April 8, 1920] 



NATURE 



179 



Mr. B. D. Porritt has been appointed director of 

 research by the Research Association of British 

 Rubber and Tyre Manufacturers. 



The annual meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute 

 will be held at the Institution of Civil Engineers, 

 Westminster, on Thursday and Friday, May 6 and 7, 

 and will be adjourned from May 7 to May 14, when 

 a final session will be held at the Mappin Hall, 

 Sheffield. On the opening day the retiring president, 

 Mr. Eugene Schneider, will induct into the chair the 

 president-elect. Dr. J. E. Stead, the Bessemer gold 

 medal for 1920 will be presented to Mr. Harry 

 Brearley, and the president will deliver his inaugural 

 address. The autumn meeting of the institute will 

 open at Cardiff on September 22. 



The World Trade Club, of San Francisco, which is 

 conducting an active propaganda in favour of the com- 

 pulsory adoption of the metric system of weights and 

 measures, both in this country and in the United States, 

 has issued under the title '* Metric Literature Clues " a 

 list of references to books, pamphlets, documents, and 

 magazine articles on standardisation in terms of metric 

 units. Although ' far from being a complete biblio- 

 graphy of the metric system, it includes most of the 

 best-known works on the subject, and contains a fairly 

 full list of the publications of the United States Govern- 

 ment and of the Bureau of Standards. In some cases 

 the title of a book or article is followed by a brief sum- 

 mary of its contents, sufficient to indicate to those in- 

 terested in weights and measures whether it is worth 

 while consulting the work in question. This is the 

 most practical and useful publication of the World 

 Trade Club with regard to the metric system that has 

 yet come to our notice. 



At a meeting of the Association of Economic Biolo- 

 gists held on March 24 the following papers were 

 read: (i) Mr. D. W. Cutler, "The Relation of Pro- 

 tozoa to Soil Problems "; (2) Mr. J. F. Martley, "The 

 Resin-Galls of the Wood of the Sitka Spruce (Picea 

 sitchensis) "; (3) Dr. W. Lawrence Balls, "The Nature 

 and Scope of Botanical Research in the Cotton In- 

 dustr\' "; (4) Dr. M. C. Rayner, "The Calcifuge Habit 

 in Ling (Calluna vulgaris) and other Ericaceous 

 Plants"; (5) Dr. H. Wormald, "Shoot Wilt of Plum 

 Trees." Perhaps the outstanding feature of the 

 meeting, emphasised alike in papers and discussion, 

 was the necessity of pure research as a basis for all 

 economic applications of biology. Not only is it im- 

 possible to conduct investigations into any applied 

 aspect of a biological problem in which at the same 

 time equal attention is not given to the more funda- 

 mental considerations, but more usually it is also not 

 possible to separate the economic from the pure issues. 

 A further point of importance, arising particularly in 

 the discussion on Dr. Balls's paper, is the great shortage 

 in this country of young botanists competent to under- 

 take research on industrial problems. With the ex- 

 pected development of research associations and the 

 partial recognition by manufacturers of the vital place 

 of the botanist in industry, this factor will become 

 increasingly apparent and be a serious menace to 

 progress. 



NO. 2632, VOL. 105] 



The Port Erin Biological, Station will be occupied 

 during the Easter vacation (March 20 to April 20) by 

 nine or ten professors, each with a group of senior 

 students, including Profs. Doncaster, Harvey^ibson, 

 Johnstone, and Herdman (Liverpool), Prof. Gamble 

 (Birmingham), Dr. Tattersall (Manchester), Mr. Douglas 

 Laurie (Aberystwyth), Prof. Benjamin Moore (London), 

 Prof. Cole (Reading), Prof. Stephenson (Lahore), and 

 Prof. Dakin (Western Australia). There are also 

 groups of other post-graduate workers and senior 

 students from Cambridge, Nottingham, Liverpool, and 

 other centres, as well as a large botany class in the 

 earlier part of the vacation, to .be followed by a 

 zoology class later. The laboratory accommodation is 

 strained to the utmost capacity, and additions to both 

 building and staff are urgently required. The usual 

 excursions for shore-collecting and plankton work and 

 dredging are being arranged, and the fish-hatching is 

 in full swing. The season is an early one at sea. 

 The phyto-plankton has consisted for the last ten days 

 of March mainly of Coscinodiscus and Biddulphia, 

 and the plaice in the spawning-pond have produced 

 fertilised eggs at least a month earlier than usual — 



the first hatched larvae were noticed on February 9 



and herring are being caught each night in the bay. 

 The Bill transferring the biological station and fish 

 hatchery from the Manx Government to the Oceano- 

 graphy Department of the University of Liverpool 

 has now passed through the House of Keys, and the 

 University takes over the control of the institution 

 and the work as from April i last. The director 

 wishes it to be known that this makes no change in 

 the use of the biological station by researchers from 

 other universities. 



The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries last year 

 purchased an estate of more than 1500 acres of typical 

 heath-land at Methwold, in Norfolk. This estate is 

 to be a National Demonstration Farm, and one of 

 the chief objects for its existence is to show what 

 can be obtained from poor heath-land by the adoption 

 of good husbandry methods. The Weekly Service for 

 March 20 from the Ministry of Agriculture gives a 

 short account of the work to be undertaken at this 

 farm. Two hundred acres of the estate have been 

 reclaimed from bracken land, so that at the present 

 time 1043 acres are under arable cultivation, 43 acres 

 under grass, and 441 acres are waste heath. The 

 chief part of the scheme will be the building up and • 

 improvement of the land by chalking and by the 

 addition of organic matter. Tobacco-growing on a 

 comparatively large scale will also be a feature of the 

 cultivation. By encouraging the growing of this crop 

 the Ministry hope to supplement the experimental 

 work carried out during the past six years by the 

 British Tobacco Growers' Society, Ltd., and also to 

 assist those smallholders in the neighbourhood who 

 may be inclined to try tobacco-growing when there is 

 a central station at hand to supply the necessary 

 information and to provide for the treatment of the 

 crop. The scheme also includes stock-rearing, poultry- 

 keeping, and pig breeding and rearing on the open-air 

 system. The result should prove very valuable both for 

 large-scale farmers and for smallholders, since the 



