JUNE 11, 1914] 
NATURE 
383 
(quoted in the American charts) may be mentioned 
the mixture of masses of moist air of different tem- 
peratures, and the direct cooling of moist air coming 
into contact with icebergs or cold northern waters. 
The Meteorological Office chart for June points out 
that near the Banks of Newfoundland the risk from 
fog is about eight times greater in midsummer than 
in midwinter; in May and June the fog zone stretches 
from Europe to America. The German chart for 
June states that up to May 19 numerous bergs and 
extensive icefields were met with to the east of the 
Newfoundland Banks between 47° and 50° W. longi- 
tude. In some cases bergs were sighted so far south 
as 42° N. latitude. The southerly advance of drift 
ice usually ceases about the middle of June, and by 
the middle of July the ice limit rapidly recedes. 
A summary of the weather for the past spring as 
shown by the results for the thirteen weeks ended 
May 30 has been issued by the Meteorological Office. 
The mean temperature for the period is above the 
average in all districts of the United Kingdom, the 
excess being as much as 3° in the north-east of Eng- 
land, 2-5° in the east of England, and from 1°2° in 
all other districts. The south-east and the east of 
England are the only districts where the absolute 
temperature tose to 80°. The rainfall is only 85 per 
cent. of the average in the north-east of England, and 
the only other districts with a deficiency of rain are 
the midland counties with 97 per cent. of the average, 
and the north-west of England with 99 per cent. of 
the average. The greatest excess of rain is 140 per 
cent. of the average in the south-east and south-west 
of England, and 131 per cent. in the Channel Islands. 
In the east of England the rainfall is 113 per cent. 
of the average, and in the north of Ireland 112 per 
cent. The absolutely largest rainfall is 10-82 in. in 
the north of Scotland, and 10-21 in. in the south-west 
of England, whilst the least is 4-26 in. in the north- 
east of England. The mean temperature at Green- 
wich for the spring months, March, April, and May 
is 49:7°, which is 1-7 in excess of the average; it is 
precisely the same as in the spring of last year, but 
18° colder than in rorz2. 
No. 5 of vol. iii. of the Memoirs of the Department 
of Agriculture in India contains a study by Messrs. 
F. J. Warth and D. B. Darabzett, of the ‘ Fractional 
Liquefaction of Rice Starch.” It is shown that 
different specimens of rice show very different be- 
haviour as regards the temperature at which lique- 
faction of their starch occurs. The method adopted 
consisted in estimating the percentage of starch lique- 
fied at intervals of temperature of 5°. The results 
published in this paper show that the cooking quality 
of rice is distinctly correlated with its starch quality, 
and that there is also a certain parallelism between 
these features and the ease with which the different 
samples undergo disintegration by dilute alkalis. 
Some kinds of grain contain a variety of starch which 
is far more resistant than that of others. 
THE importance of the mineral elements in the 
nutrition of farm animals has recently begun to re- 
ceive recognition, and Research Bulletin No. 30 of the 
Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of 
NO. 2328, VOL. 93] 
eS 
——<$<$<$<———_——$——$$ 
Wisconsin, by Messrs. E. B. Hart, H. Steenbock, and 
J. G. Fuller, deals with the relation of the supply of 
calcium and phosphorus in the ordinary farm feeds to 
the animals’ requirements; from the data considered 
a number of interesting conclusions are drawn. 
Grains in particular are deficient in calcium but rich 
in phosphorus, and rations wholly made up of grains 
will supply to the growing animal an amount of 
calcium dangerously near the critical level of intake. 
The supply of calcium also becomes an essential factor 
when continuous and high milk production are aimed 
at, and the diet must be suitably adapted in order to 
achieve this result, if necessary by the artificial use 
of calcium carbonate and phosphate. 
Pror. 1GNAzio Gait has published in the memoirs 
of the Pontifical Academy of the Nuovi Lincei, of 
Rome, a fourth memoir on globular lightning, and on 
its effects on trees and on grass. The memoir quotes 
in an uncritical manner an enormous number of 
reputed instances of lightning of globular form, most 
of which were recorded by wholly untrained observers, 
and extend over several centuries. Prof. Galli adds 
little to the facts collected by Flammarion and other 
writers. He directs attention to observations which 
seem to show that the lightning stroke following a 
spiral path is usually dextrorsum in horse-chestnuts, 
cherry-trees, apple-trees, and willows, but sinistrorsum 
in plum-trees, whitethorns, oaks, and sycamores; in 
beech-trees sometimes one way, sometimes the other. 
He discusses whether this is due to inherent spiral 
structure of the fibre of the wood or to some special 
gyratory property of the discharge. Most of the ob- 
servations are of such ancient date that critical dis- 
cussion of them is out of the question. 
AN article in the Paris Matin was referred to by the 
Paris correspondents of several London daily papers 
last Saturday. It relates to some interesting experi- 
ments in wireless telephony carried out by Captain 
Colin, of the French Navy, who has been at work on 
the subject for some years in collaboration with 
Lieutenant Jeance. The details of the apparatus are 
not given, but it would appear that some improvement 
has been made in the direction of maintaining steady 
and continuous oscillations at the transmitting end. 
Speech, it is stated, has been transmitted from Paris 
to Finisterre, a distance of 300 miles, and a type of 
field apparatus with a mast about oo ft. high has, it is 
said, been developed, which can be unloaded from a 
motor-car and set to work by a crew of six men in 
twenty-one minutes, and will transmit without diffi- 
culty over a distance of from 60 to 120 miles. 
THE most interesting communication brought before 
the meeting of the Bunsen Gesellschaft fiir ange- 
wandte physikalische Chemie at Leipzig on May 
21-24 was a paper by K. Fajans on the different 
atomic weights of lead. According to a line of 
reasoning simultaneously . developed by Fajans and 
by Soddy during the last few years, lead derived from 
radium and lead derived from thorium by the loss 
of five and six atoms of helium respectively should 
be identical except in atomic weight. Throughout 
the past year Dr. Fajan’s assistant, Dr. Lembert, has 
