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is a clear tradition of its occurrence in the past, and it is said still to be practised. This form of marriage also takes place among the Dieri of Australia, who recognise that relatives belonging to generations twice removed from one another are naturally husband and wife (ii., p. 47). Dr. Rivers will be interested to learn that Sarat Chandra Roy, in his forthcoming book on the Oraons of Chota Nagpur, will produce evidence to show that there are reasons for inferring the former existence amongst the Oraons (before clan exogamy was instituted) of a system of marriage or union between persons related to each other as grandparent (or grand-uncle or grand-aunt) and grandchild (or grand-nephew or grand-niece)." These archaic social institutions may be preserved in nomenclature like flies in amber. Dr. Rivers argues that the anomalous forms of marriage imply a dual organisation with matrilineal descent, and he is driven to assume a state of

of each mode combined with associated data leads to a finer analysis. His conclusions may be summarised as follows:

The introduction of betel-chewing was relatively late and restricted and may have taken place from Indonesia after the invasion of the Hindus. With it were associated marriage with the wife of the father's brother, the special sanctity of the skull, and the plank-built canoe.

The effect of the kava-using peoples was more extensive in time and space; they had neither clan organisation nor exogamy, some preserved the body, and respect was paid to the head or skull. Contact with the earlier populations resulted in wife purchase and the development of secret societies. They introduced the cult of the dead and the institutions of taboo, totemism, and chieftainship, an outrigger canoe, money, the slit drum or gong, the conch trumpet, megalithic monuments, and the fowl, pig, and dog.

FIG. 2.-Canoe and canoe-shed, Tikopia. From "The History of Melanesian Society."

society in which the elders had acquired so predominant a position that they were able to monopolise all the young women. He also points out that, according to this view, cross-cousin marriage arose as a modification of the marriage with the wife of the mother's brother.

Dr. Rivers has made a special study of the secret societies of Melanesia, and he works out an elaborate argument to show that the secret ceremonial is derived from rites brought by an immigrant people, relatively few in number, who were solely of the male sex, or accompanied by very few women of their own race. By considering the distribution and the customs and objects associated with betel-chewing and kavadrinking, he shows that these comestibles mark two main migrations into Melanesia, which previously was inhabited by a people with a dual organisation. Various methods of the disposal of the dead indicate racial complexity, and a study

There

may have been two immigrations
of peoples who made monuments
of stone. (1) Those who erected
the more dolmen-like structures,
probably had aquatic totems, and
interred their dead in the ex-
tended position; (2) and later,
those whose stone structures
tended to take the form of pyra-
mids, who had bird totems, prac-
tised a cult of the
cremated their dead.

[graphic]

sun, and

These immigrants found a people divided into two exogamous groups, with matrilineal descent, and three special forms of marriage (with daughter's daughter, wife of mother's brother, and wife of father's father), they had rectilinear decorative designs, and employed the bullroarer. The dual organisation seems to have been formed by fusion rather than by fission, judging from the frequent survival of hostility between the two moieties, their mythology, character, and possibly even slight traces of differences in physique. Whatever the previous social condition of each moiety, a fusion of two races under certain conditions might produce matrilineal descent. dual organisation would thus imply a dual origin, of which the immigrant people spoke an Austronesian language (as did the kava and betel peoples), interred their dead in a sitting position, feared the dead, believed in spirits, practised circumcision, introduced the bow and arrow, and an outrigger canoe. The Baining of New Britain may represent, though, of course, in a modified form, the aboriginal elements of the dual people; they are devoid of any fear of the dead, and their small stature suggests that the pre-dual people may have been pygmies.

The

Dr. Rivers has produced a work which will have far-reaching results, it being not merely a storehouse of facts, but a demonstration of

method, and conclusions are arrived at which will be sure to provoke discussion. Whatever may be the final results of such discussions, this book will probably take rank as a landmark in the study of ethnology. A. C. HADDON.

TYPHUS FEVER.

