November 3, 1904] 



NA TURE 



13 



Speaking at St. George's Hospital Medical School on 

 Friday last, Lord Kelvin remarked : — The modern medical 

 man must be a scientific man, and, what is more, he must 

 be a philosopher. The fundamental studies of medicine are 

 of a strictly materialistic kind, but they belong to a different 

 world from the world which constitutes their main subject 

 — the world of life. Let it not be imagined that any hocus- 

 pocus of electricity or viscous fluids will make a living 

 cell. Splendid and interesting work has recently been done 

 in what was formerly called organic chemistry, a great 

 French chemist taking the lead. This is not the occasion 

 for a lecture on the borderland between what is called 

 organic and what is called inorganic ; but it is interesting 

 to know that materials belonging to the general class of 

 foodstuffs, such as sugar, and what might be also called 

 a foodstuff, alcohol, can be made out of the chemical 

 elements. But let not youthful minds be dazzled by the 

 imaginings of the daily newspapers that because Berthelot 

 and others have thus made foodstuffs they can make living 

 things, or that there is any prospect of a process being found 

 in any laboratory for making a living thing, whether the 

 minutest germ of bacteriology or anything smaller or 

 greater. There is an absolute distinction between crystals 

 and cells. Anything that crystallises may be made by the 

 chemist. Nothing approaching to the cell of a living 

 creature has ever yet been made. The general result of an 

 enormous amount of exceedingly intricate and thorough- 

 going investigation by Hu.xley and Hooker and others of 

 the present age. and by some of their predecessors in both 

 the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, is that no artificial 

 process whatever can make living matter out of dead. This 

 is vastly beyond the subject of the chemical laboratory, 

 vastly beyond my own subject of physics or of electricity — 

 beyond it in depth of scientific significance and in human 

 interest. 



Mr. H. H. Jeffcott has been appointed assistant in the 

 metrological department of the National Physical Labor- 

 atory. 



By permission of His Majesty the King, the Sanitary 

 Institute will henceforth be known as the Royal Sanitary 

 Institute. 



An International Gas Exhibition will be held at Earl's 

 Court from November iq to December 17 inclusive, under 

 the auspices of the Institution of Gas Engineers. 



An exhibition of water colours, photographs, and other 

 articles of interest belonging to the National Antarctic Ex- 

 pedition will be opened at the Bruton Galleries, Bond Street, 

 on Friday by Sir Clements Markham. 



.\ SKETCH of some of the results of the public works policy 

 in India during the last fifty years was given at the Insti- 

 tution of Civil Engineers on Tuesday, in the address of the 

 president, Sir Guilford L. Molesworth,_ K.C.I.E. In the 

 course of the address, it was pointed out that there are avail- 

 able in India millions of potential horse-power, in the form 

 of water flowing from the mountain ranges, capable of being 

 converted into electrical energy at generating stations in 

 the hills, and conveyed, with slight loss in efficiency, to 

 centres even at a distance, where it can be utilised for 

 industrial purposes. A generating station has been erected 

 at the Cauveri Falls, with a head of 380 feet. The turbines 

 drive si.x generators, each of 1000 electrical horse-power, 

 and the current is transmitted, at a pressure of 30,000 volts, 

 for a distance of ninety-one miles, to the Kolar goldfields, 

 with an efficiency of nearly So per cent. At the cordite 



NO. 1827, VOL. 71] 



factory, Wellington, in the Nilgiri Hills, an effective fall of 

 660 feet is employed to work a turbine and alternators, 

 generating about 1000 horse-power at a pressure of ^OOG 

 volts. As to irrigation, the amount of land irrigated in 

 British India is about ^(4 million acres. Of these 17 million 

 are irrigated by canals, 8 million from tanks, and 19 million 

 from wells and other sources. In conclusion, the president 

 remarked that although much has been done, far more yet 

 remains to be done — in opening up the country, in the pre- 

 vention of famines, in the regulation of the water supply, 

 in the installation of works and factories, in the transmission 

 of power generated by the hill falls to those centres where 

 it can be profitably utilised, and in the general development 

 of the resources of the Empire. 



The three articles in the October number of the Zoologist 

 deal exclusively with local bird-faunas, namely, those of 

 Oxfordshire, Donegal, and Jersey. The capture of a white- 

 beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) off .Aberdeen 

 is recorded. 



The director (Captain S. S. Flower) of the Giza Zoo- 

 logical Gardens, Cairo, has sent us a copy of a list of rare 

 animals recently received from the Sudan, among which 

 reference may be made to a female of the Niam-niam race 

 of the chimpanzee (Aiithropopitheciis troglodytes schivciii- 

 furthi). 



"Gammarus," otherwise the freshwater-shrimp (a name 

 which, by the way, appears to be omitted from the text), 

 forms the subject of the twelfth number of the L.M.B.C. 

 Memoirs. Miss M. Cussans, the author, seems to have 

 treated her subject in the same thorough manner which has 

 been the rule in the earlier issues of this excellent series, 

 and the four plates, although diagrammatic, are all that 

 can be desired from the point of view of the student. 



The greater bulk of parts i. and ii. of vol. xxv. of Notes 

 from the Leyden Museum is taken up by an article on the 

 beetles of the family Paussida; by Mr. E. Wasmann. These 

 beetles, which are now definitely known to live in com- 

 panionship with ants, are regarded by the author as the 

 most interesting of all living creatures, since they show 

 better than any other group the interdependence of 

 morphology and biology. They are remarkable for the 

 enormous size of their antennse, and are believed to be the 

 descendants of pre-Tertiary Carabida;. 



The first of three lectures on the fossil vertebrates of 

 Egypt was delivered at University College, Gower Street, 

 by Dr. C. W. Andrews, of the British Museum, 

 at 4.30 on October 31. This lecture was devoted to the 

 Proboscidea. On November 7, at the same hour, the 

 lecturer will discourse on Arsinoitherium and the Hyra- 

 coidea, while on November 14 he will take into consider- 

 ation the sirenians and reptiles. Free cards of admission 

 to these lectures may be obtained on application to the 

 registrar at University College. 



According to the report of the Government biologist for 

 1903, the Government of the Cape of Good Hope is making 

 every effort to develop the local fisheries. During the year 

 four large steam-trawlers arrived from Europe ; two of 

 these were unfortunately wrecked, but the others have been 

 doing good work, as have also certain vessels belonging to 

 private owners. A new fishing-ground, much nearer to 

 Cape Town than any of the old ones, has been discovered, 

 and has been the chief attraction for the new trawlers. The 

 report contains reprints (without the plates) of various 

 memoirs by specialists on different sections of the South 

 African marine fauna. 



