September i, 192 i] 



NATURE 



n 



long period of intense hot weather in the history 

 of the province of Ontario, and the same applies 

 to the whole of Eastern Canada, where shade tem- 

 peratures ranging- from 95° F. to more than 

 100° F. have been reported. The heat has caused 

 much interruption of work, and destructive forest 

 fires have been numerous. The harvest will be 

 an early one, but, on the whole, is nearly up to 

 the average. 



New York suffered from several hot spells in 

 June and July, an unusual feature being the- 

 accompaniment of exceptionally high humidity, 

 which intensified their effect. In the latter month 

 the whole of the middle section of the country 

 eastward of the Rockies experienced great heat. 

 There does not seem to have been any general 

 deficiency of rain. Further south the cotton- 

 growing districts had an excess of rainfall in July, 

 and the crop will be very poor unless fine, dry 

 weather supervenes. 



Little information is available from Central and 



South America, but British Honduras had ririn- 



Fall and temperature below normal in April, rain- 



"fall above, and temfjerature below, normal in 



^lay, and drought at the beginning of June. Peru 



- been suffering from drought sufficient to re- 

 e the maize crop to half its usual value. 



\ :i Southern and Western .Australia tempera- 

 e was above normal during last summer in 

 t continent. A shade maximum of 108° F. was 



Jstered at Perth on January 21, the highest 

 record for that citv, and at Adelaide on more 



than one occasion the thermometer was 2'^ 

 higher. Sydney temperatures were, however^ 

 below the normal. There was a spell of dry 

 weather in \'ictoria. South Australia, and New 

 South Wales in April, but rain fell in May. Early 

 in June there was heavy rain in many parts of 

 Queensland and New South Wales, and in July 

 heavy gales and rainstorms swept the country 

 from Sydney northward to Queensland, and 

 were followed by disastrous floods in the coastal 

 rivers. Later the weather in New South 

 Wales and \'ictoria was the coldest experienced 

 for a quarter of a century, and snow fell in dis- 

 tricts where it has never been seen before. South 

 .\ustralia, up to June at any rate, had experienced 

 a dry and unusually mild winter. 



The open winter in the Arctic regions has 

 caused an abnormal number of icebergs to be 



! scattered over a large area of the North Atlantic 

 Ocean, and conditions are worse for ships than 

 they have been for many years. 



To summarise, so far as information goes at 

 present, the drought has been mainly European^ 

 chieflv in North-west Europe and Russia. Canada 

 has had extremely hot weather, but without a 

 serious deficiency of rain. The season in .Aus- 

 tralia has been abnormal, and there are indica- 

 tions of abnormal conditions in other widely 

 separated regions, notably Irak and Peru. The 

 onlv region of special excess of rain in the 

 northern hemisphere appears to have been the 



i Southern United States. 



The Disaster to the Airship R38. 



nPHE suddenness of the catastrophe and the 

 [A terrible death roll have directed the attention 

 pf the whole world to some aspects of airship con- 

 struction. \\'ith the airship Britain and America 

 pave lost many valuable lives and a great amount 

 pf personal knowledge irreplaceable at short 

 notice. .A tribute to the bravery of the crew can 

 pe given with all sincerity, for some at least were 

 aware of the fact that the airship was a great 

 experiment, and on some important points 

 ' -igned without sufficiently exact knowledge of 

 conditions to be met. Not that anyone antici- 

 pated a collapse so complete and immediate as that 

 which occurred, when the first warning was too 

 ate to enable experienced members of the crew 

 o use the parachutes provided. 



There have been less severe accidents to British 

 airships in the past, but the cumulative effect had 

 5een to give some confidence in their abilitv to 

 ake appreciable damage without total failure. By 

 aking the simple precaution of flying into the 

 .vind on the outward part of a trial flight, an air- 

 hip when partly disabled has hitherto been able 

 o return to its base quickly and safely. No 

 iarallel to the estimate of five seconds from 

 irst warning to fracture of the hull appears to 

 xist. 



NO. 2705, VOL. 108] 



It is too early to draw final deductions from the 

 accident, for the evidence is incomplete, and the 

 consequential failures are certain to mask, if not 

 wholly to hide, the source of initial weakness. It 

 may be gathered from the reported statements of 

 eye-witnesses on the ground and survivors from 

 the airship that the most probable element of 

 failure was some weak member of the hull struc- 

 ture. The explosion, whether of petrol vapour 

 and air or escaped hydrogen and air, followed the 

 failure of girders amidships. It has been sug- 

 gested that the breaking stress might have been 

 imposed by a rapid application of the rudder in 

 an endeavour to produce the equivalent of a gust 

 of wind from the side. Whether this be true or 

 not, it is probable that no one was able to 

 estimate the forces which would result from the 

 manoeuvre. .Airship design as known to us has 

 been a matter of experience and guessing, and not 

 of calculation founded on scientific knowledge. 

 Policy, first dictated bv the .Admiralty and more 

 recently by the -Air Ministry, has never given any 

 effective opportunity for the accumulation of the 

 scientific knowledge on which alone rapid advance 

 in construction could safely proceed. 



In the early days of rigid airships the breaking" 

 of naval airship No. i at Barrow was followed by 



