October 6, 192 1 J 



NATURE 



187 



enormous water-masses of South Atlantic origin are 

 passing at the surface with great speed, and the cold 

 water flowing along the bottom has, so far as we 

 know, the same course. It follows from this that 

 intermediate water-masses must move in the opposite 

 direction, from the North to the South Atlantic. We 

 hope to be able to do some useful work in this boun- 

 dary region by studying the interaction between the 

 water-masses of the northern and the southern Atlantic 

 and their pelagic life. 



The study of the equatorial current brings us in 

 close contact with another important problem : the 

 origin of the so-called Gulf Stream. We intend to 

 study this by means of sections from the Sargasso 

 Sea to the north coast of South America through the 

 Caribbean Sea, and from the Sargasso Sea to the 

 east coast of the United States. It seems clear that 

 water passing both south and north of the West 

 Indies must take part in the formation of the Gulf 

 Strearji. We hope that our sections taken before and 



after the junction of the water-masses coming from 

 Florida Strait and of those passing north of the West 

 Indies will help us to determine their relative import- 

 ance in the formation of the Gulf Stream. 



The centre of the North Atlantic rotation is the 

 Sargasso Sea, a region which seems to merit a care- 

 ful hydrographical investigation. Probably we shall 

 be able to spend a good deal of time here on account 

 of the eel investigations. It is impossible to say how 

 long we shall be kept in the Sargasso Sea and West 

 Indian waters, and it depends on this how much 

 we shall be able to do during the homeward voyage of 

 the expedition. If time permits we shall certainly 

 make one or more cross-sections of the Gulf Stream 

 or the Atlantic rotation, first one from the Sargasso 

 Sea to Newfoundland, and perhaps another from there 

 to the Azores. 



This is a very brief sketch of our working scheme. 

 Time will show to what extent we shall be able to 

 carry it through. 



Industrial Micro-biology. 



IT is not much more than half a century since 

 Pasteur began to study some chemical effects 

 of micro-org-anisms which led him to the founda- 

 tion of the new science of bacteriology. In the 

 application of Pasteur's results to medicine this 

 country has not been behind, and in the investiga- 

 tion of diseases due to protozoa it has been in the 

 forefront. We have, however, neglected the 

 application of Pasteur's work to industry. Yeast 

 has been studied successfully in England, yet we 

 cannot be said to lead in this department. Past 

 British achievements in the chemistry of fermenta- 

 tion have been recently recorded by Prof. Arm- 

 strong in his Adrian Brown memorial lecture (see 

 Nature for July 28, p. 698}. It is chiefly in the 

 other industrial uses of micro-organisms that we 

 are behind France and Germany in many respects ; 

 the Danish dairy industry has made far better use 

 of bacteriology than has ours. Accordingly we 

 must be grateful when a leading expert like Mr. 

 Chaston Chapman reviews recent achievements 

 and the present position in a series of lectures.^ 



Starting from the discovery of zymase by 

 Biichner in 1897, Mr. Chapman discusses the work 

 of Harden and his colleagues on its co-enzyme, 

 and then refers to the German manufacture of 

 glycerine by fermentation during the late war. 

 In 1858 Pasteur first directed attention to the con- 

 stant occurrence of glycerine in the fermentation 

 of sugar solutions, and put the yield at about 3 per 

 cent, of the sugar employed. Later 7 or 8 per 

 cent, has been occasionally recorded, but Conn- 

 stein and Liidecke have shown that in the presence 

 of various alkaline salts the yield of glycerine may 

 regularly amount to lo per cent. ; in a concen- 

 trated solution of sodium sulphite it may even 

 reach 36 per cent, of the sugar employed (usually 

 molasses). .\ yield of looo tons a month is 

 stated to have been attained during the war. The 

 process was kept secret until after the armistice, 



1 "Micro-organisms and some of their Industrial Uses." The Cantor 

 Lectures. Bv A. Chaston Chapman. Journ. R»y. Soc. of Arts, 1921, 

 vol. 69, pp. 581-89, 597-605, 609-19. 



NO. 2710, VOL. 108] 



and hence it is difficult to know to whom most 

 credit should be assigned. Mr. Chapman states 

 that Germany was actually producing large quan- 

 tities of glycerine by fermentation early in 191 7, 

 and he thinks it probable that the initial experi- 

 ments were made very shortly after — if not before 

 — the outbreak of war. He also refers to a less 

 known report from the laboratory of the Internal 

 Revenue Bureau in Washington, dated Mav 6, 

 19 18, which makes it clear that the American 

 authorities had then also devoted much attention 

 to the problem, and with considerable success. 



In his lectures Mr. Chapman is not so much 

 concerned with the commercial aspect of this 

 manufacture as with the illustration it affords how, 

 "by the application of the necessarv' study, an 

 ancient and very familiar biological process may 

 be made to yield as much as 40 per cent, of a 

 substance which had hitherto been regarded 

 merely as an unimportant by-product." 



A second example of the application of modern 

 biochemical methods to an ancient industry is 

 furnished by the " amylo " process for the direct 

 conversion of starch into alcohol by certain 

 moulds. Such fungi have been used for centuries 

 in China for the preparation of potable spirit from 

 rice, for they produce not only an amylase, but 

 also a zymase, combining, therefore, the functions 

 of malt and of yeast. After an investigation by 

 Calmette, the first large-scale trials were made in 

 a French distillery in 1898, and for 1916 the out- 

 put of alcohol by this process in France is stated 

 to have been 665,232 hectolitres (14 million 

 gallons). In this countr}' the " amylo " process 

 cannot be used, owing to Excise regulations. 

 Mr. Chapman points the moral : 



No Government can afford to ignore scientific dis- 

 coveries and industrial developments . . . and if there 

 is one thing which, during recent years, has been 

 made more apparent than another, it is that the 

 country which is foremost in the encouragement of 

 scientific men and in the utilisation of their dis- 



