ' 

 current regarding the northern lands v 

 part a mixtun- of legend and myth. 1... .>.... i^ , 

 have dealt with the history- of .Arctic explorati 

 hitherto have usually commenci-d with the search ' 

 the north-west and the north-<-ast passages which s 

 plied a powerful and intelligible motive for centm 

 of struggle. This record concludes before that 

 came into play; but a book on the history of «'\_ 

 tion without some clue of continuous human inter- 

 would be a weary chaos of random incidents, whi' 

 no reader would willingly face, and Dr. Nansen fin 

 a unifying clue in the persistent, romantic, and ev. 

 hopeful search for the Fortunate Isles, which lay 

 drifted throughout the mistiest periods of history ji 

 on the verge of the known i^orld. Tlie guidini/ pri: 

 riple for the elucidation of the beginnings of e\; !• :. 

 tion seems to be implied in this piece of psycholo^ 

 " For one thing, man's power of grasping reality var 

 greatly; in primitive mun it is clouded to a degree wh: 

 we modern human beings can hardly understand. He 



'I he coiicepiion of the northern and western lands and islands in 

 literature. From " In Northern Mists.' 



N\- 



as yet incapable of distinguishing between idea and reality, 

 between belief and knowledge, between what he has seen 

 and experienced and the explanation he has provided for 

 his experience." 



Dr. Nansen proceeds to retell the old stories with 

 this distinction always in his mind, and in the en- 

 deavour to separate fact from expectation he finds a 

 way of escape from the clamour of the partisans who 

 have so frequently made out the dim heroes of early 

 voyages and their first chroniclers to be either para- 

 gons of veracity and precision or shameless and aim- 

 less liars. There is an appeal to the most authentic 

 versions of the early narratives, many of which are 

 given in these pages more completely than ever before 

 in translation, and there is a minimum — we had almost 

 said an absence — of controversial statements directed 

 against the holders of contrary views. 



It should be explained that the quotations from early 

 authorities are all in translation, and the very in- 

 teresting maps or portions of maps which are repro- 

 duced are translations also in so far as they are not 

 facsimiles, but representations of the meaning of the 

 maps, in many cases without the conventional repre- 



