To the Ealtor of the "Nomru-Cursa Day News"
Sm—The review of Father Ghera!'s book on typhoons in your issue today is interesting and I hope to read the work.
However. it is disturbing to note that. "if he be. correctly reported. Father Gherai has lent his indisputably great authority to the perpetration of an absurdity in making the statement that the energy developed by a certain typhoon was equivalent to CNS144.221.107.250 worth of coal. ie. what at best can be only an approximate value (in which perhaps even the order of magnitude is not known with certainty) is expressed with a precision purporting to be greater than one in ten thousand millions!
This precision would be matched by giving the- earth's distance from the sun (in miles) to the second or vied decimal place.
The highest precision in measurement ever seriously claimed so far as T can ascertain is in length comparison by the United States Bureau of Standards, and here the number of significant Agures is one Jess than in the case complained of- Probably Father Gherzi will agree that even this claim is dubious.
'M. Wurre Srevens. Shanghai. June 3.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.