enables us to deal with the fact that workers vary markedly in physical condition. An objection to the use of a general average for all workers in all trades is that it is frequently found in practice that a certain type of man tends to drift into one type of occupation and a different type into another. It is a case, in the majority of instances, of the survival of the fittest; if a worker is not suited to the trade he has selected he eventually seeks another. But, in spite of this possible segregation-and nothing could be more simple than to make definite allowances if these were required -it is found that the general law of averages can be applied with success.

In order to determine the total daily output of energy by any individual, to the cost of the internal work must be added the increment due to the external work done. In spite of the widely expressed belief that it is quite impossible to correlate the daily work done by different types of workers, let us say that of a postman, a dock labourer, a bricklayer, and a trawler deck-hand, nothing is more easy, provided the appropriate tests are carried out. It is true that the amount of energy spent in the form of external work varies very markedly with the type of work performed and the conditions under which it is carried out. It may range from the low cost of sedentary work in a warm office or workshop, to the other extreme of hard manual labour under unfavourable conditions in the open air. One of the attempts at the classification of external work is given in the report on food requirements by the Food (War) Committee of the Royal Society. The figures given are net daily (eight-hour) figures to be added to the cost of the basal metabolism.

In certain types of work the 2000-Calorie limit may be exceeded.

Then, finally, there is the question of sex. Experimental work has definitely shown that the basal metabolism of women is about 7 per cent. below that of men, and, further, that, except in the lightest forms of manual work, the amount of external work performed is below that of men. It is generally held that the total energy output of women for the twenty-four hours is 17 per cent. below that of men. This divergence between the male and female metabolism can ultimately be referred back to two simple factors: (1) the relative weights, and (2) the relative proportion of muscle in the two sexes. As regards the first, it is common knowledge that the average woman weighs less than the average man; and, as regards the second, it is equally well known that the average woman is not so muscular as the average man the average muscle in the case of man forms about 45 per cent. of the total weight, whereas in the woman it forms only about 38 per cent. It therefore follows that the expendi

ture of energy will be greater in the case of the male, making the assumption, of course, that each worker, male and female, is working at his or her optimum rate.

It is to be regretted that in this class of investigation, although a certain amount of work has been done, Britain has not played a prominent part. Compared with the work carried out both on the Continent and in the United States, the experimental work here has been almost negligible. The special apparatus and the facilities for such research have been lacking. The Inter-Allied Scientific Food Commission, which sat during the later stages of the war, did recommend that a special institute for such research should be founded in each country, but, so far, nothing has been done here.

As regards the practical aspect of the question, the investigations of Miss Lindsay and Miss Ferguson in Glasgow have thrown considerable light on the problem. Before the war, for example, it was found that the average family in receipt of il. per week could obtain, expending, it is true, about 73 per cent. of the total income on food, 3163 Calories per "man "1 per day, roughly at the rate of 453 Calories per penny. Early in 1917 an income of Il. 10s. did not suffice. At present, in a recent Government return (Labour Gazette, September, 1920), it is shown that the cost of food alone is 167 per cent. above pre-war level, and if the overall expenditure be taken there is an increase of 161 per cent. The following table, from data kindly supplied by Miss Ferguson, gives a good idea of the change in the cost of living during the past six years:

Yield of Energy in Calories per id. Purchasable at Glasgow: Retail Prices.

Commodity
Flank beef...
Flank mutton
Bacon
Cheese
Milk
Margarine

Bread
Flour
Oatmeal

June, June, Nov., June, May, Nov., Feb., July, Oct., 1914 1915 1915 1916 1917 1917 1920 1920 1920

132 99 99 91 79 99 74 46 66 132 88 88 88 103 107 95

...

256 203 187 179 241 171 196 152

Barley Split peas Haricot beans

Lentils
Rice...

Sugar
Potatoes

...

188

-

71 129 100 95 90 96 89 111 83 89 94 90 68 49 39 60 659 587 587 504 298 255 298 298 277 810 607 607 572 405 527 495 384 405 1155 770 798 722 471 722 722 722 510 1512 753 850 814 331 467 404 360 825 660 550 471 330 412 314 314 314 827 552 414 325 325 297 325 325 366 640 640 533 457 116 271 406 457 582 648 463 216 463 217 217 271 325 271 815 815 815 652 466 466 408 233, 251 930 531 496 372 347 317 228 133 207 542 542 723 271 244 427 299 142 375

In view of the fact that, of the weekly wage of the workers earning 50s. a week or less, at any rate of those with families, 50 to 60 cent. of the income is legitimately spent in the purchase of food, it is suggested that the total

per

1 A family composed of father, mother, and children can be reduced to terms of "man" by the use of appropriate and well-established factors. Se Royal Society Food Requirements Report.

cost of living should be the dominant factor in the determination of the level of the minimum wage. Such a mode of assessment would also form an equitable basis for the determination of the wage of the skilled worker, in so far that the increment to be added in payment of (1) skill, (2) compensation for work carried out under unpleasant or unhygienic conditions, or (3) extraheavy work, would be simply an addition to the minimum wage.

