RY 27, 1923] 
‘the ‘brief but comprehensive account of weather 
-asting show, the reward is being grasped. 
Pind the other publications before us, those dealing 
he h the various codes for transmitting weather data 







































e of interest only to the senders and receivers of 
elegraphic and radiographic reports, yet the mere fact 
such elaborate systems of communication have 
bec me necessary shows the vastness of the recent 
st ides in synoptic meteorology. 
“The Observer's Handbook” is an old friend, in- 
lining towards portliness now, and with an air of 
gnity consonant with its post-war price. The ap- 
ndix of cloud-photographs by Mr. G. A. Clarke of 
rdeen, also issued separately, is helpful in defining 
the forms of cloud, and more so in showing how 
; ndependent the clouds hold themselves of all hard 
nd fast classifications. The prints of cirrus and allied 
ms showing the cloud in white on a blue ground 
‘are particularly effective. 
_ The Handbook is ripening for complete revision and 
cannot yet be viewed as having reached a final form. 
t is still Suggestive of the compiler’s anxiety to justify 
the system of units recommended, and it remains rather 
over the head of the average observer, on whose faithful 
va patient routine the whole structure of weather 
study is based. 
- The new units which were suggested about 1908, and 
introduced by the Meteorological Office eight years 
go, have had a less fair trial than the length of time 
th ey have been before the meteorological world sug- 
“gests, as criticism on such matters was necessarily 
Suspended during the war. I think that the sub- 
Stitution of the millimetre for the inch in rainfall 
ment is well on its way ; it is merely the sub- 
tution of one legal unit for another, and it makes 
rmity with other nations. The millibar, how- 
ever, has not yet helped towards uniformity, although 
Commander Brooke-Smith, in his ‘“ Weather Fore- 
fee - - for Seamen,” says that “ it will help towards 
Ses Moarnity if new barometers are graduated 
n this scale.” I suppose that its future will depend 
ely on propaganda, like a new sect inspired by the 
ambition of unifying all the churches. Some observers 
ll continue to look on it as simply a new linear 
m, Once a rainfall observer, wishing to be up- 
to-date, ordered a rain-measuring glass to be graduated 
ir millibars so as to be directly comparable with the 
barometer! The idea of freeing the measurement of 
tmospheric pressure from the gravity correction by 
“using a unit based on acceleration instead of weight 
appeals powerfully to some minds. I think, however, 
_ that it will be apt to share the fate of the kilowatt in 
_ its competition with the horse-power, i.e. to be limited 
a in its use to special lines of work. Messrs. Brunt 
NO. 2778, VoL. 111] 
! 
a 
Lc 
A 
NATURE 
109 
and Durward, in their “ Notes on Meteorological Cor- 
rections for the use of Gunners,” use the old units, 
apparently as a matter of course, without apology. 
So far as I can see from these publications, there is 
now a tendency to relax the boycott of the handy 
old Fahrenheit degree, thereby going back to the 
“absolute zero” of the snow-and-salt epoch. I have 
sometimes yearned for a scale starting at the ‘‘ absolute 
zero’ of the mercurial thermometer, that captivating 
temperature at which Fahrenheit and Centigrade 
thermometers read alike and below which mercury re- 
fuses to work. Can we look on the “ absolute zero ”’ 
of the air thermometer as absolutely fixed ? May a 
lower temperature not be reached some day and a new 
way of estimating it be discovered? Think of the 
absoluteness of the old Daltonian atom. As a mere 
matter of nomenclature “absolute temperature ” sounds 
unhappy in our days, when absolute time and absolute 
space are on the verge of becoming unfashionable. Be 
that as it may, I am glad that there is now less prob- 
ability than there was once of temperatures reckoned 
from — 273° C. being harnessed to our English weather. 
If I may conclude in a lighter vein I would refer to 
a misprint in one of the works under notice printed 
officially. Once on a time an official of a department, 
driven beyond discretion by the delays of another 
department, addressed a letter to the “ Controller of 
H.M. Stationary Office,” and was dealt with in a dis- 
ciplinary manner. Times have changed, and now a 
waggish printer’s imp has the audacity to speak dis- 
respectfully of the isobars in these words—“ anticy- 
clones . . . often remaining more or less stationery for 
several days.” Hucu Ropert MILL. 

The Constitution of Matter. 
Der Aufbau der Materie: Drei Aufsdtze tiber moderne 
Atomistik und Electronentheorie. Von Max Born. 
Zweite, verbesserte Auflage. Pp. vi+86. (Berlin: 
J. Springer, 1922.) 3s. 
La Constitution de la matiére. Par Prof. Max Born. 
Traduit par H. Bellenot. (Collection de mono- 
graphies scientifiques étrangéres, II.) Pp. iii+84. 
(Paris: A. Blanchard, 1922.) 6 frances. 
HE most important part of Prof. Max Born’s 
work is contained in the second and third of 
his essays, where he shows that it is possible to 
obtain approximate values for the heat of chemical 
union of the halogen elements with the alkali metals 
and with hydrogen from purely physical data. In 
collaboration with Landé he has calculated the re- 
pulsive force between the Na+and Cl—ions in rock 
salt, which, combined with the ordinary Coulomb 
attractions and repulsions between these ions, accounts 
DiI 
