ty 
NI 
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streams, such as those which culminated approxi- 
mately in 1820, and in 1850, lasting, perhaps with 
occasional slight recession, until well past 1860, must 
be due to a more general cause. For determining this 
the records, accumulated by the Commission Inter- 
nationale des Glaciers, will be ultimately very valu- 
able. 
BuLLeTINs 41 and 42 of the Agricultural Research 
Institute, Pusa, deal with investigations on sugar- 
vielding plants in India. In No. 4r Mr. H. E. Annett 
deals with sweet sorghum and the variation in com- 
position of this crop during growth, giving extensive 
and valuable data resulting from experiments and 
analyses. He concludes that owing to the high glucose 
ratio and other difficulties, sweet sorghum is not worth 
growing in India as a source of sugar, but that it 
seems likely to prove a valuable source of fodder, 
being a fairly quick-growing crop; also that soon 
after flowering the plant shows no increase in total 
weight or in sugar, hence it should not be allowed to 
grow beyond this stage, after which its value as 
fodder decreases. Bulletin 42, by Mr. G. Clarke and 
others, deals with came-crushing. It is pointed out 
that in order to ascertain the value of a variety of 
sugar-cane and the possibility of its succeeding as a 
field crop in any given district, it is necessary to 
investigate in the field the general crop characters; 
in the laboratory the sugar content and quality of the 
juice; and in the mill what proportion of juice and 
total sugar can be extracted, and the cost of doing so. 
Tabulated details aré given, representing the results 
of a long-continued series of experiments on sugar- 
crushing and the sucrose yields of different varieties 
of cane; and the authors conclude that future increase 
in area under cane in the United Provinees and in 
number of mills will depend upon the introduction of 
cheaper and quicker methods of dealing with the 
produce, the present crop being as much as the 
bullock-power of the provinces can deal with, and the 
industry unlikely to increase unless some cheaper 
form of crushing is introduced. 
Tue general deficiency of rainfall in March as shown 
by Symons’s Meteorological Magazine for April in the 
tentative table for the British Isles is of more than 
ordinary interest. The wet spell which was so char- 
acteristic of the recent winter has fortunately come 
to an end. Statistics previously given by the British 
Rainfall Organisation show that the aggregate rain- 
fall for the four months—November, 1914, to 
February, 1915—was 168 per cent. of the average over 
England and Wales, and more than 200 per cent. of 
the average over the Thames Valley. The rainfall 
table for March shows a totally different result. Rain 
measurements are given for fifty-five stations scat- 
tered over the entire kingdom, and of these only five 
have the total rainfall for the month in excess of the 
average; they occur along the east coast of England 
and in the north of Scotland. The greatest excess 
from the normal occurs at Gordon Castle, where the 
rainfall was 147 per cent. of the average, and at no 
other station was the percentage of the average more 
than 1ro. At twenty-one stations out of fifty-five the 
rainfall was less than 50 per cent. of the average, 
and at two stations, Launceston and Killarney, the 
NOnE2 3/7 Se VOl. 05 )| 
NATURE 

[May 6, 1915 

rainfall was less than 25 per cent. of the average. 
For the British Isles as a whole the rainfall was 
58 per cent. of the average, whilst for the several parts 
of the United Kingdom the percentages are: England 
and Wales, 54; Scotland, 79; and Ireland, 40. 
Circutar No. 24, issued by the Bureau of Standards, 
contains a list of the papers which have appeared in 
each of the ten published volumes of the Bulletin 
and a classified list of the papers, with a short account 
of the contents of each. The Bureau also announces 
that in future the Bulletin will be supplied to sub- 
scribers at one dollar a volume unbound, plus 50 cents 
for postage to this country. Subscriptions should be 
sent in advance to the Superintendent of Documents, 
Washington, D.C. We have no doubt there are many 
in this country who will take this opportunity of 
getting a valuable series of papers which up to the 
present could only be found in the libraries of scientific 
societies. 
In a paper read before the Royal Society of Arts 
on April 34, and published in the Journal of the 
Society for April 18, Mr. T. Thorne Baker gave a short 
account of the industrial uses to which radium is 
at present put. Radium residues left over after treat- 
ment of the ores may or may not improve the growth 
of plants, according to the materials other than radium 
contained in them, but if the metals have been re- 
moved during the process of extraction of the radium 
the residue in suitable quantities appears to facilitate 
growth. These residues may also be utilised in the 
treatment of disease and as bactericides. In the dis- 
cussion which followed the reading of the paper, it 
was pointed out that in much of the plant growth 
work which had been done with radium, sufficient 
care had not been exercised to enable it to be affirmed 
with certainty that the increased growth found in 
some cases was not due to the nitrates and phosphates 
in the residues, rather than to the radium. Until this 
question is settled, there appears no justification for 
the use of radium in horticulture. 
’ 
AN account of ‘‘ Réntgen Motion Pictures”’ is given 
in the Scientific American for April 3. An illustration 
of the apparatus designed for the purpose of producing 
them, by F. Dessaur, is also given, together with a 
number of somewhat indefinite results. During the 
meeting in London of the International Congress of 
Medicine, we had the advantage of seeing this  re- 
markable arrangement in action, and we brought 
away the impression that it added at least a new 
terror for the patient who has to come in contact 
with the already rather alarming armament of a 
modern radiologist. While it is certainly a model of 
ingenuity, the plate-changing operation is accompanied 
by a good deal of noise and clatter, and there is no 
doubt that beyond fixation of the image little or no 
more is to be learned from the results than can be 
ascertained by an ordinary screen examination 
with a far simpler outfit. The apparatus, how- 
ever, is not without special significance to us in 
these days. To have brought it to perfection must 
have involved great expenditure of time and money, 
nor is it likely, on account of its price and size, to 
find a very ready sale. Yet this sort of thing is done 

