July 28, 1882. 



KNOWLEDGE • 



151 



GOLD IN IXDIA. 



[491] — " J. S." will, 1 trust, excuse my answering his question 

 from eecond-hiind information, desirous as he is particularly to 

 obtain the opinion of some one who has been out in India. At 

 present, I am afraid, he will have difficulty in obtaining reliable 

 information on the subject, for Professor Ball is himself rather 

 puzzled owing to the conflicting nature of the evidence as to the 

 extent of the auriferous character of the quartz reefs of India. The 

 opinion, however, of a gentleman who— to use his own words — has 

 done more work (mining) in India than anyone else, besides having 

 had over twenty-fivo yeai-s' experience in Australia and Xew 

 Zealand as a gold-mining engineer, and of whom Professor Ball has 

 said, before a meeting of the Society of Arts, '" As far as we know 

 of him (Mr. H. A. Severn) by reputation, he was a gentleman dis- 

 tinguished from others, who must have reported (i.e., prospects of 

 gold mining) absolutely against their consciences," may be valuable 

 to "J. S." 



For fear of taking up too much of the Editor's space, I leave out 

 Jlr. Severn's account of the great dilEcnlties encountered by him in 

 transporting mills, capable of crushing 500 tons of quartz per week, 

 through the Wynaad district, which, he says, might, not unfairly, 

 be compared to the rough work of New Zealand ; but I give nearly 

 verbatim his account of the Indian quartz. Arriving out there he 

 says, '• I was much struck with the great similarity between the 

 auriferous quartz of India and that which I have seen both in 

 Australia and New Zealand ; in fact, so far as I could see, the 

 quartz we were to treat was, as nearly as possible, similar in every 

 chemical respect to the best quartz in those countries. I have 

 Been some very fine samples indeed in various parts of the Wynaad dis- 

 trict, and several of the lodes were from 6ft. to 14ft. in thickness, with 

 a heavy strike extending overseveral miles of country." He then pro- 

 ceeds to show the folly of those gentlemen " styling themselves mining 

 engineers," who, seeing a speck of " surface gold in quartz," pound 

 it up, Ac, and base all their calculations from that speck ; and he 

 then says truly, that " what we want, which will take, I believe, 

 another eighteen months, is to get 500 ft. below the mean level of 

 the country, and there pick up the quartz . lodes. I am as 

 certain of getting payable gold in India as I was in working some 



of the mines in New Zealand As a practical man, I can 



hold out great hopes ; but we must get to a greater depth than we 

 are at present working." "'J. S." will see from the above, that to 

 really obtain a satisfactory answer to his question, it will be neccs- 

 sar\- to wait for another year, until the depth of 500 ft. has been 

 reached by the miners. Knowing Mr. Severn personally, I am 

 able to fully bear oat Professor Ball's high opinion of him. 



F.C.S. 



LOCAL WEATHEK LOEE. 



[492] — From time to time I see letters in Knowledge which 

 indicate that considerable general interest is taken in the subject of 

 weather forecasting. You will therefore, perhaps, be able to find 

 room for a word about a matter intimately connected with that 

 subject. 



In a letter printed in the Times, and which, I think, was quoted 

 in K.NOWiEDGE, I attempted to show where our present system of 

 weather forecasting is defective. The method pursued is wrong in 

 principle, and accordingly it yields unsatisfactory results. If 

 practical proof of what is theoretically evident be wanted, it is only 

 necessary to point to the fact that of the forecasts issued from the 

 Jleteorological Office, those for London and neighbourhood are the 

 most accurate, those for the rest of England much less so; while 

 those for Scotland are too often but bad guesses. This does not 

 argue any want of skill on the part of the great Victoria-street 

 functionaries. It only shows that their system is faulty ; and it 

 further indicates where the imperfection lies. Weather forecasts, 

 to be as accurate as possible, must bo framed by local observers. 



Let me, very briefly, explain how the daily forecasts are made. 

 At certain hours, at certain stations tliroughont the British Isles 

 and north of Franco, certain observations are made. The results 

 are telegraphed to the office in I^ondon. By charting the particulars 

 thus obtained, the official in London has a bird's-eye view, so to 

 speak, of the state of the barometer, the fempcrnture, the wind, 

 and the weather prevailing over the British Isles at that particular 

 time. From the chart ho infers the presence or api)roach of a 

 cyclone, or the existence of an " area of high pressure," called an 

 anticyclone. He has then all the available data upon which to base 

 his forecasts. Lot us look at cue or two of the chances of error. 

