Abstract
THE volume of these Transactions for 1871 opens with biographical memoirs of Wirtgen and Haidinger. S. Simonowitsch contributes a paper on the Bryozoa of the Greensand of Essen, illustrated by four lithographic plates, which is introduced by a critical account of the anatomy and systematic position of the Bryozoa. From Prof. Förster we have a Review of the Genera and Species of the Family of Plectiscoideæ. F. G. Herrenkohl follows with a list of the Phanerogams and Vascular Cryptogams of Cleve and the neighbourhood. R. Bluhme gives a series of analyses of the water of different wells in the vicinity of Bonn, compared with that of the Rhine. In addition to these papers printed at length, a large number of other subjects connected with medical and natural science are treated in the Reports of the Proceedings of the Lower Rhine Society for Natural History and Medicine. Among these we may refer especially to a valuable paper by Dr. Brandis on the climatic conditions which principally affect the growth of forests in the British East Indies. The Indian climate is characterised by its long period of uninterrupted drought; and where the rainy season falls in spring or autumn, the summer heat is excessive. Where, however, the rainy season falls in the summer, as is the case in Burmah, Bengal, and a portion of Central India, the climate presents the peculiarity that the hottest period is in the spring, from March till May and the commencement of the monsoon, and again in the autumn, Calcutta having again a comparatively cold winter. The great obstacle to the growth of forests is the prevalence of fires towards the close of the dry season which do incalculable damage every year; but of late years something has been done to limit their ravages. The growth of tree vegetation is extraordinarily rapid in India when young, but the forests do not eventually attain such luxuriance as in Ceylon, Brazil, and some extra-tropical countries.
Verhanalungen des naturhistorischen Vereines der preussischen Rheinlande und Westphalens.
28er Jahrgang. 1te u. 2te Hälfte. (Bonn, 1871.)
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Verhandlungen des naturhistorischen Vereines der preus-sischen Rheinlande und Westphalens . Nature 6, 453 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/006453a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/006453a0