Nov. II, 1 886] 



NA TURE 



29 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[TAe Editor Joes not hold hitnsclf responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to 

 return ^or to correspond 7vith the writers of, rejected manu- 

 scripts. No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 



[ The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible othenuise to insure the appearance even 

 of commtinications containing interesting and novel facts. ^ 



The Enormous Loss from Ox-Warble 

 I HAVE read Mr. John Walker's remarks on "warbles." 

 This is one of the many important subjects to which Miss Eleanor 

 Ormerod has lately drawn attention. I can readily believe that 

 there is a loss of two to three millions to the country through 

 the ravages of this fly, but such statements, it must be remem- 

 bered, should be qualified by the thought that it might cost two 

 or three millions to protect all the cattle of this country against 

 such attacks. The labour would be great, the vigilance would 

 entail higher-classed stock-men, in almost all cases with higher 

 wages, for you cannot get our labourers, dairy-men, and bailiffs 

 even, to attend to such matters without great difficulty. The 

 loss does not, I think, fall upon farmers, unless it is from the 

 irritation to the cattle when they hear the buzz of the fly 

 meditating her attack. 



As to the damage to the hide, I never, in my experience, 

 heard a butcher or dealer make warbles in the hide a pretext 

 for offering one shilling less for a bullock. They take no notice 

 of them at all ; and, if the maggots injure the hide, this is a 

 matter for fell-mongers and tanners, rather than for farmers. 

 This is one of the cries emanating from the scientific friends 

 of jigriculture which it is well to listen to. It will probably 

 gain the ear of only a select circle of agriculturists, because, 

 to use a very homely phrase, "the game is scarcely worth the 

 candle." Animals pass through the market too rapidly, and the 

 jirices asked and given are so approximate only to the absolute 

 value, that a few warbles in the skin do not in the least influence 

 the selling price. Still, anything which can be shown to influ- 

 ence the comfort of live stock or the value of their products 

 must be considered as worth attention. 



John Wrightson 

 College of Agriculture, Downton, Salisbury, October 31 



" Lung Sick " 



Mr. H. Rider Haggard, in his excellent novel, "King 

 Solomon's Mines," has the following passage. He is speaking 

 of Zulu oxen, and says : — 



"As for 'lung sick,' which is a dreadful form of pneumonia 

 very prevalent in this country, they had all been inoculated 

 against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of an ox, 

 and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which 

 has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, 

 takes the disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop 

 ofl', as a rule about a foot from the root, and becomes proof 

 against future attacks." 



Presumably this account is bond fide. It will be gratifying to 

 me, then, if any of your correspondents will kindly explain how 

 it is that the virus, which has not been weakened by cultivation, 

 produces the disease in a mild rather than in a virulent form. 



E. J. DUNGATE 



6, Marchmont Road, Edinburgh, November i 



The Beetle in Motion 



With reference to Prof Lloyd Morgan's letter in last week's 

 Nature (p. 7), the following passage, which occurs in an 

 interesting chapter on "Motions of Insects " in Kirby and 

 Spence's " Entomology," may be quoted : — 



" In walking and ninning, the hexapods, like the larvK that 

 have perfect legs, move the anterior and posterior leg of one 

 side and the intermediate of the other alternately." 



This passage is in complete accord with the observations of 

 your correspondent. C. J. G. 



November 9 



Meteors 



Yesterday (November 2), about 8.8 p.m., I chanced to see 

 here a meteor that, I think, deserves record, especially if my 



report of its position in the sky can be compared with that_of 

 ^ome one who observed it at another place. 



Returning from Oxford, I was about half a mile east of 

 Combe Church, on the lofty plat that is the remnant of Combe 

 Common. " Stepping westward," I was startled by a sudden 

 splendour, flooding with light the moonlit heaven. This splen- 

 dour was above me and before me ; it was a little on my left. 

 A large meteor was rapidly descending, at an angle of 60° or 

 70°. Not much east of it shone the half-orbed moon ; but little 

 west of it stretched the ea'^tern branch of the Milky Way's western 

 termination. When it had traversed about three-fourths of the 

 distance between its apparent starting-point and the undiflating 

 ground beneath, it swelled out for a moment grandly, and, 

 before it burst, displayed a globe at least as big as the sun, and 

 of about the same hue, though not of dazzling lustre. After it 

 had vanished, its track was marked for a second or two by a 

 brilliant trail, which, in the light of the neighbouring moon, 

 sparkled with all the tints of the rainbow, and resembled a 

 gorgeous shower of precious stones. 



John Hoskyns-Abrahall 



Combe Vicarage, near Woodstock, November 3 



I HAVE read Mr. Murphy's letter (Nature, November 4, 

 p. S). At the same time as Mr. Murphy saw a large meteor 

 (October 31, 8.25 p.m.) I also saw an imiuen?e one coming from 

 the same portion of the sky, and travelling west. It disappeared 

 behind a cloud. There was a loud rushing noise. 



E. Parky 



Dinorwic Quarries, Llanberis, North Wales 



INFLUENCE OF WIND ON BAROMETRIC 

 READINGS 



I AM glad to see (Nature, vol. xxxiv. p. 461) that the 

 Scottish Meteorological Society recognises the im- 

 portance of the effect of wind upon the barometer. I 

 assume that the gradient, the density, and all other 

 sources of error had been fully corrected for before con- 

 cluding the existence of the large effect attributed to the 

 wind on Ben Nevis. 



There certainly is a purely local and dynamic effect of 

 the wind on the barometer due to the exposure, and for 

 which there must be found some method of correction or 

 elimination before we can proceed much farther in baro- 

 metry : this effect has been independently reasoned out 

 by G. K. Gilbert ("A New Method, c^c," 1883), and has 

 been discussed by Prof. H. A. Hazen {Annual Report, 

 C.S.O., 1882, p. 897), and by Mr. Clayton and others in 

 recent numbers of Science, but its existence was long 

 since demonstrated by Sir Henry James {Transactions 

 Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, vol. xx., 1853), whose memoir 

 seems to have been quite lost sight of by meteorologists. 



The suction of wind on tubes, cowls, and chimneys was 

 investigated by Ewbank {Journal of the Franklin Insti- 

 tute, 1842), Wyman {Proceedings of the American Aca- 

 demy, Boston, 1848), Fletcher {B.A.S. Reports, 1S67 and 

 1869), Magius (Copenhagen, 1875?), Holten (Copen- 

 hagen, Oversigt Vidensk-Sehkabs, 1877), and was used 

 by Hagemann as the basis of his anemometer ; it was 

 Hagemann's memoir (Copenhagen, 1876, translation will 

 appear in I'an Nostrand's Mi^gazine, Dec. 18S6) that sug- 

 gested a method of determining and correcting for the 

 amount of this important effect, whose existence had long 

 'been known to me. This method is sketched out in 

 \\\^ Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer, U.S.A., 

 1882, p. 99, where I state that a close determination 

 simultaneously of both dynamic wind-pressure and static 

 air-pressure is probably attainable by exposing above the 

 roof, side by side, a Pitot tube facing toward the wind 

 and a vertical tube over which the wind blows. Close 

 the lower ends of these tubes and place within each an 

 aneroid barometer, and the latter will record respectively 

 the static pressure plus the effect of the wind-velocity and 

 the static pressure minus the wind's effect. A stop-cock, 

 cutting off' at will communication between the aneroids 



