May 17, 1917] 



NATURE 



231 



try, Dr. Dayid ( Headmaster of Rugby), Lord Des- 

 b^ough, K.C.V.O., Viscount Grey of Fallodon, K.G., 

 C^l. T. Roosevelt, Lt.-Gen. J. C. Smuts, and repre- 

 sentatives of the Royal Geographical Societv, the 

 Zoological Society, the Entomological Society,, the 

 British Ornithologists' Union, the Royal Colonial In-' 

 stitute, and the British South Africa Company. The 

 committee has decided, with the permission of the 

 trustees of the British Museum, to place a mural 

 tablet in the Natural History Museum, where many 

 of Selous's finest trophies are exhibited, but the very 

 ^ er.couraging response which has been received to the 

 proposal for a national memorial of the great hunter, 

 explorer, and naturalist indicates that there is a 

 general desire that some additional form of perpetuat- 

 ng his memory should be established. Several sug- 

 gestions have been considered, and it is hoped that at 

 least it will be possible to found a Selous scholarship 

 at Rugby (his old school), for the sons of officers, 

 primarily of those who have fallen in the war. The 

 hon. secretary to the Memorial Committee is Mr. E. 

 Stuart Baker, 6 Harold Road, Norwood. Subscrip- 

 tions should be sent to Mr. C. E. Fagan, hon. 

 treasurer, Selous Memorial, Natural History Museum, 

 South Kensington, London, S.W.7. 



We learn with regret that on April 30 Arnold Lock- 

 hart Fletcher died in a Red Cross hospital at Rouen 

 of wounds received some Jays earlier at the front. 

 Prof. J. Joly writes : — Arnold Fletcher was born in 

 1889. He was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, 

 and obtained the degree in civil engineering in 1909. 

 Shortly afterwards he was appointed research assistant 

 in the department of geology and mineralogy in 

 Trinity College. In 19 10 he took part in communicat- 

 ing a paper on " Pleochroic Haloes" to the Philo- 

 sophical Magazine. In the same year he commenced 

 work on the radium content of rocks. He dealt suc- 

 cessively with the rocks of the Transandine tunnel 

 (Phil. Mag., July, 1910) and with the Leinster Granite 

 (Phil. Mag., January, 191 1). In the latter materials 

 he also made determinations of thorium content. He 

 directed special attention to the remarkably uniform 

 ratio between the quantities of the two radio-active 

 families present, a peculiarity since noticed in other 

 cases. The Antarctic rocks followed {Phil. Mag., 

 June, 191 1). Finally, he undertook a very complete 

 examination of the secondary rocks (Phil. Mag., 

 February, 19 12). In this research the fusion method 

 was used, and the utmost care taken to eliminate 

 errors. This work is entitled to rank as the best that 

 has been done on these materials. Fletcher con^ 

 tributed a paper on sublimates, obtained at high tem- 

 peratures, to the Royal Dublin Society in 19 13. In 

 the same year an account of a method of finding the 

 radium content of radium-rich minerals by fusion on 

 a carbon hob appeared in the Phil. Mag. This last 

 work was done in the Royal College of Science for 

 Ireland. In 1913 Fletcher entered the service of the 

 Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical In- 

 struction as inspector, an institution of which his 

 father — Mr. George Fletcher — is assistant secretary 

 in respect of technical instruction. Shortly after the 

 war broke out Arnold Fletcher applied for a commis- 

 sion, and was gazetted in the Leinster Regiment in 

 April, 19 15. At the time of his death he was attached 

 to a machine-gun corps. Fletcher possessed qualities 

 which contribute to success in scientific work : 

 patience, enthus'asm, manipulative skill, determina- 

 tion, and the power of overcoming experimental diffi- 

 culties. In his brief life he did work which must 

 find permanent record among the data of science. 

 Along with this claim, the claim of his sacrifice to 

 his country must for ever remain. When the War is 



NO. 2481, VOL. 99] 



over men of science should see to it that some national 

 memorial to such lives be raised. 



The National Geographic Magazine for February 

 publishes a well-illustrated article by an anonymous 

 writer on "Our Foreign-born Citizens," in which the 

 past and future of emigration intd the United States 

 are discussed. The literary test recently imposed will 

 turn back one-fourth of the Armenians, two-fifths of 

 the Serbians, Bulgarians, and Montenegrins, more 

 than a fourth of the Jews and Greeks, more than 

 half the South Italians, more than a third of the 

 Poles and Russians, and a _ fourth of the Skivaks. 

 More than 33,000,000 of people have already crossed 

 the Atlantic, of which Great Britaia and Ireland 

 have contributed 8,500,000 and Germany more than 

 t),ooo,ooo. Ireland with more than 4,000,000, Great 

 Britain with about 4,000,000, and Scandinavia with 

 2,000,000 have, together with Germany, contributed 

 more than half the emigrants since the beginning of 

 the Revolutionary War. It is estimated that the 

 United States will have a population of nearly 

 500,000,000 in 2217, or approximately 166 to the 

 square mile But there is little danger of congestion, 

 as statisticians estimate • that the country has a sus- 

 taining power of 500 to the square mile, and assum- 

 ing that one-third of the country is occupied by waste 

 land, it will, on this basis, have room for a population 

 of 900,000,000. 



Mr. EriwARD Clodd contributes to the Fortnightly 

 Review ipr May an interesting article on Dr. John- 

 son and Lord Monboddo. An attractive picture is 

 given of the active-minded judge, who, in his " Origin 

 and Progress of Language" (1773-92), was one of 

 the first to suggest man's relationship with the higher 

 apes. There was considerable absurdity in Lord 

 Monboddo's statement of his theorj', but that it was 

 a flash of genius is indubitable. Laughed at by his 

 contemporaries, and ridiculed by the conservative 

 Johnson, Monboddo was far ahead of his time. 

 " Some of his speculations were anticipations of dis- 

 coveries which have revolutionised thought and opinion 

 in all directions ; his was the creeping of the dawn 

 when old things were passing away and all things 

 were to become neiv." There is something fine in the 

 conclusion of his long exposition of the resemblances 

 between man and the apes : " That my facts and 

 arguments are so convincing as to leave no doubt of 

 the humanity of the orang-utan, I will not take upon 

 me to say; but this much I will venture to affirm, that 

 I have said enough to make the philosopher consider 

 it as problematical, and a subject deserving to be 

 inquired into. ..." Mr. Clodd shows the natural- 

 ness of Johnson's attitude to Monboddo's subversive 

 views. " But that attitude should convey the lessop 

 to keep an open mind towards all matters, especiallv 

 those that collide with our prejudices and contradict 

 our 'certainties.'" As a wise Frenchman said, "Be- 

 cause science is sure of nothing, it is always advanc- 

 ing." 



Mr. J. Harold Wuxlams contributes a study of 

 heredity and juvenile delinquency to the Eugenics 

 Review for -April (vol. ix.. No. i). Twelve family 

 histories are considered, and indicate the extreme 

 importance of heredity in delinquency. At the same 

 time, even in feeble-minded children delinquency is 

 directly a product of environment. In nature and 

 nurture, therefore, not separately, but collectively, 

 must we look for an improved social being. The dis- 

 cussion on the disabled sailor and soldier and the 

 future of our race, celebrating the Galton anniversarv 

 on February 16, is also included in this issue of the 

 review. 



