356 



NATURE 



[May 20, 1909 



the state of the sky should be made on international days 

 was recommended. 



(4) 'Jhe importance of observatories for the study of the 

 upper air to be urged on all countries which do not possess 

 them. 



(5) M. de Massani's project to establish an upper-air 

 observatory on the plains of Hungary, near Kecskemet, 

 was endorsed. 



(6) It was resolved to bring to the notice of aero clubs 

 the importance of observations during ascents of manned 

 balloons for sport, &c. 



(7) Copies of traces of registering instruments are to be 

 exchanged between members of the commission if required. 



(8) Titles of new publications to be sent to Prof. 

 Assmann for publication and analysis in Fortschrittc der 

 Phystk, or to the U.S. Weather Bureau for the Monthly 

 IVeather Review. 



(q) Prof. Rotch's proposition to express the temperature 

 gradient as positive when the temperature decreases with 

 altitude was adopted. 



(10) Prof. Rotch's proposal that in the published observa- 

 tions of kite ascents simultaneous observations at ground- 

 level be given was adopted. 



(ii) The thanks of the commission to be sent to the 

 .Austrian Minister of War and to the Vienna Aero Club 'for 

 their assistance, and to other ^ Governments which have 

 encouraged the study of the upper air. 



(12) The thanks of the commission to be sent to the 

 Spanish Government for its promise to establish an 

 observatory on (he Peak of Teneriffe, and to the Spanish 

 military aeronauts and to the German Government for 

 aiding the project. 



(13) Various new members were elected — MM. Trabert, 

 Vmcent, Kleinschmidt, Bjerknes, Ryder, and Bamler ; the 

 directors of the observatories of' Irkutsk, Tiflis, and 

 Ekaterinburg; and several military aeronauts, including 

 Colonel Capper. 



(14) It was resolved that the next meeting of the com- 

 mission should be held in Vienna in the .autumn of iqia. 



. Besides the formal meetings of the congress, the 

 members were entertained on several occasions by the 

 Prince of Monaco. A lecture was given bv M. BouiV-e on 

 the oceanographical work that has been done bv the Prince 

 on his yacht the Priiuesse Alice, and on April 4 the 

 members were taken by motor to the Nice Observatory 

 by the Corniche Road. 



PROBLEMS OF APICULTURE. 



A' 



BOLT four years ago a mysterious disease appeared 

 among the bees of the Isle of Wight, and caused 

 great mortality. The most cliaractcristic features were 

 disinclination to work, some distension of the abdomen, 

 frequent dislocation of the wings, and, later, inability to 

 fly. At this stage the bees could only fly a few feet from 

 the hive, and then dropped and crawled about aimlessly 

 on the ground. They could often be seen crawling up 

 grass stems or up the supports of the hive, where they 

 remained until they fell back to the earth from sheer 

 weakness, and soon afterwards died. An investigation 

 was begun by Mr. A. D. Imms, but, as he was unable to 

 continue the work, the Board of Agriculture secured the 

 services of Dr. VV. Maiden, whose report is issued in the 

 February number of the Journal of the Board of Agri- 

 culture. He finds that the only organ affected is "the 

 chyle stoinach, all other organs being normal ; there is 

 no paralysis of the wing muscles. The disease is almost 

 certainly infectious, and a plague-like bacillus was fre- 

 quently found in the chyle stomachs of diseased bees, but 

 not in those of healthy bees. Owing to difficulties of 

 manipulation, it was impossible to establish definitely any 

 causal connection between the disease and the presence of 

 the organism, although the experiments strongly suggest 

 that there is such a connection. It is to be hoped that the 

 investigation may be completed ; it promises to be of 

 general importance for the solution of problems connected 

 with infectious diseases of bees. 



