February 27, 1896J 



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401 



I special reierence to the so-called equinoctial gales. In order 

 not to entirely omit large districts, observations both at stations 

 with and without anemographs have been utilised, and he has 

 'leduced the yearly period at some fifty stations ; but, partly not 

 complicate the discussion, and partly from want of necessary 

 ills, no account has been taken of the duration, force and 

 notion of the storms. The position of the station has a great 

 influence upon the yearly period ; a place with a good western 

 exposure will have more westerly storms than a station with an 

 ( isterly exposure, and vice versil. The author finds that in the 

 \treme south-west of Europe March is the most stormy month ; 

 ihis is very marked at San Fernando, near Cadiz, where 45 per 

 cent, of all storms occur in that month. Further northwards, 

 on the Atlantic coast, the March maximum gradually recedes; 

 and on the coasts of France, the British Isles, and Norway, there 

 is a decided maximum in January, and at some inland places 

 this also holds good. This agrees with the results obtained by 

 Mr. R. H. Scott for the British Isles {Quarterly Journal ol the 

 Roy. Meteor. Society, 1884), who showed that mid- winter 

 was the stormiest season. The stations of South Norway and 

 part of North Germany show a considerable increase of storms 

 in October, but there is a great variation in the yearly period in 

 relatively small districts. The author considers that although 

 storms do not preponderate exactly at the times of the equinoxes, 

 the popular theory holds good to a certain extent, that they 

 frequently occur near those seasons ; and that if the year be 

 ilivided into two parts — one of stormy, and one of relatively 

 calm weather — the months of March and October must be 

 taken as the limiting periods, at all events over a great part of 

 Europe. 



We have received an atlas of the "isanomales" and of the 

 lines of secular change of the earth's magnetism, by Lieut. - 

 < icneral Alexis de Tillo. The atlas contains sixteen maps, which 

 L^ive the isanomales and the lines of equal secular change of the 

 ■ Icclination, dip, horizontal force, vertical force, and total force 

 for the epoch 1859. In addition there are two maps showing 

 the agonic lines for the epochs 1700, 1800, and 1859, and the 

 lines of maximum secular change in declination for the epochs 

 1745, 1810, and 1859. The author, from an examination of these 

 maps, concludes that with reference to each of the magnetic 

 cl ements the globe can be divided into two hemispheres by a great 

 circle approximately parallel to the meridians. In one of these 

 hemispheres the values of the magnetic element are greater than 

 in the other hemisphere, and there is a similarity between the 



iieral lie of the isanomales {i.e. of the lines of equal departure 

 each element from the mean value of the element along a 



rallel of latitude) of the several elements. The agonic lines 

 are reproduced on the maps of the isanomales of dip, vertical 

 force, and of magnetic potential. In particular the places at 

 which the declination is zero coincide with the points of 

 maximum or minimum value of these elements along the parallels 

 of latitude. The isanomales of the horizontal force show that 

 in general in those parts of the surface of the earth at which the 

 declination is westerly the horizontal force is less than in the 

 parts of the surface of the earth at which the declination is 

 easterly. An indication of the Siberian oval appears on the 

 vertical force and dip charts, while on the horizontal force and 

 total force charts there is an indication of a similar oval near 

 the Sandwich Islands. 



The belief in the vampire — that is, a spirit which leaves its 

 dead body in the grave to visit and torment the living — is a very 

 ancient and widely-spread superstition. It is startling to find, 

 according to Mr. G. R. Stetson ( The American Anthropologist, 

 ix. p. l), that this ghastly belief still persists in Rhode Island, 

 U.S.A. Persons now living claim to have had their life .saved 

 from death by consumption by the exhumation, mutilation, and 

 NO. 1374, VOL. 53] 



generally the cremation of some member of their families who had 

 died a short time previously. In the same journal, Dr. J. W. 

 Fewkes has a preliminary article on Tusayan Ethno-botany. 

 This is a subject which has not received the attention it 

 deserves, and it would be well if residents in our colonies and 

 dependencies, who have a taste for botany, would preserve the 

 transient plant -lore of our native races. 



While the old-fashioned view of igneous rocks as merely 

 accidental and irregular intruders into the regular sedimentary 

 series has been greatly modified by the results of petrological 

 researches, it is not often that it is found possible, from an 

 investigation of rock-structures, to obtain so complete an 

 account of a series of events in a district as Messrs. Holland 

 and Saise have recently done in the Giridih coalfield in Bengal. 

 They show how a liquid rock-magma of highly basic composi- 

 tion was injected as a series of dykes through the rocks of this 

 area at a temperature so high that near the dykes the coal was 

 coked and columnar structure developed in it, while sandstones 

 were so far fused that they came to closely resemble siliceous 

 lavas. This magma was rich in chlorine, as the abundance of 

 apatite in it shows, and from it thermal waters conveyed 

 chlorides in solution to permeate the rocks around. Tliis 

 permeation by chlorides produced marked changes in certain 

 more ancient igneous rocks, so that when at a later stage earth- 

 movements crushing them led to their metamorphism and re- 

 crystallisation, the results of that metamorphism were quite 

 different in the areas where the chloride-permeation had and 

 had not been effected. Where there were no dykes to supply 

 the chlorides, hornblende-schists were produced ; in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the dykes, scapolite rocks were formed. These 

 and other interesting facts are worked out in convincing manner 

 in a paper contributed to the Records of the Indian Geological 

 Survey (vol. xxviii. pt. 4). 



Mr. Charles J. Joly, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, 

 is editing an annotated edition of Sir W. Rowan Hamilton's 

 " Elements of Quaternions." The work is now passing through 

 the press. 



An important article on "Venezuela: her Government, 

 People, and Boundary," by Mr. W. E. Curtis, appears in the 

 February number of the National Geographic Magazine., illus- 

 trated by pictures of La Guayra, and the Valley of Caracas, east 

 and west of the capital. 



We have received the second volume of meteorological data, 

 published by the U.S. Weather Bureau, containing the results 

 of observations made during 1893, and, as a special contribution, 

 the records in detail of temperature, pressure, and wind at 

 Pike's Peak and Colorado Spring.s. 



A SET of thirteen " Laboratory Tables for Qualitative 

 Analysis," drawn up by the Demonstrators in Chemistry of the 

 Owens College, has been published by Mr. J. E. Cornish, Man- 

 chester. The tables are printed upon cards apparently intended 

 for use in chemical laboratories, so that students can be drilled 

 in the mechanical operations of analysis. 



The second " Psychological Index," published annuallyas part 

 of the Psychological Review, has just been issued. The index 

 is a bibliography of the literature of psychology and cognate 

 subjects for 1895, compiled by Dr. L. Farrand and Mr. H. C. 

 Warren. To psychologists, this well-arranged and complete list 

 of published books and papers must he invaluable. 



A second edition of " The Methods of Microscopical Re- 

 search," by Mr. Arthur C. Cole, has been published by Messrs. 

 Bailliere, Tindall, and Cox. The book is a practical guide to 

 microscopical manipulation, embodying descriptions of many 

 original processes and methods of work. The first edition was 



