552 
NATURE 
| April 12, 1883 
all prostrated. Mimose of various kinds, also flowering, 
and the more tender palms, were borne down and broken. 
Pelargoniums and other succulent shrubs destructively crushed. 
Partial thaw in the sunshine. 
March 8.—Th. min. 27°°7, max. 51°°3; bar. 28°83. Sun- 
shine in morning began a thaw, but only to discover mischief 
done by the frost. Wind first from N.E. ; in p.m. from S.W., 
increasing thaw. 
March 9.—Th. min. 35°, max. 514°; bar. 29°67. Rain in 
night and most of day, but later turned to snow in large flakes. 
Wind S.E. 
March 10.—Th. min. 27°, max. 44°; bar. 28°88. Fresh 
snow in night to depth of 4 or 5inches. Whole country white, 
including Esterel Mountains, on which snow is hardly ever seen. 
Wind W., rising, threatening a mistral. Only two small spots 
on the sun. 
March 11.—Th. min. 24°°1, max. 45°; bar. 28°84. Bright 
morning, but intense cold with mistral, at nizht destroyed 
almost all tender plants and shrubs in garden, in spite of covering. 
One fine young indiarubber-tree of 15 feet, with its rich green 
and bronze leaves, turned in the night to a spectre of limp black 
rags. Wind W., calm. Only one small spot on S.E. border 
of sun. 
March 12.—Th. min. 25°°7, max. 49°; bar. 2890. Sun bright, 
but hard frost everywhere except in sheltered places. Wind W. 
strong. Four spots now visible on sun, one larger than the rest, 
and near it a large oval facula of brighter light. 
March 13.—Th. min. 32°°1, max. 49°°6 ; bar. 29°30. Weather 
bright, wind W., moderate. Two of the four spots larger, with 
deeper umbrz ; suspicion of a facula near one. 
March 14.—Th. min. 29°, max. 54°(?): bar. 29°50. Sky 
bright, some haze, wind W. Four sunspots, less marked, vary- 
ing from day to day ; one, which was a penumbral streak, now 
hardly visible. 
March 15.—Th. min. 32°, max. 50 4; bar. 29°30. Weather 
feels much warmer, wind W.S.W. ; one of the sunspots much 
larger, with a rent of dark umbra within. 
March 16.—Th, min. 36°°7, max. 50°°3 ; bar. 29°19. Weather 
fine, a little haze, wind W.S.W. Now five spots ; two large, 
with dark irregular centre and fringe of penumbra ; two dark, 
without fringe ; one a mere streak of penumbra, 
March 17.—Th. min. 41°°9, max. 52°°2; bar. 29°22. Fine 
in morning, but hazy; liter, clouds from S.W. (showing rain- 
band) gathered, and brought first hail, then rain for two or three 
hours; later, the sun appeared with one of the new spots 
much enlarged, consisting of a penumbra with two distinct dark 
clefts within. 
March 18.-—Th. min. 35°°1, max. 53°°9; bar. 29°48. Bright 
morning, with haze, wind 5.S.W. No change in sunspots. 
March 19.—Th. min. 45°°9, max. 52°°5 ; bar. 29°20. Morning 
gloomy, with clouds and rain. The wave of cold seems to have 
passed, but not so the vast deposits of snow left on the moun- 
tains behind, and still less the unknown detriment inflicted on 
vegetable life in the olive and orange groves around us. 
The foregoing observations are too few and too imperfect to 
warrant any decided conclusions, but they add to those already 
made in evidence of the connection between the absence of sun- 
spots and the diminution of terre-trial heat ; and I trust they 
may be followed by further and more exact investigations to de- 
termine the influence of our great luminary on the weather and 
climate of the world. How far this ‘‘cold wave” has extended 
to other countries and latitades I am not informed ; but it seems 
to me that their usually cloudless skies bring the shores of the 
Riviera into closer and more direct relationship with sun-power 
. than other countries, and therefore render them more sensitive to 
its variations. C. J. B. WILLIAMs 
Cannes, March 19 
Mr. Grant Allen’s Article on ‘‘The Shapes of Leaves” 
THE article by Mr. Grant Allen on ‘‘ The Shapes of Leaves,” 
published in NATURE (vol. xxvii. p. 439) as first of a series, 
calls for an emphatic protest on behalf of botanists, and espe- 
cially of teachers of botany. 
