344 



NA TURE 



\Feb. lo, li 



there the explosion ceased. " The last statement was not called 

 in question by anyone, and stands unimpeached. 



Those witnesses who would not go the length of saying that 

 coal-dust alone in the absence of fire-damp had caused the 

 explosion, had no explanation of their own to offer. The " out- 

 burst of gas," the cry \\ hich used to be so often adopted in 

 similar cases, was not entertained by anyone in this case. So'iie 

 of the witnesses were unable to accept the coal-dust theory on 

 account of preconceived notions regarding it ; others had read in 

 books and papers certain statements which prevented them from 

 adopting it ; and one (Mr. Lishman, the mana^ter of Elemore 

 Colliery) had made experiments, with an apparatus similar to 

 one of mine, which did not lead to conclusive results. With 

 these conflictinij opinions before them, the jui-y arrived at the 

 conclusion that the men had been killed by an explosion, but, 

 with the characteristic caution of men of the North, they 

 refrained from stating what it was that had exploded. 



Cardiff, February 3 W. Gallowav 



Abnormality in the Urostyle of the Common Frog 



. Attention has recently been drawn to abnormalities in the 

 vertebral column of Rana. (See B )urne, Quarterly Journal 

 0/ Mil ivseopical Science. ]!a\\.\a.\\' 1884; Ho^es, Anatomischer 

 Anzei^er, I Jahrsjang, 18S6, Nr.'ii ; Lloyd Morgan, Nature, 

 November 1SS6. ) One form of such abnormality is the addition 

 of a supernumerary (tenth) vertebra. 



I wish here to record the occurrence, in the skeleton of a large 

 Rana lernporaria, of an abnormal urostyle, bearing at its anterior 

 end a larger (right) and a smaller (left) transverse process. These 

 are shown in the accompanying figures. Fig. 2 shows a tendency, 



in the dorsal moiety, towards a segmentation of the urostyle and 

 and the separation of a supernumerary vertebra. The coccygeal 

 foramina lie just behind the transverse processes. 



This case is interesting as showing an incompletely separated 

 tenth vertebra, and as bringing an abnormal Rnna into relation 

 with a normal Discoglossus. C. Lloyd Morgan' 



University College, Bristol 



The Cambridge Cholera Fungus 



I HAVE read with much intei'est the correspondence on the 

 above subject in your issue of January 27 (p. 295). In the new 

 edition of my work on bacteriologv, to be issued, I hope, 

 before many days, will be found the following statement : — 



"At a meeting of the Physiological .Society, held May 15, 

 1886, at Cambrictife, a preliminary communication was made 

 upon the investigations in Spain, referred to in the first edition 

 of this work. The observations made by Roy, Brown, and 

 Sherrington rather tend, in the opinion of the author, to confirm 

 Koch's views. Comma-bacilli were found to be present in some 

 cases iu enormous numbers, and the frequency "f their occur- 

 rence led these observers to believe that they must bear some 

 relation to the disease. At the same time, as they failed to find 

 them in all cases, they regarded the existence of a causal rela- 

 tion as not proven. They failed to find the Naples bacterium or 

 the small straight bacillus noted by Klein, but they drew atten- 

 tion to certain peculiar mycelium-like threads in the mucous 

 membrane of the intestines. These organisms, however, judging 

 from a preparation stained with methylene-blue which was 

 exhibited at the meeting, appeared to the author to much more 

 closely resemble some of the involution-forms of comma-bacilli, 

 filaments a masses globiileuscs, figured by Van Erme 'gem, than 

 anything else he had seen. Yet assuming these peculiar structures 

 to bel .ng, as described, to some species of Chytridiaceie, it is 

 very doubtful whether they can be considered to be of any 

 significance. Methylene-blue has been employed by Koch and 



others, including the author, for staining sections of the intestine 

 from cholera cases, and had they been constantly present, it is 

 hardly possible that such striking objects could have been over- 

 looked. Again, we must bear in mind that hyphomycetous fungi 

 have been found occasionally to occur saprophytically in the 

 intestinal canal, as well as in the lungs, external auditory meatus, 

 and elsewhere. We must, however, wait before expressing a 

 more definite opinion, until the Report of these observers is 

 published in full." 



