286 



NA TURE 



[January 23, 1908 



RAINFALL AND WATER-SUPPLY.^ 



T T happens that rainfall is not only the most difficult of 

 all the meteorological distributions to map accurately, 

 it is also that one which is of the greatest importance, for 

 by rain the rivers are fed, and the rivers both water and 

 drain the land. Every year makes clearer the vast 

 national importance of accurate knowledge of the rainfall 

 of a county, for the problem of the rivers is becoming 

 acute. The growing populations of the great towns are 

 tapping the upper waters and diverting the water from 

 its natural channels, and at the same time they are 

 polluting the lower courses with the waste of the factories 

 and the streets. Toll is taken all along the banks of 

 industrial streams for raising steam and carrying on the 

 multitudinous proces.scs of manufacture. There is some- 

 times anxiety as to whether the waterways can be kept 

 sufficiently supplied to float the water-borne traffic or to 

 fight the silting action of the tides, and there is growing 

 alarm as to the possibility of fish traversing the depleted 

 and polluted streams to reach their spawning beds. 



Of recent years, the value of the water-power which 

 may be generated in the lonely and lofty places amongst 

 the western heights of Great Britain, where the rainfall 

 . is large and unfailing, has been recognised, and chemical 

 works for the production in electric furnaces of what a 

 few years ago were rare substances are becoming familiar 

 features in Wales and the Highlands. In Ireland, too, the 

 rainfall is an unrecognised source of wealth which as yet 

 has not been drawn upon to any appreciable e.xtent. The 

 increasing strenuousness of the struggle for the possession 

 of large water supplies is producing in England, and 

 especially in Wales, a great amount of local jealousy and 

 strife, for the boundaries of parishes and counties coincide 

 but rarely with water-partings, and the argument has been 

 brought forward again and again that the rainfall of one 

 county should not be diverted for the use of the inhabitants 

 of another. The feeling is intensified when the boundary 

 to be crossed is that of a historical division of national 

 importance, like the boundary between England and 

 Wales, but the map-study of rainfall can do something 

 to suggest the lines on 'which such disputes should be 

 settled. 



Although the exceptional deluges of a thunderstorm or 

 a great depression fall with equal and impartial heavi- 

 ness on the hills of the west or the flat plains of the east, 

 the common every-day rains are precipitated on the high 

 lands and in the mountain valleys which cross the track 

 of the prevailing wind in much greater abundance than on 

 level and low stretches of country. Most of the rain is 

 borne to our islands from the Atlantic, and when it comes 

 torrentially it is of the air, and no boundarv checks it ; 

 the largest annual falls come down on and ne.-ir the water- 

 sheds, because there the .land produces its maximum 

 influence as a rain compeller. 



From the high ground the rivers seek the plains, carry- 

 ing off the excess of rainfall into the less liberally watered 

 districts. The Dee. the .Severn, the Wve, and' the Usk 

 restore to England part of the rains which the Welsh 

 mountains have abstr.ncted as the air passed over them. 

 The high rainfall of the whole Pennine district, .sometimes 

 by circuitous routes across the comparativelv dry plains 

 of the east, swells the volume of fresh water that pours 

 into the Humber. The Thames itself receives the com- 

 paratively high rains of the Cotswolds, the Chilterns, and 

 the Downs, and forwards the water slowlv through less 

 and less rainy districts, until it reaches the sea in the 

 driest part of England. Thus, I think, at least as good 

 an argument can be drawn from this consideration of 

 physical geography in favour of sunolving the great towns 

 of the east from the large precipitation of the w^est as 

 '"'?". P'' "^''3"'" '" 'hP opposite sense from the artificial 

 divisions of political geography. Care for the water supply 

 of the country, coming as it does from the air that knows 

 no bounds across the land, is by no means a parochial, 

 hut in the fullest sense a national matter, and should be 

 dealt with in the interests of the nation as a whole, the 

 units of subdivision, when such are required, being the 

 natural units of river-basins. 



