March 6, 1913] 



NATURE 



come to light. Referring to this discovery, Mr. Wil- 

 fred Mark Webb remarked, at a meeting of the Sel- 

 borne Society on March 3, that it was believed that no 

 portrait of Gilbert White existed or had ever been 

 painted. There was, he said, a reason for believing 

 this, in view of the fact that Gilbert White was 

 marked with smallpox, and would probably therefore 

 not wish his appearance to be recorded. Still, the 

 picture, which had been found in the Caledonian 

 Market, and had come into the possession of a relative 

 of one of the members of the society, showed internal 

 evidence suggesting its possible authenticity. The 

 stretcher, canvas, and frame indicated the date, about 

 1770, when Gilbert White was fifty years of age, and 

 the portrait fitted that age. It also had a family 

 likeness to the portraits of John White and Thomas 

 White. There was a tablet on the picture stating it 

 to be a portrait of Gilbert White, but this had been 

 added when the painting was twenty years old. It 

 was intended if possible to trace the history of the 

 picture, but this would be difficult, though it had 

 once come into a sale-room in London and had been 

 withdrawn. Mr. Webb preferred to await investiga- 

 tion before expressing an opinion. 



In the course of a lecture on heredity in feeble- 

 mindedness, delivered at the Galton Laboratory, Uni- 

 versitv College, London, on March 4, Dr. David 

 Heron showed a long series of pedigrees to illustrate 

 various phases of mental defect, and said that there 

 i an be no doubt that it is a hereditary character. 

 When, however, attempts are made to discover precise 

 laws of inheritance, many difficulties are encountered, 

 due to the fact that the term "mental defect" covers 

 a multitude of conditions, each of which exists in an 

 almost infinite number of grades of severity. Dr. 

 Heron severelv criticised some recent attempts to 

 apolv Mendelism to such cases, and showed that the 

 evidence cited told strongly against the theory. What 

 is specially required at the present time is more in- 

 formation. Special efforts ought to be made to follow 

 up the children who are passing through the special 

 schools for the mentally defective, and also to trace 

 back the school histories of those who are now 

 mentally defective criminals and paupers. Much yet 

 remains to be discovered regarding the inheritance 

 of mental defect, but on the basis of our present 

 knowledge it may be asserted that a substantial reduc- 

 tion in the numbers of the mentally defective could 

 be obtained by cutting off the supply at the source — 

 by preventing the feeble-minded from reproducing 

 their kind. 



]'i BRUARY was generally mild and dry, the rainfall 

 in parts of England being less than one-half of the 

 average. At Greenwich the mean temperature for the 

 month was 41 , which is nearly 2° above the average, 

 but is 2 colder than in February last year. There 

 were during the month ten nights with frost in the 

 shade, whilst on the grass open to the sky there were 

 twentv-one frosts at Greenwich, and on the three 

 consecutive nights from February 22 to 24, the ex- 

 posed thermometer fell below 20 . The mean of the 

 highest day readings was 47 , and the mean of the 

 lowest night shade readings 35 . The duration of 

 NO. 2262, VOL. 91] 



bright sunshine at Greenwich was fifty-eight hours, 

 which is five hours more than the average for the 

 last thirty years. The aggregate rainfall for the 

 month was 080 in., which is 069 in. less than the 

 average of the last sixty years, and at Kew Observa- 

 tory the total rainfall was only 073 in., which is 

 0-86 in. less than the normal, and only 009 in. of rain 

 fell in the last nineteen days of the month. At Green- 

 wich the mean temperature for the three winter 

 months was 42-5°, which is the same as the mean 

 for the winter of 1911-12, but warmer than in any 

 of the eight previous winters. The rainfall for the 

 winter was about an inch in excess of the average, 

 and February was the only dry month of the three. 



The alpine flora of Japan is to be made the object 

 of special investigation by the Tokyo College of 

 Science, which is establishing a large botanical garden 

 for the purpose at Nikko, situated in a region of high 

 mountains. The Tokyo Asahi of January 24 devotes 

 considerable space to an account of the new enter- 

 prise, which is intended as a complement to the two 

 gardens, representing the temperate zone and the 

 tropics respectively, laid out by the college some years 

 ago elsewhere in Japan. The site for the new garden 

 was acquired some four or five years ago, and the 

 necessary adaptations and arrangements are expected 

 to be completed early in the summer of the present 

 year. The buildings erected in the enclosure com- 

 prise a laboratory, a residential building for students, 

 experimental greenhouses, &c. The garden is to be 

 divided into eighteen sections for the separate cultiva- 

 tion of all varieties of mountainous flora, ranging 

 from trees and shrubs to ground-plants and lichens, 

 and including foreign as well as local growths. Dr. 

 H. Komatsu has been placed in charge of the new 

 station, to which the large collection of alpine species 

 already acquired by the college, but hitherto restricted 

 through lack of accommodation, will be transferred 

 in due course. 



By the death of Mr. George Harold Drew at the 

 age of thirty, which occurred suddenly at Plymouth 

 on January 30, a worker of great promise has been 

 lost to science. Intending in the first instance to 

 qualify for the medical profession, Mr. Drew studied 

 for this purpose at Cambridge, where he was a 

 scholar of Christ's College, and subsequently at St. 

 Mary's Hospital, London. He, however, never com- 

 pleted his medical course, and devoted himself to 

 biological and pathological research, in which he dis- 

 played exceptional aptitude. After working for a 

 short time at the Port Erin Laboratory, he settled at 

 Plymouth, where, at the Marine Biological Labora- 

 tory, the greater part of his research work was done. 

 For three years he held a Beit memorial fellowship, 

 and he was last summer appointed John Lucas Walker 

 research student in the University of Cambridge. He 

 made two journeys to the United States and the West 

 Indies for the purpose of carrying out researches in 

 connection with the Carnegie Institution. On the 

 purely scientific side, Mr. Drew's best work was on 

 the development of Lamminaria and on the physio- 

 logical action of marine bacteria, more particularly 

 on denitrifying bacteria and their power of preclpitat- 



