348 



NATURE 



[January 3, 19 18 



chaine apparition de la saccharine sera la bien- 

 venue/' 



The writer of the French article sugg^ests that 

 it miight be well, perhaps, to utilise the saccharin 

 solely for mixing' with sugar, as is done in Italy. 

 This economises sugar, since a smaller "ration " 

 wil! suffice, and is better than selling a substance 

 which has no nutritive value at all. Moreover, it 

 would diminish the rather unpleasant after-taste 

 of saccharin used alone, and would also facilitate 

 the employment of certain nourishing foodstuffs, 

 such as cocoa, rice, and farinaceous foods, which 

 require sweetening to make them palatable to most 

 people. A suggestion that saccharin might be 

 therapeutically olDJectionable is dismissed as of no 

 serious weight, in view of the experience obtained 

 with it in the past. 



In this country saccharin has already been em- 

 ployed to a small extent in a somewhat similar 

 manner, namely, to sweeten milk-sugar for sale 

 as a sugar substitute. The supply of milk-sugar, 

 however, is restricted. If our own authorities 

 have not already done so, they might perhaps find 

 it worth while to consider the plan suggested by 

 the French writer. Five hundred pounds of sugar 

 plus I lb. of saccharin would have about the same 

 sweetening value as 1000 lb. of sugar used alone. 



NOTES. 

 The trustees of the British Museum have been given 

 notice by the Government that the museum is to be 

 requisitioned as the headquarters of the Air Board. 

 This decision will be received with dismay by everyone 

 who possesses intellectual interests or understands the 

 value of the collections in the galleries of the great 

 building at Bloomsbury. To pack up and store away 

 the many fragile objects in the museum in order to 

 prepare the galleries for occupation means ruin to the 

 specimens, and the ruthless undoing of careful 

 organising work of many years. Sir Arthur Evans, 

 president of the British Association, and one of the 

 trustees of the museum, writes to the Times of January 

 2 to protest against the wanton sacrifice of national 

 treasures involved in the hurried removal of specimens 

 from their cases, or the alternative of letting them 

 remain while the building is used as the headquarters 

 of a combatant department. " Even the bare statement 

 of this proposal," he remarks, "will cause a shudder 

 to run through all civilised countries. Were it carried 

 out it would cover the British nation with lasting 

 obloquy. I write this with the hope that even at the 

 eleventh hour the Government may recoil from a step 

 which could not but provoke a deep and widespread 

 indignation." If the British Museum represented the 

 last extremity in housing the Air Board, the occupation 

 of the building would have to be accepted as an inevit- 

 able consequence of conditions of war. We have not, 

 however, reached a degree of national stress which 

 would justify the outrage now contemplated; and we 

 trust that immediate steps will be taken to induce the 

 Government to find a domicile for the Air Board without 

 dismantling our national museum and ruining many 

 of the priceless treasures collected within its walls. 



A LONG list of New Year honours was published on 

 Tuesday. Among the names included the following 

 will be familiar to scientific workers: — K.C.B. {Civil 

 Division): Mr. A. D. Hall, F.R.S., Secretary to the 



NO. 2514, VOL. 100] 



Board of Agriculture; Sir George Newman, Principal 

 Medical Officer to the Board of Education. C.B. 

 {Civil Division): Mr. F. L. C. Floud, Assistant Secre- 

 tary to the Board of Agriculture. Baronet : Prof. James 

 Ritchie, Irvine professor of bacteriology, University of 

 Edinburgh. CLE.: Mr. P. H. Clutterbuck, Indian 

 Forest Service, Chief Conservator of Forests, United 

 Provinces. Knighthoods: Mr. W. N. Atkinson, who 

 has contributed largely to a knowledge of the dangers 

 of coal-dust in mines; Dr. J. Scott Keltie, editor of 

 "The Statesman's Year-Book," and for many years 

 secretary of the Royal Geographical Society; Dr. A. 

 Macphail, professor of the history of medicine, McGill 

 University, Montreal. In addition a large number of 

 medical men have received honours for services ren- 

 dered in connection with military operations in the 

 field. 



The report on the production of iron and steel in 

 Canada during the calendar year 1916, which has just 

 been issued by the Canadian Department of Mines, is 

 of exceptional interest at a time like the present, when 

 the preponderating influence of iron output upon the 

 European war is daily becoming more evident. The 

 main outstanding fact is that the production of pig- 

 iron was just above one million statute tons, being an 

 increase of 279 per cent, as compared with that of 1915. 

 Only a small proportion, about 10 per cent., of the 

 iron ore smelted was produced in Canada, a little 

 more than half the remainder being Lake ore from 

 the United States, smelted mainly in Ontario, and the 

 rest consisting of Wabane ore from Newfoundland, 

 smelted in Nova Scotia. Thus fully half the ore 

 smelted is of British origin. The total production of 

 iron ore in Canada was only about 250,000 statute 

 tons, approximately one-half of which was smelted 

 within the Dominion and one-half exported to the 

 United States. It is noteworthy that Canada pro- 

 duced in the year in question 28,628 tons of ferro- 

 alloys, including ferro-silicon, ferro-molybdenum, and 

 ferro-phosphorus, smelted in electric furnaces. The 

 total steel production of Canada was 1,428,429 short 

 tons of ingots and castings, being an increase of 40 per 

 cent, above the previous year; of this amount 1,397,703 

 short tons were ingots, the remainder being castings. 

 Practically all this is open-hearth steel, only 1400 tons 

 of Bessemer steel having been made, whilst about 

 26,000 tons of steel were made in electric furnaces. 

 The quantity of scrap worked up is quite considerable, 

 amounting to about 47 per cent, of the steel produced 

 and 71-5 per cent, of the pig-iron charged. The in- 

 c'rease in production shown all round is very satisfac- 

 tory, and indicates how energetically Canadian iron- 

 masters have striven to contribute to the Imperial out- 

 put of this all-important material. There is also a 

 highly significant piece of information, namely, that 

 the production of iron ore in the United States in 19 16 

 was as much as 75^ million statute tons, or an increase 

 of twenty million tons above the 1915 production ; 

 seeing that the iron in this increase is bv itself nearly 

 equal to the whole iron production of Germany, it is 

 very evident that the part that America can play in the 

 great war is likely to prove a decisive factor before 

 verv long. 



We learn with regret that Prof. C. Christiansen, pro- 

 fessor of physics in the University of Copenhagen from 

 1886 to 1912, died on December 28, at seventy-four 

 years of age. 



The Chemist and Druggist announces that Dr. M. 

 Louis Martin, head of the Pasteur Hospital at Paris, 

 and Prof. Albert Calmette, director of the Pasteur 

 Institute at Lille, have been unanimously elected sub- 



