434 



NATURE 



[December i6, 1915 



scientific knowledge. To the neglect of science, and 

 the excessive predominance in Parliament and in the 

 Government of men with the spirit of the advocate to 

 whom all evidence which will not support their case 

 is unwelcome, Prof. Poulton ascribes the chief mis- 

 takes in the conduct of the war. The ignorance dis- 

 played in connection with the campaigns to make 

 cotton contraband and to prevent the export of oils 

 and fats, because of the use of these things in the 

 manufacture of gun-cotton and nitro-glycerine, is as 

 appalling as it is deplorable. In all such cases, when 

 vital issues are at stake, our statesmen only make use 

 of scientific evidence when the resources of political 

 rhetoric have failed to justify their inactivity. The 

 pity of it is that so much power should be in the hands 

 of politicians and members of public services unwilling 

 to recognise the important position which science. must 

 occupy in a modern State, in times both of war and of 

 peace. Prof. Poulton mentions a number of matters 

 in which scientific advice might have been applied 

 with advantage much earlier in the war, but no appeal 

 was made for such help, and the fate of suggestions 

 was not encouraging. His address should help to 

 enlighten the public as to the prime need of the country 

 for men alert to take the utmost advantage of the 

 power which science can offer. 



A NOTE from the Imperial Institute refers to recent 

 statements as to the present scarcity of certain drugs. 

 The shortage and high price of atropine has been 

 particularly commented on and attributed to "the 

 dearth of belladonna, from which [according to this 

 statement] atropine is extracted, and which is obtained 

 from Central Europe." It is most desirable that this 

 common misconception as to the sole source of atropine 

 should be dispelled. Belladonna is one source, but a 

 far more valuable source is (as was proved a few 

 years ago by investigations at the Imperial Institute) 

 the Egyptian hyoscyamus or henbane. This plant 

 grows wild in the Egyptian desert and in the Sudan, 

 and these countries are the sole source of the com- 

 mercial supply. Before the war Egyptian henbane 

 went to Germany for manufacture, but large quanti- 

 ties of the plant are freely available, and a consider- 

 able amount is now in the United Kingdom awaiting 

 manufacture into atropine by drug manufacturers 

 here. Eserine, also used in ophthalmic surgery, the 

 dearth of which is alluded to in the same statement, 

 is a product of the Calabar bean of West Africa, and 

 presumably it is the extreme present pressure on the 

 manufacturing resources of British drug manufac- 

 turers, rather than any scarcity of this British raw 

 material, that is hindering the production of the drug. 



Prof. E. A. Sonnenschein, in a letter to the Times 

 of November 4, described the good results he had ob- 

 tained in the domestic use of coal through sprinkling 

 a hundredweight of cheap slack with a solution of a 

 tablespoonful of salt in a little less than a pint of 

 water. It is difficult to account for the results 

 achieved through the medium of about one part of a 

 non-combustible and non-supporter of combustion with 

 some two thousand parts of coal, and Prof. Sonnen- 

 schein said : — " I would also not exclude the possibility 

 of a psychological process at work." Some explana- 

 tion of the beneficent effect of this salt treatment has 

 NO. 2407, VOL. 96] 



been put forward by Dr. A. Vernon Harcourt, in a 

 letter to the Times of December 8. Dr. Harcourt says 

 that the deliquescent property of the salt particles dis- 

 tributed on the slack serves to bind the small particles 

 together, "so that a handful becomes a piece of coke, 

 which burns with a steady glow, like the coke which 

 lumps of coal after giving off their gases leave behind 

 them." The improved combustion which Prof. Sonnen- 

 schein claimed may therefore arise from the better 

 access of air in the absence of very small coal and 

 dust, which frequently cause bad smoking in boiler 

 practice from the choking of air passages through the 

 fuel and the grate bars, but the "psychological pro- 

 cess " must not be entirely overlooked. 



The Royal Geographical Society has received furAer 

 news of Sir Aurel Stein's Expedition in a letter dated 

 October 27, from Bokhara. He has done thre^ months' 

 almost continuous travelling down the Altaic region, 

 across the Russian Pamirs, and along the whole 

 length of the Upper Oxus valley. He has made im- 

 portant observations on geography and ethnography 

 in this interesting region. Finally, he reached the 

 railway at Samarkand, and he is now on his way to 

 Meshed for his winter's work about Seistan. The 

 Russian political authorities have been most courteous 

 and helpful towards the expedition. In Wakhan, be- 

 sides an important old trade route, he has been able 

 to survey a series of ancient ruined strongholds. 

 "Those secluded valleys," he writes, "have preserved 

 a great deal of old-world inheritance in the ethnic 

 types, languages, etc., of their inhabitants, and the 

 materials I could collect are ample." 



The death is announced, in his seventy-first year, of 

 Dr. George A. Heron, well known for his investiga- 

 tions in tuberculosis, and as the author of numerous 

 medical works. 



Mr. O. a. Derby, an American geologist who has 

 been chief of the Geological Survey of Brazil since 

 1907, died on November 27 at Rio de Janeiro, at the 

 age of sixty-four. He was a graduate of Cornell, and 

 had served the Brazilian survey in various capacities 

 since 1875. 



The Geographical Journal for December gives some 

 particulars of the career and work of Dr. Richard 

 Kiepert, whose death we announced in August last. 

 Dr. Kiepert was born at Weimar in 1846, and gained 

 his early experience in cartography with his father, 

 Heinrich Kiepert, whose works he revised after his 

 father's death. His contoured wall maps of the 

 countries of Europe are among the best ever published. 

 Among other important work of Kiepert was an atlas 

 of the German possessions, a great part in the prepara- 

 tion of Richthofen's atlas of China, and, above all, a 

 map of Asia Minor, which embodied all available in- 

 formation. For some time Kiepert was scientific direc- 

 tor of Reimer's cartographical institute at Berlin, and 

 from 1875 to 1887 he was editor of Globus. 



Mr. Thomas Parker, whose death occurred a few 

 days ago, was not only a distinguished engineer, but 

 a man of inventive and gifted mind, who, in addition 

 to his ordinary labours, carried on investigations in 

 realms far outside engineering. He first attracted 



