A.—_MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES. Q7 
to have over-production in research workers, we do not at present seem 
to have reached that stage for normal times. 
In considering research as a profession, it must be remembered that 
especially in research of a pioneering kind the worker may spend years 
without getting results of any very striking importance. He may get 
depressed, lose hope, and be inclined if he gets the chance to go into 
administration and organisation where there is a greater certainty of work 
yielding an adequate result. The researcher, if he is to have a happy life, 
must regard the game and not the score as the chief thing. In every 
research difficulties and apparently anomalous results are constantly 
turning up. To overcome these, to make clear and consistent what 
before was obscure and confused, is to some minds one of the keenest of 
pleasures and one which may be produced by discovering the source of a 
persistent leak in a discharge tube just as well as by finding a new ray. 
Bxperience shows that men with minds of this type are not very common. 
There are many who when they are young and just fresh from a laboratory, 
where there is an atmosphere of research and many research workers, are 
so enthusiastic about research that they think nothing else matters, 
Often, however, this enthusiasm soon fades and they become more 
interested in organisation and administration than research. Thus, those 
who begin by working in the Research Department of a firm tend to 
drift into the other departments. I think this, on the whole, is an advan- 
tage, for it diffuses the scientific spirit and outlook throughout the work 
of the firm, this may be as important as discoveries in the laboratory 
and quicker in its effects. 
The increase in the number of research workers has naturally led to a 
corresponding increase in the number of papers on physics. From one 
point of view this is very gratifying, from another it is embarrassing. 
‘Science Abstracts ’ for 1930 contains abstracts of 4,165 papers on physics, 
corresponding to very nearly a dozen a day. It is obvious that no one 
can read more than a small fraction of these. It is generally more than 
one can do to read even those in a particular branch of physics, this leads 
to great specialisation. Volumes such as those of ‘Science Abstracts,’ 
which give the gist of a paper in a small space, are of great value, especially 
for looking up the literature of a subject over a definite period. For this 
purpose, however, the subject index is of vital importance, in making this 
index it is not enough to go by the title of a paper, the contents of a paper 
cannot all be got into its title. The makers of the index should have 
read the papers. This seems a council of perfection, but it would practi- 
cally be secured if the maker of the abstract were to send in with it cards 
for the subject index. This is work that requires great care and sound 
judgment. 
I do not think that abstracts alone are sufficient to cope with this 
avalanche of papers on physics. As far as I know we have nothing in 
physics corresponding to the annual reports issued by the Chemical Society 
on the progress of various branches of chemistry. I think it would be a 
very good thing if we had, and that it is a thing on which money and 
time might well be spent. In addition to these, there should, I think, be 
fuller and more critical reports issued regularly at a longer period, say 
quinquennially, of the character of those which from time to time have 
