摘要:

THE various schemes which were formulated 1 just before the War to alleviate the hardships of the indigent workless and destitute and to provide for their old age had an immediate retarding effect upon emigration from the United Kingdom. The majority of emigrants are manual workers, and anything which makes for their greater security in Great Britain must increase their natural reluctance to become the sport of chance circumstance in other lands. But the empty spaces of our vast dominions must be peopled, and it is held that it is best they should be peopled by our own stock. With this object in view the Empire Settlement Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1922, to enable the Home Government, in association with the government of any part of His Majesty's Dominions, or with public authorities or public or private organisations, to formulate and co-operate in schemes for development or land settlement, and for facilitating settlement in or migration to our dominions by assistance with passages, initial allowances, training, or otherwise. The Committee appointed to carry out these schemes has just presented to Parliament a report for 1926.1 The total number of persons assisted under the Empire Settlement Act increased from 39,559 in 1925 to 66,103 in 1926, or rather more than two-thirds of the total number of emigrants to the Dominions and more than half the net movement of population from Great Britain. The numbers assisted to Australia and New Zealand show increases of 10,205 and 3698; while the numbers assisted to Canada have risen from 8809 in 1925 to 21,344 in 1926. The Committee states that out of a net movement from Great Britain in 1926 of 115,538 persons, 93,227 went to homes within the Empire, a gratifying proportion. If this number of emigrants is maintained for the next few years, the average will be considerably above that for the decade 1901 to 1911, when it averaged 76,000 persons a year. Yet, as the Committee points out, the net movement from Great Britain overseas represents only two-fifths of the natural increase in our home population. If it is a fact, therefore, that Great Britain is already overcrowded, and, as many think, that under our present system we cannot keep all our people who are willing to work employed, the needfor a greatly accelerated movement of our home population overseas is a matter of supreme urgency.It is interesting to find that Australia absorbs more than half the migrants within the Empire. It seems reasonable that Australia should be preferred to Canada, but it is a little difficult to understand why New Zealand does not attract more settlers: it is a lovely and varied land, with a delightful climate and abundant natural resources. The Committee offers no explanation; neither are we informed in the report why so few British migrate to South Africa: only 126 went there in 1925 and 232 in 1926. The great increase in the number migrating to Canada is to be explained by the liberal arrangements made for their reception and settlement, including what appear to be generous terms for capital advances. The subject of migration is important enough to warrant a much more comprehensive account of the work of the Oversea Settlement Committee than that which has been vouchsafed in this report. But the subject is dismissed in 16 pages, most of which are filled by rather vague generalisations, interspersed with quotations from other Government publications. Most of the vital statistics contained in the report are given above. A little information, it is true, is to be found in the four appendices which fill the last 11 pages of the report. Yet many aspects of the problem upon which it might be assumed members of Parliament would wish to be informed are not dealt with at all. No reference is made as to the proportion of British to other European immigrants to the Dominions, or to the assistance given by other nations to their emigrants. The tide of emigration from central and southern European States, in many of which the standard of living of the working classes is appallingly low, has an important bearing upon the overseas settlement of our own people. No attempt is made to deal with the economics of migration. If information is desired on this aspect of the subject, it must be culled from the biased and often unsubstantiated statements of overseas statesmen, or from the handbooks issued by the various shipping agencies, any of which, it must be confessed, are more informative than this official report. Yet there is much information to be gathered from an examination of our trade returns. Each family settled in Australia, for example, creates a demand for our home products the value of which is roughly equivalent to the amount required to maintain a family at home. If satisfactory arrangements could be made to transfer 20,000 families yearly to Australia, our own unemployment problem would be quickly solved.There are other omissions. No information is given regarding the relative suitability of the various parts of the Dominions for settlement, or what are the principal crops raised or the markets they serve. Nothing is said regarding the terms on which land is granted: prospective emigrants will look in vain for information regarding the provision of the amenities of life to which they are accustomed at home, for example, education and health services, housing, transport, and communications. No indication is given of the return which can be expected from arable or mixed farming, or what are the prospects for pastoralists, based upon the purchase price of available land, the cost of domestic stock, and the cost of living. The most serious omission, however, is in connexion with the movement of the rural populations of the Dominions towards the towns. It is well known that the urban populations of the Dominions are increasing far more rapidly than the rural populations. The percentage increase of the urban population of Australia in the decade 1911-1921 was approximately 36, whereas the increase of the rural population in the same period was less than 9 per cent. It is a striking fact that the ratio of 'primary producers ' to other classes in Australia-an agricultural country-is appreciably smaller than the corresponding ratio for Great Britain-a highly industrialised community. It is sometimes urged that our education system in Great Britain is at fault for failing to make rural life more attractive than life in our large cities: and the criticism is just, With equal justice it could be urged that Australia has not yet come to grips with the same problem. The Australian town-dwellers realise their success mainly depends upon a growing number of agriculturists, and they are prepared to support any scheme which will attract agricultural settlers from Great Britain, just as ardently as they will oppose the indiscriminate transference of our urban population to their towns; but they fail to realise, apparently, that the flight from the land can be retarded or arrested only by complete re-orientation of their education system coupled with profound modifications of their economic policy.It would be interesting to know from which classes of the home community overseas settlers are drawn, and it should not be difficult to include such an analysis in a report of this kind. In the summary of Lord Clarendon's report on his visit to Canada, it is stated: "Possibly somewhat too strong a preference may have been shown for I families with farm experience. Inexperienced families, if they have the right spirit, seem to succeed just as well as the experienced.... Families from the coal-mining districts of Great Britain appear to show as good an average of success as any other families settled under the scheme." An authoritative statement of this kind is of the utmost importance, but it would carry even greater weight if it were backed up by statistical evidence. Even such a qualitative statement, however, should do much to break down the prejudice of selection committees against offering inducements to urban workers to settle on the land in our Dominions. What the urban worker lacks in experience in comparison with the farm-worker is offset by his greater adaptability to new conditions, an adaptability born of a higher intellectual standard. Rural education in Great Britain is still in a backwater.The Committee states that it is " conscious of the closeness of the relationship between research, development, and settlement." Itwould be interesting to know what kind of research the Committee has in view, what are the problems which face the Dominions for which no solution can be found on the basis of knowledge already available. Unquestionably there are vast fields of inquiry in which research workers may labour. But the Saul-like conversion of our imperial statesmen to the new faith in scientific research must not blind them, any more than the members of the Oversea Settlement Committee, to the fact that settlement and development schemes can be based upon existing knowledge. The immediate need is for a comprehensive survey of the accessible and potential resources of the Empire, an Empire stocktaking, in fact, upon which all sound schemes of overseas settlement and research should be based. It is to be hoped that in its next report the Committee will make a real attempt to deal with the problem of re-distribution of population in a scientific spirit. There are a number of diverse contributory factors to be taken into account in an inquiry of this nature, most of which appear to have been completely ignored hitherto. The report, in fact, constitutes a slight on the members of Parliament to whom it is made. It implies either that they do not possess the intelligence to examine the problem of migration of peoples thoroughly, or that they have very little interest in a subject of vital importance to the whole of the advanced peoples of the world.I Report of the Oversea Settlement Committee for the Year ended 31st December 1926. (Cmd. 2847.) Pp. 30. (London: HI.M. Stationery Office. 1927.) 6d. net.

