May 7. 1908] 



NA TURE 



The exceptionally cold weather which had prevailed 

 throughout April was temporarily interrupted with the 

 opening days of May, and on the first and second of the 

 present month some remarkably high temperatures were 

 reported from different parts of England. At Greenwich 

 the shade temperature on Saturday, May 2, registered 

 75°, which is a record reading for that day during the last 

 half century. The thermometer on the previous day 

 registered 73°. The report of the weather issued by the 

 Meteorological Office for the week ending last Saturday 

 states that at Jersey and Bettws-y-Coed the thermometer 

 rose to 78° on May 2, and to 76° at places in the south- 

 east of England and the Midland counties, and to 75° in 

 the east and south-west of England. There was an abrupt 

 change to cool weather again on Sunday, May 3, when in 

 London the highest temperature was 52°. 



The death is announced of M. C. E. Chamberland, the 

 sub-director of the Pasteur Institute, Paris, at the early 

 age of fifty-seven. M. Chamberland is probably best known 

 in connection with the porcelain filter which bears his 

 name together with that of his great master, Pasteur. 

 He did much work on surgical asepsis, showing that the 

 germs in the air may be disregarded provided the skin, 

 the instruments, and the dressings be rendered sterile. He 

 also contributed much to the prevention of animal diseases 

 by the method of vaccination with attenuated viruses. 



We regret to have to announce the death of M. .Mfred 

 Riche, one of the last of Dumas's pupils at the Sorbonne. 

 Riche was born at La Roche-sur-Vannon on February 5, 

 1829. He was originally intended for the law, but be- 

 coming attached to science, after a course of studv at the 

 Ecole Centrale, he accepted the position of aiie prcparatetir 

 under Dumas (1849). He subsequently became frdparateur 

 at the Institut Agronomique at Versailles, and then at the 

 Sorbonne under Balard and Dumas. In 1874 he succeeded 

 Bussy in the chair of mineral chemistry, which he occupied 

 until 1899, and where he had as assistants Jaques and 

 Pierre Curie, and as a pupil Moissan, who eventually 

 succeeded and predeceased him. In 1862 Riche became 

 an assayer at the Monnaie, and ultimately, in 1887, 

 director of assays, a post which he continued to fill until 

 last year, and he had charge of the revenue laboratories 

 under the Minister of Commerce. He published a con- 

 siderable number of papers on organic and mineral 

 chemistry, chiefly on the organo-nietalHc derivatives of tin 

 and arsenic, on copper-tin alloys, on the electrolytic 

 estimations of metals, on sugar-analysis, &c. For many 

 vears he was the principal editor of the Journal de 

 Pharmacie et de Chimie, and was the author of a number 

 of text-books and manuals. 



Mr. F. Howard Collins has sent us a copy of a paper 

 by him, reprinted from the Nautical Magazine, in which 

 he describes a method of representing by diagrams the 

 characters of the lights of lighthouses, and of fog signals, 

 so that they may be identified at a glance. He suggests 

 that the system should be applied to .Admiralty Charts and 

 to the Admiralty List of Lights. A leading authority upon 

 the subject has favoured us with the following remarks 

 upon the proposed method and application : — " The writer 

 proceeds on the assumption that each lighthouse completes 

 its cycle in a minute. This is not the case, and this 

 system of diagrams could not apply to lights the periods of 

 which are (a) more than a minute ; (b) not an integral 

 fraction of a minute. That is to say that only lights 

 with periods of i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, or 60 

 seconds can be represented. This would exclude the Nab, 

 Hanois, Royal Sovereign, Dover Pier, South Foreland, 



NO. 2010, VOL. 78] 



Sunk, Galloper, Orfordness, Flamborough, and many 

 other of our most important lights. Apart from this, it 

 is considered that the diagrams are no improvement on 

 the clearly composed description of each light as given at 

 present in the light lists (such as Flash, 5 seconds, Eclipse, 

 lo seconds) ; indeed, it is very doubtful if they would convey 

 any meaning at all to the less educated members of the 

 seafaring community. This applies with additional 

 emphasis to the diagrams representing fog signals. The 

 extra expense of diagrams (and their periodical correc- 

 tions) would be objectionable. The application of this 

 system to the .Admiralty Charts is altogether impractic- 

 able." 



Sealing in 1907, according to a note by Mr. T. South- 

 well in the .April Zoologist, was. owing to bad weather 

 and the heavy ice-pack, nearly as bad as in 1905, which 

 was the worst since 1898. Two of the fleet of twenty- 

 four vessels were wrecked, and the number of skins secured 

 by the others fell short of last year's total by close on 

 100,000, with a decrease of rather more than 30,oooi. in 

 money value. The total number of seals killed was just 

 over 245,000, the market price being 420 dollars per cwt. 

 for those of young animals and 3 dollars for those of 

 adults. 



According to Museum News for .April, an exhibition of 

 South .American birds' nests has been installed in the 

 children's museum, which has proved highly attractive 

 alike to children and to adults. Excellent examples of 

 protective resemblance are shown among the nests of 

 certain flycatchers, in some of which the lichen-covered 

 walls blend insensibly into the supporting branch or simu- 

 late a knot or other natural excrescence. Other exhibits 

 are nests of the slate-headed tody swinging at the end of 

 long, slender branches, and looking like bunches of drift- 

 grass left in their present positions by receding waters. 

 Nests of two species of spiny-tails (a group of woodhewers) 

 are also shown, which by their dissimilarity in structure 

 and material would not suggest relationship in their 

 builders. The nests of five species of spiny-tails agree, 

 however, in having a lining of grey lichens. 



.A collection of valuable and scarce books appertaining 

 to botany and zoology, including a series of zoological 

 works by J. Gould and D. G. Elliot, is offered for 

 sale in the antiquarian catalogue recently issued by Mr. 

 B. Quaritch. 



A CATALOGUE of new or noteworthy flowering plants from 

 Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies, determined 

 by Dr. J. M. Greenman, comprises a number of new 

 species of Senecio and various composites, also additions 

 to the Verbenaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and other orders. It 

 is issued as Publication No. 126 of the Field Museum of 

 Natural History. 



The account of the desert basins of the river Coloradc^ 

 in the delta region where it flows into the Gulf of Cali- 

 fornia provides a remarkable record. Attention was 

 directed to the locality by the rise of water in the Salton 

 Lake at the head of the delta from November, 1904, to 

 March, 1907, since which time the waters have receded. 

 The recession affords an opportunity for noting the spread 

 of the vegetation, that is chiefly halophytic and partially 

 xerophytic. With this purpose, surveys have been made 

 by workers from the desert laboratory of the Carnegie 

 Institution, beginning at the time when the flood was at 

 its height. The preliminary account, by Dr. D. T. 

 Macdougal, is published as a Bulletin of the .American 

 Geographic Society (December, 1907). Reference is made 