TYPHUS fever, which has just appeared in

and is rife in Serbia, has been one of the great epidemic diseases of the world. Hirsch remarked :-"The history of typhus is written in those dark pages of the world's story which tell of the grievous visitations of mankind by war, famine, and misery of every kind."

The name is of no, great antiquity, for it was applied to a malady or group of maladies first by Sauvages in 1759. Until then, from the time of Hippocrates downwards, it had been employed to designate a confused state of intellect, with a tendency to stupor. It was, in fact, not until 1850 that typhus fever was finally differentiated from typhoid or enteric fever by the researches of Jenner. One of the older synonyms for the disease was jail fever, and in the sixteenth century, at the first three of the famous "Black Assizes," judges, sheriffs, and jurymen were stricken with it as the result of infection from prisoners brought for trial. Another name formerly given to it is Morbus castrensis or "military fever," on account of the ravages occasioned by it among soldiers and camp followers from the time of the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War down to the siege of Sebastopol. Owing to the character of the eruption, typhus fever has sometimes been termed "spotted fever" (to be distinguished from cerebro-spinal fever, also known as spotted fever), and the German name is flecktyphus, also typhus exanthematicus, to distinguish it from typhus abdominalis, typhoid or enteric fever. The French name is similarly typhus exanthématique. Brill's disease, met with in New York, and Tabadillo of Mexico, seem to be manifestations of it. Few countries have suffered more than Ireland, and the disease has lingered in the outer Hebrides, but of late years has been practically unknown in England, and is seen but rarely in Scotland.

The invasion of typhus is, in the majority of cases, like pneumonia, sudden and severe after an incubation period of about twelve days. On the fourth or fifth day the eruption appears, first measly in character, but appearing on the wrists, trunk, and thighs, and afterwards becoming hæmorrhagic. The patient then suffers from severe fever with its usual concomitants, passing into extreme prostration. The nervous system suffers severely, and there is great muscular restlessness and tremor, excitement and delirium. favourable cases the attack ends comparatively suddenly about the fourteenth day.

In

There are, of course, considerable variations in the course of the disease in individual cases; it is always to be regarded as a serious affection, and

the average death-rate for all ages under favourable conditions is 15-19 per cent.; no age is exempt. An attack of typhus affords marked protection, and second attacks are as rare as those of small-pox. No special treatment for it has yet been discovered.

The etiology of the disease is still uncertain: no specific micro-organism has been discovered, but it is probably protozoan in nature.

Typhus is markedly infectious, and the infectivity is greater the larger the number of cases which are aggregated together. The mode of spread for a long time was uncertain, and until recently it was regarded as being conveyed by the emanations from the patient. A few years ago, in the epidemic which occurred in Aberdeen, Prof. Matthew Hay made the pregnant suggestion, on epidemiological grounds, that the disease might be conveyed by fleas. Further investigations have conclusively proved that it is conveyed by the body-louse, possibly by the head-louse also. This important fact explains how it is that typhus is so prone to appear in times of stress, war, and famine-when misery prevails and personal cleanliness is difficult or impossible to maintain.

Prevention of the spread of the disease largely resolves itself, therefore, into extermination of lice, and much attention is now being directed to the means which may attain this end. R. T. H.

AN ADVISORY COUNCIL ON INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH.

THE proposed formation of an Advisory

Council concerned with industrial and scientific research was announced by Mr. J. A. Pease, President of the Board of Education, to the deputation of which we gave an account last week. The scheme was described by Mr. Pease in Committee of the House of Commons on May 13 in connection with the Education Estimates; and the debate which followed upon it was one of the most important from a scientific point of view that has been heard in the House for a long time.

