230 



DISCOVERY 



increased speed. Another stop-cock turns on a de- 

 pressing agent, and the growth becomes paralysed ; 

 but a dose of a stimulant instantly removes the 

 depression. The life of the plant becomes subservient 

 to the will of the experimenter ; he can exalt or depress 

 its activity ; he may thus bring it near the point of 

 death by application of poison, and when the plant is 

 hovering in an unstable poise between life and death, 

 resuscitate it by the timely application of an antidote. 

 It all looks hke magic ! " 



But it is only an achievement of science. 

 ***** 



Very recently, some of Bose's work has been called 

 in question, the movements recorded by his crescograph 

 being ascribed to other causes. He was challenged to 

 give a demonstration of his instrument before some 

 experts in physiology and cognate sciences. He 

 accepted, and the result was that the experts testified 

 to the genuineness of his demonstration of the growth 

 of plant-tissues. Sir Jagadis Bose is really a physicist, 

 and not a physiologist, by training, and consequently 

 has had a good deal of opposition to encounter from 

 those physiologists who foohshly dislike people of other 

 sciences " butting in " to their subject. Part of the 

 opposition, happily a small part, is due to the fact 

 that Sir Jagadis Bose is an Indian. 



***** 



In the Geographical Review for Januarj', a writer 

 calls attention to South America as a promising field 

 for the extension of cotton cultivation. At present, 

 from Peru and Brazil, there is but a small output, 

 only 140,000 acres being planted, but efforts are being 

 made to increase production. In Brazil, the north- 

 eastern coast alone is cultivated for commercial pur- 

 poses, but there seems no reason, provided they can be 

 satisfactorily irrigated, why the inland districts also 

 should not be planted. Other parts of the continent 

 which are considered suitable are Bolivia, Paraguay, 

 and the plains of Northern Argentina, which together 

 form an area greater than the cotton land in the United 

 States. The writer considers that labour and transport 

 difficulties are the chief to be overcome, and that in the 

 future these areas of South America may compete suc- 

 cessfully with the United States, and those other parts 

 of the earth from which at present raw cotton comes. 

 ***** 



The Advisory Committee on Civil Aviation has just 

 issued its report to the Air Ministry. They point out 

 how]urgent it is that civilian firms be helped financially, 

 so that a healthy aerial-transport industry be developed, 

 amd recommend that direct assistance be given, up 

 to a' sum of a quarter of a milhon pounds, to firms 

 whose planes fly over approved routes. The routes 

 approved are London to Paris, London to Brussels, 

 and London to Scandinavia. To quaUfy for financial 



help, a firm should carry out a minimum number of 



successful flights in both directions, say forty-five days 



of flying in three months, each flight being completed 



within an agreed number of hours. The civilian firm 



can then go ahead with an easier mind than at present, 



developing its own ways of doing things, improving 



its machines, its engines, and so on, and discovering 



the most reliable aerial routes. Its work, separate in 



its way from that of the R. A.F., will lead to results which 



will be of the greatest importance to both. And there 



can be no question of the immense strength to the Air 



Force that a well-developed civilian aerial-transport 



service would be in men, material, and ideas, in a time 



of need. 



***** 



Dr. F. W. Aston, of Cambridge, is continuing his 

 brilliant work on the constitution of the elements, 

 referred to in early numbers of this Journal.' It will be 

 remembered he showed experimentally that in several 

 cases an element whose atomic weight deviated from a 

 whole number on the usual scale of reckoning is simply 

 a mixture of two or more very^ similar elements, the 

 atomic weights of which are represented by whole 

 numbers. In other cases, he showed that elements 

 were " perfectly pure," i.e. not a mixture. 



He has now extended his results to Boron (atomic 

 weight I0'i),which is a mixture of two bodies 10 and 11 ; 

 to Silicon (atomic weight 28 -3) which is a mixture of 

 three bodies 28, 29, and 30 ; and to Bromine (atomic 

 weight 79'92), which is a mixture of two, 79 and 81. 



He finds fluorine, sulphur, phosphorus, and arsenic 

 to be " perfectly pure." Dr. Aston has recently been 

 appointed to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. 

 ***** 



Surgeon-General W. C. Gorgas, of the United States 

 Medical Service, who died in London last month, was a 

 benefactor of mankind. A solitary individual working 

 in Bangalore and elsewhere. Sir Ronald Ross, found 

 out how to fight malaria. Gorgas apphed Ross's results 

 first to Havana, and later to Panama. By exterminating 

 mosquitoes, he eliminated malaria and yellow fever, 

 and so made possible the completion of the Panama 

 Canal. That was something done. Also the doing of 

 it aroused the world to the fact that some of the 

 greatest scourges of mankind can be destroyed if only 

 the right men are encouraged to go ahead and find a 

 cure. Gorgas himself was not a discoverer, a pioneer. 

 He was a man of action — what an enthusiastic American 

 might describe as " a real live-wire guy right on the 

 job every time." He was quick to appreciate the 

 importance of discoveries in prevcnrive medicine, and 

 there was neither weariness in his brow nor languor in 

 his heart inapplying them for the good of his fellow-man. 

 ' Discovery, I-"cbruarj- 1920, p. 45; .■\pril 1920, p. 100. 



