DECEMBER 17, 1903] 
INA OTE: 
155 
i 
made with his aspiration apparatus and by other | poison is certainly contained in the bacterial cells 
methods, of the number of positive and negative ions 
present in atmospheric air under different conditions. 
The variations in the richness in ions of the air at 
different heights (studied by means of balloon observ- 
ations) and the excess of positive ions in the air 
carried down by the Fohn are of special interest. The 
electrical phenomena accompanying precipitation are 
explained by the difference in the efficiency as conden- 
sation nuclei of the positive and negative ions. An 
attempt is made to treat this part of the subject quanti- 
tatively. The maintenance of the ordinary fine 
weather electric field is put down to the difference 
between the positive and negative ionic velocities. 
Prof. J. A. McClelland has described in the Royal 
Dublin Society’s Transactions (November) experiments 
upon ionisation in atmospheric air. These experi- 
ments are introductory to a study of the number of 
ions in the free air of the atmosphere under varying 
‘meteorological conditions. Like Prof. Ebert, he has 
obtained evidence from the results of preliminary ex- 
periments of a larger number of ions per c.c. of free 
atmospheric air than was shown by Prof. Rutherford’s 
measurements in Canada. The latter found on some 
occasions no more ions per c.c. of the free air than 
ar2 generally produced per second in each c.c. in air 
in closed vessels, whereas Prof. Ebert’s results are 
more nearly what we should expect if the rate of pro- 
duction of ions in the free air were the same as in a 
closed vessel. 
MEDICAL REPORT OF THE LOCAL 
GOVERNMENT BOARD. 
ale HE annual report issued by the Medical Department 
of the Local Government Board always contains 
matter of interest. 
prises an excellent summary of the contents by Dr. 
Power, the able head of the department, the vaccin- 
ation and other statistics, and the reports of inquiries 
into the sanitary administration of various districts, 
of outbreaks of epidemic disease, and on the distribu- 
tion of plague and cholera. There is a mass of in- 
formation in these pages of the greatest value to the 
specialist. 
But to the readers of Nature the reports of the 
auxiliary scientific investigations carried out for the 
Board will prove of most interest. Dr. Klein is re- 
sponsible for four of these :—(1) On the nature of the 
Haffkine plague prophylactic; (2) on the phenomenon 
of agglutination; (3) on the micro-pathology of 
hemorrhagic small-pox; and (4) on the differentiation 
of the Bacillus enteritidis sporogenes, B. butyricus, and 
B. cadaveris sporogenes from one another. The 
cultural and other differences between these microbes 
are detailed, and may prove very useful in the bacterio- 
logical examination of potable waters. The Bacillus 
aerogenes capsulatus is here alluded to, but that is all. 
This organism is closely allied to, if not identical with, 
the B. enteritidis sporogenes, and it is hardly right that 
the work of the Americans in this connection should 
be dismissed in so summary a fashion. 
Dr. Sidney Martin has once more taken up the in- 
vestigation of the chemical pathology of infective dis- 
eases, dealing in this paper with the products of the 
B. dysenteriae. Experiments were performed in order 
to ascertain whether any toxic substance is produced 
when the bacillus is grown in fluid media. Indica- 
tions of the presence of such a soluble toxin, proteid 
in nature, were obtained, but are not convincing, as 
no control experiments are mentioned ; the most potent 
WThirty-first Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1901-2. 
Supplement containing the Report of the Medical Officer for 1901-2. 
Price 6s. od. 
NO. 1781, VOL. 69] 
The first half of the volume com- | 
themselves. 
Dr. Gordon contributes a useful paper on certain 
diphtheria-like organisms, and Dr. Houston reports on 
the inoculation of soil with sewage and on the examin- 
ation of Chichester well water. Dr. Haldane gives 
further details of his method for destroying rats on 
shipboard with carbon monoxide, but this does not 
seem to be so convenient and safe as the Clayton 
process with sulphur dioxide. 
The reports from the Board’s vaccine department are 
of considerable interest. Nearly 1,000,000 charges of 
glycerinated calf lymph were supplied from the Board’s 
laboratories during the year under review, and proved 
to be of excellent quality. ®Dr. Blaxall gives an 
account of an outbreak of equine variola, Mr. Fremlin 
describes a useful method for anaérobic cultivation, 
and Dr. Green discusses the action of various alcohols 
and other substances upon vaccine lymph. The volume 
is illustrated with several excellent photomicrographs. 
R. T. HEWLe!T. 
HERBERT SPENCER. 
Be the death of Herbert Spencer England has lost 
the most widely celebrated and influential of her 
sons. He has passed away in the fulness of years and 
honours, having lived to complete the great work that 
he designed and took in hand half a century ago. 
Spencer was not without honour in his own country, 
yet our national indifference to philosophy and to all 
systematic thinking, and the subserviency of a great 
part of our professed philosophers to the great German 
metaphysicians, have undoubtedly prevented his re- 
ceiving from his countrymen during his lifetime the 
full measure of recognition that is due to his splendid 
services to science and philosophy. And, indeed, the 
enthusiastic and unstinted eulogy of our great dead, 
voiced by the Press of every civilised country during 
the past week, has brought home to many of us for 
the first time the greatness of the man who by sheer 
force of intellect and character has won the tribute 
of the world. For in Spencer’s work there was nothing 
designed to attract the attention of the crowd, there 
was no attempt to write down to the level of the multi- 
tude; it was one long and steady effort of a great 
intellect systematically grappling with the great 
problems. Yet his books have been translated into 
a score of languages, have been studied by hundreds 
of thousands of serious men, and in no small number 
of them have aroused admiring and _ enthusiastic 
gratitude. 
Spencer’s system of philosophy was broadly dis- 
tinguished from other latter-day systems, save in a 
measure from that of Comte, by two features; firstly, 
his conception of philosophy as the unification of the 
sciences; secondly, the evolutionary standpoint from 
which he sought to effect that unification. While the 
great metaphysicians have for the most part set out 
with the premise that the world must be intelligible to 
our minds, and have held it to be their business to 
present it as an intelligible whole, Spencer prefaced 
his system of philosophy with a demonstration of the 
irresolvable mystery that lies behind us and before, and 
sought merely to discover the most general laws or 
statements that will express the relations of all the 
phenomena that science has revealed. That towards 
this great work he has made splendid and enduring 
contributions no one will deny. That there remain 
great gaps in his system is equally undeniable, and the 
most serious charge that can be made against him 
is that he professed, or seemed to profess, to have 
bridged the chasm between the inorganic and the 
organic worlds, between the world of mechanism and 
the world of volition. 
