FEBRUARY I, I1917| 
NATURE 
435 
Ir is announced in the. Times of January 29 that. , 
summer time will be reintroduced in Germany and 
Austria-Hungary on April 1,.and will last until the 
end of September. Apparently, therefore, the reported. 
rejection” of the proposal by a committee of the 
Prussian Diet, referred to last week (p. 414), was 
either incorrect or will be disregarded. 
WE note with regret that the Engineer for January | 
26 records the death of Mr. James Stirling at the age 
of eighty-one years. Mr. Stirling was locomotive 
engineer to the South-Eastern Railway from 1878 to 
1898, and introduced many improvements, including 
the steam reversing gear. He was a member of the 
Institution of Civil Engineers and also of the Institu- 
tion of Mechanical Engineers. - 
Tue President of the Board of Agriculture and 
Fisheries has appointed a committee of representative 
agriculturists to advise him on questions arising in 
connection with the increased production of food. 
The committee is constituted as follows :—The Right 
Hon. R. E. Prothero (chairman), the Right Hon. Sir 
Ailwyn E. Fellowes (vice-chairman), the Right Hon. 
F. D. Acland, the Right Hon. Henry Hobhouse, the 
Hon. Edward G. Strutt, Sir Sydney Olivier (Board of 
Agriculture), Mr. W. W. Berry (Development Com- 
missioner), Mr. S. W. Farmer, Mr. F. L. C. Floud 
(Board of Agriculture), Mr. A. D. Hall (Development 
Commissioner), Mr. S. Kidner, Mr. T. H. Middleton 
{Board of Agriculture), Mr. A. Moscrop, Mr. H. Pad- 
wick (National Farmers’ Union), Mr. R. G. Paterson, 
Mr. G. G. Rea, Mr. E. Savill, Mr. Leslie Scott, and 
Prof. W. Somerville. 
joined the department for the duration of the war) is 
the secretary of the committee. 
AccorDING to a telegram (Daily Mail, January 26) 
Dr. T. B. Robertson, professor of biochemistry in the 
University of California, has succeeded in. isolating 
from an extract of the pituitary gland a substance 
which has the power to influence and regulate 
the growth of the body. That the secretion of 
the pituitary gland does take a part in regulat- 
ing the growth of the body has been known since 
1886, when that remarkable growth disturbance which 
Marie named acromegaly was discovered to be directly 
related to a diseased condition of the pituitary gland. 
In 1895 Oliver and Schafer surprised medical men by 
isolating from the pituitary gland a substance which 
has a powerful influence on unstriped muscle fibres and 
on the walls of blood-vessels. The effects produced by 
extracts from the pituitary gland are so complex and 
diverse that it is highly probable it may produce several 
different substances which act as hormones on the 
tissues of the body. Hitherto the element which acts 
as a _ growth-sensitiser or regulator has not been 
identified. 
A NuMBER of influential persons interested in the 
development of the resources of the Empire have 
formed themselves into a committee, of which Sir 
Starr Jameson is for the present acting as chairman, 
Mr. Almeric Paget, M.P., as honorary treasurer, and 
Mr. Wilson Fox as honorary secretary. The com- 
mittee, which represents every party in the State, 
has for its ultimate object the appointment of a board 
to develop the Empire’s resources; but in the mean- 
time it has been inquiring into various questions in 
order to present a prima facie case for. the considera- 
tion of the Government. The committee has the 
following purposes :—(1) To advocate (a) the con- 
servation for the benefit of the Empire of such natural 
resources as are, or may come, under the ownership 
or control of .the Imperial, Dominion, or . Indian 
NO. 2466, VoL. 98] 
Mr. E. M. Konstam (who has, 
Governments; (b) the development of selected re-. 
sources of the Empire under such conditions as will 
give to. the State an adequate share of the proceeds ; 
(c) the appointment in due time of a Board for the 
Conservation and Development of the Resources of 
the Empire, so that Imperial effort may be concen- 
trated on assets ripe for development for the common 
good of the Empire. (2) To take such action as may 
from time to time appear to be desirable in order to 
disseminate. information in regard to the objects of 
the committee, to arouse and maintain public interest, 
to enlist public sympathy and support, and to co- 
operate with other committees and associations having 
similar objects. 
Dr. H. R. Mitt, director of the British Rainfall 
Organisation, contributes a special article to the 
Times of January 25 on the rainfall of 1916. Detailed 
results are given for 131 stations. Last year is shown to 
have been generally a wet year; the rainfall was far in 
excess of the average at most stations, and slightly 
below it at only a few. A map shows the distribution 
of rainfall, and forestalls the fuller results, from about 
5000 stations, which will appear later in ** British 
Rainfall, 1916." A deficiency of rainfall for 1916 is 
shown in the extreme south-west of Wales and the 
north-west of Devon and Cornwall, and in two areas 
in the centre of England, one stretching east and 
south from the north of Anglesey and the estuary of 
the Mersey, the other in the south-east of Yorkshire. 
The area over which the year was relatively dry was 
much less than in any other of the last twelve years, 
except perhaps 1912. The excess of rain was most 
pronounced in the south of England, the centre of 
Scotland, and the south-west, north-west, and east of 
Ireland. The wettest part of England was in the 
district of East Grinstead, where the excess was about 
40 per cent. In Scotland the excess of rainfall was 
20 per cent. over nearly one-half of the country, while 
in parts there was an excess of more than 4o per 
cent. The whole of Ireland was wet; the greatest 
excess of more than 30 per cent. stretched inland from 
Dublin Bay. No year since 1903 has been wetter 
than last year in Scotland and Ireland, while the 
British Isles as a whole have only been wetter than 
1916, during the last fifty years, in 1903, 1882, 1877, and 
1872. In London the total measurement for the year. 
was 34-01 in., which is 35 per cent. above the average 
for fifty years. In 1903, the wettest year on record, 
the rainfall was 38-10 in., and the only other year since 
1858 with as much rain as 1916 was 1878, with 
34:08 in. 
Mr. A. W. Carpinatt, in the January issue of Man, 
describes a collection of stone jimplements from 
Ashanti. Most of them are of normal types, but one 
specimen is peculiar from its remarkable size—14-5 cm. 
in length, and maximum breadth 5-5 cm. In its coarse 
flaking it resembles specimens collected by M. Xavier 
Stainer from the Congo, but in the Ashanti weapon 
its rounded cutting edge is perfectly distinct, and there 
1s no doubt that this has been produced by grinding. 
WE have received the list of seeds of hardy herba- 
ceous plants, trees, and shrubs. available for 
exchange from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 
forming Appendix I. of the. Kew Bulletin for 1917. 
We are glad to notice that the list is a full one, and 
shows that this important side of the work of a 
botanic garden has been fully maintained during the 
past year, despite the large number of men who are 
absent on military duties. 
Wart disease of potatoes, which has caused such 
serious loss in the north of England, is difficult to 
eradicate from a district owing to the length of time 
