768 



SCIENCE 



[N". S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 855 



Dutcli engineer, and Professor Gaetano Pla- 

 tania have also supported the same idea. In 

 the opinion of Herr Friedlander, however, it 

 would be better to place the institute in Naples 

 itself, where there would be less danger to the 

 costly laboratories and apparatus, and where 

 the vicinity of the university and other scien- 

 tific institutes would facilitate the work. 

 After communicating his plan to the last In- 

 ternational Geological Congress, held in 

 Stockholm, and obtaining the approval of the 

 congress Herr Friedlander set to work to can- 

 vass among the scientific societies of every 

 nation for supporters. He has now secured 

 62 eminent names, among them 25 Italians, 

 19 Germans and three Englishmen, Sir Archi- 

 bald Geikie, the president of the Eoyal So- 

 ciety, Professor H. L. Tempest Anderson, of 

 York and Professor H. L. Bowman, of Ox- 

 ford. The Eoyal Academy of Naples and the 

 Geological Committee of Italy have given 

 their adherence to the scheme, some 60 of the 

 most prominent scientific and political person- 

 ages of Italy are forming a committee to pro- 

 mote it, and the Italian government will 

 shortly decide as to what official support can 

 be given also. Herr Friedlander has himself 

 generously subscribed £4,000 for the building 

 fund, and another £4,000 to be spread over a 

 term of ten years in ten annual payments. 

 The success of the scheme only depends now 

 upon the amount of the subscriptions which 

 will answer Herr Friedlander's appeal to the 

 general public of every country. As far as 

 Italy is concerned the scheme has already ob- 

 tained the full approval of the most important 

 members of the scientific world. 



It is stated in the London Times that the 

 regulations issued by the Belgian government 

 for the prevention and cure of sleeping sick- 

 ness in the Congo provide heavy penalties for 

 neglect of the prescribed precautions. All 

 employers of native labor must take meas- 

 ures to discover any cases of sleeping sickness 

 among their staff and report them at once to 

 the authorities. Those aiding others to ne- 

 glect the treatment prescribed will be pun- 

 ished; as well as those who try to pass from 



infected to uninfected districts or vice versa. 

 It is noted that in order to combat the dis- 

 ease effectively it is all-important to discover 

 those victims who have not yet reached the 

 second stage — somnolence. Such a measure 

 would tend not only to decrease the mortality 

 but also to limit the dissemination of the 

 germs. All suspects, therefore, are to be ex- 

 amined by the heads of trading posts or sent 

 for inspection to the nearest doctor, who will 

 carry out a thorough examination. Inspection 

 posts are to be established on the main lines 

 of communication in order to prevent sus- 

 pects from carrying the disease into prov- 

 inces which are as yet untouched. Natives 

 from the surrounding countries will only be 

 permitted to enter the unaffected regions of 

 the Belgian colony after undergoing a search- 

 ing medical examination at Ala or Jakoma. 



A Conference on Sleeping Sickness has 

 been held at the British Foreign Office as a 

 result of representations made of the danger 

 of the spread of sleeping sickness in conse- 

 quence of the construction of the Rhodesia- 

 Katanga Railway, which runs from the north 

 of Broken Hill to the Congo frontier and be- 

 yond. The delegates to the conference were 

 M. Melot, representing the Belgian govern- 

 ment. Dr. van Campenhout, of the Colonial 

 Office in Brussels, Dr. Sheffield Neave, repre- 

 senting the Rhodesia-Katanga Railway, Dr. 

 Aylmer May, representing the Chartered 

 Company, Dr. Bagshawe, of the Sleeping 

 Sickness Bureau, and representatives of the 

 British Foreign and Colonial Offices. 



A COMMITTEE for the study of the sea was 

 appointed in 1909 by the Italian Society for 

 Advancement of Science. Nature states that 

 its work was so active and promising that the 

 committee was converted by an act of parlia- 

 ment into an institution of the Italian king- 

 dom. The Regio Comitate Talassografico 

 Italiano is to be concerned with investigations 

 of the Italian seas from the physical and 

 chemical points of view as well as from the 

 biological. Great importance will be attached 

 to practical questions concerning the naviga- 

 tion and the fisheries. Investigations of the 



