Aprit 8, 1915] 
NATURE 

ponderating commercial interests They represent 
this agreement as a practical surrender of Spitsbergen 
to Russia, which they insist has practically no claim 
to the country.. In the development of the coal- 
mining the American interests are important though 
localised, and are of less value than the British. The 
authors urge that in consequence of the growing 
commercial development of Spitsbergen some definite 
government must be established, and they claim that 
many of those interested in the country consider its 
interests would be best served by the establishment of 
a British protectorate. 
A Society of Vulcanology has recently been founded 
in connection with the University of Catania. The 
objects of the society are to collect accounts and 
photographs of the voleanic phenomena of Etna and 
encourage generally the study of vulcanology. We 
have received the first four numbers of the Pubblica- 
sioni issued by the society. They include papers by 
Prof. G. Platania on the recent eruptions of Etna and 
on a proposal for the international organisation for the 
study of volcanoes. 
Tue well-known Vesuvian Observatory was built in 
1841. Its first director, the physicist Melloni, was 
removed shortly after taking office, on account of his 
action in political movements. The ‘observatory then 
remained closed until 1852, when Palmieri obtained 
permission to make use of it for his own investiga- 
tions. Four years later he was appointed director by 
the Neapolitan Government, though regular observa- 
tions only became possible when he was provided with 
an assistant at the close of 1863. Four of the six 
papers which appear in the last five numbers of the 
Bollettino of the Italian Seismological Society, relate 
to Vesuvian phenomena and to work done in the 
observatory since the latter date (vol. xviii., pp. 87-338). 
Mr. A. Malladra studies the rainfall of Vesuvius 
during the fifty years 1863-1913, and the effects of 
voleanic gases on vegetation. He also describes the 
seismographs and seismoscopes in the observatory and 
various chambers in the neighbourhood. Some of 
these are of modern Italian construction and are 
capable of recording strong earthquakes in all parts 
of the world. An important paper is that by Mr. C. 
Cappello on the variations in the altitude of Vesuvius 
from 1631 to 1906, and in the outline of the mountain 
in the years 1911 to 1914. After the eruption of 1906, 
the greatest height of the crater rim was 4o13 ft. on 
the west-south-west side, the least 3619 ft. on the 
opposite side, and the greatest diameter of the crater 
about 2395 ft. 
A pLot of ground covering seventy-five acres, which 
includes the remarkable Green Lake near Jamesville, 
N.Y., with its series of abandoned cataracts, rock 
channels, and dry plunge-basins, has been given to 
the New York State Museum by Mrs. Mary Clark 
Thompson, of New York, and presented in the name 
of her father, Myron H. Clark, a former governor of 
that State, and by her desire it is to be known as the 
“Clark Reservation.”” The significance of the con- 
formation of the new reservation has, says Dr. J. M. 
NO. 2371, VOL. 95] 
s i: too ft. 
Sicily and specimens of the materials ejected, and to | 

Clarke, in Science, been worked out by Prof. Fairchild 
and Mr. E. C. Quereau. In the course of Prof. Fair- 
child’s work upon the Pleistocene geology of New 
York State, he demonstrated the accuracy of Mr. 
Quereau’s suggestion that in the retreat of the ice 
mantle the outflow of the glacial waters was by way 
of great rivers moving eastward into the Mohawk- 
Hudson drainage, and in the Green Lake one of these 
streams cut its rock gorge in the limestones of the 
Helderberg escarpment and left a series of plunge- 
basins beneath great cataracts which surpassed the 
dimensions, as they must have equalled the dignity 
and grandeur, of Niagara. The lake is surrounded 
on all but its eastern side by an amphitheatre of sheer 
limestone cliffs rising to a height of nearly 200 ft., 
and the depth of the lake is stated to be not less than 
Water of a deep emerald hue still fills this 
ancient plunge-basin, without visible outlet or inlet. 
A VALUABLE investigation of the ‘Absorption, Re- 
flection, and Dispersion Constants of Quartz’? has 
been carried out by Mr. W. W. Coblentz, and published 
as Bulletin No. 237 of the Washington Bureau of 
Standards. Unlilke fluorite, quartz shows a marked 
absorption in the infra-red at 2, and becomes prac- 
tically: opaque beyond 3; but from 0-25, in the 
ultra-violet to 1-7 in the infra-red it is almost per- 
fectly transparent in thicknesses up to 3 cm. Thus, 
after allowing for losses by reflection at the interface 
between quartz and air, the transmission is actually 
found to be 100 per cent., if an allowance of 2 parts 
per rooo is made for experimental error. The 
absorption does not appear to be affected by the 
direction in which the radiations pass relatively to 
the optic axis of the quartz. 
In the Annals of the Association of American Geo- 
graphers, vol. iv., Prof. de Courcy Ward gives an 
excellent account of the general features of American 
weather regarded from the point of view of climate. 
Although climate is usually defined as the average of 
weather, the irregularities of weather, the variations 
from day to day, are in some respects more significant 
than averages: in addition to averages, we require 
frequencies and rates of change to get even an ap- 
proximately true representation of climate. Prof. 
Ward shows how in winter the controlling factor in 
America is the non-periodic variation arising from the 
passage of cyclones and anti-cyclones: the storm con- 
trol, he calls it expressively. In summer, on the other 
hand, the non-periodic variations are less dominant 
than the regular diurnal changes: storm-control is 
subordinate to solar-control. The paper is illustrated 
by diagrams showing the different paths of cyclones 
and anticyclones and the changes in the weather as 
the cyclones and anticyclones cross the country. The 
distribution about the cyclonic centres is illustrated 
for different seasons, and the changes which take place 
at a fixed spot as the cyclones pass over it are shown 
by reproducing curves from self-recording instruments. 
Tue February number of the Journal of the Royal 
Microscopical Society contains a paper which Mr. 
J. E. Barnard read before the society in December 
last on the possibility of utilising Réntgen rays in 
