NATURE 
[Aucust 8, 1912 
Tue John Scott legacy medal and premium have 
been awarded by the Franklin Institute to Mr. S. 
Cowper-Coles in consideration of his work on the 
Sherardising process. 
Rutes and regulations have now been drawn up 
for the recently established Indian Research Fund 
Association, particulars of which are to be found in 
The Pioneer Mail, Allahabad, of July 12. The objects 
for which the association has been established are the 
prosecution and assistance of research, the propaga- 
tion of knowledge and experimental measures gener- 
ally in connection with the causation, mode of spread, 
and prevention of communicable diseases. 
Tue British Fire Prevention Committee recently 
held its summer meeting at the Regent’s Park Test- 
ing Station, when some important high-temperature 
fire tests were made on a reinforced concrete floor on 
sets of electro-glazed casements of the Chadrac type, 
on sets of electro-glazed casements of the Luxfer 
type, and with a double door constructed of reinforced 
concrete made to the specifications of the chairman 
of the Belgian Government Fire Committee. Reports 
on the tests are to be published by the Committee in 
due course. 
THE new series of publications issued by the Baby- 
lonian Section of the Museum of the University of 
Pennsylvania continues to make good progress. 
Part i. of the second volume contains a beautifully 
copied series of no fewer than 123 plates devoted to 
‘Business Documents of Murashu Sons of Nippur, 
dated in the Reign of Darius II.,’’ and is the work 
of Prof. Albert T. Clay. The volume contains 228 
legal and commercial documents, which are here 
published for the first time, and they afford students 
a mass of new material for obtaining information with 
regard to the social and economic conditions which 
prevailed in Babylonia during the Achaemenian period. 
Not the least interesting feature of these inscriptions 
are the Aramaic endorsements scratched or written on 
many of them, and the proper names include many 
of Persian and Egyptian origin, borne by members 
of the foreign colonies at Nippur. Part ii. of the 
volume is devoted to temple-accounts of the Cassite 
period from Nippur, and we note that one of them 
bears a very interesting seal-impression, showing the 
form of plough in use in Babylonia in the fourteenth 
century B.c. Both Prof. Clay, the editor of the texts, 
and Mr. Eckley Brinton Coxe, who has established 
a fund for the publication of the series, are to be 
congratulated on the able manner in which the work 
is carried out. 
In the last issue of the Bulletins et Mémoires de la 
Société d’Anthropologie ( ser. vi., vol. ii., parts 5 and 
6), M. G. Courty makes an attempt to interpret 
certain rock carvings in the department of Seine-et- 
Oise. Many of these assume the form of crosses 
with little circular cups at the extremities of the limbs. 
These he supposes to represent prehistoric chariots. 
As an illustration he gives a photograph of a primitive 
plough still in use in the department of Lot. But 
M. Marcel Baudoin brings these carvings down to 
the Neolithic period, and thinks that they represent 
NO. 2232, VOL. 89| 
| 
a modified form of the Swastica symbol, a view 
certainly more probable than that advanced by M.. 
Courty. The latter is on safer ground when he finds 
in some of this class of carvings representations of 
prehistoric huts, with which M. Guébhard aptly com- 
pares the series of Etruscan hut urns from the com- 
mune of Marino, described by S, L. Pigorini and 
Lord Avebury (‘‘ Archaeologia,’’ Col. xlii. (1869), pp. 
99-123). = 
The Quarterly Review for July, 1912, publishes an 
excellent article on the study of eugenics by Dr. A. F. 
Tredgold, who is entitled, both by his qualifications 
and experience, to speak with authority on the sub- 
ject. He points out afresh the well-known and dis- 
quieting fact that, in spite of all expenditure on 
education and sanitation, there is a constant increase 
in the ratio of persons amongst us ‘who are on the 
down grade and falling out in the march of civilisa- 
tion—the biologically unfit.”” He gives some interest- 
ing figures to show that, although the incidence of 
disease, and especially microbic diseases, such as 
smallpox, consumption, and typhoid, has been reduced 
by about 50 or 60 per cent. in the last forty years, 
and the death-rate has fallen from 21 to 14 per 
thousand, there is nevertheless an increase in the 
average rate of illness at all ages in the community, 
an increase which seems to bear witness to a de- 
pressed vitality and power of resistance in the nation. 
The Hearts of Oak Benefit Society shows an average 
increase of days’ sickness per member from 1°63 
in 1901 to 2°37 in 1910, while the National Deposit 
records an advance from 2°92 to 3°34 days per mem- 
ber. In the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows the 
average payment per member of sick benefit was 
17s. 23d. in. 1886, and 11. os. 43d. in 1910. These 
figures, which relate to lives specially selected for 
their prospect of good health, provide the ground- 
work for much thought in connection with the finance 
of the National Insurance Act, which takes account 
of nearly all sections of the population. ‘‘Quem 
Deus vult perdere prius dementat,”’ says Dr. Tredgold 
with regard to the frantic efforts of those who would 
seek the national salvation by means of hospitals, 
asylums, special schools, old-age pensions for paupers, 
night shelters for vagrants, and free meals for the 
unemployable. The science of eugenics is no fad 
of the moment; it is a serious attempt to discover 
and apply in organised society the principles on which 
the real improvement and progress of mankind has 
been and must be based. 
SELECTIVE media, i.e. media favouring the growth 
of one species or variety, have been largely used for 
the isolation of bacteria, particularly those of the 
“coli’’ group. Mr. Cecil Revis has investigated the 
action of some of these media, and finds that they 
tend to suppress what may be regarded as the feebler 
growers, so that the particular species or variety 
isolated will depend largely on the medium employed. 
He also concludes that the atypical varieties of B. 
coli are not degenerate forms, but are true variants. 
Coccoid forms of B. coli were found to appear in certain 
media. Experiments were made with ground B. coli 
to detect the presence of intra-cellular enzymes capable 
ee ee eS ae 
ee ee 