It is unquestionably true that there ought to be a statutory minimum wage. It is the unskilled worker who suffers most. No matter what the trade or occupation, it can be confidently asserted that, as a general rule, it will be found that the unskilled labourer is expending most energy and receiving least pay.

The assumption has been made that the purchase of food and the production of external muscular work are terms which are strictly interchangeable, and within the limits of the minimumwage-earning class this is true. Objection to the proposal to use food consumption as the basis of wage fixation might legitimately be raised on the ground that, with the great majority of wageearners, the purchase of food is not confined to the purchase for their own needs, but also for those of a family or other dependents. There is the further difficulty as to whether the minimum wage for men and women should be identical. There is absolutely no question about the fact that the average woman worker does not expend the same amount of energy as the average man, but this may be offset by another factor of wide application, that the majority of working women

carry on at the same time housework in their own homes, where the expenditure in energy may easily compete in severity with the work done outside.

Science may seem at times to be cold and unsympathetic, even harsh, but, nevertheless, it is only when the facts are observed in a clear and unimpassioned manner that the truth can be found. Far from viewing man as a mere machine for the conversion of the latent energy of food into the potential energy of work, science is fully alive to the fact that this is only one aspect of vital activity, that there is a psychic side of life -everything that makes up the environment— which plays an equally important part in the lifehistory.

The purely energy side of the subject cannot be the sole criterion for the determining of wages. Food alone will not suffice to keep men going; it must be consumed under conditions which are satisfactory-conditions, it is true, which vary, at present, with the social status of the individual. There must be a sufficiency of money for a reasonable expenditure on various small luxuries, for entertainment, and for the various amenities of life, the absence of which makes life for the majority of people scarcely worth living. There is no question, then, as many Labour leaders seem to imagine, that an attempt is being made to reduce the manual worker to the level of serfdom.2 E. P. C.

The Editor has very kindly directed the writer's attention to a footnote in Mr. H. G. Wells's "Outline of History" (p. 519; Cassell and Co., 1920) with reference to an experiment of the Oneida Silver Co. In the assessment of the weekly wage reference is made to the cost of staple commodities and common necessities, and the worker receives his wages plus a percentage representing the advance of the cost of food, etc., from a standard value.

DR. MAX Margules.

THE 'HE news of the death of Dr. Max Margules on October 4, which reached this country a fortnight ago, is rendered particularly sad by the announcement in Tuesday's Times that "his death was due to starvation. He had been living on a pension of 400 crowns a month (which is equivalent to 8s.), and he was too proud to beg for assistance." Dr. Margules was born in 1856 at Brody, in Galicia. After studying at Vienna and Berlin, he entered the Austrian Meteorological Service in 1880, and became secretary of the Institute at Vienna in 1890.

In 1882 Lord Kelvin suggested that the explanation of the regular semi-diurnal variation of the barometer, which has a range of more than two millibars in equatorial regions, might be found in the coincidence of a free period of oscillation of the atmosphere with the period of the solar gravitational tide. Lord Rayleigh in 1890 showed that if the rotation of the earth were neglected, a rough computation of the free periods led to values of 23.8 and 137 hours, so that Kelvin's hypothesis became at any rate a possi

In 1892 and 1893 Margules contributed to the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy a series of masterly papers on the motion of the air on a rotating spheroid. These papers are little known to English meteorologists, as they were not included in the collection of papers and translations issued by the Smithsonian Institution in the volumes of "Mechanics of the Earth's Atmosphere."

Margules contributed to the Year Book of the Meteorological Institute of Vienna for 1903 a comprehensive discussion of the energy of storms. He showed that the atmospheric phenomena associated with storms would arise if two masses of air of different temperatures were in

juxtaposition. The situation would be unstable, and in passing from this unstable situation to a stable one the potential energy would be reduced, part of it being converted into the kinetic energy of the ensuing "storm." This paper contains the germ of the theory of line squalls, of the development of cyclones, of polar fronts, and so forth. It includes computations of the horizontal velocities which would result from various distributions of pressure and temperature, and shows that actual distributions would lead to velocities of 50 miles an hour. Margules summed up his conclusions in the sentence : 'So far as I can see, the source of storms is to be sought only in the potential energy of position."

