170 



NATURE 



[OctOBER 7, 1920 



Acfcording- to the second recommendation, the 

 committee apparently views with equanimity the 

 perpetuation of our use of two systems where one 

 would suffice for all purposes. In the third recom- 

 mendation the committee suggests the decimal- 

 isation of the British units of weight and measure, 

 thus supporting a proposal roundly condemned by 

 a select committee of the House of Commons 

 which, in 1862, reported that " It would involve 

 almost as much difficulty to create a special 

 decimal system of our own as simply to adopt the 

 metric system in common with other nations. 

 And if we did so create a national system we 

 would, in all likelihood, have to change it again 

 in a few years, as the commerce and intercourse 

 between nations increased, into an international 

 one." 



Our choice to-day rests between (i) the con- 

 tinued use of a dual system (because we must 

 employ the metric system in an increasing propor- 

 tion of our business, whether we like it or not), 

 and (2) the establishment of the metric system as 

 the universal language of quantity (involving the 

 gradual abandonment of the Imperial system 

 which, by reason of its manifest defects, is so 

 obviously unsuitable for universal adoption). 



It is sheer insularity which makes us cling to 

 the first course and, regarding the alternative, the 

 committee of the Conjoint Board states in par. 50 

 of its report (but omits from the "recommenda- 

 tions ") that " It will be sufficient for the purpose 

 of this inquiry to admit unreservedly that the 

 metric system of weights and measures is the only 

 system which has considerable claims to be truly 

 international, and that it is the only system to 

 which a change could reasonably be made should 

 any country propose to abolish its existing national 

 system." 



Some further Government action is clearly re- 

 quired beyond the Act of 1897, but it does not 

 necessarily follow that the next step need be the 

 adoption of legislation of a compulsory character. 

 The Government could do very much to encourage 

 the more widespread use of the system by its 

 employment in Government specifications and by 

 a declaration that ultimately. at some future date 

 (not necessarily fixed at present) the metric system 

 would become the sole legal system in this country. 

 Many manufacturers would be thereby stimulated 

 to establish all their new standards and their re- 

 visions of old standards in terms of the metric 

 system, and there would be nothing to prevent 

 them from continuing to manufacture their exist- 

 ing standards in the British system and describing 

 NO. 2658, VOL. 106] 



them for sale in terms of the metric system, as 

 they already have done for so many years. We 

 should thus progress beyond the present passive 

 permission, through a period of intensive encour- 

 agement, to the final stage in which the metric 

 system would become the sole legal system of 

 weights and measures, when "compulsion" need 

 be applied only to the stragglers who had failed 

 to adopt it voluntarily. 



It is satisfactory to note that with regard to 

 decimal coinage the committee "sees no serious 

 objection in principle " to the proposals for deci- 

 malising the ^ sterling, and it may be interested 

 to know that the revision of Lord Southwark's 

 Bill is now under consideration with a view to the 

 removal of some of the practical difficulties to 

 which the committee refers. In the meantime we 

 may perhaps be permitted to remark that it is 

 futile to talk about "preserving the credit of the 

 penny " at a time like the present, when the 

 failure of the penny to meet modern conditions is 

 so very obvious. 



Harry Allcock. 



The Study of Live Embryos. 



Contributions to Embryology. Vol. ix., Nos. 27 

 to 46. A Memorial to Franklin Paine Mali- 

 (Publication No. 272.) Pp. v -i- 554 -(- plates. 

 (Washington : The Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington, 1920.) 



LONG before the war it was being realised in 

 England that the centre of embryological 

 research, at least so far as concerns inquiries into 

 the developmental stages of the human body, was 

 shifting from the laboratories of Germany to those 

 of the United States. The transference was the 

 work of one man — the late Prof. F. P. Mall, who 

 died in 1917 at the age of fifty-five. Prof. Mall 

 stocked the new and highly equipped anatomical 

 laboratories of the United States with young men 

 and women who had served their apprenticeship 

 with him in the anatomical department of Johns 

 Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. In 1918 he would 

 have reached the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ap- 

 pointment at Baltimore, and his pupils, " in recog- 

 nition of his inspiring leadership, and in response 

 to the strong feeling of affection with which they 

 had come to regard him," intended to mark the 

 occasion by dedicating to him a volume of their 

 most recent investigations. These essays, owing' 

 to his untimely death, have now to appear as a 

 memorial volume, and the sense of regret that 

 Prof. Mall did not live to study it will be felt as 

 acutely on this side of the Atlantic as on the 



