Advancers

Ardent, august, the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science continued their palaverings at Oxford (TIME, Aug. 16). They palavered about: Baldness. Since thyroidal secretions stimulate both brain and hair growth, "it is not far wrong to assume" that, loss of hair benefits the intellect. Famine. Sir Daniel Hall demonstrated the waste, in food-units, of lands planted with hops and grapes, but added: "A race that cuts out alcohol in order to multiply is the permanent slave type, destined to function like the worker bees." The burthen of his remarks was the old scare that the world's food supply will some day fall far short of its population. Childhood Memories. Compose yourself, be seated with pencil and paper, write down every thought that occurs to you for two hours. Do this several times and show the results to your parents. Very likely they will be able to corroborate many a thought as reflecting something that happened to you at a very early age, 6 mos. even. The explanation, according to Psychologist E. Pickworth Farrow, is that the mind tends to slough off recent memories, going back to earlier and earlier ones, following expressions of the egotistic or self-preservative group of instincts. He offered the experiment as proof and correction of certain Freudian doctrines. Huxley. Professor Julian Sorell Huxley, King's College, London, brother of very-cynical-about-nothing-in-particular Author Aldous Huxley, related observations in the realm of his famed grandfather, Zoologist Thomas Henry Huxley. Courtships among low forms of life were his theme: male bristleworms wriggling in groups around females; fiddler crab bridegrooms posturing on tip-claw; hunting spider suitors offering a fly, neatly wrapped in webbing, to their prospective mates; penguins presenting bits of stone for nest-material. Professor Huxley also demonstrated that a fixed ratio exists between the members and body-weight of organisms of all sizes. A moose's antlers are in the same proportion to his body as a lobster's claws to his body. Vitamins. Sir Arnold Theiler reported cows from whose diet all vitamins were extracted, who thrived when supplied with phosphorus--a riddle. McDougall's Rats. At the end of the series of lectures and demonstrations by Dr. William McDougall of Harvard, the latter's admirer's were ejaculating that he had marked a turning point in Biology. He had exhibited rats of two strains, sprung originally from a common stock. One strain had been trained through several generations, the other left uneducated. In all manner of tests--diving, swimming, climbing, prying, escaping--the trained dynasty was quicker-witted than the untrained, proving that mental attitude in a given direction can be intensified by breeding. "As with rats, so with men."

Lodge. Of all the lay scientists assembled, Sir Oliver Lodge was the only one to take a pulpit on Sunday morning. He gave a sermon-lecture in Manchester College chapel, and those present recalled that when last the British Association met in Oxford, 32 years ago, Sir Oliver had startled many by a demonstration that electromagnetic waves ("radio") could be used for signaling, without communicating wires. His subject this time, of course, was spiritism. He began by showing how physicists have proved the nonexistence of a "material" world (all "matter" being ultimately composed of whirling particles of immaterial electricity). He ended by predicting "revolutionary" scientific discoveries in a spirit-world that surrounds the one we know. "Mercifully, things are screened from us that we may go about our business and do our daily work. That is our job for a time. . . but . . . we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses and a company of helpers in a marvelous spiritual world." Unlike his radio lecture of 32 years ago, Sir Oliver's remarks were unaccompanied by a demonstration; but for a decade he has been investigating, preaching spiritism and the elevation of mankind. In 1913-14 he was president of the British Association.

Sir Oliver was called upon again at the close of the congress, to thank Edward of Wales for his presence and interest as the Association's president. Referring to the Prince's opening address, in which Science and Government were felicitously intertwined (TIME, Aug. 16), Sir Oliver said: "It is not altogether a secret that his distinguished family chaffed him and suggested that he might make a mess of it. We all agree that he did not make a mess of it." The British Association then voted to hold its 1929 Congress in South Africa.*

* Even as the French Association for the Advancement of Science resolved to meet in 1927 in Algeria (TIME, Aug. 9).