NoveMBER 12, 1896] 
NATURE 
37 
The whole construction was evidently framed with a 
view to cheapness and simplicity, so.as to be easily 
removable. In the palmy days of the industry the sheds 
were not permanent erections, but were moved about 
from one place to another, so as to be near the crops. 
We content ourselves with recording the bare facts 
without comment or criticism. Any science that lurks 
behind this ancient manufacture has been found out 
empirically, and handed down by tradition from a remote 
past. The imaginative person may indulge his fancy by | 
carrying back the woad industry to that period when the 
early inhabitants of this country furnished that solitary 
scrap of personal information which is still the historical 
stock-in-trade of the average schoolboy. It may be 
well, however, to point out in this connection that 
Isatis tinctoria appears not to be a native of Britain.! 
We were told that in former times the woad-men 
Woad Mill at Parson Drove. Two ‘ balling-horses 
lifting one of the trays on which the balls are carried to the 
were limited to certain families, and that they had 
traditional chants of their own; but these are passing 
into oblivion, and we were unable to ascertain the words.” 
The object of drying the pulp first, and then wetting it 
again before allowing it to ferment, i is not at first sight 
obvious, nor could we learn why this practice has been 
found advantageous. The fermentation itself is no doubt 
1 In the ‘Flora of the British Islands” (ed. 1870), Hooker says: ‘‘ The 
ancient Britons stained themselves with this plant; later the Saxons 
imported it.” Can it be that even at that remote period the British colour 
industry could not hold out against continental competition ? 
2 A verse is recorded by Miss Peckover in the article in 4unt Judy's 
<innuai volume for 1883, p. 549. 
NO. I411,-VOL. 55] 
* are shown in front ; between them is the “‘ firm, 
a zymolytic decomposition of glucosides. The use of 
woad as a source of indigo is now very limited, being 
confined to some of the old-fashioned Yorkshire dye- 
houses, where it is used in conjunction with indigo in the 
so-called “woad vat,” a description of which will be 
found in any work on ‘dyeing. 
FRANCIS DARWIN. 
R. MELDOLA. 
NOTES. 
THE Royal Society’s medals have this year been adjudicated 
by the President and Council as follows :—The Copley medal 
to Prof. Carl Gegenbaur, For. Mem.R.S., for his researches in 
comparative anatomy, and especially in the history of the ver- 
tebrate skeleton ; the Rumford medal to Prof. Philipp Lenard, 
a man is 
» from the further end of which 
; the latter are shown on the right 
“‘ranges 
and also to Prof. Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, for their investi- 
gation of the phenomena produced outside a highly exhausted 
vacuum tube through which electrical discharge is taking 
place; a Royal medal to Sir Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., on 
account of the great value and importance of his many original 
contributions to geology; a Royal medal to Prof. Charles 
Vernon Boys, F.R.S., for his invention of quartz fibres and 
investigation of their properties, his improvement of the radio- 
micrometer and investigations with it, for developments in the 
art of instantaneous photography, and for his determination of 
the value of the constant of attraction; the Davy medal to 
