BILLIARDS

during the first four years of the period 1910-25 the australian prodigy, george gray, revealed the possibilities attaching to the in-off strokes, played in series from hand. his array of four-figure breaks, headed by a mem- orable effort of 2,196 (unfinished), gave rise to much controversy as to the leniency of the rules in permitting an unlimited chain of these red ball losing hazards. attention was called to the re- strictions imposed upon the remaining ‘“‘ key’”’ shots, the close cannons and the almost completely effaced spot-stroke play. but no legislative action was taken and the radius of gray’s ac- tivities, like that of his copyists, was widened. the desire not to place obstacles in the path of the ordinary amateur player accounts in great measure for the decision of the authorities to leave the rule relating to red ball in-offs untouched. gray’s displays so caught the public fancy that he was consid- ered invincible and a wave of surprise greeted the publication of his name among the list of entrants for the 1914 championship. billiards there were those, however, who realised what a difficult task the newcomer to championship contests had undertaken; he would now have to play with the ivory ball, the standard match ball, and not with the composition one which he knew so inti- mately. gray was beaten quite easily in his opening heat. the ivory ball, with its minute subtleties, its inner life and powers of expansion and contraction, reduced the master of composition balls to comparative ineffectiveness. greatest of all championships in the interest it evoked, the 1914 competition not only burst the bubble created by george gray, but brought about a change in the established order. for a decade h. w. stevenson had borne out all the high pre- dictions made for him by john roberts, and become the accepted master of the billiard cue. in 1914, however, this brilliant expo- nent was unexpectedly defeated in the second round of the cham- pionship, after having apparently gained a winning advantage. stevenson made way for another and not quite so spectacular a performer, although certainly @ more doggedly insistent one, melbourne inman. the game during the war.—the world war brought about a tremendous increase in the popularity of billiards. every y.m. c.a. hostel, every sanatorium, every military mess, called for billiard tables. thousands of young men became intimate with a game of which many of them had only vaguely heard. a lead- ing form of entertainment for soldiers home on leave was the dis- plays at thurston’s hall, leicester square, london, w.c. many of the professionals, and a good proportion of the leading ama- teurs continued to play during the war period, and the annual amateur championship, competed for by veterans, was regularly decided during those years. changes tn the laws.—very few changes have taken place in the laws since 1910. an amendment to the rimington-wilson code of rules, which have worked so smoothly since their inno- vation, was adopted. this gives the non-striker, whose oppo- nent has committed a technical foul or breach of the rules, a double option, instead of the single one which did not fairly meet the offence. now the non-offending player may either have the balls set up in their spotted positions, according to rule, or play at the balls where they rest upon the table. after many years of vexa- tious double control, with two differing sets of rules, an amalga- mation of the older billiards assn. with the more recent billiards control club has brought the government of the game under one body, known as the billiards assn. and control club. fol- lowing this amalgamation came the decision to use composition balls for the 1926 championship. championships, 1910-25 professional champion amateur champion 1910 h. w. stevenson 1910 if. a. o. lonsdale tgt1 h. w. stevenson 1git h.c. virr 1912 m. inman i912 h.c. virr 1913 m. inman 1913 h.c, virr 1914 m. inman 1914 h.c. virr 1915 no contest 1915 a. w. t. good 1916 no contest 1916 s. h, fry 1917 no contest 1917 j. graham symes 1918 no contest 1918 j. graham symes 1919 m. inman 1919 s. h. fry 1920 w. smith 1920 s. h. fry 1921 t. newman 1921 s. h. fry 1922 j. graham symes 1923 w. p. mcleod 1924 t. newman 1924 w. p. mcleod 1925 t. newman 1925 s. h. fry t. newman holds the record break of 1,274 points with ivory balls. the australian, w. lindrum, has scored a break of 1,879 with composition balls. these are the two highest breaks scored under the present code of rules. j. davis, of chesterfield, holds the snooker pool break record of 95. brbliography.—j. p. mannock and s. a. mussabini, billiards expounded, 2 vol., the standard work on the game; t, aiken, plain talks to billiard players (1924); t. newman, advanced billiards (1924) and billiard ‘‘do’s"” and ‘don’ts" (1924); j. roberts, billiards guide (1924); w. smith, first steps to billiards (1924) and [tow to play snooker and other pool games (1924); w. hoffe, 30 years of billtards (1925); a. f. peall, all about billiards (1925); t. reece, dainty billiards (1925). (s. a. m.) tt. newman 1922 1923 w. smith billing machine—biochemistry united states —william f. hoppe dominated the balkline game in the united states from 1910 to 1925. the death of schaefer, the elder, in march 1908, opened the way for hoppe in tournament and match. the championship tournaments were of international character, horemans (belgium), conti (france), hagenlacher (germany), yamada (japan) and others unsuccess- fully competing. toward the close of the period schacfer, the younger, son of the old champion, upheld the family tradition, threatening hoppe and twice lowering his colours owing to the brilliance of his play. horemans came to the united states at the close of the war. the belgian developed a new balkline system largely employing the massee. other professionals copied it, producing amazing runs such as schaefer’s 400 unfinished from spot in the 1925 tournament, and a match record average of 514 for 4,000 points. in a special contest he counted a run of 436. in a pro- fessional exhibition w. w. spink counted the high figure of 1,009 inasingle inning. a junior championship was established in the united states in 1923 and won by tado suganuma (japan). in turn a. cutler, k. suzuki and a. bos held the title. the national assn. of amateur billiard players maintained an unbroken line of championship contests. like the profes- sional records, their performances improved, j. a. clinton, jr., of pittsburgh, creating the american record of 154 for high run, high average of 374, and grand average of 18-33 in the 1923 tournament. champions 18-2 balkline professional amateur 1910 w. f. hoppe 1910 ef. w. gardner i91rt w. f. hoppe 1911 e. w. gardner 1912 w. f. hoppe 1912 m. d. brown 1913 w. f. hoppe 1913 j. mayer 1914 w. f. hoppe 1914 e. w. gardner 1915 w. f. hoppe 1915 j. mayer 1916 w. f, hoppe 1916 ef. w. gardner 1917 w. f. hoppe 1917 n. hall 1918 w. f. hoppe 1918 c. huston 1919 w. f. hoppe 1919 d. mcandless 1920 w. f. hoppe 1920 p. n. collins 1921 c. h. heddon 1922 k. t. appleby 1923 p. n. collins 1924 e. t. appleby 1925 f. s. appleby 1921 j. schaefer 1922 w. f. hoppe 1923 w. f. hoppe 1924 w. f. hoppe 1925 j. schaefer amateur international championship contests were held, c. f. conklin winning in 1910; j. f. poggenburgh, 1912; e. t. apple- by, 1922. professional and amateur national championships were de- cided at pocket billiards and at the increasingly popular three cushion caroms. ralph greenleaf was outstanding at the pocket game among professionals, and j. howard shoemaker among amateurs. at three cushions de oro, layton and cannefax proved masters among professionals, and f. i. fleming the best amateur. bibliography.—maurice daly, daly's billiard book, ed. w. w. harris (1923); willie hoppe, thirty years of billiards, ed. t. n. crozier (1925). che by hy) billing machine: see office appliances. bingham, hiram (1875- ), american explorer and senator, was born at honolulu, hawaiian is., nov. 19 1875, and educated at the universities of yale, california and harvard. he became professor of south american geography and history at yale in 1915, where he had previously been teaching those subjects, and devoted much of his time to exploration. is expeditions took him over the spanish trade route from bucnos aires to lima in ro08-9, and, in 1911, 1912 and rort4-5, to peru. in april r917 he organised the u.s. schools of military aeronautics, and was commissioned lieutenant-colonel in the air service. he was later chief of the air personnel division at washington and also in france from march to aug. 1918. from august to december he commanded the allies’ flying school at issoudun. in 1924 he was elected governor of con- necticut, and, having resigned from yale, was inaugurated jan. 734925. the following day he resigned to become u.s. senator, having been chosen at a special election to fill the unexpired term a0 of senator frank b. brandegee. he has published journal of an expedition across venezuela and colombia (1909); across south america (1911); vitcos, the last inca capital (1912); in the wonderland of peru (1913); an explorer in the atr service (1920), and inca land (1922). biochemistry.—biochemistry may be defined as the study of the chemical or physico-chemical processes which play a part in the life phenomena of plants and animals. the subdivision of the mother science of chemistry into a number of special branches, physical, inorganic, organic, biological, etc., has been the natural consequence of the rapid advances in knowledge which have been made since about 1870. although the study of the chemical aspect of the physiology of living organisms has only been generally termed biochemistry for some 20 years, it is actually one of the oldest branches of chemical science. lavoisier.—disregarding events which occurred before the birth of modern chemistry at the end of the 18th century, we find that lavoisier, the creator of the new science, himself spent no small portion of his time in prosecuting biochemical research. he showed clearly for the first time that the life-processes of the animal body can be investigated by chemical means, for he proved by quantitative methods that the body temperature is maintained by the combustion of foodstufis just as the heat generated in the burning of wood or a candle is produced by the oxidation of organic matter. the first half of the next century produced three outstanding figures, whose united labour ex- tended widely the foundations on which the modern study of biochemistry is based. in the first place liebig, carrying back with him from paris to germany the inspiration gained by con- tact with those who had been students or colleagues of the great lavoisier, not only established the study of organic chemistry, on which biochemistry is dependent, but actually opened up wide avenues of research on problems of plant and animal chemistry. liebig.—in 1837, at the request of the british association for the advancement of science, he undertook to prepare a re- port on the state of knowledge in organic chemistry. ‘this led to the publication in 1840 of his memorable work die chemie in threr anwendung auf agrikultur und physiologie, followed in 1842 by die thierchemie, oder die organische chemie tn ihrer anwendung auf physiologie und pathologie. these two classics mark quite clearly the point at which the study of plant and agricultural chemistry on the one hand, and that of animal chemistry on the other, first attracted wide interest amongst scientists in general and chemists in particular. hofmann speaking of this great man said, “ in the study of biology, vegetal and animal, liebig was the first to disentangle intricacies that had before seemed problems beyond the grasp of human intellect to solve; and it was one of the grandest results of his philosophical and experimental investigations that he traced amidst the multi- tudinous and apparently ever-varying manifestations of life, in its countless modifications of kind and degree, the operation of a few simple laws, physical and chemical, affording, by their determinate combination, the precise and proved conditions of vital development, nutrition, growth and perpetuation from generation to generation, in unaltered individuality.” claude bernard and pasteur.—at this time progress in this field of thought was still hampered by the persistence of ideas regarding the existence of a vital force. the first blow to shatter these theories was dealt by wohler in 1828 when he announced the synthesis from inorganic materials of urea, a typical animal product for the formation of which some influence exerted by the vitality of the organism had, until then, been considered essential. the belief in a vital force or vital principle would have died slowly had it not been for the brilliant series of researches in experimental physiology that have made the work of claude bernard immortal. the third figure is the illustrious pasteur, whose researches on fermentation, putrefaction and disease re- vealed not only the organisms that gave rise to these conditions, but also, in many cases, the chemical or physico-chemical changes that occurred. 374 during the second half of the roth century researches in plant and animal chemistry were prosecuted with increasing vigour. unfortunately, however, there was a tendency for the studies in each field to be kept apart from the other, and there were com- paratively few investigators of that period who were suiliciently broad in their outlook to attempt to view the problems from the standpoint of the cell rather than from that of the animal or plant. much progress was made in both animal chemistry or, as it was usually termed, physiological chemistry, and in plant and agricultural chemistry, but there were few attempts at correlation. lhe twentieth century.—the more gencral appreciation of the need of a wider outlook seems to have become apparent at the opening of the 20th century, when the term biological chemistry or biochemistry began to displace the older terms. in great britain the biochemical club, now the biochemical society, was founded in 1905 and published the first volume of the bio- chemical journal in 1906. the corresponding scientific journals in the united states and germany, namely, the journal of biological chemistry and biochemische zeitschrift, also appeared for the first time in that year. the rapid advance of the new branch of chemistry can be illustrated by the growth of the biechemical journal, of which the first volume (1906) contained 32 papers, amounting in all to 495 pages of printed matter, whereas the volume for 1924 contained 188 papers and a total of 1,428 pages. chemical processes in the cell—the study of the chemical processes occurring in living cells or brought about in the external medium by their action has all along been dependent to a very large extent on the rate of advance in our knowledge of organic and physical chemistry. the contents of the cell, known gen- erally as protoplasm, represent to the chemist a mixture of such complexity that despair of ever gaining any clear conception of its actual composition might well be pardoned. not only is the task one of great difficulty by reason of the wide variety of sub- stances which are to be found present in cells, but also because a large proportion of those compounds exist in the cell in the con- dition known as the colloidal state (see cot.oms). conditions of progress—progress in biochemistry has, there- fore, been dependent to a large extent on the rate of advance of knowledge in the neighbouring fields of organic and physical chemistry. one example may make this clear. a large proportion of the solid material of cellular contents is composed of complex nitrogenous substances termed collectively the proteins. no satisfactory theory regarding their significance in living cells could be advanced until information concerning both the molec- ular structure of the proteins and their physical properties as colloids had been obtained. the former was provided by the classic researches of the great german chemist emil fischer, who revealed, by his analytical studies, that the proteins are large, complex molecules formed by the intercombination of a number of amino-acids by virtue of their basic and acidic groupings. although it is still uncertain whether the only form of linkage between the constituent amino-acids in the protein molecule is that described by fischer, it is apparent that it is by far the most common and a very important one. his work has given us a general picture of the internal structure of the protein molecule that is in agreement with the vast majority of known facts con- cerning their chemical properties. parallel with these researches in the field of organic chemistry on the constitution of the proteins, extensive investigations were being made in many quarters on the colloidal properties of these remarkable substances. as a result of this work it has at last been possible to attack with reasonable chances of success the major question concerning the rele of the proteins in the living cell, a most remarkable achievement. , in general it can be seen that advance in biochemistry has followed much the same path that can be traced in the growth of other branches of experimental science. broadly speaking, its development can be divided into two phases, the descriptive phase and the quantitative phase. in the former period the efforts of investigators were devoted mainly to the isolation of biochemistry the substances present in living tissues and to the investigation of their nature and properties, whilst in the later phase attention has gradually become diverted towards elucidating their signifi- cance in the organisms and to the quantitative examination of the dynamics of the reactions in which they are concerned. the study of biochemistry may be regarded as having very definitely entered the second phase about 1910, for in almost any journal devoted to this branch of science the great proportion of the papers published at the present time are devoted to the study of the dynamics of cellular reactions. ‘the importance of pursuing this line of study must be apparent when it is borne in mind that it is particularly by reason of the extraordinary com- plexity and variety of the energy exchanges that occur in even the simplest cell that one clifferentiates living from non-living matter. definition of life-—from the earliest time philosophers have attempted to define life, without one wholly satisfactory defini- tion having been advanced. ‘to-day the difficulties of their task can be appreciated because it becomes increasingly evident that there is no clear line of demarcation between the living and the non-living. nevertheless, as claude bernard indicated in his striking essay on the “ phenomena of life,” there are a number of properties of living matter which, taken collectively, serve as a rough and ready means of diflerentiating it from systems rel- atively inert. these outstanding phenomena are: (1) assim- lation and respiration. (2) reproduction. (3) growth and development. (4) movement. (5) secretion and excretion. considered singly it is obvious that no one of these is in itself characteristic of living matter alone, but as yet no system that could be considered in the light of present opinion a non-living one has been found to exhibit all together. it may serve to show the scope of modern biochemistry if examples be given of the application of the new branch of science to the study of the chemical aspect of these phenomena of life. assimilation processes —the biochemical study of assimilation has somewhat naturally fallen into two sections, depending upon whether plants or animals are being considered. the power possessed by green plants to synthesise complex organic substances from carbon dioxide, water and simple inorganic salts, such as nitrates, sulphates and phosphates, places them in a class apart from other beings and calls for particular study (see photosynthesis). the essential difference is, of course, that for the synthesis of organic matter from carbon dioxide a supply of energy is necessary—the reaction being an endothermic one. comparatively long ago it was recognised that the source of this supply of energy is the sun, but only recenily has the knowledge of the nature of the pigments in the leaf, of the absorption of energy in the form of light by these pigments, of the mechanism of absorption of carbon dioxide by the leaf and of the nature of the substances formed during assimilation, enabled biochemists to construct reasonable theories as to the process of photosynthesis in green plants. in this field much remains to be done. in spite of many strong indications that the first step in carbon assimilation is the photochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to formaldehyde, precise confirmation is lack- ing. the efiiciency of the process is also undetermined. early investigators belicved it to be of the order of 3-5%, but war- burg has recently recorded values as high as 80%. chlorophyil.—there is also the question of the origin of the chlorophyll pigments in relation to their rele as energy absorbers and transformers. obviously so complex a molecule as will- stiitter’s researches revealed chlorophyll to be must have an exceedingly long evolutionary history. from what type of sub- stance is it descended? at a very early period in the history of living organisms it is probable that supplies of energy for assim- ilation of carbon dioxide and formation of organic substances were derived not from the absorption of solar radiation by suit- able pigments, but from simple exothermic chemical reactions of the type exhibited by the existing species of autotrophic bacteria (see bacteriology). ‘these remarkable organisms, amongst which are grouped certain of the sulphur bacteria, the nitrite bacteria, and the hydrogen bacteria, possess the powcr to carry biochemistry out simple reactions, such as the oxidation of sulphur to sulphates, ammonia to nitrites and hydrogen to water, and to use the energy liberated by these reactions to effect the conversion of car- bon dioxide into organic matter. it is also interesting to note that certain of the sulphur bacteria contain a pigment, bacterio- purpurin, which appears to function somewhat in the manner of chlorophyll in higher plants, when the bacteria are exposed to the light, whereas in the dark these organisms satisfy their energy requirements by the oxidations referred to above. possibly these species represent the transitional forms that ultimately led to the evolution of the assimilatory system of the green plant. plant synthesis of carbon.—little as is our knowledge re- garding the synthesis of the compounds of carbon in the green plants, it is profound when compared with that concerning the formation of substances containing other elements; in particular nitrogen. we are, to all intents and purposes, entirely ignorant of the mode of formation in the plant of the great groups of substances, the proteins, alkaloids and plant bases. animal assimilation.—the outstanding fact that the animal organism is essentially analytic and not synthetic as is the green plant, has, of course, been recognised for many years. the study of assimilation by the animal becomes, therefore, to a large extent, the study of the breakdown, or metabolism, as it is termed, of the foodstuffs that are ingested by the organism to supply, on the one hand, the energy for heat production or work and, on the other, the molecular units required to construct or keep in repair its tissues. | biochemical investigations of assimilation in the animal world have made rather more rapid progress than corresponding efforts in the field of plant chemistry. to a large degree this is due to the fact that, in the higher animals at least, it is to some extent possible to follow the fate of substances by examining the body fluids, the individual organs, or, more particularly, the excretions. food metabolism and enzymes.—the study of the metabolism of foodstuffs in the animal body represents a large and important branch of biological chemistry. it entails in the first place an examination of the mode of action of the remarkable catalytic agents possessed by the living cell and termed enzymes, by means of which the complex molecules of the proteins, poly- saccharides and fats are broken down so that the simpler mole- cules of amino-acids and sugars can pass through the absorbing membranes of the alimentary canal. mechanism of absorpiton.—the actual mechanism of absorp- tion of substances into the tissue fluids must then be studied, after which we must enquire into the fate of the molecules that have been assimilated. some of these go to form tissues that are being constructed, especially during the period of growth; of the others, the great majority are in due course oxidised so that the energy liberated by their oxidative degradation may be available for maintaining body temperature, or for the per- formance of work. a whole field of biochemistry is concerned with the mechanisms by which organic molecules are oxidised in the living cell to carbon dioxide and water, for a large propor- tion of the substances that are rapidly and fully oxidised in the tissues at temperatures below 40° c. are only oxidised by drastic treatment with chemical reagents and by the employment of high temperatures when subjected to experiment in the test tube. respiration processes.—it was discovered by the researches of mayou, priestley and lavoisier that living creatures support life by the process of respiration, in which oxygen is taken into the system, and the product of oxidation of organic matter, carbon dioxide, is given off. to-day it is recognised that respiration is in no way peculiar to living tissues, for many non-living systems can be constructed that will absorb oxygen and eliminate carbon dioxide under conditions more or less comparable with those un- der which the living cells respire. the very striking experiment described in recent years by the distinguished german chemist otto warburg may be taken as an illustration. the oxidation of certain substances which are oxidised in the body, e.g., certain amino-acids, will take place along apparently similar paths, at 375 any rate leading to the formation of carbon dioxide and am- monia, when their aqueous solutions are shaken with carefully prepared charcoal in a fine state of division. a measure of the oxygen absorbed and of the carbon dioxide evolved in such cases is as truly a measure of the respiration of the charcoal as a determination of the respiratory quotient is an indication of the oxidative activity of a living tissue. the parallel becomes even more remarkable when it is learnt that the respiration of the charcoal particles can be depressed by the addition of narcotics or polsons in a manner absolutely comparable with the influence of these substances on the respiration of living yeast cells, red blood corpuscles or muscle tissue. origin of circulatory system—the biochemical study of respiration is, however, a problem presenting many aspects. primarily it is necessary to investigate the means by which the oxygen is brought to the cclls, a task that widens on every hand and takes us into many fields. the cells of the simpler forms of life draw their supplies of oxygen direct from solution in the surrounding fluid, but for more complex organisms this would not suffice, and methods of distributing the oxygen to tissues more remote from the external medium have evolved. thus arose the circulatory system of animals. simple air-breathing species dependent on the diffusion into the tissue spaces of oxygen from a more or less complicated system of tracheal tubes, gave rise to more complex organisms leading to the evolu- tion of the lung with its enormous diffusion surface. even this would have been insufficient to supply the oxygen requirements of the majority of animals if oxygen carriers of the type of haemoglobin had not been evolved to enable the circulating fluid to carry round to the tissues ample oxygen for their needs. huaemoglobin.—the evolution of haemoglobin and other so- called respiratory pigments, their functions as oxygen carriers are widely studied problems of the biochemist, but his interest cannot stop with the study of the mechanisms by which oxygen is brought to the cells, he must enquire how the oxygen is made available in the cell for oxidations. action of oxygen.—atmospheric oxygen, whether obtained direct from solution in the surrounding medium, or by the dis- soclation of oxyhacmoglobin is relatively inert as an oxidising agent. of the foodstuffs oxidised in living cells only very few are appreciably attacked by oxygen in the molecular form o,; the unsaturated fatty acids present in such oils as cod liver oil and linseed oil are examples of compounds that take up molecular oxygen, but the extent to which they are oxidised is very small when compared with the complete degradation to carbon di- oxide and water that occurs with such ease in the animal body. early in the roth century schinbein in his studies of ozone pointed out that oxygen must in some manner be activated before it is able to effect the majority of oxidations, and this view, in one form or another, has formed the basis of the many theories of oxidation that have been advanced since his time. we are still without clear ideas regarding the mechanism of activation of molecular oxygen which the living cell possesses, but the studies of warburg on tissues and on the charcoal model to which refer- ence has been made suggest that the presence of iron plays an important part in the process. oxidative mfechanisms.