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119693a0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

IT is only when one studies a vast American work like this-which in its first two volumes covers more than 1500 pages, with still more volumes to come-that one realises that America is not Europe, that American science, for good or bad, is obtaining an individuality of its own, and that there is some hope that a population, which anthropologically is probably the most mixed the world has ever experienced, will shake down and ultimately develop national mental, if not national physical, characteristics. America has had many difficulties to contend with; it is not usually the ablest races who emigrate, still less is it the ablest members of those races. For early emigrants also, good physique rather than strong mentality is the essential factor of success. Occasionally, as in the case of Dutch and Huguenot immigrants to England, some political or religious movement drives a better class of men to change their homeland. But the bulk of men who have colonised America, especially of recent years, are men who were not succeeding very well in Europe, and hoped to find in spacious America more room for a return for their hard labour. The very spaciousness of America has been one of its disadvantages. It was possible to acquire with relatively little effort; there was no need to preserve or to maintain past acquirements, whether mental or physical; property and tradition were of smaller value than in older and more crowded countries. There was no natural selection of physique or ability, because inferiority bad merely to go farther westward, where ease of acquirement increased with every degree of longitude. The alternation from pauper to millionaire was as rapid as the reverse process, for to acquire was so simple that few learnt to conserve. To most of us who think anthropologically, there is small wonder that America thus far has not been prolific in genius. In Vol. 2 of the work underdiscussion we find sixteen American men of genius enumerated. Six were presidents (Grant, Jackson, the two Adamses, Lincoln, and Washington), two men of the sword (Farragut and Sherman), four statesmen (Franklin, Hamilton, Seward, and Webster), and four authors (Longfellow, Washington Irving, Emerson, and Prescott), all dying in the century 1790-1890, and all known to every educated European. But would a Frenchman or a German have included more than two or three of these in a list comprising Galilei, Newton, Laplace, Darwin, Shakespeare, Goethe, Moliere, Voltaire, Rousseau, Heine, Byron, Spinoza, Descartes, DIUrer, Raphael, Titian, Mozart, Bach, et hoc genus ? These are men of creative imagination, world-shakers, who have set their seals upon human culture, and if only 282 men of genius are to be taken for the four centuries 1450-1850, a sense of proportion might have hindered a European scientific writer from allotting 16 to America in one century!The Americans are a young people; it will not be possible to call them racially a nation until far more intermarriage has taken place among their component groups, and more intense selection has been called into play; then will come national individuality, and then no doubt also new and typical forms of genius. Were a genius to arise to-morrow in America, whatever his class, one to be reckoned respectively with the six greatest scientific workers, scholars, painters, or authors of the world, he would be an offspring of the Old World, a German, an Englishman, or a Jew, not only racially, but also in modes of thought. Yet the day will indeed come, if not yet, when the typical American genius will appear. Can it be hastened by such a work as we have now under notice ? The scheme attempted is undoubtedly a great one, one that could only be imagined by a youthful people without the heritage-or shall we say bondage ?-of formed traditions. It proposes first to determine how much in the genius of the past is due to (a) heredity, (b) native endowment, and (c) training; then to discover the gifted children in the American population, and give them the training appropriate to genius. One of the striking points in this novel scheme is that the authors venture to preach in a great democracy the doctrine of caste, that ability runs in families, that not only are gifted children born from superior parents, but also that those parents have superior traditional culture and follow higherclass occupations.Before we can determine, however, what the 'gifted child' signifies to American psychologists, we must appreciate how he is to be selected. One of the difficulties of examinational selection of mental characters lies in the differentiation of acquired knowledge from mental facility or general intelligence. The former is partly a matter of age and partly a matter of home environment. To surmount the age difficulty the Binet-Simon tests were devised; they provided a system of tests suited to the average child of each year of life, but even with these it is difficult to ensure that success in passing may not be correlated with home training. The year-tests which a child could just answer gave its mental age, and, on the suggestion of Wilhelm Stern, the ratio of mental age to chronological age provided a measure of intelligence which might be taken as independent of age. This so-called 'intelligence quotient ' has been developed-especially in America-in an immense variety of ways. The original BinetSimon mental age tests have been altered, adapted, varied until almost every American university, if not every psychological teacher therein, has an individual series of tests. At the present moment, from west to east, from north to south, the American population is being psychologically tested. Universities, schools of all classes, prisons, reformatories, homes for the mentally defective and fot fallen women, orphanages and training camps are being examined for their intelligence quotients. The climax was reached in the War, when the whole American Army was psychologically tested. Its average mental age was, if we recollect rightly, just fifteen years ! What is quite certain is that English public schoolboys and English undergraduates would only treat as a joke the questions put to their American confreres to test not only their intelligence but also their interests, their moral and their religious senses, their sociability and their personality traits. If we are to trust the mass of papers resulting from these tests, the schedule scatterer must have an easier time in new America than he would have in the Old World ! However, starting with a teacher's selection, followed by a Stanford-Binet psychological test, some 600 boys and girls have been selected out of some quarter of a million of the Californian school children. These are the 'gifted' children from whom we are to expect genius. They and their parents have then been examined in almost every conceivable manner after selection. Their parents have been requested to fill in 'blanks' not only with regard to their children but also with regard to themselves. Anthropometric examinations,medical examinations, 'interests ' examinations, character and personality traits examinations, etc., have been organised to an astonishing degree. We know now whether a Californian gifted boy likes to collect insects or tram tickets, whether he would like to be a statesman or a Christian Science healer, whether he always remembers to clean his teeth, whether he ever dreams of people being dead, whether he can keep still on being tickled; these are a few among some 85 similar questions! But we feel some hesitation even yet. Is not real genius inert to all examinations, even to a psychological one ? May not the one real genius that California may very likely produce in the next half-century have slipt through the meshes of this intelligence quotient net ? Unfortunately, there is no adequate control series being followed up through life in the same way, and if another 600 not gifted, but mediocre, children were being