5 eee™ 
DECEMBER II, 1913] 
NATURE 
433 
exceed the annual growth, so that exports will decline ; 
that in the majority of other timber-producing coun- 
tries the forests are, or soon will be, insufficient to 
meet the rising demand for local consumption; and 
that the only forest reserves of coniferous timber as 
yet untouched are in regions difficult of access, in 
Siberia, British Columbia, and the Andes. The posi- 
tion so far as this country is concerned is serious, but 
not yet hopeless, for Britain is admirably adapted for 
timber-growing, though it will take years of industry 
to bring the soil back to forest conditions. The author 
makes a number of timely and practical suggestions 
regarding the lines on which a scheme of afforestation 
for suitable portions of the sixteen million acres of 
mountainous and heath land in Britain should be 
prepared, and strongly urges the necessity for imme- 
diate action. 
Tue Journal of the Department of Agriculture of 
South Australia contains, amongst many interesting 
articles, brief reviews of the proceedings of the agri- 
cultural bureau meetings. The bureau, which 
possesses more than 150 branches, is essentially carried 
on to provide facilities for papers on subjects of agri- 
cultural interest being read by the farmer members, 
and to encourage mutual help. Without wishing to 
imply that the English farmer is endowed with these 
attributes for imparting and receiving information, as 
is his Australian cousin, it would appear natural that 
he should be prepared to attach more importance to 
advice obtained from a practical man than from a 
stranger in the form of an agricultural adviser. The 
adoption of farmers’ bureaus in this country might 
be productive of much good work by stimulating the 
practical man to compare and to analyse yariations in 
practice and profitability and to arouse greater interest 
in the daily routine. 
AN interesting article by Mr. A. O. Walker, on 
weather fallacies, is contained in Symons’s Meteoro- 
logical Magazine for October and November, from 
experience gained as an observer for more than forty 
years. The first subject of attack is the Meteoro- 
logical Office weather forecasts, but the criticisms 
do not imply any censure of the staff of that office, but 
are written from an agricultural point of view. Select- 
ing two or three of the author’s remarks: during 
hay harvest, e.g. a farmer wants to know what the 
weather will be two or three days after the hay is cut. 
Thunderstorms will occur independently of calculations 
as to exact time and place, and neighbouring stations 
are differently affected. Monthly averages of rainfall 
are often misleading; at Ulcombe (near Maidstone) 
for the years 1900-9 February had the lowest average, 
1-62 in., and October the highest, 3-10 in. But in 
1g00 the two months changed places ; October 1-76 in., 
and February 3-75 in., the wettest month of the year. 
Monthly mean temperatures are also apt to mislead, 
as they give little idea of the intensity of cold or 
warm spells. It is a common belief that temperature 
falls as height increases, within such limits as, for 
example, are found in south England; it is generally 
true as regards day temperature, but not as to night 
temperature. This is shown by the greater immunity 
of tender shrubs half-way up a hill from injury by 
NO. 2302, VOL. 92] 
frost compared with those at the foot. Snow is 
believed by some to have a special fertilising effect, 
but all that can be said of it is that in times of severe 
frost it protects the roots of plants. 
Tue Journal de Physique for October contains a 
paper by M. R. Détrait describing his researches on 
the slipping of liquids at the surfaces of solids. The 
accuracy with which the flow of a liquid through a 
capillary tube can be represented by the fourth power 
of the radius is a sufficient guarantee that at the 
velocities usual in such tubes the slip, if it exists at 
all, is small. To put the question to a severe test, M. 
Détrait has compared the times of flow of equal 
volumes of water and petrol through tubes of glass, 
which both liquids wet, and through tubes of sulphur, 
which the petrol alone wets. The experiments show 
that there is a measurable slip of a liquid past a solid 
it does not wet, which in the case-of water flowing in 
a sulphur capillary tube leads to an excess flow 
equivalent to an increase of radius of the tube by about 
one-thousandth of a millimetre. 
Tue nature of the gases liberated by the autolysis of 
different organs and tissues forms the subject of a 
paper by Mr. F. Traetta Mosca in the Gazzetta 
Chimica Italiana (vol. xliii., ii., 144). Striking differ- 
ences are shown by the different tissues, pointing to 
wide differences of enzymic activity; the liver, kidneys, 
brain, and suprarenal capsules liberate mixtures of 
carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and hydrogen in different 
proportions, whilst the intestines give in addition 
carbon monoxide and oxygen; from the pancreas, 
spleen, lung, and heart it is remarkable that nitrogen 
alone is evolved. In the majority of other cases also 
the relatively high proportion of nitrogen and 
hydrogen is a striking phenomenon of the protein 
degradation; thus in the case of autolysing calves’ 
brain, 71-6 per cent. of the gas evolved consists of 
nitrogen and 22-4 per cent. of hydrogen, whilst from 
the suprarenal capsules 4o per cent. of the gas is 
nitrogen and 50-4 per cent. hydrogen. 
Tue Department of Mines of New South Wales has 
issued a pamphlet on mercury or quicksilver in New 
South Wales, with notes on its occurrence in other 
colonies and countries (Mineral Resources, No. 7), by 
J. E. Carne. The occurrence of mercury, in the 
native state or in the form of cinnabar, has been 
indicated in some ten localities, but the quantities 
produced hitherto are very small, one of the most 
favourable localities having yielded only about 10 cwt. 
of metal to the company which attempted for a time 
to exploit it. The general reader will, however, find 
that much interesting information has been brought 
together in the present report with reference to the 
production of mercury in other countries. An account 
is given of the wonderful mines at Almaden, in 
Spain, which are known to have yielded some four 
million flasks, or 140,000 tons of metal, whilst the 
Californian mines have given about half this quan- 
tity. It is pointed out that wet-concentration has 
proved useless, in spite of the high density of the 
mineral, and that efficient working of the ordinary 
low-grade ores (yielding 0-5 to 2 per cent. of mercury) 
is only to be effected by careful attention to economical 
