764 



NATURE 



[August ii, 192 i 



Dr. Shadwell is undoubtedly right in saying that 

 the demand for this Act arose on account of the 

 existence of " abnormal places " in coal-mines — that is 

 to say, places in which men cannot make normal 

 wages even though they work up to the normal 

 standard, and that these conditions are due to natural 

 ■causes which can be neither controlled nor foreseen. 

 He appears to accept the Minimum Wage Act as the 

 only means of meeting the difficulty, but in this view 

 ■experienced coal-miners are not likely to concur. It 

 should be perfectly possible to devise means other than 

 this Act, which unfortunately encourages slack work, 

 without the grave drawbacks which the Act has brought 

 in its train, but such other methods must be founded 

 •on mutual confidence between masters and men. 



It must be admitted that this antecedent condition 

 does not exist ; masters have in the past been only 

 too readv to look upon hard work or successful work 

 ■on the p^rt of the men as a fair pretext for cutting 

 piece rates, and this action has sown in the men's 

 minds the seeds of the suspicion that they cannot rely 

 upon the masters for fair treatment in the case of ab- 

 normal difficulties. Colliery managers to-day are, no 

 doubt, wiser, and have learnt to appreciate the fact 

 that it is to their advantage, no less than to that of the 

 men, that the latter should be in a ix>sition to earn 

 high wages, provided, of course, that they give a 

 commensurate amount of work in return. The old 

 suspicious feeling, however, remains, and it has been 

 responsible for the introduction of legislation which 

 has probablv done more harm to the coal industry 

 than anv other single step that can be. named. 



Dr. Shadwell devotes considerable attention to the 

 discussion of the proposal for a national pool, but he 

 evidently fails to see the real object underlying the 

 proposal. He says that " it is impossible to main- 

 tain that there is anything impracticable or econo- 

 mically ruinous in pooling or amalgamation," and 

 cites Sir George Elliott's old proposal to amalgamate 

 all the collieries in the kingdom into one concern. 

 He fails to see the difference between voluntarv amal- 



gamation and compulsory pooling, which latter would 

 necessarily bring in a large number of collieries that 

 are no longer able to prcxiuce coal for less than its 

 market price. He suspects, indeed, that the object 

 with which the pool was put forward was political, 

 but does not appear to see the real motive under- 

 lying the scheme. As a matter of fact, all the pro- 

 posals put forward for a considerable time past by 

 the Miners' Federation, the Minimum Wage .Act, 

 repeated shortening of the hours, nationalisation, the 

 pool, as well as the less openly avowed tendency to 

 restrict production wherever possible — all these have 

 one and the samfe vmderlying object, namely, to keep 

 the largest number of men in the industry^ 



This object has been only too successful ; the coal- 

 miner to-day produces only two-thirds of what he did 

 fifteen years ago, so that for an equal production the 

 number of men employed in the industry is propor- 

 tionately greater. Obviously, the larger the number of 

 men employed in the industry the greater the political 

 power of the Federation, because it thus obtains con- 

 trol of a larger number of votes and of larger 

 monetary contributions. This gain to the Federation 

 is, however, dearly purchased by the decrease in the 

 efficiency ?ind prosperity of the industry, and obviously 

 such a road can only lead to ultimate ruin and destruc- 

 tion. No industry can prosper if it has in its ranks 

 more men than it can legitimately maintain. The 

 object of nationalisation was to support out of the 

 |X)ckets of the taxpayers the mines incapable of pfo- 

 ducing economically ; the object of the pool was to sup- 

 port them at the expense of the mines that could pay 

 their way. Both schemes were political, in the sense 

 that their object was to keep a number of men in 

 the industry who were working at a loss, and to 

 devise means by which that loss might be made good 

 by someone else. If Dr. Shadwell will consider the 

 effects of the proposed pool upon the mining industrv 

 of the country as a whole in the above light, he will 

 readilv see why both mine-owners and the Govern- 

 ment have offered such strenuous opposition to it. 



Botanical Papers from Pennsylvania. 



TWO parts of the Journal of the Botanical Labora- 

 tory of the University of Pennsylvania recently 

 received (vol. iv., No. 2, and vol. v., No. i) contain 

 a number of interesting papers. Dr. D. W. Steck- 

 beck has studied the comparative histology and 

 irritability of sensitive plants. The majority of the 

 highly sensitive species are natives of subtropical and 

 tropical America, and their most widespread irritable 

 response is the nyctitropic or " sleep-movement." The 

 author suggests that the phenomenon of propagation 

 of stimuli is centred in the endodermis, the cells of 

 which contain a greater or less number of crystals of 

 oxalate of lime, the number, regularity of shape, and 

 degree of restriction to the endodermis increasing 

 with the increase of sensitivity shown by the plant ; 

 the climax is reached in the two highly sensitive plants 

 Mimosa pudica and Biofhytum sensitivum. Each 

 crystal is surrounded by a protoplasmic sac, threads 

 from which pass through adjacent cell-membranes so 

 as to form continuous 'protoplasmic connections 

 throughout the endodermal tissue ; the crystals with 

 their protoplasmic connections are regarded as the 

 special conducting lines for stimuli. The cells of the 

 pulvinus of the leaves are found to contain aggrega- 

 tion bodies, resembling those described by Darwin and 

 others, increasing in amount and complexity with 

 increasing sensitiveness ; these show contraction and 

 aggregation changes under stimulation. They are 



NO. 2702, VOL. 107] 



proteinaceous in nature, and all contractile changes 

 resulting from external stimuli seem to be due to 

 changes primarily in the protoplasmic sac by which 

 each Is surrounded, secondly in the aggregation body 

 itself, and finally in the amount of liquid these may 

 absorb or give off. 



Dr. J. S. Hepburn and Dr. E. Q. St, John describe 

 the results of their investigation of the active digestive 

 agent In the liquor secreted in the pitchers of the 

 pitcher-plant (Nepenthes). Does digestion result from 

 the action of a protease secreted by the pitchers or 

 is it due to bacterial action? The authors found that 

 liquor taken aseptlcally from unopened pitchers was 

 sterile, but liquor In partly opened pitchers which 

 were free from insects contained bacteria. The slow- 

 ness with which bacterial digestion of the protein 

 occurred shows that bacteria play a secondary r6le In 

 the digestion of Insects ; the leading rdle is un- 

 doubtedly played by the protease of the pitcher liquor. 

 The enzymes contained in the bodies of the Insects 

 may also assist In digestion. 



Miss Alice M. Russell gives a comparative study 

 of the macroscopic and microscopic structure of some 

 hybrid Sarracenias and their parent species. Sarra- 

 cenla Is the genus of pitcher-plants native to swampy 

 districts in Atlantic North America from Labrador to 

 Florida, and several natural hybrids have been re- 

 ported. The hybrid forms are found to be inter- 



