NATURE 



[April 2, 1908 



the same kind, there is a vast mass of local and tribal 

 usagfe which is independent of, and in many cases directly 

 opposed to, the legislation of the Brahmans. The powerful 

 tribal organisation in the Punjab has made the conflict 

 between these two bodies of law more obvious than in 

 other parts of the Empire. The materials for a study 

 of the subject are voluminous and complex, and Mr. H. A. 

 Rose, the superintendent of the Ethnographical Survey, 

 has done useful service in codifying the district reports in 

 his recently issued " Compendium of the Punjab Customary 

 Law." He divides his subject into three chapters — 

 marriage, inheritance, alienation — and in connection with 

 such subjects as endogamy, exogamy, polyandry, and poly- 

 gamy he has collected a mass of curious facts which will 

 be interesting to anthropologists, particularly as they re- 

 present the usages of a very primitive type of tribal society. 



Mr. H. Warth sends us a photograph, here reproduced, 

 representing a method in use in south Germany for pro- 

 ducing ice from pure water in winter. The photograph 

 was taken last January in Balingen (Wijrttemberg). The 

 illustration shows a large wooden framework in two 

 storeys, 6 metres square and 6 metres high. Each storey 

 is covered with a floor of eighteen parallel beams, in the 



Produ 



1 of large Icicle 



centre of which a tube, encased in wood, rises beyond the 

 upper floor. This tube is connected with the water-main, 

 and the vi'ater issues through a rotating disc, which sends 

 a moving spray on the beams. As the water drops from 

 the beams icicles are formed, which reach the middle floor 

 and finally the ground. The volume of water is regulated 

 according to the temperature of the air, which may vary 

 between —3° C. and —18° C. During low temperature 

 20 cubic metres of ice may be formed in one night. As 

 the ice retains the shape of isolated columns, it is easily 

 broken up and removed. The ice is then stored for use in 

 summer. 



In the Transactions of the South African Philosophical 

 Society of December, 1907, Mr. J. R. Sutton, of Kenil- 

 wortli (Kimberley), discusses the question of the supposed 

 cloud-dispersing power of the full moon. From observa- 

 tions of the state of the night sky at Potsdam from 

 January, 1894, to June, 1900 (_Met. Zeits., May, 1907), Herr 



NO. noo5, '^'OL. yy~\ 



Meissncr found no such dispersing power, but a minimum 

 amount of cloud about the time of new moon and a 

 maximum shortly after full. Mr. Sutton thinks that if 

 there be no lunar influence whatever upon the clouds some- 

 thing like Meissncr's result might be expected, as the 

 moonlight makes clouds visible (see Schmid's " Lehrbuch 

 d. Met.," i860, p. 681). At Kenilworth Mr. Sutton finds 

 that cirrus and cirro-stratus appear to dissolve at sunset, 

 but the rising moon makes them plainly visible again. 

 The 8h. p.m. observations taken between January, 1900, 

 and January, 1907, show considerably more cloud between 

 the third and eighteenth lunar day than between the 

 eighteenth and third. Dr. Shaw's interesting paper, " La 

 Lune mange les Nuages " (Quart. Journ. Roy. Met. Soc, 

 April, 1902), shows that any diminution of a floating cloud 

 is due to evaporation by loss of heat, and that " any effect 

 of direct radiation from the moon may be quite properly 

 disregarded." 



The Survey Department of the Egyptian Ministry of 

 Finance has issued, as a pamphlet of thirty-eight pages 

 with thirteen index maps, a list of maps, plans, and 

 publications published up to December 31, 1907. The list 

 includes town maps, cadastral maps, topographical maps 

 of Egypt, special maps, and maps of the different provinces. 



Prof. E. Gu.\rini has published a pamphlet (Paris, 

 1908) on the resources of Peru. The mineral resources 

 include many rich deposits of gold, silver, copper, and iron 

 ores, which are at present unworked owing to lack of 

 economical methods of transport. The author believes that 

 by the introduction of electric-power transmission and 

 electric smelting, Peru might rank amongst the leading 

 industrial States of the world. 



The question of handling materials in industrial plants 

 is one continually presenting itself to owners and engineers 

 for proper solution, and some striking illustrations showing 

 the remarkable progress recently made in America in 

 economical material-handling equipments are given by Mr. 

 Werner Boecklin in the Engineering Maga::ine (vol. xxxiv., 

 No. 6). The depreciation of such equipments is necessarily 

 high, but in the majority of cases an increase in the first 

 cost, which will materially decrease this charge, is 

 warranted. In the same issue Mr. T. Kennard Thomson 

 describes the construction of hoisting machinery for the 

 handling of materials. He shows that here, as elsewhere 

 in the domain of modern enterprise, economy in unit costs 

 and maximum of output can be secured only where intelli- 

 gent use is made of the mechanical facilities afforded for 

 the handling of material. 



The application of the camera as an adjunct to topo- 

 graphical mapping began practically with its Invention, 

 and it has been employed with varying success since that 

 time. An interesting development is described in the bi- 

 monthly Bulletin of the .'\merican Institute of Mining 

 Engineers (1908, No. 19) by Mr. C. W. Wright, w'ho has 

 successfully employed in the field a panoramic camera 

 taking a 5-inch by 12-inch view, including an angle of 

 140°. The plotting of a map from the views taken by 

 the phototheodolite is a tedious process, and the office 

 work is many times greater than that required for thr- 

 same amount of mapping by the panoramic camera. 



With the view of ascertaining whether the results of 

 recent chemical Investigations would be of value in lessen- 

 ing the amount of evaporator scale formed In the sugar 

 mills of Hawaii, an elaborate series of experiments was 

 carried out by Mr. S. S. Peck, and the results are pub- 

 lished in Bulletin No. 21 of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters 



