November 13, 1919] 



NATURE 



301 



probltMj!- of this industry. There can be no doubt as 

 to the value of the opportunity offered for research, 

 the attractiveness of the subjects for investigation, 

 and the huge difficulties to be surmounted. The ideal 

 director for this association is not an individual re- 

 search worker whose glory is to work in splendid 

 isolation, but is he who will bring expert knowledge 

 of the methods of scientific research to bear upon 

 these complex problems, who possesses such per- 

 sonality as to attract promising young research workers 

 to his side, and who is also an administrator qualified 

 to secure the carrying on of a large volume of research 

 work along a broad front touching the various sec- 

 tional interests concerned, and to co-ordinate the 

 efforts being made through the various laboratories, 

 institutions, and works to which specific research and 

 experimental work will be allotted. 



In an advertisement which has appeared for a 

 director of research a lower limit to the salary has 

 been mentioned, but it may here be stated that the 

 council intends to pay a salary commensurate with the 

 qualifications of the candidate selected to fill the office, 

 and it will be very considerably higher than the figure 

 mentioned if the council can obtain its ideal director. 



There are brilliant opportunities in this field of 

 scientific investigation for the chemist, the physicist, 

 and the engineer. Glass engineering in particular is 

 in its infancy in this country, and the modern problems 

 of glass manufacture are rapidly resolving themselves 

 into those to be solved mainly by the highly trained 

 engineer who specialises in the study of glass-making 

 processes. 



The Glass Research Association is an earnest effort 

 to carry out co-operative research on an extensive scale 

 for an industry of prime national importance, and it 

 has been launched with great promise. Everything 

 now depends upon the support of the whole industrv 

 and upon the calibre of the scientific workers who will 

 undertake the investigations. 



It is not too much to hope that the present member- 

 ship will soon be doubled, and that scientific ability 

 and genius of the highest order will be found to 

 energise this great undertaking and ensure its success. 



Edward Meigh. 



THE TOBACCO BEETLE. 



BULLETIN No. 737 of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, published last March, has 

 for its subject "The Tobacco Beetle: An Important 

 Pest in Tobacco Products," and on reading what its 

 writer, Mr. G. H. Runner, has to say about the pest, 

 one is almost tempted to believe that the "precious 

 herbe " is fitted for nothing so much as the breeding 

 of maggots. At any rate, Mr. Runner makes it quite 

 clear that tobacco at every stage of its manufacture, 

 from the dried leaf up to the finished product, is a 

 most attractive diet for the grub or larva, and that 

 the conditions under which the leaf is usually 

 manufactured and stored are almost ideal for the 

 development and reproduction of the beetle. What a 

 pity King James did not know all this when he wrote 

 his " Counterblaste," and was led in irony to exclaim, 

 "O omnipotent power of tobacco! " But the tobacco 

 beetle, Lasiodcrma serricorne, was probably altogether 

 unknown in his days, and even now is not at all 

 common in England. It cannot withstand exposure to 

 extreme cold for any great length of time, and thrives 

 best, sometimes reproducing at the unusual rate of 

 three- or more generations each year, where a warm, 

 equable temperature, a moist atmosphere, and suit- 

 able food for the crub occur tO£?ether. That is whv 

 it is so much better known in America, especially in 

 the States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, than it is 



NO. 261 1, VOL. IO4I 



in this country. It is well known also in India and 

 the islands of the Far East. 



Here in England the tobacco beetle is an imported 

 species, only occasionally met with, though some- 

 times in very large numbers, as was the case not 

 many years ago when it swarmed in the warehouses 

 around one of the London docks, whither it had come 

 in a cargo of turmeric from India. Its larvae feed, 

 like those of the common "biscuit weevil " or "drug- 

 store beetle," Sitodrepa panicea, which belongs to the 

 same family, on almost every kind of dried product of 

 vegetable origin. Hence the beetle is almost as much 

 at home with the druggist and the grocer as it is with 

 the tobacconist. Tobacco, however, except in the 

 green or growing state, which it does not touch, 

 appears to be its principal food, and, according to Mr. 

 Runner, it selects the higher grades of leaf, cigar, and 

 cigarette in preference to those of inferior quality. 



Methods to be taken for the destruction or control 

 of the little pest, and various experiments and trials 

 made with that object in view, are described at some 

 length in the bulletin, which contains as well a full 

 account of the whole life-history of the insect illus- 

 trated by figures, some of which are particularly well 

 done, and there is also a list of special memoirs and 

 other papers relating to the subject. The bulletin, 

 therefore, although apparently prepared more especially 

 for the benefit of the tobacco manufacturer and dealer, 

 will be of considerable value to the practical entomo- 

 logist, and ought, indeed, to have some interest also 

 for everv true lover of the weed. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT 



BOURNEMOUTH. 



SECTION H. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Opk.ning .Vddkess hy Prof. Arthur Keith, M.D., 

 LL.D., F.R.S., Pkksidext of the Section. 



The Differentiation of Mankind into Racial Types. 



For a brief half-hour I am to try to engage your 

 attention on a matter which has excited the interest 

 of thoughtful minds from ancient times — the problem 

 of how mankind has been demarcated into types so 

 diverse as the Negro, the Mongol, and the Caucasian 

 or European. For many a day the Mosaic explana- 

 tion — the tower of Babel theory — was regarded as a 

 sufficient solution of this difficult problem. In 

 these times most of us have adopted an explanation 

 which differs in many respects from that put forward 

 in the book of Genesis; Noah disappears from our 

 theory and is replaced in the dim distance of time 

 by a "common ancestral stock." Our story now 

 commences, not at the close of an historical flood, but 

 at the end of a geological epoch so distant from us 

 that we cannot compute its date with any degree of 

 accuracy. Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the reputed 

 ancestors of the three great racial stocks of modern 

 times — the white, black, and yellow distinctive types 

 of mankind — have also disappeared from our specula- 

 tions ; we no longer look out on the world and 

 believe that the patterns which stud the variegated 

 carpet of humanity were all woven at the same time; 

 some of the patterns, we believe, are of ancient date 

 and have retained manv of the features which marked 

 the "common ancestral" design; others are of more 

 recent date, having the ancient pattern altered in 

 many of its details. We have called in, as Darwin 

 has taught us, the whole machinery of evolution — 

 struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, spon- 

 taneous origin of structural variations, the inherit- 

 ;\nce of such variations — as the loom bv which Nature 



