6io 



NATURE 



[August 14 rgi, 



authorities should abolish foreign quarantine and 

 other restrictive measures against this disease. 



(d) The section resolves that the malady known 

 hitherto under the name of Malta fever shall in futuri 

 be named " undulant fever." (Submitted by the sec- 

 tion of tropical medicine and hygiene.) 



(C) That this congress records its conviction that 

 experiments on living animals have proved of the 

 utmost service to medicine in the past, and are indis- 

 pensable to its future progress. That, accordingly, 

 while stronglv deprecating the infliction of unnecessary 

 pain, it is of opinion alike in the interests of man and 

 of animals that it is not desirable to restrict competent 

 persons in the performance of such experiments. 

 (Submitted by various sections.) 



THE CONTINUATION OF MILNE'S WORK 

 IN SEISMOLOGY. 



A WELL-INFORMED writer in The Times 

 of August 7 has insisted on the import- 

 ance of securing the continuity of the late Prof. 

 Milne's great scheme of seismological observa- 

 tion and research. Milne himself always fought 

 strenuously against his own undertaking being 

 absorbed and lost in any international scheme. 

 It is true that in connection with the international 

 system there are some admirably equipped labora- 

 tories, furnished with a variety of instruments of 

 extreme delicacy and sensitiveness ; but the estab- 

 lishment of one of these is so costly an under- 

 taking that such laboratories can never become 

 numerous. Milne's aim was to secure a great 

 number of seismological stations, scattered as 

 widely as possible over the globe, each furnished 

 with instruments of the same pattern, the records 

 of which would be strictly comparable. The 

 practical results which have been secured by 

 Milne's scheme have shown that the comparatively 

 simple type of apparatus which he advocated has 

 furnished just such an observational basis for re- 

 search as is necessary. Milne, at the outset, saw 

 in the British colonies and dependencies the means 

 for a wide extension of his scheme — though he 

 by no means limited his efforts within the Empire. 

 It would, indeed, be a disgrace, as well as a mis- 

 fortune, to British science if the great under- 

 taking originated by Milne were to suffer dis- 

 location, or to be lost by absorption in any other 

 scheme ; and, at the same time, no more 

 worthy monument to Milne's enterprise could be 

 imagined than the maintenance and development 

 of the system of observations to which he devoted 

 his genius and energy, and for which he received 

 little practical encouragement during his lifetime. 

 It is a very fortunate circumstance that the 

 British Association is holding a meeting so shortly 

 after Milne's lamented death, for no time must 

 be lost if his invaluable organisation is to be 

 rescued from the ruin which is threatened by the 

 loss of its master-spirit. From the year 1841 

 onward, the association has been the nursing 

 mother of seismological science in this country, 

 and has helped Mallet, and afterwards Milne, 

 by contributions from its funds, and especi- 

 ally by publication of their results. Milne was 

 always readv gratefully to acknowledge the great 

 NO. 2285, VOL. 91] 



aid afforded to him by the association, and devoted 

 much of his time during the last year of his life 

 to drawing up a valuable index to the numerous 

 contributions to seismology scattered through 

 seventy-two volumes of the association's reports. 

 This index is now in type, and will be presented 

 at the forthcoming Birmingham meeting. It may 

 be hoped that on this occasion a means may be 

 found for consummating the great aid which the 

 association has always furnished to seismological 

 science, by inaugurating an effort to place Milne's 

 system of observation and research on a sound 

 and permanent basis. It may be suggested that 

 as a national system of meteorological observation 

 has been evolved from the meteorological com- 

 mittees of the British Association, a national 

 seismological scheme may, in like manner, be 

 developed from the association's committees on 

 the subject. 



On August 8 a second letter appeared in 

 The Times from the president of the Royal 

 Society, strongly urging the importance of con- 

 tinuing Milne's organisation, and making it a 

 national undertaking. Sir Archibald Geikie, be- 

 sides bearing eloquent testimony to Milne's genius 

 and enthusiasm as a scientific worker and his 

 loveableness as a man, is able to quote from a 

 letter just received from Prince Galitzin, the 

 president of the International Seismological 

 Association, in which it is asserted that Milne 

 " through his most important investigations set 

 seismology on a firm scientific basis, founded upon 

 instrumental observation," that "he can dulv be 

 considered as the real founder and promoter of 

 this new and important branch of geophysics," 

 and that the continuation and development of 

 h'"s great work "would be the best monument to 

 hismemorv." J. W. J. 



THE ULTIMA THULE OF POLYNESIAN 

 p ASTER ISLAND, so called because of its 

 *— ' discovery by the Dutchman Roggeween on 

 Easter Day, 1722, presents several as yet un- 

 answered problems in ethnology and linguistics. 

 One of these is the provenance of the gigantic 

 stone statues found in the island, another the 

 decipherment of the singular incised tablets which 

 appear to show a form of writing or hieroglyph, 

 though written characters are found nowhere else 

 east of Java. A third problem, the origin and 

 settlement of the present population, or rather of 

 the generation which is now so rapidly passin-'' 

 is less difficult, and is that which Mr. Churchill 

 has set himself the task of investigating in the 

 present volume. 



In his former book on the Polynesian wander- 

 ings (see Nature, September 21, 191 1, p. 381), 

 the author discussed the entry into the Pacific of 

 the primitive Polynesians, whom he called the 

 proto-Samoans, and their settlement in the region 

 he defined as Nuclear Polynesia, comprising the 

 island-groups surrounding Samoa, and including 



1 "Easter Island. The Rapanui Speech and the Peopling of South-east 

 Polynesia." Bv William Churchill. Pp. iv+340. (Washington : Carn-gie 

 Institution of Washington, iqr2.) 