—this brings us in a natural sequence to refer to the oxidative mechanisms which the living organism possesses. in the first place there are the oxidising enzymes, the oxidases, a group of catalysts, many of them of a highly specific character, capable of oxidising with great rapidity under suitable conditions a wide variety of substances. the biochemical ex- amination of the oxidases has been extensive, and has, par- ticularly in recent years, given us considerable information how molecules such as those of tyrosine, xanthine and uric acid are oxidised. according to the recent work of thunberg and baltelli and stern the cell possesses, in addition to the recognised type of oxidase, other types of oxidative catalysts of a thermolabile na- ture. it would appear, however, from the results of the researches of sir gowland hopkins and of meyerhof that there are also present in the cells of plants and animals oxidative-reductive systems which are thermostable. the remarkable substance 376 glutathione, discovered a year or two ago by hopkins, probably plays an important part in these last-mentioned systems. in no field of research in biochemistry at the present time are activities so vigorous as in that devoted to the study of oxida- tions in living tissues. reproduction.—turning now to the second characteristic of life in our list, namely, reproduction, we find we are considering a phenomenon which might well, at first sight, appear to be out- side the scope of experimental attack by biochemists. surely, in the processes underlying reproduction, if anywhere in the realm of biology, might be traced the “ vital force ”’ or “ en- telechy ’’ that would at almost every turn frustrate our efforts. the clear demonstration that such is not the case, and that the problems of fertilisation and reproduction are no less open to experimental biochemical investigation than those of digestion or resniration, we owe to the remarkable work of the great experi- mental biologist jacques loeb. ilis investigations on the in- fluence of the composition of the surrounding medium on the reproductive cells of certain marine animals dispel any doubt that many of the problems of fertilisation, of specificity and of inheritance will in time be solved, and to a large extent by biochemical methods (see cytology; e7embryology). control experiments—can this be doubted when we recall that the migration of the sperm to the egg has been shown to be directed by the physico-chemical action of certain substances derived from the latter; that the penetration of the ovum by the sperm can be controlled by altering the composition of the sur- rounding fluid, even to the extent of permitting the admission of a sperm cell foreign to the egg; that the mechanical act of pene- tration performed by the sperm, and resulting in the almost explosive outburst of oxidative activity that marks the initiation of fertilisation, can be reproduced by perforation with needles so successfully that numbers of male frogs have been reared to adult size from eggs so fertilised? considering these striking facts, and at the same time bearing in mind the mass of evidence that is accumulating on every side to show how the development of the reproductive cells is under chemical control in the body and how these tissues themselves exert by chemical means a far- reaching control on the development and functions of other tissues, no reasonable dou»t can be entertained that the phe- nomena associated with reproduction are open to biochemical investigation. genetic problems.—many of the closely associated problems of genctics are also well within the biochemist’s purview, as can readily be judged by giving one or two examples. the inherit- ance of colours, whether we are thinking of the blue, red or purple colours of flowers or the black and brown markings of animals, has been shown to depend on the inheritance of a physico-chemical system capable, under ordinary conditions, of producing the colour. some of these systems and the mechanism of their action are fairly well understood. the systems may be more or less complex in character, but unless they are complete the mechanism for the production of the colour cannot function normally. thus, for example, two white flowers from different plants of the same species may lack colour because one compo- nent of the colour-producing system is absent. if the missing factor is the same in both cases, crossing will not result in the production of coloured flowers, but if, on the other hand, their de‘iciences are complementary, a proportion of the seeds pro- duced on cross fertilisation will yield plants with coloured flowers. the mechanisms concerned in the production of both animal and plant colours have been extensively studied in viiro, and they are to some extent understood. growth and development.—the biochemical study of growth and development has been followed along many paths. the influence of the composition of the soil on plant growth has attracted wide attention ever since the classic researches of liebig were published. to-day the agricultural biochemist not only studies the significance of the more obviously essential constituents of the soil, such as nitrates, phosphates, etc., but is concerned to no little extent with the influence which apparently insignificant amounts of other substances may have. the curious biochemistry fact that the broad-bean plant will not grow to full maturity without a minute amount of the element boron being present in the soil is an example of what has already resulted from investi- gation in this direction. chemical control.—the biochemical study of the growth and development of animals provides many examples of both these aspects of the chemical control of growth. on the one hand the energy requirements of animals during the period of growth have been investigated in great detail, whilst on the other, it has been ascertained that a normal development is dependent on the satisfaction of a number of more or less clearly defined require- ments. a small but definite amount of the amino-acid tryptophane, a constituent of some, but not all, proteins, is necessary for growth of young animals, and the provision of any amount of a protein deficient in that particular building stone will fail to induce growth unless the missing unit is provided from some other source. many biochemists at the present time are engaged in investigating the remarkable influence which the substances known as the vitamins have on the growth and nutrition of animals. the number of these substances that are generally accepted as being clearly diterentiated is already five, and prob- ably more exist as yet undiscovered. their chemical nature re- mains unknown in spite of considerable study, and we are also regrettably ignorant as to the actual part they play in the economy of the organism. (see vitamines.) growth factors.—lastly, there is a chemical aspect of growth in the investigation of the influence of inorganic elements on animal development. problems such as the rele of traces of iodine in inducing normal development of the thyroid gland, and the manner in which lime salts are deposited in growing bone illustrate the type of question in this field that calls for an answer from biochemists. movements.—study of the chemical or physico-chemical fac- tors inducing the movements of plants and animals covers a wide field of experimental research, ranging from control of the movements of free-swimming unicellular organisms to the un- ravelling of the complex series of events that occur during a mus- cle twitch in higher animals. regeneration.—little is yet known of the factors determining the growth movements of plants beyond loeb having shown by his researches on regeneration in bryophyllum that chemical factors probably play a part in the directional growth of shoots and roots. ‘the movements of many forms of simple animals can be to a certain extent controlled by making alterations in the composition of the medium in which they exist, as, for example, when the water flea, daphnia, which normally swims away from the light moves in the reverse direction when carbon dioxide is bubbled through the water. another remarkable example also described by loeb, is that of the larvae of porthesia which in the starving condition are attracted toward light and climb high up the stems of the plant on which they customarily feed, but which, having fed on the leaves, become negatively helio- tropic and at once descend again to the darker regions. by starv- ing them or by feeding on the leaves of the plant they can in the laboratory be made at will to move toward or away from a source of light. mechanism of muscular movement.—turning to what we may regard as the other corner of this ficld, namely, the biochemical investigation of the mechanism of muscular movement in animals we find one of the most complete chapters of modern biochemistry. the long series of researches of outstanding merit by hopkins and fletcher, meyerhof and a. v. ifill have taught us how the glycogen of muscle is broken down to sugar; how the sugar, passing through the intermediate stage of being com- bined with phosphoric acid, gives rise to the lactic acid that initiates the contraction, and how these anaerobic changes are followed by an oxidative phase of recovery during which part of the lactic acid passes back into its precursor, whilst the re- mainder is oxidised to carbon dioxide and water. these changes have been followed with such precision by chemical and physical methods that the heat production of the muscle during the biology whole cycle has been accounted for with considerable exactitude by a knowledge of the heat exchanges of the chemical reactions _ which are believed to occur. in spite of these carefully compiled results we are as yet ignorant of the actual processes involved when the muscle fibre shortens in contraction. without doubt it is a physico-chemical mechanism of which the nature will soon be revealed by future research. hormones.—the processes of secretion and excretion have been the subject of extensive biochemical research, although mainly on animal tissues. the discovery by starling and bayliss of the agents known as hormones indicated forthe first time how important a part such chemical messengers play in the co-ordinat- ing mechanisms of the higher animals. their discovery of secre- tin, the substance of, as yet, undetermined nature which is produced in the mucosa of the upper part of the small intestine under the stimulus of the entry of acid food material from the stomach, and which, passing into the blood stream, invokes, in a very short space of time, the secretion of the digestive juice of the pancreas, has paved the way for the discovery by banting and best of the internal secretion of the pancreas itself, and more recently of that of the internal secretion of the parathyroid _ gland by collip. viewed as a whole, the regulatory action (see endocrinology) exerted by the secretions of the various glands and tissues of the higher animals is scen to be one of the most delicately balanced nature, but it is one that is quite definitely open to chemical investigation. excretory processes —the processes of excretion by which living organisms rid their tissues of waste products have, as yet, been scarcely investigated at all in plants. in animals, more particularly in the mammals, they have been extensively ex- amined from the biochemical standpoint. the secretion of urine, the work done by the kidney in this process, the chemical and physico-chemical principles underlying the concentrations of waste products that appear in the excreted fluid, all these have been the subject of prolonged and fruitful investigation during the period under review. secretory processes.—of no less interest are problems con- cerning the secretion by living cells, such as the gastric mucosa of animals, of fluids containing appreciable concentrations of free mineral acids. these questions are intimately bound up with the very general one concerning the mechanisms by which the reaction of the body fluids is maintained within narrow limits. the study of the system of amphoteric colloids and simple elec- trolytes that constitute the tissue fluids of animal or plant tissues has, from the standpoint of physical chemistry, been al- most exhaustive, and the analysis, step by step, of the influence of the many factors playing a rele in the cycle of changes that occurs in blood during its circulation in the bodies of animals stands as one of the most impressive tributes to the application of the rigid, quantitative methods of modern physical chemistry to problems of outstanding biological importance. many other spheres of extensive biochemical work might be mentioned, but it will be sufficient if brief reference be made to the chemical in- vestigations of fermentation and bacterial changes on account of their enormous economic importance. fermentation processes.—tyo-day, as a result of the researches of harden and young in great britain, of fernbach in paris, and of c. neuberg in germany, we are in possession of a reason- ably clear idea of the stages by which the sugar molecule is broken down to yield alcohol and carbon dioxide when fermented by yeast. most of the intermediate products have actually been isolated and their part in the process proven beyond question. of particular interest is the fact that the most recent work on the fermentation of sugar by yeast and on its degradation in the cells of the animal body points to the essential steps in the breakdown of the carbohydrate molecule being the same in both cases. probably in no other field of research in biochemistry have so many striking examples been found as in that of fermentation chemistry, of the course of a reaction being changed by altera- tions in the conditions of the experiment. certain of these diversions of the normal course of events have proved of con- o11 siderable economic value as, for example, when, during the world war, german scientists were able to prepare considerable quantities of glycerol from sugar by causing inhibition of the fermentation at a certain stage in its progress by the addition of sulphites. apart from the alcoholic fermentations there are numerous other processes, many of them of considerable technical im- portance, in which the action of the bacteria (see bacteriology) or other forms of micro-organisms are the subjects of biological research. bibliograpily.—c. oppenheimer, handbuch der biochemie (jena, 1909-13); o. ilammarsten, text-book of physiological chemistry, engl. trans. by j. a. mandel (1911); a. p. mathews, phystological chemistry (1916); b. moore, biochemistry (1921); f. czapek, bio- chemie der pflanzen (jena, 1922); t. r. parsons, fundamentals of biochemistry (1923); a. krogh, respiratory exchange of animals and man (1916); r. el. a. plimmer, the chemical constitution of the proteins, pt. 1, analysis (1917); 11. maclean, lecithin and allied substances (1918); e. f. armstrong, the simple carbohydrates and the glucosides (1919); sir w. m. bayliss, the nature of enzyme action (1919); w. jones, nucleic acids (1920); e. p. cathcart, the phystology of protein metabolism (1921); h. d. dakin, oxidations and reductions in the animal body (1922); a. harden, alcoholic fermentation (1923); e. a. werner, chemtstry of urea (1923); t. b. osborne, the vegetable proteins (1924); p. a. levene, ffex- osamines and mucoproteins (1925). a biology (see 3.954) is the general science of organisms, plants and animals alike. it includes botany and zoology, and the study of man as organism; but it is at once more and less than the sum of these: more, because it is the science of organisms in their general aspects as living individualities; less, because it has not to do with the detailed descriptions given by the zoologist and the botanist, except in so far as these may throw light on the problems of the nature and continuance and evolution of life. in other words, biology is a general science, including the special sciences of botany and zoology, protozoology and bacteriology, anatomy and physiology. divisions of biology—there are various general questions that may be, and must be, asked in regard to organisms: and the answers to these are the biological sub-sciences. first, there is analysis of structure, both macroscopic and microscopic; that is to say, histological as well as anatomical; and this inquiry leads towards an understanding of what may be called the principles of organic architecture. this is the sub-science of morphology. second, there is analysis of function or activity; how does the organism “‘ work’ and keep going? this is the sub-science of physiology. as in morphology, so in physiology, the analysis may be at different levels, passing from the intact creature to its organs, its tissucs, its cells and its living matter or protoplasm. ilistorically, as a matter of fact, these two complementary sub- sciences—morphology and physiology—have developed pari passu and logically along the jines of this gradually deepening analysis. the organism, which is always an individuality, may also be regarded as a correlation of organs, a woven fabric of tissues, a vast city of cells and an integrate of protoplasmic whirlpools, to use huxley’s metaphor. the third biological sub-science is embryology (q.v.) which in- quires into the development of the individual organism; not merely describing the successive stages of “ ontogeny,” but in- vestigating the factors that are operative in the process of in- dividual becoming. thus, besides descriptive embryography, there is physiological embryology, often nowadays experimental. to give an example, it is a characteristic modern inquiry to trace the influence that the hormones of various ductless or endocrinal glands (sce endocrinology) exert on the developing embryo of which they form a part. as embryology deals with the individual organism in its time relations, it is obviously difficult to draw a hard and fast line indicating where it should stop. it must obviously include larvae as well as embryos; yet why not adoles- cents as well as larvae? this isa familiar difficulty that has many illustrations, and it means that these sub-sciences merely repre- sent the diverse ways of looking at organisms. it is common sense, however, to keep the term embryology for the study of the developing organism, before it assumes in great measure the character of its adult. 378 the fourth sub-science is palaeontology (q.v.), which inquires into the past history of the race to which a type belongs. it relies on the fossilised remains, the history written in the rocks, and it aims at working out pedigrees. how did the modern type of horse arise, or what was the ancestry of flowering plants? no doubt a fossil may be anatomised as regards its hard parts; and there cannot be any strict separation between dissecting an animal recently alive and one that lived a million years ago. part of morphology has to do with fossils, but the specific in- quiry of palaeontology is historical. the anatomy of the fossil is utilised in the reconstruction of extinct organisms. but with this there must also go a reconstruction of the environment in past ages, so that the organisms of long ago may be seen as players on a definite stage, as kowalevsky showed almost picturesquely in his classic studies of fossil ungulates. ecology.— but just as palaeontology is distinctively con- cerned with the races of organisms, and embryology with the becoming of the individual, so physiology must rise beyond the functions of the single organism to a study of the activities of the pair, the family, the herd, and so on, not only in themselves, but also in their inter-relations with their environment, animate as well as inanimate. this is what semper called ‘‘ the physiology of organisms ”’ or general physiology; it is now called ecology or bionomics, and is largely concerned with the behaviour and inter-relations of organisms. it is in great part the old-fashioned ** natural history.” taxonomy.—similarly, we may pass from the morphology of the single individual to its place in the general scheme of classification. that is to say, we may study the grouping of plants and animals in species, genera, families, orders, classes and phyla; and this in a word is taxonomy, which is to morphology what ecology is to physiology. aetiology.—but there is another great question which looms be- hind all the others: how have these organisms come to be as they are, both as regards themselves and asregards their inter-relations? this is what huxley called aetiology, an inquiry into the causes or factors that have been operative in the great process of organic evolution. this inquiry concerns not only the past and the present, but the possible, the variations and the siftings of to-day as well as those in the distant past, to which we argue back partly from the data of palaeontology and partly by analogy from what is of present occurrence. when palaeontology rises to the height of its calling and becomes causal as well as palaeon- tographical, it passes into phylogenetic aetiology. and similarly when embryography becomes physiological and experimental embryology, it passes into what may be called ontogenetic aetiology. this implies more than the physiology of the embryo at different stages of its ontogeny, it 1s an inquiry into the be- haviour of the germ-cells and the embryonic cells in so far as this throws light on the historic process of phylogeny. thus everyone will grant that such a fact as the early segregation of germ-cells from body-cells (see cyrolocy), or, to take another example, the reducing division in the maturation of the germ- cells, has a very important bearing on the general theory of organic evolution. while it is impossible to separate biology into self-contained sub-sciences which can be profitably studied and advanced in isolation from one another, there is convenience and stimulus in a map which indicates the eight possible approaches. ecology (csroups) (groups) morphology | physiology (inclivicduals) | individuals) pilylogenetic aetiology ontogenetic aetiology palaeontolography| taxonomy (race) embryography (individuals) the stiff abstractness of this map may be counteracted by keeping in mind the obvious fact that biology is not a depart- mental elaboration of knowledge, but itself a growing organism, correlated through and through. position ef biology among the sciences.—in a survey of the world without there is much to be said for recognising three main orders of facts—the inorganic, the organic, and the social; or, in other words, the domain of things, from dew-drops to stars; the realm of organisms, from microbe to mammal; and the kingdom biology of man, with its many societary forms. thus, if the terms are permissible, we may recognise the cosmosphere, the biosphere and the sociosphere, which overlap and intersect in interesting . ways. when coral-polyps build a reef, or beavers construct a dam, they are including part of the cosmosphere into the bio- sphere, just as a man brings the earth into his sociosphere when he makes a great dam or breakwater, or when he transforms organisms into his service by domestication or cultivation. for each of these three great spheres there is a distinct mode of evolution, for the genesis of a solar system and the history of a social institution are very different from one another, and very different from the process of organic evolution among plants and animals. sociology.—a further reason for thinking of three great orders of facts is that it has become practically impossible to separate chemistry and physics, and it is becoming, in the judgment of many, increasingly impossible to separate biology and psychology (g.v.). the science of the nature and origin and activity of societary forms stands by itself as sociology (q.v.). the question is whether there are three or more great orders of facts which require distinctive concepts for their formulation. chemistry and physics are concerned with matter and energy; biology faces the peculiar kind of activity that we call life; sociology has to do with human integrates that act in some measure as unities. it is much more than a problem of convenience; the question is how many large departments of knowledge can be regarded as autonomous. psychology.—but there is also much to recommend the reten- tion of the familiar spencerian grouping of five great concrete sciences—chemistry, physics, biology, psychology and sociology. one advantage of this scheme is that it gives emphasis to the central position of biology. since organisms are material systems specially adapted for the transformation of energy, biology must rest on a foundation of chemistry and physics. one needs only to think of the step of progress that was made when lavoisier brought the oxidations of the living creature into line with the combustion of fuel in air. or, looking in the other direction, the linkage of mental activity with bodily, of psychosis with neurosis, is so intimate that psychology without physiology is unthinkable. and some would reverse the statement, and say: nemo physiotlo- gus nist psvchologus. similarly, it is evident that sociology re- quires all the help that it.can get from the psychologists and the biologists. classifications of the sciences are means, not ends; and while a recognition of three great orders of facts is use- {ul for some purposes, there are also advantages in recognising five. thus when psychology is thought of mainly as the positive science of mental processes, its separateness from biology stands out; yet it joins hand with biology when it is regarded as the science of behaviour. legitimate and ilicgitimate materialisms.—the contributions of chemistry and physics to an understanding of the organism are fundamental, for organic activity is bound up with the re- actions of complex chemical substances in a colloidal state. the metabolism of the body is a concerted chemical routine, and if fermentation is a chemists’ business there is plenty of it in the organism. the organism may be more than an engine, to our thinking much more, yet an engine it is, and it cannot be under- stood apart from the properties of colloids, the phenomena asso- ciated with surfaces, and many other physical facts. ‘this is what comte called a “legitimate materialism,” using the concepts of a lower science to elucidate the phenomena which occur in the subject-matter of a higher. that laws of chemistry and physics apply in some measure to the life of organisms, 1s proved up to the hilt by the history of biology. biological categories —the question is whether there will be any biology left when chemistry and physics have said all they have to say? will bio-chemistry and bio-physics swallow up biology? the negative answer given by many biologists, who believe in the autonomy of their science, may be supported in various ways, but the strongest position is probably that the chemical-physical formulations do not actually describe what we see and know. if complete, they would afford a ledger of all biology the chemical and physical transactions that go on in the body, but that would not describe the organism’s apparently unique qualities as an integrated living individuality, such as its power of enregistering its experience within itself so that subsequent behaviour is influenced. as science is at present, it is necessary to use special biological categories describing the life of the organism—notably its growing, reproducing, developing, vary- ing, endeavouring. for isolated transactions in corners of the body, the chemico-physical] descriptions may suffice, but not at present for anything like behaviour. much has been cliscovered in regard to the movement of muscle, e.g., the contraction of the living threads in presence of lactic acid, but it cannot be said that we can as yet give a chemico-physical account of the twinkling of aneye. as everyone allows, there is a chemistry and a physics of the organism, absolutely indispensable and full of promise, but when they are added up they do not give biology. perhaps they will change, but at present the chemico-physical formulae are inadequate for the complete description of distinctively vital activities; and, from the nature of the case, they must still more egregiously fail to grip when “ mind ” is an appreciable factor. but without saying that it is ‘‘ mind ” that makes all the dliffer- ence, the position of the psychological vitalists, and without postulating any “ vital force ”’ or “ entelechy ’’—the position of other positive vitalists, we are content to state the case for “ methodological vitalism,” that the organism, compared with a non-living material system, is a new synthesis or emergence, re- quiring distinctive concepts for its description (see evolution). illustrations of modern biological methods and results —(1) a great simplification was effected when it was shown by hardy and by fischer that the cytoplasm of the cell has no visible structure. for the reticular, fibrillar and other appearances, described in so much detail in the later years of the roth century, are artefacts due to the fixing and staining. they may be mimicked in homogeneous white of egg, and the same kind of cell will show a different structure according to the way in which it is treated. yet the typical cell remains a microcosm, with its mitochondria and chromidia, its golgi apparatus and _ its centrosomes, and there is almost certainly an interpenetration of the cytoplasm with an ultra-microscopic filming which sepa- rates off different areas in the colloidal substance. many different kinds of particles and immiscible droplets quiver in suspension in the fluid medium, and in the centre there is the nucleus sur- rounded by a semi-permeable membrane, through which a regu- lated exchange is effected between the nucleoplasm and the general cytoplasm. but the nucleus is itself a little world. when it is active it shows a definite number of readily stainable rodlets, the chromosomes, bathed in a complex nuclear sap or karyo- lymph. in some cases a chromosome appears as a linear series of minuter units, ‘‘ microscomes,” fixed on ribbon of * linin,” and in indirect ways it is becoming possible to discern the topography of a germ-cell chromosome. thus it is said that the hereditary “ factors ’’ or “ genes ” for vermilion eye and rudi- mentary wing lie together in a certain stretch of the first of the four chromosomes of a particular race of the fruit-fly, drosophila. chromosomes.