214 



NA TURE 



[June 27, 1901 



Particulars of the ethnographical survey undertaken by 

 the Government of India in connection with the census, as 

 suggested by the British Association, are given in the Allahabad 

 Pioneer Mail. The following is a summary of the fcheme 

 prepared by the Government and sanctioned by the Secretary of 

 State : — Local Governments will select from among their 

 officers a superintendent of ethnography, who will undertake to 

 carry on the inquiries proposed, in addition to his ordinary 

 duties. The superintendent will correspond with the district 

 officers with the object of ascertaining what persons in their 

 districts are acquainted with the customs, traditions, &c., of par- 

 ticular tribes and castes. The information thus obtained will be 

 collated by the superintendent, and will be supplemented by his 

 own inquiries from such representative men as he can find, and 

 by researches into the considerable mass of information in official 

 reports, in the journals of learned societies and various books. 

 The superintendent will work up all this material into a 

 ystematic account of the tribes and castes of the province some- 

 what in the form adopted in " The Tribes and Castes of 

 Bengal," and that followed by Mr. Crooke for the North- 

 Western Provinces and Oudh. By working on these lines the 

 Government of India believe it will be possible to get a fairly 

 complete account of the ethnography of the larger provinces 

 drawn up within four or five years. It is estimated that the survey 

 will cost 10,000/., excluding the cost of printing the results, which 

 cannot be calculated at present. The Secretary of State has 

 accorded his sanction to an expenditure not exceeding this 

 amount. It is also proposed to collect physical measurements of 

 selected castes and tribes. In Madras the work will be done 

 by Mr. Thurston, superintendent, Central Museum, whose 

 ethnographic researches in the south of India are well known, 

 and who, it is understood, is likely to be selected by the Pro- 

 vincial Government as superintendent of ethnography for the 

 Madras Presidency. The general direction of the scheme will 

 be entrusted to Mr. Risley, whose official title will be for this 

 purpose Director of Ethnography for India. The Governor- 

 General in Council trusts that on this, as on former occasions, 

 ethnologists and scientific societies in England and America 

 will assist the Director with their advice, will refer to him points 

 which they may wish to be made the subject of inquiry in India, 

 and will, if possible, supply him with copies of publications 

 bearing on the researches now about to be undertaken. 



Among the many useful publications issued annually by the 

 Royal Observatory of Belgium we draw special attention to 

 " Ephemerides meteorologiques et naturelles." The work is an 

 excerpt from the " Annuaire meleorologique " for 1901, and 

 contains the monthly and annual values of the principal meteor- 

 ological elements and phenological observations for Brussels (or 

 Uccle) for each year from 1833 to 1900. Similar information 

 relating to the wind has been published in a separate work. 

 We extract the following interesting items from this long and 

 valuable series of observations. The absolute maximum shade 

 temperature was 95° '4 F. and the minimum 4°'4. The average 

 annual rainfall amounts to 28'56 inches and the mean number of 

 rainy days is 190. The relative humidity at noon is fairly 

 uniform, varying in the yearly average from a minimum of 67 6 

 to a maximum of 79"9 per cent. 



In the Biilletiit of the Cracow Academy M. S. Zaremba 

 discusses the proof of the existence, for any given connected 

 region bounded by a surface S, of a series of functions analogous 

 to spherical functions and satisfying the well-known physical 

 equation (v" -V /t''-)V = o. The fact that such functions exist 

 was discovered by Poincare, and demonstrated by Le Roy for 

 surfaces satisfying certain conditions. Stekloft' has studied the 

 same problem from a diliferent point of view, but the methods of 

 Le Roy and Stekloff depend on certain transformations of the 

 NO. 1652, VOL. 64] 



surface for which the existence of so-called fundamental functions 

 has to be proved. M. Zaremba now claims, without employing 

 any transformation, to have proved the existence of fundamental 

 functions for any surface satisfying certain stated conditions, 

 such as, for example, that the tangent plane at every point is 

 unique. The series of functions has not been proved to be 

 infinite in number, but this gap in the proof the author considers 

 can be easily filled. 



Systematic efforts are made in California to reduce injury 

 to fruits by frost. Mr. A. G. McAdie describes some of the 

 means used in the U.S. Monthly Weather Rei'iew for February, 

 and the accompanying illustration is one of several which illu-^- 

 trate his paper. This represents an elaborate structure of laih- 

 screens in use upon one fruit ranch. The lath covering may he 

 considered as forming a well-ventilated hot-house, and there h 



no question as to its protective value, but the expense of erect- 

 ing it will prevent its wide adoption. An investigation of the 

 conditions producing frost has shown that frost is primarily a 

 problem in air drainage. Mr. McAdie states the principle that 

 " wherever the air was stagnant the injury from frost was most 

 marked ; and conversely, wherever the air was in motion, 

 there was little damage from frost." In California, much of 

 the damage appears to be done by the sudden warming of 

 the chilled fruit at sunrise. If a screen is interposed between 

 the fruit and the sun, so that the warming is gradual, the fruit is 

 saved from injury. 



"Sunny Days at Hastings and St. Leonards" is the title 

 of a well-illustrated and well-printed little handbook for south- 

 east Sussex, by Messrs. W. H. Sanders and P. Row. There is 

 a "six-inch" map of Hastings and St. Leonards, and another 

 map, on the scale of an inch to four miles, of the country as far 

 as Seaford, Tunbridge Wells and Ashford — all for the price of 



