lOO 



NATURE 



[March 25, 1920 



ATeue Beohachtungen iiber den Erreger der Mau- 

 lund Klauenseuche : Die Entwicklung des 

 Schmarotzers im Blut, speziell in den roten Blut- 

 korperchen. By Dr. Hrch. Stauffacher. 

 Pp. 62 + plates. (Zurich, 1918.) Price 

 8 francs. 

 The author describes and illustrates a number of 

 curious linear and spherical bodies found in the 

 red corpuscles of animals with foot-and-mouth 

 disease, and works out a life-history for them 

 along the lines familiar from the parasites of 

 malaria. ■ The difficulty in all such investigations 

 is to be sure that the intracellular appearances 

 represent the cause rather than the effect of the 

 disease, and to distinguish between a parasite and 

 some remnant of the nucleus of the erythroblast 

 seems often to be impossible. Sometimes the 

 nuclear remains are plain as such ; sometimes by 

 special methods they can be brought to take a 

 basic stain in cells which by ordinary procedures 

 would appear normal ; it is quite possible that they 

 may be thus unmasked in consequence of a para- 

 sitic illness. What curious objects may be found 

 in red corpuscles is readily appreciated by examin- 

 ing the blood of a dormouse or of a new-born rat. 

 The nail- or tadpole-like bodies shown very clearly 

 in the first photograph are extraordinarily similar 

 to those demonstrated some years ago by Braddon 

 in (or on) the red cells in rinderpest. 



A Night Raid into Space: The Story of the 

 Heavens told in Simple Words. By Col. 

 J. S. F, Mackenzie. Pp. 143. (London : Henry 

 Hardingham, n.d.) Price 2s. 6d. net. 

 This book describes in a chatty, discursive way 

 the. elementary facts of astronoipy. It is avowedly 

 written for those who have absolutely no mathe- 

 matical knowledge. Unfortunately, there is in 

 many places an absence of tlie necessary precision 

 of statement. Thus the description of precession 

 suggests that it affects the earth's orbital motion, 

 there being no mention of the equatorial plane. 

 Moreover, the action is ascribed wholly to the 

 sun, though the rrioon's contribution is twice as 

 great. The description of sidereal time, and 

 the explanation of the spectroscopic determination 

 of radial velocity, are misleading. Also the 

 erroneous statement is made that the Babylonian 

 year contained 360 days, and had an intercalary 

 month every sixth year. Its real length was 12 

 lunations, or 354 days, and there were 7 inter- 

 calary months in 19 years. Altogether the book 

 needs careful revision ; if this were carried out, it 

 could be recommended as a simple handbook. 



Musings of an Idle Man. By Sir R. H. Firth. 

 Pp. xii-f359. (London: John Bale, Sons, and 

 Danielsson, Ltd., 1919.) Price 75. 6d. net. 

 This book comprises seventy-five readable and 

 suggestive essays on the most varied subjects, 

 ranging from "The Origin of Life " to "Good and 

 Bad Form.'* In an essay on "The End of Life" 

 the author envisages the final destruction of life by 

 heat due to radio-activity. 



NO. 2630, VOL. 105] 



Letters to the Editor. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.] 



Museums and the State. 



The old danger arising from the haphazard applica- 

 tion of a name surrounds the public institutions 

 which are called "museums." By a perversion of 

 its ancient signification, the word "museum" is 

 now used to designate a collection of natural history 

 specimens, pictures, antiquities, machinery, wax- 

 work or other articles (rarely libraries), as 

 well as the building where it is exhibited to the public 

 either with or without charge for admission. There 

 are various so-called "museums" supported by public 

 funds, either national or municipal. The proposal to 

 create a new body of Government clerks (or to 

 aggrandise an existing one) on the pretence that 

 museums form a "genus" which all alike require 

 central control of one and the same " tape and sealing- 

 wax " type, and that the well-known ignorant, and 

 therefore impartial, Civil Servant is to have new fields 

 of plunder thrown open to him — as "administrator"^ 

 is not surprising. We are familiar with such schemes, 

 but, none the less, this is one that all serious lovers 

 of science and of art should resist to the uttermost ! 

 What is needed in regard to our existing national 

 and other public museums is not the creation of highly 

 paid posts for otherwise unemployable "administra- 

 tors," but definite legislation after inquiry and report 

 by a Royal Commission as to the specific purpose, 

 scope, and method of work to be followed in each of 

 those great museums which in this country receive 

 support from public funds. " Overlapping ". of col- 

 lections and neglect of this and that department could 

 be at once prevented by assigning to each museum 

 its proper function and by making its income depend 

 upon its doing what it is intended that it shall do. 

 No central salaried body, no "committees" of dele- 

 gates, trustees, or members of governing bodies are 

 required. They certainly would prove incapable and 

 obstructive, as such "committees" have generally 

 shown themselves to be. 



The defects in the working of our national museums 

 have arisen from the fact that they have come irto 

 existence in obscure, surreptitious ways and by chance 

 —witness the historv of the British Museum, of the 

 Victoria and Albert Museum, and of the new so-called 

 Science Museum. They have no programme, no clear 

 assignment of scope and purpose to guide them, 

 and no attempt is made by successive Governments 

 to define their functions and to ensure for each of 

 them and for other " museums " supported by oublic 

 funds a reasonable system of management and con- 

 trol designed so as to ensure their activity and 

 development as efficient instruments of public service. 



A central bureau of managing clerks pretending to 

 deal under a heterogeneous "committee" with all the 

 various branches of science and art concerned in the 

 life and progress of all our museums would be an 

 exaggeration of the worst features of the present 

 management by irresponsible and incapable " trustees." 



I am convinced that what is needed is the separa- 

 tion and independence of the chief departments now 

 agglomerated in the national museums and their 

 redistribution to form a series of independent institu- 

 tions each under its own highly expert specialist as 

 director, with no other interference than that of a 

 visitatorial board assigned to each museum, approved 