—increasing attention is being given, especially from the botanical side, to the number of chromosomes in partic- ular organisms, and a discovery has been made which appears to be full of promise. it is a familiar fact that every kind of en- bodied organism has a definite number of chromosomes, which is in most cases rigidly adhered to, except that the ripe sex- cells have half the normal number, and that the number in the female may be one more accessory than that in the male. thus one form of the threadworm (ascaris megalocephala) common in the food-canal of the horse has two chromosomes, a very small number, while the horse itself has 66, which is a very large number. man’s number is 48, and that of the mouse 24, but it will be clearly understood that it is not the number itself that is of primary importance, since the same may occur in quite unrelated types. thus man’s number, 48, occurs in some snails and bananas. what is of chief interest is the constancy of the number, and that it bears some relation to the groups of linked hereditary characters. 379 specific characters.—in the genus rosa the fundamental number is 7, and a series of species can be arranged which have in their body-cells 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and 56 chromosomes. it is clear that the evolution of rose species has been associated with a multiplication of the chromosomes in septets or sets of 7. prof. r. ruggles gates has been one of the most successful demonstra- tors of the correlation between chromosome peculiarities and specific characters; and chromosome-series have been demon- strated in a considerable number of plant genera. it has been supposed that a rose species with, say, 28 chromosomes (tctra- ploid) was the outcome of a duplication of the chromosomes of a species with 14 (diploid); and similarly in other cases. but dr. c. c. hurst finds that the tetraploid (28) species of rose shows the combined characters of 2 distinct diploid (14) species. similarly, the hexaploid species (42) shows the combined charac- ters of 3 distinct diploid (14) species; the octoploid (56) shows the combined characters of 4 distinct diploid (14) species. thus it appears that the increase in the number of septets means in these roses something more than a mere duplication and re- duplication of chromosomes; it means diflerent combinations of the different septets which are known to occur in the various diploid species of rosa, of which 5 are known. given 5 diploid (14) species with differential septets of chromosomes and of characters, numerous new species, say, with the tetraploid, hexaploid or octoploid numbers, may arise, and have arisen, by diverse combinations. this is an important biological dis- covery with far-reaching applications. biochemical data.—(2) one of the great milestones in modern biochemistry was the discovery of glutathione by prof. sir f. gowland hopkins in 1921. this organic substance, widely dis- tributed in plant and animal cells, acts as an “ oxygen trans- porter,” an intermediary between the oxygen of the air and the food-materials of the tissues. it is a chemical fact that gluta- thione is a compound of two amino-acids (glutaminic acid and cystein), and that it alternates between an oxidised form (acting as a hydrogen-acceptor) and a reduced form, but we are here concerned with the biological fact, which is of fundamental im- portance, that this transporter and liberator of oxygen accounts for the energy-yielding combustions that take place at a low temperature within the living cell. it explains how the cell burns and yet is not consumed. in this connection should be noticed dr. d. keilin’s discovery of a widely distributed un- coloured cell-pigment, which he calls “cytochrome” which seems to have something important to do with the control of oxygen within the cell. it contains the chemical nucleus ‘“‘ haem, ” that forms the coloured portion of the red-pigment (hacmoglo- bin) of the blood of many kinds of animals. cell-culture —(3) another very interesting method, particu- larly associated with the names of ross g. harrison and alexis carrel, is the isolation and culture of single cells or groups of cells. a single nerve-cell can be watched for many days under the microscope, and the amoeboid nature of the tip of its growing fibre can be demonstrated. a few cells from the heart of an embryo chick can be kept alive for days in an artificial medium, and by their spontaneous rhythmical contraction they corrobo- rate the conclusion that the heart muscle of a higher animal con- tracts of itself by reason of an ingrained rhythm, apart from stimuli from the central nervous system. if care is taken to give the isolated fragment appropriate food, a supply of oxygen, a suitable temperature, and aseptic conditions, there seems little in the way of limit to the life of a picce of tissue in a glass tube, or on a glass plate, or in some other such arrangement. the life of isolated fragments of tissue from a chick embryo has been prolonged for 1o years—-a longevity not less than that of the hen into which the embryo might have grown. by this culture method it is possible to study the behaviour of tissues under various conditions, and to distinguish between intrinsic poten- tialities and reactions to extrinsic stimulants, such as hormones or extracts of other tissues. by it investigators can detect or de- limit the factors that inhibit or stimulate the growth of tissues; and this may assist, not only in the transformation of embryogra- phy into embryology, butin the control of pathological changes. 380 micro-dissections.—here should be recognised the great prom- ise of the ingenious micro-dissection methods which have been recently elaborated, by prof. robert chambers tn particular. the object to be micro-dissected, such as an egg-cell or a proto- zoon, 1s included in a “ hanging-drop’”’ suspended from the under-side of a cover-glass firmly fastened on the stage of the microscope and forming, as it were, the roof of a moist chamber that has no floor. into this space there protrude the exquisitely fine tips, straight or curved, of glass needles which are fixed in holders attached to an ingenious system of screws fastened to right and left on the under-side of the stage of the microscope. the object cannot be seen with the naked eye, but it is quite clear in the centre of the field of the high-power microscope, anc the needles can be manipulated through the screws so that their very delicate tips meet where desired. by working the screws it is possible to move the needles in a vertical as well as in a hori- zontal plane; thus one tip may be used to press the object against the cover-glass while the other is used to cut a piece off, or to remove a nucleus or even to effect an intra-cellular injection. the method has been found fruitful in studying the physical properties of protoplasm, in separating particular portions of a cell, and in isolating a single micro-organism, so that an absolutely pure culture or “ pure line’ can be secured. in connection with new biological methods, prominence must be given to the use of the ultra-microscope, and to the micro-analytic methods invented by prof. pregl of graz for dealing with extremely minute quantities of a particular substance. with only a fiftieth of what has usually been regarded as a minimum, he is able to effect analysis more rapidly and not less accurately than before. photosynthesis —(4) to take another instance of a very differ- ent nature, there seems to be great biological interest in prof. baly’s discovery of artificial photosynthesis (see photosynthesis). the most important organic process in the world is obviously that on which all life depends, the building up of carbon com- pounds in the green leaf. this is what prof. baly and his collabo- rators have been able to mimic. using the light of a mercury- vapour lamp, which has a very short wave-length, prof. baly was able to build up formaldehyde from water and carbon-dioxide, which is precisely what the green leaf does. light of a somewhat longer wave-length caused the molecules of formaldehyde to unite to form simple sugars. the experimenters also succeeded in bringing about a union of nitrites and formaldehyde in a test- tube subjected to the light of a quartz-mercury lamp. here it may be noted that a discharge of lightning through the air might lead in nature to a fixation of nitrogen, which man now achieves with his powerful electric arcs (see nitrogen, fixation of). rain might bring the fixed nitrogen to earth in the form of nitrite of ammonia or the like. in other words, the materials prof. baly used are such as might be readily available on the surface of the earth, and this consideration makes the possible origin of the living from the not-living more plausible. in any case, all theory apart, the ingenious chemist has been able to build up formaldehyde, sugars and nitrogenous organic sub- stances from very simple inorganic materials with only light to help him. in some later experiments prof. baly was able to bring about the reactions referred to by using ordinary sunlight in the presence of certain “ photo-catalysts ’’ which probably play a part comparable to that of chlorophyll in the plant. luminescence.—(5) considerable progress has been made toward an understanding of organic luminescence. some luminous organs, as in certain cuttlefishes, seem to owe their photogenic power to colonies of “ phosphorescent ’? symbiotic bacteria. this might be called extrinsic animal luminescence in contrast to intrinsic animal luminescence, where the light is due to the metabolism of the animal itself. in his treatise on animal light (1919) prof. newton harvey distinguishes among intrinsi- cally luminescent animals (a) those in which the photogenic material is oxidised within the cells where it is formed, as in fire- flies; and (5) those in which the material is secreted to the cx- terior and oxidised outside the cell. of the latter a clear example has recently been discovered (1925) by mr. c. f. wickling in a macrurid fish (afalacoece phalus laevis) which emits an abundant biology luminous secretion into the water. in all other luminous fishes as yet recorded, the luminescence is produced within the living cells. dubois and harvey have produced strong evidence in support of the conclusion that in the fire-tlies, the small crusta- cean cypridina and the piddock or pholas a photogenic sub- stance luciferin is oxidised to oxyluciferin in the presence of a ferment luciferase, the result being cold light, 7.¢c., without any heat-rays. but while the physiological aspect of bio-luminescence has been elucidated, there remains a paucity of facts in regard to iis significance in the everyday life of the animal, e.g., whether it serves as a lure or as a scare, a lantern or a sex signal, or for kin-recognition in darkness. it is probable that an unimportant side-track in metabolism has been utilised in different ways in different types, and may sometimes have no use at all. symbiosis.—(6) in illustration of recent ecology reference may be made to the great extension of our knowledge of internal partnership or symbiosis. additions have been made to the list, long since begun, of unicellular algae (zoochlorella and others) living in mutually beneficial partnership within the cells of radiolarians, freshwater sponges, hydra, various alcyonarians and sea-anemones, and, most vividly of all, in the little turbella- rian worm convoluta. but the researches of buchner and others have proved the frequency of yeast-like organisms in the food- canal of insects like cockroaches, which live on very dry food, or in the larva of the death-watch which thrives on the fine sawdust it eats out of the wainscot. it seems that the symbiotic yeast- plants and other micro-organisms are intermediaries between the unpromising food-material and the insect’s alimentary tract, and that they are able, in some cases at least, to set up very use- ful fermentations. termite symbionts.—very convincingly worked out by l. r. cleveland of baltimore is the partnership between wood-eating termites, e.g., reticulitermes and certain remarkable infusorians (e.g., trichonympha) which live in the intestine, and serve as the middle-men between the dry-as-dust food and the intestinal epithelium. by incubating the termites for 24 hours at 36° c., it is easy to kill the infusorians without hurting the termites, and it is found that the defaunated individuals die in 10-20 days though copiously fed with their normal diet of wood. but if they are re-infected with their partner infusorians they live on in- definitely. a colony of termites well provided with symbiotic infusorians can thrive for many weeks on an exclusive diet of filter-paper. orchids and fungi.—or, again, many, perhaps all, orchids have a partner root-fungus or mycorhiza which penetrates the super- ficial layers and contributes greatly to the success of the plant. in some of the root-cells the fungoid threads seem to feed; in other cells, less superficial, the threads and their products are digested. it is a mutually beneficial partnership. the french botanist, noel bernard, showed that the germination of the orchid seeds is closely dependent on the presence of the partner fungus. the orchid seeds are small and the embryos are slow of developing, but even if they get a start they cannot go far unless infection from the soil takes place, and in some cases the infection is specific. only one kind of fungus will serve. how the fungus promotes development is not quite clear, but there is no doubt as to its being a “benign disease.’” orchid-growers are now able to provide the suitable fungus, and thus secure the germination of seeds that baffled them before. in some parts of the world with unready moorland soil, the most outstanding biological fact is the exuberant success of the heather; but this depends on its being interpenetrated, even to leaf and flower, with a partner or symbiotic fungus. pigmy parasites very remarkable on another ecological line is mr. tate regan’s account of pigmy parasitic males in three cerativid angler-fishes which frequent the “ mid-waters ” of the ocean between 250 and 500 fathoms. in the arctic ceraitas holbollt a female about eight inches in length carried on her ven- tral surface two males of two-and-a-half inches. the snout and chin region of the dwarf male was permanently attached to a papilla of the female’s skin, and the blood-vessels of the two were confluent. the malc is without teeth and without the lumines- biology cent “ lure ’’ borne by the female; the mouth is useless; the food- canal is degenerate. in pholocorynus spiniceps from the gulf of panama, the female about two-and-a-half inches in length bore a male under half an inch long on the top of her head in front of her nght eye. in edriolychnus schmidti from the western atlan- tic, the dimensions were about the same as in the last case, and the female carried the pygmy male fixed upside down on the inner surface of her gill-cover. pygmy males are well known among some invertebrates as in boncllia, some barnacles, some parasitic crustaccans and some of the myzostomes that live attached to crinoids. but mr. tate regan’s cases are unique among vertebrates. the cerativid anglers seem to be of sparse occurrence, hence perhaps the survival value of these remarkable arrangements which secure the fertilisation of the eggs when they are shed into the sea. it may be by hormones that the presumedly synchronous liberation of the germ-cells in the two sexes is secured. we cite this case as a good instance of the progressive study of inter-relations. flowers and birds——yet another line may be illustrated by the work of otto porsch on the pollination of flowers by birds. he finds evidence of over 1,600 tropical and sub-tropical flower- birds which habitually visit flowers, carry pollen on their head feathers, and more or less depend on the nectar of flowers for their food and drink. they tend to be small in size, as in hum- ming-birds and honey-birds, and strong in wing, able to flutter before or poise themselves on the blossoms. ‘they usually have a fine-pointed bill, sometimes elongated, and a long slender tongue, which sometimes bears processes like a brush. the habit has been acquired in no fewer than 31 different families. the “ ornithophilous ” flowers are usually conspicuous in their colouration (including white) and usually scentless. they produce large quantities of watery nectar and many of them have special capillary arrangements around the mouth of the nectar-recepta- cle which tend to prevent wasteful overflow. good examples are to be found among fuchsias, mallows, aloes, tropaeolums, verbenas, honeysuckles, gardenias, cactuses, cannas and irises. they must be so built that the stamens dust the bird’s head with pollen, and that the stigma of another blossom is in turn dusted. if the birds are effective pollinators, they will be, for several reasons, better than such insects as bees, ¢.g., in having a longer year and a longer life; and it is significant that over 16% of the families of flowering plants i in java have bird-flower eee tives. fully 50 genera have species that are pollinated by birds, belonging to 22 different species. ornithophily is not a new thing, but we cite porsch’s work as an instance of the kind of biological progress that is rewarding more intensive investigation. artificial parthenogenesis.—{7) very striking, again, on an- other line, was the discovery of the possibility of artificial parthenogenesis by prof. yves delage of the sorbonne and prof. jacques loeb of new york, who were experimental biologists of great achievement. in several starfishes and sea-urchins, some worms and molluscs, and even as high up in the scale as the frog, it has been found that various modes of treatment, which alter the chemical and physical character of the water, will bring about artificial parthenogenesis. that is to say, an egg-cell which normally requires to be fertilised by a sperm-cell may be launched on aspermic development. in the case of the frog, bataillon’s quaint method is to prick the eggs with a fine needle of glass or platinum and then wash them with blood. the de- velopment, as in the other cases, is quite normal, and several fatherless frogs—of both sexes—have been successfully reared. these experiments are not only of high interest in themselves, they have led to a theory of fertilisation, which is full of promise, though still somewhat incipient. (see emmbryolocy.) sex studies —(8) another article will deal with the general subject of sey; what is admissible here is merely an illustration of modern biological methods, baltzer’s study of bonellia viridis, a green worm not uncommon in the mediterranean and occa- sionally occurring in the north sea. the female has a body about the size of a prune, bearing a string-like, terminally bifid, very contractile proboscis which may be two feet long and is used in probing about in search of food. but the male is micro- 381 scopic and lives in what may be called the reproductive duct (modified nephridium) of the female. it has no mouth and de- pends on what it absorbs parasitically through its ciliated sur- face. in 1914 baltzer discovered that when the free-swimming larvae that emerge from the eggs settle down on the substratum they develop into females, while those that settle on the proboscis of the adult, begin to absorb from the skin, suffer an arrest of development, and become the pigmy males. sometimes baltzer shook off the young males before they had been long on the pro- boscis, and in this way he obtained inter-sex forms, intermediate between males and females. at a certain stage the males leave the proboscis and enter the mouth of their bearer and undergo a final change. after this they emerge and enter the reproductive duct, where they remain for the rest of their life, fertilising the eggs before these are set free. in his last paper (1925) baltzer has shown by intra-vitam staining that the young males absorb nutritive material from the skin of the proboscis, and an extract of that skin is found to have a poisoning effect on small animals, such as slipper-animalcules, threadworms, water-fleas and tad- poles, as well as on the male larvae themselves. as an extract from the wall of the reproductive duct is not injurious, it becomes practically certain that the arrest of development exhibited by the larvae on the proboscis is due to the absorption of some specific substance from the female skin. endocrine glunds.—(9) no biological outlook at the end of the first quarter of the 20th century can fail to take notice of the dis- covery of the rele of the ductless or endocrinal glands, such as ° thyroid, supra-renals and pituitary in the body of vertebrates. (see endocrinology; pitystoltocy.} as shown by bayliss, starling, shafer and others, these endocrine glands produce stimulating hormones and soothing chalones which are distrib- uted throughout the body by the blood and exert specific in- fluences on particular parts, now activating and again inhibiting. these chemical messengers are like keys that open certain doors and close others, and they exert a regulative action on many of the functions of the body, securing their orchestration or cor- relation. to nervous and other forms of integration has now to be added this chemical integration, and it is hardly too much to say that the discovery has changed the whole face of physi- ology. biologically regarded, the hormones, such as adrenalin and thyroxin, enable the biologist to understand not only everyday events such as the cat’s hair standing on end before the intrud- ing dog, but the changes that come about in adolescence when hormones from the reproductive organs saturate throughout the body, and activate the growth of the stag’s antlers, the swelling of the frog’s first finger, and scores of other adolescent novelties. of fundamental importance also is the part that hormones play in the processes of development, in quickening and slowing rates of growth, and in securing the proportions of different parts. unhealthy dwarfs and giants are expressions of disturbance in the normal activity of the endocrine glands. the discovery of hormones among backboneless animals and in plants has begun. thus there is a hormone in the leech, and it seems to have been satisfactorily proved that diffusing hormones are operative in the striking movements of the sensitive plant. in reference to man there is no doubt as to the pervasive influence of the endo- crine glands on the health of the mind and body, but there has been a tendency to exaggerate this. in pathological cases, no doubt, a disturbance of hormone-production, in a plus or minus direction, may be disastrous, but the inborn variations in the majority of cases are within relatively narrow limits, and can be in some measure counteracted by nurture. it must be kept in mind that there are other not less important factors in the normal inheritance—the nimble brain, the strong heart, the active liver, not to speak of goodwill and power of control. biologically, as well as psychologically, it seems to be an un- warranted exaggeration to speak of the ductless glands dominat- ing and determining the personality, except, as we have said, in extreme pathological cases. pigmeniation.—(10) some important work has been done of recent years on rapid colour-change in animals (see colour of animals), and a convenient balance-sheet of investigation is to ~ 382 be found in dr. l. t. hogben’s pigmentary effector system (1924). the contraction or expansion of the chromatophores in a frog’s skin used to be referred to the control exercised by the fine branches of the sympathetic nervous system, but the re- searches of ilogben and winton have shown that the control is due to a hormone secreted by the pituitary body in fluctuating quantities. in reptiles like the chameleon and the phrynosome, most of the colour-change is due to the up-and-down movement of the dark pigment granules in the branched melanophores, and this 1s mainly under the control of the adrenalin hormone secreted by the supra-renal bodies. in flat-fishes, such as plaice and flounder, where the colour-change is very rapid, the control is effected by branches of the sympathetic nervous system. there is sometimes an enveloping of the pigment-cell with fine terminal branches of nerve-fibres, an innervation which has never been demonstrated in amphibians. it is striking, then, that in three classes of vertebrates, the predominant control of the colour-change is effected in three different ways, though the possibility is not excluded that there are auxiliary controls be- sides. the impression of variety would be increased if inverte- brate types, such as crustaceans and cuttlefishes, were also con- sidered, and no one can doubt that this is a very promising line of biological research with far-reaching implications. metabolic gradients.