342 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 348. 



ciety was in a transition state. Mr. Austen 

 Chamberlain, as representing the Treasury, 

 had insisted that the society should open its 

 gates to the public a certain number of 

 days in the year ; in fact the public had 

 rights there which had to be recognized. 

 Therefore the old character of the gardens 

 had almost completely disappeared. The 

 Society still retained its scientific char- 

 acter, however, and whatever facilities they 

 could give to promote science, particularly 

 botany, they would give. They had been un- 

 able to obtain a grant from the Government, 

 and the scientific part of the gardens was, 

 therefore, carried on with great diiEculty. 

 The subscriptions of the fellows were not 

 sufficient to keep up the gardens as they should 

 be kept up, and the council had to rely, 

 therefore, in some measure upon the enter- 

 tainments. Towards the end of the meeting 

 the chairman called attention to the skill and 

 beauty of a large number of Japanese drawings 

 of flowers and birds, of which he had a very 

 fine collection. 



At the last meeting of the Berlin Medical 

 Society, held on July 25, Professor Virchow is 

 reported by the Lancet to have alluded to the re- 

 cently-enunciated views of Professor Koch as 

 to the non-identity of tuberculosis in cattle 

 with that affecting the human subject. In his 

 sarcastic style he remarked that he was happy 

 to find that Professor Koch's views had under- 

 gone a change and were now in accordance 

 with his own, for he had maintained that the 

 mere presence of the Koch bacillus was not the 

 essential thing in tuberculosis ; a tubercle was, 

 in his opinion, a growth with a distinct ana- 

 tomical structure, and he had always protested 

 against the bacteriologists terming anything a 

 tubercle simply because a Koch bacillus hap- 

 pened to be present. He said that the adher- 

 ents to Koch's theory had believed his view to 

 be rather old-fashioned, but it did not annoy him 

 to recall to mind that he had sometimes been 

 superciliously treated by the younger bacteri- 

 ologists. Professor Virchow's ironical words 

 produced a great impression on the meeting. 



According to the Comptes Bendus, as trans- 

 lated in the Scientific American, H. Becquerel 



has confirmed, by an unpleasant experience, 

 the fact first noted by Walkofli'and Giesel, that 

 the rays of radium have an energetic and 

 peculiar action on the skin. Having carried in 

 his waistcoat pocket for several periods, equal 

 in all to about six hours, a cardboard box en- 

 closing a small sealed tube containing a few 

 decigrammes of intensely active radiferous 

 barium chloride, in ten days' time a red mark 

 corresponding to this tube was apparent on the 

 skin ; inflammation followed, the skin peeled 

 off and left a suppurating sore, which did not 

 heal for a month. A second burn subsequently 

 appeared in a place corresponding to the oppo- 

 site corner of the pocket where the tube had 

 been carried on another occasion. P. Curie has 

 had the same experience after exposing his arm 

 for a longer period to a less active specimen. 

 The reddening of the skin at first apparent 

 gradually assumed the character of a burn ; 

 after desquamation a persistent suppurating 

 sore was left which was not healed fifty-six days 

 after the exposure. In addition to these severe 

 ' burns ' the experimenters find that their 

 hands, exposed to the rays in the course of their 

 investigations, have a tendency to desquamate; 

 the tips of the fingers which have held tubes or 

 capsules containing very active radiferous ma- 

 terial often become hard and painful ; in one 

 case the inflammation lasted for fifteen days 

 and ended h-^^ the loss of the skin ; and the pain- 

 ful sensation has not yet disappeared, after the 

 lapse of two months. 



According to a notice in Nature, the annual 

 report of the Kussian Geographical Society for 

 1900 notes the growing activity of the young 

 branches of the society at Vladivostok, Kiakhta, 

 Tomsk and Orenburg — their work being not 

 limited to pure geography, but being mainly 

 directed to the exploration of the geology, bot- 

 any, zoology and prehistoric anthropology of 

 the respective regions. A new local museum 

 has consequently been opened at Troitskosavsk, 

 near Kiakhta, in addition to those of Minusinsk 

 and Yeniseisk. The chief medal of the Geo- 

 graphical Society, the Constantine medal, was 

 awarded this year to V. Obrucheff", the explorer 

 of the Nan-shan and Mongolia, who has also 

 explored very large portions of Transbaikalia 

 and the Pacific littoral, and whose preliminary 



