Sir

of the Chemical Industries," advocates combination between different branches of industry, elimination of home competition, efficient advertising, the employment of highly trained chemists and engineers, reducing the cost of production, and finally some measure of protection. George Watson, who also writes on "Chemistry and Industry," lays stress on the importance of highly trained chemists and the value of protection or some form of financial assistance for the newer industries. Mr. J. Taylor Peddie, in his review of "British Imperialism and German Culture," points out that although German ideals have been established upon sound democratic and Christian principles, and have had a vital, sustaining, and elevating influence, these ideals have been momentarily wrecked on the rocks of feudalism, absolute monarchism, and militarism. He realises Germany's intellectual superiority, for which we have no substitute, and demands organisation unrestricted by the State, which is too much dominated by the political party system. In a second brochure on "Finance and Industry" the same writer finds Germany's great commercial progress to be primarily due to the development of its financial system, and instances the advantages which the banks offer by advancing loans. to industrial undertakings.

It will be seen from this rather brief epitome that whilst the writers unite in pointing out the unsatisfactory position of our industries, especially those into which science largely enters, they are not quite unanimous, either in regard to the cause of or the remedy for the present state of affairs.

It is no doubt true that our chemical industries have in the past been hampered by absurd duties. and still more absurd patent laws, and that, speaking generally, the scientific industries have received little sympathy or encouragement from any Government, past or present. It is also true that German commercial acumen, not always over scrupulous, has succeeded in wresting from us a good deal of foreign trade. In this connection we are reminded of a chapter in Bagot's "My Italian Year," in which he describes how Germans have established themselves, as well as their goods, in the larger Italian cities, and that much of the trade formerly carried on by us has passed into their hands. All this is true enough, but there is another side to the picture. Our chemical industries have failed to prosper not because Germany has had special advantages in the use of cheap alcohol, or in its patent laws, or in its financial system or in its protective tariff, but because in recent years these industries have passed into the hands of men who have had no proper chemical training.

So long as this exists the industry will be run by rule-of-thumb methods; no advance can be made, because nothing new is being discovered or manufactured; for it must be remembered that it is not the old stereotyped products, but the novelties that bring the large profits. Where can we show such a record as that of the Baden Aniline Company, which laid out a million sterling

on experiments carried out by a body of highly trained and highly paid chemists working unceasingly for ten years in elaborating the process for producing artificial indigo, which has now nearly driven out the natural product?

We lack knowledge first and last, as well as enterprise and that kind of adaptability which studies to supply the needs of foreign countries, and this applies to others besides the chemical trade. We remember an old Lancashire cotton weaver, whose trade, once a thriving one, gradually fell away because he insisted on always producing the same kind of cloth long after it had ceased to be in demand, for no other reason than that he had always done so.

We could point to many other industries which to-day are languishing or disappearing for the same reason. The heads of these firms do not keep pace with the time; they do not keep up any pace at all; they stand still. They stagnate in a backwater of ignorance, unconscious of the rapidly flowing stream of scientific achievement; which must in the future be the guiding current in every branch of industry if commercial success is to be attained.

It was announced on Monday that there has been such a poor response on the part of subscribers that the directors of the company British Dyes (Limited) do not feel justified in proceeding to allotment, and a meeting has been called to consider the situation. This state of affairs might have been anticipated from the amount of adverse criticism to which the Government scheme has been subjected. The scheme restricted competition at home, but made no attempt to safeguard future competition from abroad, and gave no guarantee in the constitution of the directorate that the industry would be conducted on a sound scientific basis. The question is still unanswered as to the best and safest means of resuscitating this moribund industry (if one may apply these terms to describe what has never been really alive for the last half-century).

Every chemist will admit that this is a problem which cannot be solved in a hurry. Owing to the complex nature of the products and the special character of the apparatus and machinery employed, a long period of patient experimenting under the control of the best chemists and chemical engineers that the country can provide will be required before success can be attained. It will naturally entail a heavy outlay in salaries and plant, and probably no profits for a long time to come. Who is going to undertake this whilst the textile industry with its millions of workpeople is starved for the want of dyes? If the country ran short of ammunition in the present crisis, the Government would at any cost be compelled to undertake its production.