pursued in like manner, would an isolated genius in one or other series prove anything at all ? We should be able possibly to judge whether the gifted children had or had not done better in life, but the fact that one had taken a Ph.D. degree and become an academic instructor, that another had completed his work for an Sc.D. degree or gone to Europe for study, might only be the effect of the home environment selected by the sort of questions set in the intelligence test. Statistically also, when we divide into sexes, and allow for deaths before achievement, and for the probable disappearance otherwise of many individuals, the numbers, we fear, may ultimately be found quite inadequate.As for the statistical treatment of the data, it can only be said to be moderately satisfactory. For example, Dr. Lenz's criticisms on the original Terman treatment of the size of family in the case of families with gifted children are taken as truth without apparently any further examination; but in the case of a family of eight or ten children whose births may be extended over a period of fourteen or sixteen years, it is not equally probable that all the children will be found at school at the same time, and Lenz's method of correcting fertility is fallacious, and therefore Terman's conclusions drawn by applying it appear to be incorrect. Again, in the fundamental table on p. 41 and in the "corrected" table, p. 44, no comment is made on the large correlation of intelligence quotient with age (correlation ratio of quotient on age is of the order 0 37), and yet this is certainly a matter which deserved ample treatment. The method of correction detailed in a footnote is, we venture to think, obscure, and the diagrams are not adequately elucidated. Many other points will occur to the mathematically trained statistician on reading the work. Still, we would not appear ungrateful for the labour which the collection of such an immense amount of data-of varying grades of usefulnessmust have involved. In the course of the next thirty or forty years we may know whether the grading of children by aid of their intelligence quotients is correlated with their success in after life. That may not be without value and scientific interest, but we may reasonably ask whether it could not have been better accomplished by following up an additional 600 children with low intelligence quotients rather than by piling up questionnaires on the first group. That we are, by the study of these high intelligence quotient children, on the path. to determine anything about the genetics of or the suitable training for ' genius,' frankly, we do not believe.We might think that the word 'genius ' is understood in a different sense in Europe and in America, but when we turn to the second volume of these " Genetic Studies of Genius," we find that in the abstracts of the " Early Mental Traits of Geniuses " (which occupy some 600 out of the 800 pages of this volume), the bulk of the individuals included are those that a European would classify in the same way. Yet if 'genius' be one in a million-are there indeed 10 male geniuses in England at this moment ?-what hope is there of those 352 'gifted' Californian children throwing light on the matter ? However, Miss Catherine Cox accepts the European estimate, if with some patriotic bias. How, then, are these accounts of the early intelligence and early environment of genius to be brought into relation with the gifted children of California ? Only if we can assign by the accounts we have of the childhood of genius -i.e. on the basis of biographies-the corresponding intelligence quotients! Now the great merit of the Binet-Simon tests arises from the fact that they give a numerical value to the living child by aid of direct experiments. It appears to the present reviewer that when the psychologist turns the matter inside out and says that he has had such experience of these tests and of young children that he can measure the childish ' brilliancy' of genius as reported in dictionaries of biography by means of allotting intelligence quotients, he is standing as a scientific worker on a very dangerous slope indeed. Here again we have no control series, which would have to be from as many nations as the men of genius are selected from. Yet without such a series, how can we judge the precocity, the ' brilliancy' as our author terms it, of these nationals ? In the case of great men, every scrap of their handwriting has been sought for and often preserved; in the case of mediocre men, it goes into the waste-paper basket when their mothers die. Erasmus is given an intelligence quotient of only 135 before seventeen years age. What would it have been had his school scribblings been preserved ? Benjamin Franklin is given one of 145, because we have his autobiography and know of his childhood. James Stuart Mill is given an intelligence quotient of 200, not because he was ever natively brilliant, but because his apt intelligence was reared in a forcing house by James Mill; and how old-fashioned would now be the economist who would even admit James Stuart Mill to a place among the 282 men of genius of four centuries in Europe ! Galton as a child is given an intelligent quotient of 200, because his biographer included certain letters from his childhood in his Life; Darwin as a child is given an intelligence quotient of only 135, because his biographer had not, or did not think fit to print, any such letters. Newton as a child is measured by 130, but Leibnitz as a child by 185. Shakespeare cannot be rated at all, because nothing of his childhood has been preserved for us. What would such ratings be worth if they were not, as they actually are, guesses ? They depend entirely on the amount and character of the material which has been preserved for forming an estimate; they depend on the nation to which the man of genius belonged. They can tell us nothing of the extent to which relative achievement in later life depends upon relative childish ' brilliancy.' With Defoe, Linnaeus, Napier, Harvey, and John Locke as children at 125, and Klopstock, Wieland, and Longfellow at about 150, what can we learn from this modern psychological guessing based on biographical dictionaries ?Our author prefaces her work with much talk about the value and accuracy of 'historiometric' methods of investigation; she gives various mathematical investigations of the exactness of the process of guess-work involved and of her methods of ' correcting' her numerical estimates. Some of this is very open to question from the mathematical side. We do not base our main criticism on that, but on these two indubitable facts: first, that she has no control series of the mediocre men of the various nations through these centuries, and secondly, that the estimates of her colleagues and herself, even if accurate, depend entirely on the amount of data known, or at least cited in the biographical dictionaries. How would the intelligence quotient of Newton as a boy be modified by the discovery of his diary, or the knowledge that his mother sprung from an illustrious family? How would Nelson's 125 as a child be modified had the writer known that his mother was descended from the Walpoles, one of the English families most noteworthy for administrative ability ? Do we consider then thatthis volume is a waste product of several years' work ? Not in the least. We know no book that so satisfactorily condenses the main facts with regard to the boyhood of great men. Its usefulness will survive long after the intelligence quotients which are scattered through its pages have ceased to be regarded. Is this the judgment of a European ? Very possibly. The fact that it becomes more and more difficult for the European to grasp and judge modern American scientific work may be rather evidence of the European's conservatism than of the naivet6 of that work itself. America is not, but is becoming, a nation, and, as we all know, nations with the very best intentions fail to understand each other. Youth too often fails to interpret itself to age.

