  Some general features of the Bethe-Weizsacker mass formula recently extended
to light nuclei have been explored. Though this formula improves fits to the
properties of light nuclei and it does seem to work well in delineating the
positions of all old and new magic numbers found in that region, yet it is not
well tuned for predicting finer details. The mass predictions have also been
found to be less accurate compared to those by the macroscopic-microscopic
calculations. It is concluded that such semi-empirical mass formulae can not be
a substitute for more fundamental mass formulae having its origin based upon
the basic nucleon-nucleon effective interaction.
