84 



NATURE 



[May 23, 189; 



Some years ago the desirability of publishing the obserrations 

 made by the late J. Allan Broun at Tre%-andrum, in Southern 

 India, for over twelve years, was brought before the Royal 

 Society of London by the Ro)-al Society of Edinburgh, and the 

 records were deposited at the Meteorological Office for safe 

 keeping. The Meteorolc^cal Council subsequently drew the 

 attention of the Royal Society to the subject, and that body in- 

 duced the Indian authorities to render this valuable material 

 accessible to scientific men, the result lieing that the Meteoro- 

 logical Department of India has just published the barometrical 

 and thermometrical observations in vol. \\\. of their Memoirs. 

 The publication contains the hourly obser%-ations and means 

 from Januar)- 1S53 to December 1S64, with the exception of 

 Sundays, on which no observations were taken. The whole of 

 the original entries have been carefully examined for clerical 

 errors, under the superintendence of Mr. J. Eliot, the Govern- 

 ment -Meteorological Reporter, and we gather from the preface 

 that a discussion of the results w ill eventually be carried out. 



A MOST eloquent appeal for the wider diffusion of a know- 

 ledge of sanitar)- matters has been recently made by Dr. Carlo 

 Ruata, Professor at the University of Perugia, in his introductor)' 

 address to a course of lectures on the duties of sanitation. 

 Efficient sanitation, urges Dr. Ruata, may justly be demanded 

 as a right by the individual from the State ; but, at the same time, 

 each individual must be adequately impressed with his duties 

 and responsibilities to other members of society in the proper 

 conduct of sanitary matters. It is painted out how much may 

 be, and has been, done by judicious legislation and enlightened 

 public opinion in recent years ; but Dr. Ruata would insist upon 

 more vigorous measures, and upon a knowledge of the principles 

 of hygiene bsing rendered compulsory in systems of education. 

 Ignurance and lack of all sense of responsibility is only too 

 frequently to blame for the generation and spread of disea-se, and 

 Dr. Ruata's appeal, that proper hygienic conduct .should be in- 

 sisted upon as the serious duty which one member of society owes 

 to another is fully justified. Dr. Ruata is confident that with 

 improved hygienic conditions sf)ciety will benefit not only 

 physically but morally ; but whether it will bring about the 

 Utopian stale sketched by the lecturer in his sanguine peroration, 

 remains yet to be seen. 



\ REPORT, by .Mr. P. G. Craigie, on the agricultural experiment 

 stations and agricultural colleges in the United States, just pub- 

 lished as a Parliamentary Paper, should be seen by every one 

 interested in agricultural education and -research. It appears 

 that, at the present day, upwards of three-score collegiate institu- 

 tions arc engaged in the United States wholly or partly in 

 agricultural teaching, and, according to the statistics collected 

 and published for 1892, they enjoy an aggregate revenue of 

 .^689,000, practically one half of which was granted by the 

 Federal Government, while ^^223, 000 is added by the several 

 -States, minor aid being rendered by ^^40,000 which came from 

 fees, and by the benevolence of local committees or private 

 individuals, while the remainder was raised by the sale of farm 

 pro<luce or miscellaneous receipts. The number of separate 

 cxpirriment stations is fifty-four, of which forty-eight receive 

 subventions from the Federal Government out of national funds, 

 the uniform grant being roughly ;f 3033 to each station. Accord- 

 ing to the returns published of the revenue of these stations in 

 1892, upwaril- of a million dollars, or roughly ^'200,000, is 

 available as annual revenue, the Federal Government finding 

 ;f 140,030, and the grants of the .Slates reaching rather more 

 than /'30,ooo. 