The general question of the relation of science to the State, and the particular work which a suitably constituted Advisory Council could undertake, are dealt with elsewhere in this issue of NATURE by Sir William Ramsay. We need scarcely remind our readers that the need for increased provision for research in pure and applied science has been urged in these columns for many years by leaders in the scientific world concerned not only with the advancement of natural knowledge, but also with the promotion of national prosperity. For the past ten years the British Science Guild has been continuously endeavouring, with little encouragement, to secure public and official recognition of scientific research and organisation as essential factors of industrial progress. It has shown over and over again that whereas in Germany the State fosters all work and institutions engaged in scientific work and advanced technology, and in the United States

private benefactions increase the endowments for such purposes at the rate of about 5,000,000l. annually, in the United Kingdom neither the State nor the generosity of individuals makes provision for research on a scale at al comparable with what is done in the two countries which are our chief competitors in the industrial world.

The war has brought to the forefront the national necessities to which Sir Norman Lockyer directed attention in his presidential address to the British Association at Southport in 1903, and throughout its existence the British Science Gui'd has persistently endeavoured to stimulate action which would encourage the expansion, and promote the use, of the scientific forces of the Empire. At last both men of science and members of Parliament have awakened to a sense of the importance of these matters; and, as we reported last week, representatives of the Royal Society and the Chemical Society have urged upon the Government the need for intimate interest by the State in scientific research and its relation to manufactures. We congratulate these and other societies upon the support thus given to the efforts of the British Science Guild to organise scientific work in the interests of national welfare.

Political leaders have expressed, from time to time, their sympathetic interest in scientific investigation and their belief in its influence upon industrial development, but until now little attempt has been made to give practical value to their profession. The unanimity with which the scheme put forward by Mr. Pease was supported in the House of Commons shows that all parties are prepared to make adequate provision for scientific work and its organisation in the interests of industry when a definite policy is proposed. We reprint below, from the official report of the debate on May 13 (Parliamentary Debates, vol. lxxi., No. 52) the main parts of speeches referring to the Advisory Council.

MR. PEASE: The war has brought home to us and to our notice that we have been far too dependent for very many processes and many materials upon the foreigner, and we have realised that it is essential, if we are going to maintain our position in the world, to make better use of our scientifically trained workers, that we must increase the number of those workers, and that we must endeavour to secure that industry is closely associated with our scientific workers, and promote a proper system of encouragement of research workers, especially in our universities. The fault in the past, no doubt, has been partly due to the remissness on the part of the Government in failing to create careers for scientific men. It has also, I think, been due partly to the universities, who have not realised how important it is that pure science ought to be utilised with applied science and brought into close contact with manufacturing interests. I think it was also partly due to the fact that the manufacturers themselves under-valued the importance of science in connection with their particular industries. It was partly due, too, to the fact that the ratepayers have been too niggardly in making provision in connection with their technical institutions and colleges.

I ought, perhaps, to give a few illustrations to the

House in order to show that by expenditure in the first instance of a comparatively small sum of money, which ought to develop into very substantial sums of money in the future, much can be done by research workers, and by properly scientifically trained individuals in regard to many of those processes for which hitherto we have been dependent upon other countries. We relied upon Germany for hard porcelain tubes used in pyrometers which are required for measuring high temperature. On a supply of these pyrometers depends the manufacture of needles required for the sewing of boots and providing the footgear of our troops. I am glad to say that, owing to the research work that has taken place recently, we are now able to produce as good porcelain as that previously produced for this purpose in Germany, and we are able, therefore, to produce the necessary needles for this purpose. It may astonish the House when I tell them that, whereas four firms in Germany employ 1000 chemists in connection with their dye works, in the whole of our industries there are only 500 chemists employed. There are in Germany more than 3000 students, even at the present time, so far as I can learn, studying research work in connection with their university life, whilst in this country I do not think we have more than 350 students engaged in such research work. Let me give another illustration of the success which may be secured by research work. Our successes over our enemy in aviation are very largely due to the investigations made into automatic stability by a young man who went through an elementary school, fought his way up to the Imperial College, and went through a course at the National Physical Laboratory, and invented and introduced the B. E. biplane-at any rate, from his investigations the B.E. biplane was developed. We have hitherto done very little to encourage these brilliant young men taking up a scientific career.

The average salary given to a junior teacher of science is, I am told, only about 150l. a year.

