Colonel R. E. B. Crompton, C.B., F.R.S.

Abstract

NATURE 377 130 times as much as the wire alone. Mr. C. J.P. Cave calculated that in Hampshire there was a weight of 85-90 lb. of ice on a single wire between adjacent posts. Under the strain, wires and posts gave way, blocking roads and disorganizing the telephone service. Trees were split or brought down by the weight of ice on their branches, and added to the confusion, while the frozen road and rail surfaces caused an almost complete breakdown of The weather continued very cold, and it was some days before conditions approached normal ; there was even a second, though less severe, glazed frost on the morning of February 3. The difference of eleven years between 1929 and 1940 at once suggests the influence of the sunspot cycle, especially when it is remembered that February 1917 also produced a severe frost, while that of 1895 came 22-23 years earlier. All these occurred about one year after a sunspot maximum. There was, however, no similar frost in 1906 or 1907 and the eleven-year recurrence is completely absent before 1895, so that the succession 1917-1929-1940 must be regarded as most probably a coincidence. D. Brunt, in his study "Periodicities in European Weather" (Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., Lond., A, 225, 247-302), finds no trace of a periodicity of eleven years in the temperatures of London, Stockholm, Paris or Vienna. The cycle of eleven years is the largest periodic element in the temperature of Edinburgh, and shows a minimum about 1938-39; but the double sunspot cycle of 22-23 years is almost equally prominent and is now near its maximum. For London this 22-23 year cycle is the largest component and is likewise near its maximum. In any event the amplitude of these periodic terms is small in comparison with the departures from normal temperature during a severe winter. The other well-known cycle, Bruckner's of thirtyfive years, also fails to appear in Brunt's tables for London and Edinburgh, though he found it at

PHYSIOLOGICAL GENETICS OF MELANOTIC TUMORS IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER. II. THE GENETIC BASIS OF RESPONSE TO TUMORIGENIC TREATMENTS IN THE tu K AND tu bw; st su-tu STRAINS

“…But the hypothesis of a separate indirect role for the X-ray effect does not readily account for the results of studies which show that this treatment enhances the penetrance of other melanotic tumor genes, in genotypes in which no specific suppressors have been identified. In particular, HARTUNG (1942) observed a rise in tumor penetrance after X-ray treatment in the 1(1)7 strain (STARK 1918;RUSSELL 1940) and in two strains carrying the second chromosome tumor gene tu 36a (RUSSELL 1942), and more recently GHB-LBLOVITCH (1961) obtained a similar result for the tu 48a (2-29.5) strain. Not every tumor gene responds readily to this treatment, as the results for the tu" strain show.…”