I50 



NA TURE 



[June 14, 1906 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for tliis or any other part of Satvre. 

 No notice is fallen of anonymous communications.] 



Inheritance of an Abnormality. 



A CASE of the heredity of an abnormality of the hand 

 may be of interest to some of your readers. 



A father and a mother with normal hands had a family 

 of three sons and seven daughters. The eldest son had an 

 abnormality of each hand, the second and third fingers 

 being apparently jointed to the same bone, and the third 

 daughter has a different abnormality, both hands being 

 affected. The accompanying skiagram, kindly taken for 

 me by Mr. J. J. Blake, of Onslow Road, Richmond, will 



show the character of this _ abnormality. All the remain- 

 ing children had normal hands. 



The eldest son had two children without abnormalities, 

 and the second son three children that were normal. The 

 eldest daughter had one son and. two daughters normal; 

 the son has two normal children, the first daughter one 

 child abnormal, and the second daughter two children 

 normal. 



Returning to the third daughter with the abnormal 

 hands, all her eight' children are normal ; the fourth 

 daughter has two normal children ; the fifth daughter has 

 two children abnormal and five normal ; the sixth has 

 three normal, and the seventh five normal children. 



There is no tradition of abnormalities in any of the 

 relations of the father or mother. It may be mentioned 

 that the husbands of the eldest and fifth daughters, some 



NO. 191 I, VOL. 74] 



of whose descendants are abnormal, are first cousins (not 

 first cousins of their wives). 



The following scheme may make the relationship more 

 clear (n signifies normal ; a, .'ibnormal ; and c, children) : — 



Father and Mother, both N. 

 Sons Daughters 



I I I 



son I 2 



I I 



May 30. 



Herbert McLeod. 



Thermometer Scales. 



A DECIDED disadvantage of the centigrade scale in meteor- 

 ology is the use of negative numbers for temperatures 

 below freezing point. In taking out means of months 

 where negative numbers occur the labour is doubled, and 

 other additional sources of error have to be avoided. 



The Fahrenheit scale is not so liable to this trouble, 

 but there arc other objections to its use. Both of these 

 scales might be superseded by a scale starting from absolute 

 zero, on which the temperature of melting ice is 350°. 

 Such a scale is compared in the following table : — 



" C. " F. • Positive 



The great advantage of this positive scale in meteorology 

 is that temperatures, except the most unusual, fall between 

 300° and 400°, so that temperature columns might be headed 

 "300° plus." On this scale water, under a pressure of 

 31-3 inches, boils at 480°, so that the most important 

 temperatures in phvsics are easy to remember. 



R. T. A. IxNES. 

 Government Observatory, Johannesburg, May 12. 



Solar 



id Lunar Halos. 



.An interesting halo refund the sun was seen a few miles 

 from here, on Dartmoor, from 7.30 p.m. to sunset on 

 June 7. The halo consisted of a double circle, the inner 

 one having an angular radius of about fifteen to twenty 

 degrees, with concentrations of light at the top and at the 

 right extremity — the bottom of the ring was below the 

 horizon, and the left extremity hidden by clouds — and a 

 concentrated ray from the sun to the top of the circle. 

 The outer circle was double the diameter of the inner one, 

 and much fainter. A similar halo round the moon (with 

 the exception of the outer circle) was observed the same 

 evening. Rowland .\. Earp. 



The Laboratorv, Buckfaslleigh, Devon, June 12. 



THE ROV.IL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH .4.VD 

 THE GOVERNMENT. 



'"THE great deputation on behalf of the Royal 

 •'■ Society of Edinburgh, which waited on the 

 Secretary for .Scotland at the Scottish Office in 

 Parliament .Square in Edinburgh on June i, stated 

 a strong case in favour of more liberal treatment 

 of the society by the Government. As one speaker 

 expressed it. they were met there on .Scottish soil, 

 indeed at the verv heart of the ancient metropolis 

 of the kingdom of Scotland, to confer with their own 

 Secretary of .State, and to urge the claim of a society 



