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NATURE 



[April 3, 1919 



equally eligible, and that every candidate must show 

 that he or she and his or her father and paternal 

 grandfather are of British nationality ; but, subject to 

 these conditions, the awards may be made by the 

 president and council in such manner and upon such 

 terms and condition's as they may from time to time 

 determine at their discretion. 



By the untimely death of M. Jacques Danne, an- 

 nounced in last week's Nature, science loses one of 

 its earliest workers in radio-activity. M. Danne was 

 associated with Prof. Curie in researches upon the 

 phvsical properties of radium emanation and the 

 active deposit therefrom; they found the law of decay 

 of the latter when a body is exposed for a long time 

 to the emanation, and recognised that a complex series 

 of events was here in operation. M. Danne was the 

 director of the laboratories at Gif, which are a model 

 of their kind. They consist of a number of small 

 buildings designed to serve the purpose of radio-active 

 research, and to provide the accurate measurements 

 and chemical analyses required in the process of ex- 

 traction of radium from the crude ore; this latter is 

 carried out in a factory near by. The laboratories 

 possess a librarv which contains copies of practically 

 all the purely scientific work published upon radium 

 and allied substances. M. Danne was the editor of 

 he Radium, the only journal of its kind dealing with 

 all the aspects of the physical and chemical properties 

 of the radio-active bodies. He was a man of extra- 

 ordinary energy, and accomplished work of much 

 value in radio-active fields. 



A FURTHER paper on the etiology of influenza by 

 the late Major Graeme Gibson, in association with 

 Major Bowman and Capt. Connor (see Nature, 

 March 13, p. 31), is published in the British 

 Medical Journal for March 22, p. 331. The 

 experiments recorded consisted of (i) the inocula- 

 tion of animals with sputum from cases of 

 influenza, (2) the inoculation of animals with blood 

 from cases of influenza, (3) passage of the virus from 

 animal to animal, and (4) cultural experiments and 

 inoculation of cultures into animals. Of five monkeys 

 inoculated with sputum collected at an early stage 

 of the disease and filtered through a filter-candle, four 

 gave positive results and one was negative. Positive 

 results were also obtained with some rabbits and 

 guinea-pigs, but not with mice. Experiments with 

 blood were not very successful. The pathological 

 lesions in the experimental influenza in the animals 

 closely resembled those seen in the lungs of man. 

 A minute coccoid micro-organism was grown by 

 Noguchi's cultural methods frbm (a) the kidney of 

 infected animals, (h) the filtrates of lung-tissue, and 

 (c) the filtered sputum from cases of influenza. In 

 view of these findings, the authors conclude that the 

 organism isolated is capable of passing through a 

 filter-candle, and that it is, in all probability, the cause 

 of influenza as seen to-day. 



March closed with very wintry conditions over the 

 British Isles, frost and snow occurring generally. 

 During the early hours of Saturday, March 29, the 

 heaviest snowstorm of the winter was experienced. 

 In Scotland railway trailflc was delayed, and the fall 

 of snow is said to have been the heaviest experienced 

 for vears over the Irish midlands and the west. The 

 snowstorm was due to the passage of a subsidiary 

 cyclonic disturbance up the English Channel. Very 

 heavy snow fell in London from_ 2.30 to 7 on Satur- 

 day morning, the depth amounting to 9 in. in some 

 of the metropolitan suburbs, and at some places in the 

 South of England the depth exceeded a foot. Snow 

 has often fallen later in the winter or spring, and in 

 1917 much snow fell both in March and April. At 



NO. 2579, VOL. 103] 



Greenwich the latter half of March was 7° colder 

 than the first part of the month. The mean tempera- 

 ture for the whole of March was 409°, which is 1° 

 below the average for seventy-five years to 1915. It 

 is 2° colder than March, 19 18, but 2-4° warmer than 

 March, 1917. Frost was registered on the grass this 

 year at Greenwich on twenty-four nights, and with 

 only one exception after March 12. The total rainfall 

 for the month measured 2-91 in. (to the evening of 

 March 31), which is exactly double the sixty years' 

 average. The duration of bright sunshine during the 

 month was eighty-nine hours, and there were only six 

 sunless days. 



Some disconcerting possibilities are indicated in 

 some notes by Mr. A. Philpott on birds introduced 

 into Southland, New Zealand, which appear in the 

 New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology 

 (vol. i.. No. 6). According to the author, in this dis- 

 trict the introduced birds are now " much more pro- 

 minent than the native birds." Some of the latter, 

 he assures us, are still plentiful enough, and will 

 probably continue to hold their own. It is devoutly to 

 be hoped that this surmise will prove to be correct. 

 But the dispossessed species can never be replaced, 

 and they were infinitely the more valuable. Among 

 the introduced species Mr. Philpott makes special 

 mention of the starling, which, we are informed, is a 

 useful bird, but not nearly so plentiful as it used to 

 be. As it seems to be changing its nesting habits, 

 there is a grave danger that a reversal of its rate of 

 increase will in the near future have to be recorded. 

 The Australians have learnt, by bitter experience, the 

 folly of introductions of this kind. There the starling 

 has become a pest, defying all attempts to reduce its 

 numbers. 



Anatomists and palaeontologists will indeed be 

 grateful for the studies in comparative myology and 

 osteology which Messrs. W. K. Gregory and C. L. 

 Camp have just published in the Bulletin of the 

 American Museum of Natural History (vol. xxxviii., 

 art. 15). Not only have the authors given a very 

 exhaustive account of the muscles of the shoulder 

 girdle and pelvis in a number of reptiles, birds, 

 and mammals, and the homologies of these muscles; 

 they have also essayed the difficult task of recon- 

 structing- the musculature of a number of primitive 

 fossil reptiles. Only those who have some practical 

 acquaintance with dissections of this kind can appre- 

 ciate the immense amount of labour which they must 

 have expended to produce results so striking. A large 

 number of very beautiful diagrams add still further 

 to the value of this work, of which they may be 

 justly proud. 



In the report on the Agricultural Department, 

 Grenada, 1917-18, an account is given of further 

 experiments with a parasitic fungus, Sporotrichum 

 globuliferum, on the cacao thrips (Heliothrips rtibro- 

 cinctus). The trees were spra\'ed with a powdered 

 mixture of flour and fungus-spores suspended in water 

 in the proportion of from 20 to 60 grams of the 

 powder to 3^ gallons of water. The observations are 

 not yet complete, but the experiment has demonstrated 

 (i) that the fungus was readily distributed amongst 

 thrips in the field, (2) that under favourable conditions 

 of atmospheric humidity the fungus caused the death 

 of large numbers of both young and adult thrips on 

 the inoculated trees, and (3) that the fungus spread 

 by natural agencies to trees outside the inoculated 

 area. It remains to be determined whether adequate 

 control of thrips can be secured by the use of this 

 fungus, and how far the activity of the fungus is 



