168 
our text-books would commonly lead us to sup- 
pose. The details of British strata, such as the 
Ashgill Shale and the inevitable Oldhaven Beds, 
are still reverenced by examining boards, but are 
far less important than a philosophic outlook on 
the great romance leading up to man, the tiller 
of the soil. Mr. Rastall, however, makes good 
use of his opportunity, and gives us attractive 
descriptions of the types of country met with on 
various strata throughout England. 
The chapter on soils, occupying twenty-eight 
pages, is a good example of the author’s method. 
It contains a large amount of information with- 
out any appearance of compression; the details 
given fit into a continuous and pleasing essay. 
We unfortunately get no conception of thé 
variations in the “fine earth” of soils, on which 
their fundamental characters depend, such matters 
being left (p. 144) to more purely agricultural 
teaching. Phosphatic deposits (p. 100), however, 
come within the geologist’s province, and here 
we think that more analyses might have been 
inserted and a description given of materials, 
such as the beds of Florida and Gafsa, which are 
being worked commercially at the present day. 
Gs Aline: 
By Dr. H. R. Mill and 
Carle Salter. The fifty-fifth annual volume. 
Pp. 288. (London: Edward Stanford, Ltd., 
1916.) Price 1os. 
Dr. Mitt has been able, with the assistance of 
Mr. Carle Salter and Mr. R. C. Mossman, to 
prepare his annual account of British rainfall with 
almost the usual pre-war promptitude. The 
special feature of the volume lies in an account 
of the method of construction of a rainfall map, 
which is illustrated by a map of the Forth Valley 
above Queensferry, including an area of almost 
1000 square miles. The fundamental rainfall 
facts are closely related to the elevation of the 
land and to the prevailing winds, and this rela- 
tionship makes it possible to draw isohyets across 
districts where rain gauges are infrequent, with 
the result that as the years go by these rainfall 
lines approximate more and more closely to the 
final form which they will eventually take. 
In May-June, 1915, practically the whole of 
Great Britain experienced absolute drought for 
twenty days. This was an unusual occurrence for 
Scotland. On the other hand, the west coast of 
Ireland and the north-west corner of Scotland 
had a rain spell which lasted from sixty to more 
than roo “rain-days” consecutively. Remarkable 
rain splashes occurred at Abergavenny on July 4, 
when 2°2 in. fell in thirty minutes, and at 
Mildenhall, Suffolk, on June 30, when 2°63 in. 
fell in fifty minutes. The heavy thunderstorm of 
May 6 over the centre of London is specially 
mapped. On the whole, 1915 was a year of 
mean rainfall, since the areas of both heavy and 
light rains are smaller than usual; this circum- 
stance is related to the fact that the dry east was 
wetter, ahd the wet west was drier, than on the 
average. 
NO. 
British Rainfall, 1915. 
NATURE 
i[ 
opinions expressed by his cogrespondents. Neither 
| 
| 
[NovEMBER 2, 1916 © 
LETTERS ‘TO THE EDITOR. 
The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 
can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 
the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 
this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 
taken of anonymous communications.]| ory 
The Germans and Scientific Discovery. 
A coop deai. is being written on the terms of peace 
and on our attitude towards the Germans after the 
war in the spheres of pure science, applied science, 
and industry generally. While these and similar 
topics are in the melting-pot of controversy, this might 
be the suitable time to bring up the subject of the 
attitude of Germans towards the’history of science in 
general, and towards the part played in scientific dis- 
coveries by English-speaking people in particular, 
Those familiar with German utterances during the 
last twenty years or so know well that German. men 
of science, in giving the historical résumé of a subject, 
scarcely ever mention the names of British workers in 
that field. There is virtually a conspiracy of silence, 
especially as regards recent and contemporary workers. 
One would think, to read some German accounts of a 
subject, that it had been begun, continued, and ended 
in Germany. ‘ 
To make our enemies realise to what an extent 
they are indebted to British thinkers would be one 
most excellent result of this dreadful war. Of course 
they know it; but they systematically conceal it; it 
should be a valuable part of their chastisement to be 
made now to confess it. They have concealed the 
successful part played in scientific discovery by English- 
speaking people as systematically as they have con- 
cealed the successes of the Allies in the present inter- 
national conflict. They should be cast down from their 
self-assumed pride of place in the matter of scientific 
discovery, and made to confess who were the real 
pioneers in the painful fields of scientific work. It is 
well known that many truly epoch-making discoveries, 
things of the very first magnitude, were made by 
Britons, and that afterwards the Germans came in and 
adopted and utilised these discoveries in the interests, 
for the most part, of the expansion of their trade. 
As one of the conditions of their being granted peace 
by those who shall conquer them on their own selected 
arena of brute force backed by perverted machinery 
and prostituted chemistry, they should be made publicly 
to acknowledge the enormous benefits to science made 
initially, not by themselves, but by those whom they 
forced to become their enemies, the Italians, the 
British, and the French. Ri 
It would be a salutary humbling of their scientific 
pride to be made to confess that it was the English- 
man, Newton, who discovered the law of universal 
gravitation; the Englishman, William Harvey, who 
discovered the circulation of the blood; the English- 
man, Priestley, who first isolated oxygen; the Scots- 
man, Joseph Black, who discovered the chemical rela- 
tions of carbon dioxide; and the Scotsman, Ruther- 
ford, who discovered nitrogen gas. 
made to know that the Englishman, Stephen Hales, 
was the first to perceive the necessity of a mechanical 
system of ventilation, to estimate the magnitude of the 
blood pressure in vivo by an instrument which he had 
devised for estimating the pressure of sap in plants, 
and that he was the first to invent an apparatus for 
artificial respiration. | Chemistry as a science was 
created by the Englishman, Dalton. They should be 
made to confess that the steam-engine was a British 
invention, as was also the steamboat; that the electric 
telegraph, the teleohone, and the phonograph were all 
They must be- 
