August 3, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



199 



seriously disarrange tlie ship's plans for reach- 

 ing the far north. 



There is again a new universal language to 

 rival Volapiik and Spokil, and which calls itself 

 Bolak, in English the ' blue language ' or 

 ' the language colour of heavens. ' We quote 

 from the English circular issued from Paris. 

 This language appears to be the joint produc 

 tion of Leon Bollack and Raoul de la Grasserie. 

 The following extract is from the same circular : 



' ' To give to all the possibility of receiving news 

 from whole the world and of understanding them 

 without any translator. 



"To give to all the possibility of crossing whole the 

 world and of making themselves understood untkotit 

 any interpreter. 



"And a more generous ideal may be reached, 

 owing to the coming of an Inteenational Lan- 

 guage which, letting remain the 7iaiive idiom of each 

 one, would become the unique Foreign Language 

 for All. 



"It is indeed obvious to understand that this 

 facility of comprehension between persons of different 

 nationalities will forcibly raise a Holy Communion 

 of thoughts and of pacification among peoples dealing 

 together. ' ' 



But we of the English tongue naturallj' ask 

 why not adopt English as the universal lan- 

 guage, since it is alreadj' more universal than 

 any language has ever been in the history of 

 the world ? 



The daily papers report that Indians hunting 

 on the east coast of Hudson Bay, north of Fort 

 George, in the early spring, have a story that 

 may eventually give the history of the fate of 

 Andree and his companions. Mr. George Een- 

 ison, returning from Moose Factory, the Hud- 

 son Bay Company's post on the west coast of 

 James Bay, says that the last packet from 

 York Factory brought word that the Indians 

 had found a quantity of wreckage, the bodies of 

 two men and a man in the last stages of death. 

 The Indians could not understand the language 

 he spoke, but it was not English. He died 

 while they were there, and they returned to 

 their post without bringing away any evidence 

 of the strange occurrence. As the Indians had 

 never seen a balloon, the nature of the wreck- 

 age was judged only from descriptions given by 

 them, but Mr. Eenison says they described ac- 



curately a car and other fixtures that could be- 

 long to nothing else. Hudson Bay Company 

 officers are firmly convinced that it is the An- 

 dree party, and have sent out men, guided by 

 the same Indians, to find and bring back evi- 

 dence to establish the identity of the party. 



A British Parliamentary paper has been pub- 

 lished giving details of experiments performed 

 on living animals in 1899. It appears from the 

 abstract in the London Times that the total 

 number of licenses in England and Scotland 

 was 250, of whom 72 performed no experiments. 

 Tables I. and II. give the names of all persons 

 who held licenses during 1899. These tables 

 afford evidence (1) that licenses and certificates 

 have been granted and allowed only upon the 

 recommendation of persons of high scientific 

 standing ; (2) that the licensees are persons 

 who, by their training and education, are fitted 

 to undertake experimental work and to profit 

 by it ; (3) that all experimental work has been 

 conducted in suitable places. Table III. shows 

 the number and the nature of the experiments 

 performed by each licensee mentioned in Table 

 I., specifying whether these experiments were 

 done under the license alone or under any 

 special certificate, so that the reader may 

 judge which experiments (if any) were of 

 a painful nature. Table III. is divided into 

 two parts, A and B, for the purpose of 

 separating experiments which are performed 

 without anassthetics from experiments in which 

 anfesthetics are used. The only experiments 

 performed without anaesthetics are inoculations, 

 hypodermic injections, vaccinations, and simi- 

 lar proceedings, in which the pain inflicted is 

 not greater than the prick of a needle. No 

 experiments requiring anything of the nature 

 of a surgical operation, or that would cause the 

 infliction of an appreciable amount of pain, 

 are allowed to be performed without an anaes- 

 thetic. The total number of experiments in- 

 cluded in Table III. (A) is 1656. Of these 

 there were performed under license alone 820, 

 under certificate C 182, under certificate B 449, 

 under certificate B + EE 205. In experiments 

 performed under the license alone, or under 

 certificate C, the animal sufiers no pain, be- 

 cause it is kept under the influence of an anaes- 

 thetic from the beginning of the experiment 