With

a meagre salary of that kind it is not to be expected that individuals are going to endeavour to enter a career which is so badly rewarded. Let me give the Committee just one other illustration of what research may do. Lyddite was made at the commencement of the war out of phenol. The price went up at once from 6d. to 5s., and owing to laboratory experiments conducted by Prof. Green at Leeds he was able to reduce the cost to Is., as lyddite can now be made from benzol. That was entirely attributable to the research work of one man. If those things can successfully be done in times of war, I know how many things can be done in times of peace. I have been associated myself with the production of a large number of by-products from coal, and it was even necessary to go to Germany for the bricks and plant in order to erect a certain oven in this country. I satisfied myself that it is possible that these materials can be produced, and ought to be produced, at home, if only we had a sufficient number of research workers and trained men of science turning to practical value their scientific training.

I could go on and develop this subject. I see opposite a representative from Ireland who asked me a question in regard to technical optics, and there is a great deal of work to be done in this country with reference to that subject. A professor told me the other day that it had only just been found out why they were making so many failures. A greenish hue came into the glass they were producing, and in consequence they were unable to produce the necessary lenses. By research work it was found that this was due to barium oxide being contaminated with iron, and they had to go to another source in order to obtain the glass free from this impurity. And so I might go on and give case after case where by

research and a little expenditure on the scientific training of able men we would be able as a country to succeed just in the same way as the Germans have succeeded in recent years. My fear is that after the war we shall have to contend with a fiercer competition than we have had to contend with even in recent years, and it will be conducted by our enemy with less scrupulous methods. The Government agree with me that something ought to be done at once, and we must make more use of the workers in our country and prepare for an increased supply of them, and bring our universities and technical institutions into closer association with industry, and also bring our leaders of industry into closer association with skilled workers. Steps must be taken at once. Adequate supplies require prolonged endeavour. The task immediately before us may be advanced at once by the appointment of an Advisory Council on Industrial Research. I want a Committee of experts who will themselves be able to consult other expert committees working in different directions. They, in turn, must be associated with leaders of industry. We shall want advisers representing various industries in the country who not only possess certain knowledge in connection with pure science, but will be able to turn to the best account the knowledge they have acquired in the application of that knowledge to industry. We shall work in close co-operation with the Board of Trade, who are seconding the efforts of my old board. Such a body as an Advisory Council of very distinguished men upon whom we shall rely for advice, ought to be at work, and I hope it will be at work within the next few weeks. I am now considering the names, although I am not in a position to name them at the moment.

So soon as we get a Committee of that kind nominated they will at once begin their work. The solution of several problems will be placed before them in connection with the glass industry, the making of hard porcelain, technical optics; and it will be one of their duties to secure selected workers who have passed through graduated courses suitable for doing research work in laboratories in the solution of a certain number of definite problems. They will have to advise me as to how money should be immediately spent, and how it should be subsequently spent when we are able to obtain rather larger grants from the Treasury than we shall have at our disposal during the current year. They will have to advise as to the way money should be spent in training and research work generally, and how money should be spent and distributed amongst specialised departments, such as the Imperial College of Science at South Kensington. What I am anxious to secure is the use of the best scientific brains in connection with this enormous problem which is of such vital importance to the country. I hope to place on the Estimates for the current year a sum between 25,000l. and 30,000l., but the demand for money for this work will enormously increase as time goes on, and I want to inform the House that whilst we are beginning with this comparatively small sum we think it will develop, and if the scheme is to succeed I believe it must depend upon State help in the years to come, and State help must steadily progress.

