624 



NATURE 



April 26,; 1900 



of that absorbed by the inertia of the car. Although a battery 

 has already been able to drive a car lOO miles with one charge, 

 we are waiting patiently for the real automotor storage cell. 



Electricity in War. 



A strong contingent of electrical engineers, under the com- 

 mand of Major Crompton, has volunteered for service in South 

 Africa. They are all scientifically-trained practical young 

 engineers. Bicycles, field telegraphs, telephones, arc and glow- 

 lamps, cables, search-lights, traction-engines and generating 

 plant will be under their care. It is strongly hoped that we 

 may soon hear good accounts of their performances at the 

 front. 



Electricity has been extensively applied to the development 

 and utilisation of explosives in both the civil and military divi- 

 sions of our profession. Charges are safely fired under water 

 and blasted in mining and demolition operations by small 

 exploding dynamos, magnetic-electric machines or induction 

 coils acting upon high tension fuses. Sir Frederick Abel has 

 especially distinguished himself in this direction. His fuse, 

 composed of phosphoride and subsulphide of copper, is univer- 

 sally used by our War Department. Time guns are thus fired 

 at stated hours at different sea-ports by currents originating in 

 ■Greenwich Observatory. Broadsides in battleships and guns in 

 turrets are similarly discharged. Torpedoes are even directed 

 by currents from the shore. The defence of our coasts by sub- 

 marine mines and their explosion by currents when the enemy's 

 ships are properly located by position-finders is the last develop- 

 ment of the application of electricity to war. 



Electrical blasting has revolutionised the operations of tunnel- 

 ling and driving galleries. It is much used in quarrying with 

 great security to the men. The deepening of harbours and 

 channels, and the removal of obstructions such as wrecks and 

 rocks, are facilitated. On September 23, 1876, 63,135 cubic 

 yards of solid rock were completely demolished by one discharge 

 at Hell Gate in East River, New York. The preparation for 

 this great blast took four years and four months. There were 

 4427 charged holes, each containing its mercury fulminate fuse 

 and charges of dynamite. There were 49,914 explosions used 

 in that one blast. Batteries were used to generate the currents, 

 and they were arranged in large groups. Each battery exploded 

 160 charges. This was the record blast. 



The battleship is the home of electricity. It controls the 

 tudder, it ventilates the interior and the living space of the 

 ship, it forces the draught and assists the raising of steam, it 

 revolves the turrets, it trains and controls the fans, it handles 

 the ammunition, it purifies the drinking water, it lights up the 

 ship internally, it enables the captain to sweep the horizon with 

 the brilliant rays of the search-light, and to communicate with 

 his tender or with his commanding officer across space inde- 

 pendent of weather, night, season, fog or rain. 



Sanitation. 

 No branch of our profession fulfils the true function of the 

 engineer more efficiently than that which deals with sanitation. 

 Pure air, pure water, pure food, pure soil, pure dwellings, and 

 pure bodies are the panacea for health and comfort. Electricity 

 helps us very much in attaining some of these qualities An 

 electric glow-lamp doss not vitiate the air. It does not throw 

 into circulation in the air any product of combustion. The ques- 

 tion of ventilation is very much reduced in importance and 

 rendered more simple to effect. Much less air need pass through 

 our sitting-rooms and meeting-places. The air vitiated by our 

 lungs can be easily withdrawn and fresh air can be forced in by 

 fans worked by electric motors. Even the air during its entrance 

 can be warmed, and impurities floating in it can be sifted out 

 of it by the attraction of electrification. Heating by Dowsing's 

 luminous electric radiators is very much on the increase ; they 

 consume 250 watts, which cost about a halfpenny per hour. In 

 many post-offices sealing-wax is melted and kept in a liquid 

 state by currents. Water can be sterilised by ozone, a product 

 of electrification, and even by the nascent oxygen, when broken 

 up into its constituent elements by electric currents. Sea-water 

 thus electrolysed supplies us with chlorine, and converts the 

 water into a powerful antiseptic, disinfectant and deodoriser. 



Weaving. 

 The applications of electricity to other industrial processes are 

 innumerable. I have time to mention only one. Mr. T. A. B. 

