SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
99 
METEOROLOGY. 
Giant Hailstones. — Father Secchi communicated to the French Academy 
of Sciences (Nov. 27) an account of a remarkable hailstorm observed at 
Grotta Ferrata. The cloud from which it proceeded was formed with 
astonishing rapidity, and divided the sky into two nearly equal parts, from 
N.W. to S.E., advancing and unfolding itself like an immense ball of wool 
or cotton. The first drops of rain were of extraordinary size, at least a cubic 
centimeter. The hailstones, which soon followed, weighed from 40 to 60 
grammes, and were composed of groups of crystals arranged round a small 
irregular mass of ice, having almost the appearance of groups of quartz- 
crystals, mostly with four or five and six faces terminated by a pyramid. 
Some masses obtained at Marino weighed as much as 300 grammes. 
MICROSCOPY. 
Diatoms in Wheat-straw. — It will probably be remembered by most of our 
readers that when our friends Martin Chuzzlewit the younger, and his 
companion Mark Tapley, located themselves in the highly salubrious city of 
Eden, they made the acquaintance of a certain enlightened citizen, Mr. 
Hannibal Chollop, whose opinion of the gentleman who sold them their 
allotment was expressed in the words “ Scadder is a smart man.” It would 
appear that the breed of “ smart men ” is not yet extinct in the United 
States, and that in the opinion of the Editor of the “ American Journal of 
Microscopy,” and of the Botanical Editor of Silliman’s “ American Journal,” 
Professor P. B. Wilson, of Washington College, Baltimore, is a very 
“ smart man.” The article on the presence of diatoms in wheat-straw, a 
notice of which appeared in the October number of this Review, seems to 
have been rather hastily inserted, and on its coming under the notice of the 
Botanical Editor he wrote “pronouncing the alleged facts intrinsically absurd,” 
but stated his belief that the author of the article had “honestly but ignorantly 
fallen ” into a mistake, a charitable view which he has since seen occasion to 
alter. The editor of the “ American Journal of Microscopy ” is far more plain- 
spoken. He says : “ A single glance at the engraving,” of the forms of dia- 
toms found in Col. Kunkel’s straw, “ is sufficient to convince any microscopist 
that Professor P. B. Wilson never saw 1 upon the field of his microscope,’ under 
the circumstances which he has described, the objects which he has deline- 
ated.” In support of this statement he adduces two cases as follows: — “Bearing 
in mind,” he says, “ that these organisms, as figured, have been obtained by 
destroying the organic matter with nitric acid, we find Bacillaria figured as 
it exists only in the living condition, the frustules being joined together in 
the peculiar way which has given to this form the specific name paradoxa !!! 
For this diatom to have passed through a bath of nitric acid, and come out 
in the condition figured, would have been almost as great a miracle as the 
passing of Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego unscathed through the fiery 
furnace of Nebuchadnezzar. So, too, we find a calcareous foraminifer 
figured under the same circumstances ! Verily, this is such a view as has 