The same kind of national crisis exists to-day in the dyeing industry, and the same remedy should be applied without further delay. The colour-makers have had their opportunity. They have been warned for years past what their fate would ultimately be if they neglected to develop

cently discovered source of pitchblende of very fine quality in India, seems, like the Indian monazite, to be controlled by foreign capitalists. The Glasgow and West of Scotland Radium Committee purchased from Mr. MacArthur last year the equivalent of 600 milligrams of radium bromide in the form of a bariumradium carbonate containing 20 milligrams of radium bromide per kilogram, finding it more advantageous to undertake itself the further fractionation of this material than to purchase from abroad at the inflated prices then obtaining.

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In the scientific world probably the highest distinction is the election of a man of science to foreign membership of the leading scientific society of country not his own. Prof. E. C. Pickering has from time to time published lists of men of science who have received this honour from two or more of the seven great scientific societies, viz., the Imperial Academy of Petrograd, the U.S. National Academy, the Royal Prussian Academy, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Vienna, the Royal Society, the Institute of France, and the Royal Academy of the Lincei. The first such list was published in 1908, and since then more than a third of the men whose names were included have died. Prof. Pickering, in an article in the February number of the Popular Science Monthly, has brought the list up to the beginning of 1914, and analysed it according to societies, countries, and sciences. The men of science whose names appear in the list number 122, sixteen of whom are members of all seven societies, and fourteen of six societies. Four men of science in Prussia, namely, A. Auwers (since deceased), E. Fischer, van't Hoff, and R. Koch, and three Englishmen, namely, Sir A. Geikie, Sir William Ramsay, and Lord Rayleigh, are members of all seven societies. Taking two groups together, England leads with eight men of science who have achieved the distinction of election to foreign membership of six or seven national scientific societies, and is followed by Prussia, which possesses six such men. The average number of scientific societies for English members is 49, for Prussian members 42, and for Germany as a whole, 40. As regards the different branches of science, "In mathematics, the country most largely represented is France, with 5 members; in astronomy, United States, 5, England, 4; in physics, England, 5; in biology, Prussia, 5. Great Britain is the only country represented in each of the sciences. Prussia has no geologist, France no geographer, and the United States no mathematician, chemist, botanist, or biologist."

THE jubilee of the University of Melbourne Medical School was celebrated on April 25-May 2, 1914, and a memorial volume containing the history of the school and the jubilee addresses, and embellished with numerous plates of the buildings and laboratories and members of the staff, has been issued ("University of Melbourne Medical School Jubilee, 1914," Ford and Son, Melbourne). The University of Melbourne had been in existence for seven years when its medical school was opened on March 3, 1862. The school owed its inception largely to the energy of Dr. Anthony Colling Brownless, who became Vice-Chan

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cellor of the University in 1858. In 1862 Dr. John Macadam was appointed lecturer on chemistry, Dr. G. B. Halford professor of anatomy, and Mr. R. Eades lecturer in Materia Medica. In 1863, the medical school buildings were commenced from plans prepared by Messrs. Reed and Barnes, the University architects. In 1864, the Melbourne Hospital opened its doors to receive the first class of third-year students, Messrs. Rees, Moloney, and Mackie. Although its career has been checked from time to time by lack of funds, the story of the school is one of continued progress. Opening in 1862 with four students, the I students' roll now (1914) numbers 394 for the five years of the curriculum. The latest development is the establishment of a fund for clinical research, which now amounts to approximately 1000l. per annum.

