NA TURE 



229 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1910. 



PROBLEMS OF CROWN COLONY 

 ADMINISTRATION. 

 The Broad Stone of Empire. Problems of Crown 

 Colony Administration, -with Records of Personal 

 Experience. By Sir Charles Bruce, G.C.M.G. Vol. 

 i., pp. xxxiv + 511 + 2 maps. Vol ii., pp. viii + 555 + 

 4 maps. (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 19 10.) 

 Price 30s. net, two vols. 



ACCORDING to the description on the title-page, 

 this book purports to discuss problems of 

 Crown Colony administration, and to contain, as 

 a subsidiary matter, records of personal experi- 

 ence. The first volume carries out, on the whole, 

 the promise of the title-page, but the second is in 

 effect a record of Sir Charles Bruce 's acta et verba 

 during the thirty-six years of his faithful and efficient 

 public service in Ceylon, British Guiana, the West 

 Indies, and Mauritius ; and the discussion of problems 

 of Crown Colony administration forms little more than 

 a setting for the account of his experiences, and of the 

 recognition which his valuable services deservedly 

 received, from time to time, at the hands of his official 

 superiors. Lengthy despatches and memoranda, 

 much of which might with advantage have been 

 omitted and the rest severely condensed, encumber the 

 pages of the book, and were it not that it is provided 

 with an excellent index, its undoubted value as a work 

 of reference for students of colonial administration 

 would be gravely compromised. 



The book, which extends to some iioo pages, after 

 discussing the resources of the Crown Colonies, and 

 British policy in connection wuth them, under the 

 heads of national, colonial, and imperial, treats of the 

 Colonial Office and the Colonial Governor; and there 

 are chapters on law, labour, race, health, education, 

 religion, agriculture, forestry, commerce, finance, 

 transport, meteorology, imperial communications, 

 fiscal system, e.xpansion, defence, and the Crown. 

 There are seven appendices, of which two, namely 

 Mr. Edward Manson's memorandum on systems of 

 law obtaining in the Crown Colonies, and a memor- 

 andum on measures to be carried out for prevention 

 of malarial fever in Mauritius, are of special interest 

 to students of Crown Colony administration, and, as 

 already mentioned, there is an excellent index. 



Within the limits of a short review it is not possible 

 to discuss more than one or two of the subjects with 

 which the author deals; it must suffice to indicate 

 the rest, and to say that (apart from a certain discur- 

 siveness and from the other drawbacks to which we 

 have felt bound to direct attention), the student of 

 problems of Crown Colony administration will find 

 much in the various chapters to reward his industry 

 and to satisfy his curiosity. To the readers of Nature 

 the chapters on agriculture and on forestry, the 

 chapter on meteorology, and the two chapters on 

 health, will probably be of the greater interest than 

 the others. The description of the work of the Im- 

 perial Department of Agriculture in the West Indies, 

 which has done so much during the last ten years 

 towards helping to restore the prosperity of the West 

 NO. 2147, VOL. 85] 



Indian Colonies is interesting; the sketch of the pro- 

 gress of agriculture in Ceylon is instructive; and the 

 chapter on forestry shows of what vital importance 

 are conservation of forests and reaffcwestation, and 

 how much remains to be done in that regard. The 

 chapter on meteorology is practically confined to an 

 account, interesting so far as it goes, of the work 

 done under the auspices of Dr. Meldrum at the Mauri- 

 tius Observatory'. The most interesting chapters of 

 all are the chapters on "Health." Only those who 

 have lived in unhealthy climates can fully realise of 

 what vital importance it is to the prepress of a com- 

 munity that effectual means should be found for com- 

 bating the diseases which in so many of the most 

 fertile of the British Dominions beyond the seas have 

 so hampered what Sir Charles Bruce well calls the 

 "agencies of beneficial occupation" — industry, com- 

 merce, military and naval defence, and good 

 government — and how dependent those agencies 

 are on the preservation of health against tropical 

 diseases. In this field of later years science 

 has rendered yeoman service to the State, 

 and to the pioneers of civilisation and pro- 

 gress in the tropical and subtropical dependencies of 

 the Crown, and, indeed, throughout the world. 

 Malaria is no longer an elusive bogey ; yellow fever 

 has lost much of its terrors ; even plagxie and cholera, 

 in communities which have been brought to under- 

 stand the value and necessity of the precautionary 

 measures prescribed by science, can be successfully 

 combated and brought under control. 



Yellow fever has been practically banished from its 

 hot-bed, Havana. The isthmus of Panama, which is 

 credited with having killed one workman for every 

 sleeper of the Panama Railway, is no longer a par- 

 ticularly risky place of residence. Our garrison and 

 fleet at Malta no longer suffer from Malta fever. 

 Ismailia, formerly a hot-bed of malaria, has been 

 rendered perfectly healthy. The dreaded sleeping sick- 

 ness, although no absolute cure has yet been found 

 for it, has, in Uganda, at all events, been brought 

 under control. It is unnecessary to multiply in- 

 stances. And apart from what has been done in the 

 matter of prevention and euro of diseases which 

 affect mankind, the labours of the bacteriologist, 

 protozoologist, entomologist, and helminthologist 

 have contributed in no small degree to the progress 

 and prosperity of the tropical and subtropical 

 colonies. This has been done by discovering and trac- 

 ing the life-history and development of the lower forms 

 of life which are the cause of many of the fatal diseases 

 to which stock, especially in tropical and subtropical 

 lands, are subject, in tracing out the means by which 

 they are communicated, and the life-history of their 

 transmitters, or intermediate hosts, in devising pre- 

 ventive measures, and preparing vaccines or serums, 

 and searching for and discovering drugs which act 

 as prophylactics or as cures. 



The two branches of scientific inquiry — as regards 

 human disease, and as regards diseases of animals — 

 are, indeed, to a great extent interdependent. The 

 discovery of the trjpanosome of nagana in cattle and 

 of its transmission by Glossina morsitans may be said 

 to have pointed to the discovery of the transmission 



