Septembeb 28, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



411 



checking radiation and thus decreasing the 

 danger of frost. Professor Cleveland Abbe 

 contributes some further notes on the life and 

 work of Espy. In connection with a letter 

 from a correspondent in Curasao, who at- 

 tributes to deforestation in that island certain 

 electrical effects which now produce less rain 

 than formerly. Professor Abbe ('Drought 

 and Atmospheric Electricity') takes occasion 

 to point out what is known regarding the con- 

 nection between rain and electricity. In a 

 series of observations on ' The Zodiacal Light,' 

 Dr. Maxwell Hall reaches conclusions which 

 would relegate this phenomenon to the depart- 

 ment of astrophysics, the influence of the at- 

 mosphere being only to render obscure the 

 fainter details. In a note on ' Cloud Ban- 

 ners,' reference is made to the report that 

 heavy columns of smoke or steam were as- 

 cending from the peak of Mount Rainier on 

 March 6 last. Public attention was attracted 

 by the phenomenon, and it was eagerly 

 watched. In reality, it was a cloud banner 

 of the ordinary type, developed in a warm 

 southerly wind. A similar appearance, in 

 December, 1904, led to the sending of an ex- 

 pedition up the mountain by a Seattle news- 

 paper. A review of a recent paper by Briick- 

 ner on the influence of the oceans on pre- 

 cipitation over the continents brings out the 

 fact that if the figures and underlying assump- 

 tions are taken as accurate, it appears that 

 were the influence of the oceans eliminated, 

 the continents would still receive four fifths 

 of their present precipitation. 



CENTRAL LOW PRESSURE IN A TORNADO. 



A FEW years ago there was no barograph 

 record from the center or from near the center 

 of a tornado. Almost every year now some 

 tornado in the United States passes near 

 enough to a Weather Bureau station to leave 

 some record of its existence on the curve 

 traced by the self-recording barometer, yet 

 the number of these records is not yet so 

 large that new ones are uninteresting or not 

 worth noting. Thej tornado at Meridian, 

 Miss., March 2 last, whose passage caused a 

 considerable loss of property and resulted in 



the death of 23 persons, was within 250 yards 

 of the local office of the Weather Bureau. 

 The barograph pen dipped .16 inch, and re- 

 covered almost immediately, making a straight 

 line down from the main part of its curve. 

 This is the usual form of tornado pressure 

 curve. A facsimile of the original tracing 

 may be found in the Monthly Weather Re- 

 view, 1906, p. 118. 



NOTES. 



' Some Meteorological Results of the Scot- 

 tish National Antarctic Expedition,' by R. C. 

 Mossman, appear in the Scottish Geographical 

 Magazine, Vol. 22, 1906, pp. 252-272. This is 

 a more complete discussion than has hitherto 

 been published, and is illustrated by means of 

 curves and wind roses. The most important 

 results of the Scotia expedition have already ^ 

 been noted in Science. 



The rainfall of a region little known 

 meteorologically, German Southwest Africa, 

 is discussed by T. Klengel in Das Wetter, 

 1906, beginning with the April number and 

 extending through July. 



The optical effects resulting from the dust 

 thrown out in the recent eruption of Vesuvius 

 are briefly discussed in the July number of 

 Das Wetter. 



R. DeC. Ward. 



BOTANICAL N0TE8. 



A NEW FLORA OF COLORADO. 



About thirty years ago Professors Porter 

 and Coulter prepared a very useful ' Synopsis 

 of the Flora of Colorado,' and ten years later 

 this was expanded by the junior author into 

 his well-known and vddely used ' Manual of 

 the Botany of the Rocky Mountain Region.' 

 In the two decades since the appearance of 

 the latter so much has been done in the collec- 

 tion and closer study of the plants of the 

 Rocky Mountain region that these old books 

 no longer represent the present state of our 

 knowledge of the species and their distribu- 

 tion. Dr. Rydberg's ' Catalogue of the Flora 

 of Montana and the Yellowstone National 

 Park' (1900) gave some idea of what addi- 

 tions and changes would have to be made in 



