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NA TURE 



[December 9, 1922 



musii or the drama, neither of these speakers would 

 have professed, facetiously or otherwise, want of 

 knowledge of the functions of the institution they 

 honoured by their presence, or of the meaning of 

 subjects surveyed by it. Mr. Justice Darling, for 

 example, said he had heard of the Royal Society 

 as he had heard of the equator, and had been told 



that the u "concerned itself with medicine 



and biology, and particularly natural knowledge and 

 natural philosophy, but the moment the knowledge 

 became unnatural — and so far as he could see most 

 of it was — then the society had nothing more to do 

 with it." Of course, the society was founded for the 

 promotion of natural knowledge by inquiry as against 

 supernatural by revelation or authority. Mr. Justice 

 Darling should understand the distinction, for he 

 referred to Francis Bacon several times in the course 

 of his remarks, though always incorrectly, as " Lord " 

 Bacon. As Sir Charles Sherrington, who presided, 

 said, " The field of truth which the society explores 

 is in the realm of natural knowledge, and the manner 

 of the exploration of this field is in research." Sir 

 Ernest Rutherford was right when, in responding 

 to the toast of " The Medallists," he referred to the 

 spirit of adventure possessed by every scientific 

 pioneer. In no other department of intellectual 

 activity is this spirit more manifest, and in none 

 are such fertile provinces being opened. To us it 

 seems strange, therefore, that so little is commonly 

 understood of the origin and purpose of such a body 

 as the Royal Society, now in its 260th year, or 

 of the achievements of modern science represented 

 by it. 



During the war, when the country was short of 

 munitions, manufacturers at their wits' end for 

 supplies of chemicals, and medical men had to use 

 such drugs as were available instead of those most 

 suitable for their patients, no one had any doubt 

 that the making of these things was a key industry 

 and that when the war was over the Government 

 must see to it that the importer of fine chemicals 

 from Germany should be replaced by the British 

 manufacturers of such products. After much tribula- 

 tion the Safeguarding of Industries Act was passed 

 to achieve this end ; but thanks to the political 

 and legal discussions that have accompanied and 

 followed its passage and the national failing of a 

 short memory, many people have become doubtful 

 whether there is such a thing as a key industry. 

 Even chemists begin to wonder whether they know 

 a fine chemical when they see one. In these circum- 

 stances it is all to the good that somebody should 

 restate the case ; and this the Association of British 

 Chemical Manufacturers has done in a pamphlet 

 entitled " Shall the State Throw Away the Keys ? " 

 The publication contains numerous examples of 

 the dependence of our staple industries on a steady 

 supply of fine chemicals, and shows that such national 

 and Imperial functions as the care of public health 

 and the proper administration of tropical colonies 

 cannot be carried on without them. Some of the 

 most essential of these materials are now made in 

 this country ; but, as Sir William Pope points out in a 



NO. 2771, VOL. I IO] 



foreword to the pamphlet, much remains to be done, 

 and further developments in this direction cannot 

 fail " if public opinion realises that a flourishing 

 fine chemical industry is a vital necessity to the 

 prosperity of our Empire and insists that national 

 support is given to the young enterprise." This 

 pamphlet should be of considerable assistance in 

 creating an intelligent public opinion on this subject. 



On December 22 occurs the bicentenary of the 

 death of Pierre Varignon, who will be remembered 

 for the publication in 1687 — the year Newton's 

 " Principia " appeared — of the " Projet d'une nouvelle 

 mecanique," the first treatise in which the whole science 

 of statics was deduced from the principle known as 

 the parallelogram of forces. Varignon was the son 

 of an architect at Caen and was born in 1654. His 

 bent for mathematics was stimulated by Descartes' 

 work on geometry. His book immediately attracted 

 attention, and in 1688 he was made professor of 

 mathematics at the College Mazarin and a member 

 of the Academy of Sciences. In 1704 he followed 

 Duhamel in the chair of mathematics at the College 

 de France. He suffered a good deal from ill-health, 

 and his larger work, " Nouvelle Mecanique," did not 

 appear till 1725. Of this treatise De Morgan once 

 wrote, " This work was born long after its own 

 death, and three years after its author's. The 

 Projet of 1687 enabled all the world to act upon it ; 

 so that when the finished work was published it had 

 long been superseded. The great feature of this 

 work, as of the Projet, is the prominence given to 

 the composition of forces. Varignon and Newton 

 were forcing this commodity into the market at the 

 same time and independently." Varignon was one 

 of the earliest and most powerful advocates in France 

 of the use of the differential calculus and was a 

 correspondent of Leibniz and the Bernoullis. 



Excavations at Alfoldean, near Slinfold, a camp 

 on Sussex Stane Street, the route by which Roman 

 soldiers marched from Chichester to London, are 

 described in the Times of November 9. Remains of 

 officers' private quarters and of a canteen have 

 recently been found. Among other finds was a great 

 collection of pottery, nearly all broken, specimens of 

 many kinds of glass, and nine copper coins ranging 

 in date from Vespasian to the fifth-century Tetricus. 

 Mr. Winbolt, who is in charge of the excavations, 

 will report the results to the Sussex Archaeological 

 Society. Another discovery, at Wisley, Surrey, is an 

 ancient village dating between 50 B.C. and a.d. 50, 

 which is recorded in the Times of November 15. 

 It is stated that in the hut dwellings fragments of 

 broken pottery were discovered. In 1904 a great 

 deal of pottery was discovered and the kiln in which 

 it was burnt, while years ago, at the foot of the 

 village, a dug-out canoe, evidently belonging to it 

 and associated with flint implements, was found. 

 The canoe is now in the Weybridge Museum. 



The Elizabethan building in Croydon known as 

 the Whitgift Hospital, dating from 1599, is once 

 more threatened with destruction ; the Town Council 

 has given notice of a Parliamentary bill to acquire 



