November 6, 1919] 



NATURE 



267 



who was chief assistant editor at the outbreak of v.'ar 

 in 1914. 



At the annual general meeting of the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society, held on October 27, the follow- 

 ing were elected oflicers of the society for the ensuing 

 session, 1919-20 : — President : Mr. C. T. R. Wilson. 

 Vice-Presidents : Sir W. J. Pope and Sir E. Ruther- 

 ford. Treasurer: Prof. Hobson. Secretaries: Mr. 

 A. Wood, Mr. G. H. Hardy, and Mr. H. H. Brindley. 

 New Members of the Council: Prof. Inglis, Prof. 

 Seward, Dr. Rivers, Dr. E. Ff. Griffiths, and Mr. 

 F. A. Potts. 



Dr. O. L. Br.4DY, president of the National Union 

 of Scientific Workers, took the chair at a meeting 

 held on October 30 to inaugurate a London branch. 

 He pointed out that the organisation of the union is 

 bv branches. Although there are already branches in 

 South Kensington, the Board of Agriculture, tlie 

 London County Council, and at Woolwich, it was 

 felt that a more central branch should be formed to 

 meet the needs of workers engaged in the City and 

 in the central district of London. A resolution that a 

 London branch of the National Union of Scientific 

 Workers be forthwith formed was passed unanimously, 

 and Dr. H. M. Atkinson and Mr. W. E. King were 

 elected chairman and secretary respectively of the 

 branch. 



The Times of November 4 publishes the following 

 message from its New York correspondent, dated 

 November 3 : — "The gift of a further 2,ooo,oooL to 

 the Rockefeller Institute by the founder, Mr. John D. 

 Rockefeller, is announced to-day. The institute, 

 which was founded in 1901, has become the largest 

 endowed establishment in the world for medical re- 

 search. It had already received from Mr. Rockefeller 

 successive gifts to the amount of 5,500,000!. and real 

 estate valued at 500,000/. The scientific staff numbers 

 sixty-live, and in addition there are 310 persons em- 

 ployed in technical and general services. The latest 

 gift will enable research to be conducted in new fields 

 in biologv, chemistry, and physics, as well as in 

 medicine itself, and the study of practical problems 

 relating to disease in men and animals." 



At the Philosophical Congress, held at Bedford 

 College last July, particular interest centred round 

 the physiological researches of Dr. Head and his 

 fellow-workers into the nature of the function of the 

 cortex cerebri. This work has been going on for the 

 last eighteen years. It started with the now classical 

 experiment performed by Dr. Head, with the aid of 

 Dr. Rivers, on the innervation of his own forearm. 

 Following the clue which that experiment afforded, 

 the function of the cerebral cortex in regard to 

 sensation has been more and more clearly 

 elaborated. . Injuries due to the war have afforded 

 means of immediately testing theories such as we might 

 have had to wait long for under other conditions. Some 

 of our readers are anxious to know where they can 

 obtain an account of this work. Unfortunately, it is 

 not at present available in the form of a treatise or 

 monograph ; it exists only in articles in medical 

 journals. .4 very clear epitome of the whole theory, 

 however, with illustrative cases, and free from 

 technical terms, is the article bv Dr. Head himself on 

 "Sensation and the Cerebral Cortex," which fills the 

 whole number of Brain, vol. xli., part ii., issued in 

 1918. The philosophical interest in the theory was 

 due to the complete scientific refutation it offers of 

 all psychological theories which build up knowledge 

 out of original sense-material. Sensations depend 

 neither for their existence nor for their psychical 

 qualitv on the cortex cerebri, which has a purely inter- 

 pretative function in regard to them. 



NO. 2610, VOL. 104] 



Last July Sir Robert Hadfield invited a large party 

 of his Sheffield workmen to London to visit the British 

 Scientific Products Exhibition, and also the Science 

 Museum at South Kensington. Included in the party 

 were a number of apprentices, some from the Hadfield 

 works in Sheffield and others from similar establish- 

 ments in London. Prizes were offered to the boys for 

 the best essays descriptive of the visit. The winning 

 essays, which are now printed for private circulation, 

 are a striking commentary on the interest taken in 

 the visit. To many of the Sheffield boys, who were in 

 London for the first time, the day was a red-letter one. 

 Their keen powers of observation were not confined to 

 the exhibitions only ; one at least showed a truly sur- 

 prising knowledge of the significance of the historical 

 statues he saw on his way from and to the station. 

 More human, perhaps, was the boy lost in admiration 

 for the London 'bus drivers. It is no mean feat of 

 endurance to visit two exhibitions in one day and carry 

 off any sort of coherent idea of what has been seen. 

 The novelty of the event must have given these boys 

 added enthusiasm, for they describe with great clear- 

 ness machinery and processes which interested them. 

 The essays show the immense educational value of 

 visits of this character, and they are, too, a real tribute 

 to the work of the evening technical schools, where the 

 boys study hard after a day's work. 



Prof. Fer.nando Sanford discusses in the Scientific 

 Monthly for October the ignis fatuus, one of those 

 " meteoric appearances which have puzzled man since 

 he began to inquire into the relations of phenomena, 

 and which are still unexplainable." He reviews the 

 various theories which have been formulated to ex- 

 plain these appearances. His final suggestion is that 

 "they are little swarms of luminous bacteria which 

 are carried up from the bottom of the marsh bv 

 rising" bubbles of gas. Many kinds of luminous bac- 

 teria are known, and the marshes from which these 

 lights arise are known to be the favoured habitat of 

 some of these kinds. Some at least of these bac- 

 teria do not become luminous until exposed to the 

 o.xygen of the air. This seems to be true of the 

 bacteria which cause the luminosity of rotten wood, 

 the 'foxfire' of our boyhood." 



In the Scientific Monthly for October Prof. J. H. 

 Breasted, the eminent Egyptian scholar, publishes the 

 first part of a lecture on the origin of civilisation, 

 with special reference to the Nile Valley. Following 

 the guidance of Blanckenhorn, he classifies the geology 

 of the Nile Valley, in so far as it bears on the age 

 of man there, into four chief periods : — (i) The 

 Lacustrine Terraces, Pliocene and First Glacial ; 

 {2) the Upper River Terrace, Second Glacial ; (3) the 

 Lower River Terrace, Third Glacial ; and (4) the 

 .Alluvium, Lower Fourth Glacial, Upper Post-Glacial. 

 Far back in the European Glacial age the North 

 African plateau was the home of early hunters, who 

 have left signs of their presence not only in flint 

 weapons, but also in a remarkable rock temple in the 

 western desert. From this point he deals with burials 

 and artefacts, including the marvellous ripple-flaked 

 flint implements which are a mysterv to craftsmen 

 of the present day. Prof. Breasted leaves the later 

 developments of the culture of prehistoric man in 

 this region to a second article, which will complete 

 a study of unusual interest. 



LInder the title of "The Linguistic Survey of India 

 and the Census of 191 1 " Sir George Grierson has 

 published a short summary of the great work which 

 he has now brought to a successful termination. The 

 Survey deals with a population amounting to 

 290,000,000, as compared with 312,000,000 recorded 



