206 
NATURE 
[JUNE 29, 1899 
meteorological, and ten pluviometric, stations in the whole 
country. There are now a meteorological station of the first 
order at Bucharest, thirty-eight of the second order, one of the 
third, and 327 pluviometric stations within an area of 131,400 
sq.km. The annual volume, which in the present case contains 
nearly 800 quarto pages, bears testimony to the value of the 
work accomplished. Besides the usual meteorological tables, it 
contains an account of the new magnetic observatory at 
Bucharest by M. St. Murat, and nine other memoirs, among 
which may be mentioned those by the director on rain at 
Bucharest during the last thirty-two years, the rainfall of 
Roumania in 1897, the magnetic elements of Bucharest, and on 
the register of earthquakes, eleven in number, felt during the 
year 1897. 
In the columns of Nature last autumn, attention was 
directed by several writers to the phenomenon well known 
amongst iron-workers that if a bar of steel or iron, heated to a 
red or white heat at one end, have that end suddenly plunged 
into cold water, the other end will appear to become hotter. 
Prof. E. Lagrange, writing in the Azdletzx of the Belgian 
Academy (1899, No. 4). describes experiments showing that this 
effect is quite compatible with the ordinary laws of conduction 
of heat. The bar in every case is removed from the fire before 
the stationary point has been reached; the temperature of 
the unheated end is increasing at the time of removal, and 
as its rate of change does not vary discontinuously, it continues 
to increase after removal. When the hot end of the bar is 
suddenly cooled, Prof. Lagrange finds that the other end attains 
its maximum temperature sooner, and this maximum is con- 
siderably lower than when the hot end is cooled slowly. If, 
however, the bar is heated until the flow of heat has become 
steady, no further increase takes place at the other end, whether 
the hot end is cooled slowly or suddenly, but the unheated 
end begins to cool at once, and its cooling is more rapid in the 
second than in the first case. 
WHETHER corresponding to the Zeeman effect there exists 
the reciprocal phenomenon of the production of a magnetic field 
by a circularly polarised ray has been discussed by Profs. 
Fitzgerald and Gray in NATURE for January 5 and February 16. 
Prof. Augusto Righi, writing in the A¢/d dez Lincez, viii. (1), 7, 
describes his own experiments on the subject. Prof. Righi used 
columns of vapour of hypo-azotide and of bromine, the illumin- 
ation being produced by a plane polarised beam of sunlight, be- 
tween which and the tube two quarter-wave laminz of quartz 
oppositely turned were placed. An astatic magnetometer showed 
no deviation either when the sense of polarisation was reversed 
by interchanging the quartzes or when the light was cut off, 
although a magnetic field of 107° C.G.S. units produced a per- 
ceptible deviation. In another note, published in the Rendiconto 
of the Bologna Academy, Prof. Righi describes his determin- 
ation of the rotatory power of chlorine in a magnetic field. 
The numerical measure of this effect referred to bisulphide of 
carbon was found to be 0°000337, and chlorine is thus inter- 
mediate between carbonic anhydride and protoxide of nitrogen, 
whose rotatory powers, as found by Becquerel, are 0'000302 and 
0°000393 respectively. 
FROM a paper published by Drs. Rabinowitsch and 
Kempner in the Zettschrift fiir Hygiene on the milk of tuber- 
culous cows, the chance of infection from the latter appears to 
be greater than was even supposed. Whereas it has been 
generally found that cow’s milk only contains tubercle bacilli 
when the udder is affected, or when the animal is in an 
advanced stage of tuberculosis, the above authors have found 
the bacilli in milk in the very beginnings of the disease, and 
without any udder affection, as well as in latent cases where its 
NO. 1548, VOL. 60] 
existence could only be verified by the tuberculin test. The 
authors point out that it is not sufficient to make one examin- 
ation only of the milk, and they cite an instance in which, 
whilst the milk gave a negative result, butter made from the 
milk derived from the same cow on the same day on inoculation 
into guinea-pigs resulted in the death of the latter from 
tuberculosis, whilst an examination of this cow’s milk made at 
a later date revealed the presence of tubercle bacilli. In view 
of these investigations, the authors are of opinion that the milk 
of all cows which react to the tuberculin test ought to be re- 
garded with suspicion, and they point out, moreover, the great 
value which attaches to this test in helping to obtain milk- 
supplies free from the contagion of tuberculosis. 
Ir is always with pleasure that we receive a new Sudletin o 
the Madras Government Museum, as we are sure to find therein 
brightly written and instructive papers on the native races of 
Southern India by Mr, Edgar Thurston, the superintendent of 
the Museum. The most important of these little memoirs in 
the last issue (vol. ii, No. 3) is one on the Kadirs of the 
Anaimalai Hills. They are a dark-skinned, curly-haired people, 
short in stature (average 1°577) with a broad span (1°688), deep- 
chested, and like many mountaineers they rarely walk with a 
straight leg. The head is narrow (average 72°9), the jaws do 
not project, and the nose is wide (average 898). They thus are 
good representatives of the ancient population of Southern 
India. They have one remarkable custom which appears to be 
unique in the Indian peninsula, and that is the chipping of all or 
of some of the incisor teeth of both jaws into the form of a sharp- 
pointed cone. 
IN a note on the Dravidian head, Mr. Thurston (/oc. czt.) 
states that the average cephalic index of 639 Dravidians belong- 
ing to nineteen tribes and castes is 74°1. Out of the total number 
measured by him only nineteen, or 3 per cent., of the indices 
exceeded 80, the maximum being 83°7. In a discussion on the 
Dravidian problem, Mr. Thurston gives only a few original ob- 
servations, and has collected the opinions of a number of authors, 
but he does not sum up or give us his own conclusions, 
THE origin of life, as developed from a mechanical found- 
ation, forms the subject of a work by Dr. Ludwig Zehnder, of 
Freiburg, the first part of which has just reached us. After re- 
ferring to the work of Darwin and his successors, the author 
tells us in his introduction that there has long been a hope that 
a direct transition between unorganised and organised bodies 
would some day be discovered, but that hitherto the gap has 
not been bridged. Apparently it is his intention to show how 
the two great groups are at present known to approach one 
another. The present part treats of Monads, simple cells, and 
Protiste. 
In broad contrast to the foregoing may be mentioned a brief 
paper by M. E. Lefort, published at Lyons under the title of 
“*Fausseté de l’Idée Evolutioniste appliquéee au Systeme Planeé- 
taire ou aux Espéces Organiques.”’ The general contention 
appears to be that every change in nature is due to direct 
Divine interposition. 
A SHORT account of the first voyage of the Prince of Monaco’s 
new vessel, Princess Alice /J., appears in the Compiles rendus : 
and a fuller description of the work in northern waters, illus- 
trated by photographs, is published in the Paris Azdletzn du 
Museum Whistoire naturelle. The expedition of last year 
started from Ilavre in June, and, aftera meeting with the 
Emperor of Germany off the Norwegian coast, worked in 
Spitsbergen waters till the end of August, returning to Havre 
about the middle of September. Extended physical and 
biological observations were made both at sea and on a 
number of islands in high northern latitudes. The collections 
