NATURE 



111 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Biological Terminology 733 



Elements and Isotopes 736 



Elementary Pure Mathematics. By Dr. S. Brodetsky 737 



Miscellanea Physica. By N. R. C 739 



Strasburger's Text-book of Botany. By R. J. T. . 740 

 German Monographs on Biochemistry. By Prof. 



Arthur Harden, F.R.S 741 



Our Bookshelf 742 



Letters to the Editor : — 



The Ral and its Repression. — Right Hon. Lord 



Aberconway 744 



The Blue Flame produced by Common Salt on a 



Coal Fire —Prof. A. Smithells, F.R.S. . . 745 



Optical Resolving Power and Definition. — T. Smith 745 

 The Difference between Series Spectra of Isotopes. — 



—Prof. P. Ehrenfest ; Prof. N. Bohr . 745 

 The Destruction of Mosquito Larvae in Salt or 



Brackish Water.— John F. Marshall . . 746 

 The Teaching of Natural History in Schools. — 



E. W. bhann ; A. G. Lowndes . . . 747 



a- Particles as Detonators. — G. H. Henderson . 749 

 Active Hydrogen and Nitrogen. — Dr. Gerald L. 



Wendt ; Dr. F. H. Newman .... 749 

 A Supposed Ancestral Man in North America. By 



Dr. A. Smith Woodward, F.R.S. . . .750 



Synthetic Dyes as Antiseptics and Chemotherapeutic 



Agents. By Prof C. H. Browning . -750 



The 700th Anniversary of the University of Padua. 



By Prof. E. W. Scripture 752 



Current Topics and Events 753 



Research Items 756 



The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. 



By H. G. L 758 



Annual Conference of Universities . . . -759 

 The Centenary of the Royal Astronomical Society. 



By Dr. A. C. D. Crommelin 760 



University and Educational Intelligence . . .761 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers 762 



Societies and Academies 7^2 



Official Publications Received 764 



Diary of Societies 764 



Editorial and Publishing Offices : 



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Advertisements and business letters should be 



addressed to the Publishers. 



Editorial communications to the Editor. 



Telegraphic Address: PHUSIS, LONDON. 

 Telephone Number : GERRARD 8830. 



Biological Terminology. 



THE long-drawn-out discussion on biological 

 terminology which has been a feature of the 

 past year's numbers of Nature has certainly supplied 

 some food for thought. The state of Denmark may 

 not be so rotten as Sir Archdall Reid believes, but no 

 one who shares his enthusiasm for lucidity will maintain 

 that biological terms are as crisp and unambiguous as 

 could be wished. The reasons for vagueness are not 

 far to seek. The first applies to all the sciences : that 

 concepts change their content from age to age while 

 the words remain the same. This applies to chemistry 

 and physics, and even to mathematics ; it must a 

 fortiori apply to a young science like biology. Fresh 

 facts demand that some alteration be made in the 

 frames in which they have to be included — terms like 

 ' organism,' ' development,' ' variation,' ' heredity.' 

 The terms must remain, but their content requires con- 

 tinual readjustment. Sometimes, no doubt, new terms 

 are needed, but the invention of good terms is a rare 

 gift. 



The second reason for biological vagueness is that 

 biologists are not addicted to philosophy, using the 

 word to mean a criticism of categories. Biologists are 

 plain people dwelling in tents ; they are not disciplined 

 in methodology and the art of formulation. To many 

 of them it has not occurred that there is any particular 

 difficulty in terms like ' organism,' ' individual,' 

 ' development,' ' differentiation,' ' evolution.' Some 

 of them use the word ' development ' in the forenoon 

 and the word ' evolution ' in the afternoon, meaning 

 the same thing both times. Others use the term 

 ' variation ' in almost as many different senses as 

 Herbert Spencer gave to the word ' force,' or the older 

 economists gave to the word ' value.' 



An outsider, reading Sir Archdall Reid's exposure 

 of biology as ' morass,' ' a tumbling - ground for 

 whimsies,' and so forth, may feel somewhat disturbed. 

 Biologists are accused of playing with undefined terms 

 like ' characters,' ' acquired,' ' inherited,' ' innate,' 

 ' transmitted,' and the impression made on the 

 innocent reader's mind is that biology is in a very 

 unsatisfactory state. But things are not so bad as 

 they seem. A term like ' acquired character ' has 

 entered the scientific dictionary as a technical term ; 

 it is not happy, but it is not ambiguous ; every biologist 

 who knows his business uses it in the same sense ; it 

 may be dropped — the sooner the better — but it cannot 

 be re-defined ; if we use it at all we must use it as 

 Spencer and Weismann did, meaning a structural 

 change in the body imprinted in the individual lifetime 

 as the direct result of some new peculiarity in functional, 

 nutritional, or environmental nurture, and taking such 



NO. 



2745, VOL. 109] 



