APRIL I, 1915] 
NATURE 
125 

Tue Kew Bulletin (No. I., 1915)-contains an account 
of additions to the gardens, museums, library, and her- 
barium during the past year. Among many interesting 
presentations to the gardens the most valuable was the 
fine collection of botanical orchids presented by Lady 
Lawrence. Collections of filmy ferns in excellent con- 
dition have also been received from the Director of 
Agriculture, Jamaica, Dr. L. Cockayne, New Zealand, 
and the Assistant-Director of Agriculture, Trinidad. 
The herbarium has acquired no fewer than 25,500 
specimens as donations or exchanges, and 13,500 by 
purchase. Among the former, Mr. Crossland’s collec- 
tion of British fungi, with drawings, presented by 
the Bentham Trustees, is one of the most important 
additions. The Bentham Trustees have also enriched 
the library with several rare books, and Miss Will- 
mott has presented a copy of her fine work on ‘‘ The 
Genus Rosa.” 
Tue Canadian Department of Mines has published 
a Memoir (No. 20-E) upon the goldfields of Nova 
Scotia by Mr. W. Malcolm. This forms a large 
volume of some 330 pages, and gives a detailed 
description of the various gold-producing areas, which 
together include about one-half of the entire province 
of Nova Scotia. These descriptions are mainly of 
local interest, but a good deal will be found of import- 
ance to the student of ore deposits, owing to the 
fact that these particular deposits present a number of 
specially interesting features. The report shows 
clearly that the veins belong mainly to the type known 
as bedded yeins—that is to say, mineral veins which 
are interstratified with, and generally conformable to, 
the country rocks, though some fissure veins that 
cross the formations are also met with. To the 
former class belong the numerous saddle veins, and 
especially those curious corrugated saddle veins, to 
which the name of ‘barrel quartz’’ is given locally ; 
the peculiar structure of these veins has long attracted 
the attention of geologists. The memoir has been 
compiled with great care, the detailed statistics of 
production being amongst its most welcome features, 
and it forms a very valuable contribution to our 
knowledge of these goldfelds. 
THE wet winter of 1914-15 is dealt with in Symons’s 
Meteorological Magazine for March in a preliminary 
way, it being as yet too early to prepare any com- 
plete account of the rainfall. Taking the British 
Isles as a whole, the four months, November and 
December, 1914, and January and February, 1915, 
are said to have been all wet, and of these December 
and February were, relatively to the average, the 
wettest. November rainfall was below the average 
in the south of Ireland and in the south-west of 
Wales, while December was wet everywhere, especially 
in the south. More than two and a half times the 
average fell in the south-east of England, and more 
than three times the average in Sussex. The rainfall 
of January was double the average at a few stations 
in England, again chiefly in the south-east. In 
February more than twice the average rainfall was 
recorded in the south of England and Wales, in York- 
shire, and in the south and east of Scotland. The 
rainfall for the four months was 168 per cent. of the 
NO. 2370, VOL. 95| 

average over England and Wales, 139 per cent. over 
Scotland, 150 per cent. over Ireland, and over the 
British Isles as a whole it was 155 per cent. of the 
average. No previous winter seems to have been so 
wet. In the Thames Valley the general rainfall for 
the four months was 19-19 in., which is 205 per cent. 
of the average, and previous records, which exist for 
thirty-two years, show no aggregate general rainfall 
for four months over the Thames Valley so much as 
double the average. 
THE stability relations of the ternary system 
CaO-Al.O,-SiO, are studied by Mr. G. A. Rankin 
in the American Journal of Science, vol. xxix (1915), 
p- 1. Photographs of models, due to the ingenuity 
of Mr. England, are given; in these, the horizontal 
positions represent the compositions of the ternary 
mixtures and the vertical measures give the corre- 
sponding melting temperatures. The result has some 
resemblance to the surface of a mountainous country, 
the peaks of which represent the melting points of 
compounds stable at their melting points. The base 
is an equilateral triangle, the heights above its angles 
being the respective melting points of the three mem- 
bers of the system, i.e. CaO, 2570°; Al.O;, 2050°; 
SiO. (cristobalite), 1625° 
Tue Washington Bureau of Standards has carried 
out a useful investigation of the familiar ‘‘ basic lead 
acetate solutions.”” Mr. R. F. Jackson, in Bulletin 
No. 232, has given a complete equilibrium diagram 
for the system H,O|]PbO|PbC,H,O,. In addition to 
the free base, Pb(OH),, and the neutral acetate, 
PbC,H,O,, two double-compounds may exist in equi- 
librium with the solution. The most important of 
these has the formula PbC,H,O,,2Pb0,4H,O, but 
there is a narrow range of compositions within which 
the compound 3PbC,H,O,,PbO,3H.O, is the stable 
phase. 
Tue chemical and mechanical relations of iron, 
| cobalt, and carbon formed the subject of a paper read 
by Prof. J. O. Arnold at the Institution of Mechanical 
Engineers on March 19. The paper gives account of 
research work on the influence of cobalt, from which 
it appears that the tensile strength increases with the 
percentage of cobalt present. In annealing tests, with 
2-68 per cent. of cobalt present, very little of the com- 
bined carbon was precipitated as graphite; two-thirds 
of the combined carbon passed into the graphitic form 
in specimens containing 5-5 per cent. cobalt, and in 
specimens having a higher percentage of cobalt, 
annealing caused the whole of the combined carbon 
to pass into the graphitic form. Dr. Arnold, in his 
remarks, pointed out that there were three true steels : 
(1) the old iron and carbon steel; (2) the true iron and 
carbon steel with 5 per cent. of vanadium; in this 
steel carbide of iron ceased to exist, carbide of vana- 
dium is present; (3) iron and carbon steel having 
II's per cent. of tungsten; the tungsten expels the 
carbide of iron, giving the true tungsten steel. Iron 
and carbon steel hardens at 730° C., vanadium steel 
at a temperature just before the melting point 
(1450° C.), and in tungsten steel hardening starts at 
850° C., and is not completed until nearly 1200° C. 
