April 15, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



639 



The question of the improvement of ports by 

 the installation of practical appliances is 

 deemed so important that it has been given in 

 the program under a separate heading. The 

 Panama Canal, sailors' charitable associations, 

 territorial seas, international marine statistics, 

 yachting, sardine fisheries and wireless teleg- 

 raphy also fig-ure in the list of matters to be 

 dealt with. 



The London Times states that Sir Alfred 

 Jones entertained at lunch, in Liverpool, on 

 February 22, a company of merchants and 

 scientists to meet Professor Boyce on his re- 

 turn from Egypt, and to hear his statement 

 as to the success of the anti-malarial fever 

 expedition to Ismailia. Sir Alfred Jones pre- 

 sided and wfelcomed Professor Boyce. Pro- 

 fessor Boyce said that when Major Ross vis- 

 ited Ismailia in September, 1902, there were 

 2,000 cases of malaria annually in a popula- 

 tion of 9,000 people, of whom 2,000 were 

 Europeans. The authorities at Ismailia loy- 

 ally carried out Major Eoss's suggestions as 

 to filling up marsh land close to the town and 

 cleaning out small irrigating channels and 

 stagnant waters. That involved an expense 

 of £4,400, and at the same time they organized 

 a drains brigade and petroleum brigade, as a 

 result of whose work people could now sleep 

 in any of the houses in the European quarter 

 without mosquito nets. From something like 

 2,000 cases of malaria a year the number had 

 been reduced, according to the latest statistics 

 drawn up by an independent medical officer, 

 to 200. As a matter of fact, there were no 

 fresh cases of malarial infection in Ismailia; 

 there had been no deaths among Europeans 

 during the year, and only four among natives, 

 against something like 30 deaths the year be- 

 fore. Such had been the improvement that 

 Prince D'Arenberg, president of the Suez 

 Canal Company, informed him that he hoped 

 before two years were out to see Ismailia re- 

 garded as the sanatorium and watering place 

 for Cairo. Tropical medicine was bringing 

 us to think that after all this little country of 

 ours had been for centuries teaching medicine 

 applicable to our own country and domestic 

 life without thinking of our great empire all 

 over the world. The time had come when 



they must teach students a medicine applicable 

 to the whole world. Major Eonald Eoss, C.B., 

 remarked that the success of the anti-malarial 

 campaign at Ismailia had taught two things 

 — that it was possible to rid a large town en- 

 tirely of mosquitoes, and that it was equally 

 possible to eradicate malaria. He had been 

 asked by Mr. Brodrick to draw up a report as 

 to malaria cases in India, which numbered 

 300,000 admissions to hospitals among the 

 troops and the gaol prisoners. With the 

 Ismailia figures before him he would do that 

 with complete confidence, for he was sure that 

 very shortly they would reduce that immense 

 admission rate to one third of its former 

 number. 



We learn from N attire that a bill for render- 

 ing compulsory the use of the metric system of 

 weights and measures in the United Kingdom 

 was read a second time in the House of Lords 

 and referred to a select committee. The bill 

 provides that the metric system shall become 

 compulsory on April 5, 1906, or at such later 

 date as may be directed by His Majesty by 

 order in council. It is, therefore, left to the 

 discretion of the government to fix the date 

 for inaugurating the compulsory adoption of 

 the system. In moving the second reading of 

 the bill. Lord Belhaven referred to the recom- 

 mendations of the select committee of the 

 House of Commons in 1895, and pointed out 

 the educational and commercial advantages 

 which would follow the adoption of the metric 

 system in the place of our present irrational 

 standards. Lord Kelvin, speaking in support 

 of the bill, remarked that in Germany, France 

 and Italy, no inconvenience had resulted from 

 the introduction of the metric system. He 

 said it was of interest to know that the decimal 

 system originated in England. In a letter 

 dated November 14, 1783, James Watt laid 

 down a plan which was in all respects the 

 system adopted by the French philosophers 

 seven years later, which they suggested to the 

 King of England as a system that might be 

 adopted by international agreement. James 

 Watt's objects were to secure uniformity and 

 to establish a mode of division which should 

 be convenient as long as decimal arithmetic 



