Advancers

Pulling themselves together after the inimitable opening speech of their royal president, smooth Edward of Wales, the august members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, meeting last week in Oxford, deployed about the town to attend various section meetings, where marvel after scientific marvel was related demonstrated or predicted. Evolution. Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn of Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History, was there as a guest to expatiate upon the enormous difference between Evolution as it is understood today and as it was debated in Oxford half a century ago by Darwin's champion, Thomas Henry Huxley, and empurpled Bishop Wilberforce. (The difference: Darwin saw discontinuity where modern zoologists and paleontologists read continuity, in the speciation of plants and animals.) Rat. Dr. William McDougall, onetime Oxonian, now Harvard's preeminent psychologist, demonstrated what an intelligent creature is the rat. Into a box with 14 latches the speaker put some cheese. Sniff, scratch, scrabble--plop, and in went a white rat, all the latches flapping open after him, to nibble contentedly. Spectators cheered. Eclipse. Professor H. H. Turner endeared himself to the British working public by agitating for a special holiday, next June 29, a holiday to be spent by patriots in flocking to the path of the first total solar eclipse Britons will have enjoyed in 203 years. All should carry reliable stopwatches and make notes of the duration of totality; the stars visible, if any. "The occasion should, however, be regarded primarily as an opportunity for seeing a wonderful spectacle," the professor added.

Moneyed Negroes. UnderSecretary for the Colonies W. Ormsby-Gore revealed to a group of geographers that the natives of West and East Africa have been amassing wealth; lately substituted "real" currency for cars of cloth and square-faced bottles of gin.

Gas, Books, Corpses. Professor J. F. Thorpe viewed with alarm an approaching shortage in the world's supply of gasoline; deplored wasteful U. S. extraction methods, whence comes 70% of the world's supply; vowed that petroleum chemistry has been too little explored. Professor Thorpe likewise viewed with alarm humanity's library and cemetery problems. Cremation would solve the latter, he thought, but it would be too optimistic to expect that it might be judiciously applied to the former. With 23,000 scientific periodicals published in the world annually, "the mind stands appalled at the prospects . . .even in so short a time as 100 years hence." Idle Rich. The economics division was addressed by distinguished Sir Josiah Stamp, co-author of the Dawes Plan anent the "idle" rich. Sir Josiah doubted that this much maligned class of British society numbered over 1,000 able-bodied persons. He demonstrated that if all British incomes from -L-250 ($1217. 50) upward were pooled, the income per family would not exceed five shillings ($1.20) weekly. "In America," he said, "inequality of wealth stirs men to effort, emulation, ambition." He propounded the economic and eugenic advantages of a novel "moving annuity," whereby a father's property would pass to his son, not at death, but gradually, in middle life, as the father's necessities shrank and the son's grew.

Plant Hearts. Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, savant of India, was there with his plants, trays and sensitive instruments to show that plants have systolic circulation ("heart action") even as animals have. First he recorded a plant's "pulse" on a photographic plate while it stood in plain water. Addition of a bromide to the water reduced the "pulse" very noticeably. Musk soon restored the normal beat. Strychnine and cobra venom induced excessive stimulation. The sap-flow recorder showed a struggle between life and death as a depressant and then a stimulant were applied. Tense onlookers at last saw the stalk recover, stand erect.

"Spikenard." Many curious noses sniffed at a tiny phial taken from TutankhAmen's tomb containing a minute smear of cosmetic cream still undecomposed. Chemist Chanston Chapman promised that the formula would be rediscovered (a base of animal fats, plus resin or balsam) and the cream given again to the world, perhaps as Biblical "spikenard."

Glow-Worm's Eye. There was a scientist who had made photographs through a glow-worm's eye instead of a camera lens.