November 17, 1892J 



NA TV RE 



61 



amount was at Stonyhursf, where it was only 2 per cent. The 

 south-west of England enjoyed the brightest weather, as there 

 the sunshine amounted to 33 per cent, of the possible amount. 



The current number of the Annalen der Hydrographie contains 

 a short note of a hurricane at Marseilles on October i, which is 

 said to have been more severe than any experienced during the 

 last thirty years. From 8 a.m. until i p.m. the wind, rain, hail 

 and lightning were incessant, all the lower parts of the town 

 being under water, while several houses and bridges in the 

 neighbourhood were destroyed. The weather charts for the day 

 show that the storm was caused by a small whirl which occurred 

 on the south-eastern side of a large depression, whose centre lay 

 in the south of Scotland. While the centre of the depression 

 scarcely altered its position, the whirl increased in extent, but 

 diminished in intensity, and on October 3 it had crossed Northern 

 Italy and lay over Hungary. 



Mr. Charles Carpmael, director of the meteorological 

 service of the Dominion of Canada, urges in his latest report the 

 need for more thorough inspection of the various stations 

 under his control. He points out that the stations in Great 

 Britain and Ireland, connected with the Meteorological Office, 

 LcJndon, are constantly inspected, and that in every country 

 where meteorology is worked out on a large scale inspection is 

 admitted as the only system, whereby trustworthy and satisfactory 

 results can be obtained. He recommends therefore that a 

 sufficient appropriation should be placed at his disposal to enable 

 him to have the meteorological stations in the Dominion 

 inspected and the observers thereof thoroughly instructed in the 

 duties required of them. If this is not done the data furnished 

 to the Central Office cannot, he says, be accurate. 



Two numbers have now been issued of the new series of the 

 quarterly cryptogamic journal, GreviUea, under the editorship of 

 Mr. G. Massee. It is conducted very much on the old lines, 

 and contains many articles of interest to cryptogamists. It is 

 strange that one peculiarity of the journal should still be retained 

 which detracts very much from its usefulness as a work of re- 

 ference, the absence of any table of contents or index to each 

 separate nuniber. 



The Cambridge University Press has issued the Sedgwick 

 prize essay for 1886, by the late Thomas Roberts, on the Juras- 

 sic rocks of the neighbourhood of Cambridge. The essay has 

 been edited by Mr. Henry Woods, Scholar of St. John's College, 

 and Lecturer on Palaeontology in the Woodwardian Museum. 

 In an interesting preface. Prof. T. McKenny Hughes explains 

 the nature of the problem which the author endeavoured to solve, 

 and expresses his belief that the work is indispensable for the 

 student of Cambridge geology, and most valuable for all special- 

 ists in the Jurassic rocks. 



Sir Henry H. Howorth has completed and will shortly 

 publish a considerable work on which he has been long engaged 

 entitled, " The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood." It begins 

 with an account of the various theories which have been forth- 

 coming to explain the drift phenomena, in which the very large 

 literature on the subject has been for the first time condensed and 

 tabulated. It then proceeds to criticize the extreme glacial 

 views which have recently prevailed among geologists, and to 

 call in question the theory of uniformity as developed by the 

 followers of Lyell and Ramsay, and especially to attack the 

 notion that ice is capable of distributing materials over hundreds 

 of miles of level country, and of producing many of the effects 

 attributed to it by the glacial school of geologists. The author 

 argues that the evidence points to the former existence of much 

 larger glaciers than exist now, but not to an ice period when 

 the temperate regions were covered with ice. On the contrary, 

 these great glaciers existed side by side of fertile plains. Lastly he 

 NO. 1203, VOL. 47] 



argues that the phenomena of the drift can only \>e explained by 

 reverting in a large measure to the diluvial theories of Sedg- 

 wick and Murchison, Von Buch and others, and tha» tne purely 

 geological evidence is completely at one with that collected in the 

 author's previous work on " The Mammoth and the Flood," and 

 establishes that a great diluvial catastrophe forms in the temperate 

 7ones the dividing line between the mammoth age and our own. 



The Libraries Committee of the Glasgow Town'Council, in 

 the eleventh general report on the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, 

 make a suggestion which deserves to be kept in mind. It is to 

 the effect that an admirable way of perpetuating the memory of 

 a relative or friend would be to present a public library with a 

 separate collection of books, to be kept together and called by 

 such name as may seem proper to the donors. " Such a me- 

 morial collection," say the Committee, "would, with propriety, 

 be composed of books devoted to any department of literature or 

 learning in which the person to be commemorated was interested 

 or which the donors desired to see more fully represented." 



A valuable paper on the present state of Morocco 

 is contributed to the current number of the Revue Scientifique, 

 by M. A. Le Chatelier. He brings out very strik- 

 ingly the mixed character of the population of Morocco. 

 First he notes the fair-haired, blue-eyed type, which is 

 represented in the sculptures of some tombs of the twelfth 

 Egyptian dynasty. Then come the various Berber types, 

 the Arabs, several elements (including the Draoua) which 

 have come down from remote antiquity, Spanish Moors and 

 Jews, and the descendants of Christian captives. M. Le 

 Chatelier thinks we must also take into account descendants of 

 Phenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, and Vandals. 



Mr. C. H. ElGENMANN has contributed to the Proceedings of 

 the U.S. National Museum (vol. xv. ) a paper in which he pre- 

 sents a valuable account of the observations made by him on the 

 fishes of San Diego and vicinity from December 11, 1888, to 

 March 4, 1890. Especial attention was paid to the spawning 

 habits and seasons, the embryology, and migration of the fishes 

 of Southern California. A diary was kept of (he occurrence of 

 each species throughout the year 1889 and part of 1890. Mr. 

 Eigenmann's knowledge of the occurrence of each species is 

 largely based on observations of the fish brought into the mar 

 kets, which he visited twice or thrice daily, and of those caught 

 with hook and line by the numerous habitual fishermen found 

 on each of the wharves, and of those caught by the seiners, whom 

 he accompanied on several occasions. During the early part of 

 1888 each individual fisherman sold his catch as best he could 

 and the data for this part of the year are not as full as for the 

 latter part of 1888, when practically the whole catch was brought 

 to two markets, where Mr. Eigenmann could see the fish as they 

 were unloaded. The knowledge of the ocean fishes is largely 

 derived from frequent visits to ocean tide- pools, from the fish 

 brought to the markets, and from a two-weeks' stay on the 

 Cortes Banks. As a matter of cour-e, hundreds of speciuaens of 

 most species have been observed to every one preserved, and the 

 present paper is to be looked upon as a contribution to the 

 economic history of the fishes, rather than to the anatomy of 

 the various species. With two exceptions, the types of the new 

 species discovered, and otherwise interesting specimens, have 

 been deposited in the U.S. National Museum. A nearly com- 

 plete series of types has been placed in the British Museum, and 

 minor series in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the 

 California Academy of Sciences. 



The Committee of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria 

 have hit upon an excellent plan for interesting the more active 

 members in definite lines of investigation. They have arranged 

 that special meetings shall be held once a month for the carrying 

 on of practical work which cannot conveniently be undertaken 



