352 



NATURE 



[August io, 1893 



August and September, should harvest operations continue so 

 long, and Essex and Northumberland are the counties selected 

 for the purpose. The measure of success which the forecasts 

 now obtain is such as to lead the Board to the conclusion that 

 the information thus made available will be of practicable value 

 to agriculturists in making their arrangements for the following 

 day. 



Sharp thunderstorms occurred at several places in the south 

 and east of England on Friday and Saturday last, accompanied 

 by heavy rain or hail. In the eastern and northern parts of the 

 kingdom the rainfall has been exceptionally heavy. At York 

 the aggregate amount for the week ended the 5th inst. was 

 I '6 inch, while at Yarmouth it reached two inches, or nearly the 

 average amount for the month of August. 



The question as to whether the term "perennial 

 spring" is applicable to the climate of Quito, as it is 

 claimed by many explorers of the equatorial city, is dis- 

 cussed by Dr. J. Hann in the Zeitschrift der Gcsellschaft fiir 

 Erdkunde. He comes to the conclusion that the term does 

 indeed convey a fair idea of the climatic conditions of the place. 

 Not only does the mean temperature and its range of diurnal 

 variations resemble that of our May, but also the changeable 

 weather, with its afternoon thunderstorms, rains and hailshowers, 

 recalls our spring months. It is possible that the contrast be- 

 tween the cool mornings and evenings may be felt more severely 

 in the capital of Ecuador than with us, on account of the greater 

 power of the vertical rays of the sun, but the variability of the 

 mean temperature is, on the other hand, much smaller than in 

 our latitudes. The influence of the weather upon health is very 

 much the same as that of our springs, attacking, as it does, all 

 the mucous membranes of the unwary traveller. It is a question 

 whether a perennial spring is as much of a blessing as the poets 

 would have us believe. The charm of spring lies in the re- 

 awakening of life after the torpor of the winter, and where this 

 contrast is wanting, the greatest part of the charm disappears. 



A Meteorological Society has recently been established 

 at Zi-ka-Wei, near Shanghai, under the presidency of the Rev. 

 S. Chevalier, S. J., and has issued its first report for the year 

 1892. A good stock of self-registering barometers has been 

 purchased by the Zi-ka-Wei observatory, and distributed among 

 the members of the Society who were able to make use of them. 

 The report contains a brief account of the principal typhoons of 

 the year 1892, accompanied by a map showing their paths, and 

 also an interesting article upon the fogs along the northern 

 coast of China, based upon the observations made at several 

 stations of the Imperial Maritime Customs during the years 

 1889-91. The discussion shows that from September to No- 

 vember the coast is remarkably free from fog, but that from 

 March to July fogs are very frequent either at the Shan-tung 

 promontory or near the estuary of the Yang-tse-kiang. They 

 are most frequent in the early morning, by far the greatest num- 

 ber being observed before 9 a.m. The conditions most favourable 

 to their formation occur with a low and still falling barometer. 



Science contains an interesting account by Mr. E. H. S. 

 Bailey of the effects of a cyclone that passed near Williamston, 

 Kansas, on June 21. At one point, where the track of the 

 cyclone was about six hundred yards wide, elm and walnut 

 trees two or three feet in diameter were torn up or wrenched 

 off fifteen or twenty feet from the ground. The storm travelled 

 eastward, and the debris was distributed round its centre in the 

 manner that usually characterises cyclonic movements. Barbed 

 wire fencing and telephone wires were lifted into tree-tops 

 about fifty feet north of their original position. Heavy farm 

 wagons were utterly destroyed, and spokes were broken off near 

 the hub and carried to a distance of quite half a mile. But even 

 NO. I 24 I. VOL. 48] 



these are comparatively unimportant items in Mr. Bailey's cata- 

 logue of casualties. We learn that gravestones (the sire is not 

 stated) were carried three hundred yards, and that chickens were 

 stripped of their feathers and trees of their foliage. The west 

 sides of the trees that stood the storm were much roughened, 

 while the east sides were unchanged, owing doubtless to the 

 fact that clouds of sand and dust accompanied the wind and 

 assisted it in the work of destruction. Just before the storm left 

 the earth's surface its fury was at the highest pitch and the 

 width of its track was least. The length of the track, as shown 

 by the devastation, was about five miles. 



We learn from the Kew Bulletin that the fine collection of 

 Stapelias made by the late Mr. Thomas Westcombe, of Worces- 

 ter, has been presented to the Royal Gardens, together with a 

 number of notes, descriptions, and beautifully executed coloured 

 drawings. 



The Bulletin of the Royal Gardens, Kew, Nos. 76, 77, con- 

 tains an elaborate report on the preparation and export of 

 Chinese white wax. The eggs of the Coccus which produces 

 the excretions are invariably transported from the district v.'here 

 they are produced to that in which the wax is obtained. The 

 industry appears to be a decaying one. 



The first three parts of vol. iii. of " Indian Museum Notes," 

 published under the authority of the Agricultural department of 

 the Government of India, contains a great mass of information 

 on the causes of the various diseases which affect crops in India, 

 descriptions of noxious insects, &c. It is edited by Mr. E. C. 

 Cotes, Deputy Superintendent of the Indian Museum, who him- 

 self contributes a large number of notes. The third part is 

 entirely occupied by a conspectus of the insects which affect crops 

 in India, 240 in number. 



It would appear from researches made by Fromme and 

 Stagnitta-Balistreri that no inconsiderable number of micro- 

 organisms are capable of producing sulphuretted hydr>gen. 

 Fromme'employed as culture media ordinary nutritive ge atine 

 to which tartrate, acetate, or saccharate of iron had been addedi 

 the reaction being exhibited by the varying shades of brov/n to 

 black produced by the organism's growth. Balistreri (Arcfdv f. 

 Hygiene, vo\. xvi.) used broth with and without peptone, and 

 tested for the presence of this gas by the insertion of strips of 

 lead paper. Amongst those organisms which produce sulphur- 

 etted hydrogen are the B. protcus vulgaris, the typhoid bacillus, 

 B. coli communis, bacillus of rabbit septicaemia, the comma 

 bacillus, whilst B. subtilis, the anthrax bacillus, Micrococcm 

 tetragenus, the diphtheria bacillus yield a negative result. 08 

 substituting for beef broth that prepared from veal, horse-flesh, 

 or haddocks, no difference in the behaviour of the organisms 

 investigated was observed. When inoculated into raw eggs, 

 which contain such a large proportion of loosely combined 

 sulphur, the Proteus vulgaris, associated with so many processes 

 of decomposition, failed, in spiteof abundant growth, to produce 

 any sulphuretted hydrogen. On boiled eggs, however, this 

 microbe produces this gas. These interesting results suggest 

 that the power of evolving sulphuretted hydrogen may be 

 possessed in a latent state by certain bacteria, and that just as 

 particular conditions may stimulate their activity in this direction, 

 other circumstances may act as a deterrent. 



The power of gradually adapting themselves to their sur- 

 roundings possessed in such a remarkable degree by many 

 micro-organisms, has been studied as regards their susceptibility 

 to various strengths of disinfectants by Kossiakoff, and still 

 more recently by Trambusti (Lo Sperimentale, 1892, fasc. i.;. 

 Kossiakoff showed that a larger dose of a particular disinfectant 

 was necessary to destroy an organism which had been trained 

 by being subjected to gradually increasing doses of the disin- 



