March i, 1917] 



NATURE 



15 



temperature. In order to find the typical white climo- 

 graph the author takes five towns in the southern, and 

 seven in the northern, hemisphere, where white energy 

 appears at its highest development. The resulting 

 figure he uses as a criterion in all the climograph 

 charts. He then takes Herbertson's natural region 

 and draws a typical climograph for each, which in 

 every case is compared with the white climograph. 

 Applying the results more particularly to Australia, 

 Dr. Taylor confirms the generally accepted opinion 

 that the hinterlands of tropical Australia can develop 

 only on pastoral lines, and that the coast lands of the 

 north are useless for white settlement. The paper is 

 a valuable scientific reply to the advocates of a white 

 Australia. 



Meteorological information of a varied character 

 is given in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal 

 Meteorological Society for January. Among the 

 papers communicated are "A Meteorologist in 

 China," by C. E. P. Brooks; "Discontinuities 

 in Meteorological Phenomena," by Prof. H. H. 

 Turner; and a lucid communication by Sir Napier 

 Shaw, director of the Meteorological Office, " on 

 " Meteorology for Schools and Colleges " ; also a 

 communication on "The Measurement of Rainfall 

 Duration," by Carle Salter, assistant-director, British 

 Rainfall Organisation. Records from self-recording 

 gauges for fifty-eight stations scattered over the 

 United Kingdom are as yet obtainable. Many of the 

 records are for a short period, for a year or two only, 

 and the recording gauges are of various patterns. 

 The author acknowledges that niany difficulties have 

 to be contended with and he hints that possibly a 

 standard type of recording instrument may eventually 

 have to be insisted on, in the same way as in official 

 sunshine returns. Mr. Salter has done good work in 

 dealing with the method and preliminary difficulties 

 encountered. A discussion on "The Forms of 

 Clouds," by Capt. C. J. P. Cave, R.E., is of con- 

 siderable interest. The paper is illustrated with beau- 

 tiful photographs of the forms of cloud, and the author 

 explains the different forms, and combats freely the 

 forms suggested by many earlier writers on the sub- 

 ject. Much information is given on the different 

 layers of air and the measurements of the heights 

 of clouds. This cloud paper is in many ways sug- 

 gestive to the would-be observer. 



We have received from Messrs. Flatters and 

 Garnett, Ltd., Oxford Road, Manchester, a specinien 

 of their cedarwood oil for use with oil-immersion 

 microscopic objectives. As the result of tests we find 

 that the oil is of good consistence and colour, does 

 not become cloudv in cold weather, and has a high 

 refractive index. The refractive index is stated to be 

 1-510, but that of the specimen sent to us was well 

 above this, viz. 1-518. Immersion oil has hitherto 

 been supplied from the Continent, and we are glad 

 to direct attention to tTiis British-made oil, which 

 seems to fulfil every requirement. It is supplied in 

 bottles at from gd. to 45, each, or in bulk. 



The sixth part of vol. v. of the Transactions of the 

 Royal Society of South Africa contains a paper by 

 Prof. J. C. Beattie, of Cape Town, in which are 

 embodied the whole of the determinations of the devia- 

 tion of the compass from true north and of the mag- 

 netic dip at 667 stations in South Africa. The two 

 large maps show that the lines of equal deviation run 

 across the country from north-west to south-east, the 

 greatest deviation — 27° to the west — occurring at the 

 south-western corner of the country near Cape Town, 

 and the least — 14° west — at Beira. The lines of equal 



NO. 2470, VOL. 99] 



dip run from south-west to north-east in the south 

 eastern portion of the country, and show a tendenc} 

 to run more nearly east and west in the northern dis- 

 tricts. The dip is nearly 63° south in the south-east 

 near East London, and diminishes to 52° south in the 

 neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls in lat. iS*^ 

 south. During the last ten years the deviation to the 

 west has decreased a degree and a half to two de- 

 grees, while the dip has increased by a degree or a 

 degree and a half. 



Prof. M.\cmillan Brow.n, in a recent number of 

 the Press of New Zealand, discusses the appearance 

 and disappearance of islands amid the western insular 

 fringe of the Pacific. He recognises two curves of 

 vulcanism, an outer, extending from the Aleutian 

 Islands to Malay and New Zealand, and an inner, 

 passing through the Marianne, Caroline, Gilbert, 

 EUice, Samoa, Tahiti, and Paumotu archipelagos to 

 Easter Island. The outer curse lies off the enclosing 

 continental shelf of the ocean, while the inner curve 

 is parallel with the trend of the ancient continental 

 shelf. The " main longitudinal crescent of vulcan- 

 ism " has shifted from the inner to the outer curve, 

 and with this shifting much archipelagic land between 

 the two curves has disappeared. The main interest 

 of the theorv' lies in the suggestion that this shifting 

 has taken place in human times. The elevation of 

 Rota in the N. Mariannes is dated to the Japanese 

 Bronze age, 4000 years ago, by bronze bosses in the 

 elevated coral. Ocean Island has risen and sunk 

 several times, and in a previous elevation was in- 

 habited by Polynesians, who made the regular Maori 

 ovens. . Ponape is supposed to have been a central 

 point in a large archipelago with a great population. 

 A considerable forest area with a dense f>opulation is 

 required to account for the megaliths of Easter Island. 

 In any case, those who speculate on migration routes 

 must not assume as their basis the same areas and 

 distribution of land in the Western Pacific as now 

 exists. Prof. Brown, if the subsidence theor\- of atoll, 

 formation (which he assumes to be the only applicable- 

 theory) is applicable to the Western Pacific, must find' 

 much further and more direct evidence of those great 

 archipelagos which he postulates as existing such ai 

 short time ago in what are now deep oceans with- 

 comparatively level beds. Existing coral formations 

 do not point to the former existence of great islands. 

 The animals and plants of still existing high lands 

 should be more varied in genera and species if such 

 lands were formerly parts of considerable archi- 

 pelagos. 



The new technical journal. Air, does not appear to 

 be a great innovation, judging from No. 3, which is 

 in our hands. There is, however, in this number, 

 one interesting article by Mr. E. A. Sperry, on 

 •'Aerial Navigation over Water," which describes 'ver\- 

 clearly and simply the methods which are in use for 

 measuring the wind-drift of an aeroplane moving 

 over the earth, and the various ways in which the 

 pilot can obtain information as to his actual direc- 

 tion of flight relative to the earth. The construction 

 and use of the drift indicator are explained; and thr 

 way in which the direction and velocitv of motion of 

 wave crests, and their distance from crest to crest, 

 can be used to afford information as to the flieht 

 path is clearly dealt with. Another article, on "The 

 Fundamental Equations of an Aeroplane," succeeds, 

 after three pages of involved argument, in arriving 

 at a simple aerodynamic conclusion which could be 

 stated in as many lines. The reasoning reads as if 

 the main object had been to make an exceedingly 

 simple argument look as complicated as possible. 



