February 4, 19 15] 



NATURE 



621 



well, and will have vei'y little trouble from the 

 treatment. 



To admit this much is not to excuse the anti- 

 vivisectionists ; indeed, it makes their behaviour 

 look blacker than ever. For example, they dis- 

 cover a case of pneumonia, coming on after the 

 treatment, and forthwith they proclaim it as 

 "septic pneumonia from inoculation." Or they 

 discover a case of a bad arm after ordinary vac- 

 cination ; this may have been the man's own fault; 

 later he was discharged from the Army for a 

 cause which had nothing to do with his arm. And 

 forthwith they declare that the man's health was 

 so impaired by the protective treatment against 

 typhoid that he had to leave the Army. " Proved 

 to be useless and dangerous " — that is the opinion 

 - — if we can call it an opinion — of these people. 

 They are a very small handful of people, in pro- 

 portion to the general public ; but they are trying 

 hard to prevent our men from being protected. 



It is probable that some of them are incapable 

 of clear thought on the subject. We may wonder 

 what they will make of the statement just issued 

 from the War OlBce, and published in Sir 

 Frederick Treves's letter in the Times of January 

 26. Up to date, among our men abroad there 

 have been thirty-five deaths from typhoid. Of 

 these thirty-five men, thirty-four were not pro- 

 tected ; it was two years or more since they had 

 received any sort of protective treatment. Among 

 our protected men there has been only one death, 

 and this patient had only had a single dose of the 

 protective treatment, instead of two doses as 

 directed. 



What will the anti-vivisectionists say to this? 

 Which way will they look? Will they say that we 

 do not know the proportion of non-protected to 

 protected men throughout the Expeditionary 

 Force? But we do know what strenuous and in- 

 cessant efforts are made to avoid the sending out 

 of non-protected men. Surely it is a safe guess 

 that the great majority of the Expeditionary Force 

 are protected. Nature leaves these alone; she 

 picks out the non-protected. Two men shall be 

 sleeping in one tent, fighting in one trench ; the 

 one shall be taken, and the other left. The anti- 

 vivisectionists know that, lots of them ; and we 

 come back to Newman's saying, "Perhaps it is 

 wrong to compare sin with sin, but I declare to 

 you, the more I think of it, the more intimately 

 does this Prejudice seem to me to corrupt the 

 soul, even beyond those sins which are commonly 

 called most deadly." 



MR. F. JV. RUDLER. 



AS announced with regret last week, Mr. F. W. 

 Rudler died on January 23 at his residence, 

 Tatsfield, Surrey, after a brief illness, in his 75th 

 year. He will be lamented by a large number 

 of scientific friends, who have known him not 

 only as the genial curator of the Museum of Prac- 

 tical Geology, but also as a prominent member 

 of many scientific societies and at the meetings 

 of the British Association. 



It was some fifty-five years ago that Mr. 

 Rudler was appointed Assistant Curator of the 

 Jermyn Street Museum. He rapidly made his 

 mark as a mineralogist, and became more and 

 more in request as a specialist in that department. 

 In 1876 he was appointed lecturer in natural 

 science at the University College of Wales at 

 Aberystwyth; but in 1879 was recalled to succeed 

 Mr. Trenham Reeks, as Registrar of the Royal 

 School of Mines and Curator of the Museum of 

 Practical Geology, which post he held until his 

 retirement in 1902, when the high appreciation of 

 his services was marked by the bestowal upon 

 him, bv King Edward, of the Imperial Service 

 Order.' 



Beyond his oflficial duties, Mr. Rudler was a 

 busy worker and a voluminous writer. He was at 

 different times president of the Anthropological 

 Institute, also of the Geologists* Association and 

 of the Essex Field Club. He was for years an 

 active member of council of the Geological Society, 

 and was awarded the Lyell Medal of the Society 

 in 1903. 



Mr. Rudler 's popularity as a science lecturer 

 caused him to be much sought after. His writings 

 were largely in connection with technical works, 

 such as "Ure's Dictionary of Arts and Manufac- 

 tures," "Thorpe's Dictionary of Applied Chem- 

 istry," " Muir's Dictionary of Chemistry," the 

 "Encyclopaedia Britannica," etc. Articles and 

 reviews flowed from his pen in a continuous 

 stream for years, and he will long be remembered 

 as a man of wide scientific attainments and high 

 literary ability. 



NOTES. 



The committee of users of dyes appointed to confer 

 with the Board of Trade as to a national dye scneme 

 has come to a unanimous decision in favour of the 

 adoption of a scheme which differs in certain impor- 

 tant respects from those of the scheme previously made 

 public. The proposal is to form a company with an 

 initial share capital of 2,000,000/., of which i,ooo,ocoJ. 

 will be issued in the first instance. The Government 

 will make to the company a loan for twenty-five 3ears 

 corresponding to the amount of share capital sub- 

 scribed up to a total of i,ooo,oooZ., and a smaller pro- 

 portion beyond that total. The Government advance 

 will bear interest at 4 per cent, per annum, payable 

 only out of net profits, the interest to be cumulative 

 only after the first five years. In addition, and with 

 the desire of promoting research, the Government has 

 undertaken for a period of ten years to make a grant 

 to the company for the purposes of experimental and 

 laboratory work up to an amount not exceeding in the 

 aggregate 100,000/. The modified scheme has been 

 received with more approval from users of dyes in 

 Leeds and the district than the original scheme, and 

 the feeling appears to be general that it will meet with 

 a considerable measure of success. The grant for 

 scientific research in connection witli the manufacture 

 of dyes is a particularly satisfactory provision of the 

 new scheme. 



XO. 2362, VOL. 94] 



