632 
foreign consumption with his cheap but well- 
made ‘interchangeable’ wares, owes his seem- 
ingly meteoric success to applied science and 
in large part, in these later years, to the intro- 
duction into his manufacturing and transporta- 
tion organizations of scientifically trained men, 
and while it is unquestionably the fact that 
Great Britain is suffering from neglect of sci- 
ence, and from the barbarous spirit and igno- 
rance of her trades-unions, the real, the funda- 
mental, element of difference probably lies 
behind all this, The ultimate cause of these 
developments of the United States which have 
so astonished the world is that perfect freedom, 
political and conventional, that freedom of the 
individual to mark out his own life and strive 
for his own highest goals, unhampered by gov- 
ernmental dictation or by bonds of caste, which 
has given the American citizen hope, ambition, 
purpose and effective energy. It is this which 
gave him invention, power of achievement, his 
patent laws, his legislation in behalf of essential 
industries, even his alert mind and his patriot- 
ism and love of country, It is this which has 
given us our common schools, which has pro- 
moted the organization of schools of the arts 
and trades and productive professions and the 
whole system of technical education and of 
industrially applied science. This has given 
our capitalist a new use for accumulated wealth 
in the endowment of schools of science and the 
promotion of education generally, has induced 
the adoption of organized industrial systems on 
such an enormous scale and has permitted the 
introduction of labor-assisting machinery with- 
out serious opposition on the part of those 
certain to be ultimately most benefited by the 
resultant increase of wages and decreased costs 
of product. Great Britain is still under the 
enslaving influences, in large degree, of con- 
vention and caste, and it is mainly this which lies 
at the bottom of her slow progress in the adop- 
tion of modern scientific methods, of improved 
systems and of extensive and intensive tech- 
nical education. 
Meantime, these two books will serve for the 
present as admirable summaries of progress to 
date and, later, will have great value histori- 
cally. 
R, H. THurRsTON. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Von. XIII. No. 329, 
THE MALARIA EXPEDITION TO NIGERIA.* 
Tue detailed report of the expedition sent 
out to West Africa last year by the committee 
of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has 
not yet been completed, but its main conclu- 
sions can now be given. The expedition was 
under the direction of Dr. H. H. Annett, demon- 
strator at the Liverpool School of Medicine. 
Its main objects were: (1) the exploration and 
investigation of the conditions under which ma- 
larial fever occurs and is conveyed to Europeans, 
(2) the possibility of adopting any preventive 
measures. against the disease, and (3) the cor- 
roboration and extension of recent discoveries 
and researches on the subject. In Nigeria 
there are no large communities of Europeans 
such as at Lagos, Accra, Cape Coast and Sierra 
Leone, but there were from three to ten white 
men at each of the stations, with the excep- 
tion of Old Calabar and Lokoja, where they num- 
ber ahundred or more. The observations of 
the members of the expedition confirm the re- 
cent discoveries regarding the cause of malarial 
fever and more especially the part played by 
mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles as the carrier 
of the disease from an infected to a non-infected 
person. The examination of the blood of the 
natives themselves corroborated the work of 
Professor Koch in the Hast Indies, and of the 
members of the Royal Society’s Commission on 
Malaria in West Africa, that the blood parasite 
which gives rise to malarial fever in man is car- 
ried by the mosquito from the native to the 
European—and more especially from the native 
children. The examination of the blood of 
hundreds of native children revealed the inter- 
esting fact that between 50 and 80 per cent. of 
those under five years, between 20 and 30 per . 
cent. of ages between five and ten years, and a 
small percentage over ten years contained ma- 
larial parasites, often in very large numbers. 
The breeding places of the Anopheles were found 
to be chiefly the dug-out native canoes in the 
regions of the mangrove swamps, claypits and 
puddles in the forested district, and at Lokoja 
puddles and ditches on and alongside the 
roads and footpaths. It was particularly no- 
ticed everywhere how carelessness in the con- 
struction of roads and footpaths, and more es- 
* From the London Times. 
