July 28, 1923] 



NATURE 



12 



We owe much — in more senses than one — to our trans- 

 atlantic kinsfolk, and we are piling up a debt which will 

 prove more serious than the millions of the funding 

 loan. What are we doing, what can we do, to reduce 

 the load, to equalise the position ? 



The General Electric Company has its new laboratories 

 at Wembley finely equipped and guided in the proper 

 spirit. " The question," Mr. Paterson writes, " is 

 sometimes asked whether the laboratories undertake 

 pure research or confine themselves to applied research," 

 and his answer is that " the question is meaningless." 

 " A research laboratory," he holds, " is not complete 

 unless it contains members interested in almost every 

 branch of science and provides facilities for these and 

 also for other classes of work." 



The National Physical Laboratory devotes much 

 of the energy of its staff to abstract science, though 

 telegraphy and telephony have not figured largely in 

 its programme ; these are catered for to some extent 

 by the Post Office Research Laboratory at DoUis 

 Hill. For metallurgical work we have the Brown 

 Firth research laboratories and the Hadfield Labora- 

 tory at Sheffield ; other firms have laboratories in 

 which occasionally an investigation in pure science is 

 carried out. But as a rule a work's laboratory is 

 mainly occupied in controlling the normal product 

 of the works, testing the materials supplied, and 

 assisting the works managers in maintaining a proper 

 standard. 



Then there are the laboratories of the Research 

 Associations established and in part financed by the 

 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research ; 

 good and valuable work is being done by these, but 

 the co-operative system has its obvious disadvantages, 

 and in but few is abstract science pressed very far. 



Our best hope for the future would seem to be with 

 the universities, but here again the want of funds 

 is an almost fatal handicap. " There is not," writes 

 Prof. Fleming, "• as far as I am aware a single university 

 in this country which possesses the necessary equipment 

 for conducting advanced experimental research in 

 telephony and telegraphy " ; and this is true of many 

 other subjects. 



Research is terribly expensive. We have always 

 had men of the highest scientific originality who in 

 the past have been pioneers in the advance of know- 

 ledge ; we have them still, but somehow we fail to 

 estimate their value ; we are reluctant to furnish 

 them with the means alone by which their natural 

 gifts may be utilised. The application of science can 

 be organised, and many steps have been taken in recent 

 years to improve its organisation, but if we wish to 

 utilise scientific progress to prevent waste and to 

 increase the efficiency of industry we must support 

 NO. 2804, VOL. 112] 



the solitary genius working often for a mere pittance 

 in some university or college laboratory and devoting 

 all his powers to unravelling a little further the tangled 

 skein of Nature's mysteries. Success in the struggle 

 depends on finding the right man and in affording 

 him full facilities. We have the men ; will our 

 legislators who control the nation's purse see that 

 facilities are not wanting for their work ? 



. R. T. Glazebrook. 



An Epitome of Antarctic Adventure. 



The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton, C.V.O., O.B.E. (Mil.), 

 LL.D. By Hugh Robert Mill. Pp. xv-i-312 + 20 

 plates. (London : William Heinemann, Ltd., 1923.) 

 21S. net. 



BY common consent. Dr. Hugh Robert Mill, the 

 author of " The Siege of the South Pole " and 

 the friend and adviser of a generation of polar explorers, 

 must be acclaimed the right man to tell us the story 

 of the most brilliant career in modern Antarctic 

 exploration. Not only has he long been the ablest 

 chronicler and the most sympathetic critic of adventure 

 and achievement in the southern seas, but he was 

 also for long the friend and oftentimes the confidant 

 of the subject of this biography. It was, therefore, 

 with the keenest anticipation that we took up the 

 book, anxious to see how a master hand would deal 

 with a life so full of light and shade and a character 

 compounded of such contrary impulses. The result 

 is somewhat of a revelation, and whatever may be 

 said in criticism of the book it must be acknowledged 

 that the biographer has carried out his task worthily 

 and has revealed to us the man as he was, fully and 

 fairly. It was obviously no light task to reconcile 

 the leader of magnificent sledge journeys with the 

 unsuccessful dabbler in city finance, the platform 

 lecturer, unconventional even to bluntness, with the 

 sensitive lover of poetry, but it has been done with 

 skill and understanding and the result will be to many 

 a new Shackleton, undreamt of by those who knew 

 but one of his many aspects. 



The book is divided into three sections corresponding 

 with somewhat indefinite periods in the life. In the 

 first, styled " Equipment," we are introduced to a 

 healthily mischievous boy with a taste for poetry and 

 the sea, developing along normal lines into an efficient 

 but scarcely an enthusiastic officer of the mercantile 

 marine. So far the story is an ordinary one, and even 

 to Dr. Mill's discerning eyes it foreshadows but little 

 of the future. But then appears the nucleus round 

 which his energy and ambition gathered. To the 

 average reader the story becomes alive immediately 