 Suppose there are indications of an approaching disturbauco to the 

 west of Ireland. The barometer there is falling, the wind is S. and 

 rapidly increasing in force, dense masses of cloud are coming up 

 before tho wind. Now, we know what kind of weather charac- 

 terise.', as a general rule, each part of the cyclone, and it would not 



be a very difficult matter to predict what weather would prevail at 

 the places which are about to be encountered by those different 

 parts ; but in order to do so, it is essential for us to know the eize 

 of the disturbance, the direction of its motion, and tho rale of its 

 progression, and those are precisely the particulars which we can't 

 get. The forecaster only knows that a disturbance is approaching, 

 and he must guess all tho rest. Then take tho case of an anti- 

 cyclone. If the forecaster has to trust in great part to luck in 

 founding predictions on a cyclone, he has to trust altogether to it 

 when an anticyclone lies over the country. Anything whatever in 

 the shape of weather might very well happen within an area of high 

 pres.sure, so long as this little disturbance is of local dimensions. 

 Thus it might rain at one place, hail at anether, blow at a third, 

 thunder at a fourth, and so on, all without producing the least 

 effect upon the '"area of high pressure." It is seen, then, how 

 largely guess-work enters into the calculations of our weather- 

 prophets. 



Situated as we are, with about 2,000 miles of ocean in the quarter 

 from which nearly all our disturbances come, this can never well be 

 otherwise. The particulars of extent, direction, and rate of pro- 

 gression, which are so necessary, we caimot hope to obtain with any 

 degree of precision ; and so long as they are wanting, forecasts can 

 never be aught but unreliable. 



I come now to the other class of weather-phenomena, with which 

 it is the more immediate object of tliis letter to deal, namely, 

 phenomena related in some way to the circumstance of place. And 

 I may say, to begin with, that while, when an area of high pressure 

 is over the country, the weather is entirely the result of local 

 agencies, a cyclone may also be locally modified by the same factors ; 

 so that in reality local meteorology occupies a far more important 

 place than has hitherto been assigned to it. 



This letter is already so lor.g that I must refrain from entering 

 into the subject of local weather. What I wish more particularly 

 to point out id, that local meteorology rising in the scale of im- 

 portance, local weather-lore, which embodies the observations and 

 experience of generations respecting the phenomena peculiar to 

 localities, must rise with it, and that such folk-lore, if carefully col- 

 lected, would form an invaluable adjunct to the weather chart in 

 framing forecasts. Although I am no believer in the existing 

 administration of the Meteorological Office, I can quite well see that 

 great difficulties stand in the way of the adoption of what Mr. 

 Scott himself holds to be the best system, i.e., the supplementing 

 of the London forecasts based npon general laws by the experience 

 of local officials; but if that plan bo impracticable in tho meantime, 

 is it not possible to have the weather at each observer's station 

 described in sufficient detail to enable a meteorologist in London, 

 with a topographically-arranged book of weather-wisdom before 

 him, to make at least abetter guess at the approaching atmospheric 

 conditions than he otherwise could ? llero, again, there is the dif- 

 ficulty presented by the very sparse distribution of observers, but 

 notwiilistanding that, I believe some such plan as I have Buggested 

 would materially improve the forecasts. 



In conclusion) I may say that any of your readers who may como 

 across weather-saws of purely local application, would oblige me 

 by sending them to mo (together with the name of tho district to 

 which they apply), as I purpose compiling a book of weather folk- 

 lore, arranged according to localities, as soon as I can find time. 

 J. A. Wkstwooi, Olivkr. 



HAIR TCRNINt; WHITE. 



[493j— I can supplement the experience of '■ \V. K. F. lieiier 

 434, p. 133) by an analogous one of my own. Throe years ago 1 

 lost an entire estate through a fi-audulent agent. This involved a 

 most serious reduction iu my establishment ; the discharge of 

 servants, patting down carriages, Ac., and CAUsed me the most 

 terrible anxiety. I could not sleep for many nights, and, in the 

 result, my hair, which b.'foro my trouble was of a dark brown, 

 tamed in about ten days as grey as that of a badger. It has never 

 regained its colour up to the instant at which 1 write. W. N. 



TRICVCLING. 



[491] — 111 a recent deliverance on tho subject of Tricycling, by 

 Dr. B. W. Kicliai-dson, he emphatically coiidemuod tho practice by 

 persons suffering from hernia. I lx?Iieve that a toler.ibly reliable 

 estimate places tho proportion of male subjects of heniia at one in 

 five or one in six, and as the vast ni.ijority of these ])crsons are not 

 disqualified thereby from participation in most kinds of field s|M)rts 

 and exercise, it may be useful to enquire why tricycling in particular 

 should be considered jioniicious. Some evidence njion this jwint, 

 based njioii actual experience would bo more satisfactory than a 

 mere medical dictum. E- A. U. 