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119695a0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

THE agricultural methods of China have long Texcited the interest and curiosity of Western experts, partly because they are highly intensive and partly because of the element of mystery still surrounding all things Chinese. On western methods, 2-2k acres of land are required for the maintenance of each person; but there are great areas in China where two acres of land support no less than five people, to say nothing of a donkey and other animals. The comparison is striking, even allowing for the great difference between eastern and western ideas of maintenance. Hitherto, and in spite of its inherent interest, Western experts have had little opportunity of learning anything about Chinese agriculture. There are a few articles in the Chinese Repository and in Millard's " Review of the Far East," not usually available in agricultural libraries, but no account by any English writers except the useful summary in the " Encyclopoedia Britannica." The only accessible account hitherto has been that written by the late F. H. King, the well-known soil physicist of Wisconsin, who visited the Far East in 1910 and recorded his impressions in his book, " Farmers of Forty Centuries."Dr. Wagner had therefore almost a clear field when he undertook to describe Chinese agriculture. His qualifications for the task are considerable; he was appointed as agricultural lecturer in 1911 to the High School set up by the Germans in Tsingtau for the education of the Chinese,. and he remained in China until 1920. When he began, the school was only two years old, and the agricultural equipment, he tells us, was a blackboard, a sponge, and a piece of chalk; by August 1914, laboratories had been erected and the institution possessed 16 hectares of experimental farm land and proper farm buildings, with more than 30 head of cows and 5 horses in addition to pigs and other animals. His students came from various parts of China, and he had many opportunities of learning about its agriculture. The plan is to discuss first of all the natural conditions, particularly climate and soil, then the human factors, finally the methods of dealing with the soil and its chief crops.The author adopts the usual divisions of China into a northern and a southern section separated by a folded range of the Tsing-ling-shan. The northern part is subdivided into the western highlands, often desert and sparsely populated; and the eastern plain of yellow loess soil, entirely agricultural and densely populated. The south is somewhat similarly divided, but the soil is not loess; it is largely sandy or calcareous. Again, however, the east is the agricultural land with the dense population. The river valleys are highly fertile, but even the hills are cultivated, being laid up in terraces. The agricultural interest lies in the eastern portions of the country; it is there where the intensive methods are used. The basis of the crop production is a close regulation of the water supply to the crop necessities. China has a network of canals which serve to drain land that has too much water, to irrigate land that has too little, and also as a means of transport and communication, the roads being bad. The rainfall is high; so far as the slender records go, it varies from 25 inches in the Shantung peninsula to 100 inches or more in the warmer sub-tropical parts; it is more variable in the north than in the south. Much of the lower land is drained, but almost always by open drains, occasionally in the south by bamboo pipes, but never, so the author tells us, by clay pipes. Drainage is, however, less important than might appear, because the rainfall comes mainly in the summer, and swamp land is not the waste in China that it is in colder climates, for the paddy rice flourishes in it. The problem is rather the other way; land otherwise dry is watered so as to obtain maximum yields. This circumstance that the highest rainfall of the year comes in summer is an important factor in determining the intensiveness of Chinese agriculture. Crops have water during warm weather when they need it, and they are not hampered by high rainfall in winter when they do not need it. Where the winter is not too cold, two crops a year become possible; they are obtained on much of the land in the centre and south (though not usually in the north), especially on the tropical rice land which lies high enough to be dry in winter and yet can if necessary be flooded in summer. Even the low-lying wet land can be made to carry two crops.The descriptions of the agricultural implements suggest affinities with Babylon and ancient Egypt rather than with Bronze Age north Europe, and it would be interesting to make a careful comparison between the agricultural system of ancient China and that of ancient Egypt so far as this is known or can be inferred from later Arabic writings. Some of the implements, however, notably the harrow and the roller, have a very western appearance. Among the commonest manures are the mud from canal bottoms, green material cut from the large areas devoted to graves, and, above all, human excrements, all of which are carefully collected and applied to the land.The chief food crops are rice and millet, and they form a good combination, since rice can tolerate any amount of water and millet does well in dry conditions, having great power of withstanding drought, and at the same time growing well when rain comes. The second crop, grown in winter, may be wheat, barley, beans, pease, or various vegetables. Land not