As I have been longer in my present post than any of my predecessors, I may be allowed to say that in my judgment two things are essential in the interests of this country if we are to maintain our position and succeed in the future and remain in the proud position, industrially and commercially, in which we are now situated. First, that after the war, and even during the war, an effort should be made to retain longer at school those who are able to benefit by further education. Too many now leave school at the ages of

twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and there is an enormous wastage of ability in the country owing to the non-education of the children after that age. Secondly, the nation should create careers for men who are capable in the scientific world of benefiting that problem. If we had these two things I believe we should maintain our position, and without them I am afraid we shall be discouraged. Therefore, so far as I am able, I wish to appeal to all those men throughout the country who are devoting their lives to the cause of education to do what they can to encourage, not only the longer education of abler children in the secondary schools, but also to make the scheme which I have outlined here this evening very briefly a success in connection with training scientific workers who will be a real advantage to the industries of this country in years to come.

SIR PHILIP MAGNUS: I have no doubt whatever that the scheme for co-ordinating more successfully the science of industry will be welcomed by all scientific men in this country. I should not like it to be thought for one moment that our universities and our technical institutions have failed to turn out a sufficient number of scientifically trained men to be able to carry on research work in connection with our industries almost to the same extent that it has been done in other countries. Where we have to some extent, and to a large extent, failed in this country is in the appreciation of manufacturers and employers of the value and importance of such scientific training, and if the conclusions at which the President has arrived, and if the facts connected with this war will bring home to our manufacturers and employers the great advantage which they can obtain by liberally supporting scientific men in connection with their work, then the Right Hon. gentleman will not have spoken in vain this evening.

There is nothing in which we have been more deficient in this country than in scientific organisation, and, if I may say so, in the organisation of our science, and to this I hope that any such council as he has proposed will diligently apply itself. We have a great number of institutions doing excellent work, but the work of one often overlaps that of another. We want very carefully to see that each institution does that work which it is best fitted to do, and that manufacturers shall have no difficulty whatever in obtaining through any technical or scientific institution the particular class of scientific man which will be helpful in the industry in which they are employed. Take London, for instance. We have already the Imperial College of Science and Technology, on the organisation committee of which I was a member. We have also the Imperial Institute, in which a certain amount of research work is being done of a very high quality in connection with our colleges. We have also, not very far removed, the National Physical Laboratory, where research work is being done, but where more research work might be done if larger funds were available for the purpose. In Berlin there is what is called the Reichsanstalt. That is a research institute which combines the work of our national institute and the National Physical Laboratory, and that institute is placed in close juxtaposition with its Imperial Institute of Science and Technology, which goes by the name of Charlottenburg.

The President of the Board of Education has referred to the fact that it is very difficult to obtain men who will be attracted to the profession of technologists at a salary of 150l. a year. I was sorry that he did not remember that the Government itself has advertised for very highly skilled technical chemists at Woolwich at that same salary. I complained of that years ago, but I was told that there was quite a sufficient number of highly skilled chemists only too glad to accept

the position at that small sum. I hope that the Government will be the first to take to heart the lesson which the Right Hon. gentleman has given. There is only one other word I want to say at the present time. I heard with great satisfaction that it is proposed in the scheme to which the President referred that the Board of Trade shall be associated with the Board of Education. I attach great importance to that, because we do not want in this work merely theoretical scientific men. We want men who are imbued with the commercial spirit, and it is desirable that in any body who are to direct instruction by giving suggestions you should combine those who have an intimate knowledge of the trade requirements with those who at the same time are developing the scientific instruction itself. Personally, in the thirtyfive years during which I have been associated in, it may be, a feeble endeavour to bring science to some extent to bear upon industry, I have always been most careful to see that the commercial requirements of those engaged in the trade are carefully considered by those who have the task of organising the schemes of instruction. I am glad to see that same policy is likely to be carried out by the President of the Board of Education acting in conjunction with the President of the Board of Trade.