Margules retired from active participation in the work of the Austrian Meteorological Service during the directorship of the late Prof. Pernter, and applied himself to the study of chemistry. He fitted up a small laboratory in his own house, where he lived in comparative retirement. The present writer was saddened to see him there in 1909 entirely divorced from the subject of which he had made himself a master. Meteorology lost him some fifteen years ago, and is for ever the poorer for a loss which one feels might and ought to have been prevented. E. GOLD.

was

THE Engineer for October 22 records the death of MR. C. J. Bowen COOKE on October 18 in his sixty-second year. Mr. Bowen Cooke educated at King's College School, London, and on the Continent, and thereafter spent the whole of his life in the service of the London and NorthWestern Railway. After serving a pupilage under the late Mr. F. W. Webb, he was appointed assistant in the running department, and rose to be its superintendent. In 1909 he was appointed chief mechanical engineer, and thereafter was responsible for the design of several important types of locomotive engines. The chief of these was a non-compound superheater engine weighing 116 tons and having four cylinders; this engine was fitted with Walschaert's valve gear. Mr. Bowen Cooke took a very active part in the development of the manufacture of munitions of war in railway workshops, and was made C.B.E. in 1918. He was a member of both the Institutions of Civil and Mechanical Engineers, a Justice of the Peace and County Councillor for Cheshire, and a major in the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps. He was the author of two books on locomotives, and also of a paper on the mechanical handling of coal for British locomotives, read at the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1912.

PROF. HANS PEDR. STEENSBY, whose death at the early age of forty-five is announced by the Times, was professor of geography in the University of Copenhagen. He was chiefly known for his researches on the Eskimo in relation to their environment, most of which appeared in

66

Meddelelser om Grønland, and included "Contributions to the Ethnology and Anthropogeography of the Polar Eskimos" (1910) and An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of Eskimo Culture" (1917). Prof. Steensby came to the conclusion that the Eskimo were originally an inland people dwelling in the tundra, probably in the vicinity of the Great Slave Land and Coronation Gulf, and that their culture was originally an Indian hunting culture adapted later to the conditions of the Arctic shores. He also wrote on the early voyages of the Norsemen, and was returning from America, where he had been in connection with his investigations into this subject, when his sudden death at sea occurred.

Science announces that PROF. SAMUEL MILLS TRACY, agronomist of the United States Department of Agriculture, died at Laurel, Miss., on September 5, aged seventy-three years. Prof. Tracy was born at Hartford, Vermont, and graduated from Michigan State Agricultural College in 1868. From 1877 to 1887 he was professor of botany and agriculture at the University of Missouri, and from 1887 to 1897 director of the Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station. Since that time he had been attached to the United States Department of Agriculture. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in the work of which he took an active part, and a member of the New Orleans Academy of Science and of the Botanical Society of America. Among Prof. Tracy's works

are

"The Flora of Missouri," "The Flora of Southern United States," and numerous bulletins issued by the Mississippi Experiment Station and, the United States Department of Agriculture.

SIR CORNELIUS NEALE DALTON, whose death occurred on October 19 at seventy-eight years of age, was Comptroller-General of Patents from 1897 to 1909. When, in 1901, the Committee appointed by the Board of Trade to inquire into the working of the Patent Acts reported in favour of an examination for novelty, within certain. limits, being undertaken by the office, Sir C. N. Dalton laid down the lines on which the examination has since been conducted, and recommended and carried out the necessary scheme of reorgan

isation. His strength lay in his tact, energy, and power of organisation, and these enabled him to carry out alterations in the law and practice of patents, though it may be doubted whether the changes were to the advantage of the inventor. He was hon. D.C.L. of Oxford, was created K.C.M.G. in 1908, and was chairman of the council of the East London College.

THE death of DR. ANTON WEICHSELBAUM, professor of pathological anatomy at Vienna University, at the age of seventy-five years, occurred on Friday, October 22.