THE forty-eighth report of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University is a record of active progress. Additions to the buildings now provide much needed accommodation for the collections. Exploration has been active in various regions-Mexico, Nebraska, New Jersey, Arizona, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Dr. E. A. Hooton conducted an expedition to England. Landing in July last, he worked for a month, when "he was forced to discontinue work because of the unsettled state of the country." He excavated without much success the alleged site of an early Saxon cemetery at Great Shefford, Berks, and then he turned his attention to Wexcombe Down, overlooking Salisbury Plain, where nine barrows were opened containing incinerated remains, Bronze Age potsherds, and surface finds of late Celtic and Roman pottery. One large cinerary urn and one La Tène III. bronze fibula were found. From Knowle Pit, Savernake, a series of River-drift implements was obtained.

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CAPTAIN SIR G. D. DUNBAR in the February 26 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts describes some of the tribes occupying the northern frontier of Assam. Owing to the inaccessibility of the country and the savagery of its inhabitants, little is known about them. The tribes here dealt with are the Abors, Daflas, and Mishmis. The word Abor means unfriendly," which well describes the character of the group. The general type is Mongoloid, and the writer suggests that the Abors and their brethren migrated from the Tibetan side of the Himalayas into the Dihang valley. They display remarkable industrial capacity in their bridges, irrigation channels, and ironwork. It is not possible to imagine a more democratic organisation than the constitution of these tribes. The village, not the clan, is the political unit, ruled by a headman, whose office is not hereditary, but he is retained in office only so long as he represents the views of the majority in their rather noisy meetings. Women exercise a marked influence. Other duties now prevent Sir G. D. Dunbar from preparing a book on these tribes, but it may be hoped that this intention is only for a time postponed.

IN the American Museum Journal for February Col. Theodore Roosevelt contributes an admirable article on the animals of Central Brazil, and Mr. L. E. Miller gives an account of the Roosevelt-Rondon

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Scientific Expedition. The value of this exploration will be shown only when full studies have been made of the 2500 and more specimens of birds and mammals which have been collected. This will for the first time provide an outline of the mammalogy and ornithology of this hitherto unknown region, which includes a river as long as the Rhine, of which there appears to be no trace on the existing maps. special interest is the account of the man-eating fish, the piranha. "South America," Col. Roosevelt remarks, “makes up for its lack relatively to Africa and India of large man-eating Carnivora by the extraordinary ferocity or blood-thirstiness of certain small creatures of which the kinsfolk elsewhere are harmless. It is only here that fish no bigger than trout kill swimmers, and bats the size of the ordinary flittermouse of the northern hemisphere drink the blood of big beasts and of man himself."

IN the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for December, 1914, Mr. J. C. Moulton, curator of the Sarawak Museum, continues his list of the butterflies of Borneo, dealing in this instance with the whites and swallow-tails, or Papilionidæ. No fewer than forty-three species, together with a number of subspecies of the true swallow-tails of the genus Papilio, are recognised, against twenty-nine in a list published by Dr. Russel Wallace in 1865.

To the March number of the Irish Naturalist Dr. R. F. Scharff contributes a tentative list of the native names of Irish mammals. There is a considerable degree of uncertainty with regard to the proper application of some of these names, and in a few instances, which may represent species now extinct, identification has not yet been practicable. Several names for the bear and the wolf are known, and it is possible that one or more of the unidentified terms may refer to the extinct giant Irish deer or "elk."

A STRIKING coloured plate of the king-condor of the Andes forms the frontispiece to an article in the April number of My Children's Magazine on the vertical distribution of animal life on land and in the ocean. Most of the more striking instances of animals dwelling at great heights in the mountain-ranges of the world are mentioned, and the article as a whole is a mine of information. The artist cannot, however, be congratulated on his rendering of the red deer's antlers or on his so-called wild sheep and yak, which are obviously drawn from domesticated breeds.