The whole question of bee diseases needs working out 

 more fully, for little is as yet known with any degree of 

 NO. 2064, VOL. 80] 



certainty about the causes of some of them, and few of 

 the disease-producing bacteria have been investigated. An 

 important administrative question is also raised : if a 

 diseased hive is -not- at once destroyed it becomes a source 

 of infection for surrounding hives, and one careless bee- 

 keeper can in this w-ay do serious harm to others round 

 about him without becoming liable to compensate them 

 for their loss. In a recent Bulletin issued from the United 

 States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Entomology 

 (No. 75), discussing the status of apiculture in the United 

 States, it is urged that bee-keeping should not be 

 popularised, but should be confined, so far as possible, to 

 competent men having a sufficient financial stake in the 

 business to ensure that the bees- should have proper atten- 

 tion. "No question in apiculture," says the writer, "at 

 all compares in importance with the control of bee 

 diseases." Two contagious brood diseases already cause 

 serious loss, and there is reason to believe that they are 

 spreading at a rapid rate. The bee industry of the States 

 is quite important enough to deserve consideration; the 

 value of the honey is put at 20,000,000 dollars annually, 

 but the work of the bees in fertilising the blossoms of 

 fruit trees is valued at a still higher figure. 



Among other bee problems that are still obscure, few 

 are more interesting than the mating of bees. A host of 

 questions suggest themselves as one watches the wonderful 

 flight of the virgin queens and the drones, but investiga- 

 tion is rendered difficult by the absence of methods. It 

 is no easy matter to arrange that only selected drones 

 shall mate with the queens. Only few cases are on 

 record where mating took place when the bees were caged, 

 even though all the conditions were normal and the cages 

 used were very large — Mr. Davitte's was 30 feet high and 

 of the same diameter. Mr. Miller recently made some 

 experiments, with negative results, at the Rhode Island 

 .Agricultural Experiment Station on this subject, and his 

 paper, in the current annual report, affords a good illus- 

 tration of the difficulties that the investigator meets. 



METEOROLOGY OF THE DUTCH E.AST 

 INDIES. 

 VAT^E are indebted to the Royal Observatory of Bat.avia 

 for the following valuable publications: — (i) meteor- 

 ological, magnetical, and seismometric observations for 

 igo6, and (2) rainfall observations made at the Nether- 

 lands East Indian stations for 1907. It may not be 

 generally known that the establishment of this important 

 observatory w;is primarily due to a suggestion made by 

 Baron A. v. Humboldt to the Governor-General of Nether- 

 lands' India in 1856 (Bayard, Presidential Address to the 

 Royal Meteorological Society, January, 1899). Humboldt 

 pointed out the great value that a magnetical and meteor- 

 ological observatory at Batavia would be .for the promotion 

 of, knowledge concerning those phenomena between the 

 tropics. ■ The Amsterdam lAcademy strongly supported the 

 suggestion, and invited Prof. Buys Ballot to draw up a 

 plan. The proposal of the latter, in 1857, included the 

 organisation of hourly observations, at Batavia and the 

 establishment of secondary stations at some places in the 

 East Indian Archipelago, and Dr. P. A. Bergsma was 

 subsequently appointed director of ' the ' proposed system. 

 Hourly observations were commenced at Batavia in 1866, 

 and have been continued without interruption down to the 

 present time, with summaries after each five-yearly period, 

 but the establishment of second-order stations was not 

 carried out on account of expense. . Wind observations are 

 however, made at many places by non-official observers 

 and are collected by the observatory. In 1870 Dr 

 Bergsma organised a system of rainfall observation 

 throughout the archipelago which has since been regularl 

 continued. 



The data for 1907 are published in two volumes, giving 

 (i) daily and monthly amounts, and (2) monthly and yearly 

 amounts and the number of rain-days, together with the 

 results for 1S7Q-1907. at all stations haying observations 

 for five years and upwards. At the end of the year the 

 official stations numbered 292. and included Java, Sumatra, 

 Borneo, North Guinea, and the many islands lying 

 between them, some of the principal places being provided 