—(11) one of the most suggestive of new biological ideas is prof. c. m. child’s hypothesis of ‘‘ metabolic gradients,” but in brief compass it is not easy to do more than give a glimpse of it. in the simple planarian worms that are common in brooks, creeping on stones and water-weed, there is a frequent asexual multiplication by transverse fission. at a certain distance behind the head a transverse constriction ap- pears, but there is no structural peculiarity to mark the place. eventually the tail-end is separated off and grows a new head; the original head-end develops a new tail; and after a period of growth the process repeats itself. in his profound study of the planarian worm, prof. child found that its maximum rate of chemical change or metabolism, measured for instance by the output of carbon dioxide, occurs in the head-region; it gradually falls off posteriorly; but the curve rises again to a lower peak far down the body and then falls again to the tip of the tail. now the site of the second, smaller peak is the place where the trans- verse constriction will occur, and where the future head-end of the coming offspring will be formed. the head-end seems to exert a graduated sway or control over the body and when this wanes to a minimum, a hitherto somewhat suppressed individual- ity may assert itself. in a similar way the growing point of a shoot exerts a control on the buds beneath it, which are not activated until the apex has been carried by growth to a certain distance. the structure of the body is the equipoised result of many controls, both quickening and restraining. biology and psychology — many will disagree, but psychology may be conveniently described as primarily the study of the subjective aspects of the organism. as some of these are cor- related objectively with behaviour and, in man’s case, with conduct as well, a contact with biology is obvious. for the ecolo- gist is also concerned with animal behaviour, though in a syn- thetic rather than in an analytic way. he is not so much inter- ested in the inner activity of the animal as in the objective out- come (e.g., in courtship, nesting, nurture, co-operating, com- peting) and its rele in securing the continuance and advance- ment of life. but the ecologist is bound to join hands with the comparative psychologist. another contact between the two sciences is implied in the unity of the organism. whatever view be taken of the relation of “ mind” and “ body,” there is no doubt that these two ab- stract terms refer to aspects of the organism which are equally real and cannot be studied in complete isolation from one an- other. there may be mental processes which can be adequately described in psychological terms without any reference to the body, and there may be bodily processes which can be adequate- ly described in physiological terms without any reference to the mind, but between these two limits or extremes there is a large stretch of behaviour which requires dual treatment. in dealing biology with the activities of plants the botanist does not find any need to postulate a subjective aspect, though he might not be bold enough to deny its possibility; but many naturalists who study the ways of birds find an apsychic description quite inadequate. the inclined plane of animal behaviour —among unicellular animals there are numerous reactions to stimuli, and some of these are hereditary like paramecium’s reversal of cilia, retreat, change of direction, and re-advance; a simple concatenation that often enables the creature to circumvent some obstruction or injurious stimulus. in stentor and other forms there is clear evidence of a “trial and error ” procedure of a simple sort. to a microscopic shower of dust the animal responded by reversing its cilia, by bending to one side, by contracting into its sheath, and finally by loosening itself and swimming away. in prof. h.s. jennings’ case of an amoeba pursuing a smaller amoeba, capturing it, losing it, recapturing it after change of direction, and finally | losing it again, there seems to be evidence of purposive behaviour at alow level. some of heron allen’s cases of foraminifera that build up beautiful and effective extrinsic encasements, of sponge spicules and the like, are, to say the least, very suggestive of mentality. in regard to multicellular animals the facts are more abundant. there are many simple reflex actions which depend on inborn linkages of certain nerve-cells and certain muscle-cells, usually involving four links:—(1) sensory neurons, (2) adjustor or associative neurons, (3) motor neurons, and (4) the effector muscle-cells. but even here there is an inclined plane, for in sponges there is neuro-muscular reaction, although there are no nerve cells; in hydra there are nerve-cells at once sensory and motor; in the earth-worm and even in man there may be simple reflexes that do not involve more than sensory and motor neurons; and then in the opposite direction there is an evolution of com- pound reflexes, as when nestlings react to the parent-bird bring- ing them food. experimental behaviour.—on a different line is what may be called tentative or experimental behaviour—the search for food, the exploring of a corner, the behaviour of a brainless starfish in attacking and disarming an equally brainless, but very formida- ble, sea-urchin. this is far below the level of intelligent behav- lour in the ordinary sense. in the early life of many animals, especially birds and mammals, there is a period of association- forming, as when a chick learns to connect a particular maternal cluck with a rapid seeking for shelter, a linkage that is inborn or instinctive in some other creatures. the forming of useful associations leads on to more difficult achievements in the way of non-intelligent learning. thus even a frog will “learn” to find its way out of a maze and a rat may become very expert after a short course of lessons. there is certainly a profiting by experience, though it seems too generous to credit the animals with judgment. tropisms.—of great importance and of widespread occurrence are “‘ tropisms,” which are engrained constitutional obligations to adjust the body so that the two sides—it may be the two eyes, ears, or nostrils—are equally stimulated. in this way a physio- logical equilibrium is automatically secured. thus the young eel or elver goes straight up-stream, the male mosquito finds the buzzing female, and the moth flies into the unnatural stimulus of the candle. somewhat higher is the persistent way in which newly hatched loggerhead turtles make for the more open hori- zon, as prof. g. h. parker has shown, which usually and happily means finding the sea. instinctive behaviour.—on the same line of hereditarily pre- established reflexes are the various grades of instinctive be- haviour, the purest expression being found in ants, bees and wasps. physiologically regarded, they are concatenations of re- flex actions, but in many cases, at least, it seems necessary to suppose that they are suffused with awareness and backed by endeavour. to say that this endeavour is nothing more than the physiological urge of hunger or of sex seems inadequate when the subtler instances of instinctive behaviour are kept in view. the hive-bee—a glimpse of the subtlety of animal behaviour in its lower reaches is afforded by prof. k. von frisch’s careful biology studies of hive-bees in connection with their discovery of nectar. it is well known that when a bee discovers a rich treasure of nectariferous blossom and returns laden to the hive, the flowers are soon afterwards visited by considerable numbers of bees whose comings and goings continue until the supply is exhausted. the old theory was that the original bee-discoverer guides her comrades to the feast. but this is not what happens. frisch found that when a bee (carefully marked) returns full of nectar to the hive, she executes a peculiar ‘‘ round dance ” on the comb. this excites the resting bystanders who issue forth to search for themselves. but they are not without a clue, for they have sampled the floral fragrance lingering on the discoverer’s body, and they search for flowers with that particular scent. if the nectariferous flower has no scent, a clue is afforded by the body- scent which the discoverer-bee leaves on the blossom. bees have on their posterior body a protrusible glandular organ which secretes a scent recognisable even by man, and when an exploring bee finds a very profitable flower she excitedly protrudes the scent-organ, and thus sprays the petals with a scent which gives the other searching bees a clue. when supplies are exhausted, the returning bees execute no dance, and no fresh explorers issue forth. all this has been worked out with convincing care, and it is also shown that when the bees are collecting pollen, with a specific fragrance which helps in the search, there is again a dance on the comb that tells the tale, though it is quite different from the nectar-dance. intelligent behaviour—in sharp contrast to instinctive be- haviour, in the view of many biologists, is intelligent behaviour, where there is some learning, some profiting by experience, some understanding of a situation, some appreciation of relations so that a slight change of circumstances does not lead to bewilder- ment, as in instinct, but is met by a fresh adjustment. to use romanes’ terminology, intelligent behaviour is psychologically dependent on a “ perceptual inference.”” thus, to take some re- cent instances, a chimpanzee will piece together two bamboo rods so that they make a double stick long enough to reach a fruit outside the bars of the cage; or an orang having discovered how to use a wooden lever will proceed to make and use others of different sizes and strengths, and will even use its trapeze bar to enlarge the space between the first upright of its cage and the iron partition wall so that the opening becomes large enough to allow of the gratification of a long-cherished desire to look into the next compartment. the recent studies on chimpanzees by dr. yerkes and mrs. learned, and even more those by prof. kohler, show conclusively that the intelligence of apes (see intelligence, animal) though strikingly limited in certain directions, has been hitherto underestimated. when the doings of these predominantly intelligent animals are compared with the highest achievements of ants and bees, the contrast corroborates sir ray lankester’s view that “ the little brain type ” rich in instincts and far from educable, is on a line of evolution quite different from ‘“‘ the big brain type,’ with few instincts in the strict sense, but eminently educable. in many cases, however, as in birds, there may be an intricate mingling of intelligent and instinctive behaviour in varying proportions. development of the brain.—oi great biological interest is the cerebral series worked out by prof. elliot smith showing the graduated improvement in the anterior region of the fore-brain in jumping shrew, tree-shrew, spectral tarsier, marmosct, mon- key, ape and man. the demands of arboreal life favoured cere- bral variations in the direction of controlled agility, the seeing eye and the understanding ear. there was a reduction of the snout, a bringing forward of the eyes, an enlargement of the brain case. in particular there came about a great reduction of the olfactory region of the fore-brain and a progressive increase of the centres for sight, touch, hearing, and dexterous move- ments. soon there was added the power of stereoscopic vision, and the outgrowth of a pre-frontal or neo-pallial lobe of the cere- brum that made delicate eye-movements possible and a focusing of attention as well as vision. there is anatomical evidence of an evolutionary trend which gave increased scope to the centres for vision, hearing, touch and skilled movements. it has been 383 part of the tactics of evolution among the highest mammals to reward improved visualisation (see man, evolution of). the inclined plane—much has to be done in analysing the various grades of behaviour, but biology has contributed to comparative psychology a wealth of observational data which suggest the idea of a long inclined plane, on which there are diverse evolutionary lines variously ramified, rather than any linear succession. but another general conclusion may be drawn, that there are two main modes of behaviour: (a4) the expression of enregistered capacities for effective response, as in reflexes, tropisms, constitutional rhythms, instincts and habituations; and (b) the expression of a capacity for initiative, tentatives and experimenting, as in “ trial and error ” procedure, non-intelligent new departures, experiential and associative ‘ learning,’’ and clear-cut intelligence. of reason in the strict sense, involving what romanes called “ conceptual inference,” and of conduct, involving the control of behaviour in the light of general ideas, the only convincing illustrations are human. | definition of instinct—the largest contribution that biology has to make to psychology is this disclosure of the inclined plane of animal behaviour, which implies, of course, applications to man, who has his reflexes and urges, his intelligent experiments and his habituations. it is to be regretted, however, that many psychologists used the terms “‘ instinct ” and “ instinctive ” very vaguely when discussing human behaviour and conduct. the term “ instinctive ’’ has been defined in a thoroughly clear way by prof. lloyd morgan and most modern zoologists use it in his sense. confusion has arisen through the psychologists’ loose application of the term to a medley of promptings—urges, appetites, inborn reaction-tendencies, racial pre-dispositions, and so forth. here it may be said that biological studies on what galton called “ ancestral inheritance ’’ have thrown a useful light on the racial enregistrations which form part of the “‘ primary ” (as distinguished from the “‘ freudian ”’?) unconscious. dominance of mind.—the study of animal behaviour in its many gradations brings into prominence two great facts, (1) the increasing emergence of the mental aspect of organisms in the course of the age-long process of becoming (see evolution), and (2) the increasing importance of the mental factor as a vera causa in organic evolution (see e. s. russell, the study of living things, 1924). indeed one of the largest results of biology 1s the evidence it has brought forward of the increasing dominance of the mind in evolution. through many grades of animal individuality there has been an advance towards human per- sonality. biology and sociology.—the three sides of the biologist’s prism are organism, function, and environment, and they are obviously the same as the sociologist’s folk, work, place—le play’s famille, travail, lieu. in scientific discussion and in practical endeavours there is often a loss of time and energy because the three complementary aspects are not kept equally in view. as the unit in sociology is not the individual, but some societary integrate, the old misleading analogy between the animal organism and the “ social organism ” should be aban- doned. the true analogy is between animal societies and human socicties, and this has been utilised far too little. in the ant-hill, the bee-hive, the termitary, the rookery, the beaver-village, the herd of anteclopes, and so on, there are valuable hints for the sociologist; and dr. w. trotter’s instincts of the herd (19109) requires a sequel. that may be found indeed in tier-soziologie (leipzig, 1925) by prof. f. alverdes. tradition and human society —in this incipient, comparative sociology, the interesting parallelisms must not be allowed to weaken the emphasis on the differentia between wild nature and man. for in human societies there is not only the unique- ness implied in man’s reason and language, there is the mainten- ance of an extra-organismal heritage which may be as supreme as the germ-plasmic or natural inheritance is fundamental. in traditions and customs, institutions and laws, literature and art, permanent products and external registrations, there is a per- sistent social heritage, or, from another point of view, environ- ment, which is only adumbrated in the ant-hill and the beaver 384 village. moreover, there is great apartness implied in man’s consciousness of his own history and in his occasional but charactcristic endeavours to control the future in the light of general ideas. it is mistaken to suppose that animals may not actively share in their own evolution, but it is obvious that they cannot do so with man’s clear purpose. biological applications —just as chemistry and physics have their applications in biology, so has biology its application in sociology, as is plain when we think of such facts as health and disease, variation and heredity, fertility and length of life. but it is unscientific to try to force social phenomena into biological frames, and to make things that are very different appear, by anatogous terminology, as if they were the same. ‘thus there arises a biological section of sociology concerned with such problems as the relation of individuation and reproduction (see spencer’s principles of biology, 1895), the import of inbreeding and outbreeding (sce east and jones), the transmissibility of acquired charactcristics and the complementarincss of heredi- tary “‘ nature ” and environmental “ nurture ” (see galton and pearson). more distinctively sociological, and yet with its hand on biology, 1s an inquiry into the differential significance of a socictary unit, for instance in allowing the survival of individual variations and modifications which could not persist without some such shicld. what, in other words, is meant by social varia- tions, social heredity, social selection and the like. just as it is an iulegitimate “ materialism ”’ to force the facts of organismal life into the frames of chemistry and physics, so it is an illegiti- mate “ biologism ” to force the facts of human social life into the frames of pure biology. | biotechnics.—this term, proposed by prof. patrick geddes, may be usefully applied to man’s control of organisms for his ownends. thus the domestication of animals and the cultivation of plants are pre-historic instances, and though few important additions have been made to cither list within recent times, there has been much progress in breeding, especially since the mende- lian clue was discovered. the production of astonishing egg- jayers among poultry or of the marquis or garnet wheat among cereals may be cited as two examples out of a hundred. this art of breeding may aim at establishing subtle qualities, such as wheat immune to the disease of “‘ rust,” or collie-dogs that are almost rational in their handling of sheep. applications of biotechnics—what is sought after is often a more economical or more permanent exploitation of the resources of nature, as in the fishing industry and in farming, as well as in minor matters such as bee-keeping and ostrich rearing. some of the improvements of most promise rest on a biological under- standing of the facts of the case. to the interesting problems of forestry (see forestry), which are of so much importance from the occupational as well as from the economic side, the methods of genetics and ecology are beginning to be applied. on a similar line one may refer to what prof. oliver and others have done towards the utilisation of waste places, like sandy heaths, pit- heads and salt marshes; or to prof. bottomlcy’s experiments on the utilisation of peat; or to prof. scott elliot’s study of the ways of checking the spread of bracken, which is annually en- croaching very seriously on pasture land. the balance of nature -—man’s struggle with his animal ene- mies, which was doubtless of incalculable importance, in the early days of his ascent, has succeeded so far that in regard to the larger forms the danger now is that he push his victory too far. even in regard to snakes, which still bite man’s heel, there is a tax to pay for their elimination, namely the increased multi- plication of rats and mice and other small rodents. there ts reason to hope that a clearer realisation of darwin’s central ecological idea of the web of life (the multiplicity of vital inter- relations in animate nature) is lending greater subtlety to man’s attempts to check those organisms that are prejudicial to his interests and to foster those that are in his favour. thus golden eagles are no longer shot at sight as they once were, and, apart from aesthetic and other reasons, birds are being spared because of the beneficent part that many of them play in keeping down injurious insects, the unchecked increase of which would in a few biology ycars bring everything to destruction. a respect for the balance of nature rests on the soundest biological foundations. preventive amedicine.—a recognition of bionomical linkages has reaped a rich reward in connection with human parasites (see malaria; parasitology). thus the conquest of malaria in many places has depended on pouring a little petrol on the stagnant pools where the larval mosquitoes live. the film of oil makes it impossible for the larvae to hold on to the surface by their posterior respiratory tube, and they drown. but the dis- tribution of the malaria organism (plasmodium) depends on the vagaries of the adult mosquito, and thus the pctrol method works wonders. when account is taken of the importance of malaria in human history, the value of biotechnics reccives signal con- firmation. the same holds in regard to many other discascs. further examples —onc would not seck to put to the credit of applied biology what clearly belongs to preventive medicine, yct in many cases the latcer has been effectively supplemented by the former. thus while it is a medical discovery that carbon tetrachloride is extraordinarily potent in expelling from man’s food-canal the small threadworms (ankylostomum and necator) which cause one of the commonest and most scrious discases of tropical countries (see hookworwm), it is a question for natural history how the larvae of the hookworms behave in the soil, and how the natives become cutancously infected by walking with bare fect on ground that has become hopelessly contaminated. now these hookworms, which suck blood from the wall of the intestine, are responsible for widespread weakness, depression and despair, forming, according to some authorities, the heaviest pathological cloud that has ever rested on the human race. the campaigns undertaken by the rockefeller institute have shown conclusively that this cloud may be dissipated in a rela- tively short time, and health secured as long as simple sanitary precautions are respected. part of this triumph may be fairly placed to the credit of biotechnics. the same may be said in regard to our knowledge of the part that many insects and some acarines (mites and ticks) play as the carriers of microbic diseases. thus in addition to the case of mosquitoes and malaria already referred to, one may recall the tsetse flies which carry the micro-organisms (trypano- somes) of sleeping sickness, and the fleas that spread the bac- terium of bubonic plague from rat to man. many of these knots in the web of life are of great importance, a signal instance being the part a minute mite plays, according to rennie and white, in bringing about “‘ isle of wight ” disease in bees. eugenics, eutechnics and eutopias—there is a growing in- clination to bring biological facts and ideas to bear on three of the great objective human problems, the betterment of the stock (see eugenics), the amclioration of occupational conditions (eutechnics), (see industrial psycholocy; industrial wel- fare) and the improvement of the environment (eutopias). i:ven the conviction that these three aspects must be correlated is a biological commonplace of the first magnitude. much that is being done to lessen occupational diseases (many of them already conquered) is frankly to the credit of medicine, but the biological note is sounded in the investigation of industrial fatigue and in the study of economy of movement. it may be said that modern dictetics has passed from a basis of experience to a basis of experiment, and has become subily biological. or again, while the value of exercise in the open air and sunlight has been recognised, as a pious opinion at least, for ages, it has now acquired a quite new biological authorisation (see helio- therapy; pustic health). similarly, very much that is being done to make surroundings more wholesome and more beautiful is not directly actuated by biological considerations, yet there is no doubt that endeavours in this direction are being invigourated by what 1s biologically known in regard to the influence of the environment on the individual organism espccially in its early life. the proteus newt of the dalmatian caves has a pigmentless skin in its native haunts, but it soon becomes dark when brought into the well-lighted laboratory. in the caves it is blind, and the arrested eye never comes to the surface; but the young ones reared in the light may receive their sight. biplane—birds, migration of eugenics—eugenics was defined by sir francis galton as “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.” the theoretical soundness of the study is obvious. the difficulty is in regard to practicable eugenics. thus, whether sound or unsound biologically, it is socially im- practicable to return to “ the purgation of the state’ which sparta to some extent practised and plato approved. it might be a kindness that weakly infants, whose life must be more or less miserable, should be allowed a euthanasia, but it has to be admitted that many weaklings have been makers and shakers of the world, that eliminative methods are apt to outrun our present secure knowledge, that their operation would in some instances remove the results of evil without touching the causes, and that we cannot at present go far in social surgery without outraging social sentiment. as regards positive eugenics, it may be suggested that greater enthusiasm for health and a heightened biological patriotism will lead (1) to more careful selection of partners in life, (2) to well- considered forms of social selection that will favour the increase of the fitter types and the decrease of the undesirables, (3) to a more conscientious “ criticism of consumption ”’ which will favour occupations that are wholesome and handicap the re- verse, and (4) to an enlightened and moralised practice of medi- cally authorised methods of birth control (q.v.) that will probably tend to raise the health-rate. the probability is that a diffusion of biological education will steadily work towards the eugenic ideal, which is, after all, one of the oldest man has cherished. bipliography.—a. weismann, the evolution theory, 2 vols. (1905); t. h. morgan, experimental zoology (1907); hans driesch, the science and philosophy of the organism, 2 vols. (1908); w. bateson, mendel’s principles of heredity (cambridge, 1909); j. g. needham, general biology (ithaca, 1910); bergson, creative rvolution (1911); w. macdougall, body and mind (igtt); karl pearson, the grammar of science (1911); c. lloyd morgan, justine? and experience (1912); j. s. waldane, aflechanism, life and person- ality, (1913) r.e. 1921; james johnstone, the philosophy of biology (cambridge, 1914); g. fl. parker, biology and social problems (boston, 1914); c. m. child, senescence and rejuvenescence (chicago, 1915); e. g. conklin, heredity and environment in the develop- ment of men (princeton, 1916); jacques loeb, the organism as a whele (new york, 1916); e. s. russell, form and function (1916); g. n. calkins, biology (1917); j. s. haldane, organism and en- vironment (new haven, 1917); r. s. lull, organic evolution (1917); d’arcy w. thompson, on growth and form (cambridge, 1917); jacques loeb, forced movements and tropisms (1918); j. s. haldane, the new physiology (1919); t. hi. morgan, the physical basis of fleredity (philadelphia, 1919); h. f. osborn, origtn and evolution of life (1919); w. e. agar, cytology (1920); a. f. shull, principles of animal biology (1920); j. arthur thomson, the system of animate nature, 2 vols. (1920); james johnstone, the mechanism of life (london, 1921); j. arthur thomson, the control of life (1921); f. w. flattley and e. l. walton, biology of the seashore (1922); l. l. woodruff, foundations of biology (1922); f.o. bower, botany of the living piant, 2nd ed. (1923); a. dendy, evolutionary biology, re-ed. (1923); julian s. huxley, essays of a biologist (1923); w. macdougall, an outline of psychology (1923); c. lloyd morgan, emergent evolution (1923); sir arthur e. shipley, life, (cam- bridge, 1923); j. arthur thomson, the biology of birds (1923); j. arthur thomson, everyday biology (1923); w. bayliss, general principles of physiology, new ed. (1924); g. r. beer, growth (1924); e. v. cowdry, general cytology, a co-operative work, (chicago, 1924); e. s. goodrich, living organisms, oxford (1924); l. t. hog- ben and f. r. winton, comparative physiology (1924); e.s. russell, the study of living things (1924); macgregor skene, 7he biology of flowering plants (1924); h. m. kyle, the biology of fishes, (1925); j. arthur thomson, concerning evolution (new haven, 1925); e. b. wilson, the cell in development and ileredity, 3rd ed. (1925). | (j. a. t.) biplane: see aeroplane. birds, migration of.—no longer do dwellers in great britain believe that the cuckoo spends the winter with them in the guise of a hawk, and that the swallow tribe seek refuge in horse ponds, or holes in sand pits and cliffs, till the winter is past and the summer is at hand. it is now a matter of common knowledge that they leave, when the summer is spent, for the more congenial climes of africa and return in the spring. but the movement embraces a large number of species un- recognised by the world at large, and there is an autumn move- ment which is unsuspected by the uninitiated. with the spring 385 come the cuckoo, the swallows, the swifts, the warbler tribe, wagtails and wheatears, the red-backed shrike and many others. in the autumn, as these leave, come the redwing, fieldfare, snow- bunting, shore-lark, woodcock, shorteared owls and yet others. they leave with the advent of spring. results of observation —to explain these seasonal changes many theories have been advanced. for the most part they rest on a postulated instinct, engendered by conditions imposed by the glacial period, ages ago. when observation is substituted for mere guesswork some pertinent facts present themselves. in the first place migration is possible only to such species as can find food wherever they go. the hornbill and the toucan, the bird-of-paradise and the peacock cannot migrate, because they have become adjusted to a food supply having a relatively restricted distribution. should famine overtake them they must as certainly die if they fare forth in search of food as if they stayed in the stricken area. hence, such species are relatively limited in regard to their individual numbers. chimney-swallows and sedge-warblers vastly outnumber hornbills or birds-of-paradise, for example. since the insectivorous and carnivorous species can count on an almost universal source of food, the impression is gained that migration is purely a matter of food supply; that the cuckoo, the swallows and the warblers must, perforce, leave in the autumn because flies and caterpillars are hard to come by in the winter. this simple explanation, however, is demonstrably untenable. we are misled by concentrating too much on the insectivorous species. every autumn the home-bred thrushes and woodcocks leave britain and their places are presently filled by other thrushes—redwings and fieldfares—and woodcock, which come from more northern regions to escape the rigours of their native land. evidently, then, our thrushes do not leave because the british islands are no place for thrushes in the winter. again, if these movements were simply conditioned by the food supply why should the swallows, warblers and other spring migrants leave the genial climes of africa to pass the summer in britain? the journey is full of perils, many fall by the way and many perish on arrival from a sudden return of wintry weather. further, as the native-bred birds are returning, those that came in the autumn lcave for their breeding grounds in northern europe; they leave, in short, just when food is growing more plentiful. the real reason.