SIR JAMES YOXALL: I think that the Right Hon. gentleman even to-night attached more importance to the highly technical education which has been procurable in Germany under the German system of education than was just. The impression I have been able to form after years of study has been that it is probable that during the last twenty or twenty-five years as many capable men of science, highly skilled chemists and physicists, have been produced by the educational system of this country as has been produced in Germany. My impression is that probably in number, and certainly in quality, even our somewhat unorganised and uncoordinated British system has produced quite sufficient men to provide the industries of this country with sufficient guides, leaders, and captains. The fault has been not with them, or with the schools, colleges, and universities, but, no doubt, with the manufacturers and employers of this country, who have been blind to the opportunities which this material has presented to their hands. Even now, when my Right Hon. friend has created his excellent Advisory Committee, and has used his new grant and has developed further this admirable attempt on the part of the Government to provide for what may happen with regard to industry after the war, little will be the result so long as it is rooted in the minds of employers and capitalists that rule of thumb is better than rule of brain. I would suggest to my Right Hon. friend that he might consider, as a development of what he has submitted to-night, the running of this great concern which he has in view on a commercial basis, so that if manufacturers and capitalists will not take up this work, the State itself should take it up, and provide and sell to the manufacturers the results of researches which otherwise they would not obtain.

MR. ANDERSON: Perhaps the most important matter raised by the President to-night was that of establishing an Advisory Council to deal with matters relating to science and industry, and to bring science into closer touch with industry. That is a very important statement. Personally, I believe that it is along these progressive lines, and not by adopting reactionary policies, that the nation is going to hold its own in regard to industry and trade. We have not in the past spent anything like the amount of money we should have spent in regard to scientific research and technical training. We ought to equip ourselves to the fullest extent along these lines, and it is by doing

so rather than by adopting backward policies that we are going to make headway in the future. You ought to try to bring science and industry into closer touch with each other and to make science the great servant of industry, to make it a more practical matter rather than merely be taken up with abstract questions, and you ought to avail yourselves to the fullest extent of the practical knowledge and experience of the working people who are now employed in the fac tories, in the mills, in the workshops, and so on. and I believe in regard to that, that your Advisory Committee ought to have representatives of labour so as to show that you are going to bring the practical knowledge and experience of the workpeople into account in this matter, and I believe it will be important from the point of view of the success and welfare of your scheme.

MR. LYNCH: Whatever we think of the material aspects of Germany, we really have in her history one of the most extraordinary examples in the whole history of the world of a nation gradually rising to great material power on a foundation of high scientific education. The rise of Germany does not date, as some have said, merely from the great victories in 1870, but from a much earlier epoch when a German with a less salary than the then President of the Board of Education held that office for only two years, and yet within those two years left such a stamp on the education of Germany that it has remained ever since, and has been the real source of the education of the nation-Wilhelm von Humboldt.

The

Let us consider now one of the questions referred to by the President of the Board of Education to-night, technical education. When we speak of technical education in this country we are too apt to think of trifling details, such as wood carving and filigree work, or such as crewel-work or crocheting impossible parrots on the background of some fancy cloth. In Germany technical education has a very different and a much higher meaning, and having had the advantage of studying in the University of Berlin myself, I can say that one of the most abiding impressions of my whole life was the extraordinary revelation I had there, not merely of the devotion to science itself, but of the manner in which that widened out the whole horizon and prospect of the nation's view, and the way in which science was seen to be the vital influence in great enterprises and wonderful industries. I would not labour this question to-night, but those who have leisure might refer to an article by Sir William Ramsay, first published in NATURE in November, 1914, but to which my attention was called in the French paper La Revue Scientifique. French recognise the value of that article, and in France I think it got wider publicity than in this country. Sir William Ramsay analyses the causes of the greatness of Germany in the industrial world, and he finds several very interesting points which he tabulates. The first is that in a great German industry the board of directors are not a set of ornamental magnates with a peer thrown in to give respectability or publicity, but are a board of specialists on that subject which is the basis of the industry, keen and hard-working men. Secondly, that there is another agency definitely appointed with the definite active functions to watch out for new inventions in other countries. I could enter into this question very deeply, and I could show that right throughout the range of industry there are cases where the real central idea of that industry has not originated in Germany, but in France, England, or America. I believe if I were to ask which is the nation most fertile in ideas and most inventive, from my own brief experience I would be inclined to place the French in inventive genius above even the Americans. The Germans are always

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