252 



NATURE 



[October 20, 192 1 



monthly meetings liave been arranged at which papers 

 by well-known workers will be read. Membership of 

 local sections is open free to all members of the in- 

 stitute. The council of the institute has sent out, 

 with the annual programme, a pamphlet comprismg 

 a series of notes lor the guidance of those preparing 

 papers for publication in the Journal of the Institute 

 of Metals. This action should result not only in a 

 commendable uniformity in the form of papers, but 

 may also secure economy in the costs of pro- 

 duction of scientific communications — a result much 

 to be desired. 



In a thoughtful article in The Scientific Monthly 

 for September (p. 214) Prof. Irving Fisher dis- 

 cusses impending problems in eugenics resulting from 

 war, hygiene, birth-control, and immigration. He 

 concludes that his surveys " seem to indicate that 

 much of what we call progress is an illusion, and 

 that really we are slipping backwards while we seem 

 to be moving forwards. Human ambitions under 

 the opportunities afforded by civilisation seem to 

 sacrifice the race to the individual. We congregate in 

 great cities and pile up grea* wealth, but are con- 

 quered by our very luxury. We seek imperial power 

 and not only damage, but destroy, our germ plasm 

 in war. We seek social status and education, but 

 limit motherhood. Like moths attracted by a candle, 

 we fly towards the glamour of wealth and power 

 5)nd destroy ourselves in the act." 



A TIMELY and very necessary protest against the 

 restrictions imposed upon the collection of birds and 

 their eggs for scientific study in certain States in Cali- 

 fornia appears in California Fish and Game (vol. 7, 

 No. 3). It is pointed out that there "are about one 

 hundred and fifty scientific collectors in California, as 

 contrasted with more than one hundred and eighty 

 thousand 'hunters,'" or, as we should say, "sports- 

 men." "Since practically all useful information 

 regarding wild birds and animals," it is remarked, 

 " is a result of the acquisition of specimens, the neces- 

 sity for work of this kind is evident. The curtailment 

 of scientific collecting must result in decreased scien- 

 tific information. Furthermore, there is a danger of 

 decreasing the number of ornithologists by cutting off 

 the opportunity for the right kind of study. Our best 

 ornithologists owe their early interest and their 

 development largely to the unrestricted chance for 

 securing specimens." We heartily endorse this 

 protest. 



Messrs. E. A. Hooton and C. C. Willoughby, in 

 the Papers of the Peabody Museum of American 

 Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University 

 (vol. 8, No. i), report the results of the excavation 

 of an Indian village site and cemetery near Madison- 

 ville, Ohio. The occupation of this site covered the 

 interval immediately preceding the first intercourse 

 of the Indians of this region with Europeans, and 

 extended into the proto-historic period, during which 

 the inhabitants were able to procure a small amount 

 of European metals and glass beads, either from 



NO. 2712, VOL. 108] 



early missionaries or travellers, or indirectly through 

 their Indian neighbours. This culture in prehistoric 

 times extended over a considerable portion of southern 

 Ohio, and there appears to have been a migration 

 of these Indians, driven south by the Iroquois, into 

 the region of the Ohio River. Unfortunately there is 

 Httle osteological material available from the States 

 of Indiana and Kentucky for comparison with that 

 of MadisonviHf, and the skeletal remains from the 

 graves of the great earthwork builders of Ohio, now 

 in the museum, have not been as yet systematically 

 studied. 



In the Fortnightly Review for October Mr. 

 Julian S. Huxley makes some suggestive observa- 

 tions on the evidences of variation and evolution as 

 they occur in nature, derived from his study of the 

 bird life of Spitsbergen during a visit to that island 

 as a member of the Oxford University Expedition. 

 The ringed or bridled guillemot is a simple Men- 

 delian mutant of the common guillemot, differing 

 only in the presence of a line of white encircling the 

 eye and prolonged backwards across the side of the 

 head. The two varieties live together and inter- 

 breed. The process of differentiation has progressed 

 further in the Spitsbergen puffin and Mandt's guille- 

 mot, which are distinct northern geographical races 

 of the common puffin and black guillemot, char- 

 acterised by their larger size and paler colour. In 

 the Spitsbergen geese, skuas, and eiders are found 

 closely related species inhabiting the same region, but 

 adapted to different modes of life. They are distinct 

 in habit as well as in structure; the barnacle goose 

 nests on the cliffs, the Brent goose on the low 

 islands; Buffon's skua appears to keep more to the 

 hills than Richardson's skua, while the king eider 

 has been found nesting only singly on the tundra, 

 not, like the common eider, in multitudes on islets. 



An excellent summary of our knowledge of the 

 "bacteriophage " is given by d'Herelle, its discoverer, 

 in La Nature of October i, p. 2jcg. The funda- 

 mental observation on this subject is as follows : 

 a patient suffering from the bacillary form of dysen- 

 tery is observed for, say, thirty days. Every day a 

 sample of the fzeces is mixed with broth, filtered 

 through a porcelain filter to remove the bacteria pre- 

 sent, and the series of filtrates is kept. At the end of 

 the thirty days, thirty broth cultures of B. dysenteriae 

 are prepared, and then to each culture tube one drop 

 of a faeces filtrate is added, and the tubes are incu- 

 bated. After twelve hours the following kind of re- 

 sult is obtained : tubes i to 6, unchanged ; tubes 7 

 to 18, entirely clear and free from turbidity; tubes 

 19 to 30, unchanged. In the clear tubes the dysentery 

 bacilli will be found to have dissolved, hence the 

 disappearance of turbidity. D'Herelle maintains that 

 the agent which causes the solution of the dysentery 

 bacilli is an ultra-microscopic organism, to which he 

 gives the name "bacteriophage," and which he sup- 

 poses is of importance in cure and in immunity. 

 Others believe that the agent is a catalyst which 

 causes micro-organisms to produce autolytic ferments. 



