February 28, 1895] 



NA TURE 



417 



It may be useful to put down a number of the coldest of these 

 days (reckoned by maxima). Here are 12 : 



Max. Min. Diff. 



12-8 



77 

 170 



'34 

 i6-9 



IZ'O 



iS-5 

 iS-i 



177 

 140 

 13 I 

 139 



6-2 



13s 

 6-2 



103 



7-3 

 1 24 

 60 

 6-4 

 6.9 

 108 



"7 

 I I o 



These minima, it will be seen, range from ']''•'] to i8''5. I 

 do not enter on the question as lo the coldest days measured by 

 minima ; but from a table by Mr. Charles Harding, giving the 

 minimum at Greenwich in each winter, 1841-S9 {Quart. Journ. 

 of K. Mel. S. vol. xvi. p. 165), extended 10 '93, I take the fol- 

 lowiDg cases (adding the maxima since '44) : 



Diff. 



Min. 



Max. 



The lowest (4°o) was in '41, and so beyond our fifty years' 

 limit. It will be observed that those six maxima are all higher 

 than any in our first list, exhibiiing a wide range in the tem- 

 perature of the very cold days thus measured. 



In the present remarkable season, there have 'oeen, up to 

 February 27, 17 of our "very cold" days, viz. 6 in January, 

 and II in February (an unprecedented case). The lowest 

 maximum is 27° 'o, occurring on February 6, 7, and 9 ; the re- 

 speclive minima, I5°'I, 9° 6, and io°'2. A. B. M. 



Hesper and Phosphor. 



In his " History of the Inductive Sciences" (vol. i. p. 149, 

 London, 1S47), Whewell says: — " Pythagoras is said to have 

 maintained that the evening and morning stars are the same 

 body, which certainly must have been one of the earliest 

 discoveries on this subject : and indeed, we can hardly con- 

 ceive men noticing the stars for a year or two without coming to 

 this conclusion " (<r/. " The Planet Venus," by W. J. L., in 

 Nature, vol. xlix. p. 413). Now, what Whewell deemed so 

 hardly conceivable appears to have actually occurred in old 

 China. Wang Chung, the philosopher (ciVca 27-97 a.d. ), in 

 bis work, renowned for its total repudiation of the then current 

 errors, writes as follows : — " In the * Book of Poems * it is said, 

 ' A'/-m;'H^( Phosphor)exisls in the east, and C43«fXvzH^( Hesper) 

 in the west.' In fact, however, ibey are but the phases of 

 Jupiter and Venus, which, appearing now in the east, now in 

 the west, received such distinct names from the ignorant bards " 

 (" Lun-hang," Miura's edition, Kyoto, 1748, torn. xvii. pp. 12- 

 13). Two facts are manifested in this passage. First, it shows 

 that, celebrated for their astronomical acquirements in very 

 archaic ages, as they are, the fact that the evening and 

 morning stars are the satr.c body, was not known to the Ctiinese 

 of theeighth century B.C., when the poem entitled "Ta-tung" 

 was composed, comprising the above-quoted line. Secondly, it 

 shows that, even after the identity was established of the even- 

 ing and morning stars, some Cliinese, so well learned as Wang 

 Chung, were ignorant of their own error; affirming that Jupiter 

 as well as Venus appears now as Phosphor, now as Ilespcr, 

 they have admitted the existence of two distinct Phosphori and 

 two distinct Hesperi, and of a Phosphor essentially difTerent 

 from a Hesper. It is probable that some later scholars hive 

 tried to evade this intricacy by aibitrarily apportinning the two 

 phases between the two planets ; thus, Minamoto-no-.Shita-zau, 

 the Japanese poet and glossarist (909-983 a.d. ), referring to a 

 Chinese work " Kien-ming-yuen," which is perhaps lost now, 

 identifies Jupiter (in Chinese : Sui sini^) with Phosphor (in 



NO. 1322, VOL. 51] 



Japanese : Aka-boshi), and Venus (in Chinese : Tai-peh) with 

 Hesper (in Japanese: YiJtsutsu) (" WamyC Ruijusho," Nawa's 

 edition, Kyoto, 1667, torn. i. p. i). 



February 22. Kumagosu Minakata. 



The Recent Storm in the United States. 



The storm of February 4-9 in the United States was notable 

 for its extent and severity, recalling the memorable blizzard of 

 March 1888. The Government Weather Bureau gives the 

 following comparison of the two : — 



It will be seen that the recent storm was more severe in 

 everything except the amount of snow, and far more ex- 

 tensive. The entire southern portion of the ouniry expe- 

 rienced severe cold, destroying fruits and vegetables to the 

 value of 15,000.000 dols. in Florida alone. The zero line 

 extended below the middle of Arkansas, and well down into 

 Texas. 



The storm reached New York on Thursday, February 7. On 

 the previous afternoon, at about four o'clock, I observed at 

 Brooklyn the unusual phenomenon of a double rainbow. 



Brooklyn, February II. Wm. H. Hale. 



SOME SUGGESTIONS ON THE ORIGIN AND 



EVOLUTION OF WEB-SPINNING IN 



SPIDERS. 



IT cannot be reasonably doubted that one of the most 

 interesting features connected with the natural 

 history of spiders, is their habit of gaining a livelihood 

 by spreading nets for the capture of prey. It may be 

 that the large share of the attention of naturalists that 

 this habit has attracted, is to be attributed to the fact 

 that it appears to be confined in the animal world to 

 spiders and men. This circumstance is of itself suffi- 

 ciently remarkable to call for special comment ; but its 

 interest is not a little enhanced by the reflection, that 

 since spiders made their appearance in the history of 

 animal life vast ages before man came upon the scene, 

 none of us can justly claim that any member of our 

 own kind was the first in the field in the invention of the 

 art of netting. Possibly, indeed, the oft-repeated and 

 unavoidable observation of the efficacy of a spiders web 

 for the purpose of catching otherwise unobtainable prey, 

 may have roused in the brain of some intelligent hunter 

 amongst our ancestors, the idea of the practical utility of 

 a similar instrument for the capture of fish or other 

 eatable forms of life. But if this be so, civilised man 

 has long forgotten the debt of gratitude he owes to 

 spiders. For, to the average individual amongst us, a 

 spider is a thing to be looked upon and spoken of with 

 fear and dislike amounting to loathing, and to be 

 ruthlessly destroyed when a safe chance of destruction 

 is afforded. 



Itis, perhaps,on account of this widespread repugnance 

 that the science of arachnology has claimed within the 

 last century far fewer students than many another less 

 instructive branch of zoology. Moreover, such attention 

 as it has received, is no doubt largely due, as suggested 

 above, to the wonderful web-building powers that spiders 

 possess. But those who have devoted their time to the 

 study of webs, have, for the most part, contented them- 

 selves with observing and recording the structure and 

 method of formation of the various types of nests and 

 snares, and in claiming or disputing their value as a 

 basis for a natural classification of the animals that make 

 them. This has resulted,- if in nothing else, at least in 

 the accumulation of an array of facts sufficiently vast to 



