344 



NA TURE 



[August lo, 1905 



and the storm centre invariably passes to the south of that 

 spot. It was but natural, therefore, to suppose that the 

 storm came from the W. or W'.S.W. of the Leeuwin, and 

 the winter and summer disturbances have been regarded 

 as two distinct varieties. Within the last two years, how- 

 ever, circumstances have been noted which seem to show 

 that there is no real distinction between the two. In 

 July, 1904, I first directed public attention to the fact that 

 certain of our winter storms could be distinctly traced 

 do\i.'n the west coast, affecting N.W. districts first, and 

 then travelling in a S. or S.S.E. direction. I have gone 

 somewhat fully into this matter in my " notes " on the 

 climate of Western .Australia for the month of July, 1904, 

 and when once the fact has been indicated it becomes easy 

 to find numbers of cases when winter storms can be seen 

 to have a considerable southerly component of motion. 

 Only a few days ago, for instance, a disturbance struck 

 the N.W. coast in about lat. 20°, and travelled in a S.E. 

 direction across the State, giving rain just along the fringe 

 of our most eastern settlements, probably much heavier in 

 the interior desert, and causing a heavy downpour in 

 South .Australia from the centre to the south coast. .Again 

 on .May 20 a disturbance approached the N.W. cape, 

 causing rain there, ne.xt day being definitely located in the 

 ocean a little to the S.W. of Perth, and certainly consider- 

 ably north of Cape Leeuwin, then continued to travel 

 down the coast, rounded the Leeuwin, and behaved thence- 

 forward just like anv other winter disturbance. 



There is, therefore, plenty of evidence that " lows " do 

 travel down the Indian Ocean, even in the winter months, 

 in a southerly or S.E. direction towards Cape Leeuwin, 

 and probably all, or nearly all, of our storms come in this 

 way. If this be so, the charts on p. in are misleading. 

 Our rain certainly does not come mainly with a S.W. or 

 S. wind, nor is there (probably) any stationary " high " 

 as marked. Instead there is a series of " highs " moving 

 towards our west coast, broken up by a series of " lows," 

 which pass between and make for the extreme S.W. corner 

 of .Australia. The weather which we .specially desire to 

 predict comes with these " lows." .Several things follow 

 from this. One is that the .Amsterdam and St. Paul 

 Islands are far too inuch to the southward to be of any 

 use to us for practical forecasting purposes, though a few 

 years' records from there would be e.xceedingly valuable. 

 Another is that Dr. Lockyer's theory about the S.E. trades 

 and S.W. monsoon requires some modification, though 

 it is very probable that the Indian and .Australian 

 weathers are inter-dependent and require to be studied 

 together. .A third is that Sir John Eliot's proposal for 

 an Empire study of meteorology ought to be acted upon 

 as soon as possible, and all our observations coordinated 

 to some definite purpose. A fourth is that, failing this, 

 Aijstralian meteorologists ought to make every effort to 

 bring about the establishment of a central .Australian 

 bureau for the study of scientific meteorology, as recom- 

 mended at the recent conference held in .Adelaide. 



W. Ernest Cooke. 



Perth Observatory, Western Australia, July 3. 



DUTY-FREE ALCOHOL. 

 TLJOW far the trade in synthetic colours and fine 

 -•- chemicals has been lost to the country throug-h 

 the heavy customs restrictions placed upon the use of 

 alcohol is a question which has been apitatintj manu- 

 facturers for many years past. On the one hand, we 

 are told that the entire chemical trade has been 

 diverted from our shores because of the hig-h cost of 

 alcohol ; on the other, that the alcohol question has 

 very little to do with the matter. .After the agitation 

 for the u.se of duty-free alcohol had been going on 

 for some years, and owing to its increasing intensity 

 and to the pertinacity of a few, the Government in 

 the autumn of last year appointed a departmental 

 committee to take evidence in order to find out 

 whether the high duty on alcohol really was the 

 factor which caused the practical extinction of the 

 aniline dye industry and accounted for our inability 

 to found an industry in fine synthetical products. The 

 NO. 1867, VOL. 72] 



committee commenced to take evidence on November 

 8, igo4, and finished on February 17 of this year. 



More is heard about the loss of the synthetic colour 

 trade to the country than about the loss of any other 

 industry, or about the failure to establish new indus- 

 tries which flourish on Continental or American soil. 

 The loss of the coal-tar colour industry is variously 

 ascribed to incompetence on the part of our manu- 

 facturers and their failure to realise the iinportance 

 of employing — and paying for — highly trained scien- 

 tific chemists, to our patent laws, to trade protection 

 abroad, and to the excessive duty charged upon 

 alcohol in this country. The report with which we 

 are at present dealing has to do with the last question 

 — duty-free alcohol. .A careful perusal of the ques- 

 tions to and the answers of the witnesses before tlie 

 commission, which included most of the well-known 

 names in the coal-tar colour industry in this country, 

 does not convince one that this special industry has 

 been lost to the country owing to the high cost of 

 alcohol. 



The amount of alcohol used at the present day for 

 preparing the dyes is not very large. .At one time 

 many of the dyes were sold as alcoholic extracts, and 

 alcohol was somewhat largely used in the preparation 

 of the products. Since the introduction of the azo 

 dyes, however, alcohol is not nearly so largely em- 

 ployed as formerly. There are, indeed, certain dyes 

 in which the methyl or ethyl radical is introduced 

 during the process of manufacture, and these require 

 the employment of methyl or ethyl alcohol in their 

 preparation, and, of course, in this case the alcohol 

 cannot be recovered ; for example, the dyes in 

 which dimethyl aniline is the starting product. 

 British manufacturers who desire to make these 

 colours import all the dimethyl or diethyl aniline 

 from abroad. It came out, however, in the evidence 

 that one large aniline dye company which desired to 

 manufacture dimethyl aniline obtained Government 

 sanction to employ methyl alcohol mixed with one- 

 twentieth of I per cent, of mineral naphtha — " a con- 

 dition which the company stated would suit their pur- 

 poses." .Although from the evidence before the com- 

 mission it appeared that there was " a substantial 

 profit to be made upon the manufacture of dimethyl 

 aniline," for some reason or other it was never 

 manufactured. 



Reviewing the evidence of the different persons con- 

 nected with the coal-tar dye industry, one is brought 

 to the conclusion that, although the high price of 

 alcohol has militated against the success of the in- 

 dustry, yet there are other even more potent factors 

 which have prevented the industry being successful. 

 Manufacturers, with a few isolated exceptions, have 

 not even been successful in meeting Continental com- 

 petition in dyes which do not require the use of 

 alcohol. Prof. Green probably came very close to 

 the truth when he said, in replv to a question as to 

 what' lie considered the cause of the decline of the 

 coal-tar colour industry : — 



" They (the manufacturers) did not realise the 

 great importance of research ; the great importance 

 of theory. They expected to see an immediate result 

 from experiments, and if they did not get an imme- 

 diate result they considered that they were wasting 

 their money. They did not employ a sufficient num- 

 ber of research chemists, and thev did not pay those 

 research chemists they had to encourage them to re- 

 main. . . . There may be other contributory causes, 

 such as the patent laws and this question of the spirit." 



There seems to be a strong consensus of opinion " 

 that in the xylonite and gunpowder manufactory 

 leave to use pure alcohol is much to be desired. 

 Xylonite when made with methylated spirit is in- 

 clined to darken, and there is thus a difficulty in 



