January 15, 1920] 



NATURE 



509 



He considers that the advantages of such a service 

 far outweigh the possible disadvantages. Among the 

 advantages are mentioned the speedy exclusion of 

 quacks and irregular practitioners, and of the struggles 

 for existence and rivalries among the regular practi- 

 tioners, while the public health would be maintained 

 as never before ; treatment would be prompt and of 

 the highest quality ; specialists of all sorts easily 

 accessible ; and all manner of special treatments 

 readily available for the rich and poor alike. 



The weekly mortality statistics of the influenza 

 epidemic beginning in the autumn of 1918 for thirty- 

 nine large American cities have been subjected to a 

 preliminary analysis by Prof. Raymond Pearl (Reprint 

 No. 548 from the Public Health Reps., Treasury 

 Dept., U.S. Public Health Service). There was con- 

 siderable variation among the several cities in the 

 relative degree of explosiveness of the outbreak. The 

 analysis appears to demonstrate that an important 

 factor causing this variation was the magnitude of 

 the normal death-rates occurring at the same time as 

 the influenza epidemic in respect of pulmonary tuber- 

 culosis and diseases of the heart and of the kidneys. 



In Medical Science: Abstracts and Reviews for 

 December (vol. i., No. 3) the influenza epidemic of 

 1918-19 is reviewed in all its aspects. In the civilian 

 population of the United States the total number of 

 deaths attributable to the epidemic was estimated at 

 not fewer than 450,000, a death-rate of more than 4 per 

 thousand. In the County of London some 22,750 

 deaths were caused by it. The statistics of the I-ife 

 Insurance Bank of Gotha show that, whereas in 

 1889-90 epidemic influenza caused no deaths in the 

 age period 15-30, in 1918 the greater number of 

 deaths occurred in this age period — an experience 

 similar to that which obtained in this country. 



We have received a copy of the general report of 

 the Survey of India for 1917-18. Shortage of officers 

 necessitated the curtailment of field work. Several 

 officers and survey parties were supplied for Persia, 

 Mesopotamia, and East Africa. New maps published 

 included 43 one-inch sheets, 65 half-inch sheets, 

 4 quarter-inch sheets, and 13 sheets of the million map. 

 The report gives useful index maps of all the sheets 

 published up to the present on various scales by the 

 Indian Survey Department. 



The United States Geodetic Survey has published a 

 report on the connection of the arcs of primary 

 triangulation along the ninety-eighth meridian in the 

 llnited States and in Mexico (Special Publication 

 No. 54). Mr. W. Bowie, the writer of the report, 

 points out that this connection not only makes it pos- 

 sible to compute with greater accuracy than hitherto 

 the dimensions of the earth, but also enables Mexico to 

 e.xtend new areas from the ninety-eighth meridian arc, 

 which can be based on the North .American datum, 

 as the United States standard datum is now called. 

 It had been intended to carry out this work in 1913, 

 but the unsettled conditions in Mexico made it neces- 

 sary to postpone the observations until 1916. The arc 

 of the ninetv-eighth meridian was completed to the 

 Canadian frontier in 1907. 



MO- 3620. VOL. IO4I 



The value of large-scale maps in war is the subject 

 of an unsigned article in La Giographie (vol. xxxii.. 

 No. 7) on the Service Gdographique of the French Army. 

 This Service was practically created by the war, when 

 it was realised that the available maps of France were 

 on too small a scale to be of use. Maps on scales of 

 1/80,000 and 1/200,000, although valuable for war in 

 the open, were unsatisfactory for trench warfare. 

 Large-scale plans were available only for the neigh- 

 bourhood of Paris and certain fortified places. It was 

 decided to make maps of the war area on a scale of 

 1/20,000, 1/10,000, and 1/5000 (plans directeurs). Of 

 these the smallest scale was for artillery use, the 

 second for Staff work in general, and the largest 

 scale, confined to front-line areas, for infantry use. 

 Generally speaking, the 1/20,000 proved to be the 

 most useful. It is hoped that this will be extended 

 to the whole of France and be periodically revised. 

 The urgency of the demand in war-time did not allow 

 of detailed resurvey for this work, so recourse was had 

 to existing survey material, land valuation plans, and 

 aerial photof^raphy. Specimen sheets of the maps 

 accompany the article. 



In the Bulletin of the Central Meteorological 

 Observatory of Japan (vol. iii.. No. i) Prof. T. Okada 

 attempts to discover a forecasting formula, starting 

 from the undoubted fact that in Japan a hot August 

 means a good crop, and a cold August a bad one, 

 resulting in famine in 1902, 1905, and 1913. Prof. 

 Okada connects the temperature of northern Japan 

 with the sun-spot cycle, but more definitely finds a 

 correlation between the August temperature in that 

 region, the March pressure difference between Zika- 

 wei and Miyazaki, and the South American pressure 

 for March to May, using data from Santiago and 

 Buenos Aires. The South American data give larger 

 correlation coefficients (0-5 or 06 with P.E.<oi) than 

 the Zikawei-Miyazaki pressure differences (03 or 04 

 with P.E.>oi). Treating the districts of Hokkaido 

 and Tohoku separately, he obtains the yearly varia- 

 tion in the rice crop for the former as o-53x-f-o-26y, 

 and for the latter as oi8.ic-|-o-ioy, where x is the yearly 

 variation of South American pressure, March to May, 

 and y the yearly variation of pressure gradient, Zika- 

 wei-.Miyazaki. The table of comparative results shows 

 a fair agreement in sign between calculated and actual 

 vields, especially for Hokkaido, and the conclusion is 

 drawn that, in general, abnormally low pressure in 

 the southern part of South America from March to 

 Mav and abnormally small pressure gradient in March 

 between Zikawei and Miyazaki are followed by a 

 failure of the rice crop in northern Japan. 



Dr. G. R. WiELANU, in his "Classification of the 

 Cycadophyta " (Am. Joiirn. Sci., vol. xlvii., p. 391, 

 1919), reviews "the gymnosperm phylum," and goes 

 much further than this in providing a table in which 

 the evolution of dominant and specialised land-plants 

 is correlated with the climates of successive geological 

 periods. In this suggestive diagram various types are 

 shown as moving towards "ascendancy and extinc- 

 tion" or "simplification and reduction," sharply or 

 n;ently from a previous parallel course of evolution. 