well suited to rice, by reason of being too high above the water level of the canal, is devoted to bamboos, mulberries, fruit and vegetables. This section of the book would have been more interesting had the author had more of his own photographs. As it is, he is driven to use illustrations from King's book of 1911. He devotes a great part of his book to descriptions of the crops, their varieties, and the conditions in which they are grown. The number of crops is amazing; including all the grain crops, many oil seeds, strange I plants such as the lacquer tree (Rhus vernicifera) and the tallow tree (Sapium seliferum), in addition to the better known tea, cotton-said to have been introduced into China from Khotan in the eleventh century-mulberry trees and other crops traditionally associated with the country. The animals are described at length, and finally the author collects some materials for a summary of the economic position of the Chinese farmer, an interesting attempt which one would like to see followed up.As the only recent book on the subject, the volume would in any event be of interest to the agricultural expert. Added to this are its intrinsic merits; the mass of information, numerous illustrations by photographs and diagrams, and, where they can be obtained, figures of yields or analytical data. To those interested in eastern agriculture it will prove very valuable.

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119698a0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

IN his preface to this book the author explains that " La Mentalit6 primitive," which appeared in English in 1923, and " Les Fonctions mentales dans les societ6s inf6rieures," of which this is a translation, are two volumes of one work. By an accident of circumstances, the second volume was translated into English before the first. This was unfortunate, as the essential principles of M. Levy Bruhl's theories are contained in the latter, and although the two books can be read apart, some knowledge of these principles is necessary before the argument can be grasped as a whole. M. LUvy-Bruhl's thesis is, in the main, a constructive criticism of the views of the English school of anthropologists at the head of which stand Tylor and Frazer. He holds that the work of this school is based upon an assumption that the working of the human mind is everywhere and in all cases identical. The vast body of facts relating to primitive peoples which have been gathered together in the employment of the comparative method, have been interpreted in the light of the animistic theory and explained by the law of association, whereas the author maintains they can only be understood as 'collective representations '-social phenomena having their own laws which no analysis of the individual qua individual, such as is implied in the method of the English school, can ever reveal. The ' difference in degree ' in savage mentality which is recognised by the English school, therefore, becomes for M. LUvy-Bruhl a difference in kind.Thanks in a great degree to the French school of sociologists and social anthropologists, and to the work of certain anthropologists in England, the tendency to consider facts entirely in vacuo is now by no means so marked as it has been. M. L6vyBruhl's stimulating book, in which the consequences of the difference of point of view are worked out in detail, is by no means so entirely destructive of English theory as he hopes, but it will serve as a caution and a corrective.

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119700b0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

IN a foreword to this book, Prof. Leonard Hill refers to it as a masterly production, and we are inclined to agree with this verdict. The translator has done his work exceedingly well, and we now have a book to which we can turn with some confidence on the question of the use of light treatment in surgery; we hope that some one will be found who can cope with light treatment in medicine in as broad a comprehensive way as the author of the work under notice. We shall then be spared a continuance of the present holocaust of books written on the subject of ultra-violet therapy by writers of very little experience. The book is divided into two parts, the first being general in its scope, the second, special in the sense that it deals with the actual light treatment in surgical cases. The two parts of the book are of about equal length, and the first five chapters give one a very good idea of our present state of knowledge on the effect of light on the organism generally, right up through the vegetable and animal kingdoms.The second part of the book is divided into a section dealing with the indications for the use of this therapy and two sections on the helio-therapy of surgical tuberculosis. Scattered throughout the book are photographs and radiographs illustrating the good effects which often accompany the treatment of patients with sunlight. That climatic conditions play an important part in the treatment of tuberculous patients is recognised by the author, and, in fact, twenty-five pages are devoted to this subject. In a book the object of which has been to set forth the beneficent action of sunlight in disease, a section of no less than twenty pages is devoted to the pathological action of sunlight. The dangers to specially sensitive subjects and those accompanying over-doses of radiation are dealt with very fully. The book should be welcomed by those who have looked, so far in vain, for an authoritative account in English of this new, yet really very old, form of therapy.

