NA TURE 



229 



SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 1923. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



By Prof. L. 



The Helicopter : is it worth a Prize ? 



Bairstow, F.R.S. . . . . . . 229 



Life of a Naturalist and Teacher. By C. T. R. .231 

 The Structure of the Atom. By J. A. C. . . 232 



The Ascent of Sap ....... 234 



By A. H. A. 



234 

 235 



237 

 239 

 239 



A Metric Campaign, 



Our Bookshelf 



Letters to the Editor : — 



Breeding Experiments on the Inheritance of Acquired 

 Characters. — Dr. Paul Kammerer ; Michael 

 Perkins ........ 



Light-Quanta and Interference. — H. Bateman 

 A Mountain Mirage. — E. Leonard Gill 

 Probable Aeolian Origin of Greywether Sandstone. — 

 F. Chapman ....... 239 



Barometric Pressure in High Latitudes. — R. M. 



Deeley 240 



Phototropic Compounds of Mercury. — M. L. Dey . 240 

 Melanism in the Lepidoptera and its Possible In- 

 duction. — F. C. Garrett and Dr. J. W. Heslop 

 Harrison ....... 240 



The Reported Meteorite at Quetta. — Dr. E. H. 

 Pascoe . . . . . . . .241 



Scientific Names of Greek Derivation. — Dr. W. D. 



Matthew, F.R.S 241 



Hardness Tests. By W. C. U 242 



Structural Colours in Feathers. By Prof. Wilder D. 

 Bancroft ........ 243 



Obituary : — 



Prof. C. Niven, F.R.S 244 



Mr. E. J. Banfield. . By S. F. H. . . .244 



Current Topics and Events ..... 245 



Our Astronomical Column ..... 247 



Research Items ....... 248 



Fossil Human Bones, possibly of Pleistocene Age, 

 found in Egypt ....... 250 



Recent Fisheries Investigations. By J. J. . . 250 

 The Floor of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. 

 F-y Prof. Grenville A. J. Cole, F.R.S. . . .251 



Cultivation of Metal Crystals by Separation from 

 the Gaseous State . . . . . -251 



State Afforestation in 1921-22 252 



The British Medical Association .... 252 

 Einstein and the Philosophies of Kant and Mach . 253 

 The Life-Cycle of the Protozoa . . . -253 



Science in Poland 254 



Formation of Organic Compounds from Inorganic 



by the Influence of Light . «> . . 254 



University and Educational Intelligence . . -255 

 Societies and Academies ...... 256 



Official Publications Received . . . . 256 



The Adaptational Machinery concerned in the 

 Evolution of Man's Body. By Sir Arthur Keith, 

 F.R.S 257 



Editorial and Publishing Offices ; 



MACMILLAN &- CO., LTD., 



ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON, W.C.2. 



Telegraphic Address: PHUSIS, LONDON. 

 Telephone Number : GERRARD 8830. 



NO. 2807, VOL. I 12] 



The Helicopter: is it worth a Prize? 



JULES VERNE is responsible for the idea of the 

 helicopter, and as a writer of works of imagina- 

 tion he invented devices with ease. The aeronautical 

 engineer asked to produce a helicopter must recognise 

 some limitations of his powers, and one is led to wonder 

 whether the author of " The Clipper of the Clouds " 

 could have solved the problems associated with the 

 materialisation of his ideas. Press comments on the 

 official conditions for the test of a helicopter, and the 

 wording of the rules by the Air Ministry, raise the 

 principle involved in this idea in a form of consider- 

 able interest to men of science. In the Times of May 1 1 

 appeared the following paragraph : 



" Still, the Air Ministry cannot afford to neglect 

 the possibility that some practical helicopter may 

 suddenly be evolved, and by their action they have 

 made reasonably sure that any such development will 

 come before their notice." 



To guard against the possibility of ignorance in this 

 particular direction, prizes to the total value of 50,000/. 

 have been offered ; the cost of the aeronautical research 

 at the National Physical Laboratory is about 23,000/. 

 per annum. The construction of the Brennan heli- 

 copter by the Air Ministry at Farnborough is variously 

 estimated to have cost from 6o,oooZ. to 100,000/. ; lack 

 of separate accounts for research and ad hoc experi- 

 ments make it difficult to estimate the cost of scientific 

 research at Farnborough, but it is probably of the 

 same order as that at the National Physical Laboratory. 

 It is believed to be inadequate for systematic progress 

 on the full scale, with the result that Britain is far less 

 active than America .^ 



Is the Air Ministry in danger of losing the substance 

 for the shadow in giving prominence to a policy based 

 on accidental strokes of genius rather than on patient 

 and certain inquiry ? Scientific workers at least will 

 realise how foreign such a policy is to their own 

 work. 



Leaving this issue, which needs no elaboration in 

 the columns of Nature, it is interesting to examine 

 the prize scheme on technical grounds. A passage 

 which crystallises the underlying idea says : " .... a 

 successful helicopter — that is, a machine capable of 

 rising vertically from the ground under its own 

 power, . . ." thereby indicating the property to 

 which chief importance is attached as that which 

 allows an aircraft to leave the ground and return 

 to it without the high forward velocities of 50-60 miles 

 per hour normal to the aeroplane. Such a property 

 added to an aeroplane would be welcomed by all 



' See the Wilbur Wright memorial lecture before the Royal Aeronautical 

 Society by Dr. Ames, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the American 

 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1923)' 



