NA TURE 



[July 28, 1904 



tremors propagated in the soil, and quickly afterwards to 

 movements produced by air waves acting on the building, 

 and then to the instrument. A second paper, by the late 

 Dr. M. Contarini, is on the choice of earthquake re- 

 corders. Although the paper is short it contains good 

 advice. We are told first to select our instrument accord- 

 ing to the object we may have in view. If we wish to 

 record earthquakes of local origin, a type of instrument 

 may be used different to that which will record disturbances 

 with their origins as distant as the antipodes. Again, an 

 instrument which may record the times of arrival of certain 

 phases of motion may not be able to analyse the same ; in 

 fact, for earthquakes of distant origin it is doubtful whether 

 an instrument yet exists that gives a true record of the 

 movements of the soil. 



At the end of the number the Italian catalogue of shocks 

 of local and of distant origin is brought up to the end of 

 September, 1902. 



in an interesting article of twenty-eight pages, M. Paul 

 Choffat gives in Communica(;des dii Servia Gcologique du 

 Portugal (Tome v., pp. 279-306) an account of " Les 

 tremblements de terre de 1903 en Portugal," to which he 

 adds notes relating to earthquakes which took place in 

 previous years. From the conclusions we learn that there 

 are two chief centres from which disturbances felt in 

 Portugal originate, one of which is suboceanic off the 

 mouth of the Tagus, from which the great Lisbon earth- 

 quake of 1755 radiated, and the other is in Andalusia, the 

 shocks from which are comparatively feeble. There are also 

 several local centres. 



AGRICULTURAL NOTES. 

 T^HE officials in charge of the County Technical Labor- 

 ■'■ atories at Chelmsford are engaged in an investigation 

 that will commend itself to Londoners ; they are trying to 

 gain some information as to the natural causes bringing 

 about variation in the composition of milk. Two reports 

 dealing respectively with the winter and summer months 

 of the past year have been issued. From the latter we 

 learn that in Essex milk is poorest in the months of July 

 and August. This is the common experience of dairy 

 farmers. It is when the pastures begin to dry up that the 

 quality of milk suffers most. In the Essex experiments 

 four cows were kept under observation from May until 

 September, and two others for a shorter period. The yield 

 of milk fell off at the rapid rate of 10 per cent, per month ; 

 with this decline there was an increase in the proportion of 

 fat, but no regular increase in the case of solids not fat. 

 In the month of July the percentage of non-fatty solids 

 decreased in the milk of every animal. The milk of four 

 of the cows, and the mixed milk of the six animals, never 

 fell below the standard in solids not fat, but two of the 

 cows often failed in this respect. The mixed milk and the 

 milk of one of the cows never contained less than the 

 standard quantity of fat, but the milk of two of the cows 

 frequently, and the milk of two others occasionally, con- 

 tained less than the required 3 per cent, of fat. 



In connection with the investigations on nutrition, which 

 form an important part of the work of the Storrs Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station, Conn., analyses have recently 

 been made of the flesh of many kinds of fowl. The 

 analyses were published in the annual report of the station 

 for 1902-3, and some account of them is also given in a 

 recently issued bulletin on " Poultry as Food." The 

 bulletin contains a table showing the composition of the 

 digestible nutrients in the flesh of poultry ; comparisons 

 are made between young and mature birds, and also between 

 poultry and other common articles of diet. The meat of 

 light-fleshed birds is shown to be usually richer in 

 albuminoids and poorer in fat than the meat of dark-fleshed ; 

 and among light-fleshed fowls chickens supply a more 

 nitrogenous food than mature birds ; on the other hand, 

 in dark-fleshed fowls the flesh of the young appears to 

 contain more fat and less albuminoids than the flesh of 

 older birds. The following figures show that the breast, or 

 breast and wings of poultry, usually contain more 

 albuminoids and less fat than the legs or dark meat. The 

 analyses were of raw- meat. Cooking may materially alter 

 the proportion of fat. 



NO. 18 I 3. VOL. 70] 



Digestible nutri 



An important paper containing a summary of Koch's 

 investigation of Rhodesian red-water, or, as he prefers to 

 call it, African coast fever, appears in the May number of 

 the Agricultural Journal of the Cape of Good Hope. This 

 disease of cattle, introduced from the coast, has recently 

 worked havoc in Rhodesia, the mortality among the herds 

 of certain districts having risen to 90 per cent. Like Texas 

 fever, with which it was at first confounded, coast fever is 

 due to the presence of a tick-conveyed parasite in the blood. 

 An animal which has recovered becomes immune, and, 

 according to Koch, a proportion of the progeny contract the 

 disease in a mild form as calves and also become immune, 

 so that an immune race will gradually form in the same 

 way as a partially immune population is to be found in 

 many of the most deadly malaria districts. In the absence 

 of ticks, coast fever cannot spread. Unlike Texas fever, 

 injection of the blood of a diseased animal will not produce 

 the disease. But Koch has shown that repeated injections 

 result in a mild fever which is sufficient to confer partial, 

 and in his opinion a high degree of immunity. On this fact 

 is based the treatment which he recommends for the disease, 

 the injection of 5 c.c. of defibrinated blood from a sick 

 or " salted " aniinal about seven times at intervals of a 

 fortnight. This treatment he believes will in four or five 

 months confer immunity. Inoculation is absolutely safe, 

 for of 3 1 15 " clean " animals treated not one died, and the 

 treatment is so rapid that an operator can deal with 300 

 to 500 per day. Of the efficacy of the treatment it is clear 

 that Koch has a high opinion, though he is careful to point 

 out that his experimental evidence is not yet complete. Of 

 16SS animals that had been exposed to infection and were 

 inoculated, 174 died. As in many of these cases inoculation 

 must have been too late to benefit, Koch argues that the 

 number dying because inoculation failed to protect must 

 have been very small. In view of the very high death 

 rate in unprotected herds it would appear that the proposed 

 treatment is of high promise. 



But Koch's views on the value of inoculation do not seem 

 to be shared by all the experts who are now engaged in the 

 study of African coast fever, and the Government 

 entomologist, Mr. Lounsbury, who has made a careful study 

 of the tick conveying the disease, appears to favour the 

 use of arsenical dips, which, by destroying the tick, would 

 put an end to the ravages of coast fever. Lounsbury 

 speaks of these dips as an " effectual remedy," while Koch 

 characterises their use as a " temporary " measure. Mr. 

 Lounsbury publishes an interesting account of the experi- 

 ments by which he proved that the infection was carried 

 by the common brown cattle tick of South Africa (Rhipi- 

 ccphalus appcndiculatus). He failed in ten experiments 

 to convey it through the blue tick, which Koch says is 

 partly responsible for transmission. In a preliminary ex- 

 periment Lounsbury proved that brown ticks taken from 

 sick cattle in Rhodesia produced coast fever in Cape Colony. 

 Brown ticks were then collected in a region in the colony 

 in which coast fever was unknown. From these ticks 

 progeny were raised, the majority of which were fed 

 throughout life on healthy cattle without causing any dis- 

 turbance in health ; others were taken to Rhodesia and 

 placed on a sick cow ; they were then taken back to Cape 

 Colony and put, at intervals of a few days, on three cattle. 

 " The results were most decisive. The three animals 

 sickened each in turn about a fortnight after the infest- 

 ation," and all died. This experiment was repeated, and 

 it w-as found that a single tick could produce the disease. 

 Lounsbury notes that one of the cattle which died in his ex- 

 jwriments had previously been inoculated ten times from art 

 .inim.il pronounced by Koch to be suitable as a " bleeder." 