'. From ijie presidential ad.'rfsst'e'lvfred befor theRoy.T Meteoioloeical 

 Society on January 15 hy Dr. H. R. MMl. 



NO. 1995, '^'OL. 77I 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Cambridge. — The .Senate has approved the alTilialion of 

 the University of Bishop's College, LennoxviUe, Quebec, 

 under the conditions laid down in the report of the council 

 of the Senate dated November 25, 1907. 



The Senate has assigned a site on the Downing ground, 

 situate to the south of the botanical laboratory and parallel 

 to it, for a building in connection with the Department 

 of Agriculture. 



Dr. James, Provost of King's College, has been 

 appointed a member of the council of the National Trust 

 for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. 



The special board for physics and chemistry reports that 

 the prize of 50/. from the Gordon Wigan fund for an 

 investigation in chemistry was awarded in the year 1907 

 to F. Buckney, of Sidney Sussex College, for his essay 

 entitled " A Study of some Quinquevalent Cyclic Nitrogen 

 Compounds." 



Manchester. — A communication has been received from 

 the Treasury intimating that to remove any uncertainty 

 which may prevail in regard to the arrangements of the 

 University during the current session, a special grant of 

 the same amount as that paid before the proposed reduc- 

 tion, viz. i2,oooZ., will be inade to the University for the 

 current year. The question of the future distribution of 

 the Treasury grant is left open for decision after the 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer has consulted the Advisory 

 Committee which deals with grants to universities anil 

 colleges. 



Mr. F. M. Saxelby, head of the department of malhe- 

 tiiatics at the Technical College, Belfast, has been 

 appointed to a similar position at the Battersea Polytechnic. 



In the Engineer of January 17 is published the first 

 instalment of a series of articles on the training of 

 engineering apprentices, describing the methods followed 

 at a number of works. The result of the inquiry has to 

 a great extent been disappointing. No real general upward 

 movement in the training of apprentices has oeen observed, 

 and, with the exception of a few firms, the old indifferent 

 method of training by hazard still obtains. 



The Government of Mysore has, the Pioneer Mail states, 

 made public the new rules for regulating the grant of 

 scholarships for scientific research and technical education 

 from the Damodar Dass charities fund. The scholarships 

 will be open to all Indians who have taken with credit a 

 degree in arts, medicine, or engineering in an Indian or 

 other recognised university. Each candidate selected will 

 be given travelling allowance to England or elsewhere from 

 Bangalore on the completion of his course of study or 

 research. He will be allowed, during his stay in England 

 or elsewhere, outside India, a sum of 200/. per annum, 

 this allowance to be inclusive of college fees, cost of 

 books, instruments, and boarding charges. 



Lord Aveburv was formally installed as Lord Rector 

 of St. Andrews University on January 16, and delivered 

 his rectorial address. Lord Avebury, during the course of 

 his remarks, said there never was a time when .St. 

 .Andrews was more adequately equipped, had a more dis- 

 tinguished list of teachers, and a curriculum more 

 generous, wider, and less one-sided. The question is not, 

 as is sometimes alleged, between a scientific and a classical 

 education. No scientific man wishes to exclude classics. 

 No degree should, in the opinion of scientific men, be 

 given without demanding some classical knowledge. .\ 

 man who is entirely ignorant of the classics, even if he 

 is a profound mathematician, biologist, chemist, or 

 geologist, is but a half-educated inan. But the same is 

 true even of the profoundest classical scholar who know^ 

 nothing of science. .Science is of vital irnportance in 

 human life; it is more fascinating than a fairy tale, mor< 

 brilliant than a novel, and anyone who neglects to follow 

 the triumphant march of discoverv is deliberately rejecting 

 one of the greatest gifts with which we have been 

 endowed. 



The prospects of a university for Bristol w^cre mucii 

 discussed at the annual dinner last week of the Bristut 

 University College Colston Society. The financial posi- 