 Carver has brought out a new Jacquard loom for weaving ; 6co 



NO. I 59 1, VOL. 61] 



hooks are controlled electrically. The twill as well as the pat- 

 tern is under complete management. It has been warmly taken . 

 up in Glasgow, and a factory has been started there. 



The pattern on this cloth is woven directly from a photo- 

 print of the artist's design, mounted on a metallic sheet ; the 

 threads of the warp being picked up by electromagnetic action, 

 owing to the figure of the pattern being cut away, and thus 

 allowing the circuit to be completed by the metallic sheet. 



Distinction betiveen Physicists and Engineers. 



There is now a distinct line of demarcation separating the 

 physicist from the engineer. The former dives into the un- 

 known to discover new truths ; the latter applies the known to 

 the service of man. Research is the function of the one ; utility 

 that of the other. In the past the engineer had to rely on him- 

 self for his facts, but the advance of modern science, the growth 

 of technical education, the formation of laboratories, and the 

 endowment of chairs have changed all that. 



We can scarcely hope for new sources of energy to be dis- 

 covered, but there are some existing ones we have not touched 

 yet. When the evil day arrives for our coal supplies to give out 

 we may perhaps be able by the aid of electricity to utilise the 

 heat of the sun and the tides of the ocean. There is, however, 

 a vast illimitable store of energy not only in the rotation of the 

 earth upon its axis, but in the internal heat of this globe itself. 

 As we descend, the temperature gets higher and higher. It 

 ought not to be difficult to reach such temperatures that by 

 thermo-electric appliances we might convert the lost energy of 

 the earth's interior into some useful electric form. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INCREASED 

 SIZE OF THE CEREBRUM IN RECENT 

 AS COMPARED WITH EXTINCT MAM- 

 MALIA.^ 



TT has occurred to me that in order, at short notice, to take 

 ^ part in the celebration of the Biological Society of Paris — 

 however briefly — I might place before my colleagues a biological 

 problem and suggest a solution of it which, though not decisive, 

 has, I think, much in its favour, and raises many interesting 

 points for observation and discussion. It is well established 

 that the extinct Mammalia of the Middle and Lower Tertiaries 

 had — as compared with their nearest living congeners— an ex- 

 tremely small cerebrum. The exact figures are not important, 

 but Titanotherium — a true Rhinoceros — had certainly not more 

 than one-fifth of the cerebral nervous substance which is 

 possessed by living Rhinoceros. Dinoceras representing a 

 distinct group of Ungulata had even a smaller brain. Yet in 

 bulk these animals were as large as, or larger than, the largest 

 living Rhinoceros. Further, it appears from the examination of 

 the cranial cavities of extinct and recent Reptiles, that the 

 increase in the size of cerebrum is not peculiar to Mammalia, 

 but that we may assert as a general proposition that recent 

 forms have a greatly increased bulk of cerebrum as compared 

 with their early Tertiary or mesozoic fore-bears. 



It appears also that the relative size of the cerebrum in man and 

 the anthrapoid apes may be cited here as a similar phenomenon ; 

 the more recent genus Homo having an immensely increased 

 mass of cerebral nerve-tissue as compared with the more ancient 

 pithecoid geneira. 



The significance of this striking fact — viz. that recent forms 

 have a cerebral mass greatly larger than that of extinct forms 

 (probably in every class of the animal kingdom) — has not been 

 discussed or considered as it deserves. We cannot suppose 

 that the extinct Rhinoceros, Titanotherium, was really defective 

 in the essential control of its organisation by the cerebral nerve- 

 centres. Probably could we see the two creatures aliv« side by 

 side, we should not detect any defect in the manifestations of 

 the nervous system in Titanotherium as compared with Rhino- 

 ceros ; just as we do not remark any such obvious inferiority 

 when we compare a lizard and (let us say) a mouse. The 

 organism with the lesser cerebrum is in each case, in spite of the 

 smaller mass of cerebral nerve-tissue, an efficient and adequate 

 piece of living mechanism. 



In what then does the advantage of a larger cerebral mass 

 consist? What is it that the more recent Mammalia have 



1 By Prof. E. Ray Lankester, F.R.S. Reprinted from the "Jubilee 

 Volume of the Sociit6 de Biologie of Paris, 1899. ' 