—a careful survey of the phenomena of bird migration seems to show that the primary cause of these move- ments is not the need of finding food so much as an optimum tempcrature for the offspring. that this is the key to the problem seems to be shown by the fact that during any spell of really hot weather the native birds, whether incubating in a sun-baked hedgerow, a shadeless heath or a ledge of rock 200 {t. above the sea, all alike show signs of evident distress, sitting with open mouths apparently panting for breath. with the ad- vent of the young the same distress is seen; the fledglings some- times hang over the edge of the nest exhausted by the heat. such facts show that had these birds remained in their african winter quarters they would have reared no young. and similarly, if the redwing and fieldfare had not left in the spring, they too would have met with a like disaster. these birds, in short, have each and all become tempered, or adjusted, by natural selection to certain more or less definite ranges of temperature, a general average of heat and cold, beyond which they cannot range with impunity. if this interpretation is correct, then it would seem that these migrants must, at some remote past, have been forced out from an area where they were resident the year round, as are so many native birds. need for migration.—the necessity for migration came about as these species, increasing in numbers beyond the limits of their food supply, were forced, in each succeeding generation, farther and farther from the ancestral centre. let us suppose this to have been true of the swallows, originally of african origin. there came a time when those which had been forced north- ward found themselves in a temperate climate, where the winter 386 was uncongenial. they would be driven back towards their an- cient centre of dispersal; but now they could no longer stand the summer temperature of their winter quarters, and as a con- sequence would be forced to return to the land of their birth. since it is the custom, for obvious reasons, for the adults to drive their young away as soon as they can fend for themselves, the birds hatched last year, returning to their birth-place, will find their prospective breeding sites occupied by their parents. hence they would be forced still farther northward. thus is the range of a species gradually extended. thus it has come about that the migratory species are vastly more numerous in in- dividuals than resident species. migratory species become as much “ local-races ” as the resident species. ‘the pair of swallows which reared their broods in a barn in ripley, surrey, in 1925, will, if both survive, return to that village, and to that nest for the same purpose. but for this wonderful homing instinct, disaster would overtake the species. as the migrating hosts set out on their migration to their native land, which is their birth place, they spread, as it were, fanwise, cach to his appointed place. ‘thus they spread evenly. but for this, vast hordes might elect to stay in one small area, anywhere on their route, when disaster would inevitably follow. the males, as a rule, are the first to arrive for on them falls the necessity of seizing upon a breeding territory, which is held at all costs against rivals, perhaps their own offspring. the females follow about a week later, and pair up as they meet with the successful males. the sense of directiot.—f¥inally, there is one aspect of mi- gration for which no satisfactory interpretation is yet forth- coming. with some species, as with the common cuckoo, the adults leave for their winter quarters some considerable time in advance of their young. how then do these find their way? we can only postulate some subtle sense of direction, inherited irom their parents, which, earlier in the year, made their way unaided from africa, that land of plenty and genial warmth, whither they had gone to escape the rigours of the winter months in the north. so long as it was assumed that migration was merely a matter of food supply, the appeal to “ inherited habit,” forced on the migrating hosts by the severitics of the last glacial epoch, had a certain superficial plausibility. but since this glacial grip of the land lasted several thousands of years, it be- comes untenable as a serious solution of this problem. bibliography.—w. halliday, the book of afigratory birds (1910); w. eagle clarke, studies in bird migration, 2 vol. (1912). qv op scp xa) united states during recent years, the migrations of north american birds have been the subject of much intensive study. spring and autumn routes, as well as the territory in which the winter is spent, are now well known for most species, the prin- cipal lanes of flight following the valleys of the great rivers, such as the mississippi and the hudson, as well as the sca coasts. there are three main routes by which birds pass from the united states into the countries to the south. the most obvious one leads through the mainland of mexico, directly into central america. the second uses northwestern florida as a jumping- off place, followed by a flight directly across the gulf of mexico to yucatan. the third takes the travellers. down through the peninsula of florida, thence across the caribbean sea to south america, with resting places in cuba, jamaica and other islands of the west indies. closely related species, probably because of inherited habit, may use widely different routes, and a few, such as the redstart, use all of them. in most cases, however, the line is closely restricted. in general, the direction followed in the southward and autum- nal flight is used for the return in spring. however, there are some striking exceptions, which serve to increase our wonder at the ability of the birds to find their way. the much-quoted case of the golden plover will serve as an example. those that nest near the arctic ocean, gather in labrador in july. here they acquire a considerable reserve of fat and finally cross to nova scotia. thence, they strike out over the sea, directly for the northern coast of south america, more than 2,000 m. away. hf birdwood, sir george—birkenhead, i’. i. s. fair weather prevails, they seem to make no stop until the goal is reached, though fogs or head winds may drive them ashore. the winter is passed in argentina. on the return journey to their northern nesting grounds, some 8,o00 m. distant, the birds follow an entirely different course, through central america and up the mississippi valley. the problem of the origin of mi- cration routes is a difficult one at best, and such cases as this have so far baffled solution. probably the most important recent contribution to the study of migration, is the development of bird banding. light alumi- nium rings, bearing a serial number and a return address, are placed on the legs of young birds in the nest, or on those of adults, which are trapped and released. this work, at first carried on by scattered individuals, has now been taken over by the bureau of biological survey, at washington. with the help of interested naturalists, in all sections of the country, some thousands of birds are marked yearly. out of this total, many returns are made to the central office, and from the mass of data gathered in this manner, much valuable information concerning migration routes is being obtained. (l25.c:) birdwood, sir george christopher molesworth (1832-1917), anglo-indian writer (sce 3.979), died at ealing, london, june 28 1917. birdwood, sir william riddell (1865- ), british general, was born sept. 13 1865. ile joined the r2th lancers in 188s and.was in the following year transferred to the indian staff corps, joining the cavalry. after scrvice in several frontier expeditions, and in the south african war (1899-1902), he was closely associated for several years with lord kitchener in india, acting as his military secretary. lord kitchener, in dec. 1914, selected him for the command of the australasian forces which were being assembled in egypt, and in the following april he commanded this army corps in the memorable landing at anzac. he was in charge of the troops clinging to this patch of the gallipoli peninsula until aug., and his personality won the confidence and regard of these australasian troops in a unique degree. birdwood carried out the masterly withdrawal of the dardanelles forces from their dangerous positions in the following december and january. after a short period in egypt he took his australasian troops to the western front, where they played an important part in the last phases of the british advance in the autumn. for his services he was made a baronet, besides receiv- ing a grant of f10,000. he paid a visit to the antipodes a year after the war. in 1920 he took up command of the northern army in india, and in 1925 was promoted field-marshal and appointed commander-in-chief in india. birkenhead, england (see 3.982), with an area of 3,909 ac. and a population of 145,952 in 1921, is a thriving city, which has increased largely in importance during and since the world war. it has now a great trade in cattle, coal and grain, and numbers of warehouses and works have been built. birken- head is one of the chief meat markets of the empire, and (with wallasey) the largest milling centre in europe. the biggest cattle market in great britain is held at the mersey cattle wharf, and there is a special landing stage for cattle. a clock tower, a memorial to king edward vil, was unveiled in 1912, and a war memorial cenotaph in hamilton square in 1925. an art gallery and museum was opened in 1912. in 1923 the docks covered an area of 170 ac., and improve- ments were being considered. a new deepwater entrance has been built and a passage made to bidston moor, so that this undeveloped land may be made a manufacturing centre. bir- kenhead is also a large shipbuilding centre; the yards, which cover over roo ac., had a very large output during the world war. a water undertaking, begun in 1911 and involving the construction of a reservoir three miles long at alwen in wales, was completed in 1921; the corporation became the sole water authority for the borough in 1925. birkenhead, frederick edwin smith, ist earl of (187 2- }, british politician and lawyer, was born at birken- head july 12 1872. educated at birkenhead grammar school and wadham college, oxford, whcre he was a scholar, he took birmingham, alabama a first-class degree and in 1894 was president of the union. asan undergraduate he impressed his contemporaries by his force of character, oratorical power and mordant wit. he won the vinerian law scholarship in 1896, and secured a fellowship at merton college. he lectured both at merton and oriel, and became a university extension lecturer in modern history. choosing the law as a career, mr. smith was called to the bar at gray’s inn in 1899. skilfully gathering round him his old con- nections in the north of england, he attached himsclf to the local bar at liverpool, where his natural abilities swiftly gained him a considerable practice. audacious intrepidity was his main characteristic as a youthful pleader. following his oxford tradi- tion as a conservative, he was adopted as candidate for the wal- ton division of liverpool and made a speech at a public meeting which greatly impressed joseph chamberlain. elected m.p. for walton in 1906, he held that seat until raised to the lord chancel- lorship in rg19. he signalised his entry into the house of com- mons by delivering, from the broken ranks of the opposition, a maiden speech of brilliant mockery which made his reputation. a rapidly growing practice at the london bar, where he took silk in 1908, hindered him from pursuing the regular routine of parliamentary opposition. the achicvement that brought him prominently before the public as a barrister was his success in an action brought in 1908 by lever bros. against the daily mail for describing that company as a ‘‘ soap trust.”? he also appeared for miss le neve in the crippen case and against lord alfred douglas in a case arising from the disputes about oscar wilde. his forensic style differed from his method of public oratory. he inclined to be quiet, dispassionate and deadly in cross-examina- tion. a tremendous worker at the bar, he undertook tasks which would have overwhelmed most men in combining his legal and political careers. his chief political strength lay in captivating and mastering mass audiences. after the retirement of chamberlain popular conservatism found in him its most telling exponent, and in the art of the platform even lloyd george had to reckon with him. the qualities which won his early success also made him enemies, not always in the rival political fold. me brushed opposition or prejudice brusquely aside, and he never restrained his wit from playing over any object it fancied. at the same time he was much loved by his intimate friends and subordinates, to whose feelings and interests he always gave marked consideration. mr. smith took a prominent part in the struggle over the parliament bill. he moved its rejection on the third reading, may 1011, and threw in his lot with the dic-hards, who desired the peers to reject the measure. his growing position was recog- nised by a privy councillorship in 1911 and he became an ac- cepted member oi the conservative ‘‘ shadow ” cabinet. the frish question was now becoming acute and mr. smith was sir edward carson’s principal lieutenant in the resistance organised in ulster. the war of 1914-8 closed the original irish controversy. he accepted the task of controlling the press bureau, went to france as eye-witness with the indian corps, and did valuable work in the administration of army law. he was recalled from france to become solicitor-general in the first coalition of r915, and suc- ceeded sir edward carson as attorney-general in nov. of that year. in this year he was knighted. the defence of the realm act threw on the law officers of the crown a great burden of anx- ious work including the prosecution of sir roger casement for high treason. as attorney-gencral sir f. e. smith’s most impor- tant success was the case in which he succeeded in getting the rights to the unoccupied land of rhodesia reserved to the crown instead of passing to the british south african company. when lloyd george reconstructed his ministry after the election of 1918, the attorney-general was offered the lord chancellorship, and was raised to the peerage as viscount birken- head in rorg. the appointment, though quite in the normal order of promotion, was subjected to considerable criticism, partly owing to the new chancellor’s comparative youth, but chiefly to his vehement partisanship in earlier years. flis chief legislative achievement during his term of office was the law of 387 property act of 1922. this reform, long overdue but perpetually held up by the inertia of the various legal authorities and inter- ests, revolutionised the whole system of holding landed property. among lord birkenhead’s most notable judgments were (1) director of public prosecutions v. board, dealing with drunken- ness as an excuse for crime; (2) wakeford 2. the bishop of lon- don; (3) the rhondda peerage case before the committee of privileges, laying down that women could not sit in the upper house by right of peerage; (4) admiralty «. s.s.“volute’—a judgment on the law of negligence in collision cases. of this fourth deliverance lord finlay said “‘ i regard the judgment to which i have just listened as a great and permanent contribution to the law on the subject of contributory negligence, and to the science of jurisprudence.” the fall of the coalition government of 1922 was brought about by the desire of the rank and file of the conservative party to regain its independence. lord birkenhead and some other conservative ministers opposed this movement in vain at the carlton club meeting. as a consequence he was not in- cluded cither in the administration of mr. bonar law or in that of mr. baldwin, and he assumed an attitude of marked independ- ence. on vacating the lord chancellorship he had been made an earl. mr. baldwin prudently healed the breach in the con- servative ranks on assuming office again in 1924, and lord birk- enhead became secretary of state for india. lord birkenhead, as an oxford scholar, had a natural taste for letters and his libraries were filled with carefully selected vol- umes. he himself writes well and profusely. his work on in- ternational law has gone through several editions. he pub- lished a collection of essays on unionist policy in 1913, the story of his american visit during the war in 1918, and two volumes of collected essays in 1922. the essay on lord salisbury, originally published in the times, is his best historical work and the short sketches of his young friends who died in the war re- veal the human side which he always shows to youth. he mar- ried in root margaret eleanor, daughter of the rev. henry furneaux of oxford, the editor of tacitus. they have one son (viscount furneaux) and two daughters, the ladies eleanor and pamela smith. (m. w.) birmingham, ala., u.s.a. (see 3.983), diversified its in- dustries until, in 1924, its factories were producing 1,640 kinds of articles. pig-iron and steel remained the basic products. others of importance were cast iron and clay pipe; wire, nails, steel cars, car wheels, rails, stoves, cotton gins; sugar-mill, coal washing and mining machinery; cement, brick, lumber, cotton-seed oil and meal ancl fibre; corn meal, meat, cotton goods and chemicals. by 1920 the old beehive coke-ovens had given way to by-product ovens with an annual capacity of 4,500,000 tons of coke, yielding also vast amounts of coal-tar and 17,000,000 ft. daily of by- product gas, which supplied the city mains. hydroelectric power in ample quantities was already available, and the muscle shoals (q¢.v.) development is well within the limits of economical transmission. on jan. 1 1910 the city’s boundaries were ex- tended, incorporating several suburbs, including ensley, and in- creasing the area to 49 square miles. the population in 1920 was 178,806, of whom 70,230 were negroes and 6,410 foreign born; in 1925 {census bureau estimate) 205,670. bessemer, fair- field (a model industrial city), and other suburbs, which, though politically independent, are an integral part of the economic unit, would increase the population by 60 or 65 %. the commission form of government was adopted in roii. transportation facilities were augmented by the construction of the birmingham belt, encircling the city and connecting with all of the nine trunk lines; and by the opening (1920) of a terminal at birmingport, on a branch of the warrior river, 17 m. from the switching limits of the city, giving access by water to mobile and other gulf ports. in 1922 the board of education undertook a thorough examination of the school plant and mapped out building programmes to relieve the worst conditions immediately, make adequate provision by 1930, and, after that, provide for the anticipated normal growth of the population up to r940. by 1924 six new buildings had been completed and four 388 more were under construction. a municipal market house was completed in 1923; a munictpal auditorium, seating 6,o00, in 1924. the cost of living in birmingham is relatively high (110-:9% of the average for 31 american cities, dec. 1924). birmingham- southern college, created in 1918 by the consolidation of bir- mingham college, founded in 1898, and southern university, founded at greensboro, ala., 1859, had a total enrolment for 1925-6 of 2,086, of whom 876 were in the college proper. birmingham, england (see 3.983), has increased largely in size since 1910. the primary cause of its growth in area was the extension of the municipal boundaries by an act of parlia- ment, though manufacturing developments and industrial enter- prise before the world war, as well as the influx of munition workers in 1914-8, contributed materially to the increase in population, which had reached 919,444 in 1921, making bir- mingham the third largest city in great britain. twelve mem- bers have been returned to parliament since 1918. the greater birmingham scheme became an accomplished fact in rgtr1, when aston manor, erdington and handsworth, almost the whole of norton and northfield, and the rural dis- trict of yardley were added to the city. king’s norton and northfield, as parts of birmingham, ceased to be portions of worcestershire from the geographical as well as the administra- tive aspect, and came nominally within the boundary of war- wickshire, as did handsworth from staffordshire. the area of the city was increased to 43,537 ac., or about 68 sq. m., and the membership of the city council to 30 aldermen and go councillors. housing—in 1918 a policy for dealing with the housing question was formulated, and by 1921 the corporation was in possession of about 1,930 ac. of land for housing purposes. in 1925, 8,279 houses had been built, and provision made for a total number of 21,873. birmingham was the first large town in england to prepare a comprehensive scheme of town planning. no definite steps to carry it out were possible until the extension of the city in 1911, when 24,000 ac. of undeveloped land in the suburbs were brought under the control of the council. the first scheme authorised referred to harborne and quinton, to the west of the city; no factories were provided for in this area, but considerable space was reserved for them in the east bir- mingham scheme, where the greater part of the property is already industrial. these schemes were approved in 1913, those for north yardley and south birmingham in 1916, and that for southwest birmingham after the war. much work has been done on the widening of roads, and the construction of new arte- rial routes. a scheme was under consideration in 1926 for im- proving the canal system between birmingham and the mersey, to make it navigable for barges of 100 tons, instead of for those of 30 tons, as at present. a large number of parks and open spaces have been acquired by gift or purchase. among the largest are perry reservoir, of gs ac. (1919); selly park, of 20 ac. (1910-4); barr beacon, of 148 ac. (1919); pype hayes park, erdington, of 76 ac. (1920); swanshurst park, sparkhill, of 44 ac. (1917-23); king’s norton site, of 25 ac. (1920); rose hill, rednal, of 129 ac. (1920); staple hall farm, northfield, of 90 ac. (part of which is to be used for housing). an elizabethan house called the “ golden lion,” was moved from deritend and re-erected in cannon hill park in rot1. the total area of parks, recreation grounds and open spaces was 2,645 ac. in 1925. the village and estate of bourn- ville are now managed by a body of trustees. im provements.—considerable improvements were in progress in the central part of the city in 1926, especially in new strect and bull street. an area was being cleared in the neighbourhood of the “‘ hall of memory,” the birmingham war memorial, a circular temple off broad strect, which it is hoped to make the civic centre of the city; a war memorial masonic temple is to be built here, and it is hoped in the future to erect further mu- nicipal buildings, in addition to those finished on the colmore estate in 1912, to house the different departments which are still scattered about birmingham. picture galleries and a museum of casts were built over the new municipal buildings and con- nected with the old art gallery by a bridge over edmund street. birmingham—birmingham, university of the natural history museum was established at the same time. in 1925 it was also decided to reconstruct the interior of the town hall to provide further accommodation. ambitious schemes for road widening and improvements of traffic conditions are in hand, notably one for the construction of a north-south road, 80 ft. wide, which will be carried over new street station on a viaduct. new churches include st. benedict’s, bordesley (1910); st. basil’s, deritend f1or1); st. germain's, edgbaston (1917); and a roman catholic church in sparkhill. birmingham became the seat of a roman catholic archbishop in 1911. in 1914-6 a new parcel post-office was built on the site of the old inland revenue office in paradise street, and the inland revenue transferred to empire iiouse, great charles street. the repertory theatre in station street was built in 1913. ‘‘ highbury,’’ moor green, formerly the residence of mr. joseph chamberlain, and the adjoining house, the home of mr. richard cadbury, used as orthopaedic hospitals during the war, afterwards reverted to the corporation as gifts. the old children’s hospital in broad street, used for government purposes during the war, was moved to larger premises in ladywood road. the princess mary centre for disabled sol- dicrs is at rednal, and a hospital for nervous diseases has been opened at edgbaston. after the war the chamber of commerce entered into posses- sion of the colonnade hotel in new street. the enormous structure erected by the government on the corporation play- ing fields at castle bromwich, for use in connection with the aerodrome established there during the war, provided in 1921 accommodation for the birmingham section of the british indus- tries fair. other large buildings erected during the war facili- tated the development of local industries. fort dunlop is a new suburb, occupied by the makers of rubber goods. the output of shells, fuses, etc., during the war was very large; although the output of shells produced in birmingham was not a record, the number and variety of articles manufactured for the use of the army, navy and air force was greater than in any other part of the country. the city is now second only to coventry in the manufacture of motor-cars. (o. j. r. h.) birmingham, university of (sce 3.986).—the wise modern policy of insisting that universities, such as this, should aim at the highest standard in every department has been fol- lowed with conspicuous success. the problems of industry are admittedly dependent upon the application of scientific principles and the institution in 1922 of a dept. of petroleum engineering iz significant of the importance of this subject. contact with the active life of commerce and industry is maintained very closely. the coal owners’ mining research laboratory is now asso- ciated with the university. the asylums committee of the city is associated with the university on the joint board for research i: mental diseases. a chair in town planning gives evidence of the interest in important social problems, while the establish- ment of a dept. of legal studies brings the university into close relationship with the needs of this important profession. honour schools, including that in geography, have been instituted; new, ampler and more adequate accommodation is being provided; extramural activities are being developed and the interests of the working classes are carcfully provided for. in response to an appeal issued in 1920, over £250,000 was raised, of which approximately half was ear-marked for special purposes. the treasury grant has been increased and local sup- port augmented. in addition there have been a number of benefactions for various purposes—scholarships, research funds, memorials, for the endowment of chairs, such as that in italian, in law, in finance, and for special purposes, such as the develop- ment of the dept. of oil engineering and the erection of new buildings for the biological departments. a donation of £100,000 was made by sir charles hyde without restriction. the number. of students at the university is stabilised at about 1,400 to 1,500 for full-time degrees. economic conditions affect the entry considerably, and with an improvement of trade in the midland area the entries should increase. it is notable that women out-number men considerably in the faculty of arts. birrell—birth control a much higher proportion of the students have come through ultimately from public elementary schools, particularly those who are in the pure science departments. sir oliver lodge, the distinguished scientist, was principal of the university till 1919, being succeeded by c. grant robertson, c.v.o., who came from oxford. birrell, augustine (1850- ), british writer and politician (see 3.989), continued to be chief secretary for ireland till the dublin rebellion of easter 1916, a period of over nine years. the cattle-driving agitation died down, and irish politics, save for labour troubles, were comparatively quiet, till the two general elections of 1910 had once again made retention of office by the liberal leaders dependent on the irish vote. a third home rule bill was now inevitable, and mr. birrell spent much of the autumn of rg11 in preparing it. the main conduct of the measure was, however, taken out of his hands in the sessions of 1912, rg13 and 1914, by mr. asquith, the prime minister. when resistance was organised in ulster, when volunteers were enlisted and drilled in the province, and a provincial gov- ernment constituted, mr. birrell adopted the laissez-faire attitude which had throughout been the mark of his irish administration; and he applied the same treatment to the irish volunteers who were raised in the sinn fein and nationalist interest. with the outbreak of the world war the ilome rule controversy was left in abeyance; and the danger with which mr. birrell had to cope came from extremists of the sinn fein, irish-american and irish labour parties of whom casement and larkin were the apparent leaders. they promoted a strong and largely success- ful propaganda against enlistment in ireland, which culminated suddenly in open rebellion at easter 1916. immediately after the suppression of the rising, mr. birrell resigned; and he left parliament and political life in 1918. resuming his literary work, he published in 1920 a life of his father-in-law, the poet frederick locker-lampson; in 1922, collected essays in 3 vol.; and in 1924 more obiter dicta. his originality, satire and ripeness put him at the head of english men of letters on the critical side. birth control.