October 5, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



443 



All the above results meet the highest Men- 

 delian expectation on the assumptions made 

 regarding character pairs and dominance. 

 "We should expect some departure from the 

 highest expectation. In the following we 

 find it. 



The same RB boar used in the last cross 

 was bred to a one eighth Duroc-Jersey Cred- 

 it') seven eighths Poland China sow having 

 perfect Poland China markings. The highest 

 expectation is shown in the formula of this 

 breeding. 



R 



B 



w 



B'B 

 B 



B 



SBB 



iB 

 B 



BJ 



\BB 

 IB 



The Duroc-Jersey red {B') seems to have 

 been eliminated in the breeding of the dam 

 B^. Here the highest expectation is that half 

 of the progeny should show red markings; 

 four of them were red and black spotted and 

 two nearly pure red with a few black spots, 

 indicating that they were all of the BB type, 

 a case the probability of which in this par- 

 ticular cross is one sixty-fourth. 



The above results can not be regarded as 

 conclusive concerning any of the points in- 

 volved, but they do render it highly probable 

 that there are good Mendelian characters in 

 this class of animals. They are published 

 with the hope of stimulating further enquiry 

 along this line. 



W. J. Spillman. 



U. S. Dept. of Ageicultuke. 



CURRENT 'NOTES ON METEOROLOGY- 



VAGARIES OF LIGHTNING. 



A PAPER in the Quarterly Journal of the 

 Royal Meteorological Society for July, by 

 Alfred Hands, deals with ' Some So-called 

 Vagaries of Lightning Reproduced Experi- 

 mentally.' Lightning is an electric charge, 

 the author says, and should act in accordance 

 with the laws that are known to govern dis- 



charges. In the course of an extended in- 

 vestigation into the effects of lightning, Mr. 

 Hands has come across many cases that have 

 been called vagaries, but which on close in- 

 spection have proved to be extraordinary only 

 in the erroneous way in which they were de- 

 scribed. Had they been correctly reported, 

 they would have appeared perfectly consistent 

 with ideas previously held — in fact, they could 

 have been foretold in every case if the condi- 

 tions that led to those effects had been known 

 before the events occurred. 



Mr. Hands reproduced experimentally sev- 

 eral so-called vagaries of lightning, showing 

 by means of skeleton models the conditions 

 under which they occurred, and by a single 

 discharge producing effects which would be 

 most perplexing if the arrangement of the 

 hidden links in the alternative path of con- 

 duction were not known. 



AFRICAN HUTS ON POLES TO ESCAPE MOSQUITOES. 



The placing of native dwellings on poles to 

 elevate them above the ground during over- 

 flows in the rainy season has long been known 

 as an interesting illustration of the influence 

 of climate upon architecture. In an account 

 of a journey ' From Mombasa to Khartum : 

 through Uganda and down the Nile,' Sir 

 Charles Eliot notes the use of platforms on 

 poles ten or twelve feet high by some of the 

 native tribes along the Bahr-el-Gebel. These 

 platforms serve as places of repose when mos- 

 quitoes are very abundant, for it is found that 

 the mosquitoes do not go far above the ground 

 {Scot. Geogr. Mag., 1906, 350). 



PILOT CHARTS. 



The monthly pilot charts of the North At- 

 lantic and North Pacific Oceans, issued by the 

 Hydrographic Ofiice of our Navy, are well 

 known. Eive years ago the British Meteor- 

 ological Office began the publication of 

 monthly North Atlantic pilot charts, and 

 has now undertaken Monthly Meteorological 

 Charts of the Indian Ocean North of 15° 

 South Latitude, and Bed Sea. The first num- 

 ber is for May, 1906. Two pilot charts are 

 published by the Deutsche Seewarte, at Ham- 