IN Mr. T. Southwell's report of the Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa Fishery Department for the year ending June 30, 1914, attention is directed to the extent of the area under the control of the Department, the smallness of the staff, and the difficulties encountered, in endeavours to improve the present condition of affairs owing to the indifference and lack of energy on the part of the fishermen. It is admitted that in Bengal the supply of food-fish, always short, is steadily falling, but since the occupation of fishing or dealing in fish is carried on exclusively by the lower classes the whole industry is left in the hands of people with no capital, no education, and no business capacity. In such circumstances it is scarcely to be wondered

at that the fish-supply is scanty. In area and potentiality the fresh-water fisheries of Bengal are second to none; but the establishment of hatcheries for carp and other species of fish is highly desirable in order to mitigate the disaster to eggs and fry occurring annually in the big rivers during the rains. The rearing of eggs and fry removed from the mouth of the Damodar and their return to the river as young fish at an age when they are able to look after themselves, seems to be a step in the right direction, and one which should eventually give satisfactory results. As time and opportunity allow, the stocking of other small rivers will be carried on, where the necessity is indicated. The rearing of fry in special tanks will further enable small fish to be supplied for tankculture throughout the province, at an age when they are unlikely to be devoured by voracious fish, whereby considerable improvement in tank-culture generally may be expected.

AMONG Specimens received by the U.S. Museum from the Lower Eocene of Fort Union, Montana, particular interest attaches to the left half of the lower jaw of a small mammal described by Dr. J. W. Gidley in No. 2077 of the Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. (vol. xlviii., pp. 395-402) as a new genus and species under the name of Myrmecoboides montanensis. The specimen, which retains the canine and seven cheekteeth, is regarded by its describer as indicating a marsupial, which may be related to the Australian banded anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus). The dentition presents the distinctly marsupial feature that all the last four cheek-teeth are molariform, and of the same general type, the first of the series being, however, slightly more complex than the other three. In many respects all the teeth present resemblances to those of Myrmecobius, although those with a molariform structure are relatively larger, and not separated from one another by intervals. If, however, the dentition of Myrmecobius be of a degenerate type, as is now generally believed, such differences are precisely those which would be expected in an ancestral form. What an important bearing such a relationship would have on the origin and dispersal of marsupials will be obvious. In addition to this, the Fort Union fossil may serve to solve a disputed point in regard to marsupial dentition. For, as Dr. Gidley points out, the first molariform tooth presents several features suggestive of its being a persistent milk-molar rather than a molar; and if this idea be well founded, there will be decisive evidence in favour of the view first suggested by Dr. Winge, and also arrived at independently by Mr. Lydekker in 1899, that the first molariform tooth of marsupials is a persistent milk-molar, and not, as previously supposed, a molar, and consequently that both placentals and marsupials normally possess but three pairs of molars.

WE note with interest that the Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union is taking steps to preserve the ancient flora of Lincolnshire from extinction. Owing to cultivation, drainage of bogs, eating off by sheep, and the rapacity of trippers much has been lost. By educating the populace to respect the flora and by

jealously guarding the habitats of the rarer plants, the Naturalists' Union should do useful work.

THE Indian Forester for January, vol. xli., No. 1, contains a short account of the tali-pot palm (Corypha umbraculijera), which is indigenous in the Andamans and Southern India. Its uses are many; the pith is used for flour, some thirty headloads being yielded by one tree. The leaves, which were formerly used for writing upon, now serve for umbrellas and thatching, and the seeds are carved or made into buttons. At Honawar bats live under the protection of the leaves of the tali. When the lendi fruit (Calophyllum inophyllum) is ripe, the bats bring back large quantities to their palm and drop the hard drupes. As these contain oil, which is much prized, the bats serve a useful purpose, and natives are planting the tali-pot palm in order to obtain oil in this easy manner.

