March 22, 1883} 
families of hedgehogs, swine, and dormice, and of the genera 
Meles, Equus, Bos, Gazella, Mus, Cricetus, Meriones, Dipus, and 
Hystrix, among mammals ; and of the important families of 
flycatchers and starlings, the extreme rarity of larks; the 
scarcity of warblers, and the absence of such widespread genera 
as Acrocephalus, Hypolais, Ruticilla, Saxicola, Accentor, Gar- 
rulus, Fringilla, Emberiza, Motacilla, Yunx, Cuculus, Capri- 
muleus, Perdix, Coturnix, and all the true pheasants, among 
birds, many of which are groups which may almost be said to 
characterise the Old World as compared with the New, must 
surely be allowed to have great weight in determining this 
question. 
The geographical individuality of the two regions is of no 
less importance, and if we once quit these well-marked and 
most natural primary divisions we shall, I believe, open up 
questions as regards the remaining regions which it will not be 
easy to set at rest. There runs through Prof. Heilprin’s paper 
a tacit assumption that there should be an equivalence, if not an 
absolute equality, in the zoological characteristics and peculiari- 
ties of all the regions. But even after these two are united, 
there will remain discrepancies of almost equal amount among 
the rest, since in some groups the Neotropical, in others the 
Australian, far exceed all other regions in their speciality, The 
temperate and cold parts of the globe are necessarily less marked 
by highly peculiar groups than the tropical areas, because they 
have been recently subjected to great extremes of climate, and 
have thus not been able to preserve so many ancient and spe- 
cialised forms as the more uniformly warm areas. But, taking 
this fact into account, it seems to me that the individuality of 
the Nearctic and Palzearctic regions is very well marked, and much 
greater than could have been anticipated ; and I do not think 
that naturalists in general will be induced to give them up by 
any such arguments as are here brought forward. 
ALFRED R, WALLACE 
IS /s 
+ , 
A Remarkable Phenomenon,—Natural Snowballs 
I TAKE the liberty of inclosing a copy of an account of natu- 
ral snowballs which I furnished to the Courant newspaper in 
this place. It may be well to state that the distance from Long 
Island Sound to Massachu-etts is some seventy miles, and that 
the Connecticut Valley Railroad is about fifty miles long, and 
runs close to the bank of the Connecticut River for some forty 
miles; the rolls of snow on the frozen river are said to have 
been very large and handsome. SAMUEL HART 
| Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., U.S.A., February 22 
On Tuesday evening a light but damp snow fell upon the 
crust that had formed over the snow of Sunday’s storm ; and 
the south wind, which arose at a later hour, produced an unusual 
phenomenon. Wednesday morning the college campus, the 
park, and vacant lots everywhere hereabouts were seen to be 
strewn with natural snowballs, some of them resembling spheres 
with diameters of from one to nine inches or more, and others 
‘ looking very much like rolls of light cotton batting, having a 
\ cylindrical shape, but in nearly every case with a conical depres- 
sion at each end reaching nearly or quite to the middle. It was 
easy to see how the balls had been formed, as it is easy to see 
how boys roll up the snow for their forts. The wind had in 
each case started a small pellet of the moist snow, and it had 
rolled along until it grew so large that the wind could move it 
no further. The ball not only increased in diameter as it rolled, 
but also grew gradually in length as a little more of the snow 
stuck to it on each side, and thus the snow was formed into the 
peculiar shape described—that of a cylinder with a hollow at 
each end, as if along isosceles triangle were rolled up, beginning 
at its vertex. The largest of the cylinders measured on the col- 
lege campus had a diameter of twelve inches and a length of 
eighteen inches, while others in the fields in the neighbourhood 
seemed much larger. The path of the balls could in many 
eo be readily traced for a distance of twenty-five or thirty feet. 
The snow, it should be added, was not at all closely packed, 
but lay together very lightly and yielded to a slight touch, so 
}ithat it was impossible to move a ball without breaking it. 
