August 15, 1907] 



NA TURE 



587 



pxceptlons. \vc may hope to stamp out infectious diseases, 

 Dr. Henrot proceeded to deal with the question of ctiild- 

 life protection. Various societies have been i'ounded in 

 I'rance to care for the mother, both before and after the 

 birth of the child, and to educate the parents in the proper 

 feeding and care of their children. For this purpose, 

 associations for the supply of proper milk, comparable to 

 our infants' milk depots, have been established. Creches 

 also have been organised to look after the children while 

 the mothers are at work. Children abandoned or in 

 immoral surroundings are cared for by the State, and in 

 France there arc no less than 178,000 of these, for whom 

 schools are established where, as they become old enough, 

 various trades are taught. The families which have . the 

 most numerous members should be the best housed, and 

 at \ancy the " Bureau de Bienfaisance " has provided 

 dwellings with gardens for those families where there are 

 children. 



An interesting rcpcrt by Dr. Leslie Mackenzie and 

 Captain .^. Foster has been issued by the Scotch Education 

 Department on a collection of statistics relative to the 

 physical condition of children attending the public schools 

 of the School Board for Glasgow. The figures show that 

 the one-roomed child (i.e. the child of a family occupying 

 one room only), whether boy or girl, is always on the 

 average distinctly smaller and lighter than the two- 

 roomed ; the two-roomed than the three-roomed ; and the 

 three-roomed than the four-roomed. " The numbers ex- 

 amined are so large, and the results are so uniform that 

 only one conclusion is possible, viz. that the poorest child 

 suffers most in nutrition and in growth. It cannot be an 

 accident that boys from two-roomed houses should be 

 1 1-7 lb. lighter on an average than boys from four-roomed 

 houses and 4-7 inches smaller. Neither is it an accident 

 that girls from one-roomed houses are, on the average, 

 14 lb. lighter and 5-3 inches shorter than the girls from 

 four-roomed houses." The report contains a number of 

 elaborate tables and diagrams. 



The Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital for June- 

 July contains a number of papers of interest to the patho- 

 logist and clinician, mostly from the laboratories of the 

 medical clinic of the hospital. The August number of the 

 same Bulletin is principally devoted to tuberculosis, and 

 contains an article, by Dr. Pohlman, on " The Purple 

 Island " by Phineas Fletcher, a seventeenth-century lay- 

 man's poetical conception of the human body. 



The Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute for August 

 (xxviii.. No. 7) contains the inaugural address by Sir 

 Charles Cameron at the Dublin conference, in which he 

 demonstrated how sanitation has reduced the death-rate, 

 and discussed the questions of tuberculosis, mill-c supply, 

 and infant mortality. 



After quoting a considerable portion of Sir H. H. 

 Johnston's article on big-game protection which appeared 

 in vol. Ixxvi., p. 37 (1907), of Nature, a writer in the 

 .\mcvican Naturalist for July asks the question whether 

 we cannot do without furs, remarking that the lack of 

 " buffalo-robes " due to the extermination of the bison 

 is not felt in America. He then goes on to raise a pro- 

 test against collecting skins and eggs for museum pur- 

 poses, observing that their scientific value is but slight, 

 while it is a question wdiether oology has any right to 

 rank as a science at all. In his opinion a museum with 

 specimens of species as rare in collections as the great 

 auk is of less value for educational purposes than a barn 



NO. T972, VOL. 76] 



where swallows nest. " In these days of inexpensive and 

 quite accurate pictures, collections are not necessary for 

 identification, and science is advanced by detailed studies 

 of common forms, rather than by collecting luna and 

 imperial moths." 



The July number of the Emu (forming the first part of 

 vol. vii.) opens with an account by Mr. I. Batey of the 

 changes w-hich have taken place in the bird-life on an 

 estate of fifteen thousand acres in Victoria during the last 

 sixty years. In its early days the tract was a veritable 

 bird paradise, but, largely owing to the felling of its 

 timber, many of the species have now completely dis- 

 appeared, soine of them from an area of much wider 

 extent than that occupied by the estate. Wedge-tailed 

 eagles abounded in 1846, and but little effect was made 

 on their numbers by the shot-guns then in use, although 

 the introduction of strychnine scon led to their practical 

 extermination. 



The July issue of the .American Naturalist opens with 

 some interesting personal reminiscences of Louis Agassiz 

 related by Mr. C. W. Eliot at a meeting of the " Saturday 

 Club " in connection with the Agassiz centenary. 

 Emphasis is laid on the great naturalist's eminence as a 

 teacher and expositor, and the novel methods of education- 

 he adopted. The son of a distinguished surgeon was, 

 for instance, set to study a few trilobites, upon which 

 he was expected to work for several weeks without any 

 aid from books or illustrations, and at the same time to 

 be his own artist. His powers of organisation and of 

 obtaining financial support were also very noteworthy in- 

 these early days of science teaching. Years ago it was 

 remarked that " Agassiz will get more money out of the 

 Commonwealth of Massachusetts for his subjects than 

 any of you have dreamed of getting, than any of you 

 could possibly get ; but he will so equip his subject, he 

 will set such a standard for collections in all subjects, that 

 every department of learning in the University will profit 

 bv his achievements." These words have proved absolutely 

 prophetic. 



Ix the August Issue (No. 3) of British Birds, Miss 

 E. L. Turner announces that the ruff has made its re- 

 appearance as a breeding species in Norfolk, where the 

 last known nest was recorded so long ago as iS8g. In 

 June of the present year a keeper discovered a reeve's 

 nest containing four eggs, which, together with the parent 

 bird, was successfully photographed. It is probable that 

 another pair of ruffs also nested in the county during the 

 present sumiTier, while as young birds were killed during 

 the two previous seasons, there is reason to believe that 

 the species has nested in Norfolk since 1004. Ruffs have 

 been reported as breeding in Yorkshire in 1901 and the 

 two succeeding years. In the same issue Mr. F. Smalley 

 points out that the alleged occurrence of the Pacific eider- 

 duck {Somateria ■a-nigrum) in the British Isles is due to 

 ornithologists having failed to recognise that drakes of the 

 ordinary eider-duck may show a faint dark chevron on 

 the throat. A specimen of the Sardinian warbler (Sylvia 

 mclanocephala), killed near Hastings in June last, de- 

 finitely adds another species to the British list. 



We have received a memoir by Dr. Alvan A. Tenney 

 on " Social Democracy and Population," issued in the 

 series of "Studies in History, Economics- and Public 

 Law " of Columbia University. By " social democracy " 

 the author means " that form of society ... in which 

 every man has a chance and knows that he has it," a 

 form of society based primarily on the maintenance of a 



