444 



NATURE 



[October 6, 1910 



tion that during the comparatively short period since they 

 came under European observation they have risen from 

 practically the lowest to a comparatively high stage of 

 culture. Kane, who in the early 'fifties first described 

 them, found that they possessed little iron or wood, using 

 sledge-runners of bone and pieces of barrel-hoops as knives. 

 They did not hunt the reindeer, and were ignorant of the 

 use of the bow and arrow ; they could not catch salmon, 

 and did not use the kayak. These cultural deficiencies 

 were certainly survivals of their primitive social condition. 

 During the 'sixties, however, they learned from emigrants 

 from the .'\merican side of Smith's Sound the art of rein- 

 deer hunting, the use of the bow and arrow, skill in 

 salmon catching, and the mode of building kayaks and 

 hunting from them. The leader of this party of foreigners, 

 Kridlarssuark, has now become the legendary culture hero. 

 Finally, in iSgi, Peary began his intercourse with them, 

 which enabled them to obtain in e.xchange for their fox 

 and be.nr skins the finest American weapons, with the 

 result that the rapid destruction of game will probably 

 soon destroy their main source of livelihood. Even up to 

 the time of Peary's first visit stone knives and axes were 

 in use, and they used to make rude implements with 

 cutting edges of meteoric iron, the source of which was 

 discovered by Peary during a later expedition in 1894. 

 Even now they make their harpoon points of iron with a 

 head-piece of bone, and they work iron with much skill 

 with the files they used for the older material. 



A similar course of evolution may be traced in the con- 

 struction of their houses. In their original home they 

 must have used whale-ribs for the support of the roof. 

 Wood of suflicient span being now not procurable, they 

 have, while retaining the primitive plan, adopted a new 

 device for supporting the roof, planned on the model of 

 the cantilever. 



With this modern and fairly advanced culture the Polar 

 Eskimo combines many savage characteristics. He is, 

 says Dr. Steensby, " a confirmed egoist, who knows 

 nothing of disinterestedness. Towards his enemies he is 

 crafty and deceitful ; he does not attack them openly, but 

 indulges in back-biting ; he will not meet his deadly enemy 

 face to face, but will shoot or harpoon him from behind." 

 They practise a rude form of justice. One man, because 

 he was a notorious liar, was summarily killed by two 

 chiefs, one of whom annexed the wife of the deceased. 



We have said enough to show the interest and value of 

 this account of a little known tribe. It is illustrated by 

 characteristic sketches, the work of an Eskimo woman, 

 which in style closely resemble the Bushman drawings 

 recently published under the editorship of iVIr. H. Balfour. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIA TION A T SHEFFIELD. 

 SECTION I. 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



Opening Address by Prof. A. B. Macallum, Vi.k., M.B., 

 Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., President of the 



Section. 



The record of investigation of the phenomena of the 

 life of animal and vegetable cells for the last eighty years 

 constitutes a body of knowledge which is of imposing 

 magnitude and of surpassing interest to all who are con- 

 cerned in the studies that bear on the organic world. 

 The results won during that period will always constitute, 

 as they do now, a worthy memorial of the intense 

 enthusiasm of the scientific spirit which has been a dis- 

 tinguishing feature of the last six decades of the nine- 

 teenth century. We are to-day, in consequence of that 

 activity, at a point of view the attainment of which 

 could not have been predicted half a century ago. 



This body of knowledge, this lore which we call cyto- 

 logy, is still with all this achievement in one respect an 

 undeveloped science. It is chiefly — nay, almost wholly — 

 concerned with the structural or morphological side of the 

 cell, while of the functional phenomena our knowledge is 

 onlv of the most general kind, and the reason is not far 

 to seek. What little we know of the physiological side of 

 the cell — as, for example, of cellular secretion, absorption, 

 and nutrition — has only to a very limited extent been the 

 outcome of observations directed to that end. It is in 

 NO. 2136, VOL. 84] 



very great part the result of all the inferences and 

 generalisations drawn from the data of morphological re- 

 search. This knowledge is not the less valuable or the 

 less certain because it has been so won, but simply because 

 of its source and of the method by which we have gained 

 it ; it is of a fragmentary character, and therefore less 

 satisfactory in our estimation. 



