220 



NATURE 



[August 17, 191 1 



should be prepared to pay something towards a fund 

 that shall indemnify him for any loss that may result 

 from the presence of tuberculosis amongst his animals. 

 The milk dealer or butcher who runs the risk of buy- 

 ing a tuberculous animal, and thus of having to pay 

 more for the food of the animal during life and of 

 receiving a less price for the carcase after death, 

 should be equally prepared to pay towards an insur- 

 ance scheme. (Butchers' insurance associations — 

 voluntary — have already been founded in this country.) 

 The ratepayer, through the municipality, owes 

 something to any scheme that protects him and 

 his children from the dangers associated with the 

 consumption of tuberculous milk, and even of tuber- 

 culous meat, whilst the State may well be called 

 upon to contribute its quota towards the protection of 

 the child, the young adult, or, in some cases, even 

 the adults of more mature years, against the ravages 

 of tuberculosis, one of the great factors in bringing 

 about the diminution in the wage-earning power of 

 the worker in the State. The whole question is no 

 doubt now under careful consideration, and whilst it 

 is inadvisable to press for any measures that have not 

 been carefully considered, it must be urged that 

 there shall be no unnecessary delay in bringing for- 

 ward a Bill and putting into force a measure for the 

 improvement of our milk supply and the protection 

 of the consumer against infection, the reality of which 

 has been so amply demonstrated by the Royal Com- 

 mission. 



SCIENTIFIC WORK IN INDIA. 1 



IN any large organisation a certain amount of sub- 

 division is necessary to ensure economy in work- 

 ing, even though this may conduce to a want of 

 connection and cooperation between the departments 

 so formed ; and when their work lies in scientific and 

 technical fields the inevitable specialisation is likely 

 to accentuate the evil of any such lack of cooperation, 

 and lessen the advantages derived from the work in 

 each. In India the Board of Scientific Advice was 

 formed a few years ago in order that by its aid the 

 scientific resources of the Government of India might 

 be organised to the best advantage and their efforts 

 concentrated on the solution of the problems which 

 were the most urgent. 



The Board held its eighteenth and nineteenth meet- 

 ings in 1910, and the report for the year 1909-10 

 has just been published, in which contributions from 

 the different services and departments are restricted to 

 the scientific work coming under the various headings 

 of the report, and do not deal with matters of de- 

 partmental administration or detail. We have in 

 consequence, within a compass of two hundred pages, 

 a valuable summary of scientific work in India for the 

 period under review, so far as it is covered by the 

 departments which contribute to this report. In in- 

 dustrial and agricultural chemistry the work done has 

 resulted in much knowledge gained of indigenous pro- 

 ducts and their technical applications. Reference is 

 made to the report of a committee, appointed by the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal, on the adoption of a tem- 

 perature of reference suitable for India, in which the 

 temperature of 30 C. is recommended. This matter 

 has been referred to the Royal Society for submission 

 to the International Association of Academies in order 

 that other countries in tropical regions mav express 

 their opinions. 



Tlic water requirements of crops have been inves- 

 tigated in continuation of work which has been in 



1 Annual Report of the Board of Scientific Advice for India for the Year 

 1909-10. Pp. iv+210. (Calcutta: Government Printing Office, 1911.) 



NO. 2l8l, VOL. 87] 



hand for several years, and the results are about to 

 be published. This work and field tests at Cawnpore 

 and Pusa have shown how great the value would be 

 of an accurate method of determining the quantity of 

 water which can move through soils under the influ- 

 ence of surface tension. Cottonseed oil was investi- 

 gated in order to ascertain whether the acridity of the 

 Indian oil could not be economically removed, and a 

 large number of natural products were studied with 

 a view to improving the final product. A large 

 amount of observational work in solar physics 

 was carried out, and advantage was taken 

 of Halley's comet being favourably situated 

 in April and May, 1910, to photograph the 

 comet and its spectrum. In meteorology Mr. 

 Field's experimental work with recording balloons 

 resulted in more than half of the seventeen sent up in 

 the monsoon season being recovered, but only one of 

 those liberated in December was regained. In the 

 present year, following that of the report, it is pro- 

 posed to liberate two recording balloons weekly at 

 Jhang in the Punjab, and to continue the search for 

 relationships between the seasonal variations of 

 weather in different parts of the earth, which has 

 already produced instructive results. 



In terrestrial magnetism a survey of the Andaman 

 and Nicobar Islands is proposed as the work of the 

 following year. Some of the geological work referred 

 to has already appeared in the publications of the 

 department, and an exhaustive memoir on the Triassic 

 rocks of the Himalaya by Dr. C. Diener is about to 

 appear. The map of the Raniganj coalfield has been 

 revised, and much additional information relating to 

 the underground correlation of the coal seams has 

 been gained. Reports of coal in Sikkim were proved 

 to be baseless, the rock being but a black carbonaceous 

 shale greatly crushed. Advice on such matters as 

 the suitability of building sites, irrigation dam sites, 

 sources of suitable road metal, and the prospect of 

 increasing a subsoil water supply by deeper boring was 

 widely given. 



In geodetic work operations were carried out in 

 northern Baluchistan, Kashmir, and in Upper Burma 

 on the lines of former years, but an innovation is the 

 employment of secondary triangulation with 8-inch 

 micrometer theodolites to fill in between the principal 

 series instead of the third order network, which has 

 hitherto been used. This improved grade of work will 

 furnish permanent stations for the control of the 

 periodic re-surveys which become increasingly neces- 

 sary, and which are often required to be on larger 

 scales than in the past. Gravity work was directed 

 to testing the suitability of Hayford's method to the 

 results obtained in India, and so far as work has 

 gone his correction serves to intensify the anomalies 

 in regions like the Indo-Gangetic plain. 



In botanical survey work on the catalogue of the 

 non-herbaceous flowering plants cultivated in the 

 Royal Botanic Garden has been continued, the 

 numerical index of the first 4000 plants being com- 

 pleted, and another 4000 being in the press. From 

 Burma and southern India large accessions of material 

 have been received by the Calcutta herbarium. 

 Economic botany records a large amount of work 

 done on the improvement of the wheat crop, not only 

 in the field, but investigation has been carried into 

 the mill and the bakehouse. The questions involved 

 are of the greatest importance, and the results already 

 obtained are of great value. Mycological studies of 

 various plant diseases of tea in Darjeeling, of palms 

 in Madras, of sugar in the Godaveri delta, are all 

 instances <>f the value of scientific research suitablv 

 directed and coordinated. 



The whole report presents a valuable survey of the 

 application of science to many problems related 



