JULV 2 1, 1898] 



NATURE 



277 



and non-odorised water gas should not be allowed to be used 

 under any conditions, since it is devoid of smell which would 

 give warning of any escape of the gas ; (3) that 25 per cent, 

 should be the maximum amount of water gas allowed to be in- 

 troduced in the enrichment of coal gas, the proportion of water 

 gas being ascertained by determining the amount of carbonic 

 oxide in the rich coal gas (coal gas enriched to this extent 

 would correspond in poisonous character to the Dowson gas, 

 which is already in use for heating purposes and for gas 

 engines, and would exclude the use of carburetted water gas) ; 

 (4) that when it is proposed to supply poisonous enriched gas 

 to houses and the interior of buildings, a proper inspection be 

 made of the service pipes by a responsible officer appointed by 

 the local or other suitable authority, who should certify that the 

 pipes are in a sound condition and that there is no escape of 

 gas, and that the cost of such inspection be borne by the gas 

 company. 



What will be, we should imagine, a boon to electrical 

 engineers has been brought about by the Patent Office having 

 undertaken to supply the Institution of Electrical Engineers 

 every Monday morning with a copy of each electrical patent 

 specification published during the preceding week. The specifi- 

 cations will remain on the table of the Institution for three 

 weeks, and will then be filed. 



The banquet given to the ladies by the Leathersellers' 

 Company at their Hall on the 13th inst. was a very brilliant 

 affair. The life-size portrait of the ex-Master, Dr. Perkin, 

 F.R.S., painted by Mr. Henry Grant, and placed on an easel 

 for close inspection, which it bore well, was an interesting 

 feature of the evening. The Master, Colonel Bevington, 

 "thought all would agree with him that the artist had 

 succeeded in painting a perfect likeness of the learned doctor, 

 and as good a picture as any they already possessed." It 

 represents Dr. Perkin giving an address to the Society of Arts, 



After distributing the prizes to the successful students of 

 the Guy's Hospital Medical School on Wednesday, July 13, 

 Mr. Arthur Balfour delivered an interesting address on the 

 subject of the medical profession and its work. In the course 

 of his remarks he said there was a period at which almost the 

 only subsidiary sciences to the art of healing, the only ones of 

 practical value, were anatomy and physiology. But all that 

 has been changed, and at the present moment, if a man is to 

 make progress in medical research, he must draw his inspira- 

 tion not merely from those sciences which deal with the human 

 organism immediately, but from chemistry and almost every 

 branch — he thought he might say every branch — of physics. 

 But while that tendency has on the one side been making 

 itself manifest, while the interdependence of all these sciences 

 is becoming more and more manifest, while the assistance 

 which each can and must give to the other is becoming more 

 and more evident, the separate sciences themselves are so 

 rapidly accumulating facts, are growing so enormously that 

 specialisation is necessarily and inevitably set up in every one 

 of them, so that you have the double tendency of an inter- 

 dependence between the sciences which makes it necessary 

 for every man who would- further any one of them to have 

 some working acquaintance with many others, but at the same 

 time you have specialisation forced upon you by the accumu- 

 lation — the rapidly increasing accumulation — of facts in every 

 one of the sciences of which he had spoken. The result of 

 this double tendency is that you must rely more and more for 

 your work and research upon people whose main labour is 

 research. You cannot expect a man in the interstices of a 

 busy life, in the interstices of a great practice, to do much 

 towards the advancement of his science. . . . The man who 

 would succeed in research, the man who, at all events, desires 

 NO. 1499, VOL. 58] 



to devote himself to research, must not be asked to burden 

 himself with other labours. He has upon his shoulders not 

 merely what might be called the specialised work of his pro- 

 fession, but he must have a sympathetic and appreciative eye to 

 everything which is going on in other departments of science, 

 so that even where he cannot follow those other departments 

 minutely, he knows by the instinct of genius where to pick 

 up those new discoveries which may help his own special branch 

 of research. For men of that kind we required further 

 endowment. The speaker had all his life been an ardent 

 believer in the cause which is often laughed at — the cause of 

 the endowment of research. In that cause he most firmly 

 believed, and he thought there was no branch of knowledge in 

 which it may find a more useful field of application than in 

 that of advancing medical knowledge. . . . The work of the 

 medical practitioner is seen at once ; its value can be im- 

 mediately appreciated ; but he who spends his life in pursuit of 

 the secrets of nature, working in his laboratory, may very often 

 receive no public recognition at all during his life, except from 

 that restricted circle of experts who alone are, after all, capable 

 of forming any valuable estimate as to his merits. 



The young male giraffe, lately received in the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens, is of special interest as representing the 

 Northern form of this animal in contrast to the Southern 

 female which arrived in February 1895, ^^t the differences 

 between them will be much more apparent when both the 

 specimens are adult. Although the fact of the Northern 

 giraffe being different from the Southern form has been sug- 

 gested by various authors, and several names have been given 

 to each of them, the subject was first placed on a sound basis 

 by Mr. W. E. de Winton in his paper " On the Existing Forms 

 of Giraffe," read before the Zoological Society in February 1897. 

 It was there shown most conclusively that the Northern form, 

 to which Mr. de Winton proposes to restrict the name Giraffa 

 camelopardalis, is distinguished from the Southern form by 

 several characters, especially by the great prominence of the 

 third frontal horn, which is barely shown in the Southern form 

 {Giraffa capensis). The young giraffe from Senegal, just arrived, 

 belongs to the Northern form, which would appear to extend 

 all across the Sahara into North-eastern Africa. The Cape 

 giraffe seems to be met with in suitable localities all up the 

 east coast into British East Africa, where it is stated that both 

 the forms occur. 



Reference has often been made in these columns to the 

 importance of attention to forestry, and we are glad to notice 

 that the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society has published a 

 memorandum, prepared by the Society for the consideration of 

 the Minister of Agriculture, dealing with the subject of a Scottish 

 model State forest. Commenting upon the memorandum, the 



North British Agriculturist says 



W 



e require a model 



forest, first of all, that we may be in a position to offer to 

 proprietors, their wood managers and foresters, a practical proof 

 that the principles of modern economic forestry, as taught and 

 practised in France, Germany, India, and other countries, are 

 equally suited to our islands. The model forest is also required 

 as a station of experiment and research into matters connected 

 with the development and characteristics of the various species 

 when grown in this country, such as would indicate the correct 

 sylvicultural treatment to be applied to them, and would enable 

 our teachers of sylviculture to base their instructions on data 

 obtained in this country, instead of relying on figures the 

 result of observations conducted elsewhere. Again, we want a 

 model forest as a field of practical instruction for students. 

 Dr. Schlich writes : ' Something more is wanted than theoretical 

 instruction. Instruction in the field must also be provided. 

 There must be forests which are managed on the right lines, 



