6 4 



NATURE 



[March 20, 191 



grapher obtained for him a position in the Intelli- 

 gence Department of the War Office, which he filled 

 from 1855 to 1872. He had been a pupil of the famous 

 Dr. Petermann, and did much to improve British 

 cartographical methods. For the Royal Geographical 

 Society he devoted several years to the compilation of 

 a map, of many sheets, of eastern equatorial Africa, 

 which was published in 1S84 ; and even now, after all 

 that has taken place in the last thirty years, it is a 

 monument of fullness and accuracy, indispensable to 

 the student of the evolution of African geography. 

 He served on the council of the Royal Geographical 

 Society for several years, and was president of the 

 Geographical Section of the British Association in 

 1891. Among 1 his publications were " Vasco da 

 Gama's First Voyage," published in 1S98; a 

 "Systematic Atlas," 1894; and "Martin Behain, his 

 Life and the Globe," 1908, a monumental work, the 

 result of many years of research. 



Yesterday was the hundredth anniversary of the 

 birth of Dr. Livingstone, and the centenary has been 

 celebrated by many eloquent tributes to the memory 

 of the great explorer. At a meeting of the Royal 

 Geographical Society on Monday an address on the 

 subject of the life and achievements of Livingstone 

 was delivered by Sir Harry Johnston, and the 

 assembly included not only many distinguished geo- 

 graphers, but also relations and others, who were 

 associated with the great explorer during his life. 

 In the course of his remarks, Sir Harry said that a 

 research into the life and work of Livingstone on 

 which he had been engaged for thirty years past, 

 beginning with his (the lecturer's) association with 

 Stanley, with Sir John Kirk, and some of Living- 

 stone's old Swahili followers on the Congo, left him 

 unable to quote anything of importance which could 

 be regarded as serious dispraise of that remarkable 

 man. On the other hand, the repeated reading of 

 Livingstone's works tended to increase his astonish- 

 ment at Livingstone's achievements with the means 

 in his possession, and to convince him more than ever 

 that Livingstone was the greatest of African ex- 

 plorers, judged not only by his actual achievements 

 but by his character, disposition, and mental capacitv. 

 He wrote things, he expressed ideas, in the 'forties, 

 'fifties, and 'sixties of the last century which seemed 

 to-day singularly modern as conceptions, conclusions, 

 and lines of profitable study. Indeed, it required very 

 little accentuation of his opinions expressed in private 

 letters in 1841 to formulate the phrase, since so potent, 

 of "the Cape to Cairo." He never lost sight of this 

 ideal, and .during his last years speculated on its 

 ultimate achievement through the work of Sir Samuel 

 Baker on the Mountain Nile and the Albert Nyanza. 

 The work done by Livingstone for geographical 

 science and for humanity stands out among the 

 greatest achievements of history ; and we are glad to 

 unite with all others who are bearing testimony this 

 week to the noble career of the pioneer who passed 

 away forty years ago, and whose work opened up a 

 continent to civilisation. 



The Chingford reservoir of the Metropolitan Water 

 Board, excellent accounts of which will be found in 

 NO. 2264, VOL. qi] 



The Engineer and Engineering for March 14, was 

 opened by his Majesty the King on Saturday last. 

 The reservoir measures about two miles in length by 

 more than one-third mile in width at its narrowest 

 part, and covers an area of 416 acres; the length of 

 embankment is about four and a half miles. The 

 reservoir straddles the old course of the River Lea, 

 and is divided into two parts by a bank near its 

 centre, in order to reduce the fetch of waves. The 

 embankments consist of a puddle trench reaching 

 down to the London clay, and filled with earth, the 

 j outer slope being 2 A to 1, and the inner slope 3 to 1 

 to 4 to 1. The slopes are faced with concrete slabs, 

 the protection being most complete at the north- 

 eastern corners where the highest waves with preva- 

 lent winds may be expected. The reservoir is capable 

 of storing 3000 million gallons, to be pumped from 

 the River Lea, and also from the River Lea Naviga- 

 tion, by means of five large Humphrey gas pumps, 

 reference to which was made in Nature for February 

 20 (p. 683). These pumps have been put to work 

 with complete success. The large storage capacity 

 required in the Lea Valley is necessitated by the 

 enormous fluctuations in the volume of flow of the 

 Lea. Much of the capacity will only be required at 

 rare intervals, and in normal seasons will facilitate 

 treatment by subsidence ; it has been proved that 

 storage alone affects a marked improvement in the 

 quality of water, and thus reduces the work of the 

 filters. 



A lecture was delivered at the Galton Laboratory, 

 University College, London, on March it, by Mr. 

 W. Palin Elderton, on the mortality of the phthisical 

 under sanatorium and tuberculin treatments. Mr. 

 Elderton showed that at present the best comparison 

 is reached by studying the subsequent mortality of 

 those who have undergone various kinds of treatment. 

 The mortality of incipient cases under sanatorium 

 treatment is, generally speaking, more than three 

 times that of the general population, while advanced 

 cases show a mortality of ten times, and far advanced 

 cases a mortality of about forty times that of the 

 general population. He discussed some interesting 

 results from Dr. Lawrason Brown's statistics of the 

 Adirondack Sanitarium, New York, but owing to the 

 selection of patients and the increased proportion of 

 early cases among the patients admitted more recently 

 it is impossible to decide to what extent sanatorium 

 treatment has improved. The statistics show, how- 

 ever, that at this particular sanatorium the authorities 

 are now better able to say which cases will improve 

 under treatment and which cases are cured. Mr. 

 Elderton showed that the mortality of cases having 

 tubercle bacilli in the sputum is two and a half times 

 to four times as heavy as that of the cases which are 

 without this symptom, and this result sometimes 

 enables the extent to be estimated to which data are 

 influenced by the admission of an undue proportion 

 of early cases. There is no evidence to prove, he 

 continued, that tuberculin, as compared with ordinarv 

 sanatorium treatment, appreciably lengthens the life 

 of the consumptive. If the use of tuberculin had the 

 marked results claimed by some definite evidence of its 

 effect on mortality would have been anticipated. 



