490 



NATURE 



[August i6, 191 7 



C. D. Walcott, and F. A. Lucas have been appointed 

 judges for the bestowal of the medal and honorariumr. 

 It is expected that it will be possible for the first award 

 to be made in April, 19 18. 



The mycological collection of the late Dr. J. W. 

 Ellis has been acquired by purchase by the herbarium 

 at Kew. It comprises nearly 1600 dried specimens, 

 is especially rich in micro-fungi, and includes a series 

 of mounted specimens of those of economic import- 

 ance. There are also 330 microscopic slides. 



An Aerial Postal Service between Italy, Sicily, and 

 Sardinia has already been established, as we read in the 

 Journal of the Society of Arts, August 3. The first 

 post was inaugurated on June 24 between Naples and 

 Palermo, and three days later the next service, from 

 Civita Vecchia on the mainland to Terranuova-Pau- 

 siinia (Sardinia). In the first trip from Naples to 

 Palermo, a seaplane was used, carrying a heavy mail, 

 flying at a height of 1500 to 2000 metres at 140 kilo- 

 metres (say ninety miles) an hour, reaching Palermo 

 in less than two hours and a half. The service from 

 Civita Vecchia to Sardinia was opened on June 27 by 

 two seaplanes, each carrying 100 kilogrammes of mail 

 in watertight bags. The passage was Tiade in an liour 

 and forty minutes, leaving Civita Vecchia at 6.20 a.m. 

 and reaching Terranuova about 8 a.m., and the return 

 journey was made in about the same time. 



An appeal for the loan of prismatic compasses for 

 use in the Army has been issued by the Countess 

 Roberts. Any good prismatic compass, such as is 

 used for map-making and surveying, would be accept- 

 able. The instruments would be engraved and regis- 

 tered under the lenders' names to facilitate their return, 

 when possible, after the war. They should be sent to 

 the Manager of Lady Roberts's Field Glass Fund, 64 

 Victoria Street, S.W.i.' 



The Cavendish lecture of the West London Medico- 

 Chirurgical Society was delivered on June 22. The 

 lecturer, Capt. Andrew Macphail, Canadian Army 

 Medical Corps, who is professor of the history of 

 medicine at McGill University, Montreal, took as his 

 subject "A Day's Work." In a word-picture of coh- 

 siderable power he described the medical organisation 

 of that part of the Army concerned with the attack on, 

 and capture of, the Vimy Ridge. "The Medical Ser- 

 vice, above all other services, has done its perfect 

 work. It has yielded an army without sickness. I 

 have never seen a case of typhoid, and the few in- 

 fectious cases are of the nature of children's diseases. 

 Except for a few days on the Somme, I have not 

 seen more flies than one would see on a well-kept 

 farm. Purified water is put into the men's bottles. 

 To drink from an unauthorised source is a crime. 

 Wells are examined even whilst they are yet under 

 fire, and food is scrutinised before every meal. Men 

 are bathed as methodically as they are fed, and by fire 

 and steam the advances of the humble, but friendly, 

 louse are discouraged. One acquires a certain pity 

 for this most dependent and helpless of all creatures 

 — his means of livelihood are so restricted and he is 

 so unbeloved." He finally concluded with some in- 

 spiring sentences on the outlook, the lessons of the 

 past, and the messages of war. 



The Eugenics Review for July (vol. ix., No. 2) 

 contains an abstract of an address by Judge Henry 

 Neil on the Mothers' Pension System, of which he 

 is the founder. The State legislature of Illinois eleven 

 years ago inaugurated the system, and at the present 

 time thirty other States have adopted it. Mothers' 

 pensions are maintenance grants made in respect of 

 children under fourteen to a parent, who is a " proper 



NO. 2494, VOL. 99] 



guardian " — that is to say, of established good char- 

 acter, but too poor to feed, clothe, and "home" her 

 children adequately. The money is provided by 

 general taxation, and the pensioned mother is put on 

 the county pay-roll and receives her cheque every 

 month. If she prove herself unable to handle the 

 money properly her pension may ibe revoked, but very 

 few cases of any abuse of this kind occur, and prac- 

 tically about three-fourths of the destitute children in 

 the thirty States in which this pension system has 

 been adopted are now looked after at home. Super- 

 visors, appointed by each State, see that the children 

 are properly cared for, and an immense saving in 

 public money has been effected, the cost per child 

 being about one-third that incurred by institutional 

 care. 



Drs. Browning, Gulbrausen, and Thornton give a 

 further contribution on the antiseptic properties of 

 flavine and brilliant green, with special reference to 

 their suitability for wound treatment, in the British 

 Medical Journal for July 21, p. 70. Flavine corripounds 

 and brilliant green are antiseptics which exert a slowly 

 progressive bactericidal action. Concentrations of 

 these substances, which at first inhibit, and finally 

 kill, bacteria, are without harmful effect on the tissues 

 locally or generally. Flavine compounds are enhanced 

 in their bactericidal potency by the presence of serum, 

 while brilliant green, in common with most other 

 antiseptics, is reduced in its activity by serum. Bril- 

 liant green satisfies requirements for application by 

 repeated irrigation in aqueous solution (i : 2000), while 

 with flavine, since it is most potent in the presence 

 of serum, the indication is to arrange the wound' 

 dressing so that it may act in a serum medium. 

 Operative measures are an essential preliminary to the 

 effective use of therapeutic antiseptics in wounds, since 

 the antiseptic can act only when brought into intimate 

 contact with the infected tissues. 



When Mr. and Mrs. Routledge finished their inves- 

 tigations on Easter Island in 1915, they touched at 

 Pitcairn Island, and there engaged two brothers, direct 

 descendants of the Bounty mutineers, Charles Young, 

 aged twenty-eight, and Edwin Young, aged tweYity- 

 five, to serve as hands on their yacht Mana. On their 

 arrival in England these young men were sent to the 

 Royal College of Surgeons to undergo examination 

 by Prof. A. Keith and Dr. W. Colin Mackenzie. This 

 is the first opportunity enjoyed by European anthro- 

 pologists of examining members of this interesting 

 communit)'. From their report, published in the 

 August issue of Man, it appears from examination 

 of their genealogy that their ancestral composition 

 should be 13/32 parts British and 19/32 parts Tahitian. 

 Prof. Keith sums up the result of the examination 

 as follows : — " I regard the two Pitcairn Islanders as 

 decidedly more Tahitian than European in their 

 physical characteristics. In facial features Charles is 

 European, Edwin is not, yet in actual shape of the 

 head the case is reversed — Charles has the typical 

 Tahitian head, Edwin rather the European ; in texture 

 of hair they* are Tahitian rather than European. In 

 size of brain they are typical of neither "British nor 

 Tahitian, but incline rather to the second than to the 

 first. But there can be no question of physical de- 

 generation ; they are both splendidly developed men." 

 They belong to the sixth generation of the descendants 

 of the mutineers — six generations in 127 year$. 



The Museum Journal published by the University of 

 Pennsylvania (vol. vii.. No. 4, December, 1916) contains 

 an account of the University expedition to the Amazon in 1 

 1913, under the superintendence of Dr. F. H. Church j 

 and Mr. W. C. Farabee. An interesting account is 



