194 
NATURE 
[NovEMBER 9, 1916 
ee 
by this method of treatment the healing of 
wounds 
is greatly accelerated. ; 
- Dr. C. D. Watcort, secretary of the Smithsonian 
Institution, and Mrs. Walcott have just returned 
to Washington, D.C., after several months’ field work 
on the Continental Divide, which forms the boundary 
line between Alberta and British Columbia south of 
the Canadian Pacific Railway, studying the Cambrian 
rocks. Mrs. Walcott visited Glacier, British Colum- 
bia, where she measured the position of two large 
glaciers, and determined that the front ice foot, in 
each case, had retreated at the rate of roo ft. a year 
during the past two years. Steel plates were placed 
on the ice on the present surveyed boundary lines. 
The plates will be buried beneath the winter snows, 
but, since their positions are relatively low as to 
altitude, the snow will be melted off next summer, and 
their locations then will indicate the amount of for- 
ward flow of ice during the year. Mrs, Walcott’s 
studies show that the ice has been steadily retreating 
during the past six years, and her measurements agree 
with observations made in Alaska. During the field 
work a large number of photographs were taken, in- 
cluding a dozen or more panoramic views, exposures 
being made on continuous films 8 ft. in length. 
Lizur. Joun Hanpysipe, who fell in one of the 
recent advances on the Somme, at the age of thirty- 
five, was a distinguished graduate of Edinburgh and 
Oxford, and since 1912 had been lecturer in philosophy 
in the University of Liverpool. At Edinburgh he 
carried off all the honours open to students of philo- 
sophy, and at Oxford, after taking a first in Greats, 
he was elected a fellow of St. John’s College. On the 
completion of his Oxford course he returned to Edin- 
burgh, and acted for three years as assistant to Prof. 
Pringle-Pattison.' After his appointment to Liverpool, 
the long illness of Prof. Mair threw upon him the chief 
responsibility for the work of the philosophical depart- 
ment. It was a severe test, and Mr. Handyside proved 
himself a successful teacher and a most helpful col- 
league. In 1915 he was granted leave of absence for 
military service, and obtained a commission in the 
16th Batt. King’s Liverpool Regiment. He had been 
between three and four months at the front, and was 
mortally wounded while rallying his men during an 
attack. His engrossment in teaching work during the 
last years prevented him from writing much, but he 
had completed a translation of two of Kant’s smaller 
treatises, which he intended to equip with a critical 
introduction, and he had also in view some independent 
work in ethics.. It is hoped, therefore, that some 
specimen of his work may yet be published. 
QuickLy after Ehrlich and Metchnikoff, his fellow 
Jews, has passed Prof. Albert Neisser, of Breslau, 
whose name will ever be associated with theirs in the 
history of the scientific advance against venereal 
disease. He was only twenty-four when, in 1879, he 
identified the gonococcus, a markedly characteristic 
form of diplococcus which is the cause of gonorrhcea. 
He devoted all his later years to. the study of 
venereal disease, contributing largely to the biochem- 
ical tests for the identification of syphilitic infection, 
and being the founder, fourteen years ago, of the 
German society which corresponds to our National 
Council for Combating Venereal Diseases, founded in 
London last year. Though the discovery of the gono- 
coccus has not led, as yet, to the construction of any 
direct chemical remedy, such as salvarsan in the case 
of syphilis, or to the production of an antitoxin, as 
in the cases of diphtheria and tetanus, Neisser’s dis- 
covery has-nevertheless been of incalculable value in 
the treatment, the identification, and, in our own times, 
NO. 2454, VOL. 98] 
the prophylaxis of the disease. Thanks to him, the 
gonorrhceal nature of ophthalmia neonatorum has been 
demonstrated, and the dependence of many cases of 
rheumatism or arthritis upon the same organism; 
while gynzcology tells us that at least one-half of all 
the cases where a major abdominal operation is re- 
quired in women are due to gonorrhceal infection, 
which is, in fact, the great steriliser of femininity, and a’ 
leading enemy of the birth-rate everywhere. Thanks 
also to Neisser, the treatment of the disease has been 
vastly improved, the introduction of protargol being 
due to him, and his warnings and the microscopic 
resources which we owe to him enable us to know 
that the disease is still present in many cases where it 
would otherwise have been ignored, 
At a time when Jit is strongly urged that more capital 
must be employed in food production, any method that 
will enable the farmer to calculate the risk of his 
crops being destroyed by unfavourable weather condi- 
tions deserves careful study. In the July issue of the 
Geographical Review (New York) Messrs. W. G. 
Reed and H. R. Tolley show how the risk for a crop 
which is in a condition to be damaged by frost between 
any two dates in spring and autumn may be com- 
puted if sufficient observations for that district are 
available. Using the well-known method of mean 
squares, ‘‘standard deviation” figures are calculated 
for 569 stations in the United States. These con- 
stants are a measure of the departure from the average 
dates of the last killing frost of spring and the first 
killing frost of autumn. Naturally these standard 
deviations are lowest for the central areas and highest 
for maritime States like Florida and California, If 
a crop is in a condition to be damaged on the average 
date of the last killing frost in spring, the risk is © 
50 per cent. In the case of a station with a standard 
deviation of 14-4 the risk falls to 10 per cent. nineteen 
days later than the average date. By combining the 
risks in spring and autumn the total risk may be com- 
puted for a crop which is exposed to both dangers. 
The risk of loss which may be profitably carried natur- 
ally varies with the crop and the economic conditions. 
Given the necessary data, the authors believe that 
risks from weather conditions other than frost may be 
computed in this way. 
In the Proceedings of the American Philosophical 
Society (vol. Iv., No. 3) Dr. Raymond Pearl describes 
some interesting experiments on the effect of continued 
administration of alcohol to the domestic fowl. Com- 
paring the control group and the alcoholised group, he 
finds that there is no evidence that specific germinal 
changes have been induced by the alcohol treatment, 
at least in those germ-cells which produced zygotes, 
and that the germ-cells which produced zygotes were 
not in any respect deleteriously affected. Although the 
results are apparently in contradiction to those of 
some observers with mammals, the writer believes 
that the contradiction is more apparent than real, The 
discrepancy, he argues, is fundamentally due to a 
difference in the resistance of the germ-cells to alcohol. 
Dr. Cart HaNsEN-OsTENFELD has published (Mem. 
Acad. Roy. Copenhagen, Sect. Sc., 8 ser., t. ii., No, 2, 
1916) an account of the Protozoa found in the samples 
of plankton taken in Danish seas from 1898 to Igol. 
Some of these organisms, e.g. ciliates of the genus 
Tintinnopsis, are indigenous, but the majority, e.g. 
the two recorded species of Heliozoa, several species 
of Radiolaria and of Tintinnoid ciliates, appear to 
have been carried by currents from the North Sea into 
the Skager Rak or the Cattegat, but it is evident that 
most of them do not penetrate far, as they meet with 
water of low salinity from the Baltic, strane 4 is inimical 