In his introductory paragraphs he at once cuts the Gordian 
knot of vegetable physiology in a most startling manner. He 
tells us that ‘‘from the free carbon thus obtained [z.e. by de- 
oxidation of carbonic acid], together with the hydrogen liberated 
from the water in the sap, the plant manufactures the hydro- 
carbons which form the mass of its various tissues.” If he had 
| of these articles, since the series is not yet complete. 
only substituted, by a slip of the pen, the term hydrocarbon for 
carbohydrate, it might have been regarded as a pardonable piece 
of negligence ; but, since he speaks of ‘‘ free carbon” and hydro- 
gen, he shows that he really meant to write the word “‘hydro- 
carbons.’’ Naturally he does not bring forward the results of 
any experiments which may have led him to make this extra- 
ordinary statement. 
He goes on to say: ‘‘ Vegetal life in the true or green plants 
consists merely in such deoxidation of carbonic acid and water, 
and arrangement of their atoms in new forms.” Among other 
strange conclusions to be drawn from the above lines we see 
that, according to Mr. Grant Allen, either nitrogen does not 
enter into the composition of proteids, or that the latter have 
nothing to do with that ‘‘ vegetal life ” of which he speaks. 
Articles containing blunders of such magnitude, but written 
with that assurance of style which naturally carries conviction 
to the mind of the unwary, and disseminated through the country 
in a widely read journal like NATURE, cannot but produce a 
rich crop of erroneous impressions. These it will be the arduous 
duty of teachers to eradicate. 
Every one will agree that the popular writer must, before all 
things, be master at least of the first rudiments of the subject on 
which he writes: Mr. Grant Allen has in two consecutive sen- 
tences shown himself singularly deficient in this respect. 
It would*be premature here to enter upon a detailed criticism 
But the 
two sentences I have quoted are so strangely heterodox that they 
could not be passed over without remark, F, O. Bower 
As I do not think it necessary to preface four short papers on 
the shapes of leaves with a formal treatise on physiological 
botany, Iam not careful to answer Mr. Bower in this matter. 
The word hydrocarbons was used deliberately, because the 
important point to notice is this—that the plant consists in the 
main of relatively deoxidised materials. From the point of 
view of energy, with which one has to deal mainly in treating of 
functions of leaves, that fact is of capital importance. I can 
conscientiously inform Mr. Bower that I was aware of the 
chemical constitution of proteids, and of the part which they 
bear in life generally; but I do not see what harm can 
be done to anybody by such a confessedly rough statement 
as that which he critici-es. If we must always step aside to say 
all that we know about any subject whenever we have to deal 
with it, exposition of new matter becomes impossible. May 
I call Mr. Bower’s attention to the further fact that in the same 
paper I spoke of the plant catching ‘‘ fragments of carbon,” 
meaning thereby not free carbon, but carbon in the form of 
carbonic acid, even though it be merely reduced fron carbon 
dioxide to carbon oxide. It seems to me that such roughly 
accurate language is permissible in popular writing, where one’s 
main object is to insist only on the general principle involved. 
It is the carbon that the leaf wants, not the oxygen; it is the 
carbon and the hydrogen that it deals with, not the nitrogen, 
which is but the instrument for dealing with them; and the two 
other elements may therefore be safely neglected. Or must we 
drag in sulphur, and potassium, and calcium, and all the rest as 
well ? GRANT ALLEN 
Ticks 
Ir W. E. L. will acquaint himself with the somewhat scattered 
literature of this subject he will find that much useful information 
has already been placed onrecord by entomologists and others. The 
Farm Fournal for July 10, 1880, contains asensible and convin- 
cing article by Mr. James Elliot, showing the connection between 
ticks and louping-ill. A good article on the sheep-tick (falsely 
so called, since it is an insect and not one of the Ixodidze) occurs 
in Zhe Field for April 26, 1873. The scientific aspects of the 
subject are well treated of by Mégnin, especially in relation to 
classification in his ‘‘ Monographie de la Tribu des Sarcoptides 
Psoriques,” 1877. Mr. Hulme’s edition of Moquin-Tandon’s 
“‘Elements of Medical Zoology” has a useful chapter on ticks 
(p. 302). Some valuable hints are given in Prof. Verrill’s 
Report on parasites to the Connecticut Board of Agriculture, 
1870. An excellent article with good figures on Alelophagus 
ovinus appeared in one of the volumes of the /y/el/ectual Ob- 
server. The ticks of the sheep and stag are both figured in 
Van Beneden’s ‘‘ Animal Parasites” (English edition of Inter- 
national Series, p. 177). The sheep-tick is likewise figured and 
described in the ‘* Micrographie Dictionary.” References and 
