268 
NATURE 
[JANUARY 17, 1907 
forms in rivers, and is the term applied to ice formed 
on and attached to the bottom of rivers. This anchor- 
ice is only formed in rivers where the current is too 
swift for surface-ice to form, and not in depths ex- 
ceeding 4o feet to 45 feet, though in the clear sea- 
water off the coast of Newfoundland it is largely 
formed at depths of 60 feet to 70 feet. Its formation 
appears to be rightly attributed to loss of heat in the 
bed of the river from radiation, for it occurs on clear, 
cold nights, and is impeded by any form of shelter 
interfering with radiation, such as under a bridge; 
it does not form at all under surface-ice arresting 
radiation, and is less below a turbulent river than 
in a clear, still sea. Frazil-ice is the cause of the 
packing up of the ice and of the floods of the St. Law- 
rence, and also of the obstruction to the working of 
the power plants in the winter. When a river is com- 
pletely frozen over, the channel is protected from the 
formation of frazil-ice or anchor-ice, unless there is 
an expanse of open water above, from which frazil- 
ice, and in mild weather anchor-ice, is carried down. 
To prevent the stoppage of the power works in the 
latter case, the author suggests that the gates, the 
rack for arresting débris, and the wheels should be 
placed under shelter; that the iron bars of the rack 
should be heated; and that the passage of the frazil- 
ice should be facilitated as much as possible, and 
prevented from agglomerating by the occasional in- 
jection of steam. 
ROMANTIC INDIA. 
Under the Sun: Impressions of Indian Cities. 
P. Landon. Pp. xii+288; illustrated. 
Hurst and Blackett, Ltd., 1906.) Price 
net. 
HIS is one of the crop of books on India by 
Press correspondents who visited the great 
Eastern dependency during the recent tour of the 
Prince of Wales. Its author had previously on one 
or two occasions spent some weeks in the country, 
and now presents part of his already published letters 
““recast in a more permanent form.’’ It is perhaps 
inevitable that the great bulk of the impressionist 
literature on the East should issue from the hurried 
pens of the cold-weather globe-trotters, whose 
“butterfly zigzags’’ over the country undoubtedly 
enable them often to see things from fresh and com- 
parative, if somewhat superficial, standpoints. With 
all India to roam over, it would be surprising did 
the oft-told tale of Indian cities not bear some re- 
petition at the hands of such an imaginative journalist 
as Mr. Landon. He certainly has produced a read- 
able book, though many of his sketches convey less 
clear-cut impressions of the places than those of some 
other writers who have gone over the ground before, 
Steevens, for instance; and they lack proportion. 
Some point is seized on and overstrained with a dis- 
cursiveness that causes the reader at times to lose 
the thread of the narrative, whilst other more 
characteristic features of the picture are omitted. 
The author betrays a weakness for unnecessarily 
dragging in vernacular names (some of which are 
misspelt, e.g. ‘‘ bebel,’? which occurs a dozen times 
NO. 1942, VOL. 75 | 
By 
(London : 
12s. 6d. 
for “babul,’’ the Acacia arabica), with no word of 
explanation to the reader as to what the thing is, 
and his too frequent use of superlatives leads him 
into meeting the most transcendental thing ‘‘ on 
earth’? many times on his trip. Thus we are told 
within a hundred pages that at Udaipur ‘‘ one room 
is without rival on earth.’’ The Indian antelope and 
cheetah are ‘‘ two of the fastest animals on earth— 
the cheetah is beyond all question the swiftest.”’ 
Jaipur has “ colours that only Mandalay of all places 
in the world can hope to rival.’’? A ‘‘ dishonest and 
fugitive jeweller from France ”’ is ‘‘ the first decorator 
of all known periods.’’ The Delhi grand trunk-road 
is ‘‘the most historic highway in the East.” 
Although the Taj is ‘‘ the crown and goal of all that 
India has of beauty and romance,’’ the Queen’s 
monastery at Mandalay is ‘‘the most picturesque 
place in the East, probably in the world,’’ though 
a few pages previously we read that the Shwe Dagon 
pagoda at Rangoon also is ‘‘the most picturesque 
place in all the East.” 
As to details, he is not over careful; he speaks of 
bread-fruit ‘‘ palms,’’ and of the reedy banks of Cal- 
cutta “flaming with patches of rose lotus ’’—this 
might be the case if lotuses grew on banks, but they 
do not. At Darjiling, he says, “‘ the valley stretches 
out ten miles wide from the foot of the precipice ’’; as 
a fact, the valleys there are narrow ravines, none of 
which has a width of more than a quarter of a mile 
at its bottom. The photographs of the hackneyed 
views one has so often seen before are good and well 
reproduced; the same, however, cannot be said for 
the coloured prints, which are unpleasantly low-toned 
from a too liberal application of dull paint; the 
sombre view of “‘ the sunset glories of the Hugli”’ is 
utterly unlike what it is meant to represent. 
A chapter is added on the later life of the notorious 
rebel and fugitive of Mutiny days, Nana Sahib, pur- 
porting to give ‘‘historical facts here presented for 
the first time.’’? No one, however, can seriously be 
expected to accept as evidence the old re-discovered 
bazaar rumours picked up by a passing traveller 
and set down without absolutely any proof what- 
ever in support of them, all the more so as such an 
experienced Anglo-Indian magistrate as Sir Dennis 
Fitzpatrick, commanding the resources of the Imperial 
secret police, was specially deputed to sift such 
rumours at the time, and finally rejected them as 
wholly unfounded. There is no index, but this, 
perhaps, is unnecessary for fugitive slxetches. 
OUR BOOK SHELF. 
Species and Varieties: Their Origin by Mutation. 
Lectures delivered at the University of California. 
Second Edition, Corrected and Revised. By H. De 
Vries; edited by D. T. MacDougal. Pp. xviii+ 
847. (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. ; Lon- 
don: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd., 1906.) 
Ir is not surprising that the first edition of De Vries’s 
lectures in America should be followed by a 
second after the lapse of a year. All the 
misprints that we pointed out in our review of the 
first edition have been corrected; and even our sug- 
gestion that uniformity in the termination of the 
adjectives derived from such terms as physiology was 
