542 

NATURE 
[APRIL 21, 1923 
Current Topics and Events. 
THE agricultural Tribunal of Investigation ap- 
pointed by the Government to inquire into the present 
position of the farming industry and to suggest 
methods for its improvement has issued an interim 
report. Its recommendations are being actively dis- 
cussed in the daily press, mainly from the political 
aspect. At present the majority of farmers are un- 
doubtedly in an unsound economic condition, and 
especial interest therefore centres in these sections of 
the report dealing with agricultural organisation and 
education. The Tribunal is impressed by the extent 
of co-operative measures both in Europe and in 
America, and in urging that British farmers should 
form similar organisations, suggests that the study 
of the economic organisation of the industry should 
have fuller recognition in the farm institutes and agri- 
cultural colleges. The Tribunal pays a tribute to the 
work carried out by the research staffs of these in- 
stitutions and considers that the departments dealing 
with the economic problem should be further de- 
veloped. New systems of farm management, in 
particular the maintenance of livestock on arable 
land,—the soiling system,—are suggested as urgent 
problems to be investigated from this point of view. 
It is pointed out that in the United States 50 per 
cent. of the research grants are devoted to farm 
economics as against 10 per cent.in this country. In 
this connexion, however, it should be remembered 
that the term ‘‘ farm economics ’’ has a much wider 
interpretation in America than would be admitted 
here, due in part to the absence, until recently, of 
the settled rural population that marks the older 
countries. Making due allowance, however, for this 
and for the characteristic American tendency towards 
over-organisation, the comment of the Tribunal still 
remains true in substance. It is to be hoped that 
this essential bridge between the research workers 
and the farmers will be strengthened as a result of 
the Tribunal’s recommendations. 
Tue Secretary of State for the Colonies has ap- 
pointed an executive committee to control the re- 
searches recommended by the Inter-Departmental 
Committee on Research and Development in the 
Dependencies of the Falkland Islands, and in par- 
ticular the investigation of the question of the 
preservation of whales and of the whaling industry, 
which has been subject to Government regulation 
since its inception nearly twenty years ago. The 
members of the committee are as follows :—Mr. 
Rowland Darnley (chairman), Colonial Office; Sir 
Sidney Harmer (vice-chairman), British Museum 
(Natural History) ; Mr. H. T. Allen, Colonial Office ; 
Mr. J. O. Borley, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries ; 
Capt. R. W. Glennie, R.N., Admiralty; Mr. J. M. 
Wordie, Royal Geographical Society: and Sir 
Fortescue Flannery, of Messrs. Flannery, Baggallay 
and Johnson, consulting naval architects to the 
Crown Agents for the Colonies, who has consented to 
serve as a member of the committee until the Dis- 
covervy, which has been purchased for the purposes of 
NO. 2790, VOL. 111] 

the research expedition, has been reconditioned. In 
another part of this issue, Sir Sidney Harmer gives 
some account of the scientific results to be expected 
from the cruises which it is anticipated the Discovery 
will undertake. 
THE report of the nineteenth year’s work of the 
Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie 
Institution of Washington has lately been issued in 
the Year Book of the Institution for 1922. The 
non-magnetic ship Carnegie, after twelve years’ 
voyages which have been of great import to the 
science, is now out of commission for a time, while 
the observing staff is largely occupied with re- 
observations in land areas where further information, 
chiefly to determine the secular variation, was needed. 
An analysis of the vast body of data acquired by the 
Department is now in progress. Two magnetic 
observatories have been set up, in Western Australia 
and in Peru, regions of the globe where such institu- 
tions are much needed, and help has been given in 
carrying on the former German observatory at Apia, 
in Samoa. The Department has now turned its 
energies to the much-neglected study of earth- 
currents, and is devising new methods of registration. 
Dr. S. J. Barnett, chief of the section of experimental 
work in pure magnetism, is vigorously prosecuting 
his researches on magnetism by rotation, and the 
converse effect. The investigation of atmospheric 
electricity is also being extended. A conference of 
American men of science was held at the Department 
during the year, in order to consider what modifica- 
tions, if any, of the original programme of the Depart- 
ment should now be made, and the conclusions and 
recommendations of the conference are being taken 
as a guide in the further development of the activities 
of the Department. 
In the “ Shirley Institute Memoirs,”’ vol. I, 1922, 
recently received, are collected the ten papers pub- 
lished during the year by the British Cotton Industry 
Research Association. A perusal of this volume affords 
an encouraging picture of the future of textile research 
in this country if the high standard indicated is main- 
tained. The work described falls naturally into three 
well-defined sections—chemical and physical, bio- 
logical, and technological. Four papers are résumés 
of the literature of some chemical, physical, and botan- 
ical aspects of cotton, and should be of much value 
to workers in this field, in which the literature is 
scattered and much of it almost inaccessible: more 
than 380 references are given. The biological papers 
have been dealt with previously in these columns and 
need no further mention. The three most striking 
papers are the technological contributions dealing 
with some properties of yarns, such as regularity in 
relation to tensile strength and twist. They materi- 
ally increase our somewhat scanty knowledge of the 
nature of yarns, and the original methods of investiga- 
tion described are of wide application. Until the 
present publication little of permanent value has been — 
done on yarn structure since the pioneer work of 


