550 



NATURE 



{April lo, i< 



tember 4 he was in long. 155° 28' W., lat. 8° 20' N., sailed 

 from Fanning's Island three days before. At 5 ]).ni. noticed 

 strange appearance in the sun, which was greenish. .Strange 

 colours over the west and aiound the sky at sunset. The sun 

 was green at setting. Thought bad weather was portended. 

 Never saw such appearances before. 



Both parties are positive that the schooner was three days out 

 when their fears were thus excited. She sailed September i. 

 No entiy in ship's log of the above phenomena. 



Honolulu, February 20 S. E. Bishop 



Another note relative to these phenomena : — "August 20, 

 1861. — Earthquake at Naples. At Castellamare the water is so 

 discoloured, that although the calm has been complete, we fear 

 some subterranean perturbation. The heat is intense. At the 

 same time the atmosphere presented a very peculiar appearance. 

 There are no clouds, and during tlie whole week a thick mist 

 has enveloped the city and coast, and the sun when setting is as 

 red as blood." — {Moniteur &■& 29 AoCit, l85l.) 



J. P. O'Reilly 



Royal College of Science for Ireland, 

 Stephen's Green, Dublin 



Meteorological Bibliography 



I REJOICE to see the well-earned tribute which you have paid 

 to Dr. Hellmann's excellent " Repertorium der Deutschen 

 Meteorologie," and as a worker in the same field I trust that 

 you will permit me to add that I agree with every word which 

 your reviewer has said as to its excellence. 



My object in writing is merely to point out that, thanks to 

 the liberality of the United States Government, we may hope 

 soon to have, not a perfect catalogue, but one which will be 

 extremely useful, especially if, as I hope, the United States 

 Government adopt my suggestion and endeavour to arrange with 

 Dr. Hellmann for the incorporation of the first part of his 

 " Repertorium " with the materials already forwarded to them. 



Your reviewer is perfectly right in urging the absolute neces- 

 sity of steps being taken to index and classify the multitudinous 

 publications now appearing. Dr. Hellmann in his "Reper- 

 torium " says that 800 publications upon meteorology appear 

 annually, or more than two each day, hence the impossibility of 

 any one keeping abreast of the entire literature. 



As regards the catalogue which I had the pleasure of sending 

 to the United States last .autumn, I annex an abstract of the 

 description which I gave at the Southport meeting of the British 

 Association in case you may think it of sufficient importance to be 

 worthy of a place in Nature. Dr. Hellmann's "Repertorium" 

 only reached me just before my catalogue was shipped, hence 

 the absence of reference to it in the annexed paper. 



62. Camden Square, N.W., April 4 G. J. Symons 



On the Completion of the European Portion of the Preliminayy 

 Meteorological Catalogue, by G. y. Symons 



The author commenced by giving a few illustrations of the 

 large amount of time and energy which has been wasted by 

 meteorologists, owing to their not knowing what had previously 

 been done, sometimes even in their own country, but most fre- 

 quently in other parts of the world ; and he pointed out that 

 with the modern development of meteorological work and of 

 meteorological literature, some effort, upon a large scale, to deal 

 with this evil was imperatively necessary. 



Mr. Symons described the catalogue which he had formed 

 during the last twenty or twenty-five years, by extracting (from 

 many thousand catalogues issued by dealers in second-hand 

 books in most of the capitals of Europe) all the titles of works 

 on meteorology or kindred subjects. He also described the im- 

 portant publication, by the Royal .Society, of its "Catalogue of 

 Scientific Papers," and showed wherein the two agreed, and how 

 largely eacli sujjjjlemented deficiencies in the other. 



He then explained the steps which Prof. Cleveland Abbe had 

 taken in preparing his card catalogue, and the arrangements 

 whereby a copy of Mr. Symons's catalogue was to be prepared 

 and forwarded to the United States for incorporation with Prof. 

 Abbe's. 



Mr. Symons then stated the additions which had been made to 

 the original proposal, and that the following catalogues had been 

 subsequently incorporated, each giving approximately the num- 

 ber of titles set against it, viz. : — 



Of course a great many of these were duplicates, but every 

 catalogue contained titles which were not in any of the others, 

 and altogether they have undoubtedly added very largely to the 

 value of the work ; it is impossible to state how largely, nor is it 

 material in a case wherein the assistance rendered has been 

 almost as great as the catalogue, and as diverse as the languages 

 dealt with. 



The precise number of titles forwarded is not known, but is 

 probably about 20,000. Prof. Abbe's catalogue is understood 

 to contain about 10,000, but probably there will be a few thou- 

 sand common to both catalogues, and therefore the preliminary 

 catalogue, which the United States Signal Office, under the 

 direction of General Hazen, will proceed to prepare for publica- 

 tion, will probably contain the titles of more than 25,000 books 

 and papers upon meteorology. 



Mr. Symons remarked, in conclusion, that the catalogue must 

 not be regarded as complete. It was impossible to make it per- 

 fect — it could not be perfect as regarded the past until every 

 public and private library in the world had been searched. It 

 could not be perfect for the present, because every day new 

 works appeared in different parts of the world, and all could not 

 be simultaneously inserted. Nor would his jjart of it bear biblio- 

 graphical criticism, for he was not a bibliographical expert, and 

 his chief aim had been to give information useful to working 

 meteorologists. 



Ice Volcanoes — Mountain Rainbow 



The jiast winter has been unusually cold and stormy in 

 Ontario, and, as a result, an uneven strip of ice 100 to 200 yards 

 wide has accumulated along the lake shore, sometimes forming 

 mounds twenty or thirty feet high. Many of these mounds are 

 conical, and have a crater-like opening communicating with the 

 water. In stormy weather every wave hurls a column of spray 

 and ice fragments through the opening. The ejecta freeze fast 

 as they fall, and add to the height of the cone. In high winds 

 the coast seems fringed with miniature volcanoes in active erup- 

 tion. After a time the crater becomes clogged with ice, and the 

 volcano may be looked on as extinct. Often a second crater is 

 formed just to seaward of the first, and growing upon its ruins. 



Mr. J. A. Fleming mentions in your issue for January 31 

 (p. 310) a circular rainbow seen from a hill-top against mist. I 

 saw the same phenomenon three years ago near the Lofoden 

 Islands, as a fog was breaking. It was noticed and admired by 

 other passengers on the steamer also. Each saw his shadow 

 enlarged upon the mist, and with the head surrounded by a 

 brightly coloured halo or rainbow. The beautiful sight dis- 

 appeared after a few minutes as the fog thickened again. 



A. P. COLMAN 



Faraday Hall, Victoria University, Cobourg, Canada 



Thread-twisting 



In reply to "Cosmopolitan's" question in Nature (vol. 

 xxix. p. 525), I have been many years in Orkney, but do not 

 remember to have seen the women twisting thread with "the 

 palm of the hand on the thigh," but the fishermen there twist the 

 short lengths of horsehair line called "snoods," which when 

 united together form fishing lines of diliFerent strengths, in this 

 manner. 



The women of the North-American Indians always twist the 

 short threads of sinew with which moccasins and leather clothes 

 are sewn in this way : The sinew is torn up or divided into 

 thin filaments slightly moistened by being drawn between the 

 lips, then twisted between palm and thigh. J. Rae 



Kensington, April 5 



In reply to "Cosmopolitan's" query as to the occurrence of 

 the habit of thread-lwisling with the ]).alm of the hand on the 