This, I think, may explain Mr. Gardiner's difficulty. Very 

 probably the same preparation was shown to him, as his second 

 opinion coincides with the conclusion I arrived at last May. I 

 have now before me the Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. 

 247, and I am greatly puzzled by the illustrations, for they cer- 

 tainly appear to repi-esent a branching mycelium, and do not in 

 the least recall to my mind the preparation which I had an 

 opportunity of examining. Edgar Crooksiiank 



Eastljourne, January 31 



Low Barometric Readings 



Ln a Note in Nature of December 16 (p. 157) you observe 

 that the barometric readin.; of 27 '333 inches (reduced to sea- 

 level) recorded at Ochtertyre, Perthshire, on January 26, 1884, 

 is the lowest observed by man anywhere on the land surface of 

 the globe. This, however, is not the case. The cyclone which 

 on the morning of September 22, 1885, swept over False Point, 

 on the coast of Orissa, gave the lower readings 27'I35 at the 

 beginning of the central calm, and 27'I54 half an hour later 

 (both readings reduced to 32' and sea-level). These readings 

 are perfectly authentic, the instrument being a Casella's obser- 

 vatory standard (on Fortin's principle) that has been verified with 

 the Calcutta standard and is corrected to that standard, which is 

 001 1" higher than the Kew standa'd. Its elevation above the 

 sea, 20'6 feet, has been determined by spirit-level ; and the 

 observer, Mr. Workman, is one of the best of those who keep 

 a regular meteorological register for this department. The above 

 are the lowest of a series of readings, taken at intervals through- 

 out the storm, which was then travelling at the rate of thirteen 

 miles an hour. 



The srorm will be long remembered as that in which the 

 settlement of Hookeytollah, six miles to the n irth of False Point 

 lighthouse, together with its inhabitants, was swept away by the 

 storm-wave accompanying the cyclone. At False Point station 

 the water rose 22 feet above mean sea-level directly after the 

 passage of the storm centre. The country inundated lay to the 

 north of the lighthouse, and is a low-lying alluvial tract from 4 

 to 5 feet above mean sea-level, intersected by a network of salt- 

 water tidal creeks. 



The destruction that ensued was very great. Including the 

 small settlement of Hookeytollah, some two thousand house- 

 holds were swept away, representing a loss of from six to ten 

 thousand ouls. Crops valued at ten lakhs of rupees (loo.ocxi/.) 

 were irretrievably damaged and lost ; the wells and tanks of 

 drinking-water were rendered unfit for use ; and about 60,000 

 acres of land rendered unfit for cultivation for two or three years 

 to come. But even this is very sjiall m comparison with the 

 destructive effects of the Calcutta cyclone of October 5, 1864, 

 and those of the Backerganj cyclone of November I, 1876. 



Henkv F. Blanford 



Indian Meteorological Office, Calcutta, January 6 



Magnetic Theory 



Mr. Watson .asks. What is the physical evidence in favour 

 of the existence of A, B, C, and a, j3, 7 ? With regard to the 

 former the evidence, derived from the permanence of the mag- 

 netisation in a small piece of a hard steel magnet, seems to me 

 almost conclusive ; while the following consideration tells very 

 strongly in favour of a, /3, 7. 



To determine the mechanical force and couple acting on a 

 magnetic element placed in a magnetic field in air, we treat it 

 as consisting of two equal and opposite poles very near together, 

 and find the resultant of the forces on the-e tao poles. It may 

 be proved without difficulty that the same process may be used 

 to find the mechanical force and couple, arising from magnetic 

 causes, acting on an element within the m i-.s of a magnei. In 

 the first case we may, of course, employ either a, 3, 7, or a, h, c, 

 as the forces acting on a unit pole. But in the second ca>e we 



