98 NATURE 
[MarcH 25, 1915 


jealously guarding the habitats of the rarer plants, the 
Naturalists’ Union should do useful work. 
Tue Indian Forester for January, vol. xli., No. 1, 
contains a short account of the tali-pot palm (Corypha 
umbraculijera), which is indigenous in the Andamans 
and Southern India. Its uses are many; the pith is 
used for flour, some thirty headloads being yielded by 
one tree. The leaves, which were formerly used for 
writing upon, now serve for umbrellas and thatching, 
and the seeds are carved or made into buttons. At 
Honawar bats live under the protection of the leaves 
of the tali. When the lendi fruit (Calophyllum 
inophyllum) is ripe, the bats bring back large quanti- 
ties to their palm and drop the hard drupes. As these 
contain oil, which is much prized, the bats serve a 
useful purpose, and natives are planting the tali-pot 
palm in order to obtain oil in this easy manner. 
In an article reprinted from the Botanical Gazette, 
vol. lviii., No. 3, Dr. G. D. Fuller breaks new ground 
in plant ecology and presents results which, as in the 
case of much recent work in this subject, is of great 
interest to agriculturists and foresters as well as to 
botanists. He has made a detailed series of deter- 
minations at weekly intervals during the growing 
period (May to October) of the rate of evaporation 
and the amount of soil moisture in a series of plant 
communities which shows a gradual change or suc- 
cession from exposed sand vegetation to moist beech- 
maple forest on the sand dunes near Chicago. The 
determinations, extending over three years, are pre- 
sented in graphs; those of evaporation were taken 
with evaporimeters placed near the ground, those of 
soil moisture in the upper layers of the soil—in both 
cases the critical regions, since within them develop 
the seedlings which determine the character of the 
succeeding vegetation. The author introduces the 
term “ growth-water ”’ for the percentage of soil mois- 
ture in excess of that found by experiment to be pre- 
sent in the soil when wilting occurs in plants; and 
he finds that the differences in the ratio between 
evaporation and growth-water in the series of plant 
communities investigated are sufficient to be regarded 
as efficient factors in bringing about the succession 
or gradual change from the scanty drought-enduring 
(xerophytic) vegetation of the open sand to the mois- 
ture-loving (mesophytic) broad-leaved forest, which 
forms the climax of the series. 
In vol. xiv., part 1, of the Annals of the South 
African Museum Mr. George Arnold, of the Rhodesia 
Museum, Bulawayo, commences an illustrated mono- 
graph of the ants of South Africa, which it is claimed 
will form the first collective account of the (approxi- 
mately) three hundred known local species. Vol. xv., 
part 1, of the same is devoted to a continuation (part 7) 
of the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing’s account of South 
African Crustacea. Six species and two genera of 
Macrura are named as new, and certain emendations 
in pre-existing nomenclature suggested. 
THE association of geology, botany, and zoology in 
the domain of a State Survey is interestingly exempli- 
fied in the sixth biennial report of the Commissioners 
of the State Geological and Natural History Survey 
NO. 2369, VOL. 95] 


of Connecticut. The superintendent, Prof. W. N. 
Rice, points out the desirability of the maintenance 
of the survey as a permanent bureau of publication. 
Much of the work is done by men who are otherwise 
engaged for a large part of the year, and the annual 
appropriation of 1500 dollars may be considered 
modest for a State where a high level of general 
culture is ready to respond to scientific information. 
THE potash salts associated with the Cambrian rock- 
salt of the Cis-Indus Salt Range have been known 
since 1873; but a more complete examination of their 
extent has now been made by Dr. W. A. K. Christie 
(Records Geol. Survey of India, vol. xliv., 1914, 
p. 241). This author concludes, on account of the 
association of kieserite, sylvine, langbeinite, and 
rock-salt, that crystallisation finally took place under 
subterranean conditions at a temperature of about 
80° C. It is interesting to note that the very soluble 
potash-salts have been preserved where a fine clay 
with sand-grains, probably wind-borne, was formed 
across the deposits of the evaporating lagoon. 
AN interesting rock is described by Dr. du Toit 
from the slope of Ingeli, in the extreme south-west 
of Natal (Geological Survey of South Africa, Annual 
Report for 1913, p. 99). In a stratum about 15 ft. 
thick, pellets of graphite, which may be as much as 
an inch in length, lie in a ground of oligoclase, 
quartz, cordierite, enstatite, and biotite; this ground 
has in part a micropegmatitie structure. This unique 
rock is ascribed to the partial absorption of a car- 
bonaceous shale of the Ecca Series by an offshoot from 
the overlying intrusive sheet of norite. Kentallenite, 
the curious biotite-olivine-dolerite with soda-orthoclase, 
well known from its occurrence in Appin, is now 
recorded by Mr. S. K6ézu from Torigoé, Japan (Science 
Rep., Téhoku University, Sendai, Japan, vol. ii., 
1914, p. 1). 
Tue South Wales tornado of October 27, 1913, which 
involved some loss of life, has been discussed by the 
Meteorological Office in No. 11 of its Geophysical 
Memoirs (price 6d.). Dr. Shaw states that a scien- 
tific assistant attached to the office, Mr. H. Billett, 
was sent to the neighbourhood to collect information 
on the spot. A severe thunderstorm swept the west 
of England and Wales from the south of Devon to 
Cheshire, and developed locally into a tornado of 
exceptional violence. The storm was intense for a 
distance of about 11 miles up the Taff Valley in 
Glamorganshire, for about an equal distance in Shrop- 
shire, and for about 5 miles in Cheshire. For 
several days before and after the occurrence, a high- 
pressure system was situated over Central Europe, and 
there was a low barometer centred over the Atlantic. 
The wind over the region affected was mainly from 
south-east or south, with the temperature decidedly 
above the average, and the weather unsettled. The 
rainfall was almost wholly limited to the south-western 
and western districts of England. Practically no 
damage was done outside the narrow limits of the 
storm, which nowhere exceeded rooo ft. in width, 
but much destruction. was wrought in certain parts 
of the track. In Cheshire, where the storm’s track 
was about 450 ft. wide, the sound is described as that 
