64: 



NA TURE 



[October 25, 1906 



as well as of those who learn malhematics with a view 

 to its application in physics or in applied science, that the 

 teaching of the subject be unified. The two classes of 

 students may thus avoid the opposite dangers of taking 

 a too purely abstract view of the science on the one hand, 

 and of regarding it as consisting of a set of empirical rules 

 on the other. The letter is signed : — Robert S. Ball, 

 Lowndean professor of astronomy and geometry ; G. H. 

 Darwin, Plumian professor of astronomy ; A. R. Forsyth, 

 Sadlerian professor of pure mathematics ; B. Hopkinson, 

 profi'ssor of mechanism and applied mechanics ; J. Larmor, 

 Lucasian professor of mathematics; J. J. Thomson, 

 Cavendish professor of experimental physics ; H. F. Baker, 

 Cayley lecturer in mathematics ; E. W. Hobson, Stokes 

 lecturer in mathematics ; and R. A. Herman, J. G. 

 Leathern, H. W. Richmond, university lecturers in mathe- 

 matics. 



Dr. William Oslek, regius professor of medicine at 

 Oxford, delivered the Harveian oration at the Royal College 

 of Physicians on October i8. He took as his subject " The 

 Growth of Truth '" as illustrated bv the history of Harvey's 

 discovery of the circulation of the blood. Truth, he said, 

 grows like a living organism, and its gradual evolution 

 may be traced from the germ to the mature product. All 

 scientific truth is conditioned by the state of knowledge 

 at the time of its announcement. Thus, at the beginning 

 of the seventeenth century, the science of optics and its 

 mechanical appliances had not made possible (so far as the 

 human mind was concerned) the existence of blood 

 capillaries and of blood corpuscles. Jenner could not have 

 added to his inquiry a discourse on immunity. Sir William 

 Perkin and the chemists made Koch possible, Pasteur gave 

 the conditions which produced Lister, Davy and others 

 furnished the preliminaries necessary for anaesthesia. To 

 scientific truth alone may the homo mensura principle be 

 applied, since of all the mental treasures of the race it 

 alone compels general acquiescence. That such general 

 acquiescence, such aspect of certainty, is not reached per 

 saltum, but is of slow, often of difficult, growth, marked 

 by failures and frailties, but crowned at last with an 

 acceptance accorded to no other product of mental activity, 

 is illustrated by every important discovery from Copernicus 

 to Darwin. The growth of truth corresponds to the states 

 of knowledge described by Plato in the " Theastetus " — 

 acquisition, latent possession, conscious possession. Scarcely 

 a discovery can be named which does not present these 

 phases in its evolution. In a hundred important problems 

 acquisition has by slow stages become latent possession ; 

 and then there needs but the final touch, the crystal in the 

 saturated solution, to give us conscious possession of the 

 truth. When those stages are ended, there remains the 

 final struggle for general acceptance. But however eminent 

 a man may become in science, he is very apt to carry with 

 him errors Vi^hich were in vogue when he was young, errors 

 that darken his understanding, and make him incapable 

 of accepting even the most obvious truths. It is a great 

 consolation to know that even Harvey came within the 

 rang" of this law ; it was the most human touch in his 

 career. 



.'^FTER an interval of only three weeks, another violent 

 hurricane burst over the more western portions of the 

 West Indies on October 17, apparently with little or no 

 warning of its approach. As is usually the case with 

 tropical storms, the area of the cyclonic whirl was small, 

 for while the Cuban provinces of Havana and Pinar del 

 Rio were devastated, Matahzas and Santiago were not 

 affected. In the city of Havana the cyclone attained terrific 

 NO. 1930, VOL. 74] 



violence on the morning of October 18, structures being 

 rocked as if by an earthquake. Many buildings were 

 demolished, there were numerous shipping casualties, and 

 the loss of life was considerable. The storm was accom- 

 panied by deluging rain, which soon flooded the streets 

 and rendered vehicular traffic of all sorts impossible. 

 Enormous waves raised by the wind dashed thirty-five 

 lighters in pieces against the wharves. The destruction in 

 the city is estimated at a couple of million dollars. Pass- 

 ing on to Florida, the hurricane wrought great havoc on 

 its way, wrecking ships and causing great loss of life. 

 One captain reports that he took shelter under Elliott's 

 Key on the morning of October 18, but shortly afterwards 

 a huge wave swept the island, and its 250 inhabitants 

 are believed to have perished. Owing to the interruption 

 of telegraphic communication, the full extent of the damage 

 in Florida is not known, but at alligator-breeding Miami 

 various places of worship, the concrete-built prison, and a 

 hundred houses were involved in the ruin. Mixed up with 

 the information relating to the Cuba-Florida hurricane are 

 messages reporting immense destruction by floods in the 

 Central American Republics. So far as can be gathered 

 from the brief cablegrams, rain-storms, and not wind- 

 storms, have been the cause of the damage. In San 

 Salvador the storms are said to have been incessant during 

 ten days, the country being flooded, and the physical 

 features completely altered in many places. Aqueducts and 

 iron bridges have been carried away, the railway, electric 

 lighting, and telegraph services disorganised, there has 

 been great loss of life, a man-of-war lost, and the losses 

 in cattle and crops have been very heavy. The casualties 

 in Guatemala and Honduras are estimated at manv millions 

 of dollars. 



The type of weather has been very unsettled during the 

 past week, and exceptionally heavy rains have occurred in 

 Scotland and in the north-east of England, while in most 

 parts of the country rain has fallen each day. Snow has 

 occurred at times in Scotland. In the south and south- 

 east of England the weather has been unusually warm for 

 the time of year ; and with the single exception of 

 October 19 the reading of the thermometer at Greenwich 

 has exceeded 60° each day. On Monday, October 22, the 

 Greenwich temperature was 69°, which is 3° higher than 

 any previous record on the corresponding day since 1841, 

 a period of sixty-five years, and on Sunday, October 21, 

 the thermometer registered 67°.5, which is i°.s higher than 

 any previous reading. The nights have also been ex- 

 ceptionally warm, the thermometer at times scarcely falling 

 below 60°. Strong winds and gales have occurred over the 

 northern and western portions of the kingdom. 



According to a paper by Dr. W. E. Hinds, forming 

 Bulletin No. 59 of the Entomological Bureau of the U.S. 

 Department of Agriculture, the damage done to crops bv 

 the Mexican cotton-boll weevil is in a fair way of being 

 to a considerable extent neutralised as the result of the 

 presence of the insect itself. Cotton-bolls (or buds), it 

 appears, when pierced by the beak of the weevil show a 

 decided tendency — more strongly developed in some strains 

 than in others — to proliferation, producing internallv a 

 number of large thin-walled cells placed so close together, 

 and so loosely combined, that the whole structure presents 

 a granular and gelatinous texture. Amid this abnormal 

 tissue (which is in no wise poisonous to the insects) the 

 grubs of the weevil are hatched, and proceed to develop. A 

 considerable percentage is, however, found to perish, and it 

 is inferred " that the great majority of the deaths due to 



