[o8 



NATURE 



[June 3, 1897 



In the House of Lords on Friday last, Lord Stanhope moved 

 — " That her Majesty's Government should be invited to take 

 such further steps as are necessary under the Finance Act, 

 1894-96, to preserve in the country ' such pictures, prints, 

 books, manuscripts, works of art, and scientific collections, not 

 yielding income, as are of national, scientific, or historic 

 interest.' " Speaking upon the subject of the motion, Lord 

 Kelvin pointed out its great importance so far as scientific 

 collections were concerned. It might have an exceedingly 

 injurious effect upon scientific investigation in this country if 

 the heavy death duties were charged upon apparatus for scientific 

 research or upon natural history collections, the property of private 

 owners. Very large sums of money had been spent on private 

 observatories. A large part of the astronomical investigation 

 in the United Kingdom had been "performed by amateur 

 astronomers, if he might use the word, who stood at the very 

 head of scientific men in respect of knowledge and skill in 

 scientific investigation. A large amount of money had been 

 spent upon private observatories, on great telescopes, and on 

 other instruments of research, which would be subject to ex- 

 ceedingly heavy death duties, and the heirs of the proprietors 

 might find it impossible to keep them. The result might be 

 that it would be necessary to sell them ; foreign purchasers 

 might get them, and those valuable tools for scientific work 

 might be sent out of England and leave this country so much 

 the poorer in respect of scientific work. The same might also 

 be said of natural history collections. Such collections were of 

 unique value. A man might spend his whole life in the work of 

 making such collections and leave something that was of price- 

 less value in reality, and which would be estimated at a very 

 high money figure if the expense involved in creating the 

 collection was to be taken into account. It would be most 

 disastrous that such natural history collections or apparatus for 

 scientific investigation should be subjected to the severe death 

 duties that were charged on those to whom was left property 

 which they could use, and which might be sources of income 

 and revenue to the inheritors, when that which was inherited 

 could only be of use through the inheritor devoting himself, as 

 the creator of the collection had devoted h imself, to the public 

 good and for the advancement of science. He thought it would 

 be exceedingly bad, and in every way undesirable that a duty any- 

 thing more than merely nominal should be charged in such 

 cases.-— Lord Cross explained that there was a great desire on 

 the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to deal fairly with 

 this matter. Anything that could be done within the terms of 

 the Act of Parliament would be done by him to keep works of 

 art, whether they be pictures, manuscripts, scientific collections, 

 or scientific instruments, in^the country. He hoped, therefore, 

 that the motion, with the main object of which the Govern- 

 ment fully sympathised, would not be pressed. The motion was 

 afterwards negatived without a division ; so the decision whether 

 the objects referred to shall be liable for estate duty or not, 

 remains with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 



A VERY valuable address on the progress of medicine in the 

 Victorian Era, delivered on May 27 by Mrs. Garrett Anderson, 

 M.D., before the East Anglian Branch of the British Medical 

 Association (of which branch she has been elected President), 

 concluded with the following clear statement of the directions 

 in which advances may be gained by research. " It is in medi- 

 cine proper that more light is specially needed. We want, in 

 medicine, more of the knowledge that can only be gained 

 through research. We want to know the real nature of 

 malignant growths, the complete life-history of the bacillus of 

 diphtheria, of the parasite of malaria, the conditions they 

 require, and how to produce immunity from them and from 

 tuberculosis. It does not need much imagination to realise how 

 the world would be helped, and its sorrows lightened, if cancer, 

 NO. 1440, VOL. 56] 



consumption, and diphtheria could be brought under control in 

 at all the same measure as small-pox, thanks to Jenner, has been 

 brought ; nor how civilisation would advance by leaps and 

 bounds in many parts of the world if malaria could be eff'ectually 

 combated. Victory in these directions can only come through 

 patient and laborious research, and we should all do our best so 

 to educate public opinion that the true value of this work 

 should be generally recognised, and that the demand for it 

 should no longer be restricted within the narrow limit of the 

 world of science." 



Prof. Koch's final reports upon his rinderpest investigations 

 at Kimberley, appear in the Cape Town Agricultural Journal 

 of April I. The following extracts from the last report, dated 

 March 22, are of interest : — " I consider my researches, respect- 

 ing the rinderpest, finished in the main, and I believe that I can 

 leave the further working out of them to Dr. Turner, who will 

 for some time still have the assistance of Dr. Kohlstock, and 

 later that of Dr. Kolle, should it be possible to arrange this. 

 This ensures the continuity between my work hitherto and the 

 further investigations at the experimental station. What I had 

 been able so far to find out regarding the microbe of the rinder- 

 pest seemed to me too uncertain to mention in my reports. But 

 I have shown Dr. Turner everything I have found in this 

 respect, and he will try to gain further facts about the occurrence 

 and habits of these microbes which, at any rate, do not belong to 

 the class of Bacteria. The discovery that by injection of gall 

 taken from rinderpest animals, sound animals may be protected 

 against rinderpest, and that this discovery is also practically 

 applicable, I consider absolutely proved in view of the results 

 achieved on the farm ' Susanna.' Should my hopes respecting 

 the artificial production of rinderpest-gall by mixture of gall and 

 rinderpest-blood, about which I am not quite certain at present, 

 not realise themselves, it will still be possible to obtain any 

 desired quantity of effective gall by infecting a proportional 

 number of cattle with rinderpest blood and killing them on the 

 sixth or seventh day of the illness. The use of gall for immun- 

 isation seems at present to me to be so far superior to immunising 

 with serum, that I would advise the latter procedure to be applied 

 only experimentally." 



Prof. J. A, Harper's paper " On Nuclear Division and 

 Free Cell-formation in the Ascus," reprinted from Pringsheim's 

 Jahrbikher, completes a valuable series of observations on the 

 obscure process of nuclear fusion which takes place immediately 

 before the formation of the spores in many of the Ascomycetes. 

 The author does not take the view of several French observers, 

 that this fusion of nuclei is of a sexual character. 



The Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, issued by the 

 Superintendent of the Botanic Garden, Trinidad, mentions the 

 very interesting circumstance that in that island a species of 

 Bauhinia {B. magalandra, n. sp.), belonging to the Leguminosse, 

 is pollinated by the agency of bats, the first instance recorded of 

 a " mammalophilous " flower. On visiting a flower the bat 

 alights upon and holds fast to the protruded stamens, and 

 attacks the erect and curved petals. The object of, the visit of 

 the bats appears to be hot any nectar secreted by the flower, but 

 the insects which are attracted to it by its odour. The flowers 

 open only in the evening. 



Towards the end of the notice of vol. ii. of the Cambridge 

 Natural History, in our issue of April 29 (vol. Iv. p. 610), 

 reference was made to the admirable illustrations, and regret 

 was expressed that the name of the artist did not appear to be 

 given. We are glad to be able to say that the artist was Mr. 

 Edwin Wilson, of Cambridge, whose illustrative work has-taken 

 a high place in science for some years. The volume lately 

 reviewed was written by several different contributors, and, as 



