May 20, 1915] 
NATURE 
327 

to the scheme, such as it is. Whether it will be a 
success or not will depend upon matters which we 
cannot discuss to-night. It will depend largely 
upon the men and upon the methods by which the 
work is carried out. No one doubts that there is a 
need for it at the present time. The Right Hon. 
gentleman has enumerated some of the things in 
connection with which we have discovered the need, 
and he could have made a much longer list—things 
which are vitally important for the carrying on of 
the war. This country has had brought home to it 
the recklessness of any island country being dependent 
for its supplies to a large extent upon places outside 
its bounds. That is one of the lessons we shall learn 
from the war. It must be remembered that scientific 
men have been connected with agriculture and in- 
dustry in this country before. They were connected 
with it in the best possible way; they were present 
while the work was being done. But in one case 
after the other the Germans bought up those firms 
and practically carried the industries away to Ger- 
many. We must not have that occur again. It is 
not merely a question of scientific research; it is 
much more a question of policy. So far as the scien- 
tific side is concerned, I think that even the President 
of the Board of Education was scarcely sufficiently 
optimistic when speaking of the enormous supply of 
men in the universities who are perfectly qualified and 
ready to take part in the industrial side of science. 
A large number are already doing so, and a very much 
larger number are perfectly ready and willing to take 
part and assist in the science of industries of any kind. 
Dr. Appison: There are many things which we 
must attend to without any delay, and it is for this 
reason that the Committee for Research will be set 
up quite soon. A great deal has been done by private 
effort in respect of research, and notwithstanding all 
that my hon. friend the Member for West Clare 
(Mr. Lynch) has pointed out, quite properly, in this 
connection, I think that the research which has been 
associated with British men of science has often been 
the most original of any in the whole world. We have 
not organised and developed it as we ought to have, 
but the British researcher is often freer in his outlook 
and greater in his conceptions, I think, than almost 
any other. At all events, he certainly stands far 
above the average German researcher, who tends 
more to apply the ideas which have been suggested 
by others, but from all that my hon. friend pointed 
out we have got to recognise that we cannot afford 
nowadays to leave all this to private effort. A great 
deal can be done by careful organisation and by seeing 
that the men turned out from our universities and 
technological institutions are equipped with that train- 
ing which will make them acceptable in industry, and 
make them more likely to find a good market and a 
good career for themselves. Going around our insti- 
tutions you will find certain departments where the 
professors will tell you that they cannot supply the 
men quickly enough to the manufacturers, while in 
other departments it is quite the reverse. The Royal 
Society has lately, very patriotically, been assisting 
chemical research in respect of drugs. This was one 
of the matters in which we felt ourselves behindhand 
at the beginning of the war. However, | think that 
my Right Hon. friend may be satisfied with the full 
assent of the House in all quarters in getting ahead 
with this great scheme, which, while we hear so much 
of the mobilisation of our industries with respect to 
the production of munitions of war, will quickly, for 
the first time in this country, show that we are going 
to some extent, at all events, to create a machine 
which will enable us to mobilise brains and science 
in the service of industry and national progress. 
NO. 2377, VOL. 95] 


\ 
NOTES. 
THE annual visitation of the Royal Observatory at 
Greenwich will be held on Saturday, June 5. 
Sir WittiamM Crookes and Prof. R. Meldola have 
been elected honorary members of the Society of Public 
Analysts. 
WE learn with regret of the death, on May 8, of 
Dr. P. Zeeman, since 1902 professor of geometry and 
theoretical mechanics in the University of Leyden. 
Prors. Maurice Cautiery (Paris), Charles Henri 
Marie Flahault (Montpellier), and Jacques Loeb 
(Chicago) have been elected foreign members of the 
Linnean Society. 
Tue London County Council has decided to com- 
memorate the residence of Lord Lister in London by 
placing a memorial tablet on the house, 12 Park 
Crescent, Marylebone Road. 
WE regret to announce the death on May 13, in his 
eighty-ninth year, of Dr. M. W. Crofton, F-.R.S., 
formerly professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, 
Galway, and also, later, professor of mathematics and 
mechanics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. 
Sir Davin Bruce will this year deliver the Croonian 
lectures at the Royal College of Physicians of London 
on June 17, 24, and 29. His subject will be 
“Trypanosomes causing Disease in Man and Domestic 
Animals in Central Africa.”’ 
22 
22, 
At the annual meeting of the Iron and Steel Insti- 
tute last week, the Bessemer gold medal of the insti- 
tute for 1915 was, in the unavoidable absence of the 
French Ambassador, handed to M. de Fleuriau, coun- 
cillor of the French Embassy, for transmission to M. 
Pierre Martin, for his invention of the open-hearth 
system of steel manufacture. 
THE regents of the American College of Surgeons 
announce the appointment of Dr. J. G. Bowman as 
director of the college. The college was founded in 
1913, and is an organisation of the surgeons of the 
United States and of Canada, having for its purpose 
the advancement of the art and science of surgery. 
The address of the executive offices is 30 North Michi- 
gan Avenue, Chicago. 
THE trustees of Columbia University, in the city 
of New York, have awarded the Barnard gold medal 
to Prof. W. H. Bragg, Cavendish professor of physics 
in the University of Leeds, and his son, Mr. W. L. 
Bragg, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a 
member of the college staff, at present holding a 
commission in the Leicestershire R.H.A. (T.F.), for 
their work on X-rays and crystals. The medal is 
awarded every five years for ‘‘meritorious service to 
science,” on the recommendation of the National 
Academy of Sciences of the United States. The pre- 
vious recipients have been Lord Rayleigh and Sir 
William Ramsay, Prof. von R6ntgen, Prof. Henri 
Becquerel, and Sir Ernest Rutherford. 
A PARTIALLY restored skeleton of a small ancestral 
camel, Stenomylus hitchcocki, from the Lower Mio- 
cene of Nebraska, U.S.A., has just been added to the 
