March 2, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



345 



of every subject in wliicli advance has been 

 made within four years. To give one other 

 example, on pages 384-5 of the later edition 

 the evidence concerning the movements of 

 the upper air currents around cyclones which 

 has been obtained by means of hallons-sondes 

 is added to what was included in the first 

 issue. The most important additions nat- 

 urally concern the results obtained in the free 

 air with balloons and kites, and all the im- 

 portant results obtained up to ^;he time of 

 printing the book are discussed, including the 

 newer investigations of Bigelow, Shaw and 

 Hildebrandsson. The recent Antarctic ex- 

 peditions have contributed towards making 

 this volume thoroughly complete up to date. 



The second edition differs from the first 

 in having larger type for the main portion 

 of the text, which improves the book decidedly, 

 and in the omission of a good many of the 

 fine-print passages which rather clogged the 

 first edition so far as easy reading was con- 

 cerned, although they contained much valu- 

 able matter. There have been added a useful 

 table of monthly and annual mean tempera- 

 tures for about 140 different stations scattered 

 over the world, many of these means having 

 been newly determined by the author; a small 

 table of monthly rainfalls for some of the 

 more important stations; a vapor-pressure 

 table, and a table for the convenient calcula- 

 tion of differences of altitude from barometer 

 readings. The first edition had 805 pages ; the 

 second has 642. There is thus a considerable 

 reduction, brought about by the omissions 

 just referred to, but in spite of this shorten- 

 ing, the new book is extraordinarily complete, 

 and for all ordinary purposes will serve as 

 the authority beyond which there is no need 

 of going. For detailed investigations of 

 special points, however, it will be necessary 

 to refer to the fuller bibliographical notes of 

 the earlier edition. For the working meteor- 

 ologist both books are needed. The clima- 

 tologist also, in spite of the extraordinary 

 richness of the material in the same au- 

 thor's ' Handbuch der Klimatologie,' will find 

 many of the data and discussions in the 

 ' Lehrbuch ' invaluable as supplementary to 

 the ' Handbuch.' 



Meteorologists may well congratulate them- 

 selves on having the ' Lehrbuch ' in its new 

 form. Their fellow workers in other sciences 

 may well envy them. For it does not hap- 

 pen to every scientist that the master mind in 

 his subject produces a volume so wholly be- 

 yond the possibility of unfavorable criticism; 

 so indispensable; so sure to last for years 

 as the undisputed authority. 



K. DeC. W. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



THE TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 



The meeting of November 14, 1905, was 

 called to order by President Eusby in the 

 American Museum of Natural History. 

 Twenty persons were in attendance. 



Dr. C. Stuart Gager was elected recording 

 secretary to succeed Mr. Edward W. Berry, 

 resigned. 



The first nnmber on the scientific program 

 was a paper by Dr. D. T. MacDougal on ' Bud 

 Sports.' 



The speaker gave an outline of the subject 

 of bud sports and described some illustrative 

 cases. Three striking examples from the cul- 

 tures of the evening primroses in the New 

 York Botanical Garden in 1905 were dis- 

 cussed. In one, a hybrid gave a flowering 

 branch which sported into the characters of a 

 sister hybrid; in the second, a fixed hybrid 

 produced a branch constituting a reversion to 

 one of the parents, a third, a mutant of the 

 common evening primrose, produced a branch 

 which resembled the parental form. Atten- 

 tion was called to the fact that all mutations 

 are essentially vegetative and, therefore, a 

 greater terminology would necessitate the use 

 of the terms ' bud sport ' or ' bud mutant,' or 

 ' seed sport ' or ' seed mutant.' While seed 

 mutants may theoretically be traced to one 

 cell, it seems difilcult to do this in the case of 

 bud sports. The action of the growing point 

 in the protection of buds was illustrated with 

 diagrams, and an enlarged photograph of one 

 of the bud sports was exhibited. 



Dr. Tracy Hazen exhibited a hybrid between 

 Asplenium murrare and A. irichomenes from 

 Vermont. 