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119701a0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

THE authors of this manual express the " opinion that quantitative work in an elementary course often consumes time that were better spent in the accumulation of useful and necessary qualitative information." Quantitative work is therefore reduced to a bare minimum and a scheme for the qualitative investigation of chemical phenomena, covering a fairly wide field, has been elaborated. A novel feature is the introduction of linear scales showing the relationship between the temperature and the vapour-pressure of water and between the density and the concentration of several common reagents. Working directions are minutely specified, and almost every page is liberally sprinkled with cross-references, which are likely to bewilder the student, whose natural desire to discover things for himself is stifled by the warning in heavy type that all unauthorised experiments are strictly forbidden. Yet the authors hope to " foster something of the research spirit at an early age " ! About onefourth of the book deals with ordinary qualitative analysis, this section being prefaced with the following instruction to the beginner: " The work is based on differences in solubility. Commit to memory the table of solubilities and get some classdrill in its applications." Such methods will not appeal strongly to teachers in English schools.

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119702b0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

IN a previous letter to NATURE (vol. 119, p. 277, 1926) I have discussed Dr. J. W. Evan's suggestion that the existence of pleochroic haloes in mica indicates that much of the energy of the rays from the radio-elements in rocks is used up in producing physical, chemical, or atomic rather than thermal changes in the surrounding minerals. I concluded that the close agreement between the calculated and measured heat productions of the radio-elements affords strong evidence for the view that “practically the whole of the energy associated with the radiations emitted by these elements is available for raising the temperature of the rocks in which they occur.” In a later communication (NATURE, vol. 119, p. 424, 1926), Dr. Evans infers that if measurements of the heat production of radium were carried out in a mica container instead of in a glass tube, the results of experiment and theory might not show such good agreement, in spite of the fact that the fluorescence effects and colorations produced by the radiations and the thermo-luminescence resulting from subsequent heating of the coloured materials are quite analogous for the two substances. From the viewpoint of geothermal problems, the importance of an unequivocal decision on the question at issue is perhaps sufficient justification for my returning to the subject, for several independent lines of thought support the conclusion arrived at in my previous letter.Since it can be obtained in very thin uniform sheets, mica has always been used extensively in absorption experiments with a-rays; its behaviour is perfectly normal. The calculated range of a-particles in mica, as in glass and aluminium, is in good agreement with that found by experiment. This we should not expect if the behaviour of mica as regards absorption were abnormal. In such a case, either each a-particle would lose an appreciable amount of its energy in promoting, say, chemical change and the observed range in mica would be smaller, or the a-particles would lose different amounts of energy in this way, when the range would be indefinite, in opposition to observations of pleochroic haloes where the range is sharply defined. Furthermore, the proportion of the energy of a-rays utilised in promoting atomic changes in mica must also be very small, for mica has been used extensively in absorption experiments on atomic disruption, and the number of H-rays observed, particularly when the mica has been outgassed, is insignificant for present purposes. Dr. Evans mentions that Dr. Alfred Brammell found it necessary to keep biotite at a dull-red heat for about six hours to render the pleochroic haloes invisible; but here I think he has misunderstood my previous reference to the thermo-lumineseent effects with minerals coloured by radioactive radiations. When coloured glass or minerals are heated appreciably, but below dull-red heat, the thermo-lumineseent effect is of relatively short duration, and may often be designated a flash. My statement that the energy liberated during the process is " manifestly small "was based primarily on visual impression, but it is supported by the fact that if an appreciable proportion of the radioactive energy from an inclusion were stored in the pleochroic sphere and liberated on heating, the energy so released would correspond to a flash of intensity about 1010 times greater than that necessary to excite the retina of the eye. Moreover, Duane has shown that when radium is mixed with a material which fluoresces strongly under the action of the rays emitted, the measured heat production is identical with that obtained with radium alone,a result which surely admits of no other interpretation than that the energy of luminescence is negligibly small. Quartz, and to a less extent glass, when subjected for a long time to intense radiation from radium, develops tiny fractures or cracks which can be removed by continued heating above the softening point of the material, just as devitrified glass can be restored to condition by suitable heat treatment. I am inclined to attribute Dr. Brammell's observation to an analogous mechanical effect in the mica, the original crystal lattice being restored by the later heating at dull-red heat. Markings in the outer shell or in the body of the pleochroic sphere might also arise from the escape of gases on the application of heat. Thus for a representative sphere (radius of sphere =30 a; radius of inclusion = I A; age = 500 million years) the volume of helium available in the outer shell, neglecting diffusion, would be about thirty times the volume of the inclusion, and the oxygen contained in the mica of one-thousandth part of the pleochroic sphere would occupy a volume equal to that of the sphere.The evidence of heats of formation also renders it probable that most of the radioactive energy is converted into heat in the mica, for the calculated amount of heat available from radioactive sources during the life of the pleochroic sphere of the abovementioned dimensions has about twice the value of the heat of formation of a volume of water equal to that of the sphere. The heat of formation of mica is unknown, but on the assumption of an additive law for the constituent parts, I find that the radioactive energy liberated within the pleochroic sphere is of the same order of magnitude as the estimated heat of formation of an equal volume of mica. It is observed that for each gram of radium some thirty or more cubic centimetres of electrolytic gas are produced daily in an acidified aqueous solution of radium, the requisite energy being derived primarily from the a-particles emitted. Knowing the heat of formation of water and the daily heat development of radium, we can readily deduce that only about two per cent. of the energy of the radioactive rays is used up in promoting chemical change in the solvent. When an identical amount of radiation acts on ice, the resulting amount of chemical change is much less than in the case of water, and for a stable mineral like mica it seems reasonable to conclude that the amount of chemical change produced will be exceedingly small.The concordance of evidence advanced in this and in my previous letter is very strongly opposed to the views expressed by Dr. Evans, and I shall only briefly refer to the latter part of his letter. He points out that the presence of extensive granite and gneiss in and below the deep boring at Dubbelde Vlei, in the Cape Province of South Africa, seems to have had no appreciable effect on the temperature gradients. In the absence of actual measurements of the radioactivity of these rocks, however, it would be futile to attempt to discuss the above observations of temperature gradient, though it seems not unlikely that low radioactivity is the reason for the low gradients. The thickness of the granitic and basaltic layers, however, will also exert an influence. Prof. Holmes has referred to the gradient difficulty in two recent papers (Geol. Mag., vol. 62, p. 533, 1925; vol. 63, p. 313, 1926) without coming to a decision as to the cause; but he is also convinced that anomalous absorption of the radioactive rays is insignificant in this connexion, and that practically the whole of the energy of the radiations from the radioactive substances in igneous rocks is available for raising or maintaining the temperature of those rocks. It is to be hoped that before long additional evidence will be obtained on the question of the temperature gradients associated with, and the radioactivity of, the granitic layer in different parts of the world. Meanwhile it is interestingto recall that high gradients are associated with the highly radioactive granitic rocks of the Simplon tunnel, and that independently of the petrographic nature of the dominant rock type, some regions of the earth's surface are known to be characterised by more intense radioactivity (e.g. the Alps) than others (e.g. New Zealand). In future discussions it will be necessary to take account of the well-established radioactivity of potassium in this connexion, for in igneous rocks the thermal effect of potassium appears to be of the same relative importance ast of uranium or thorium.

