April i, 1880] 



NATURE 



52s 



Great-Russians so considerable a difference exists. Vol. 

 I. deals with the superstitions of the peasants, espe- 

 cially as regards witchcraft, to which subject Prof. 

 Antonovich of Kief has devoted a long and interesting 

 essay. According to him, the popular ideas about the 

 subject are " not demonological, but pantheistic." And 

 the authorities seem to have looked upon wizards and 

 witches with some indulgence. In a hundred trials of 

 persons accused of witchcraft in the eighteenth century, 

 he finds scarcely any trace of such cruelty as was shown 

 at an earlier period by British or German legal officials, 

 or by the Inquisition in the south of Europe. Burnings 

 were unknown. Convicted warlocks were generally 

 mulcted in a fine paid to the Church. In the few cases 

 in which they were punished more severely, the unusual 

 harshness of the court was due to the fact that the com- 

 plainant belonged to the class of nobles. The second 

 volume contains a valuable collection of 146 skaz'<i or 

 folk-tales, 31 of which are classed as "mythical." It 

 forms an important supplement to Rudchenko's excellent 

 " Collection of South-Russian Tales." Vols, iii.-v. con- 

 tains an immense number of folk-songs, and a list of 

 days to which the peasants pay special attention. The 

 sixth volume is devoted to popular jurisprudence in 

 general and the village courts in particular, and the 

 seventh to statistics, giving a complete account of the 

 Little- Russians themselves, and of the rest of the popula- 

 tion, whether of Polish, Jewish, or other extraction. 



TEMPERATURE OF THE SOIL DURING 

 WINTER 

 'THE French physicists, Edmond and Henry Becquerel, 

 '*■ took advantage of the intense cold pre /ailing at 

 Paris last December, to study the changes in temperature 

 below the surface of the soil under various conditions. It 

 is a widely-spread belief among farmers, that when pro- 

 tected by a layer of snow, crops sown in the autumn are 

 effectually guarded against freezing. This opinion, how- 

 ever, must lose much of its weight in view of these late 

 observations, which we will briefly summarise. 



The observations were made by means of Becquerel's 

 electric thermometer, which consists simply of two wires 

 isolated by a coating of gutta percha, and soldered 

 together at their extremities. Differences in temperature 

 between the two places of junction cause electric currents 

 varying in intensity with the greatness of the difference. 

 A magnetic needle, brought under the influence of the 

 current, registers on a dial these differences. The wires 

 were inserted in the Jardin des Plantes at various depths 

 varying from 5 to 60 centimetres, and observations were 

 made from November 26 to the close of December. 

 Frost first appeared in the Garden November 26. 

 December 3 snow fell in abundance, and the tempera- 

 ture of the air sank to — n" C. The layer of snow was 

 25 centimetres deep. December 10, the temperature had 

 sunk to - 2t°, and commenced then gradually to rise. 

 December 15, the snow was 19 centimetres in depth. 



Coming now to the observations made below the 

 surface of the ground under the above circumstances, 

 we find at once a striking difference between the results 

 obtained in soil covered with grass, and those obtained 

 below a bare surface of the ground. In soil protected by 

 grass, before as well as after the snowfall, at all depths 

 below that of 5 centimetres, the temperature never 

 descended below o° C. Registering 3°5 at the depth 

 of S centimetres on November 26, it slowly sank to o°i8 

 on December 14. The presence of grass would appear, 

 then, to effectually protect the earth beneath it from 

 freezing at the lowest temperatures attained in our 

 climate. Quite different results, however, are yielded in 

 the absence of grass. In this case at a depth of 5 

 centimetres the thermometer sank below zero on 

 November 27. Two days later it registered - 2°-6. 



On December 3, just before the snowfall, it reached 

 its minimum of — 3°'i7. After being covered with snow 

 it registered - o c, 8, and later - i ^. The snow here 

 appears to act in a certain measure as a screen against 

 changes in temperature, but its conductive properties are 

 still too marked to prevent these changes from being felt 

 sensibly at a certain depth in the earth. In the case of 

 the agriculturist, this slow conduction, when united to the 

 still slower conductive properties of a tolerably thick layer 

 of dead shoots of cereal crops sown in autumn may 

 frequently insure immunity from freezing to the roots 

 below the surface. T. H. N. 



NOTES 



We regret to have to announce the death of P. W. Schimper, 

 the well known Professor of Palaeontology in the University of 

 Strassburg, and of Dr. R. H. C. C. Scheffer, the amiable and 

 accomplished director of the Botanic Garden, Buitenzorg, Java, 

 at the early age of thirty-five. Also of two foreign entomologists 

 — Herr Hellmuth von Kiesenwetter at Dresden, in the sixtieth 

 year of his age, and Dr. Snellen van Vollenhoven, formerly 

 Conservator of the Leyden Museum, one of the foremost ento- 

 mologists of Holland, and author of " Faune Entomologique 

 des Indes Orientales." 



With reference to Prof. Smyth's communication in regard to 

 the exhibition of aurora on March 17 (Nature, vol. xxi. p. 

 492), we are informed that the photographic records of the 

 Royal Observatory, Greenwich, show that there was also mag- 

 netic disturbance on that day. 



Dr. W. Farr has been made a C.B. 



Dr. C. William Siemens has been elected an honorary 

 member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. 



There has just appeared, as Vol. XII. of the Report of the 

 United States Geological Survey of the Territories under 

 Dr. F. V. Hayden, an important monograph on the Freshwater 

 Rhizopods of North America by Dr. Joseph Leidy, the eminent 

 comparative anatomist of Philadelphia. It is a well-printed 

 quarto, and sumptuously illu;trated with a series of forty-eight 

 coloured plates. Containing the results of an investigation of 

 materials partly collected during the prosecution of the Survey, it 

 shows the broad scientific spirit in which the operations of 

 Dr. Hayden's Survey were conducted. Dr. Leidy, almost 

 elbowed out of the field of research among the fossil vertebrates 

 of the West, where he was the earliest pioneer, has left that field 

 in possession of his younger friends, Professors Cope and Marsh, 

 and has betaken himself to another and very different domain 

 of scientific research, with which he has long been familiar. To 

 the monograph which he has now issued we hope to call attentioa 

 in an early number of this journal. 



A new School of Agriculture is to be opened, to be called the 

 South Wiltshire and Hampshire Agricultural College, at Down- 

 ton, near Salisbury, on April 26. Among the teaching staff will 

 be : Prof. Wrightson for Agriculture, Trof. Church, Chemistry ; 

 Prof. Fream, Natural History and Geology ; and Prof. Sheldon, 

 Dairy Work. Attached to the college is a mixed farm of 540 

 acres, to be worked by the students themselves. 



At the Royal Institution on Tuesday next (April [6) Prof. 

 Huxley will give the first of a course of two lectures on Dogs 

 and the Problems connected with them ; on Thursday (April 8) 

 Prof. Tyndall will give the first of a course of six lectures on 

 Light as a Mode of Motif n ; on Friday evening (April 9) Prof. 

 Huxley will give a discourse on the Coming of Age of the Origin 

 of Species; and on Saturday (April 10) Mr. James Sully will 

 give the first of a course of three lectures on Art and Vision. 