Mr. Ckmoie's repart b;ars out his conclusion that "great 

 and practir.il energy is bjini; directed to the discovery of the 

 licst meant of extending the field of agricultural and horticultural 

 knowledge. It should not be overlooked that side by side with 



NO. 1334. VOL. 52] 



the growth of local stations a very extensive development of the 

 scientific staff engaged on the special inquiries of the Federal 

 Department at Washington has taken place in the last ten 

 years. The .-Vmerican Government seems willing to face any 

 cost to the community that promises the better to equip the 

 farmer with a knowledge of his business. The authorities seem 

 assured that in indicating methods of profitable production, and 

 still more by the aireful perfecting of the )>roduce of the vast 

 lands of tHe Republic, in whatever directions of extensive or 

 of intensive culture the economic circumstances of the moment 

 may prescribe, they are providing a solid means of advancing 

 the well-being of the nation as a whole." 



A FRESH addition to periodical literature is the [ournal of the 

 Soiith-Eastcrn Agricultural College, Wye, Kent, which is to 

 be published three times a year, and is intended to be a brief 

 record of the history of the college from term to term, and to 

 announce the results of investigations and experiments conducted 

 by the college or members of its staff, together with other observa- 

 tions that may seem of interest to the agriculture of the counties of 

 Kent and Surrey. The first nuniber contains a description, with a 

 plan, of the farm attached to the college, together with an 

 account of the dairj- school, of the water supply of the college, 

 and of the field experiments which are being instituted. Mr. 

 F. V. Theobald's notes on poultry parasites would appear to 

 open out an instructive field of inquir)'. Mr. J. I'ercival gives 

 an abstract of a paper, already published, relating to eelworms in 

 hop plants, their rav.iges resulting in the condition of the plants 

 known as " nettle-headed."' The nematode lictcrodera Sihachlii 

 attacks so many kinds of plants, that its presence in hops was 

 quite to be looked for. No reference seems to be made to the 

 value which hop-growers set upon rape as a "trap-plant" for 

 enticing the eelworms away from the infested crop. If future 

 numbers are as attractive as this one, the publication is likely 

 to prove acceptable to those in whose interest it is issued. 



I.N a recent number of the Hullcliii Gcol. So(. America, Messrs. 

 (i. K. Gilbert and F. P. Gulliver give an interesting account of 

 the remarkable "tepee butles " that Occur abundantly in the 

 neighbourhood of Pueblo, Colorado. Using the term " butte " 

 to denote sleep-sided hills with narrow summits, which may be 

 of very various origin, ihe authors mention the various tyj>es of 

 butles (volcanic necks, geyser deposits, i:c.), and discuss this 

 particular form. They are low hills, less than twenly feet in 

 height, that owe their origin to the resistance to denudation of 

 peculiar vertical masses of limestone occurring in the shales of the 

 Pierre series (Upper Cretaceous). The limestone is composed of 

 shells, chiefly of Lucina and Inoceraiiius, united by a matrix of 

 shell-fragments, foraminifera and clay. This structure of the 

 limestone, in comparison with that of the calcareous concretions 

 that occur nonnally throughout the shale, negatives its con- 

 cretionary origin, nor does it resemble the spring-deposited 

 masses of limestone known elsewhere. It is concluded that 

 particular local conditions determined the establishment of 

 colonies of Molluscalhal continued for generations at these spots, 

 though what these conditions may have been it is not easy to 

 explain. Attention is called to the description, by Dr. Bell, of 

 similiar limestone ma.sses in Devonian shales in Canada. 



TitE motion of a pianoforte wire when struck has been investi- 

 gated by llerr W. Kaufmann, whose paper on the subject in 

 iVicdcmaiiu^s Anna/en is accom|>anied by a set of very interesting 

 photographic records, obtained by a modification of the method 

 invented by Raps and Krigar-Menzel. By vibrating the wire in 

 front of a luminous slit, and throwing the image of it upon sensitive 

 paper rotating upon a cylinder, a white line is traced upon a black 

 ground. This line, which is due to the inlerruplion of the 

 luminous slit by the opaque wire, exhibits all the motions of the 

 particular point in the wire which is crossed liy ihi- sill. In 



