310 



DISCOVERY 



Professor A. Y. Hill, wlio has this year been awarded 

 the Nobel Prize for his work on oxygen and hnman 

 energy ; Mr. Julian Huxley, an Oxford biologist and 

 grandson of the famous scientist, whose writings and 

 experiments have attracted the keenest interest since 

 the war ; and Professor \A'. L. Bragg, who has co- 

 operated with his father in recent epoch-making 

 researches into crystal structure. It was in Discovery 

 that Professor Alfred Wegener first described for the 

 British public his new theory of the origin of continents 

 and oceans — a theory which has startled the world 

 with its revolutionary conception of the nature of the 

 surface of the globe. In the realms of archaeology 

 we have been fortunate in securing descriptions from 

 the excavators themselves of three highly important 

 post-war discoveries : Professor Peet has described 

 his work on the site of the ancient city of the sun-cult 

 at Tel-el-Amarna, in Upper Egypt ; Professor Zaminit 

 his discoveries of temples dating back to the later 

 Stone Age in Malta ; and Dr. Hall and Mr. Woolley 

 their' romantic " finds " in Southern Iraq of the 

 temples and palaces of Ur of the Chaldees. 



A leading article in the Manchester Guardian not 

 long ago described Discovery as " a sort of war 

 correspondent of peace-time. It fetches to us laymen 

 at home the exciting news from the various fronts 

 where science is gaining hard-fought ground." Science 

 has certainly gained much gi^ound since the end of the 

 war, and our knowledge of the universe and of life 

 has been greatly increased, as also our knowledge of 

 man in the distant past. 



The teachings of Freud, Jung, and Adler have 

 received widespread attention since the war, when 

 psycho-analysis has been first seriously used in this 

 country to cure nervous disorders. A vast literature, 

 fictional as well as technical, has grown up in mush- 

 room fashion on this remarkable science, which, 

 despite its extremists and its conflicting schools, has 

 already done much good in the treatment of abnormal 

 characters and which is destined to teach us a great 

 deal more about the normal human mind than we have 

 ever known before. 



Even more notable, perhaps, have been the strides 

 made in physics and chemistry with Einstein's theory 

 of Relativity and the work of Thomson, Rutherford, 

 Chadwick, the Braggs, Soddy, Aston, Bohr, and other 

 pioneers, which, by revealing to us the electrical 

 composition of the atom, has put a completely new 

 interpretation on the structure of matter throughout 

 the universe. 



Since the war physiologists have made rapid advances 

 in the study of the ductless glands, or endocrine 

 system, and the value of their secretions in building up 



and maintaining the human body ; one of the practical 

 results of this investigation has been the invention of 

 insulin early this year, an extract of the pancreas 

 gland of sheep used with considerable effect in the 

 curing of diabetes. This year, too, bacteriologists 

 have come very near to discovering efficacious inocula- 

 tions against tuberculosis ; time alone will show their 

 value, but we can at least say that we are one stage 

 " nearer home " in this direction. The problem of 

 cancer is still far from being solved, but this year, 

 again, has seen the initiation in England of a general 

 campaign against the terrible disease. 



Our knowledge of prehistoric times has greatly 

 increased during the last four years. Indeed, it may 

 be said that much of what was prehistory before the 

 war is now becoming history. An article in this 

 number demonstrates how archjeologists and geologists 

 have been tackling the question of whether man 

 existed as far back even as the Tertiary Age. Many 

 remarkable archaeological " finds " have been made in 

 Crete, Greece, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere, but, of 

 course, the most sensational has been the discovery 

 last year of Tutankhamon's burial-place, which has 

 given us tangible, beautiful, and enormously valuable 

 relics of the earliest known civilisation. 



The application of new knowledge to industry and 

 human endeavour generally has been attended with 

 wonderful successes. The highest mountain in the 

 world still remains unconquered, but we venture to 

 think it wiU not hold out much longer. It is now no 

 remarkable event in a business man's life to fly by 

 aeroplane from London to Paris ; speeds of over 

 250 miles an hour have been attained by aeroplanes, 

 and a new class of light air machine with an engine 

 of a few horse-power seems destined ere long to usurp 

 not only the light car, but the motor-bicycle. This 

 year has witnessed the consolidation of a wireless 

 service within the reach of almost everyone, and the 

 spectacle of families in the cottages of villages listening 

 to concerts in London, Manchester, and even Paris. 

 We are not likely ever to conquer earthquakes, but, 

 as narrated in an article in this number, a scientist 

 in England was wakened in the night, through the 

 medium of an electric bell attached to his seismograph, 

 by the recent earthquake in Japan. 



***** 



The world in which our venture has played its part 

 has been harassed by the aftermath of war and the 

 perils of new wars. Only an optimistic person would 

 predict that there is no danger of Europe being plunged 

 into a war, that will overwhelm her civilisation, within 

 the next fifty years. The alternative of peace is 

 so entrancing, with its vistas of the application of 



