December 17, 1914] 



NATURE 



419 



(3) This little book, while forming a useful 

 guide to the clinical examination of the blood, 

 contains little that cannot be found in several 

 well-known manuals on this subject. The only 

 novelty, in fact, which we notice in it is the 

 particular technique employed by Prof. Pappen- 

 heim. In some respects, indeed, it is lacking. 

 Thus we find no mention of a common method of 

 enumerating the leucocytes by an examination of 

 microscopic fields in the preparation employed for 

 a red-cell count, and there is no connected account 

 of the blood-picture of pernicious anaemia and of 

 the leukaemias. The nomenclature of the blood- 

 cells and their variations is also unusual and 

 difficult to follow by those accustomed to British 

 nomenclature. In some respects the lx)ok is 

 interesting reading, e.g. Prof. Pappenheim's views 

 on the derivation of the leucocytic cells. The book 

 contains two beautiful coloured plates of the blood- 

 cells and numerous figures in the text. 



R. T. Hewlett. 



OUR BOOKSHELF. 



The Annual of the British School at Athens. No. 

 xix. Session 1912-1913. Pp. viii-r3i4. (Lon- 

 don: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 

 255. net. 



The most valuable contribution to this issue of the 

 annual is the report by Messrs. R. M. Dawkins 

 and M. L. W. Laistner on the famous Kamares 

 Cave in Crete. This has been known for more 

 than twenty years as a prehistoric sanctuary, but 

 its complete investigation was carried out only in 

 1913 under the auspices of the British School at 

 Athens. The early fame of the cave was due to 

 the discovery in the early 'nineties of a number of 

 vases and a few figurines. The work has now 

 been successfully accomplished under consider- 

 able difficulties. The general result is that the 

 votive objects which form so striking a feature 

 of other caves and mountain sanctuaries in Crete 

 — the libation tables of Psychro, the shields and 

 bronzes of the Idaean cave, and the figurines of 

 Petsofa- — are conspicuously absent. The question 

 then arises whether the Kamares Cave was really 

 a sanctuary or only a shelter. The writers con- 

 clude that its position renders its use as a shelter 

 improbable; the finds themselves, if they do not 

 positively suggest a sanctuary, equally negati^-e 

 ihe idea of a dwelling, because houses of the 

 Bronze Age in Crete invariably yield obsidian, 

 while not a single flake was found in this cave. 

 The pottery, again, does not suggest domestic 

 uses. On the other hand, the restricted range of 

 the pottery shapes suggests a sanctuary in which 

 votive vessels were deposited. The cave, in short, 

 was probably a sanctuarj' of the tutelary divinity 

 of the mountain. 



Another side of the, subject is illustrated by a 

 report in the same issue of the Journal by Dr. J. 



^'0• 2355, VOL. 94] 



i Hazzidakis, of an early Minoan sacred cave at 

 ' Arkalokhori. Here some interesting vases were 

 ; unearthed with remarkable bronze swords or 

 i daggers. Double axes, undoubtedly symbols of 

 ' the deity worshipped by the Cretans in the pre- 

 historic period, lead to the conclusion that during 

 I the whole of the long period of the Bronze Age, 

 j the >iinoan periods of Sir A. Evans, the Cretans 

 I practised one and the same cult, and this is as 

 much as to say that they were, all through, one 

 and the same i>eople. 



The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon 

 and Burma. Edited by Dr. A. E. Shipley, 

 assisted bv G. A. K. ' Marshall. Orthoptera 

 i (.Vcridiidse). By W. F. Kirby. Pp. ix + 276. 

 (London : Taylor and Francis, 1914-) Price 105. 

 i The lamented death of Mr. W. F. Kirby left 

 i his memoir on the locusts of British India not 

 1 quite completed. So far as completion was pos- 

 sible it has been effected by the kind offices of 

 Mr. C. O. Waterhouse, who has compiled many 

 of the diagnostic keys. The memoir, which is an 

 admirable piece of systematic work, deals with no 

 fewer than 329 species of Acridiidae. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor does net hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manusctipts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.'] 



Wet Bulb Temperature and Climatology. 



It is rather disappointing^ to find, according to your 

 report of the proceedings of the Section of Physiology 

 of the British Association, the discussion upon climate 

 had to be abandoned because no one was prepared 

 to follow up Prof. Osborne's contribution to it. For 

 the points raised by Prof. Osborne, according to what 

 we gather from your short report (p. 322), are of great 

 and vital interest. He emphasises the importance of the 

 readings of the wet-bulb thermometer as indications 

 of what one might call the evaporative quality of the 

 atmosphere as it affects the economy of the human 

 body. Unfortunately the wet-bulb thermometer is un- 

 trustworthy for several reasons, and it is well known 

 that physicists treat it with scant respect. Its indica- 

 tions depend in an uncertain way on the physical con- 

 dition of the air surrounding it, and no one has been 

 able to give a satisfactory method of deducing from 

 its readings the value of the vapour pressure of the 

 atmosphere. Recent experiments of ours with the 

 Kata thermometer prove beyond question that the rate 

 of evaporation from the skin depends directly on the 

 defect of the actual vapour pressure in the surround- 

 ing air from the vapour pressure in contact with the 

 slon, and the value of the air vapour pressure 

 can be determined very easily by means of a couple of 

 readings of the dry and wet Kata thermometer. 



In order to investigate fully the relation between 

 the climatological condition obtaining in different 

 parts of the United Kingdom and the cooling and 

 evaporative power of the air as measured by the 

 Kata thermometer, we would welcome the help of 



