March i6, 1922] 



NATURE 



355 



Carbon Monoxide in Gas. 



By Prof. John W. Cobb 

 'HE following paragraph appeared in The Times 

 for February ii, under the heading "Carbon 

 moxide Peril." 



["The Board of Trade has drafted a special Order 

 ider the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, relating to carbon 

 jnoxide in gas used for domestic purposes. The 

 ler provides that : No gas undertakers as defined 

 the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, shall supply any 

 for domestic purposes containing carbon monoxide 

 _ less such gas possesses the distinctive pungent 

 smell of coal gas. The Order requires the approval 

 of both Houses of Parhament." 



The announcement needs some explanation, as 

 probably nobody in this country has ever come across 

 a pubhc gas supply without a very distinctive and 

 pungent smell. 



When Sir George Beilby and the Fuel Research 

 Board were called upon by the Board of Trade, 

 some time ago, to make recommendations for the 

 future regulation of public gas supply, they recognised 

 in effect that radical improvements and economies 

 by the gas manufacturers could be secured by the 

 gasification of the fixed carbon of the coal by some 

 such process as that of the steaming of vertical gas 

 retorts or the gasification of coke in external genera- 

 tors with steam — the so-called water-gas process. 



The increase in the carbon monoxide content of 

 the gas so involved depended upon the extent to 

 which the fixed carbon was gasified. The recom- 

 mendations then made form the basis of the Gas 

 Regulation Act of 1920, but when the Act was passed 

 it w'as decided that the Board of Trade should in- 

 stitute mquiries on two special points, one of which 

 was " whether it is necessary or desirable to prescribe 

 any Umitations of the proportion of carbon monoxide 

 which may be supplied for the gas used for domestic 

 purposes." The inquiry was made and evidence 

 taken by a Committee from witnesses who regarded 

 this matter from different points of view, and set out 

 their arguments at length. It became plain that the 

 economic advantages offe. ed by the new Act depended 

 very largely on freedom to supply gas containing 

 more carbon monoxide, and that even on the side of 

 hygiene the position was not so simple as might 

 appear at first sight. Any danger from carbon 

 monoxide had to be placed against the improvement of 



public health which would result from the progressive 

 abohtion of smoke as gas replaced raw coal for 

 heating purposes, and it had to be realised that in 

 no circumstances would it be practicable to supply 

 gas containing little or no carbon monoxide, since 

 ordinary " straight " coal-gas might contain 10 per 

 cent or more. 



It is not surprising, therefore, that the Committee 

 recommended against statutory Umitation of carbon 

 monoxide in public gas supply. It was. however, 

 possible that the conditions of manufacture might at 

 some time or place be changed to such an extent 

 that the gas- then supplied to the pubUc would be 

 nearly odourless unless some means were taken to 

 confer a smell upon it, and to meet that possibility 

 of the future it was recommended that the distribu- 

 tion of an odourless gas should be made an offence. 



The Board of Trade Order, which has just been 

 drafted, will carry that recommendation into effect. 

 It is no doubt hoped that it will also have on the 

 public mind the beneficial effect of a psychological 

 antitoxin, which seems to be needed at the present time. 



During the last two months of severe weather, 

 the number of accidents from gas poisoning un- 

 doubtedly increased. Various factors have been 

 operative in bringing this about, including the tend- 

 ency to restrict ventilation owing to the cold, and 

 to use gas heating apphances of all kinds, in all sorts 

 of places, and particularly in bedrooms. Public atten- 

 tion, however, having been directed to the fact that 

 carbon monoxide in pubhc gas supply might increase 

 considerably in the future owing to the Gas Regula- 

 tion Act, people have arrived at the mistaken con- 

 clusion that such increase had already taken place 

 and was solely responsible for these accidents. It 

 would, as a matter of fact, greatly surprise the present 

 writer to learn that the carbon monoxide content of 

 gas responsible for any one of these accidents was 

 above the permissible hmit recommended by the 

 advocates of restriction before the special Committee 

 to which leference has been made above. In the 

 gas supply of Leeds, which has come under the 

 writer's own tests, the percentage of carbon monoxide 

 has been actually considerably lower than it was 

 during the summer months of the coal strike, and 

 no higher than in the preceding winter. Nor is there 

 any reason to suppose that the condition so described 

 is exceptional. 



The Brain of Rhodesian Man. 



AT a meeting of the Royal Anthropological 

 ^^^ Institute held on February 14, Dr. W. H. R. 

 Rivers, president, in the chair. Prof. G. ElUot Smith 

 described the brain of Rhodesian man. 



The excellent endocranial cast which Mr. Frank 

 Barlow, of the Natural History Museum, has been 

 able to obtain from the Rhodesian skull is of ex- 

 ceptional importance. In the first place, it affords 

 evidence which settles once for all the position of 

 Homo rhodesiensis in the human family and its 

 varying degrees of affinity to the different members 

 of the family ; and, secondly, it provides very precise 

 information concerning the size, shape, and stage of 

 development of the brain of Rhodesian man, so 

 that when the endocranial casts of Pithecanthropus, 

 Eoantlu-opus, and Homo Neanderthalensis are com- 

 pared with it and the whole series is considered in 

 the hght of the new information, a fuller under- 

 standing of the process of evolution of the human 



NO. 2733, VOL. 109] 



brain is attained. Moreover, the endocranial cast 

 enables us definitely to settle the dispute as to the 

 posture of Rhodesian man, or at any rate as to how 

 he carried his head. 



Prof. John Hunter, of the University of Sydney, 

 has made a series of exact orthogonal projections 

 of the endocranial casts of the extinct types of the 

 human family and of the anthropoid apes, and has 

 shown that Rhodesian man's head was thrust forward 

 on his tremendously massive neck at an angle almost 

 exactly intermediate between that of the gorilla 

 and modem jnan — a degree of obliquity almost 

 identical with that of Gibraltar man and probably a 

 little more than that of the man of La Chapelle-aux- 

 Saints. The peculiarly distinctive features of the 

 base of the skull of Rhodesian man corroborate this 

 interpretation. The cranial capacity is 1280 c.c, 

 which is roughly equal to that of the Gibraltar skull, 

 but much smaller than all the other members of the 