a

IMPORTANT changes are announced at the Ministry of Agriculture, the effect of which is the promotion of Mr. F. C. L. Floud to be Permanent Secretary and the liberation of Sir Daniel Hall from office work so that he will be able to keep in close personal touch with agricultural developments in this country as well as abroad, and devote his whole time to the organisation of agricultural education and research. Sir Daniel has been associated with this work throughout his whole official career. The scheme now in operation comprises four essential parts:(1) Research institutions, where knowledge is gained and agricultural science systematically developed and put into such form that teachers and experts can use it. At first this work was distributed among number of university departments, but of recent years there has been a tendency to concentrate it at a few institutions owing to the necessity for bringing individual workers into closer personal contact with each other and with the large-scale problems of the farmer. (2) Agricultural colleges, where experts and large farmers will be trained, receiving a three years' course of instruction of university character. Most of these colleges are associated with universities which award degrees in agriculture; for students who do not wish to take degrees there is a diploma course requiring a high standard of technical work. (3) Farm institutes for small farmers and farmworkers who cannot spare three years for college, but have some practical knowledge and are unable or unwilling to go through the ordinary college course. These institutes aim at giving sound courses of instruction on soil, manure, crops, animal husbandry, etc., but it is usually presumed that the student will take up farming in the area served by the institution, and for which the instruction is specially appropriate. (4) Advisory officers. In each county arrangements are made whereby farmers, smallholders, and others may consult the agricultural expert appointed by the county authority in regard to any difficulties they may meet with in their work. The expert is in a position somewhat similar to that of the general medical practitioner, and usually finds that he can deal with a large number of the cases presented to him. He is, however, in touch with the colleges, research institutions, etc., and can always obtain expert advice in any particular problem of special difficulty.

PROF. T. H. PEAR has been elected an honorary secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in succession to Prof. C. A. Edwards.

MR. J. A. BRODIE will deliver an inaugural address at the opening meeting of the one hundred and second session of the Institution of Civil Engineers on Tuesday, November 2, at 5.30 p.m.

THE British Medical Journal announces that the fourth congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine will be held in August, 1921, at Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies, under the presidency of Dr. W. T. de Vogel.

THE University and the Royal Academy of Sciences of Bologna will hold a joint commemoration service for the late Prof. Righi in the lecture hall of the University on November 1. This will be the fortieth anniversary of Righi's first association with the University, and an oration will be delivered by Prof. Luigi Donati, director of the Royal School of Engineering.

are

A JOINT meeting organised by the Faraday Society. and the Sheffield Section of the Institute of Metals will be held at the University of Sheffield on Friday, November 19, to discuss papers dealing with various aspects of electro-plating. Communications promised from representatives of the scientific side of the electro-plating industry in London, Birmingham, and Sheffield Anyone desirous of taking part is invited to communicate with the Sheffield local hon. secretary of the Faraday Society, Dr. F. C. Thompson, Department of Applied Science, University of Sheffield.

WE learn from the British Medical Journal that, through the gift of an anonymous fellow, the Royal Society of Medicine has been able to institute a triennial gold medal open to medical practitioners throughout the world. Sir Almroth Wright has been chosen as the first medallist, and the presentation will be made to him by the president of the society, Sir John Bland-Sutton, at 5 p.m., on Thursday, November 11, at 1 Wimpole Street, and Sir Almroth Wright will afterwards give an address on medical research.

Ar the annual meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, held on October 25, the following were elected as office-bearers and members of council:President: Prof. F. O. Bower. Vice-Presidents: Prof. D. Noël Paton, Prof. A. Robinson, Sir G. A. Berry, Prof. W. Peddie, Sir J. A. Ewing, and Prof. J. W. Gregory. General Secretary: Dr. C. G. Knott. Secretaries to Ordinary Meetings: Prof. E. T. Whittaker and Prof. J. H. Ashworth. Treasurer: Dr. J. Currie. Curator of Library and Museum: Dr. A. Crichton Mitchell. Councillors: Prof. R. A. Sampson, Prof. J. Lorrain Smith, Dr. W. A. Tait, Surg.-Gen. W. B. Bannerman, Mr. H. M. Cadell, Prof. A. R. Cushny, Prof. F. G. Baily, Mr. G. J. Lidstone, Dr. R. Campbell, Prof. J. C. Irvine, the Hon. Lord Salvesen, and Prof. J. A. Thomson.

WE referred in our issue of September 2, p. 26, to a statement received from a correspondent in India that Sir Alfred Bourne was to be succeeded in the directorship of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, by an administrator with no scientific experience, and we remarked that such an appointment would be greatly deprecated by scientific workers. By the statutes of the institute, the council appoints a committee at home to make nominations, and from the nominations sent out it selects a name for the approval of the Viceroy, who is patron of the institute. If the council sent home a nomination for

the office, it apparently went beyond the spirit of the statutes, but, in any event, we understand that no director has yet been appointed to succeed Sir Alfred Bourne. We trust that the post will be filled by a man who combines administrative capacity with scientific knowledge.

