288 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



novels of Miss Braddon, White Melville, Anthony TroUope, and so on ; but 

 there are also shelves stocked with musty old volumes containing translations 

 or biographies of great men of the musty old past. I asked the caretaker 

 whether there are many readers. He said that the novels are now out of 

 fashion, and that no one ever calls for one of the other books. Yet 9t this 

 seaside resort there are hundreds of idle people sitting about on the sands 

 with nothing to do. One can glance down at such of them as are engaged in 

 reading, and one will find only newspapers, shilling magazines, and ninepenny 

 novels in their hands ; and when one talks with them, only newspapers, shilling 

 magazines, and ninepenny novels in their heads. Yet everyone nowadays 

 asks for more education, for larger sums for universities and for scientific 

 laboratories. I am tempted to ask. Cut bono ? In the England of to-day the 

 most prosperous men are often the fools — and sometimes the rogues. Why, 

 then, trouble to be anything else ? 



Some Miscellaneous Publications 



The Sociological Review (Spring 1920, vol. xii. No. i) quotes a large part 

 of Sir Ronald Ross's essay called " A Great Default " in Science Progress 

 of April last, and comments on the whole story from the sociological point 

 of view. The comment is called " A Study in the Third Alternative." 



The Addresses of the President and the Presidents of Sections of the British 

 Association at its Cardiff meeting in August 1920 have been published by Mr. 

 Murray in book form (price 6s.) under the title The Advancement of Science : 

 1920. 



The Research Defence Society (11 Chandos Street, W.i) publishes Major- 

 General Sir David Bruce's paper on The Prevention of Tetanus during the Great 

 War by the Use of Anti-tetanic Serum. Like all Sir David Bruce's work, this 

 one is very short, but reaches definite results ; and it is a pleasure to see that 

 this dreadful disease may be prevented by such a simple process as inocula- 

 tion. It is due to a bacillus which lives very largely in the soil, and which can 

 enter our tissues through a mere scratch of the skin to which soil has gained 

 access. In the tropics, tetanus follows such wounds very commonly, and we 

 all remember the dreadful case occurring many years ago, in which a number 

 of people died because the instrument used for inoculating anti-cholera vac- 

 cine was polluted with dust or mud. Such cases are much rarer in England ; 

 but almost at the same time as Sir David Bruce's paper appeared, there 

 appeared the reports of two cases in The Times. Both were fatal, and no 

 preventative inoculation seems to have been used when the wounds were first 

 inflicted. In many respects military medical practice is far ahead of civilian 

 medical practice. 



The Royal Statistical Society (9 Adelphi Terrace, W.C.2) publishes in 

 its Journal an important paper by Major Greenwood and G. Udny Yule on 

 the Nature of Frequency Distributions Representative of Multiple Happenings, 

 with particular reference to the occurrence of multiple attacks of disease or of 

 repeated accidents. The mathematics of all epidemiological matter should 

 be considered much more than it is ; and it is singular that scientific researches 

 on subjects concerned with the life and death of large numbers of people receive 

 much less attention than their importance would indicate. The Annual Report 

 of the County Medical Ofi&cer of Health, London County Council, for 191 9, 

 pp. 86 et seq., discusses recent theories of epidemics advanced by Dr. 

 Brownlie and by Sir R. Ross, whose conclusions appear to be somewhat in 

 opposition. 



The Journal of Philosophy , Psychology, and Scientific Methods for July 31, 

 1919, contains two articles on Dr. Strong's Panpsychic Theory of Consciousness 

 and Perception. We fancy that few scientific men, especially if they are also 

 biologists, are likely to accept this kind of alleged philosophy ; and most of 



