62 
NATURE 
[Marci 21, 1912 
librarian embodied it in a recommendation which he 
laid before the Public Libraries Committee, which re- 
solved that the Public Library should stop talking in 
the following :—London Mathematical Society Pro- 
ceedings; Journal de. Mathématiques; Quarterly 
Journal of Mathematics; Fortschritte der Mathe- 
matik; Mathematische Annalen; and should take 
instead: Annali di Matematica: Tortolini; Bulletin 
de la Société Mathématique de France; Atti dei 
Lincei; Zeitschrift fiir Mathematik: Schlémilch; 
Giornale di Matematiche: Battaglini. 
The Public Library periodicals were to be stored so 
as to be accessible to Armstrong College readers, duly 
accredited, for consultation in the library and for use 
at home. For future volumes of the first set of 
periodicals, properly accredited Public Library readers 
were to have similar access to Armstrong College 
volumes. 
A copy of the resolution was sent to the Library 
Committee of Armstrong College, which likewise 
adopted it. The curators of Armstrong College 
Library (Profs. Bedson and Duff) and the public 
librarian were then in a position to carry the scheme 
into practical working. They decided the appropriate 
dates for discontinuing old periodicals and for start- 
ing new ones; they arranged that the students of 
each library should be admitted to corresponding 
privileges in the other library; and they drafted and 
printed the necessary regulations and forms. 
As the scheme was found to work: satisfactorily for 
the mathematical section, the committees concerned 
authorised extension of the idea. The officers accord- 
ingly made further revisions in other subjects, at 
meetings which they held from time to time. The 
classical section was first dealt with, and the re- 
sponsibility of providing the leading periodicals was 
allocated to one institution or the other. Other 
sections were dealt with in due course. In this way 
all the more important journals taken by the two 
institutions (scientific, historical, philosophical) have 
been assigned to one or other of the libraries, with 
the result that unnecessary duplication of expendi- 
ture is now avoided. Naturally, a certain amount of 
duplication is still necessary, since a single copy will 
not always answer the needs of students. But the 
general result is that a good deal of money has been 
set free, and has been used for covering fresh ground. 
The same principle has also, to some extent, been 
adopted as regards buying expensive books, of which 
one copy in the town is sufficient. It may be added 
that, as a side issue of this cooperation, there will 
shortly appear, in a catalogue which the Public 
Library is issuing, the titles of a number of interest- 
ing books on classical subjects which the library of 
Armstrong College possesses, but which are not 
duplicated in the Public Library. 
Bastt ANDERTON. 
Public Library, Neweastle-upon-Tyne. 
Mars and a Lunar Atmosphere. 
In his interesting letter on the above subject in 
Nature of March 7, Mr. Whitmell is quite correct 
where he mentions that the moon was at full on 
October 16, 1902, when, according to my note, Prof. 
Luther observed an occultation of Mars. In fact, 
there was a total eclipse that night, and that was the 
phenomenon which Prof. Luther actually observed. 
The abridgment of a previously condensed transla- 
tion led to the substitution of the misleading 
‘**similar,’? and I must apologise to Mr. Whitmell for 
the trouble this may have caused him in looking the 
matter up. Prof. Luther on that occasion observed ‘a 
section of a dark concentric ring bordering the small 
NO. 2212, VOL. 89| 
| 
crescent of the nearly totally eclipsed moon, and this: 
he suggested might be caused by the absorption of a 
fairly extensive atmosphere. 
Tue WRITER OF THE NOTE. 
Observed Fall of an Aérolite near St. Albans. 
UnbeER the above heading in the issue of Nature 
for last week I reported upon the circumstances and 
other details of a supposed fall of a meteorite during 
the storm of March 4, as described to me by an 
| observer, Mr. H. L. G. Andrews, at Colney Heath, 
near St. Albans. I have now submitted the stone for 
examination to Dr. George T. Prior, of the British 
Museum (Natural History), who informs me that it is: 
not of meteoric origin. G. E. BULLEN. 
Hertfordshire Museum, St. Albans, March 16. 
THE INFLUENCE OF WEATHER ON BEES. 
LTHOUGH all who are interested in bees,, 
either from the scientific or the commercial 
and practical sides, are agreed that the weather 
plays a most important part in their lives, very: 
little appears to have been done to ascertain the 
| exact effects which different kinds of weather have 
upon them. The reason may well be that those 
who are interested in bees from a practical point of 
view would not be able to devote the time necessary 
to the making of elaborate observations of the 
weather and the weighing of colonies daily, to say 
nothing of the laborious calculation necessary to 
ascertain the results of the observations. 
In the autumn of 1910, the so-called Isle of 
Wight disease was raging very fiercely in the 
southern counties, and to account for the wide- 
spread character of the scourge, many beekeepers. 
advanced the idea that a succession of bad seasons 
was responsible to a great extent, if not entirely, 
for the trouble. 
It seemed to me that the proper course to pursue 
was to make a long series cf observations in order 
to find out what particular kinds of weather were 
most conducive to the well-being of bees or the 
reverse. I therefore commenced, in April of 1911, 
a series of experiments. Commencing with a 
strong colony, which weighed with its hive 39 lb. 
| on April 20, I began to weigh it every evening, 
and on May s, for the sake of comparison, I also 
weighed a weak colony. This only weighed with 
its hive 364 lb., the other being on that date 
8 lb. heavier. The bees were hybrids, an excel- 
lent and good-tempered variety, eminently suit- 
able for experiments, though not the best of honey 
gatherers. 
The queens of both colonies were sisters, that 
| of the strong one having been raised in 1g09, and 
that of the weak one in 1910. It is pretty uni- 
versally agreed among beekeepers that a queen in 
her second year is at her best, and according to 
this idea, which is quite sound, the weaker colony 
should have done better than the other, but there 
is a factor in the situation which is really more 
important than the age of the queen. This is the 
amount of stores possessed by the colony at the 
commencement of the season. Should there be 
a shortage of stores, breeding is much slower ; 