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119703b0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

IN a series of experiments carried out in Prof. O. W. Richardson's laboratory at King's College, London, I have attempted to measure the velocity of the photo-electrons set free from a metal under the influence of soft X-rays, excited in the usual way by electrons from a hot filament falling on the radiator through an accelerating potential difference of 50–800 volts. The results obtained with the stopping potential method—in which a varied retarding potential is applied to a surrounding electrode, thus preventing all electrons with a kinetic energy below the corresponding value to escape—are difficult to interpret because of the masking effect of scattered radiation on the measurements for higher voltages. Various forms of magnetic methods have also been tried, of which the last one has yielded definite results. In this apparatus the photo-electrons are emitted from a narrow rod forming the axis of a short cylindrical ring, connected to the electrometer and kept at the same potential as the rod. A variable magnetic field, applied in the direction of the axis, prevents electrons with velocity less than a certain value from reaching the cylinder.In the measurements so far obtained, the potential on the tube was 700 volts. The anode-radiator was of carbon and the rod of copper-clean or covered with a thick coating of lamp-black. In both cases the curves show that the preponderance of low-speed electrons in the emission is very great indeed. More than 70 per cent. of all the electrons emitted have energies less than 10 volts. The following is a typical set of values showing the relative number of electrons within an equal interval in volts for different points on the distribution curve: Energy (volts) . . 2 5 5 20 50 100 150 200 volts. No. of electrons . 100 41 14 2 5 1-6 0-7 0 5 083 It may be that this low average energy of the electrons results from the greater part of the incidentradiation being of comparatively great wave-length. On the other hand, recent experiments by Simons (Proc. Phys. Soc. London, 37, 58; 1925) with ordinary homogeneous X-rays have shown that in this case also a great part of the photo-electric emission consists of slow-moving 6-particles.In both cases it is possible that the process by which the large quanta of energy carried by the exciting electrons are transformed to small quanta of the photo-electrons, involves some kind of a compound photo-electric mechanism. According to Auger (Ann. de Phys., 6, 183; 1926) the compound photo-electric effect should play a very important part in the soft X-ray region. The investigation is being continued with the object of gaining further knowledge on this

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119704a0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

