234 
NATURE 
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[| Fuly 9, 1885 
The completion of other work will prevent my return to this 
subject at present— perhaps altogether—but I have ventured to 
publish this incomplete account of an apparently promising 
method for the measurement of solar radiation, in the hope that 
it may be of use and interest to others. 
University College, Liverpool. J. W. CLarK 
P.S.—It may perhaps be found advantageous to use an appar- 
atus like an inverted cryophorus, in which the absorbed radiant 
energy generates a vapour- pressure, and is made to lift a column 
of water in the tube—the height of the column and the time 
being registered photographically. 
THE GROWTH OF CEREALS 
ERHAPS nowhere is the influence of the different climatic 
factors on the rapidity of growth so well illustrated as on the 
plains of Russia. Therefore W. Kowalewski’s careful researches 
into this subject, summarised in the A/emoirs of the St. Peters- 
burgh Society of Naturalists (xy. 1), are especially worthy of 
attention. The author has gathered all necessary information 
for showing the periods of growth of various cereals on the soil 
of Russia, from the far north of Arkhangelsk, to the southern 
province of Kherson, and he has arrived at most interesting 
results, of which the following is a summary. If the periods of 
growth of the same cereal be taken throughout Russia, it appears 
that, altogether, it is inthe higher latitudes that it ripens fastest. 
Oats and spring wheat take 123 days and bariey 110 days to 
ripen about Kherson, and only 98, 88, and 98 days at Ark- 
hangelsk, the difference in favour of the north being respectively 
thus: 25, 35, and 12 days. ‘The intermediate regions show 
also intermediate differences, while for each latitude the growth 
of cereals proceeds faster in the eastern parts of Russia than in 
the western. It is obvious that if the rapidity of growth were 
due to temperature, the phenomena would be the reverse of 
what they are. Moreover, the want of moisture in the southern 
steppes is also a condition in favour of the rapidity of growth : so 
that it is in the insolation that we must seek for the cause of the 
above-stated difference. In fact, oats being usually sown about 
May 17 at Arkhangelsk, and the harvest usually occurring about 
Sept. 1, the insolation continues there for 2000 hours in 98 days, 
not to speak of the 240 hours of bright nights ; while at Kherson, 
during 123 days (from April 1 to Aug. 1) the insolation lasts only 
for r850hours. The difference in favour of Arkhangelsk is thus 
equal to 150 hours (to 400 hours, if the bright nights be added), 
and it compensates for the influence of temperature. It is use- 
less to add, moreover, that the cereals cultivated in the north 
have already undergone a certain accommodation to their con- 
ditions. As to the intensity of light, Prof. Famintzin’s work on 
the subject, corroborated by ulterior researches, shows that the 
great intensity of light in Southern Russia, combined with the 
great transparency of the atmosphere, is rather a condition 
against the rapidity of growth, the intensity of light exceeding 
the limits of the maximum of decomposition of carbonic acid. 
Winter rye shows the same differences as the spring cereals. It 
appears from M. Kowalewski’s tables that in the Arkhangelsk 
district winter rye takes 375 days to arrive at ripeness, of which 
there are 202 days of winter rest, 68 days of autumn growth, 
and 105 days of spring and summer growth, making thus a total 
of 173 days of growth. At Kherson the total growth lasts for 
290 days, of which only tor days of winter rest and 189 days 
of productive growth (63 during the autumn and 126 during the 
summer), The difference reaches thus 16 days in favour of the 
north, and it would rise to 20 or 25 days if only spring and 
summer be taken into account. The graphical representation of 
all these data is most interesting. Thus the lines of simultaneous 
sowing of winter rye from north-west to south-east correspond 
to the isochimenes, while the lines of simultaneous ripening of 
the spring cereals—oats, barley, sarrazin, wheat—run from 
south-west to north-east, corresponding to the lines of equal 
summer temperatures. The retarding influence of rain comes 
out also pretty well. 