In an article reprinted from the Botanical Gazette, vol. lviii., No. 3, Dr. G. D. Fuller breaks new ground in plant ecology and presents results which, as in the case of much recent work in this subject, is of great interest to agriculturists and foresters as well as to botanists. He has made a detailed series of determinations at weekly intervals during the growing period (May to October) of the rate of evaporation and the amount of soil moisture in a series of plant communities which shows a gradual change or succession from exposed sand vegetation to moist beechmaple forest on the sand dunes near Chicago. The determinations, extending over three years, are presented in graphs; those of evaporation were taken with evaporimeters placed near the ground, those of soil moisture in the upper layers of the soil-in both cases the critical regions, since within them develop the seedlings which determine the character of the succeeding vegetation. The author introduces the term growth-water" for the percentage of soil moisture in excess of that found by experiment to be present in the soil when wilting occurs in plants; and he finds that the differences in the ratio between evaporation and growth-water in the series of plant communities investigated are sufficient to be regarded as efficient factors in bringing about the succession or gradual change from the scanty drought-enduring (xerophytic) vegetation of the open sand to the moisture-loving (mesophytic) broad-leaved forest, which forms the climax of the series.

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IN vol. xiv., part 1, of the Annals of the South African Museum Mr. George Arnold, of the Rhodesia Museum, Bulawayo, commences an illustrated monograph of the ants of South Africa, which it is claimed will form the first collective account of the (approximately) three hundred known local species. Vol. xv., part 1, of the same is devoted to a continuation (part 7) of the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing's account of South African Crustacea. Six species and two genera of Macrura are named as new, and certain emendations in pre-existing nomenclature suggested.

THE association of geology, botany, and zoology in the domain of a State Survey is interestingly exemplified in the sixth biennial report of the Commissioners of the State Geological and Natural History Survey

of Connecticut. The superintendent, Prof. W. N. Rice, points out the desirability of the maintenance of the survey as a permanent bureau of publication. Much of the work is done by men who are otherwise engaged for a large part of the year, and the annual appropriation of 1500 dollars may be considered modest for a State where a high level of general culture is ready to respond to scientific information.

THE potash salts associated with the Cambrian rock. salt of the Cis-Indus Salt Range have been known since 1873; but a more complete examination of their extent has now been made by Dr. W. A. K. Christie (Records Geol. Survey of India, vol. xliv., 1914, p. 241). This author concludes, on account of the association of kieserite, sylvine, langbeinite, and rock-salt, that crystallisation finally took place under subterranean conditions at a temperature of about 80° C. It is interesting to note that the very soluble potash-salts have been preserved where a fine clay with sand-grains, probably wind-borne, was formed across the deposits of the evaporating lagoon.

AN interesting rock is described by Dr. du Toit from the slope of Ingeli, in the extreme south-west of Natal (Geological Survey of South Africa, Annual Report for 1913, p. 99). In a stratum about 15 ft. thick, pellets of graphite, which may be as much as an inch in length, lie in a ground of oligoclase, quartz, cordierite, enstatite, and biotite; this ground has in part a micropegmatitic structure. This unique rock is ascribed to the partial absorption of a carbonaceous shale of the Ecca Series by an offshoot from the overlying intrusive sheet of norite. Kentallenite, the curious biotite-olivine-dolerite with soda-orthoclase, well known from its occurrence in Appin, is now recorded by Mr. S. Kôzu from Torigoé, Japan (Science Rep., Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, vol. ii., 1914, p. 1).

THE South Wales tornado of October 27, 1913, which involved some loss of life, has been discussed by the Meteorological Office in No. II of its Geophysical Memoirs (price 61.). Dr. Shaw states that a scientific assistant attached to the office, Mr. H. Billett, was sent to the neighbourhood to collect information on the spot. A severe thunderstorm swept the west of England and Wales from the south of Devon to Cheshire, and developed locally into a tornado of exceptional violence. The storm was intense for a distance of about 11 miles up the Taff Valley in Glamorganshire, for about an equal distance in Shropshire, and for about 5 miles in Cheshire. For several days before and after the occurrence, a highpressure system was situated over Central Europe, and there was a low barometer centred over the Atlantic. The wind over the region affected was mainly from south-east or south, with the temperature decidedly above the average, and the weather unsettled. The rainfall was almost wholly limited to the south-western and western districts of England. Practically no damage was done outside the narrow limits of the storm, which nowhere exceeded 1000 ft. in width, but much destruction was wrought in certain parts of the track. In Cheshire, where the storm's track was about 450 ft. wide, the sound is described as that