IT has been found possible to grow long crystals in iron wire by making use of the allotropic transformation which occurs at about 900°C. The method is to heat a portion of the wire between two mercury contacts by passing direct or alternating current through it and then to cause the heated portion to travel along the wire either by moving the support carrying the contacts or by moving the wire itself. The hottest part of the wire should be at 1400°C. or higher. Under these conditions a very steep temperature gradient exists at the point where face centred cubic (γ) crystals, stable at high temperatures, are being replaced by body-centred cubic (α) crystals, stable at lower temperatures, and at a favourable velocity of travel a single α-crystal will grow to a length of 20 cm. or more in wire 1 mm. in diameter.Crystals have been grown in a vacuum and in an atmosphere of nitrogen, but the best results have been obtained in hydrogen at atmospheric pressure. The rate of travel principally used has been about 4 cm. an hour, but higher and lower rates have also given good results. The chemical purity and previous mechanical history of the iron seem relatively unimportant. Most of the experiments have been made on remelted electrolytic iron, but impurities usual in commercial iron do not inhibit growth. In a particular experiment, long crystals were grown in harddrawn piano wire containing originally 0-8 per cent. carbon. In the final state the amount of carbon had been reduced, but, as judged by resistivity measurements, the carbon content was probably still greater than 0 3 per cent. The large crystals occupy the whole cross-section of the wire, there being no surface layer of fine crystals as is usual in crystals grown by over-strain with subsequent annealing. Etching with nitric acid develops planes of the form {100}, so that an optical goniometer serves to locate the cubic axes normal to these reflecting surfaces. The orientations so found have been checked by X-rays, which permit more exact location than does the optical method. A considerable variety of orientations has been obtained, and it cannot yet be said whether there is any preferred orientation.Irregularity in tension on the wire and torsional stresses in it result in twinning. Twins may either appear as small inclusions or as complete changes in orientation with the twinning plane traversing the entire cross-section of the wire. The twinning plane is of the form {211}. The magnetic and magnetostrictive properties of long crystals free from twins are being investigated. These properties appear in some respects to differ from those of crystals prepared by others 1 by the method of over-strain and annealing. The initial permeability of nearly carbon-free crystals grown in hydrogen lies between 2000 and 2500, the maximum permeability is around 20,000, and the coercive force about 0 2 gauss. After treatment which should remove hydrogen (its actual removal has not been proved) the initial permeability drops to a few hundred, the maximum permeability rises to nearly 40,000, and the coercive force diminishes slightly. A crystal grown from piano wire in hydrogen and not further treated had an initial permeability of about 1000, but was otherwise much like the purer crystals in magnetic behaviour, though stronger mechanically. The dependence of properties upon crystal orientation in the wire, and the behaviour in fields of more than 50 gauss, have not yet been determined.Plastic deformation of the crystals, even to the slightest extent, causes considerable changes in their magnetic behaviour, and restoration of the original condition by annealing seems only to be possible when the amount of deformation has been minute. The method is being extended to iron alloys possessing in the cold the body-centred structure characteristic of pure iron and having an allotropic change at nearly the same tempera

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119705b0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature

摘要:

A FEW months ago, K. Peters and I published an account of experiments we had made in an attempt to transmute hydrogen into helium (Ber. d. Deutschen Chem. Ges., 59, 2039; 1926). A more or less detailed account of this publication appeared in the columns of NATURE (vol. 118, p. 526, 1926), and perhaps I may be permitted to refer to a more recent publication on the same topic by K. Peters, P. Günther, and myself (Ber. d. Deutschen Chem. Ges., 60, 808; 1927). In this communication, as a result of further experiments, we feel that we are in a position to give an explanation of the occurrence of the observed very small quantities of helium in our experiments, without having recourse to the assumption of a synthesis of helium.In the first-mentioned communication we considered the penetration of helium from the atmosphere through the glass walls of the apparatus to be the most likely source of trouble in such experiments, and we excluded this possibility by the use of vacuum jackets, immersion in water, and similar devices. In addition, we also discussed the possibility of regarding the helium dissolved in the glass as an explanation of the observed effects, but blank experiments led us to the conclusion that the quantity of helium capable of being liberated in this way was beyond the limits of sensitivity of our method of detection. In the interval we have carried out experiments both in the Baker Laboratory of Cornell University and in the Chemical Laboratory of the University of Berlin, and these have shown that the liberation of helium from glass (and from asbestos) is dependent on the presence of hydrogen. Thus glass tubes which gave off no detectable quantities of helium when they were heated in a vacuum or in oxygen were found to yield helium in quantities of the order of 10-9 c.c. when they were heated in an atmosphere of hydrogen. Now in the earlier experiments the glass tubes containing palladium yielded helium, whereas the empty glass tubes used in control experiments did not; and since the former tubes would fill with hydrogen on the application of heat, we see that the source of the helium lay not in the palladium but in the glass, in spite of appearances to the contrary. Our method of detecting helium is sufficiently sensitive to show that a glass tube which has been completely freed from its content of helium by heating in hydrogen takes up a detectable amount of neon-free helium from the atmosphere even after only one day's contact with the air.Since asbestos behaves similarly to glass, we now see why one particular palladium preparation, bought as palladium-asbestos, yielded larger quantities (10-7 c.c.) of helium after being charged with hydrogen. Here, obviously, in contrast to the preparations we made ourselves, the asbestos had not been ignited until it was free from helium, and a fraction of the residual helium was always liberated by heating when the palladium was charged with hydrogen, whereas in oxygen no development of helium could be observed. As a result of our more recent experiments we have thus established that, in using an apparatus made of glass, one cannot make any trustworthy statement as to the origin of 10-9 c.c. of helium if air comes in contact with the apparatus, parts of which are later heated in hydrogen. By avoiding all heating of the apparatus, we shall endeavour to decide whether a transmutation of hydrogen into helium of the order of 10-9 c.c. or less takes place. In any case, the amount of helium formed in experiments on electric discharges, as tested by various workersand by ourselves, and in experiments on the action of palladium, does not reach the order of magnitude of 10-8 c.c.It is scarcely necessary to emphasise the fact that the sensitiveness of our method, though limited to 10-8 c.c., is sufficient to decide with certainty the other questions dealt with in our first communication, such as the helium content of meteorites, the helium development of radioactive deposits, and so on

ISSN:0028-0836    

DOI:10.1038/119706a0

出版商:Nature Publishing Group    

年代:1927

数据来源: Nature