SCIENCE AND THE PRESS 57 
impossible to add anything to them.’ Fancy calling in the 
expert for such an opinion on such a question! I give one 
more example from a weekly journal of high repute and terrible 
seriousness. ‘This journal gravely discussed a rumour that an 
American inventor had discovered a compound which possessed 
the peculiarity of exploding ‘forward only.’ It was pointed 
out that if the report were correct the defence of the Northern 
Frontier of India would be facilitated as it would be possible 
to substitute parchment for metal in the construction of guns. 
The subject was referred to again in another article on the 
‘Air-Cannon’. Nor could the remonstrances of a distinguished 
friend of mine gain admission to the pages of the journal. 
This is rather an old example, but it is so striking that I 
cannot help recalling it, as an illustration of the kind of thing 
that is still to be found in high-class journalism. 
In case you may think I have been hoarding these examples 
in a revengeful spirit, I will take events of the present week. 
Here is a paragraph that appears in Wednesday’s paper : 
The Discovery of Polonium 
Five Thousand Times more Rare than Radium, 
Paris, Tuesday. 
Madame Curie and M. Debierne, according to a report made 
to the Académie des Sciences, state that the substance named 
Polonium has much greater radio active power than radium. 
It is five thousand times more rare than the latter, but dis- 
integrated much more rapidly. Thus a particle of polonium, 
obtained with enormous difficulty, lost half its weight in 140 
days, while it takes a thousand years for a similar particle of 
radium to disappear altogether. 
If the transformations which these scientists hope to trace 
within a year or so are confirmed it will constitute a revolution 
in chemical science. © 
What exception is to be taken to this? Well, in the first 
place Polonium was discovered twelve years ago, and that 
discounts the headline, The first paragraph announces nothing 
that was not published in 1906. The same is true of the second 
2461 H 