THE ROVAL SOCIETY OF NEW SOUTH 
WALES 
"THE annual general meeting of the members of the Royal 
Society of New South Wales was held on May 7. The 
president, Mr. H. C. Russell, B.A., F.R.A.S., occupied the 
chair, and delivered an address, from which we give the following 
extracts :-— 
‘* There is a very general impression, borne out by the evidence 
which geology has furnished, that at least the east coast, if not 
all Australia, is rising in relation to the mean level of the sea, 
The late Rev. W. B. Clarke, in a report to the Port Jackson 
Harbour Commission, said ‘that the coast has risen in former 
geological epochs, and that it has risen during the present epoch 
is capable of distinct proof.’ ‘Raised beaches of shells, which 
are not kitchen middens, may be seen about twenty-five feet 
above the sea, near Ryde, on the Paramatta estuary, and at 
Mossman’s Bay, in Port Jackson, at a height of 132 feet above 
high-water.’ Again, ‘regarding the whole coast from Broken 
Bay to Botany Bay as mere peninsulatic fragments, united only 
by low isthmuses, bare or covered with sand, as they actually 
are, one may still see that there must have been oscillations of 
level, and finally elevation.’ Speaking of other portions of the 
coast, Mr. Clarke says :—‘ At Adelaide in 1855 the railway 
between the city and the port was being constructed, and Mr. 
Babbage has since shown that in four years a difference of four 
inches of rise between the levels of those places has taken place.’ 
And again, ‘according to Mr. Ellery, the accomplished and ac- 
curate Williamstown observer, the self-registering tide-gauge at 
that place indicated a rise of the bottom of Hobson’s Bay of 
four inches in twelve months, and a deposit of recent shells and 
imbedded bones of sheep and bullocks which had been thrown 
into the bay is now seen at a level above the reach of the sides.’ 
Again, quoting from a letter by the late Mr. John Kent, of 
Brisbane :—‘ A survey was made of a shelf of rocks in Brisbane 
River in 1842 by Captain Gilmore, Mr. Petrie, and myself, and 
in making a re-survey in 1858 Mr. Roberts found the relative 
depths were singularly correct, but that the general depth of 
water over the shelf of rock had decreased eighteen inches in 
sixteen years since the first survey was made.’ Sir Roderick 
Murchison, in the Preceedings of the Royal Geographical 
Society of London (vol. vii. p. 42) quotes from a letter he had 
received from the late Mr. Kent, of Brisbane :—‘I have lately 
drawn the attention of the Rev. W. B. Clarke to the fact that 
the eastern coast of New Holland is rising at the rate of (say) 
one inch per annum, as ascertained by the height of rocks in 
the river Brisbane above tide levels, through a period of twenty 
years, and he assures me that to the south the same result has 
been inferred, though the observations haye not extended over 
so long a period. At what rate the rise is now going on there 
are no data to establish. Till a series of mean tidal levels are 
marked on the rocks of the harbour, and the alteration made as 
distinct as that in Hobson’s Bay, any deduction as to the rate of 
rise must be conjectural and unreliable.’ I have but taken a 
few extracts from a great mass of evidence which Mr. Clarke 
brought forward in proof of the rapid elevation of the coast of 
Australia. I was deeply interested in this report when it was 
published in 1866, and as soon as I had opportunity determined 
to make such observations with a self-registering tide-gauge as 
would determine the rate of rise, if any, and in collecting infor- 
mation bearing upon this subject during the past thirteen years, 
I wrote to Mr. Ellery and asked him for further particulars of 
the rise going on in Victoria, and in reply he said that Mr. 
Clarke had in some way misunderstood his remarks, which had 
reference to the silting up of the harbour, not the elevation of 
the land ; and he at the same time sent me a copy of his paper 
on ‘The Tidal datum of Hobson’s Bay,’ read before the Royal 
Society of Victoria, August 14, 1879. After giving the history 
of the tide-gauge, which was started in 1858 under the Harbour 
Department, and was not under his control till 1874, Mr. Ellery 
says :—-‘It is to be regretted that no precise references to mean 
tide level in the earlier days can be found. Where measurements 
do exist in Hobson’s Bay they are lacking in accurate informa- 
tion as to the state of the tides, and I find nothing trustworthy 
upon which to base any statements as to change of sea level 
since surveys have been made. I think it desirable that perma- 
nent bench marks on the natural faces of the rock zm st/ should 
be established around our bay, carefully connected by accurate 
levelling with one another and with the tide-gauge, for it is very 
doubtful if bench marks on tuildings can be assumed to afford 
a permanent datum.’ The first self-registering tide-gauge in 
Sydney was erected on Fort Denison by the late Mr. Smalley in 
1867. Unfortunately the design was so faulty that all the records 
of the heights of tides made by it are of no value, although the 
times of high and low water are correct. The reason for this 
fault in its records was that an ordinary hempen cord was used 
