November, 1906.] 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



577 



microphone. The characteristic images of the vowels 

 a, e (German) are reproduced in Figures 5 and 6, in 

 which the whole vibrations will be accurately ascer- 

 tained. The same process, moreover, as seen from 

 Figures 7 and 8, allows whole words to be analysed. 

 Mr. Marbe's process seems to be destined to give rise 

 to interesting discoveries in the range of acoustics as 

 well as of phonetics. The author is at present engaged 

 in constructing an apparatus enabling the pictures of 

 such sounds as make up a continuous speech to be re- 

 corded graphically. This apparatus is to be combined 

 with a counting device, marking on the tape tenths of a 

 .second, and is to be used in connection with statistical 

 research work on the tune of human speech, researches 

 which constituted the starting point of the present in- 

 vestigation. It may be said that their interest will 

 be the higher, as no means of obtaining repeated and 

 extensive records of human language has been so far 

 forthcoming. 



The Flora of the 

 Presidency of Bombay. 



This local flora, intended as a supijlement to Hooker's 

 " Flora of British India," should have been completed 

 in January last by the issue of the sixth part; but Dr. 

 Cooke, CLE., who has been engaged on the work a*- 

 Kew for the past five years, has found as it progressed 

 that the number of plants requiring description has 

 constantly increased, and application has been made t.) 

 the Secretary of State for India, who is subsidising the 

 publication, for permission to exceed the limits 

 originally laid down. Two additional parts have been 

 sanctioned, and the complete work will not be issued 

 until 1908. Part six is now in the press; the five that 

 have already appeared have received many expressions 

 of approbation from botanical experts, and from the 

 non-scientists, revenue and district ofiicers, and others, 

 for whose use the book is designed. 



The only existing regional flora is that by Dalzell 

 and Gibson; this was published in 1861, and is now very 

 incomplete, the knowledge of the vegetation of the 

 Presidency having been added to so largely by the 

 work of the Botanical Survey of India during the past 

 fifteen years. The new flora will meet a want widely 

 felt by all who.se duties make it advisable that they 

 should be acquainted with the characters and properties 

 of the plants of the province. 



It has long been the desire of Dr. Cooke to compile 

 this manual, for which he had gathered much valuable 

 information while acting as Honorary Director of the 

 western branch of the Botanical Survey. He was for 

 twenty-eight years Principal of the College of Science 

 at Poona, and on his retirement in 1893, the Govern- 

 ment of Bombay, acting on the recommendation of Sir 

 George King, the Director of the Survey, wished then 

 to entrust him with the work, but Lord Kimberley, the 

 Secretary of State, vetoed the proposal, and it was not 

 imtil 1901 that official sanction was given for its pre- 

 paration. As the flora has been completed, the large 

 pri\ ate herbarium, formed by Dr. Cooke while in charge 

 of the Survey in Bombay, has been made over bv him to 

 the Poona herbarium, to replace the loss by fire of the 

 Go\ornment collection there in May, 1902. 



World Weather. 



By Sir John Eliot, K.C.I.E., F.R.S. 



The Meteorological Office has recently issued a memoir 

 entitled " The Life History of Surface Air Currents : .\ 

 Study of the .Surface Trajectories of Moving Air."* It gives 

 the results of the investigations of Dr. Shaw, Director of the 

 Meteorological Office, and Mr. Lempfort, his scientific as- 

 sistant. The research marks an important advance in the 

 scientific work of the office, and suggests that in future im- 

 provement in the practical work of forecasting will be 

 based on the results of scientific investigation rather than 

 on empirical or experimental inferences. It is, however, 

 of special importance as it employs novel methods for the 

 investigation of air movement on the large scale — which 

 are leading to results not merely unexpected, but opposed 

 to the fundamental principles which have formed the chief 

 stock-in-trade of meteorologists during the past fifty years. 



The most important principle hitherto utilised by meteoro- 

 logists is that connecting pressure of gravity forces and air 

 movement. It is usually stated in the form that air in- 

 variably moves from positions of higher pressure to those of 

 lower pressure (the pressure being reduced to sea-level 

 equivalents). In the other form (a development of the 

 pressure) air is assumed to move along planes of equal 

 pressure, inclined to the horizontal, or from positions of 

 higher to lower level, and hence under the action of gravity. 

 In addition to these laws and modifying their application is 

 the principle first largely utilised by Farrel, that air moving 

 on the rotating earth is always being deflected to the right 

 of its path by a force or amount depending on its velocity 

 and latitude position on the earth's surface, but not on the 

 direction of the movement. It is apparently assumed that 

 air never moves from positions of lower to higher pressure, 

 or from positions of lower to higher level. This is certainly, 

 more especially in the latter case, opposed to ordinary 

 dynamical principles and experience. For example, the bob 

 of a pendulum moves for one half of its period of a single 

 oscillation from higher to lower level under the force of 

 gravity, and during the second half from lower to higher 

 level with respect to the horizontal plane. Similarly, if the 

 actual air motion be assumed to take place along an isobaric 

 plane it follows that it may not only move down the plane 

 from higher to lower level (acquiring momentum and 

 kinetic energy), but also if it posses.ses momentum it may 

 move in the opposite direction from lower to higher level 

 (losing kinetic energy). Similar arguments might be ap- 

 plied to the pressure principle. The preceding remarks are 

 simply intended to show that if ordinary dynamical (not 

 hydrodynamical) principles are applied to meteorological in- 

 vestifjation, their limited application in the form usually 

 adopted by meteorologists is apparently neitlier valid nor 

 justified by dynamical methods. Meteorological problems 

 are chiefly problems of air movement, as changes of tem- 

 perature, and humidity, rainfall, &c., are primarily the re- 

 sults of air movement. Hence the necessity for the study 

 of the phenomena of air movement, from theory as well as 

 from observation. 



.\ir movement on the large scale may be that 

 of the permanent or periodic circulations (as, for 

 example, the trade winds and monsoon winds), and that of 

 anticyclonic or cyclonic conditions, more or less temporary 



• "The Life History of Surface Air Currents; A Study of the 

 Surface Trajectories of Moving Air." by W. W. Shaw. Sc.D., 

 F.R.S. (Oirector, Meteorological Officel, and R. G. K. Lempfort, 

 M.A. Published bv the authority of the Meteorological Committee. 

 (Wvman & Sons, H.^L Stationery Office, 1906; price, 7s. 6d.). 