This state of our knowledge has affected — or, to express 

 it more explicitly, has fashioned — our concept of living 

 matter. W'hen we think of the cell it is idealised as a 

 morphological element only. The functional aspect is not 

 ignored ; but we know very little about it, and we veil 

 our ignorance by classing its manifestations as vital 

 phenomena. 



It is true that in the last twenty years, and more par- 

 ticularly in the last ten, we have gathered something 

 from biochemical research. We know much concerning 

 ferment or catalytic action, of the physical characters of 

 colloids, of the constitution of proteins, and their synthesis 

 in the laboratory promises to be an achievement of the 

 near future. We are also in a position to understand a 

 little more clearly what happens in proteins when, on 

 decomposition in the cell, they yield the waste products, 

 urea, and other metabolites, with carbon dioxide and 

 water. Further, fats can be formed in the laboratory 

 from glycerine and fatty acids, a large number of which 

 have also been synthesised, and a very large majority of 

 the sugars of the aldohe.xose type have been built up from 

 simpler compounds. These facts indicate that some of 

 the results of the activity of animal and vegetable cells 

 may be paralleled in the laboratory, but that is as far as 

 the resemblance extends. The methods of the laboratory 

 are not as yet those of nature. In the formation of carbo- 

 hydrates, for example, the chlorophyll-holding cell makes 

 use of processes of the most speedy and effective character, 

 but nothing of these is known to us except that they 

 are quite unlike the processes the laboratory employs in 

 the artificial synthesis of carbohydrates. Nature works 

 unerringly, unfalteringly, with an amazing economy of 

 material and energy, while " our laboratory syntheses are 

 but roundabout ways to the waste sink." 



In consequence, it is customary to regard living matter 

 as unique — sui generis, as it were, without an analogue 

 or parallel in the inorganic world — and the secrets involved 

 in its actions and activities as insoluble enigmas. 

 Impelled by this view, there are those, also, who postu- 

 late as an explanation for all these manifestations the 

 intervention in so-called living matter of a force other- 

 wise and elsewhere unknown, biotic or vital, the action 

 of which is directed, according to the character of the 

 structure through which it operates, to the production of 

 the phenomena in question. Living protoplasm is, in this 

 view, but a mask and a medium for action of the un- 

 known force. 



This is an old doctrine, but it has again made head- 

 way in recent years owing to the reaction from the 

 enthusiasm which came from the belief that the applica- 

 tion of the known laws of physics and chemistry in the 

 study of living matter would explain all its mysteries. 

 A quarter of a century ago hopes were high that_ the 

 solution of these problems would soon be found in a 

 more profound comprehension of the laws of the»physical 

 world. Since then there has been an extraordinary in- 

 crease in our knowledge of the structure and of the pro- 

 ducts of the activity of' living matter without a correspond- 

 ing increase in knowledge of the processes involved. The 

 obscuritv still involving the latter appears all the greater 

 because of the high lights thrown on the former. Despair, 

 in consequence, has taken the place of hope with some, 

 and the action of a mysterious force is invoked to explain 

 a mvsterv. 



It' may be admitted that our methods of mvestigation 

 are very' inadequate, and that our knowledge of the laws 

 of matter, seemingly comprehensive, is not at present 

 profound enough to enable us to solve all the problems 

 involved in the vital phenomena. The greatest factor in 

 the difliculty of their . solution, however, has been the 

 fact that there has been a great lack of investigators 

 speciallv trained, not onlv in biologv, but also in physics 

 and ch'emistrv, for the verv purpose of attacking intelli- 

 gently such problems. The biologists, for want of such a 



