372 



NATURE 



[December 2, 19 15. 



career. On the other hand, employers must be 

 prepared to resort more commonly to methods of 

 research and to engage a larger number of well- 

 educated scientific assistants, to whom they must 

 be willing to offer prospects of a satisfactory 

 career. 



In dealing with this question the natural re- 

 luctance of many manufacturers to divulge indis- 

 criminately any part of their processes which, 

 rightly or wrongly, they suppose to have a special 

 value, must be recognised. Hence the difficulty 

 of getting them to resort to a university or other 

 laboratory of research outside the works. 



Space does not permit us to discuss these points, 

 but there appear to be only two ways out of the 

 difficulty. If the services of highly-trained scien- 

 tific men are to be utilised more than has been the 

 case hitherto, as must be done if we are not to 

 be out of the running altogether, our manufac- 

 turers must not expect to get manufacturing 

 experts direct from the universities, for it is cer- 

 tain that industrial applications of science can 

 only be properly learnt in the works. The plan 

 long ago adopted in Germany, and to some extent 

 in America, consists in engaging thoroughly well- 

 informed young men, usually graduates, for a 

 period of years, at a salary on which they can 

 at least live, while they are learning in practice 

 to apply their knowledge to the business. Future 

 advancement, of course, depends on the aptitude 

 and diligence shown in the first year or two. 



The other plan is represented by the scheme of 

 industrial fellowships inaugurated by the late 

 Prof. Kennedy Duncan in connection with the 

 Universities of Kansas and Pittsburgh, as ex- 

 plained in Nature of October 21 (p. 203). The 

 essence of the idea is that in such an institution 

 as the Mellon Institute at Pittsburgh arrangements 

 of a confidential character can be made whereby 

 the services of one of the fellows working at the 

 institute can be secured, on mutually agreed 

 terms, by any manufacturer who has problems 

 which he desires to investigate with due privacy. 

 All we can do is to await with interest the results 

 of experience gained at Pittsburgh, or try the plan 

 on a smaller scale at one of our own universities. 

 In any case it is certainly imperative that co- 

 operative relations be forthwith established be- 

 tween our universities and the industries which 

 are dependent on science. 



THE SUPPLY OF NITRATES. 



ONE of the minor misfortunes to the cause of 

 the Allies, coming through no fault of their 

 own, has been the landslide in the Panama Canal, 

 which has interfered with the import of nitrate 

 of soda from Chile by prolonging the time of the 

 voyage. Nitrates are, of course, required in 

 enormous quantities for explosives, but a very 

 considerable amount of nitrate of soda — no less 

 than 100,000 tons per annum — is used in agricul- 

 ture for manurial purposes. No modern farmer 

 would like to try to do without it; indeed, any 

 increase in food production almost necessarily 

 means an increase in nitrate consumption. Yet 

 NO. 2405, VOL. 96] 



Mr. Acland recently stated in the House of 

 Commons that the quantity now in this country, 

 or on the way to it, was only about 30,000 tons. 



As yet the situation is not serious. Farmers 

 do not use nitrate of soda until spring-time; 

 February or March would represent the earliest 

 date when most people would apply it to their 

 crops. Further, the Board of Agriculture has 

 already made an arrangement whereby farmers 

 can buy the sulphate of ammonia produced in 

 this country, and formerly exported, at a price 

 not much above the pre-war prices — 14Z. 105. 

 per ton instead of 12I. los. To this extent the 

 situation is relieved, but, nevertheless, no one 

 would care to see the supply of nitrate too much 

 restricted. 



There are two ways of dealing with the diffi- 

 culty. One is to leave it alone, and trust that 

 matters will somehow right themselves before 

 February ; the other is to arrange forthwith for 

 a supply of artificial calcium nitrate. This sub- 

 stance was on the market as a fertiliser before 

 the war ; it has been tested on the large scale, and 

 is known to give satisfactory field results ; its 

 defects have been studied, and a body of experi- 

 ence has been gained which would now prove 

 very useful. But somehow it seems to have dis- 

 appeared as a fertiliser since the war began. It 

 ought not to prove impossible of manufacture, 

 and in any case the situation ought not to be 

 allowed to develop too seriously before steps are 

 taken to cope with it. 



PROF. THEODOR BOVERI. 



DR. THEODOR BOVERI, whose death on 

 October 15 was announced in Nature of 

 November 11, was born on October 12, 1862, and 

 was the successor of Carl Semper in the chair of 

 zoology and comparative anatomy in the Univer- 

 sity of Wiirzburg. He received his university 

 education in Munich, where he had the good for- 

 tune to be one of Richard Hertwig's first pupils. 

 There he studied natural science and medicine, 

 graduating in both and becoming privat-docent 

 in 1887. In 1893 he was called to Wiirzburg, 

 where, in spite of offers of other appointments, 

 he remained for twenty-two years. In 1913 he 

 declined the post of director of the Kaiser Wilhelm 

 Research Institute in Berlin. Extensions of his 

 overcrowded research laboratories were granted, 

 and he was made "Geheim Rat." In 1905-06 he 

 was rector of the University. He held the member- 

 ship of many scientific academies. But probably 

 honours and titles had little meaning for Boveri, 

 for, like Semper, he was a very modest man. 



Among modern zoologists Boveri occupied a 

 somewhat unique position. Properly speaking, 

 only one of his memoirs, his masterly study of 

 the excretory organs of Amphioxus — which he and 

 Weiss discovered independently— can be described 

 as purely zoological. His other work — and its 

 total is by no means small or unimportant — re- 

 lated mainly to cytology. For research in this 

 field Boveri had a positive genius. To him we owe 

 the first proof, in Ascaris, of the true nature of the 



