March 31, 19 10] 



NA TURE 



12 



sesame, but persisted in her reticence, the philosopher 

 grew pessimistic and disappointed." " Pessimistic " is 

 the very last adjective to be applied to Lord Kelvin 

 in his cheery and undaunted battling- to the last with 

 the deepest problem of mathematical physics. No 

 trace of disappointment soured the serene close of his 

 strenuous life. 



There are eight portraits and a score of illustrative 

 cuts in the work, which is well and clearly printed. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Syllabus of the Lessons on Marine Biology for Fisher- 

 men, given at the Marine Laboratory, Piel, 

 Barrow-in-Furness, by the Lancashire and Western 

 Sea-Fisheries Joint Committee. Revised January, 

 1910. Pp. 35; 7 plates. (Liverpool : C. Tinling and 

 Co., Ltd., 1910.) 



This handbook, which has been prepared by Mr. 

 James Johnstone, is written in a clear, direct style, 

 and is illustrated by good text-figures and seven ex- 

 cellent plates. The author is to be especially con- 

 gratulated on the skill with which he has, throughout 

 the book, avoided the use of technical terms without 

 sacrificing scientific accuracy. The desire to avoid 

 the use of the word protoplasm has, however, led to 

 the use of another term in an unusual sense; on p. 

 13 the author, dealing with Peridinians, writes : — 

 "They, like the diatoms, are jelly-fish, and have 

 shells . . . ." It would be better to avoid the use 

 of the term jelly-fish, in such a connection, in view 

 of its more generally accepted application to or- 

 ganisms of a higher class. 



The book contains outlines of lessons on those 

 branches of marine biology which are of special in- 

 terest to fishermen— the general anatomy, phvsiologv 

 and development of the mussel, the structure of the 

 cockle, the food of these molluscs; the structure of 

 shrimps, crabs and lobsters, their growth, "casting" 

 (ecdysis) and reproduction; the anatomv of the had- 

 dock or whiting, the fecundity of various fishes, 

 especially of flat fishes, that of the flounder being 

 studied in detail ; the food in the sea, plankton ; the 

 different kinds of spawn found on the shore; the 

 elementary chemistry of air and water, the tem- 

 perature of the sea, &c. This list will serve to show 

 the range of subjects comprised in this admirably 

 planned course of scientific instruction. The book 

 is certain to stimulate the interest, not only of those 

 who attend the classes, but also of other fishermen, 

 to whose notice it will be brought by their more 

 fortunate fellow-workers who have passed through 

 the classes and used the book. 



The Sun a Habitable Body like the Earth. By Sree 

 Benoybhushan Raha Dass. Pp. xiv+ 130. (Naldha : 

 Published by the Author, 1909.) Price 55. , or 3 

 rupees. 



This is, typically, a book "published (and distri- 

 buted) by the author," and perhaps the kindest 

 statement to make about it is that it is an 

 anachronism. Apparently the author attempts to 

 explain all solar phenomena as electrical effects, and, 

 as a prelude, describes the actions of, and discharges 

 from, insulated conductors ; but the language is so 

 often obscure, and, where intelligible, is so devoid of 

 connected reasoning, that no clear idea can be 

 obtained as to the ultimate conclusions. Quotations 

 from great authorities, including HerschePs conclu- 

 sion as to the sun's habitability, give the volume 

 Itself an air of authority which is rudely dispelled on 

 a closer acquaintance. 



NO. 2109, VOL. 83] 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 [The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part 0/ Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 



The *' Reindeer " from the Lorthet Grotto. 



I HAVE just been consulting in Science Progress for 

 July, 1909, the very interesting paper of Prof. Sollas on 

 the Palaeolithic races, and I venture to direct attention 

 to the title of an illustration on p. 25. It is entitled 

 " Reindeer and Salmon Incised on a Piece of Horn from 

 Lorthet." This legend is taken from the original figure 

 by the late M. Piette in L'Anthropologie, 1904, p. 160; 

 but is the Cervus there engraved rightly ascribed to 

 tarandus? Is it not megaceros? Tarandus has no brow 

 tines like those delineated on this horn plaque. They are 

 more or less palmatcd, while in megaceros they are 

 differently directed, present a different section, and are 

 bifid as are those figured in Science Progress. It may or 

 may not be now or later of importance to ascribe correctly 

 this particular drawing, but the determination of the 

 species in prehistoric cave-engravings has an important 

 bearing on the age and climate of the horizon from which 

 they come. 



May I venture, if Prof. Sollas will allow me, to refer 

 also to p. 26 of the same important contribution, where 

 occur the words "... Saiga antelope, the same animal 

 as that which is sculptured in so masterly a manner on 

 the spear-thrower mentioned on p. 20 (Fig. 3)." The 

 animal sculptured — also after >I. Piette's figure in 

 L'.Anthropologie — on the implement (from Mas d'Azil) re- 

 ferred to can hardly be a Saiga. The position and form 

 of the nostrils and the uninflated nose-sac which the side- 

 view reveals preclude this determination. The creature 

 must be a' goat or a chamois, or belong to a nearly related 

 genus. Henry O. Forbes. 



The Museums, Liverpool, March 20. 



Centre of Gravity of Annual Rainfall. 



The ordinary method of exhibiting the annual distri- 

 bution of rainfall for any station or country is a graph 

 the ordinates of which represent the monthly rainfall. 

 Though this pictorial method is both useful and interest- 

 ing, it does not lend itself to the ready comparison of a 

 number of such graphs for different places or for the 

 same place in different years. By a similar graphic 

 method we can exhibit the yearly rainfall totals for a 

 number of years, but we cannot show differences of internal 

 distribution for each year unless we are at the trouble to 

 graph each month of each year separately. 



Another method, which may be called the analytical 

 method, I have been applying recently to the study of the 

 rainfall of the province of Mysore, India, upon which I 

 had to report officially from 1893 to 1908, and I 

 have been much surprised at the results brought out by 

 this method. The same method applied to the rainfall 

 statistics of England, Scotland, and Ireland, as given bv 

 Dr. H. R. Mill in " British Rainfall " for 1908, show's 

 also curious and interesting results. 



The method consists in the application of the well-known 

 formula for finding the position of the centre of gravity 

 of a number of weights placed along a straight rod, viz. 

 X = 5(k'x)— 2(k')- If we imagine the rainfall for the 

 months of the year January, February, . . ., December to 

 be weights placed along an axis at distances i, 2 ... 12 

 units from the Origin, or end of the axis (January i), 

 multiply each month's rainfall by its distance from the 

 Origin, and divide the sum of the products by the total 

 rainfall for the year, we get the position (or date) at which 

 the year's rainfall might be supposed to have fallen 

 all together to give the same effect as the separate monthly 

 falls. 



The Mysore Province, which has about the same area as 

 Scotland without the Isles (28,000 square miles), is 

 divided into eight Districts, which differ greatly in the 

 amount of yearly rainfall, as well as in the monthly dis- 

 tribution. Each District is divided into a number of 



