938 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XlV. No. 363. 



fortunately thrown overboard with some rub- 

 bish from the ship laboratory. 



The exact measurements of the specimen will 

 be given later when the photograph is repro- 

 duced by the Fish Commission. 



Theo. Gill, 



c. h. townsend. 



CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 

 HAIL PREVENTION BY CANNONADING. 



The hail prevention cannonading craze has 

 gone very far in Windisch-Feistritz (Steier- 

 mark), the home of this newest undertaking 

 for artificially controlling weather phenomena. 

 In Das Wetter for October Dr. Friedrich Sten- 

 gel, who has recently visited the locality, gives 

 an enthusiastic account of the somewhat re- 

 markable arrangements which have been made 

 for this work. The huts containing the firing 

 apparatus are 1 km. apart, in four long parallel 

 rows, the rows also being 1 km. apart. There 

 are three groups of stations, containing twelve, 

 thirteen and fifteen stations each, respectively. 

 Each section has a central station, under the 

 charge of a schiessmeister, and each schiessmeister 

 is directed by the general superintendent. 

 Cannonading begins when a thunder-storm is 

 within two or three kilometers. Sometimes 

 only one of the sections fires ; at other times all 

 the stations participate. Firing continues until 

 the sky begins to clear overhead, or, if this does 

 not happen, until thunder and lightning cease 

 and a general rain sets in. The central station 

 of each section regulates the time of the begin- 

 ning and ending of the firing, as well as the 

 rapidity of the discharges. 



THE DUST STORM OF MARCH, 1901, AND 

 GLACIAL STUDIES. 



In the October number of the Meteor ologische 

 Zeitschrift, Richter calls attention to the use 

 that may be made of the fall of red dust which 

 occurred over most of Europe on March 11 last. 

 It was suggested some time ago that studies 

 of glacial movements and phenomena might be 

 facilitated by coloring a considerable portion of 

 the surface of a glacier, and then noting the 

 rapidity of. movement, and the folding and 

 fracturing of this particular colored stratum. 

 The dust storm of last March colored the Euro- 



pean glaciers on a grand scale, and thus an 

 excellent opportunity of making critical studies 

 of these glaciers has been provided, which 

 could never have been brought about by arti- 

 ficial means. 



THE CLIMATIC CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT IN 

 THE TROPICS. 



Mr. W. Alleyne Ireland, who is well 

 known in this country through his writings on 

 the settlement and government of tropical pos- 

 sessions, read a paper on the influence of geo- 

 graphical environment on political evolution 

 before the British Association at its Glasgow 

 meeting. In this paper the possibilities of native 

 government within the tropics are discussed. 

 The conclusion is reached that while the natives 

 of the tropics are not deficient in intellectual 

 power, their ' climatic discipline ' renders them 

 unfitted to play the part of legislators or respon- 

 sible administrators, or to maintain a govern- 

 ment sufficiently stable to admit of proper com- 

 mercial development. 



UNDERGROUND TEMPERATURES AT OXFORD. 



The volume containing the meteorological 

 observations made at the Radcliffe Observatory, 

 Oxford, from 1892 to 1899, presents some no- 

 table facts regarding soil temperatures. The 

 observations were made with platinum resist- 

 ance thermometers, placed at various depths. 

 The thermometers on the whole were found to 

 work much more satisfactorily than the com^mon 

 spirit thermometers with long stems. It ap- 

 pears that the annual variation in temperature 

 is reduced to 0.1° at a depth of 45.3 ft., and to 

 0.01° at 66 ft. The semi-annual wave has 

 these same limits at 21.4 and at 36 ft., respect- 

 ively. 



R. DeC. Ward. 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 

 IMPORTANT PHILIPPINE WOODS. 



Under this title Captain George P. Ahern, 

 of the Ninth Regiment of United States Infan- 

 try, has issued a small quarto volume of 112 

 pages, illustrated with forty-two colored plates. 

 The author, who is in charge of the Forestry 

 Bureau at Manila, candidly states that it is a 

 compilation undertaken in response to numer- 