—birth control is the popular name for control of conception, the deliberate restriction of births by chemical and mechanical means, instead of by abstention from intercourse. the term was first used by mrs. margaret sanger in the woman rebel (april 1914). the use on a large scale of contraceptives is a modern phenom- enon. the prosecution in 1877 of charles bradlaugh and annie besant, for selling, in order to establish freedom of publication, a pamphlet by dr. charles knowlton entitled the fruits of philosophy, gave enormous publicity to birth control methods, and a malthusian league, with dr. drysdale as president, was immediately established to continue the propaganda in favour of small families. the league started a periodical, and dr. drysdale and his wife, dr. alice vickery, devoted their lives to writing and lecturing on the need of spreading the knowledge of contra- ception, especially among the poorest classes. they maintained that the two fundamental needs of food and love could be satisfied only through contraception, and that poverty, sex starvation, and promiscuity could only be avoided by early marriage and small families. in 1881, by their assist- ance, a dutch neo-malthusian league was established followed by similar leagues in belgium, france, and germany. in 1921 the league opened a clinic in south london, where a doctor instructs poor mothers in the mensinga method. in 1922 it held in london the fifth international neo-malthusian con- ference. in 1925 it distributed over 500,000 leaflets proposing that the ministry of health should allow the welfare centres to give contraceptive instruction if they wished to do so. decline in the birth-rate——the results of these and similar efforts, of course in addition to other causcs, quickly showed them- selves in a declining birth-rate. before the 18th century there was nearly a population equilibrium. between 1750 and 1800 the population of england and wales rose from 6,500,000 to 9,000,000. in the 19th century, influenced by great national prosperity and the development of preventive medicine, the pop- 4 t 5 e 389 advance reached its height in 1876. thereafter a decline in the birth-rate set in which still continues. that decline is exhibited in the census returns particularly in the report on the “fertility of marriage,” vol. 13, 1911. one example may be given: table 44, which relates only to wives over 45 years of age at the census date, shows that, when necessary allowances are made, children born to roo couples fell from 738 for marriages entered into between 1851-61, to 632 for those of 1881-6, the latest date to which this particular investigation was made. this shows a decline of over 14%. later returns show a much greater decline. in 1881, in round figures, 883,600 children were born to 26,- 906,000 persons, but in 1924 only 729,900 children were born to 38,746,000 persons. table 42 in the rgr1 report also shows the changes in the fertility of each social class from 1851-6r to 1906-11. the effect of the differential decline there recorded is shown as follows:— legitimate birth-rates in social classes england and wales, rozr per 1,000 married males social class i. upper and middle . 119 ii. intermediate class (exc. scholars) 132 til. skilled workmen . . ; 153 iv. intermediate class 158 v. unskilled workmen 214 vi. total population 162 this effect may be illustrated in another way from the upper classes. “ taking burke’s pecrage,’’ says professor whetham, ‘“‘and considering only those families which have held an hereditary title for at least three generations, we exclude the more modern middle-class commercial element in the present peerage, and get more homogeneous material. marriages which took place during the ro years ending in 1840 gave an average of 7-1 births to each fertile couple. for the next 10 years the average sank to 6-1, at which figure it remained constant till after 1860. from 1871 to 1880 the average was 4:36, while from 1881 to 1890 the cor- responding number was 3-13.” | these data, said the report of the national birth-rate com- mission, amount to a complete statistical demonstration that fertility is closely correlated with social status, the more pros- perous the social class the lower is the fertility. this initial difference is not removed by subsequent differential mortality upon the offspring in favour of the more wealthy classes. every rise in the condition of the artisan tends at present to lower the birth-rate in his class. whenever political and social conditions bring a man into a position in which he hopes to rise or fears to fall, the family will be restricted. that kind of mo- tive which we may blame as love of comfort, snobbishness, timor- ousness, or praise as proper pride, desire for self-improvement, and prudence, is the most potent cause of family restriction. america and australia, like europe, have the same problem to face, and there is evidence that the same phenomenon can be observed in india. no doubt, special causes play a part in each case. in france the provisions of the code napoleon, which in- sist on the division of property, make in the same direction. social difficulties connected with religion operate in india, thus a differential birth-rate has arisen as a consequence of the practice of restriction by the higher social classes. for a population to maintain its numbers unaltered it is necessary, professor whetham estimated, that families should consist of “ not less than four children.” a nation which produces three children to the fertile marriage has, therefore, a birth-rate of three-quarters of that necessary on this basis to maintain its position. whetham says:— if the death-rate be taken at 15 in 1,000 per annum, the birth- rate will be 2x15, or about 11; that is, about four less than the 15 needed to replace the dead. at the end of a year the 1,000 will have become 996, while at the end of a century, 687, and in two centurtes 472 of their descendants will alone be teft. the birth-rate of other sections of the people is still about 33, or 13 more than their higher death-rate of about 20. ina year each 1,000 will become 1,013; in a century, 3,600; and in two centuries, ahout 13,000. thus the less prolific stock, if originally equal in number to the other, would be but one in six at the end of t00 years, and in 200 years it would he but 1 in 30 of the population. it would be lost in the descendants of ulation rose from 9,000,000 to over 32,500,000. this amazing | the stocks of predominant fertility. 390 a public enquiry—in 1to1r6 the national council of public morals established the national birth rate commission (some of whose findings have already been quoted), with the recog- nition of the british govt. which allowed dr. t. c. stevenson, the superintendent of statistics, and sir arthur newsholme, its prin- cipal medical officer, to serve as members. the commission, which consisted of 43 members representing medicine, science, economics, statistical, educative andl reli- gious interests, issued its first report in 1916, entitled the declin- ing birth rate: us causes and effects. a second appeared in 1920, on problems of population and parenthood; a third in rg2t, on the prevention of venereal disease; and a fourth in 1923, en- titled youth and the race. the commission heard over 70 expert witnesses on all aspects of these problems and published for the first time the views of the roman church, the church of england, and the free churches on the ethical aspects of birth control. the commission’s enquiry was made in four clirections: (1) the extent and character of the decline; (2) the alleged causes; (3) the effects; (4) the economic and national aspects. ‘these reports were presented to the various departments concerned, the ministry of health and the board of education; and extensively circulated and reviewed throughout the british empire and america. dr. sydney webb described the report thus: the commission has produced the most candid, the most out- spoken, and the most impartial statement that this country has yet had as to the extent, the nature, and the ethical character of the voluntary regulation of the married state which now prevails over the greater part of the civilised world. in dealing with the wider problem of birth control, the commis- sion said that when we look beyond our own shores the possibility of an increase along with improvement of the population becomes manifest. there are vast territories in canada and australia which are very sparsely peopled, and are not yielding in food for human sustenance and raw matcrial for human industry what they might. the rise of prices throughout the world can be met only by a much fuller development of the incalculable natural resources of such lands, a development which is waiting an increase of population. can we resist the pressure of asiatic immigration without provoking antagonism, if not worse, while we are not making full use of the lands which weare resolved to keep ‘white’? if we value our national type should we not desire its diffusion, for the sake even of the back- ward types, that they may be advanced by our influence to a better standard of life and thought? britain must, in view of these con- siderations, regard with gravest concern her falling birth rate, and take such practical steps as may be within her power to arrest the decline, and, if possible, restore the rate to a higher figure. that an increase in quantity is desired is clear, but 1t must be an increase in quality as well. the crux of the problem is to increase the supply from good stocks, precisely the stocks which possess the important qualities of foresight and control. it cannot be supposed that the dominions will accept emigrants from feeble stocks, which there, as here, become a burden on the industrious. their statesmen are anxious to avoid that catastrophic condition in which— by filching all the substance of the fit we make the rotten multiply on it. the commission concluded that there is no evidence that the world’s population is outrunning the natural resources: but on the contrary the presumption is that for their fuller utilisation a larger population is necessary, and thereby could be maintained with a higher standard of living. propaganda.—birth-control propaganda received another im- petus from the enormous sale of the writings of dr. marie stopes and from her libel action against dr. halliday sutherland. a society for constructive birth control, with the mother’s clinic for birth control, was established by dr. stopes and her husband. in 1923, dr. stopes published an exhaustive treatise on birth control entitled contrucepiion, tis theory, history and practice: a manual for the medical and legal professions and all soctal workers, which has been largely used by doctors and medical students. in 1924, the national birth rate commission established a special committee, consisting of representatives of medicine, public health, education, sociology, and religion, under the presidency of the bishop of winchester to investigate further the ethical aspects of birth control. this report was published in may 1925, together with the evidence taken. four of the con- clusions of the committee may be quoted:— birth rate—bissell (1) the use of contraceptives 1s a symptom of the artificial char- acter of our civilisation whereby for large numbers of people a sim- ple, healthy, normal married life is dithcult, and in some cases all but impossible. (2) there are numerous cases in which control of conception, considered in itself and apart from the question of the methods employed, is medically necessary and economically advis- able, but in every such case all the circumstances should be weighed in the light of the best available scientific and ethical counsel. (3) the ideal method of birth control is self-control. such self-control must be agreed upon by husband and wife and be carried out in a spirit of service and sacrifice. therefore, so far from giving any general approval to the use of contraceptives, the line of real advance lies in a deeper reverence, a return to greater simplicity of life and, not least, a drastic reformation of our social and economic conditions. (4) the weightiest argument for birth control is found in the eco- nomic circumstances (wages, grossly inadequate housing, and the like) of many persons. while in many instances birth control by contraceptives may be the lesser of two evils, the ultimate remedy lies in the amelioration of those conditions. the report has been widely circulated and reviewed and is now being followed up by a strictly medical and economic enquiry promoted by the same body. the american birth control league was organised in 1921 under the presidency of mrs. sanger. due to her efforts similar leagues have since been organised in japan, china, and india. the main activity of the american league is directed toward the removal of federal and state statutes prohibiting instruction in contraception under the direction of duly licensed physicians, and aims at the eventual establishment of clinics for scientific and hygienic instruction of parents. it has also established a re- search department for the scientific investigation of contra- ceptive methods. under the auspices of the american birth control league, inc., the sixth international neo-malthusian and birth control conference was held in new york city, march 1925. delegates from fifteen countries including china, japan, and india as well as the leading nations of the occident presented reports concern- ing the status of birth control propaganda and practice through- out the world. the whole question was treated in its ethical, psychological and medical aspects as well as in its relation to economic and international politics. see population. bibliograpiy.— the declining birth rate; its causes and effects (1916); prabiems of population and parenthood (1920), reports of british national birth rate commission; ethics of birth control (1925), published by british national council of public morals; marie stopes, hwv7se parenthood (1918) and contraception (birth control) (4923); lord dawson, love, afarriage, birih contrel (1921); lady florence barrett, conception control (1922); a. m. carr- saunders, zhe population problem (1922); the control of parent- hood (1922), edited by sir james marchant; w. j. robinson, fewer and better babies or the limitation of offspring (18th ed., 1915); the american birth control league, one tundred years of birth control. (j. ma.*) birth rate: see population. bison (sce 4.11).—during the period 1910-26 there was a rapid and continuous increase in the number of bison on the north american continent. this is shown by the census taken by m.s. garretson, secretary of the american bison society. as on jan. 1 1924 this gave a total of 14,369 head for all north america. of captive buffalo there were 4,167 in the united states and 8,877 in canada. in addition there was a herd of 100 head running wild in the yellowstone national park, u.s.a., and another of over 1,000 near great slave lake in northern canada, these latter being known as wood bison. the greatest herd of bison in the world in 1926 was the canadian national herd at wainwright, alberta, numbering, in 1924, 7,489 head. about 1,200 head of young animals from wainwright were turned joose south of the wood bison region and the two species are now mingling. experiments have been made both in the united states and canada in crossing the bison with domestic cattle, with the object of introducing into range cattle a hardy strain of bison blood. a cross-breed, known as “‘cattalo,’ was produced, but practical difficulties developed, resulting in the abandonment of further efforts. bissell, george edwin (18309-1920), american sculptor (see 4.12), died aug. 30 1920 at mount vernon, n.y. bissolati-bergamaschi—black sea bissolati-bergamaschi, leonida (1857-1920), italian politician, was born at cremona fcb. 20 1857. the son of demetrio bergamaschi, he was adopted by, and took the name of his stepfather, prof. bissolati, the philosopher. he was an active member of the italian socialist party from its foundation in 1892, and he exercised considerable influence as a journalist, editing the official organ of the party, l’avanti. in 1897 he entered parliament as member for pescarolo, and was after- wards elected for the second division of rome (1908) which he represented until his death. although a confirmed socialist, bissolati became dissatisfied with certain aspects of the policy of the party, notably with its anti-patriotic attitude at the time of the libyan war. in 1912 he seceded from the party and founded the reformist socialist group. at the outbreak of the world war bissolati declared himself an interventionist, whereas the “ official ’’ socialist party was frankly neutralist. in june 1016 he was minister without portfolio in the boselli national cabinet. he resigned in dec. 1918, owing to dis- agreements with sig. orlando’s govt. over the treaty of lon- don. iie opposed the annexation of the alto adige because of its german population, and of north dalmatia with its slav majority; but he advocated the annexation of i*iume as a purcly italian town. his attitude on the alto adige and dalmatian questions lost him much of his former popularity, but his un- doubted honesty and patriotism caused wide regret for his death, which occurred at rome on may 6 1920. bitter, karl theodore francis (1867-1915), american sculptor (see 4.13), died in new york april 10 r91g. in 1o1r he finished a model designed for the henry ifudson monument. he was director of sculpture at the san francisco exposition (1912-5), and at the time of his death was president of the national sculpture society. bjerknes, vilhelm (1862- ), norwegian physicist, a son of carl anton bjerknes, professor of mathematics in the university of christiania (oslo), was educated at the universily of that city. at an carly age he gave an experimental confirma- tion of his father’s prediction, on theoreiical grounds, of the re- markable apparent actions at a distance between pulsating and oscillating bodies in a fluid, and their analogy with electric and magnetic actions at a distance. from 1890-1 he studied electric waves at hertz’s laboratory at bonn in germany, and in 1895, alter carrying out much valuable work at oslo (christiania) and at stockholm, where he was appointed lecturer in the university in 1893 and professor of mechanics and mathematical physics in 1895, he gave a complete theory of the phenomenon of electric resonance which has contributed much to the development of wireless telegraphy. bjerknes subsequently returned to hydrodynamics and par- ticularly the problems of meteorology, in which he was supported by the carnegie institute of washington. two introductory volumes of a larger work, dynamic meteorology and hydrography, were published in 1910-1, under the auspices of this institution. in 1917 he went to bergen, where, as professor of physics, in the new geophysic institute there, he was the originator of an im- proved and more scientific weather service, afterwards controlled by his son and collaborator, jakob bjerknes (b. 1897), which occasioned a new view of cyclones and anticyclones. elis papers on electric oscillations were published in ansalen der phystk (1891-5). in his vorlesungen iiber iydrodynamische fernkrdafte nach c. a. bjerknes’ theorie (1900-2) he gave the first complete exposition of his father’s discoveries, and in a later book die kraftfelder (1909), he stated the same theory in a gencralised form according to methods of his own. blache, vidal de la (1845-1918), french geographer, was born at pezenas, [lerault, jan. 22 1845. he was educated at the ecole normale superieure in paris, and entcred upon the study of geography by way of that of history. the relations be- tween geographical causes and historical effects were with him the subject of a life-study, the results of which are seen in one of his best-known works, the tableau general de la geograpiie de france prefixed to lavisse’s [istoire de france (1903) and later 391 the theory of geographical “ control ” to an extreme. he joined the french school at athens in 1867, and was thus enabled to travel extensively in mediterranean lands. from 1872 to 1877 he was in charge, latterly as professor, of the department of history and geography at nancy; from 1877 to 1898 he taught geography in the higher grades at the ecole normale superieure, and from 1808 to 1909 he held the chair of geography in the fac- ulte des lettres at paris. he lectured widely and among his publications is the monumental aflas general: histoire et geo- graphie, first published in 1894; he founded in 1891, and edited until his death, the periodical annales de geographie, and con- tributed constantly to its pages. he died at tamaris-sur-mer (var) on april 5 1918. blackburn (see 4.20) had a population of 126,630 in 1921. it was estimated at 129,000 in 1923 and the area of the borough is 47,420 acres. it is proposed to make it a diocese, taken from that of manchester, as soon as the necessary funds are raised. an electrical generating station was opened in 1921; and in 1924, 27 of the large textile mills had adopted electric power and others were on a waiting list. the town hall has been extended and al. municipal departments were transferred there in r915. the county court was enlarged in 1912. an annex to the blackburn and east lancashire royal infirmary was finished in 1915, anda large war memorial block was in course of construction in 1924. three public halls were opened in 1921. st. jude’s church was built and its parish formed from that of st. thomas in 1914; st. silas, preston new road, was finished in the same year, and the church of the saviour, longshaw road, was given a separate parish in 1922. blackpcol, england (see 4.24), has increased largely in population, the figure in 1911 being 60,746 and that in 1921 99,640. it was made a parliamentary borough in 1918, and in the same year the urban district of bispham with norbreck and part of the civil parish of carleton were incorporated. the princess parade, extending from the north pier to cocker strect, was opened in 1912. a considerable amount of building has been done, particularly on the north shore, rising toward fleetwood. in torr acentral free library and reading rooms were erected in queen street, and in 1912 a large opera house in con- nection with the winter gardens was built. in 1922, 274 ac. of undeveloped land behind the town were bought for a park, and an ambitious scheme of development, including a “ social centre,”’ a restaurant, a lake, a county cricket ground, a golf course, etc., was prepared. the indian pavilion on the north pier, burnt down in 1921, was rebuilt in 1923 to seat 1,750 people. black sea (sce 4.25).—the political changes which have taken place on the shores of the black sea since 1911 have not been great, and result chicfly from the enlargement of rumania. after the balkan wars in 1912-3 that state obtained territory in the dobruja region at the expense of bulgaria. the reason as- signed for this rectification of the frontier was that the old line, which ran from silistra on the danube to the coast, exposed the railway from bucharest to the port of constantsa to attack. the value of the territory thus transferred is small, but the change which was confirmed after the world war meant the loss to bulgaria of the two small ports of balgik and cavarna and brings the present frontier very close to the important bul- garian port of varna. the war itself gave to rumania the province of bessarabia, that is, extended its black sea frontier from the chilia mouth of the danube to the right bank of the dniester. the only port on this strip is cetatea-albi (akkerman), of little value save for local traffic. soviet russia, it may be noted, does not recognise the transference of bessarabia. the other political changes are nominal rather than real. a part of the northwest coast, with the port of odessa, is now in- cluded in the ukraine; most of the rest of the northern shore belongs to the russian socialist federal soviet republic, while the remainder of what was formerly the russian coast belongs to georgia, all of which states are included in soviet russia. ukraine includes the most productive of the grain lands of republished separately; but he always refrained from pressing . european russia, and odessa was the most important black sea 392 port of imperial russia. on the georgian coast the two ports of batum and poti are the main outlets of the caspian oil-fields. in rumania and russia the export trade from black sea ports has shown changes alike in amount and in character. before the war rumania was, after russia, the most important wheat- exporting country in europe, wheat forming on the average more than two-fifths by value of her total exports. the war period led inevitably to the total collapse of this trade. sce dardanelles. blake, edward (1833-1912), canadian politician (see 4.35), died at toronto march 1 1912. blakelock, ralph albert (1847-1910), american painter (see 4.38), died near elizabethtown, n.y., in the adiron- dacks, aug. 9 i919. owing to insanity he was kept under re- straint during the last 18 years of his life. in 1913 he was made an associate of the national academy of design and in 1915 a full member. in 1916 the toledo art museum paid $20,000 for his “‘ brook by moonlight.” bland-sutton, sir john (1855- }, british surgeon, was born at enfield highway, middlesex, in 1855. he studied medicine and surgery at middlesex hospital from 1878 onwards, and from 1881-6 made systematic examinations of animals dying in the gardens of the zoological society, london. this work formed the substance of a series of lectures delivered at the royal college of surgeons 1886-91. he subsequently carried out much valuable work on hysterectomy and the diseases of women. he was president of the medical society of london in r914, of the royal society of medicine 1921-2, of the royal college of surgeons in 1923, and was also consulting surgeon to middlesex hospital. he was the recipient of many british honours, being knighted in 1912 and made a baronet in 1925. his published works include evolution and disease (1890); liga- ments, their nature and morphology (1887); surgical diseases of the ovaries, etc. (1891); tumours, innocent and malignant (1893); diseases of women (1897); surgery of pregnancy and labour, con- plicated with tumours (1901); gall stones and diseases of the bile ducts (1907); afan and beast in eastern ethiopia (1911); fibroids of the uterus (1913); selected lectures and essays (1920); orations and addresses (1924). blasco-ibanez: sce ibanez, vicente blasco. blashfield, edwin howland (:848- ), american artist (see 4.43), executed, among other works, mural decora- tions for the chancel of st. saviour’s, philadelphia; the state capitol at madison, wis.; the courthouse at youngstown, o.; and the state capitol of south dakota. for these two last works he received the gold medal of the architectural league (1911). he has published afural patnting in america (1913). blasting: see mining. blind, training and welfare of the.