312 



NATURE 



[October 14, 1920 



Bragjj addressed the Geology Section on X-rays and 

 crystal structure ; I think this was as useful as a joint 

 meeting with Section A would have been. 



{2) I very much doubt the assumption commonly 

 made that the application of science to life and 

 industry is what the public want to hear about. It 

 may be good for them to hear about it, but we shall 

 have to gild the pill with more attractive subjects, 

 such as the age of the earth, the e.\cavations at 

 Cnossus, the properties of prime numbers, or Einstein. 

 The public that we are trying to reach may be in- 

 terested in the application of X-rays to atomic struc- 

 ture, but a paper on the latest X-ray apparatus in the 

 hospitals would be hopelessly dull. May we not draw 

 a moral from the fact that the best-attended Section 

 at Cardiff seems to have been that which devoted its 

 whole programme to pure science and scarcely touched 

 on any industrial applications? To lay stress on the 

 valuable material results of science may be the best 

 way of touching the ]X)ckets of commercial magnates, 

 but the British .Association has also the missionary 

 task of encouraging interest in the methods of science 

 and of spreading the true scientific spirit. 



The question remains : Can anything be done to set 

 forth in a more popular way the methods of science 

 in the towns we visit? I think anything that is done 

 must be outside our Sectional proceedings. To popu- 

 larise them would meVely result in the majority of 

 professional scientific workers staying away, leaving 

 only those interested in scientific propaganda. 

 -Mtiiough some of our ablest men of science have the 

 gift of being able to deliver attractive popular lectures, 

 the majority have no special aptitude or inclination 

 for this, and there is no reason whatever why they 

 should. If thev have trained themselves to be 

 able to explain their work lucidly to those who have 

 been educated to understand and criticise, they have 

 done their part, and may leave to others the work of 

 propaganda. We must avoid the painful spectacle of 

 a brilliant investigator placed in an unfamiliar position 

 before a popular audience and trying to talk down 

 to them — a task performed much better by a man 

 with a tenth of his knowledge, but who has practised 

 the art of jxjpular lecturing. Moreover, the public 

 wants his \"ery latest conclusions, stated without the 

 conditions and reservations which they do not under- 

 stand ; and when next year he alters his opinion in 

 the light of further advances, they will deride him and 

 men of science generally for advertising sensationally 

 themselves and their half-baked conclusions. It is 

 right that we should try to make some more direct 

 return to the public in the towns the hospitality of 

 which we enjoy ; but the difficulties and dangers are 

 so obvious that it is desirable to proceed very 

 cautiously. 



References to the good old davs of the .Association, 

 when Kelvin, Maxwell, and others would argue bv 

 the blackboard and the audience could watch new dis- 

 coveries emerging, produce in my mind an effect 

 opposite to that apparently intended. It makes me 

 realise how greatly the .Association has advanced since 

 then. In these days, too, we have a big X, Y, Z 

 whose views on any subject under discussion would 

 have delighted the audience, and their presence and 

 happy way of saying the right thing or putting an 

 encouraging question when it was needed cannot be 

 too highly valued. But more often X shook his head, 

 and a whisper from the Recorder reminded me that 

 X (a name scarcely known to the majority present) 

 had made a life-study of the particular problem, and 

 it was he who enlightened us. The great democracy 

 of scientific workers is a product of the newer age, 

 and nowhere does one feel that sense of equality and 

 fraternity so convincingly as at the British .Associa- 

 tion. A. S. Eddixgton. 

 NO. 2659, VOL. 106] 



With reference to the views expressed by corre- 

 spondents in Nature as to the future of the British 

 .Association, based, it would seem, in large measure 

 on the rather disappointing attendance at the recent 

 meeting at Cardiff, it appears to me there were 

 reasons for this irrespective of any decadence of the 

 -Association. May not the date being so near the 

 height of the holiday season — viz. the end of August 

 rather than the beginning of September, as on so 

 many previous occasions — be accountable for the 

 absence of some members? In these times there are 

 more counter-attractions than formerly for scientific 

 workers and others interested in scientific or profes- 

 sional subjects in connection with their own special 

 annual gatherings. Having yielded to the claims of 

 these, they cannot afford the time or expense of 

 attending the British Association meeting in addi- 

 tion. F"or example, a friend of mine residing in 

 South Wales, whom I hoped to meet at Cardiff, 

 expressed his regret at not being able to be present, 

 as he had to expend all his spare time during the 

 first two weeks in .August at the national Eisteddfod 

 of Wales at Barry and the annual meeting of the 

 Welsh Bibliographical Society also held there, and 

 at the Cambrian .Archaeological .Vssociation meeting 

 in Gower. In some instances the increased railway 

 fares (and no reduction as formerly) and hotel and 

 other expenses acted as deterrents, and not any 

 falling off of interest in the Association that kept 

 many away. The bulk of the usual attenders at the 

 British -Association belong to the class who have been 

 most severely hit by the present hard times. 



W'lLSON L. Fox. 



Carmino, Falmouth, October 5. 



Recapitulation and Descent. 



The passage entitled " Recapitulation as Proof of 

 Descent" in Dr. Bather's "Fossils and Life" (see 

 Nature for September 30, p. 162) calls for critical 

 comment, inasmuch as it is representative of incon- 

 sequent reasoning current in several text-books 

 commonly in use among students. 



If experimental breeding justified the inference that 

 a mutant form should recapitulate the characters of 

 its ancestral stock, the observed fact that develop- 

 mental stages in the life of an organism frequently 

 resemble adult forms which are antecedent to it in the 

 time process would constitute a cogent consideration 

 for regarding these antecedent forms as ancestral to 

 such an organism. But genetic investigation does not 

 at present lead to such a prediction, and hence it is 

 perfectly evident that recapitulatory phenomena do 

 not provide direct evidence for evolution. Hitherto 

 experiment has not thrown any light on the genetic 

 significance of recapitulation, except so far as to 

 suggest that factorial elimination rather than any 

 " perennial desire of youth to attain a semblance of 

 maturity " (whatever this may mean) is the key to 

 "the omission of some st.eps in the orderly process." 



-As Sedgwick many years ago emphasised, for the 

 purpose of the general theory of evolution recapitula- 

 tory phenomena are of interest only as extending the 

 law of unity of type ; while the value of embryological 

 data for phyiogenetic speculations resides logically in 

 the fact that the embrvologist studies the entire 

 sequence of structural arrangements which charac- 

 terise a living organism, whereas the comparative 

 anatomist of adult life pays attention to only one of 

 them. 



It is easy to appreciate that in a ireneration which 

 was obsessed with the " immutability of species " 

 recapitulatory phenomena would greatly influence the 

 minds of persons otherwise slow to recognise the 

 varying degree of similarity and dissimilarity in the 



