July 20, 1893J 



NATURE 



269 



Society, in which I have every confidence, takes any action in 

 this matter, I have no wish to participate in the controversy, and 

 have but little doulrt that the simple publication in your columns 

 of the enclosed correspondence, without any comment from me, 

 will be quite sufficient to enable the readers of Nature to form 

 a correct opinion as to the manner in which my book has been 

 made to serve the purposes of the Victoria Street Anti- Vivisection 

 Society. Percy F. Frankland. 



University College, Dundee, July 15. 



The committee of the Victoria Street Anti- Vivisection Society 

 have issued the following protest to the members of the Society 

 for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge against a work re- 

 cently published by that Society, and concerning which the Lord 

 Chief Justice has written the letter appended : — 



20, Victoria Street, London, S. IV., July 1893. 



Sir (or Madam), — The attention of the Committee of the 

 above society has lately been drawn to a book issued by the 

 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge entitled "Our 

 Secret Friends and Foes," the author of which. Dr. Percy 

 Faraday Frankland, held a license last year as a practical vivi- 

 sector. 



My committee consider that the following extracts sufficiently 

 show that the book is calculated to encourage the unjustifiable 

 and demoralisingpracticeof experimenting on living animals ; — 



" Nicolaier was the first to discover that certain bacilli, widely 

 distributed in the superficial layers of soil, were capable when 

 subcutaneously inoculated into mice, guinea-pigs, and rabbits, 

 of setting up symptons typical of tetanus from which they subse- 

 quently died." (Page 123.) 



" Rabbits and guinea-pigs inoculated with some (spider's) web 

 .... died under particularly well-defined symptoms of teta- 

 nus." (Page 126). 



Again, with regard to the Pasteur methods, which, from their 

 nature, must involve great torture of animals, we read : — 



" Numerous investigators have succeeded in calling forth many 

 of the symptoms of a disease by injecting the products of these 

 organisms'" (Page 140.) 



On page 148 there is the following passage referring to the 

 establishment of Pasteur Institutes : — 



" Such institutions have been established in Russia, Hungary, 

 Italy, Sicily, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, the United States, and 

 JRoumania, whilst in Great Britain, to our unutterable disgrace, 

 we are in this respect behind the unspeakable Turk, and the 

 semi-barbarous subjects of the Czar." 



That a Pasteur Institute has not yet been established in 

 England, in spite of repeated efforts on the part of the vivisecting 

 school, is greatly to the credit of this country, for such an insti- 

 tution would result in an enormous increase in the number of 

 painful experiments on God's innocent creatures. 



My committee are of opinion that the teaching of this book is 

 opposed to the objects of the Society for Promoting Christian 

 Knowledge, and 1 am directed earnestly to urge you, if you con- 

 sider the objections to the book are valid, to write the Secretary, 

 Editorial Department, S.P.C.K., Northumberland Avenue, 

 London, W.C., and protest against the continued publication of 

 it. — I am. Sir (or Madam), your obedient servant, 



Benjn. Bryan, Secretary. 



The following is the letter from the Lord Chief Justice of 

 England ; — 



I, Sussex Square, W., June 27. 



Madam, — I have signed this paper, not exactly with pleasure, 

 <or the whole subject is utterly odious to me, but with great 

 ■willingness. I have never seen any reason to change or qualify i 

 the opinions I expressed many years ago in an article on vivisec- 

 tion which your society reprinted. Should the book in question 

 not be withdrawn by the.Society for Promoting Christian Know- 

 ledge, I shall at once withdraw myself from it, as it will, in my 

 judgement, become a Society for tlie Promotion of Unchristian 

 Knowledge. Very good men, I am quite aware, take a different 

 view, and will continue to support the society ; but a man, how- 

 ever oljscure, must act upon his convictions, especially when 

 they have not been hastily taken up and are not quite ignorantly 

 maintained.—! am, Madam, your obedient servant (Signed) 

 ■CoLEKirjGE. Miss Monro. 



Oyster-Culture and Temperature. 



It may interest some of your readers to know that there has 

 been an unusually heavy deposit of oyster spat just now on the ' 

 collectors (tiles) along this west coast of France. Sjme of the ] 



NO. 1238. VOL. 4.8] 



tiles I have seen during the last few days have been very densely 

 crowded over with the little amber-coloured scales. The oyster 

 breeders both at Arcachon and at Point de Chapus, men of 

 long experience, attribute the special abundance of the spat this 

 season to the continuous hot weather. 



The calmness of the sea at the time when the embryos were 

 set free may also have had something to do with an unusually 

 large number passing safely through the'critical larval stages. 



The temperature of the sea on various parts of the oyster 

 "pares " at Arcachon last Monday was from 80° to 90° F., and 

 out in the open to-day, half-way between the islands of Oleron 

 and Re, I find it is 72° F. However, it may be hoped that 

 although temperatures like these may be favourable, they are 

 not necessary for successful oyster breeding. 



W. A. Herdman. 



St. Pierre He d'Oleron, France, July 7. 



The Diffusion Photometer. 



In the di.-cussion before the Physical Society of June 9, a 

 photometer made of paraffin blocks is mentioned as " The Jolly 

 Photometer." I think, however, that this is the photometer de- 

 scribed by me in the Philosophical Magazine some two or three 

 years ago ; also in the proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, 

 and exhibited before the British Association on the occasion of 

 their meeting at Bath. I cannot now give exact references, but 

 I must be pardoned for calling attention to the mistake, as it has 

 been made before by a high authority, and seems likely to be 

 perpetuated in England. 



It is correctly described in Wiedemann and Ebert's "Physi- 

 kalisches Praktikum," recently published (p. 217). 



Bonn, July 12. J. JoLV. 



P.S. — I have no objection to the prefix if written with a small 

 letter. 



[We followed the spelling of the word contained in the official 

 report of the Physical Society. — Ed.] 



ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE. 



''F' HOUGH this notice is somewhat belated, the passing 

 -*■ away of a figure so conspicuous as De Candolle in 

 the European world of science cannot be permitted to 

 receive no more sympathetic notice than a bare record 

 of the fact. 



Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle, to give 

 him his full name, died on April 4 at his house in the 

 Cour de St. Pierre at Geneva, in the eighty-seventh year 

 of his age. If his bodily vigour had of late somewhat 

 failed, he preserved his scientific interests and mental 

 activity up to the last. Only the week before his death I 

 received a letter from him, in which there was no indica- 

 tion of failing vitality, and in which he wrote without 

 anxiety of the work that he had in hand. 



So many of us have grown up under the shadow of 

 De Candolle, that it seems almost a kind of impiety to 

 sit down and coldly measure his stature. To me it seems 

 that in a manner his death closes an epoch. With him 

 passes away the last great representative of the French 

 School of Botanical Taxonomy — to which, through 

 Bentham,the English was in a great measure affiliated — 

 and which had its root in Lamarck, whom the world in 

 general scarcely realises as a botanist. 



Geneva has long been remarkable as the home of a 

 number of families whose members have cultivated 

 science with distinction. These are for the most part 

 descendants of French Protestants who have emigrated 

 from the south of France. Amongst these the De 

 CandoUes stand out in pre-eminence ; the third gener- 

 ation still sees them in the front rank of the scientific 

 world. 



Alphonse de Candolle's father, Augustin Pyramus, was a 

 man who would have been remarkable in any age. Gifted 

 with astonishing energy and enthusiasm, a singular power 

 of grasping and co-ordinating large masses of detail, and 

 indefatigable indtistry, his buoyant charm of manner in- 

 spired even the citizens of Geneva with interest and con- 

 viction in the supreme importance of taxonomic studies. 



