April 22, 1920] 



NATURE 



223 



Council the best scientific opinion of the time 

 through the channel of the Royal Society, which 

 is likely to be all the more effective because it 

 is not a formal nomination to be made by a busy 

 Royal Society Council among other business, and 

 it gives direct access by the President to the re- 

 sponsible Ministers. A further important pro- 

 vision is that the charter itself may receive 

 amendment or addition, if majority votes of the 

 Council under stated conditions be obtained and 

 the change be allowed by the Committee of Privy 

 Council. 



We halve continually urged in these columns 

 that scientific men themselves should decide upon 

 thc' allocation of funds for research, as is done 

 by the Royal Society, the British Association, and 

 other bodies; and that they should be responsible 

 for any schemes of organised investigation. 

 Friction and misunderstanding always arise when 

 these functions are performed by official adminis- 

 trators unfamiliar with such a sensitive plant 

 as scientific genius and unable to judge the 

 promise of incipient inquiry. The remedy for 

 such difficulties is always to ensure that the men 

 who do the work are the masters of the adminis- 

 trative machine and have confidence in the direc- 

 tion of it by specially qualified colleagues- — to pro- 

 mote, in fact, the same spirit of common interest 

 between director and worker that is desired be- 

 tween capital and labour. The Medical Research 

 Council seems to fulfil these conditions in every 

 respect, and its incorporation marks a noteworthy 

 stage in scientific development. The Council can 

 determine its own policy, has complete control 

 of its funds, is in direct touch with progressive 

 science by association with the Royal Society, 

 and, above all, its Secretary, Sir Walter Fletcher, 

 has the full confidence of medical research 

 workers. He knows well enough the truth of 

 the adage Poeta nascitur,. non fit as applied to 

 scientific genius, and may therefore be trusted to 

 secure the most favourable conditions for the de- 

 velopment of this rare fruit when it appears. 



During Its existence the Medical Research Com- 

 mittee brought together a brotherhood of research 

 workers whose scientific investigations have been of 

 the highest national value, and it did this 

 without limiting the freedom of action which is 

 their heritage. We confidently look to the new 

 Council to encourage the independent investigator 

 as well as to create a reserve of research workers, 

 and thus consolidate the organisation of scientific 

 effort in the service of medicine so well begun by 

 the Committee which it supersedes. 

 NO. 2634, VOL. 105] 



A Study in Palaeogeography. 



The Environment of Vertebrate Life in the Late 

 Paleozoic in North America: A Paleo geographic 

 Study. By Prof. E. C. Case. (Publication 

 No. 283.) Pp. vi4-273. (Washington: Car- 

 negie Institution of Washington, 1919.) Price 

 3 dollars. 



THE following passage from Suess's "Face of 

 the Earth " might be taken as an appropriate 

 text for the work under consideration : — " It is the 

 organic remains, no doubt, which afford us our 

 first and most important aid in the elucidation of 

 the past. But the goal of investigation must still 

 remain the recognition of those great physical 

 changes in comparison with which the changes in 

 the organic world only appear as phenomena of 

 the second order, as simple consequences." Prof. 

 Case's volume may be described as an attempt 

 both to provide an up-to-date corpus of material, 

 often presented in the form of lengthy quotations 

 from the writings of American geologists, bearing 

 upon the history of the later Palseozoic period, and 

 to utilise the data as evidence in an inquiry into 

 the physical and climatic conditions under which 

 organisms lived, migrated, or became extinct in 

 different regions of the North American Con- 

 tinent. • ' '. 



The author has essayed a difficult but attractive 

 task, and though his ovC^n conclusions and 

 generalisations are to some extent overwhelmed 

 by the superabundance of citations from published 

 sources, he has succeeded in making a valuable 

 contribution to a neglected branch of geological 

 history. He takes a broad view of the conception 

 of environment; it represents "the sum of all the 

 contacts which any organism or group of 

 organisms establishes with the force? arid nja-tter 

 of its surroundings, either organic or inorganic." 

 The difficulty is that we have comparatively little 

 knowledge of the nature of the interaction of exist- 

 ing organisms and their environment ; but it is 

 none the less praiseworthy to extend ecological 

 inquiry to a remote era in the hope that in this 

 line of research, as in others, a knowledge of 

 the past may help us to solve the problems of 

 the present. 



In the first chapter Prof. Case discusses the 

 different categories of facts which it is esserttial 

 to consider in connection with palaeogeogrdphical 

 questions, the nature of the sedimentary deposits; 

 the source of the sediments, the history of the 

 flora and fauna — whether. they were eyolyed, where 

 they were preserved, or had migrated, from 

 another locality— the influence of .environment 

 reflected in the morphological characters of 

 animals and plants, and other factors. He empha- 



