Marcu 26, 1914] 
In the Izvestiya of the Imperial Academy of Sciences 
of St. Petersburg (February, 1914) Madame H. I. 
Poplavska publishes some preliminary results of her 
botanical researches in the neighbourhood of Lake 
Baikal. The fauna of the lake exhibits such peculiari- 
ties that Prof. Berg has defined it as a subregion of 
the holarctic region, but the flora has _ hitherto 
aroused little interest. The lake affects the distribution 
of rainfall and the temperature, the summers being 
much colder in the neighbourhood of the lake than in 
the surrounding parts of Siberia. Consequently the 
climate is similar to that of alpine regions and lofty 
peaks, and the flora is adapted to such conditions. 
Madame Poplavska mentions several forms peculiar 
to the Baikal area, some of which differ in so many 
points from their allied forms in other regions that 
they may be considered independent species, while 
others, not having as yet fully adapted themselves to 
local conditions, show few divergences, and can only 
be styled varieties. The habitat of these forms and 
their relation to allied species do not support the view 
that they are a relict flora. 
Count DE MONTESSUS DE BALLORE examines the so- 
called luminous phenomena of earthquakes in a paper 
published in the latest bulletin of the Seismological 
Society of America (vol. iii., pp. 187-90). Referring 
to Galli’s catalogue of 148 earthquakes during which 
luminous phenomena were reported, he shows that 
the time-intervals between these phenomena and the 
earthquakes are very variable and sometimes consider- 
able, the accounts come indifferently from the epi- 
central areas and from distant regions, and the lights 
appear more frequently from the atmosphere than 
from the ground. In the great catalogues of Chinese 
earthquakes, luminous phenomena are never described 
as attending earthquakes. Two cases are examined 
in detail. The lights seen during the Valparaiso 
earthquake of 1906 were probably due to a thunder- 
storm, and those during the earthquake of November 
16-17, 1911, in Germany and Switzerland to meteors. 
The author concludes that, in the present stage of our 
knowledge, the existence of luminous earthquake 
phenomena should be neither affirmed nor denied, but 
that all the facts at our disposal tend to a negative 
conclusion. ; 
THE current number of Symons’s Meteorological 
Magazine contains an interesting account by Mr. 
A. H. Hignett of the peculiar behaviour of a cyclonic 
whirl or tornado which did an immense amount of 
damage in Cheshire on the evening of October 27 
last. It lasted only a few minutes, and its track was 
about 150 yards wide. It was accompanied by vivid 
lightning, heavy rain, and a loud noise, said to re- 
semble that of ‘‘hundreds of motor-cars crashing 
through the trees.’ On entering the county of 
Cheshire from the north of Shropshire and travelling 
in a northerly direction, it seems to have risen in the 
air and passed over about seven miles of country 
without doing any damage, and then to have 
descended and struck a tree standing alone in a field 
smashing it to pieces. It then apparently rose again 
for about 13 miles, and afterwards descended and 
travelled along the foot of the Peckforton 
NO. 2317, VOL. 93| 
NATURE ay 
(600-700 ft. above sea-level), destroying trees and 
buildings in its track, and eventually passed into Lan- 
cashire near Runcorn. The wind is described as 
warm, but in South Wales, where the cyclone occurred 
earlier in the day, it was said to be icy cold. This 
bounding motion of the whirl is probably by no means 
an isolated case, and seems to point to another danger 
to which aviators may be exposed. 
Dr. P. W. Bripeman, of the Jefferson Physical 
Laboratory, Harvard University, whose high-pressure 
research is well known to our readers, has communi- 
cated to the American Academy a paper on the tech- 
nique of high-pressure experimenting which will be 
of great service to all who wish to follow him in 
dealing with physical measurement under pressures 
of ten to thirty thousand kilograms per square centi- 
metre. He gives details of his methods of packing, 
the construction of his pistons and cylinders, and the 
connection of his pipes, valves, and pressure gauges. 
Yhe paper appeared in the February number of the 
Proceedings of the American Academy. 
No. 209 of the Scientific Papers of the Bureau of 
Standards deals with the recent determinations of the 
latent heat of fusion of ice by Messrs. Dickinson, 
Harper, and Osborne, of the bureau. The natural 
or artificial ice was cooled in a cryostat to either 
—o-7° C. or —3-78° C. before insertion in the calori- 
meter. Its weight was determined while suspended in 
the cryostat. Both the electrical method and the 
method of mixtures were used in measuring the heat 
of fusion. The former method allows the temperature 
of the calorimeter to be kept nearly constant during 
the melting of the ice, and the cooling correction is 
therefore small. Ninety-two samples of ice were 
tested, commercial can, plate, and natural ice, and ice 
made in the laboratory from air-free distilled water 
were used, and the heat of fusion found to be the 
same for each to within one part in 1000. The final 
result is 79-63 calories per gram. 
In the third of his six lectures on new problems 
of theoretical physics, recently published (in German) 
by the Ernest Kempton Adams Fund of Columbia 
University, Prof. W. Wien discusses in an illuminat- 
ing manner the various electronic theories of the con- 
duction of heat and electricity through metals. The 
practically infinite conductivity at the absolute zero, 
rendered probable by the researches of Kamerlingh 
Onnes, is explained if we assume that the distribution 
of molecules at the lowest temperatures is perfectly 
regular, so that the displacement of electrons along 
certain lines encounters no resistance. The irregu- 
larity of distribution induced by rise of temperature 
and consequent thermal agitation reduces the free 
path of the electrons, and hence also the conductivity. 
There is some evidence to show that it is only the 
mean free path, and not the number of electrons or 
their mean velocity, which is affected by temperature. 
Indeed, the lecturer inclined to the belief that even at 
the absolute zero all electrons have an irreducible 
kinetic energy, such as is required by the persistence 
of both diamagnetism and photo-electric effects at the 
lowest temperatures, not to speak of the expulsion 
Hills | of electrons by radio-active substances in entire in- 
