September 27, 1900] 



NATURE 



531 



were published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal and in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society 

 of London, Dr. Anderson wrote two catalogues on very 

 different subjects for the museum under his charge in 

 Calcutta. Of these, one was the first part of the " Cata- 

 logue of Mammals,'' published In 1881, the other the 

 'Catalogue and Handbook of the Archaeological 

 Collection" which appeared in 1883. 



Dr. Anderson was elected a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society in 1879, and retired from the Indian Service in 

 1886. He had married a few years previously, and after 

 retiring he travelled with his wife to Japan. Finally he 

 settled in London, but for the remainder of his life his 

 health was somewhat precarious, and he passed several 

 winters in Egypt. Here he took up the study of the 

 mammals and reptiles, which had received but scant 

 attention since the early part of the century, when the 

 great and superbly illustrated French work on Egypt 

 appeared — a work which, brilliantly begun by Savigny 

 and others, was never adequately completed. 



To the work of collecting, examining, figuring and 

 describing the Mammalia, Reptilia and Batrachia of 

 Egypt, the later part of Dr. Anderson's life, when he 

 was well enough for work, was mainly devoted. He also 

 paid some attention to the fauna of the neighbouring 

 countries, and in 1898 published "A Contribution to the 

 Herpetology of Arabia," founded on the collections of 

 the late Mr. J. T. Bent and others. The first part of 

 the important work he had intended to produce on the 

 zoology of Egypt, containing an account of the physical 

 features of the country and descriptions of the Reptilia 

 and Batrachia, appeared in 1898. It is a fine quarto 

 volume with excellent figures, many of them coloured. 

 He had made large collections and notes for the volume 

 on Mammalia, and these it is hoped will be published in 

 due course. 



One of the last undertakings in which Dr. Anderson 

 engaged, as soon as the Upper Nile valley was once more 

 thrown open to civilisation, was the systematic collec- 

 tion and description of the fish inhabiting the river and 

 its tributaries. That this important work (of which a 

 notice appeared in NATURE of February 23, 1899) is now 

 being carried out with warm interest and assistance from 

 the Egyptian Government, must be attributed to Dr. 

 Anderson's foresight, zeal and skilful advocacy. Both in 

 our Indian Empire and in North-eastern .A.frica, Dr. 

 Anderson contributed much to the solution of one of 

 the chief biological questions of the present day, an 

 accurate knowledge of the distribution of animal life. 



W. T. B. 



NOTES. 

 A NEW instance of the want of encouragement, and often 

 opposition, which scientific work receives in this country is 

 given by Major Ronald Ross in a letter in Monday's Times. It 

 appears from a correspondence just published, that in 1898 the 

 Secretary of State for India refused to permit officers and 

 soldiers to undergo voluntary inoculation against typhoid. It 

 is known to our readers that Dr. Wright, professor of pathology 

 at Netley, elaborated the system of inoculation against typhoid 

 so long ago as 1896. The treatment is based on the soundest 

 scientific principles, and substantial evidence of its value as a 

 preventive measure had been obtained by laboratory experiments. 

 It is entirely free from danger, and there would have been no diffi- 

 culty in obtaining numerous soldiers to undergo inoculation with 

 Dr.Wright's typhoid vaccine. From the results of the inoculations 

 which might thus have been made three years ago, results would 

 have been obtained which could have been utilised in the recent 

 war in South Africa, and might have been the means of saving 

 hundreds of lives. But unfortunately for the army as well as 

 for science, officers and soldiers appear to have been forbidden 

 NO. 1613, VOL. 62] 



to submit themselves for inoculation. In other words, a reaJ 

 success against disease might have been scored, and in any case 

 the information gained would have been of value in making 

 further efforts to diminish mortality from typhoid, but the officials- 

 who should have done everything in their power to assist the 

 work, deliberately stopped it by hampering the freedom of the 

 persons who would most benefit by the treatment. It is difficult 

 to understand this singular action, and Major Ross has done a 

 public service by directing attention to it. 



It was announced in Nature several months ago (p. 230) 

 that Dr, L. Sambon and Dr. G. C. Low, of the London School of 

 Tropical Medicine, had arranged to live from May to the end of 

 October — that is, during the malarial season — in a part of the 

 Roman Campagna, near Ostia, where scarcely a person spends a 

 night without contracting malarial fever of a virulent type. No 

 quinine or other drug was to be taken as a precautionary 

 measure, but the investigators were to live in a mosquito-proof 

 hut from an hour before sunset to an hour after sunrise, so as to 

 avoid being bitten by mosquitoes, which only feed during the 

 night. The experiment was planned to test the reality of the 

 connection between malaria and mosquitoes, and we learn from 

 the British Medical journal that it .has been most successful. On 

 September 13, Prof. Grassi visited the residence of the investi- 

 gators with several other men of science, and gave his testimony 

 as to the value of the experiment in the following telegram to 

 Dr. Manson : " Assembled in British mosquito-proof hut, having 

 verified perfect health experimenters amongst malarial stricken in- 

 habitants, I salute Manson who first formulated mosquito malarial 

 theory. — Grassi." So far as the experiment has gone, therefore^ 

 the result is entirely satisfactory, and affords the strongest support 

 to the mosquito theory of malaria. Additional evidence is given 

 by Dr. Elliott, a member of the Liverpool expedition sent to 

 Nigeria some time ago to investigate the subject of malarial 

 fever, who has recently returned to this country. He reports 

 that the members of the expedition have been perfectly well, 

 although they have spent four months in some of the most 

 malarious spots. They lived practically amongst marshes and 

 other places hitherto supposed to be the most deadly, and they 

 attribute their immunity to the careful use of mosquito nets at 

 night. 



Another experiment arranged in connection with their 

 malarial investigation in the Campagna is described in the 

 British Medical Journal. Drs. Sambon and Low have shown 

 that by avoiding mosquitoes they avoid malaria ; but this is, after 

 all, only negative evidence, and its full value can only be 

 appreciated in connection with the actual production of malaria 

 in a healthy person in this country by the bites of mosquitoes 

 containing the germ of the disease. This evidence is now forth- 

 coming. We learn from our contemporary that a consignment 

 of mosquitoes which had been fed on the blood of a sufferer frorr> 

 malaria in Rome, under the direction of Prof. Bastianelli, was 

 received in London early in July. A son of Dr. Manson, who 

 offered himself as a subject for experiment, allowed himself to 

 be bitten by these insects, and, though he has never been in a 

 malarious country since he was a child, he is now suffering from 

 well-marked malarial infection of double tertian type, and 

 microscopical examination shows the presence of numerous 

 parasites in his blood. Full details of the experiments will be 

 published in due course ; meanwhile, they must be regarded aa 

 affording the most striking confirmation of the transmission of 

 malaria by mosquito bites that has yet been obtained. 



Dr. L. A. Bauer, in charge of magnetic work of the U.S. 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey, has gone to Alaska and to the 

 Hawaiian Islands, in order to select the sites for the magnetic 

 observatories in those regions. The principal or standard 