—in april 1925 the total number of blind persons known to the registering authorities in great britain was 48,472. on the same date (april 1925) the number of employed blind in great britain was 10,274. nearly 2,000 were employed in basket-making and nearly 1,c0o each as piano-tuners and in the knitting industry. brush and mat-making employed together about 1,100. the number of cases of blindness from disease and accident ts on the decrease, and more care is taken by local authorities in the prevention and treatment of infantile ophthalmia and better precautions against accident are insisted upon in textile, metal and other factories. additional power was given by the public health act, 1925, to local authorities in england and wales to make, with the consent of the minister of health, such arrange- ments as they may think desirable for assisting in the prevention of blindness, and in particular for the treatment of persons or- dinarily resident within their areas suffering from any disease of, or injury to, the eyes. educating the blind.—for many years the work of the ele- mentary schools for the blind has progressed steadily. in 1907 the english schools were transferred to the jurisdiction of the medical branch of the board of education. this was carried out from motives of administrative convenience, and the transfer, although undesirable on purely educational grounds, may have contributed something to freedom and individuality. excellent blakiex—blind, training and welfare of the progress was made till 1921 when, for reasons of cconomy, teaching staffs were reduced and the number of children in a class increased with a resultant decrease of efficiency. in 1908 the college and in 1912 the association of teachers of the blind were founded, and after doing much good work independently were amalgamated in 1924. by their efforts the general level of teach- ing and the qualifications of teachers in schools for the blind were raised and a corporate spirit was introduced into this branch of the teaching profession. suggested reforms.—in 1910 the industrial affairs of the blind world were in an interesting condition. an organisation of blind workers, mainly workshop employces, called the national league of the blind, had begun to direct public opinion to the need for a more systematic solution of the problem than could be secured by the piecemeal action and insufficient resources of the voluntary institutions. the institutions had been in the main opposed to the idea of government assistance for the adult blind. the alternative plan, proposed by the workshop author- ities, was to secure government contracts, and orders for brushes and baskets were obtained from the post office and the war office. unfortunately the work could not be executed except at a loss, so that the institutions were no better off than before. because of the failure of this line of approach the institutions swung round completely in favour of state assistance. the number of blind men and women employed in british workshops was only 2,300. about 200 young persons were com- pleting their technical training annually, and for these practically no provision was being made. at the same time the wages paid were inadequate and, owing to lack of funds in most of the in- stitutions, very little could be added thereto. as far back as the days of the royal commission on the blind of 1886 the blind workers had stood united in favour of a state subsidy of wages in one form or another, but their petitions had gone unheeded. now the matter came again to the front and, along with the de- mand for municipal workshops, a measure before parliament stipulated for an adequate wage. the institutions were thus driven to produce a measure of their own. this was the state of affairs in rg10 and in december of that year the first attempt was made to bring the two competing measures, the league’s bill and the institution’s bill, into line. an agreed bill was at last put forward with the united support of the blind world and secured its first reading in may ro14, but it got no further, prob- ably because of the outbreak of war. administrative action.—the forward step, however, came by another route. mr. wardle, labour m.p. for stockport, initiated, in march 1914, a useful debate on the conditions of the blind. the govt. were friendly and on may 7 set up a departmental committee “ to consider the present condition of the blind in the united kingdom and the means available for (a) their indus- trial or professional training and (0) their assistance, and to make recommendations.’ the committee’s report was published in august 1917 and contained, among much that was negligible, one suggestion of far-reaching consequences. this was that a central authority should be sect up “in the ministry of health, whenever such a ministry should be created, and in the mean- time in the local government board, for the general care and supervision of the blind.’? this central authority was to have at its disposal funds provided by the exchequer. it was to be re- sponsible to parliament for its actions and to be guided as to policy by an advisory committee. by the establishment in the following year of this department and of a similar department in the scottish board of health, a new era was begun. since that date the advance in all branches of work for adult blind has been unprecedented. new services have been instituted and old services developed out of recogni- tion. in aug. 1919 regulations were issued explaining the serv- ices in respect of which grants would be paid. the following table details these services with the grants paid in england and wales during the years 1921-2 and 1924-5. act of r920.—in 1920 the blind persons act, which had been in suspense during the war period, was passed. its provisions may be summarised as follows:— blindness—blockade 1921-2 6,844 31,476 6,117 7412 12,978 4,912 147 69,886 section i provides for a grant of pensions to blind persons on attaining the age of 50 at the same rates and on the same conditions as old-age pensions. section 2 places a duty on local authorities to promote the welfare of blind persons ordinarily resident in their area, and for this purpose enables them to provide and maintain or contribute toward the pro- vision and maintenance of workshops, hostels, homes and other places for the reception of blind persons, or to do any other thing approved by the ministry or the scottish board of health for pro- moting the welfare of the blind. local authorities were required to prepare and submit to the ministry or board a scheme for the exercise of that duty. section 3 applies the provisions of the war charities act, 1916, with certain modifications, to all agencies making public appeals for subscriptions on behalf of the blind. 1924-5 counties’ assns. workshops . home workers . homes and hostels home teaching book production capital expenditure... tools and miscellaneous . the local authorities have gradually increased their interest in, and contributions toward, this service since the act came into force on sept. 10 1920. the amount of their contribution was under {15,000 in 1921-2, and the estimated figure for 1925-6 was over £127,000. most of this subsidy has gone to the volun- tary institutions and agencies to supplement and expand their work. in 1925 nearly 13,000 blind men and women in england and wales between the ages of 50 and 70 were in receipt of an old-age pension at a cost to the community of about £320,000. the figures for great britain and northern ireland were over 16,000 pensioners at a cost of about £413,000. in great britain, therefore, public moncy, in one form or another, is spent, either directly upon, or in the interests of, blind people to the extent of over £600,000 a year. this figure is more than equalled by the amount received by institutions and agencies by way of voluntary contributions from the charitable public. during the year which ended march 31 1924, these institutions, other than the endowed pension societies, received in this way no less than £662,000. lhe war and the blind—the war years of 1914-8 brought about a great addition to the numbers of the sightless. in all probability more than 10,000 soldiers and sailors lost their sight on active service. to this appalling total the british common- wealth contributed nearly 2,000 and germany 3,000. in britain these blinded men were cared for in special institutions, st. dunstan’s in london and newington house in edinburgh. there they were given fresh hope and inspiration, were taught an oc- cupation such as mat-making, boot-repairing, massage or teleph- ony, and, for the most part, established in their own homes. in germany, a laudable effort was made to find occupation for those blinded in the war in particular sections of factory pro- duction. messrs. siemens led the way in this endeavour, and about 450 were so employed at the close of 1925. (j. m. rt.) tue united states activity and progress have been marked in work for the blind in the united states since 1910. the following paragraphs sum- marise briefly the independent actions of the various states. the young blind.—seven residential schools have been re- built in suburban locations, most of them adopting the cottage plan. in 1913, certain low-vision children began attending day centres opened for them in common schools, and by 1925, 15 states had collectively 205 of these sight-saving classes. there is as yet no systematic provision for the blind who are feeble- minded. deaf-blind pupils now mosily attend schools for the deaf. while little demand exists for specially prepared teachers of the blind, a movement for them has begun. in 1917 the coun- try adopted braille as its uniform type, and in 191g the govt. increased from $10,000 to $50,000 its yearly subsidy for embossed books for the schools. 393 the adult blind.—new legislation to reduce industrial acci- dents has lessened the cases of blindness due to this cause. since the world war, practically every state conducts a rehabilitation bureau which will assist blind persons not served by other agencies. ten states have set up permanent commissions for the blind, making 19 in all. these employ the usual instrumentalities, the latest means to employment being the placing of the fit in industry alongside the seeing. suitable occupations are the as- sembling of parts in factories and typing. the federal compensa- tion in 1925 to those (477) blinded during the world war is from $150 to $200 a month. moreover, money was abundantly spent in efforts to re-cducate these young men and to place them back in industry. congress in 1924 authorised the veterans bureau to expend not exceeding $100,000 in obtaining embossed books for them, which, with the general hand-copying of stories begun during the war, adds materially to the books available for finger readers. the blind, by harry best, ph.d. (1919), is the most notable american monograph on this subject. there was launched in 1922 the american foundation for the blind, with offices in new york city. its slogan, “ nation-wide service to the blind,” indicates its purpose. (e. e. a.*) blindness: sce ophthalmology. bliss, cornelius newton (1833-1911), american mer- chant and politician (see 4.72), died in new york oct. 9 rg11. although prominent in the republican party, and for a long period the treasurer of its national committee, he refused to accept public office. his lack of sympathy with theodore roosevelt’s growing influence led him to retire from politics. bliss, tasker howard (1853- ), american soldier, was born at lewisburg, pa., dec. 31 1853. he graduated from west point military academy in 1875, and from 1885 to 1888 was professor of military science at the naval war college. in 1897 he went to madrid and was military attache at the american legation. he served through the porto rican cam- paign during the spanish-american war and from 1898 to 1902 was in charge of cuban customs and collector for the port of ilavana. in 1903 he became commandant of the army war college. from 1903 to 1905 he was a member of the joint army and navy board and also of the general staff. from 1905 to 1909 he held various commands in the philippines. during the latter half of 1909 he was president of the army war college, afterwards becoming assistant chief of the staff, to which post he returned in rors after four years’ service in command of military departments. in 1917 he was made chief of the staff and promoted to the rank of general, but he retired later in the year, having reached the age limit. he was a member of the allied conference (1917), of the supreme war council (1918) and of the international peace conference (1918-9). blister: see burns and scalds. blockade.—several years before the world war began, the british admiralty had realised that there could be no thought of stationing a squadron off the german coasts and declaring a blockade of germany. the development of minor attack by means of mines, light torpedo craft and submarines had given naval states a means of keeping enemy forces away from their coast-lines; apart from which the german battle-fleet was suf- ficiently powerful to destroy or drive off any line of cruisers which attempted a blockade. the british admiralty was bound to make its naval disposi- tions accordingly. on the outbreak of war two cruiser squadrons were given the duty of watching the enemy’s trade and stopping it as far as they could. the first was stationed at the western mouth of the english channel. the second, called cruiser force b or the northern patrol force—was not given any definite station; but was intended to watch the northern exits from the north sea, between the north of scotland and norway. neither of these cruiser squadrons was a blockading force; their duties were to arrest all enemy ships and to stop cargoes of con- traband. ‘the cruisers at the mouth of the channel were soon with- drawn, and their duties transferred to a boarding flotilla in the 394 straits of dover. the history of cruiser force b was different. during the autumn and winter of 1914, the commander-in-chief treated it as part of the grand fleet cruiser squadrons; and attempted to use all his light forces to intercept and inspect trade. to do this, he divided the northern part of the north sea into patrol areas which covered the line between buchan ness and the norwegian coast, and allotted a squadron to each. the loss of “‘ hawke ” to a german submarine showed that the watch- ing line must be withdrawn to the north and west, and the steady increase in the escort and reconnaissance work of the grand fleet cruiser squadrons made it necessary to give one single squadron the specialised duty of watching and inspecting the trade routes to northern europe. ‘the squadron of old cruisers, which had hitherto made up cruiser force b, was paid off, and its place was taken by a force of armed merchant cruisers called the roth cruiser squadron. the line along which these ships patrolled varied continuously but it was found that the bulk of the east and westbound euro- pean traffic ran through the rough rectangle bounded by the facroes, the facroe bank, the hebrides and the shetlands, and the lines of patrol were so arranged that they ran across it. an- other line of watching cruisers was maintained between the facroes and iceland and, during the summer months, a small patrol was kept in the strait between iceland and greenland. these may be called the stabilised dispositions of the roth cruiser squadron; they were subsequently altered in points of detail only. about the same time it was announced that, owing to the enemy’s reckless mine-laying policy, the north sea was henceforward to be looked upon as a military area, and that any neutral ship which passed through it did so at her own risk, un- less she called at kirkwall and received the admiralty’s in- structions. these two measures gave final shape to the naval arrangements for putting all neutral commerce to northern europe under observation. the central organisation—the british admiralty’s disposi- tions when the war began made provision for intercepting enemy ships and contraband; but the govt. had realised for long that the mechanism of modern sea-borne commerce is too intricate to be controlled by naval means alone. but although the point had been grasped, little provision had been made for setting up an adequate organisation, and the central staff, known later as the ministry of blockade, was built up during rors. the ministry of blockade, in its final shape, consisted of various departments and branches. the chief of these and the nucleus round which the whole organisation was formed, was the contraband dept. of the foreign office, created in aug. igr4. the contraband committee was formed in oct. ig14. in jan. 1915 were created the war trade intelligence and the war trade departments and the licensing committee. in the same year were established the enemy exports committee (march), war trade statistical dept. (april), war trade advisory com- mittee (september), and the general black list committee (october). in 1916 were added to the ministry the foreign trade dept. of the foreign office (january), finance dept. (january), and the restriction of enemy supplies dept. (au- gust). finally in jan. 1917 the insurance intelligence dept. and the blockade committee were set up. contraband.—as there was no thought, when war began, of blockading germany, or of stopping all her import and export trade, and as the british govt. could only order the seizure anil arrest of enemy ships and contraband cargoes, it was a matter of great importance to state the rule of law on which they would act in the matter of contraband. the declaration of london was not binding on the govt., in that it had not been ratified; it was, none the less, in substance, a summary of the rulcs of maritime law established by custom, and had all the weight, though possi- bly not the binding force, of an international convention. it so happened, however, that the rules of the declaration of lon- don which referred to contraband gave great advantage to neutral traders who intended to traffic in it surreptitiously. contraband was divided into two classes. absolute contra- band, defined in a list of military stores, could be stopped if its blockade ostensible destination were a neutral port, and its final destina- tion an enemy country; conditional contraband, in which were included foodstuffs and fodder, could only be arrested if destined for the armed forces or an official department of an enemy state. free commodities, which included several articles of great importance in munition factories, could not be stopped in any circumstances. the british govt. was not bound by these rules, and indeed, could not be expected to observe them. it was, none the less, most important that the govt. should observe rules of warfare which were justifiable by custom. orders in council.—various orders in council were 1ssued dur- ing the war. (1) the order of aug. 20 1914 laid down that the rule of continuous voyage should be applied to conditional as well as to absolute contraband. it also reaffirmed the govern- ment’s intention, previously expressed in the royal proclamation of aug. 4, to place articles on the contraband list by its own authority, without obtaining the consent of neutrals. jurists have quarrelled with this procedure; but it is too well established in practice to be seriously contested. the order also stated that the ultimate destination of contraband might be established by any sufficient evidence. in all previous wars most of the evidence against a cargo had been taken from the ships’ papers and the letters in the captains’ possession at the time of seizure. this order empowered the naval authoritics to stop all cargocs of conditional contraband which were being sent to germany through the netherlands, denmark, sweden and norway. by the order of oct. 29 1914, issued in reply to american pres- sure, the govt. resigned some of the rights it had claimed under the previous one. “ notwithstanding the provisions of art. 35 of the said declaration,” ran the order, ‘‘ conditional contraband shall be liable to capture on board a vessel bound to a neutral port, if the goods are consigned ‘ to order ’ or if the ship’s papers do not show who is the consignee of the goods ....” this obviously gave neutral shippers of contraband exceptional facilities, as it is quite easy under modern conditions of com- merce to disguise the ultimate destination of a cargo without consigning the goods “to order.’”’ the order, none the less, reserved to the british govt. the right to treat neutral countries as bases of enemy supply, if statistics showed that they were so; but this clause was never applied. the order of march 11 1915, commonly, though not officially, styled the reprisals order and issued in answer to the german declaration of submarine war against merchantmen, was the basis of the blockade of germany. in it the british govt. stated that its naval forces would thenceforth stop all ships and cargoes with a german origin or destination; contraband would be con- demned; non-contraband would cither be requisitioned or re- turned to the owner. the orders in council of oct. 29 1915 and march 30 1916 amended the order of oct. 29 1914. the order of july 7 1916 rescinded the declaration of london, and stated that thenceforward the british govt. would act in accordance with the customary lawof nations. a statement of the rules of law which they intended to follow in the matter of contraband was added to the order. the order of jan. 10 1917 amended the re- prisals order of march 1915. the order of feb. 16 1917, issued in answer to the german declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, was comple- mentary to the reprisals order of march 1grg. it declared that a vessel, met at sea, whilst on its way to a neutral port giving access to enemy territory, without previously calling at a british | port for examination, would be deemed to be carrying goods of enemy destination or origin. goods of this character would be liable to condemnation in prize, instead of being requisitioned or returned. a stronger blockade.—it can be seen from the foregoing that the blockade of germany began with the order in council of march 1915, which was a measure to prevent goods of any kind from entering or leaving germany. the difficulty was that, at the time, the british govt. did not possess the means of giving full effect to its intentions. two cordons of cruisers, one watch- ing the heligoland bight from the danish frontier to the ems, and another patrolling the baltic between the great belt and the blockade russian frontier, might have stopped all germany’s seaborne supphes. the roth cruiser squadron, holding a patrol line be- tween scotland and iceland, obviously could not do so. it could have blockaded all the states of northern europe together; but had no power to isolate any one of them. the duty before the govt. was, therefore, to make this order in council effective in two ways: (1) by distinguishing between goods intended for con- sumption in neutral countries and goods intended for re-export to the enemy, (2) by seeing that no british or allied goods found their way to the enemy, or rcleased similar goods, produced in neutral countries, for re-export to germany. these two schedules of duties had best be treated separately. the original policy of the british govt. had been to persuade neutral governments, contiguous to germany, to prohibit the export of all goods which were declared contraband in london; but this proved unworkable. neutral governments could not always be persuaded; and when traders were prosecuted for dis- obeying such prohibitions as existed, the penalties imposed were not deterrent. a little experience showed that the british govt. would have to deal direct with neutral traders and neutral ship- ping companies and leave their governments alone. the new policy took time and it was not until the end of 1915 that it was working properly. the leading commercial and industrial mag- nates in the netherlands, denmark and switzerland were in- duced to form themselves into trusts, and were made the sole consignees of all goods that the british govt. desired to stop from going into germany. these trusts signed agreements with the british govt., in which they gave guarantees that no goods consigned to them would be re-exported. arrangentents with neutral shippers.—the first of these guilds to be formed was the nederlandsche overzee maatschappij; in denmark, the guild was called the industrieraadet, and in switzerland the societe de surveillance suisse. no general trust of the kind could be formed in sweden, owing to the oppo- sition of the swedish govt., but in sweden, norway and the united states the policy of dealing direct with trading associa- tions was pursued successfully. during 1915 american cotton was stopped from going into germany by separate agreements with the cotton industries in the united states and sweden, and american meat supplies were dealt with by a far-reaching agree- ment with the american meat packers’ association. norway differed from other scandinavian countries in that, owing to her geographical position, she was not so likely to become an inter- mediate dumping station for german goods. in her case the problem consisted mainly in finding some means of stopping norwegian fish oils and in seeing that norwegian shipping, a great carrier of foreign goods, was not used for indirect german trade. this was done by negotiations and agreements with a special body called de norske fabriker (denofa). although this could not have been done by naval means alone, neither could it have been done without predominance at sea. the 1oth cruiser squadron, controlling ail the sea approaches to northern europe, was the source and orizin of the british government’s power of bargaining. neutral traders knew that great britain could stop all the sea-borne traflic to northern europe if she wished, and they realised that if they were to carry on their ordinary business they must come to terms with her. development of the policy —by creating these great consignee trusts in neutral countries and by dealing direct with neutral traders, the british govt. found a method of solving the problem of cutting off enemy supplies, and it only remained to perfect the existing machinery. at the beginning of 1916 statistics and in- formation showed that the germans were certainly beginning to feel the effects of the economic warfare, but that supplies were still going through from neutral countries and that considerable stocks had been laid in during the first months of the war, as well as during the period when great britain’s general policy was in the process of formation. during 1916 the gaps and de- fects in the system were to a large extent made good by (1) the rationing system, (2) the issuing of letters of assurance or “ navicerts,” (3) blacklisting, (4) bunker control. the rationing system was, as ils name implies, the placing of 395 an embargo upon all neutral goods in excess of a certain figure which was arrived at by examining the statistics of the country’s trade. at first sight it seems incredible that neutrals should have allowed their imports to be regulated by a foreign power. the new system eased friction between great britain and neutrals very considerably for the following reason. the trade agreements signed during 1915 had dealt with some, but not all, of the im- portant imports of northern neutrals. they could not be made to cover all the articles of the country’s import list, because there were certain commodities for which the trade guilds refused to be responsible. the consequence was that cargoes of these un- guaranteed goods were often held up, to see if evidence could be collected against them; and the delays and uncertainties had caused a great deal of irritation. the rationing system lacked a legal basis, but it gave neutral traders the certainty and se- curity which they sought. letters of assurance was a name given to a system of control which applied only to shipments from the united states to scan- dinavia. american traders submitted to the british embassy at washington a complete list of the goods they wished to ship, and of their quantities and applied for permission to pass these through the patrols. thanks to an elaborate organisation, formed solely for the purpose of making the necessary investigations as rapidly as possible, a permit or a refusal was generally telegraphed within 48 hours. jf further investigation was necessary the applicant was informed. this system was a development of the general policy of easing friction by allowing the neutral merchant to know where he stood. it was extremely successful; over 40,000 applications were made between march 1916 and april 1917 and 30,000 were granted. the blacklisting system grew out of the postal and telegraph censorship. the inspection of all mails and wires which passed through the country