Observers in other parts of the city report that some balls 
were seen of the size of a barrel which left tracks behind them 
or more than sixty feet. From East Hartford it is reported 
hat they studded the fields thickly, especially in places 
here the wind had a long range, and were of every size 
o that of a half bushel or larger. Similar balls were seen yes- 
erday morning in many places from the Sound north to Massa- 
NALTORE 
483 
chusetts. All along the line of the Valley Railroad they appeared 
on every rod of ground, and at some places they had left tracks 
showing that the wind had blown them in every direction, even 
in some cases up hill, 
This interesting phenomenon, though quite unusual, has been 
noticed before in different places in this country and elsewhere, 
the most striking instance on record being one which was ob- 
served in New Jersey in 108; this was in the daytime, when 
the whole process could be watched. On this occasion some of 
the masses of snow which were rolled up by the wind attained a 
diameter of three feet. They appear to have been seen, how- 
ever, over an area of only some four hundred acres, whereas the 
snowballs yesterday were spread thickly over many square 
miles. 
[We have received a communication on the same subject from 
Prof. Brocklesby of Hartford. —ED. ] 
The Late Transit of Venus 
I AM told that, in referring to the observations on the late 
transit of Venus which were made from a station on our college 
grounds by the astronomers of the German Imperial Commis- 
sion, you speak of them as using the photographie process. 
This is not correct; besides contact observations they re- 
stricted themselves to the use of the heliometer. The first and 
the second contacts were not seen by reason of clouds ; but four 
half sets and six full sets of heliometric measurements were 
made—128 in all. The third and the fourth contacts were 
observed by the German astronomers and by myself, 
SAMUEL HART 
Trinity College, Hartford, Conn,, U.S.A., February 22 
Rankine’s ‘‘ Rules and Tables” 
I Do not know upon what authority your reviewer of Ran- 
kine’s ‘Rules and Tables” bases his dictum that the 7 in the 
rule for the extension or compression of a spiral spring should 
be to the second power instead of to the third power. of. 
Rankine’s view was that it should be 7%, I would refer your 
reviewer to vol. xviii. of the Zramsactions of the Institution of 
Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, where he will find, 
amongst other results of an experimental committee’s investiga- 
tions upon the important question of the loading of safety-valves 
by such springs, that the ¢427d power of the radius or diameter 
of the spring is also used. W. J. MILLAR 
Glasgow, March Io 
[The formula given by Mr. Millar is, the writer of the notice 
informs us, perfectly correct, and the error is his. —ED. ] 
Meteors 
ABOUT five minutes past seven this evening I saw the most 
beautiful ‘* shootime star” I have ever witnessed. It was 
moving from east to west directly over this town, and disap- 
peared at an apparent distance of ten or twelve miles, after 
traversing an arc of about 75° as I saw it. It was visible whilst 
one might count ten or twelve at the usual rate of speak- 
ing. In its course it not only left a most unusually long train 
of light behind, but whole pieces kept dropping. What appeared 
is thus best described. These pieces followed the original for 
a space, leaving perceptible lines of light. Probably ten or 
a dozen such pieces were broken off during the time I was 
looking, Some idea of it may be gathered from the fact that 
for a time I thought it wasa rocket. The light was remarkably 
white, the brilliance much above that of Venus at any time, 
and its rate of motion slow. The most remarkable feature, 
however, was the continucus breaking away of pieces, which 
left in turn visible trains of light. THOMAS MASHEDER 
The Grammar School, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, March 17 
In Nature, vol. xxvii. p. 434, reading somewhat hastily, I 
took the brilliant meteor there mentioned to be one I myself 
saw. Reading more carefully, however, in last week’s issue, I 
see that both day and hour and direction differ. On March 4, 
about 8.45 p.m., a very large and bright meteor passed at a low 
altitude from south to north. It was of a greater apparent size 
than Venus, quite as bright, but with a greener light. The 
motion was slow, no train; it only became incandescent during 
