May 27, 1920] 



NATURE 



391 



issue licences for all articles which were not made, 

 in this country either in sufficient quantity or of ap- 

 proved quality. At the present moment "the rate of 

 exchange is such that British manufacturers cannot 

 compete even under the most up-to-date methods of 

 manufacture, and it must always be borne in mind 

 that this is a new industry which has not had time 

 to establish itself or to get over the experimental 

 stages of glass as an industry. 



Douglas H. Baird, 



Chairman. 

 The British Chemical Ware Manufacturers' 

 Association, Ltd., 51 Lincoln's Inn Fields, 

 London, W.C.2, Mav 18. 



Mortlakes as a Cause of River-windings. 



Mr. T. S. Ellis asks us in Nature of April 29, 

 p. 264, to believe that the curves of a meandering 

 river, instead of being wholly secondary features, are 

 to a large extent primary, arising from the simplifica- 

 tion of a "complicated network of channels." He 

 admits, however, that such a network does not occur 

 in existing rivers, and it will require more than deduc- 

 tive reasoning as to what should happen on a newly 

 exposed land surface to prove that it belongs to any 

 stage of their evolution. 



On our sandy and muddy shores we have abundant 

 opportunities for studying inductively the genesis of new 

 stream-systems ; and the general resemblance between 

 these transient formations and the river-systems 

 which we regard as youthful lends strong support to 

 existing theory. In these primitive streamlets islands 

 are not uncommon, but they are almost always of 

 narrow lenticular form, with the lens-angles pointing 

 up- and down-stream, and the lateral curves moderate. 

 Save, perhaps, in a few exceptional cases, nothing 

 approaching the sweeping curves of a meandering river 

 is ever seen, and a whole volume of inductive reason- 

 ing goes to show that such curves belong to the stages 

 of maturity and old age. How far the "primarv con- 

 sequent streams " approach and how far they deviate 

 from straight lines depends largely upon the angle of 

 slope: and this again, on our shores, is often condi- 

 tioned, quite apart from the coarseness of material, 

 by the rapidity of the tidal moven-.ents ; for example, 

 the drainage of the mud-/iais of Poole Harbour is 

 quite distinct from that of the mud-banfc.v of the Wye 

 near Chepstow; but there is surely sufficient ground 

 for believing that regional uplift has sometimes been 

 comparatively rapid, and in such circumstances 

 straight consequent streams would be the rule. 



Even in Mr. Ellis's special case of Mortlake his 

 conclusions are by no means free from objection. In 

 the first place, admitting the former existence of an 

 island, Mortlake would lie at the head of it. and 

 therefore quite outside the area o£ the "mort-lake" 

 fas defined by Mr. Ellis) now represented by the 

 Beverlev Brook. Secondly, it is surely unreasonable 

 to attempt to evolve primar\' laws from such obviously 

 secondarv conditions as we find on the flood-plain of 

 the Thames. 



Lastlv, I should like to point out that, even when 

 islands occur, their secondary nature is frequently 

 obvious, and that there are many cases in which one 

 of their limiting channels is due, not to the main 

 river, but to a tributary captured bv it. Jumi^ges. on 

 the Seine, affords a fine example of such capture, but 

 the i=:1nnd has become an isthmus. Between Datchet 

 and Old Windsor the island and backwater ("mort- 

 lake ") are retained. I am not in a position to say 

 whether the Beverley Brook has been similarlv cap- 

 tured and then set free again, but such a double 

 change is not impossible. Henrv Bury. 



Mavfield House, Farnham. Surrey, May i. 

 NO. 2639, VOL. 105] 



Science and the New Army. 



The two letters on this subject in Nature of 

 April 22 raise some points of considerable interest. 



It seems clear that any attempt to train the main 

 body of Army officers thoroughly in science and in 

 scientific methods will be fruitless under present con- 

 ditions, while it is even more certain that any attempt 

 to train General Staff officers as scientific experts is 

 extremely undesirable. It is, in fact, the duty of the 

 General Staff to rely on its technical corps for 

 advice, and it is unsound in principle and in practice 

 for the General Staff to include within itself a separate 

 body of experts. 



On the other hand, the General Staff should possess 

 a wholesome regard for the results which can be 

 achieved by scientific methods, and this regard is all 

 that is necessary to the General Staff, though the 

 technical corps should be strengthened by the addition 

 of scientific experts. 



There appear to be three totally different Army 

 requirements, namely : — 



1. An organisation permitting the utilisation, so 

 far as possible, of the services of scientific and tech- 

 nical men in time of war : (a) in the Army, through 

 the Territorial Force and Officers Training Corps; 

 and (b) outside the Army, as advisers in a civilian 

 capacity. 



2. An organisation which in peace time will keep 

 the technical corps in close touch with the progress of 

 science. This organisation would preferably be asso- 

 ciated with the Research Deoartment or Departments 

 of the War Office. 



3. Training of the general body of Army officers 

 and the General Staff in scientific methods. 



No attempt should be made to convert General Staff 

 officers into scientific experts, for the reasons given 

 above; in the nature of things, the General Staff 

 officer must not be a specialist. 



There seems to be every desire on the part of men 

 of science to assist the War Office to the best of their 

 ability; it rests with the War Office to prove that 

 it has a sincere desire to avail itself of the oppor- 

 tunities offered. 



C. S. Wright. 



I Royston Road, Richmond, Surrey, May 5. 



Waage's Phytochemicai Synthesis of Phloroglucin from 

 Glucose. 



It is generally stated that phloroglucin is formed by 

 floating leaves in sugar solutions when exposed to 

 sunlight. This phytochemicai conversion of an ali- 

 phatic chain into an aromatic ring-compound is based 

 on observations published by Waage in 1890 (Berichte 

 der deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii., 

 p. 250), which have found their way into nearly every 

 text-book on the subject (compare, for example, M. 

 Wheldale Onslow, "Practical Plant Biochemistry," 

 p. 7, which has just been published). The fascination 

 of this simple experiment and its general importance 

 to plant chemistry have made me repeat it every 

 summer for the last fifteen years, but not in a single 

 case, out of nearly eighty experiments, did I succeed 

 in detecting even the slightest trace of phloroglucin. 

 For the detection of phloroglucin I used the pine-wood 

 test, as recommended by Waage, and also the 

 bromine-water test after extraction with ether.^ 



It seems to me, therefore, desirable that this very 

 important experiment of Waage's should also be re- 

 investigated by others interested in this question with 

 the view of either definitelv confirming or contra- 

 dicting it. M. NlERENSTEIN. 



I'niversitv of Bristol, Mav 8. 



