March 2'], 19 19] 



NATURE 



71 



hours, the Shardana, occupied Sardinia at the same 

 time. His reason is that Sardinia was " a very difficult 

 country to occupy, strongly fortified, and inhabited by 

 a herce population." The Sardinians were a Mediter- 

 ranean people who "provided war material for the 

 confederation of the ' peoples of the sea ' who attacked 

 Egypt. They took part in this attack with valour, 

 such as their descendants have recently shown in the 

 battles of the Isonzo." 



In Scietice (vol. xlviii., No. 1250, December 13, 

 1918) Mr. S. O. Most discusses the problems, methods, 

 and results of the study of behaviour. He thinks that 

 from time to time it is advantageous to trace the 

 course of scientific development and adjust plans for 

 the future. He gives a historical review of the study 

 of behaviour from the unscientific acceptance of the 

 soul as the controlling agent of all activities— the 

 current view of pre-Renaissance times— through the 

 seventeenth-century belief in the purely mechanical 

 action of men and animals— a belief which inspired 

 much research— to the nineteenth-century realisation of 

 the complex nature of the problem. Ihe problem is 

 a practical one, as is evidenced by the work of such 

 societies as that of the anti-vivisectionists, who, 

 though often inconsistent, yet base their activities on 

 an assumption of the likeness between animals and 

 man with regard to pain. The author urges the claims 

 of a comparative study of behaviour in spite of its 

 anthropomorphic tendencies. He thinks that the 

 differences between the mechanists and vitalists are 

 mainly verbal, the one believing that all reactions 

 are completely determined by material configurations, 

 the latter that the reactions are not thus completely 

 determined, the differences, though, lying in an am- 

 biguous use of mechanical reduction. Whichever view 

 is held, the scientific worker is in equal degree bound 

 to ascertain by experimental methods every possible 

 sequence of phenomena ending in reactions. Hitherto 

 all attempts to reduce animate responses to physico- 

 chemical principle have resulted in evidence which 

 shows that a great majority of such responses are, in 

 a measure, mechanically determined. To ascertain 

 the extent of this determination is an important 

 problem both for the vitalistically and the mechanis- 

 tically inclined men of science. 



I.N the February issue of Reveille (No. 3) 

 ''Economist" discusses "the cost of consumption." 

 The author points out that in ten years the deaths 

 from tuberculosis in England and Wales are not far 

 short of the total deaths in the British and Dominion 

 forces during the war. He pleads for the extension 

 of colony treatment, such as obtains at Papworth, 

 where the consumptive, after a period of observation 

 in a sanatorium, is allowed by slow degrees to begin 

 working, preferably at his old occupation, or, if that | 

 IS unsuitable, at some new occupation which does I 

 not require too long a period of training. After a 

 few months, when ready to leave the sanatorium, and 

 if a suitable case, the patient is encouraged to settle 

 on, or in the neighbourhood of, the colony. This 

 means subsidised labour, a costly matter, but probably 

 no more costly than allowing the patient to die, 

 while the ultimate gain by the reduced risk of infec- 

 tion is very great. 



A PAPER by Harriette. Chick, E. Margaret Hume, , 

 Ruth F. Skelton, and Alice Henderson Smith on the 



prevention of scurvy (Lancet, November 30, 19 18) is of , 

 some botanical as well as medical interest. " Lime. 



juice " has a well-known reputation as an anti- '< 



scorbutic, dating from the eighteenth century, and i 



there is every reason to believe that it was, in fact, | 



the; use of " lime-juice " which was responsible for , 



the disappearance of scurvy from the British Navy ' 



NO. 2578, VOL. 103] 



in the early part of the nineteenth centurv. Towards 

 the end of that period, however, various Arctic 

 explorers became sceptical about its value, and it has 

 been subjected to much adverse criticism as a pro- 

 phylactic or therapeutic agent in the late war. The 

 authors found m animal experiments that the current 

 I hme-juice is of very little value, but that lemon-juice 

 IS effective in preventing scurw in guinea-pigs. The 

 I historical researches of Mrs. Henderson Smith 

 cleared up the puzzle. The original "lime-juice" 

 j came from the Mediterranean, and was derived partlv 

 I r°"}, ^^^ ^^^^^ ''"^'^ (Citrus medica var. limetia), but 

 ; chiefly from the lemon (C. medica var. limottum); it 

 ; was what we should now call "lemon-juice." About 

 ! 1865 the cultivation of the sour lime (C. medica var 

 I actda) had become a considerable business in the 

 I West Indies, and the Admiralty patriotically trans- 

 I ferred its contracts from Malta and Sicily to 'English 

 j firms; they got what we now call "lime-juice," and 

 ; it was useless. In the same series of nutritional 

 investigations made at the Lister Institute, Harriette 

 Chick and Mabel Rhodes (Lancet, December 7, 1918) 

 direct attention to the fact that the most potent anti- 

 scorbutics are all crucifers — cabbage, "scurvy grass" 

 (Cochlearia), and "cresses" of various kinds; swedes 

 are much more efficient than carrots (Umbellifera) or 

 beetroots (Chenopodiaceae). 



The efforts made to introduce the use of bracken 

 rhizomes as food for stock do not receive much en- 

 couragement from the results of experiments with 

 pigs and poultry reported in Bulletin No. 89 of the 

 West of Scotland Agricultural College. In the experi- 

 ments with pigs an increased live-weight was cer- 

 tainly secured by the use of the bracken rhizomes, 

 but this represented only a very meagre return. In 

 the case of poultry the results as indicated by egg. 

 production were entirely disappointing. In both 

 cases^ the experiments were admittedly not on a 

 sufficient scale to warrant definite conclusions, but 

 the outlook for the promotion of bracken to the 

 dignity of a fodder crop does not appear hopeful. 



Mr. G. T. Moore (Annals of the Missouri Botanical 

 Garden, vol. v.. No. 3, 2 plates, 1918) gives an 

 account of a new wood-penetrating alga, Gomoniia 

 Hgnicola, found on a yellow-pine board in a fresh- 

 water pond near Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the 

 study of which has cleared up several points in the 

 life-history of the genus. The plant consists of un- 

 branched cylindrical filaments in which a striking 

 appearance is produced by the concentration of most 

 of the chlorophyll in the terminal cell, the remaining 

 cells being so devoid of colour as to have the appear- 

 ance of a fungal hypha. The plant is reproduced by 

 zoospores, which are formed in large numbers in 

 sporangia of extremely irregular outline, and either 

 germinate directly to produce a new filament or form 

 resting-spores. The latter are very irregular in size 

 and shape, brilliantly green and full of starch, and 

 may rest for months, or even years, before germina- 

 tion. 



• 



One of the most destructive of recent Italian earth- 

 quakes, of which little was heard at the time, occurred 

 in the Upper Tiber valley on April 26, 19 17, at 

 0.40 a.m. (G.M.T.). Though the area of damage, 

 according to Prof. Oddone (Boll. Soc. Sis. Ital., 

 vol. xxi., 1918, pp. 9-27), contains only about seventy- 

 five square miles, there was within it a small district 

 in which the intensity of the shock surpassed the 

 highest degree (10) of the Mercalli scale, the destruc- 

 tion of houses being as complete as at Messina in 

 1908 and Avezzano in 1915. The .epicentre of, this 

 earthquake is in 43° 28-2' N. lat., 12° 7-7' E.. long.. 



