February i6, 1893] 



NATURE 



173 



and South Islands, being most severe at Wellington and at 

 Nelson. 



The weather of the past week has been very stormy and 

 damp in most parts of these islands ; scarcely a day has passed 

 without gales being reported. On Friday, the loth, the wind 

 force was especially strong, on the north-east coast of Scotland 

 and in the English Channel, and on Tuesday another deep de- 

 pression had reached our northern coasts from off the Atlantic, 

 accompanied by strong gales. The United Kingdom was situa- 

 ted between two areas of high barometer readings, one of which 

 lay over Scandinavia and the other over France and Spain. 

 With this distribution of pressure, the conditions were favour- 

 able to the passage of cyclonic disturbances within our area, and 

 although the storms were not of exceptional violence in the 

 southern districts, they were so relatively, as the winds have 

 been peculiarly quiet during the last twelve months. Tempera- 

 ture has been a little above the mean for the season, the daily 

 maxima often exceeding 50", but on Sunday the highest day 

 readings were below 40^ over the north-east of England, while 

 a sharp frost occurred in the north of Scotland, the minimum 

 temperature registering 20^ On the continent the temperature 

 has been much lower than in this country ; at Haparanda, at the 

 north of the Gulf of Bothnia, which lies in the area of the high 

 barometric pressure over Scandinavia, a temperature of minus 

 37° was recorded on Friday and Saturday. Rainfall has been of 

 daily occurrence at most stations, although the amounts measured 

 have generally been light, while hail and sleet have occurred in 

 many places. With Tuesday's storm, however, the rainfall ex- 

 ceeded an inch en the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland. By 

 the Weekly Weather Report ol \}[i^ nth instant it appears that 

 the rainfall for that week was greatly in excess of the mean in 

 the north and west of Scotland, and to a less extent in the east 

 of Scotland, the north of Ireland, and the western parts of 

 England. Bright sunshine exceeded the mean in all districts, the 

 greatest amounts, 32 to 38 per cent., being recorded in most 

 parts of England. 



The recent numbers of Ciel et Terre (Nos 21-23) contain 

 interesting articles on ozone. The observation of this element 

 by meteorologists has been almost given up in most countries, 

 owing chiefly to the difficulty of obtaining comparable results by 

 the methods at present in use, although its importance for in- 

 valids and others as a purifier of the atmosphere is generally 

 acknowledged. And at a recent meeting of the Royal Meteoro- 

 logical Society, regret was expressed at the discontinuance of 

 these observations. D. A. Van Bastelaer, in conjunction with 

 the Royal Observatory of Brussels, maintained a system of 

 ozone observations at 150 of the stations belonging to the Society 

 of Public Medicine in Belgium during the<years 1886-91, which 

 is probably the most complete investigation into the subject 

 which has been made. The values found for the various stations 

 are given in a tabular form, and M. Van Bastelaer found that 

 there are continual and sudden variations in the records from hour 

 to hour, between morning and evening, and from one day to 

 another, but that the mean values for any locality remain nearly 

 constant. Isolated values are of no use ; a long series of obser- 

 vations is necessary for any results of importance to be arrived 

 at. The air at stations near the sea coast contained, as is 

 usually supposed, the greatest amount of ozone. 



The Indiana Academy of Science lately held at Indianopolis 

 its eighth annual meeting, the president being Prof. J. L. Camp- 

 bell, of Wabash College,, Crawfordsville, Ind. There was a 

 large attendance, and no fewer than ninety-two papers had been 

 prepared, most of which were read. The first volume of the 

 Academy's Proceedings was distributed at the meeting. 

 NO. I 2 16, VOL. 47] 



The Kew Bulletin continues, in the January number, its 

 series of articles on the food grains of India, one of the subjects 

 being Kangra Buckwheat {Fagopyrum tataricum, Gaertn., var. 

 himalaica, Batalin). The typical plant is cultivated through- 

 out the higher Himalayas, but more especially on the western 

 extremity, and at altitudes from 8000 to 14,000 feet. The yield 

 in India cannot yet be estimated, but the Bulletin says there can 

 be little doubt that the seeds are singularly rich in nutrient 

 constituents. This is confirmed by the conclusions of Prof. 

 Church with regard to a sample he has examined. 



The January number of the Kew Bulletin contains also the 

 fourth decade of new orchids, the fourth of " Decades Kew- 

 enses," papers on fruit growing at the Cape and the clove 

 industry of Zanzibar, and miscellaneous notes. 



Prof. R. Shimek is now investigating the flora and the 

 geology of Nicaragua, along the route of the canal, under com- 

 mission from the State University of Iowa. Dr. Terracciano, 

 of Rome, is about to renew his investigation of the flora of 

 Erythrea, the Italian colony on the Red Sea. Dr. K. N. 

 Denkenbach is commissioned by the Natural History Society of 

 St. Petersburg to investigate the flora of the Black Sea. 



Mr. R. Thaxter proposes in the Botanical Gazette the 

 establishment of a new order of Schizomycetes, the Myxobac- 

 teriacese, somewhat intermediate in its characters between the 

 typical Schizomycetes and the Myxomycetes. It comprises the 

 genus Chondromyces, placed by Berkeley, in his "Introduction 

 to Cryptogamic Botany," under the Stilbacei, and two new 

 genera, Myxobacter and Myxococcus. The order consists of 

 mobile rod-like organisms, multiplying by fission, secreting a 

 gelatinous base, and forming pseudo-plasmode-like aggregations 

 before passing into a more or less highly-developed cyst- 

 producing resting state, in which the rods may become encysted 

 in groups without modification, or may be converted into spore- 

 masses. 



At the meeting of the Royal Botanic Society on Saturday, 

 one of the branches of the flowering stalk of Fourcroya selloa 

 was shown from the Society's conservatory. This is a Mexican 

 plant allied to the aloes, and like them it flowers only once 

 during its life. The plant, which has been in the conservatory 

 for upwards of twenty years, late last autumn threw up a flower 

 spike which in a very short time grew toa height of 30 feet, and, 

 passing through the glass roof, rose for some feet into the open 

 air. It could not, of course, resist the frosts and fogs of winter. 

 The flower-buds dropped unopened, when immediately from 

 each node a number of young plants appeared. This mode of 

 reproduction is found in only a few varieties of plants, and is 

 especially valuable in relation to the cultivation of Fourcroyas 

 as a source of commercial vegetable fibre. 



The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society will have 

 no very pleasant associations with the memory of its hundredth 

 anniversary, which was celebrated on Tuesday of last week. 

 During the following night the society's premises caught fire and 

 were greatly damaged. Much injury was done to the library, 

 where many most valuable books were destroyed. 



The fifth and sixth parts of the fifth volume of the Inter- 

 nationales Archiv fiir Ethnographie have been issued together 

 in a single number. It includes the second part of Dr. W. 

 Svoboda's interesting study (in German) of the inhabitants of 

 the Nicobar Islands ; a paper (in French) by Desire Pector on 

 the volume by Dr. Hyades and Dr. Deniker (noticed some time 

 ago in Nature) on the ethnography of a part of Tierra del 

 Fuego ; a suggestive essay (in German) by Dr. T. Achelis, on 

 the psychological importance of ethnolc^y ; and the second part 

 of Dr. Schmeltz's careful contributions (in German) to the 



