86 



NA TURE 



[November 28, T895 



Sir John Gorst and see whether we cannot do something to spur 

 on the teaching of the metric system in the schools, and thereby 

 familiarising the imagination of the rising generation to a system 

 which perhaps ultimately will be the only one they will be 

 permitted to use. With regard, however, to the second pro- 

 position in the order of statement by the Chambers of Commerce, 

 you will have gathered from what I have said that I should see 

 very great difficulties in compelling every class in the community 

 suddenly to alter its familiar and habitual practice in regard to the 

 weights and measures in which it deals. If I may venture to say 

 so, I hardly think that the Chambers of Commerce, or even the 

 trade union congresses, are adequate representatives of the kind 

 of feeling which would probably animate the great mass of small 

 retail dealers and those who buy their goods from such dealers, 

 who would suddenly find all their familiar landmarks swept away 

 and unfamiliar things put in their places. You represent the 

 great commercial interests of the country, and possibly you 

 might find a degree of opposition to your proposals which you 

 little anticipated if you were to endeavour to drive into every 

 cranny of our social system changes which no doubt would be 

 verj- beneficial as applied to the great industries and manu- 

 factures. That leads me to ask — if the advantages of the metric 

 system as compared with the existing system be so great as you tell 

 me they are, as I fully believe they are — whether they could not 

 now be adopted, for instance, in shipbuilding yards on the Clyde, 

 in the great machine-making industries of Manchester, and in 

 such commercial centres as Belfast. I think one gentleman did 

 mention a firm which had employed it, and which had no 

 difficulty in employing it. The engineers do it now, and they 

 have not found much difficulty in doing it, and they have derived 

 much benefit from it. Surely it is within the province of private 

 enterprise to extend that system to every one of the great 

 industries which bring us into relation with foreign countries. 

 The foreign meat trade is already largely carried on on a decimal 

 system, but not the metric. What I want to insist upon is that, 

 while it is of great importance to render such a change easy, it 

 is within the province of private enterprise to carry it out 

 gradually in those great industries. I cannot but believe that if 

 you represent, as I am sure you do, the feeling of the great 

 industries in this matter, we shall find, without any compulsion 

 on the part of the Government at all, the metric system making 

 its way through all the leading industries. It must be legalised 

 certainly, but, when legalised, it will make its way. It is 

 evident that, in so far as that process is carried on, you would 

 enormously facilitate that ultimate compulsory change to which 

 we all look forward, but which, I think, could not, with safety 

 or advantage, be undertaken by the Government till public 

 opinion is more prepared for it than at present. The public 

 opinion with which we have got to deal, and which we are 

 bound to consider, is not the public opinion of the great 

 manufacturers alone, but the public opinion of every man and 

 woman you meet in the street. While I look forward to the 

 time, and no distant time, when they will adopt the change 

 without difficulty and without repugnance, I should like to see 

 private enterprise do more than it has done up to the present to 

 show that the change can be adopted without inconvenience, 

 and that it carries with it all the benefits which I, in common 

 with you, firmly believe to be attached to the metric system, and 

 which it is impossible to associate with the arbitrary, perverse, 

 and utterly irrational system under which we have all had the 

 misfortune to grow up." 



NOTES. 



A i,arc;e and influential deputation is to wait on the Duke 

 of Devonshire at noon to-day to urge on the Government the 

 importance of introducing, at an early date, a Bill appointing 

 a Statutory Commission to give effect to the recommendations 

 of the late Royal Commission on the London University 

 question. 



The first meeting of the General Committee of the Huxley 

 Memorial was held, under the presidency of the Duke of 

 Devonshire, yesterday, as we went to press. The chief object 

 of the meeting was to decide the form which the memorial 

 should take. The long list of the General Committee, consisting 

 of the names of men of light and leading in all parts of the world, 

 is a striking testimony to Huxley's greatness. 



NO. I361, VOL. 53] 



The Egyptian Government have determined to commence a 

 geological survey of the "land of Egypt." The work will be 

 begun next year, and will take about three years for its com- 

 pletion, the estimated cost being ^^25,000. To carry out the 

 proposed plans, a wise selection of a geologist has been made 

 in the person of Captain H. G. Lyons, R.E., who is at present 

 engaged (under the Public Works Department of the Egyptian 

 Government) in superintending the excavation of the ruined 

 temples of Philte. Captain Lyons has already written an ex- 

 cellent article on the " Stratigraphy and Physiography of the 

 Libyan Desert of Egypt " in the Geological Society's Journal 

 for 1894, and has also made extensive explorations on the Upper 

 Nile. Had the Egyptian (Government taken this step some 

 years ago, they might have saved some considerable sums of 

 money which they have squandered in searches for petroleum and 

 various minerals, undertaken at the instigation of inexperienced 

 and interested advisers. 



A SHARi' earthquake shock occurred at Athens at 7.30 on 

 Wednesday morning, and was also felt at Chalcis, Livadia, 

 Thebes, and Corinth. 



Dr. J. D. Gilchrist has been appointed Marine Biologist to 

 the Government of the Cape of Good Hope. He will be 

 charged with the investigation of the marine resources of the 

 country, especially in their practical relations to the fisheries. 



A Committee has been formed to make arrangements for 

 presenting to Prof. Adolf Bastian, Professor of Ethnolog); ir* 

 Berlin, a volume of original essays on various branches of ethno- 

 logy, anthropology, and kindred sciences, when he attains his- 

 seventieth birthday in June next. 



We learn from the Lancet, that the Health Committee of the 

 Glasgow Town Council has decided to establish and equip a 

 complete bacteriological department in the sanitary buildings now 

 in course of erection. The laboratory is to be in charge of ani 

 expert in bacteriology. 



The British Medical Journal states that Prof. Loeffler, of 

 Greifswald, the discoverer of the diphtheria bacillus, has received 

 from the French Government the Officer's Cross of the Legion 

 of Honour. 



Dr. Cartwright Wood has been granted ;i^ioo out of the 

 Goldsmiths' Company's grant allocated by the Committee of the 

 Conjoint Laboratories of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and 

 Surgeons, for investigations as to improved means of treating 

 horses with a view to obtaining diphtheria antitoxic serum in a 

 shorter time than is possible by the methods hitherto in use. 



Our contemporary Invention has lately been brought out in a 

 popular penny series. We hope and believe that in this form it 

 will play a useful part by showing to a wide circle of readers- 

 some of the work that has been, and is being, done in the world 

 of science, and by indicating how intimately scientific research is- 

 connected with industrial progress. 



We notice with regret the death of Mr. J. Traill Taylor,^ 

 editor of the British Journal of Photography. He was in his- 

 sixty- ninth year, and was widely known and respected in photo- 

 graphic circles. We have also to record the death of Prof. 

 George Lawson, Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in the 

 University of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and formerly President of 

 the Royal Society of Canada. 



The death is announced of Surgeon-Major George Edward 

 Dobson, F.R.S., at the age of forty-seven. He was awarded- 

 the gold medal of the Dublin Pathological Society in 1867 for 

 his essay on the diagnosis and pathology of the injuries and 

 diseases of the shoulder-joint. He also wrote " Medical Hints 

 to Travellers," published by the Royal Geographical Society ; 



