568 



NATURE 



[June 30, 192 1 



poisons], for it has a very delicate stomach, and, I 

 believe, cannot vomit ; at any rate, does not readily 

 do so." There is room for an extended biological 

 and psychological study of the rat, for it does seriously 

 affect the commerce of the world both directly as a 

 consumer and indirectly as the international carrier 

 of plague. 



Perhaps the most fascinating item of the congress 

 programme was the popular lecture by Prof. Mel- 

 lanby, of Sheffield, on "Vitamins." A health con- 

 gress without a discussion on diet would be a 

 solecism, and to-day the whole theory of diet has been 

 transfigured by the "vitamin " hypothesis. It is well 

 to regard the word as provisional, for in this way 

 the methods of research are likely to remain more 

 fluid. No one has established a better right than 

 Prof. Mellanby to be heard on the recent develop- 

 ments. He set forth the data with persuasive lucidity. 

 He showed that experiment discredited the old view 

 that diet could be exhaustively expressed in terms of 

 proteins, carbohydrates, fats, salts, and water. There 

 is a sextum quid. From Eyckman's discovery that 

 beri-beri was due to rice robbed of certain portions 

 by "polishing " to the latest experiments with puppies 



to show the production and arrest of rickets, Prof. 

 Mellanby made clear the reasons for assuming the 

 existence of the three factors : Fat-soluble A, water- 

 soluble B, and the anti-scorbutic factor. The work 

 of Prof. Mellanby and his wife in this field is well 

 known to the technical and official public, but there 

 is much need to spread the ascertained facts among 

 the wider public, for this is the onlv way to generate 

 sufficient pressure to secure that the consumer shall 

 have the benefit of the latest discoveries. The fact 

 that hypotheses are disputed is no reason for not 

 making them known. In this matter the facts even 

 as now ascertained are of high practical value. The 

 physiological and biochemical departments of the 

 various schools ought to work in more intimate touch 

 with the administrative public, especiallv with the 

 clinical investigators. 



Of the congress as a whole it can be said trulv 

 that the mayor and councillors did everything to- 

 show that they understood the importance of the 

 institute's educational work, and as we parted in the 

 clean air and light of a perfect summer day we 

 assured each other that on the scientific, as well as 

 on the social, side it had been "a very nice. con gress."^ 



The Importance of Research in the Development of the Mineral Industries.^ 



By Sir Richard Redmayne, K.C.B. 



THE present state of the civilised world is, 

 economically, paradoxical. The need for com- 

 modities is very great, yet the production of them 

 is so costly that industry is languishing for lack of 

 orders. On the termination of the war, after four 

 years of excessive waste and destruction, the world is 

 found short of houses, food, and other commodities ; 

 railwavs and rolling stock are in sad need of repair, 

 restoration, and expansion ; the output of fuel, the 

 life-blood of our economic existence, is greatly 

 decreased, and the mines from which it is produced 

 are in a laackward state of development. 



The cessation of hostilities was succeeded almost at 

 once by a period of feverish industrial activity — it 

 would be erroneous to apply the words "general 

 prosperity "—followed by a cycle of great depres- 

 sion. The demand for goods is great, but production 

 is falling. What is the explanation? It lies, I think, 

 in a combination of circumstances : — 



(i) A feeling of insecurity due to unsettled political 

 and financial conditions. Hence a disposition to con- 

 serve rather than to utilise in commercial ventures 

 such capital as is available. 



(2^ The incidence of rate of exchange. 



(3) The high cost of production consequent on the 

 high cost of living and the higher standard of com- 

 fort demanded (and rightly demanded) by the labour- 

 ing classes than formerly obtained. 



(4) The lower, and still appai-ently decreasing, pro- 

 ductive power of labour. 



The fi,rst two conditions will in part right them- 

 selves in process of time as the various political 

 problems are solved, or partly solved, and rates of 

 exchange will then tend towards the normal ; but a 

 very great deal depends upon the last two conditions, 

 as the future position of production is not easy to 

 forecast. Higher and cheaper production is a diflficult 

 desideratum to obtain in view of the high rate of 

 wages now ruling and the diminishment in working 

 time either achieved or claimed by the manual workers 

 of the day, and these are demands which are not likely 

 to show much abatement in the future. What is the 



1 Address delivered at the annual meeting of the British Science Guild 

 held at the Goldsmiths' Hall on June 8. 



solution? The answer I venture to give, the solution 

 which I presume to propound, to this problem, is 

 "research." To discover by research cheaper means 

 of production, and by research to create new outlets. 



The object, then, of my address to-day is to direct 

 attention^ to the necessity for research work in the 

 mineral industries. Let me make more clear what I 

 have in mind by taking one special case in point, a 

 most important case — that of coal. It is an axiom 

 that a cheap and plentiful supply of suitable fuel is 

 necessary for our prosperity as a manufacturing 

 country. This situation will remain, and is bound to 

 remain, until some other means of producing power 

 cheaply is discovered. 



I think it may be taken that, roughly speaking, 

 the rate per cent, of return on the capital invested in 

 coal-mining in Great Britain over the last hundred 

 and fifty years has, on the average, not varied much 

 — reckoning in, say, periods of ten years — yet the 

 progress made during the last two or three genera- 

 tions in every respect, except in the rate of return on 



\ capital, has been enormous. 



i Thus such everyday features of a colliery working 

 at the present time as shaft cages and guides, the 



; safety lamp, the steam locomotive, the trade in coke 

 and by-products, ventilating fans, wire ropes, 

 mechanical haulage, mechanical screening, the use of 

 compressed air, the application of electricity to signal- 

 ling, lighting, and motive power, and the mechanical 

 cutting of coal have all been introduced in the course 

 of the last hundred and twenty years. There is 

 scarcely an appliance (save the simplest tools) or a 

 machine in use at a modern colliery which could have 

 been made at the beginning of the nineteenth century ; 

 and during this period the wages of the workmen — I 

 omit the war period and the present abnormal time 

 from consideration — have been increased certainly 

 between 200 and 300 per cent., and this though the 

 price of coal did not greatly increase ; as a matter of 

 fact, between the years 1828-1900 the variation was 

 small and the price was lower in the latter year than 

 in the former. 



It was because of the improvements introduced into 

 coal-mining that it was possible to keep down the 



NO. 2696, VOL. 107] 



