DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. IV, No. 48. DECEMBER 1923. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

 ledge. 



Edited by Edward Liveing, B.A., 23 Westminster 

 Mansions, Great Smith Street, London, S.W.i, to whom 

 all Editorial Communications should be addressed. (Dr. 

 A. S. Russell continues to act as Scientific Adviser.) 



Published by John Murray, 50A Albemarle Street, 

 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

 should be addressed. 



Advertisement Office". 34 Ludgate Chambers, 32 

 Ludgate Hill, London, E.C.4. 



Annual Subscription, 12s. 6d. post free ; Single numbers, 

 IS. net ; postage, 2d. 



Binding cases for Vol. IV, 1923, are now ready. Price 

 2s. 6d. net each ; postage, gd. 



Editorial Notes 



We regret to have to inform our readers that this is 

 the last number of Discovery which will be published. 

 No earlier announcement could be made, since efforts 

 to preserve the life of our journal were continued 

 almost up to the day on which this number was sent 

 to press. The years alter the late war have seen the 

 initiation, the rise to popularitj', and the fall in circula- 

 tion of many magazines beside this one. Perhaps the 

 chief cause of these failures lies in the depression in 

 trade following so closely on the artificial prosperity 

 that appeared after the Armistice. The result of this 

 depression has been twofold : the cost of producing 

 magazines has increased and the reading public has 

 had less money to spend on them. We do not com- 

 plain of our lot ; from the outset we have striven to 

 keep our readers in touch with the latest advances in 

 knowledge both in the Sciences and in the Humanities. 



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In taking farewell of our readers, we think that a 

 brief recapitulation of Discovery's short existence 

 will not be out of place. The first conception of the 

 journal was due to the late Professor Julius Macleod, 

 of Ghent, a distinguished Belgian botanist, who was 

 a guest of the University of Manchester during the war. 

 His suggestion led to a special conference between a 

 committee of the Council for Humanistic Studies and a 

 committee of the Conjoint Board of Scientific Studies. 



As a result of this conference, negotiations were 

 started and, through the enterprise of Mr. John 

 Murray, our publisher, eventually ended in the 

 appearance of the first number of Discovery in January 

 1920. From the outset the magazine- was under a 

 deed of trust, the then Presidents of the Royal Society 

 and of the British Academy being two of the four 

 trustees, while a Committee of Management was 

 formed, consisting of representatives of the National 

 Union of Teachers, the Co-operative Union, the 

 Library -Association, the Incorporated Associations of 

 Head Masters and Head Mistresses, the Head Masters' 

 Conference, the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies, 

 the Classical, Historical, English, Geographical, and 

 Modern Language Associations, the British Psycholo- 

 gical Society, and the Royal Society of Economics. 

 It was largely due to the help of these speciahst societies 

 that Discovery was able to secure a supply of articles 

 written by the men who were actually undertaking 

 the investigations described, or were in other ways 

 specially fitted for the work of reducing technical 

 scientific phraseology to intelligible and interesting 

 language. 



We venture to say that no popular magazine pub- 

 lished in England has ever before marshalled such an 

 array of scientists and research workers in the Humani- 

 ties in its army of writers. In the list of its con- 

 tributors stand out such names as those of Sir Oliver 

 Lodge ; Sir William Bragg, one of the greatest 

 pioneers in the wonderful modern researches into the 

 structure of matter ; Professor Sir Flinders Petrie, the 

 greatest living authority on the life and history of the 

 ancient Egyptians ; Dr. C. S. Myers, a famous English 

 psychologist ; Sir Arthur Shipley ; Professor A. C. 

 Seward, whose work on fossilised plant-life has opened 

 new vistas in the study of Botany ; and Professor 

 Conway, whose name is associated with the modern 

 school of classical scholars that has revolutionised 

 the study of the Greek and Latin civilisations and 

 languages by showing the vast importance of their 

 contributions to the civilisation of our own day. 

 .\mong younger scientists who have described their 

 researches and experiments in our pages have been 



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