524 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 172. 



press immediately before his last illness. 

 His principal work lay, however, in the 

 field of cellular biology, and a brief but 

 important paper by him on the fertilization 

 of the egg in Thalassema, published in the 

 Transactions of the Xew York Academy of 

 Sciences for 1895-6, had attracted consider- 

 able attention, both in this country and 

 abroad. A more extended paper along the 

 same lines, bringing forward new and im- 

 portant evidence on the nature of fertiliza- 

 tion, the history of the centrosome, the 

 phenomena of chromatin-reduction and 

 other vexed problems of cytology was prac- 

 tically ready for the printer at the time of 

 his death and will be hereafter printed. 

 He was a man of singularly pure character. 

 His high ideals of life, his rare and single- 

 hearted devotion to his chosen life-work, 

 will not be forgotten by those who had felt 

 the stimulus of his example. 



E. B. W. 



CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 

 THIRST IN THE DESERT. 



No more graphic account has ever been 

 written of the physiological effects of the 

 dry air of the desert than that by McGee 

 in the Atlantic Monthly for April. The 

 regions to which particular reference is 

 made are those of Death Valley, farther 

 Papagueria (the desert borderland of Ari- 

 zona and Sonora), and other portions of 

 our western arid counti-y, where " daily for 

 mouths the air is 120° F. or more in the 

 shade, and dry, so dry that a basin of water 

 evaporates in an hour, so dry that no drop 

 of sweat is shed by hard-pushed horse or 

 toiling pedestrian. * * * * Even the In- 

 dians gathered in the moister spots have a 

 shrunken and withered mien, half mummied 

 before death, as thej^ are wholly after. Here 

 thirst abides." The article is grewsome 

 reading, portraying, as it does in the most 

 vivid manner, the five successive stages of 

 thirst in the desert, from the first, in which 



the symptoms are beginning, to the final 

 stage, in which " there is no alleviation, no 

 relief, until the too pex'sistent heart or lungs 

 show mercy, or kindly coyotes close in to 

 the final feast." 



WEATHER CYCLES IN INDIA. 



A PAPER by Dallas, in the Monthly Weather 

 Eevieiv for December, 1897, entitled ' A Pre- 

 liminary Discussion of Certain Cj'clical 

 Changes in India ' makes it appear that there 

 are two cycles, both traceable in pressure and 

 rainfall, which affect the weather over the 

 Indian region. One of these cycles runs 

 through a period of 11 years, and the other 

 through a period of 9 years. Both are 

 more distinctly traceable in the records of 

 southern India (Madras) than in the 

 records of the whole of India. It does not, 

 however, appear possible to make use of 

 these facts in predicting, with any certainty , 

 the probable amount of rain in any season 

 with a view to the taking of precautionary 

 measures against impending droughts. 



ELECTRICAL STORMS IN CALIFORNIA. 



In the same number of the Monthly 

 Weather Review Mr. James A. Bar wick. Ob- 

 server of the Weather Bureau at Sacra- 

 mento, Cal., discusses ' The Electric Storms 

 of California.' The impression is quite 

 widespread that thunder and lightning are 

 almost unknown in California, but the pres- 

 ent paper shows that thunderstorms are 

 by no means infrequent, and that they occur 

 pretty well all over the State. The greatest 

 number come in the hot months of June, 

 July and August, and the storms of these 

 months are confined mostlj'' to the counties 

 of the Coast Eange and the Sierra Nevada. 

 The hotter the weather in the summer in 

 California, the greater is the number of 

 thunderstorms, as is found to be the case 

 elsewhere. 



BLUE HILL OBSERVATORY BULLETINS. 



The Blue Hill Observatory has begun, 

 with the present j^ear, the issue of a series 



