238 



NATURE 



[December 22, 1910 



some strong-smelling substance, such as aniseed. 

 Moreover, alter a tew rats have been caught or 

 poisoned in a locality, the survivors will frequently 

 migrate elsewhere, hence the need tor concerted and 

 systematic action in and around a district in which 

 plague has occurred. 



Although plague cases may occur at any time of 

 the year, the disease usually exhibits a marked 

 seasonal prevalence. In Poona plague is epidemic 

 only from July to February, .\ugust, September, and 

 October being the months of maximum prevalence. 

 This period corresponds closely with the extent of flea 

 prevalence on the rats. An epidemic terminates 

 naturally, owing to a combination of adverse factors, 

 e.g. decrease in the number of fleas, decrease in the 

 number of rats, and an increase in the proportion of 

 immune to susceptible rats.' In some instances 

 plague cases may be completely absent between the 

 seasons of prevalence, but by what means the infec- 

 tion is kept alive in the intervals has not yet been 



lead to scattered outbreaks of human plague, probably 

 not in themselves very serious, but possibly causing 

 great injury to commerce. Thus, if, say, half a dozen 

 cases ot plague occurred in the neighbourhood of th< 

 d(x;ks, the Port of I.ondon would be placed in quaran- 

 tine,' and the home and foreign trade of the port 

 amounts nearly to one million pounds per day! It 

 behoves the authorities therefore to prosecute .-i 

 vigorous, concerted, and systematic campaign against 

 the rats with a view to the detection and the limitation 

 of infected areas; now is the time for action, for when 

 infection becomes widespread it is too late. 



For the photomicrographs 1 am indebted to Mr. 

 I. E. Barnard. R. T. Hewlett. 



EXPLORATION IN THE NEARER EAST. 



IN his latest book,- Mr. Hogarth has given us a 

 series of brilliant sketches, each of which centra- 

 round some epistxle in a life of very varied archaec- 



FiG I. — Kigging ihe gn 



l_i,hc.->us. Kiom "Accidents of an Antiquary's Life." 



determined. Rats are occasionally met with suffering 

 from what has been regarded as chronic plague, but 

 the latest investigations of the Indian Plague Com- 

 mittee indicate that the condition is one of recovery 

 from plague infection, and the condition is stated to 

 possess no significance in the seasonal recurrence of 

 the disease ainong the rats.^ 



The recent outbreak of plague in Suffolk, though in 

 itself insignificant, is disquieting owing to the fact 

 that plague-infected animals — rats, rabbits, hares, a 

 ferret (see Fig. 2), and a cat — have been met with in 

 five districts in Suffolk, in one district in Essex, and in 

 the London Docks, indicating a somewhat wide distri- 

 bution of infected • localities. This may be of no 

 moment, but, on the other hand, it may in the future 



^ See "Reports on Plague Investigaiion in India," Nos. xxxvi and 

 ■xxKvW, Journal of Hygiene, x. No. 3. 

 2 Ibid., Report No. xxxiv. 



NO. 2147, VOL. 85] 



logical adventure. It is a delightful form of auto- 

 biography, for we find no dull pages to skip, n 

 laboured accounts of worthy but uninteresting achieve- 

 ment. Each chapter is a separate picture in itself, 

 and, as we read, we find ourselves transported, with 

 somewhat startling rapidity, throughout the lands of 

 the Nearer East. We see the author at work as an 

 archaeologist on the coasts of Asia Minor, in Crete, 

 among the Nile fens of the Delta, in Upper Egypt, 

 on the North African coast at Cyrene, and by the 

 banks of the Euphrates and Sajur, to say nothing of 

 the time when he served as the Times correspondent 

 in Thessaly during the Graeco-Turkish war. Few 

 archoBologists, if any, have accomplished work of so 



1 Plague and cholera are the two diseases now quarantinable under t' 

 Paris Convention. 



'-i "Accidents of an Antiquary's Life." By D. G. Hogarth. Pp. x + 17 

 (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Price 7^. 6ei. net. 