ONE of the most valuable contributions to the study of magic in the Malay Peninsula was the description by Mr. W. W. Skeat in his "Malay Magic" of the methods by which the soul of the rice plant was evoked in the seed grain. Our knowledge of these practices has recently been advanced by the papers contributed by Mr. R. O. Winstedt to the Journal of the Federated States Museums (vol. ix., part 2, July, 1920) descriptive of similar rites in Upper Perak and Negri Sembilan. In the former region the seed is washed and cleansed with limes, and the farmer makes the invocation: "Greetings be to thee, God's prophet Solomon, King of all the earth! I would sow seed rice. I pray thee, cherish it from all danger and hazard!' At harvest he says: "Greetings be to you, gnomes of the latter days, gnomes of the beginning, gnomes one hundred and ninety! Get ye back and aside! If ye turn not aside, I will curse you!" After the regular invocation the soul of the rice will come in the form of a grasshopper or other insect with the sound of a breeze. When the rice-soul is invoked at harvest the magician must wave a white cloth, so that the rice-soul shall not fall on and crush one of the party at her coming. This valuable contribution supplies additional information on the subject fully discussed by Sir James Frazer in the last edition of his "Golden Bough."

THE origin of cancer is discussed by Dr. Alexander Paine in a paper in the Lancet of October 2 last (p. 693). The conclusion Dr. Paine arrives at is that cancer is due, not to the action of a specific parasite, as has been suggested, but to a disordered growth of epithelium caused by various chemical or physical irritants, the most important being the toxins or poisons of micro-organisms. Dr. Paine considers that the origin of cancer lies in the degeneration of the "nobler" parts of the cell consequent on damage to its structure. The result of this damage is to disturb the balance of metabolism by impairing the special functions of the cell, thereby causing persistent overgrowth.

THE Research Defence Society has published a pamphlet by Sir Leonard Rogers on "The Value of Experiments on Animals." No one is better qualified than Sir Leonard Rogers to speak with authority on this subject. Investigations on rinderpest in cattle and surra in horses are quoted as examples of the value of animal experiments in the elucidation and prevention of diseases affecting the lower animals, whereby much suffering to the animals themselves and pecuniary loss to their owners are diminished. The action of snake-venoms and the preparation of curative sera for snake-bites, the use of permanganates in the treatment of snake-bite and of cholera, work on the dysenteries, and experiments leading to improved treatments of leprosy, tuberculosis, and

kala-azar are all summarised. It is shown how much we are indebted to experiments on animals for a better knowledge of these conditions and for improved methods of dealing with them.

MR. E. H. TAYLOR gives (Philippine Journ. Sci., vol. xvi., No. 3, March, 1920) an account of sixty-six species-seventeen being new-of Philippine Amphibia. phibia. These belong to the orders Apoda-represented by a new species of Ichthyophis-and Salientia, there being only one doubtful record in the order Caudata. The Salientia, which includes the frogs and toads, is represented by four families, Ranidæ, Engystomidæ, Bufonidæ, and Pelobatidæ, the first of which has by far the largest representation. A new genus of the Ranidæ Hazelia-is described.

MESSRS. BOVING AND CHAMPLAIN (Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum, vol. Ivii., No. 2323, 1920) describe the morphology and taxonomy of a number of North American species of beetle larvæ belonging to the family Cleridæ. With very few exceptions, these insects, both as larvæ and adults, prey upon destructive wood- and bark-boring beetles. This careful and very exact memoir should appeal to all coleopterists, and the classification of Clerid larvæ illustrates how much a taxonomic arrangement of the beetles can differ from that of their larvæ. A new appropriate classification of larvæ independent of the adults is necessary in this case. The second part of the paper deals with the biology and seasonal history of the Cleridæ. Information of this nature is obviously essential if the forester is ever to benefit by the preservation of the predators, and at the same time by the destruction of the injurious species upon which they prey. The authors state that, whenever practicable, the dissemination of Cleridæ, particularly of Thanasimus and Enoclerus, in quantities in badly infested regions would be a valuable additional aid to control measures.

A CERTAIN amount of romance is attached to the control of insect pests by parasites, and the Americans have specialised in this work. Those interested will find a very full illustrated account of the subject in the Monthly Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture for California (vol. ix., No. 4, April, 1920). Several parasites have been introduced as natural enemies of mealybugs in the hope that some might prove effective. One, a so-called mealy-bug destroyer, Cryptolaemus Montrouzieri, Muls., a ladybird beetle from Australia, was expected to solve the problem, but after the first few months seemed to die out except in particular localities. The reason is fairly obvious. The success of such a parasite means that its natural food becomes scarce, and therefore it starves. The problem has now, however, been solved by the Californian authorities, who found that they could feed the mealy-bug on potato-sprouts, and hence were enabled to keep the ladybird fed and breeding during the winter months. Special insectaries have been built for this purpose, and tubes of the ladybird can be supplied for release when and where necessary the following spring.