190 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [September 3, 1670. 
DECIMAL GRAIN-WEIGHT. 
(From the London Gazette of Friday, August 12.) 
Whereas the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council 
for Trade have represented to her Majesty that the fol 
lowing decimal series of new avoirdupois grain-weights 
have been recommended by the Commissioners appointed 
by royal warrant, hearing date the 4th day of May, 
1868, for inquiry into the condition of the Exchequer 
Standards (now called the Board of Trade Standards) of 
length and weight, and for other purposes, to he lega¬ 
lized as secondary standards, in pursuance of sections six 
and eight of the “ Standards of Weights, Measures, and 
Coinage Act, 1866,” and that such grain-weights have 
been constructed, and have been duly verified in the 
Standards Department of the Board of Trade, their 
weight in relation to the imperial standard pound having 
been accurately determined:— 
Decimal Grain- Weights. 
» 
» 
» 
» 
4000, 2000, 1000 grains. 
500, 300, 200, 100 
50, 30, 20, 10 
» 
5, 3, 2, 1 grains. 
0-5, 0-3, 0-2, 0-1 „ 
0-05, 0-03,0-02,0-01 „ 
Now, therefore, in pursuance of, and by virtue of the 
said recited Act of Parliament, her Majesty, by and with 
the advice of her Privy Council, is pleased to order, and 
it is hereby declared, that the said decimal avoirdupois 
grain-weights shall be legal secondary standards of Im¬ 
perial weight, from and after the time when this order 
shall have been duly published in the London Gazette , 
pursuant to the said Act. 
Arthur Helps. 
AMENDMENT OF THE MEDICAL ACT. 
The following letter, which sufficiently explains itself, 
appeared in the Times of the 1st of September:— 
Sir,—With reference to a recent report in your columns, 
we beg to state that at the late meeting of the British 
Medical Association, held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, we 
found ourselves compelled to resign our seats on the 
council of that body. 
As members of the General Council of Medical Edu¬ 
cation and Registration, we had advocated the main pro¬ 
visions of the Amended Medical Bill introduced into the 
House of Lords by the Lord President of the Privy 
Council—provisions which, in our judgment, were of the 
utmost importance to the public weal. 
The Bill, it is believed, was withdrawn in the House 
of Commons by Mr. Forster in consequence of the course 
pursued by the Direct Representation Committee of the 
Association. That course was subsequently approved by 
a vote of the Association at Newcastle. 
We, therefore, could not, in justice to ourselves or to 
the members of the Association, continue any longer to 
belong to its executive. 
_ The question of the permanent construction of a Me¬ 
dical Council of Education is one of grave importance. 
It is intimately connected with other questions and in¬ 
terests entirely extra-professional, and it cannot, there¬ 
fore, be properly dealt with by any hasty or one-sided 
legislation. 
We are, Sir, your obedient servants, 
George Paget, Cambridge. 
William Stokes, Dublin. 
Henry W. Acland, Oxford. 
H. Wildbore Rumsey, Cheltenham. 
Dennis Embleton, Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
A Good Hair Oil.—The Journal of Applied Chem¬ 
istry recommends the followingPure fresh castor 
oil, 2 oz.; Cologne^ spirit (95 per cent.), 16 oz. The oil 
is freely dissolved in the spirit, and the solution is clear 
and beautiful. A very cheap and good dressing is made 
by dissolving four ounces of pure,' dense glycerine in 
twelve ounces of rose water. 
Coloured Rain and Snow. —On the 14th of Feb¬ 
ruary a remarkable yellow rain fell at Genoa. The fol¬ 
lowing details respecting it are given in a letter addressed 
to M. Ad. Quetelet by M. G. Boccardo, Director of the 
Technical Institute of Genoa, who examined it in concert 
with Dr. Castellani, professor of chemistry. The quan¬ 
titative analysis gave the following results :— 
Water. 6-490 per cent. 
Nitrogenous organic substances 6-611 
Sand and clay.65-618 
Oxide of iron.14-692 
Carbonate of lime. .... 8*589 
Examination under the microscope revealed the pre¬ 
sence of a number of spherical or irregular ovoid sub¬ 
stances of a cobalt blue colour; corpuscles similar to 
the spores of Peziza or Pcrmospora; spores of Dema- 
ziacece or Spheriacece; a fragment of a Torulacea (?) ; 
corpuscles of a pearly colour, concentrically zoned, pro¬ 
bably small grains of fecula; gonidia of lichens; very 
scarce fragments of Diatomacece ; spores of an olive-brown 
colour; a few fragments of filaments of Oscillaria , 
JJlotlirix , and Melosira varians ; a fragment of Synedra; 
a peltate hair from an olive leaf. If, instead of collect¬ 
ing the earth on the morning of the 11th, when it had 
already been subjected to the action of rain falling for 
several hours, I had been able (writes M. Boccardo) to 
observe the phenomenon during the night, at the moment 
when it was produced, it is very probable that the micro¬ 
scope would have shown the existence of several kinds 
of infusoria, as has been the case in several similar in¬ 
stances. 
The author notes that the direction of the wind at 
Genoa during the night of the 13th and 14th was from 
the south-east, and, without being exactly a hurricane, 
as on the preceding few days, was still very strong. 
The temperature, previously exceptionally low, had 
risen, and probably did not fall during the night below 
+ 4° R. (5° C. or 41° F.). The journals state that on 
that date a tempest devastated the coasts of Sicily. M. 
Boccardo, following P. Denza, proposes the theory that 
the dust came from the coast of Africa. “We ought 
not to forget,” he writes, “ that, according to Maury’s 
theory of the circulation of the atmosphere, these clouds 
of dust may have travelled a long distance before touch¬ 
ing the soil of Italy, coming from beyond the Atlantic, like 
those which, in 1846, spread from Guiana to the Azores, 
over the south of France and the whole of Italy.” 
In a paper in the Bulletins de la Societe Vaudoise, 
No. 62, Dr. O. Nicati gives a resume, of various researches 
respecting the peculiar red snow which occasionally falls 
in the Grisons. Some of this snow fell, mingled with 
common snow and rain, during a violent storm from the 
south-west, on the morning of January 15th, 1867, in 
various places. The chemical analysis of the melted 
snow demonstrated the presence of minute quantities of 
sulphate of lime or gypsum, sulphate of magnesia, or¬ 
ganic matters, chlorine, and iron; and microscopic exa¬ 
mination detected vegetable fibre, pollen, spores, with 
here and there diatoms and small crystals. The colour 
varies from brick-red to a pale yellow. This snow is 
quite distinct from the red snow of the upper alpine re¬ 
gions, which owes its colour to the presence of the 
minute plant, Protococcus nivalis. After discussing va¬ 
rious theories respecting its origin, Dr. Killias expressed 
his opinion that it is the dust of the desert of Sahara, 
transported by a sirocco, which gives the colour to the 
snow of the Grisons. Dr. Nicati gives many interesting 
particulars, with analyses, of the Algerian sirocco dust, 
and of the mud-rain in Naples and Sicily; and Professor 
C. Cramer states that he has discovered, both in the sand 
of the Sahara and in the red snow of the Grisons, parti¬ 
cles of vegetable organisms (especially polythalamia) and 
minute fragments of animal origin, such as wool, hair, 
etc. He considers the presence of gypsum in the red 
snow an incontestable proof of its containing matter con¬ 
veyed from the desert of Sahara.— Nature. 