gave the blockade authorities an immense amount of information about the organisation of german im- port and export trade. it disclosed the firms in america and scandinavia which were most concerned in it, the dummy con- signees which were being used to disguise the dealings, and it also gave details of a great number of particular cransactions. the blacklisting system was elaborated to ensure that all the firms known to have an interest in enemy trade should be abso- lutely denied the use of british shipping or british insurance. in addition, all neutral shipping lines were called upon to give undertakings that they would not carry the goods of blacklisted firms on pain of being refused british bunker coal. both a gencral and a statutory blacklist were kept by the blacklisting committee. bunker control, already mentioned as a means of enforcing blacklist regulations, was a formidable economic weapon. the principle of the system was that neutral shipping lines were only allowed to take in british bunker coal if they visited a british port for examination, and if they gave guaran- tees that they would not handle goods which were prohibited. the control which this gave britain over neutral shippiag com- panies was very great. in 1917, the roth cruiser squadron was actually withdrawn, and yet all the shipping to northern europe continued to call voluntarily at british ports of examination. control of domestic resources —before the war began a sub- committee of the committee of imperial defence had examined the question of trading with germany in time of war; they had decided that there were many branches of trade between ger- many and britain which might be continucd with advantage to great britain; but that a policy of non-intercourse was, on the whole, the best. as a result a draft trading with the enemy act was ready for presentation to parhament when war was declared. it forbade all commercial and financial intercourse with enemy countries, but not with men of enemy nationality domi- ciled abroad. it fell to the trading with the enemy committee, a body constituted by the treasury on aug. 4 1914, to give effect to the proclamation. [1s business consisted mainly in advising the privy council to grant or refuse licences for export trade, and in making recommendations with regard to export prohibi- tions. the control of the insurance market, the sequestration of 396 enemy property, the liquidations of enemy businesses and enemy banks were carried out by specially appointed committees. the united states declared war against germany in april 1917 and soon passed measures for stopping all german trade and for making it absolutely impossible for adjacent neutrals to re-export to the central powers. as the 1oth cruiser squadron was withdrawn during the year the american govt. was not asked to assist in the naval side of the blockade, but in all else— blacklisting, export embargoes, postal and telegraphic censor- ship—the american govt. acted far more drastically and severely than the british. effecis of the blockade-—information received from germany shows that, although germany was not completely deprived of foreign supplies until the autumn of 1917, the country was, none the less, reduced to terrible distress in the winter of 1916, and that it was only the conquest of rumania and the occupation of the ukraine which saved a breakdown. one of the most decisive factors was the complete loss of all artificial fertilisers at a very early period of the war. the soil of germany cannot produce its normal harvest of grain, fodder and potatoes without these fertilisers. it was thus impossible to make good the increasing shortage of sea-borne supplies by intensive cultivation, or even to prevent the harvests from falling below their average yield. all this was accentuated by the demands of the military, the loss of productive man-power and the inevitable waste of foodstuffs sent and distributed to armies in the field. the loss of oils and fats was severely felt at a comparatively early date, and had effects which nobody could have foreseen. the damage to the population was great, but that was not all. the lack of lubricants lowered the transporting capacity of the railways. the meat imported from adjacent neutrals during rors and 1916 was never enough to fill the deficit created by the british agreement with the american meat packers assn.; the cattle killed at home in any year could not be replaced in the next, owing to lack of fodder for raising the young kine. the suffering and demoralisation caused by this progressive lack of most of the necessaries of life was most severely felt in the industrial districts of the west and centre. austria felt the blockade even more than germany. when the armistice was signed the population of vienna was in little better plight than the population of paris in 1871. in the autumn of 1919 prof. e. h. starling, after making a dispassionate and scientific study of the conditions of life in germany, reported ofhcially to the british govt. that “‘ the nation of germany is broken both in body and spirit.”?> (white paper cmd. 280.) the blockade of germany proved that modern states are 1n- terdependent to a degree which nobody had conceived before the war began. an industrial country cannot be isolated from the outer world and continue to produce machinery and food sup- plies at the same time; an agricultural country severed from its neighbours may possibly feed itself, but it will never keep its armies supplied with arms and material. even after the coalition of the central powers covered half europe with its conquests and occupations, its lack of sea-borne supplies created wants and deficits which, in their turn, created others, and in the end the entire population of germany, austria, bulgaria and turkey broke down under the strain created by these progressive dlis- comforts and sufferings. bibliography.—viscount tiverton, principles and practice of prize laws (1914); w. b. hale, american rights and british preten- sions on the seas (1915); h. r. pyke, the law of contraband of war (1915); w. e. hume-williams, /nternational law and the blockade (1916); a. m. low, law of blockade (1916); e. pchedecki, le droit international maritime et la grande guerre (1916); a. p. wiggins, defensively-armed merchant ships (1917); a. rousseau, sous-nearins et blocus (1917); j. a. salter, allied shipping control atear: bloemfontein (sce 4.74), the capital of the orange free state and the seat of the court of appeal of the union of south africa has a population (1921) of 36,491. the white inhabitants increased from 14,720 in 1911 to 17,711 in 1921. owing to its central position, its excellent climate, and its railway facilities, bloemfontein became increasingly uscd for conferences—polit- bloem fontein—bloodless surgery ical, educational and agricultural—of delegates from all the provinces of the union. it is noted for its annual agricultural show, and has the most important live-stock market in south africa. since 1916 grey university college has been a con- stituent college of the university of south africa. law courts, in the classical style, have been built; government buildings replace those burnt down in 1908, anda state museum has been erected. the raadzaal of republican days became the meeting place of the provincial council; government house was turned into a girls’ high school. the foundation stone of an archives building was laid in oct. 1925, the first building in south africa designed solely for the preservation of historical doc- uments. bloemfontein returns two members to the union parliament. | blok, alexander (1880-1921), russian poet, was born in leningrad (then st. petersburg) in 1880. his father was pro- fessor of mathematics at warsaw. in 1903 he married the daugh- ter of the russian scientist, mendeleev. his first book of poems, songs to the belle dame (1904), show the influence of the mystic poet and philosopher, v. soloviev. later his romantic style was changed to one of bitter irony and sarcasm and his works show deep disillusionment conflicting with a national idealistic inspir- ation. ‘‘ the scythians ” is representative of this latter phase. all these alternating motives, expressing the eternal contrast between the real and the ideal form the vast scope of blok’s greatest poetry. the bolshevik revolution inspired him to write his famous poem ‘‘ the twelve ’’—english translations by c. e. bechhofer (1920), and b. deutch and a. yarmolinsky, new york (1920). the poem is an apologia for the revoiution. he is the finest lyric poet of modern russia, and ranks with the great masters of the past. his outstanding qualities are the great depth of feeling manifested in his poetry, the rich melody of his verse, his extremely varied rhythm, and the blending of an exquisite lyrical style with the raciness of speech of the masses together with an extremely skilful use of the vulgarisms and slang of the street. he died in leningrad aug. 7 1921. blok’s principal poems, besides those already mentioned, are “ the unexpected joy” (1907), the lyric drama, the fatr booth, “ the earth under snow,” “ hours of the night,’’ ‘‘ the hoary morning " and the romantic drama, the rose and the cross. blok, petrus johannes (18s55- ), dutch historian, was born jan. 10 1855 at helder, holland. after holding a professorship in greningen university, he became, in 1894, pro- fessor of dutch history in the university of leyden, a position which he retained until 1925. from 1894 to 1897 he was history tutor to queen wilhelmina. in 1904 he founded the netherlands historical institute in rome. his most important work is geschiedenis van het nederlandsche volk (itistory of the dutch people) (1892). among his other historical books are zen hol- landsche stad in de middeleeuwen (a dutch town in the middle ages) (1882); willem de eerste prins van oranje (prince william the first) (1919). | bloodless surgery.—in a sense this method is an acci- dental and indirect outcome of listerism. its originator, lo- renz of vienna, was an early follower of lister and suffered so severely from carbolic acid intoxication that surgery by anti- septic methods of all kinds became impossible for him. still impressed, however, with the cardinal aim of lister’s teaching, namely, the avoidance of introduction of bacteria into a wound from without, he concluded that he would make no wound at all unless absolutely necessary. the method is employed in ortho- paedics and, strictly speaking, is not bloodless for the bruising that may result is evidence of ruptured blood-vessels; a better term would be woundless or subcutaneous surgery. stretching procedure —the contrast between surgery and bloodless surgery in correction of an orthopaedic deformity is as follows:—orthosurgery, by cutting or excising, adapts the bones to the shortened soft parts; bloodless surgery lengthens the shortened soft parts by stretching until they correspond to the length of the bones. this lengthening is effected by repeated (many hundred) small stretching procedures (the modelling cor- rection of the germans) and not by a single forcible procedure bloodless surgery (the fotcible correction of the french), which introduces un- desirable damage, such as fracture or injury to nerves. model- ling and forcible correction differ further in that the former gradually annihilates the natural elasticity of the shortened soft parts so that they fail to retract when the modelling tension ceases, and can be fixed, passively, in any desired position by a suitable appliance. this gradual process is unaccompanied by the pain that characterises forcible correction. modelling cerrection—modelling correction is not without danger, even if cautiously performed. the soft parts, when sub- jected to tension and extension, are of different tolerance. mus- cles and ligaments are much less liable to damage. in case of absolute resistance to stretching, the tendons are severed with a thin, sharp needle (tenotome), although in this case the char- acter of the bloodless operation is blurred to a certain extent. fortunately the blood-vessels, being clastic, are less sensitive to stretching. in spite of this, the circulation can be greatly im- paired if excessive stretching of the vessels cause their inner walls to come in contact, thus stopping the flow of blood. there- fore the circulation must be watched closely. nerve stretching —of all soft parts the nerves are the most sensitive to stretching. ‘‘ pins and needles ”’ is a familiar example of the fact. should pressure on the nerve last a comparatively short time—say some hours—paralysis may ensue, the nerve remaining anatomically uninjured. such a paralysis persists for many months. reactive swelling —another danger of modelling correction is reactive swelling of the soft parts after the procedure. the plas- ter cast, maintaining the limb in the corrected position, must therefore be very accurately upholstered and even split appro- priately, in order to provide room for the swelling, which is always to be expected, or gangrene may develop in the parts enclosed within the bandage. nature of deformity—the aim of modelling procedure is cor- rection of deformity. the question arises: what is a deformity in the orthopaedic? the answer is likely to be: deformity means any alteration of the normal form. but this would cover the conception in part only. a knee bent to a right angle may be a very severe deformity, or no deformity according as the joint is fixed or movable. it docs not matter whether the bones forming the knee-joint be normal in shape or not. as soon as there is fixation, there is deformity. a straight knee-joint represents no deformity in the common sense, yet is a severe one, if the joint is fixed in the straight position. club-foot, knock-knee, bow-legs are obvious deformities, in which alterations of the shape of the bones concur with immobility of the parts. deformity and function.—the essential character of deformity is impairment of function, with or without obvious alteration in shape of the bones of which a joint is composed. most of the deformities are represented by fixed joints. the angle, in which a joint is fixed, is of noimportance. we differentiate the deform- ities of the joints, not by this angle, but by firmness of the given position. thus, a joint is “ contracted ”’ if there is still some mobility between the bones of the joint, or “ ankylosed ” if no mobility 1s left, because the bones of the joint have become united by bony tissue as a sequel to the underlying disease. it is evident that ankylosis is beyond the reach of bloodless surgery. if an ankylosed knee is not straight, it cannot be made so by the modelling correction, but solely by the chisel. con- tracted joints, however, with even the slightest trace of mobility, represent the most important objects of bloodless treatment. but even here the field of bloodless surgery is limited by the nature of the underlying disease. contractures.—to make evident the necessity of such further limitation, contractures must be classified according to their origin. the most important causes of contractures are tubercu- lous disease of the joints, rickets and similar softenings of the bones and infantile paralysis. congenital deformities, though less frequent, are, in many cases, the cause of contractures. in addition there are contractures caused by accident (fractures of bones, luxations of joints), by rheumatic joint diseases, by luetic, cerebral affections, etc. 397 tuberculous contractures.—on the whole the army of cripples can be divided in two groups, viz., diseased cripples and healthy cripples. among the first are those whose contractures are due to tuberculosis. the treatment of tuberculous bone and joint diseases exclusively belongs to bloodless surgery. resections of {uberculous joints in children in the course of time often result in deformities more severe than those occurring naturally. open- air life, plentiful food and sunshine, combined with bloodless mechanical treatment, bring about results which contrast favour- ably with those due to the knife. it is not yet possible to cure tuberculosis by direct specific medication. we must reach the aim by a roundabout way, viz., by improvement in the general health of the patient, and since a rather severe operation does not improve general health, osteo- plastic operations in cases of tuberculous disease of the spine in children (pott’s disease) are contra-indicated. spinal disease-—this operation of german-american origin, consists in inserting a bony peg from the tibia between the split spinous processes of the vertebrae. by bony union of the trans- planted bone-peg with the spinous processes disintegration of the vertebrae should be lessened, if not prevented. this opera- tion might be necessary if cure could not be brought about with- out it. fortunately this is not the case. on the contrary, it is proved by every day experience, that even the worst cases of their kind can be cured without any operation, while the result- ing deformity (gibbosity) is no worse, and the duration of the treatment is no longer than in cases which had been operated upon. it isin tuberculosis of the spine that mechanical bloodless treatment can be proud of the result it has obtained. it is essen- tial in the treatment of tuberculous diseases of the spine as well as of other tuberculous joints to secure immobilisation, for in this way the efforts of nature in producing bony union of the diseased parts are most effectively assisted. the plaster bed —the apparently difficult problem of immo- bilising the spinal column has been solved in a most satisfactory way by lorenz’s plaster bed, which is a well-upholstered plaster model of the trunk. though pain has been severe, especially during the night, the patient in his plaster bed is exempt to such a degree that he bears perambulator exercise with equa- nimity. thus he is neither confined to his bed nor to his room, he can enjoy open air, sunshine, undisturbed sleep, his appetite increases and he gets well without any operation. the developing gibbosity can be lessened, and sometimes even prevented, by adjustable cushions placed underneath the prominent parts. a similar plaster bed has been employed with benefit for spinal war injuries. other joint diseases—in the same way immobilisation is essential in the treatment of all other tuberculous diseases of the joints (hip-disease, white swelling of the knee, etc.).. immobili- sation by plaster casts is superior to extension, though this latter method is also useful as a means of fixation. by far the greater number of cases of tuberculous joint diseases, develop contrac- tures, whatsoever method of treatment they may have gone through. should the contracture not be evident at the time when the treatment has come to an end, it will develop later on, when the patient is left to himself. the usual contraction of the knee-joint is flexion, of the hip- joint is flexion and abduction. it might be thought that if the treatment of tuberculous diseases of the joints is the exclusive field of mechanical bloodless treatment, it should be the same with the resulting final contractures. although lorenz advo- cates bloodless surgery in the treatment of the acute stage of tuberculous joint diseases, he warns strongly against treatment of the resulting contractures by modelling correction. the healed tuberculous joint is comparable to a bone scar and should not be torn asunder, lest the tuberculous process be stirred up anew. such contractures call for the chisel, and correction is done not in, but near, the joint (pararticular osteotomy). rickets —to the diseased cripples also belong patients suffer- ing from rickets. during the acute stage of the disease, correc- tion of deformities belongs to bloodless procedures. in reality, also patients with lateral deviation of the spine belong to the 398 class of diseased cripples, because their deformity is due to a pathological softening of the bones of the spine. the treatment of scoliosis is the task of bloodless surgery. besides measures to improve the general health of such patients, gymnastics, mas- sage, corsets, etc., are of great importance in treatment, in which also the plaster bed plays a great part. healthy cripples.—finally reference must be made to the class of healthy cripples. leaving on one side deformities due to acci- dent where recourse may be had to bloodless surgery, mention must be restricted to deformities consequent on infantile paral- ysis, the most terrible scourge of childhood. it can well be assert- ed that all contractures caused by paralysis can be straightened out by the bloodless method. when the normal shape of the limbs is restored, a very simple brace is sufficient to make walking possible. it must be admitted that conditions can be improved by successful transplantation of tendons. but this operation is not absolutely necessary. many cases do without it—for in- stance, cases of paralytic flexurc-contraction of the knee-joint. instead of transplanting the active flexors of the knce-joint to the paralysed extensor (quadriceps), lorenz substitutes the lost power of this latter muscle by the weight of the body. this is done by a slight overstretching of the contracted knee, by which the line of weight is thrown in front of the axis of the knee-joint. arthrodesis, or artificial stiffening of joints by an operation on the cartilage and on the bone, gives poor results, except in the shoulder joint. lorenz also strongly objects to extirpating bones in paralytic deformities of the foot. at first the result may scem to be good enough, but very often in the course of vears consecutive deformities develop, which are worse than the orig- inal ones. to the healthy cripples belong further such congenital deformities as congenital wry-neck, congenital club-foot, and — most important of all, because most frequent—congenital dis- location of the hip-joint. advantages of modelling correction.—in all these cases blood- less treatment obtains better results than operative procedures. modelling correction, assisted by preliminary tenotomy in case of absolute necessity, can overcome the severest deformities of this kind. extirpation of bones, resection of wedge-shaped pieces of bones is superiluous in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. instead of resecting bones, the modelling correction restores the normal position of the «leformed bones to each other and main- tains this position by mechanical means. the bandaged foot, being compelled to support the weight of the body, is subject to the formative power of physiological function. by acting in their normal function the deformed bones, in the course of time, assume the normal shape. in this way the function, viz., to bear the weight of the body is forced to serve the purpose of the ortho- paedic treatment. similar benefit may often be derived from the treatment in cases of flat-foot. luxation of the hip-joint.—congenital luxation of the hip- joint, the most frequent of all congenital deformities, can be entirely cured by. bloodless surgery without open operation. this achievement is one of its greatest successes. reposition of the displaced head of the femur into the acetabulum is brought about by manoeuvres which are entirely consistent with those of modelling correction. by repeated stretching of the soft parts the head of the femur is forced into the acetabulum. this is the first, and often a very difficult part of the procedure. far more difficult is the second part of the treatment, 1.e., retention of the head of the bone in the socket, the latter being too small and too shallow to retain it within its defective borders. to accomplish this, the thigh has to be fixed in certain extreme positions, by which the head ts prevented from slipping out of the socket. owing to forced pressure of the head into the socket, the latter develops according to the size and shape of the head of the femur, while without it the socket would get smaller and smaller. contractures and shortening of certain soft parts caused by the extreme position of the thigh help to retain the head in its normal place. it takes about a year before the socket is developed so far as to guarantee retention of the head. the third part of the treatment consists in gradual] reduction of the extreme abducted position of the thigh into the normal blood ‘transfusion one. the difficulty of simultaneous treatment of bilateral hip ‘luxation can be imagined from what has been said about uni- lateral luxation. children with unilateral luxation are allowed to move about during the greater part of the treatment’s dura- tion and bear fairly well the impediment caused by the fixing bandage. described thus shortly the plan of treatment seems to be simple enough, but its actual achievement is by no means so simple. experience has proved, that within certain limits of age (up to 5 er 6 years) the cure of the children can be a perfect one, while in older cases at least great improvement ean be obtained. this is so much the more remarkable, as surgeons of all times regarded the deformity in question as absolutely incurable. when all mechanical experiments had failed, some surgeons opened the hip-joint with a knife, in order to deepen the shallow acetabulum with sharp spoons and to replace the luxated head of the femur into it. the results were fairly good in young chil- dren, but in older ones frequently resulted in a stiff and con- tracted joint. but this was not the worst, for opening the hip- joint and artificially deepening the socket proved to be an opera- tion much more dangerous than laparotomy. some operators had up to 10% mortality. _brairocrapuy.—a. lorenz, ‘‘gelenksmobilisierung in der kriegschirurgie,’’ wiener med. wochenschr. (1915); ‘uber die friih- diagnose ciniger wichtiger deformitaten,”' ibid (1916); “ behandlung der htiftgelenksschiisse,” ib¢d (1917); ‘‘ zur technik der lehnen- verpllanzung,” zentralbl. f. chirurgie (1917); ‘* uber die behandlung der irrepontblen angeborenen iliiftluxation, ete.,” wiener klin. wochenschr. (1919); “a new method of treatment of irreducible acquired or congenital hip dislocations,” new fork medical journal and medical record (feb. 7 1923). (a. lo.*) blood transfusion, the term used in medical literature for the process of transferring the blood from the circulation of one living animal to that of another. ‘the first authentic record of it was not made until the middle of the 17th century. a |lor- entine physician, francesco folli, claimed to have transfused blood from one animal to another on aug. 13 1654. subse- quently many experiments bearing on the subject were made by dr. (later sir christopher) wren, richard lower, edmund king, and thomas cox, their experiences being recorded in the philosophical transactions published by the royal society about 1666. some of these experiments were witnessed by samuel pepys, who referred to them in his diary. in spite of this activity in england the credit for first performing a blood transfusion upon a human being must be given to jean denys of montpellier. an account of his experiment done upon a boy aged 15, was published in the philosophical transactions for july 22 1667. on this occasion, and indeed throughout the 17th century, the blood for transfusion was taken from a lamb or a calf, and, al- though good therapeutic results were claimed at first, the opera- tion soon fell into disrepute and was almost entirely abandoned. little or nothing was heard of it during the 18th century and it was not until 1818 that attention was again focused upon its possibilities. this was due to the writings of james blundell, jecturer at st. thomas’s and guy’s hospitals, who invented a syringe for receiving the donor’s blood and for pumping it into the recipient. his first experiments were performed upon dogs and in 1824 he described the transfusion of patients with human blood. from this time onwards many different observers recorded their experiences and several methods of performing the op- eration were described. the coagulation of the blood outside the body was always the prime difficulty. one way of over- coming this was to remove the fibrin which forms the basis of the clot, and from 1835 onwards this defibrinated blood was used by various operators. transfusion did not, however, come into general use as a thera- peutic measure during the roth century, and after the year 1875 was largely neglected. this was probably due to the increased number of disasters which had attended the operation as soon as it began to come into fashion. an improvement in tech- nique was initiated in america through advances in the surgery of the blood vessels, and this culminated in the work of crile, who about 1907 described in detail an efficient method of periorming blue sky laws—blum dwect transfusion by means of an anastomosis between an artery of the donor and a vein of the recipient. coagulation of the blood was thereby prevented and it was possible, at any rate in theory, to transfer as much blood from one person to another as might be desired, though it was difficult to ascertain, even approxi- mately, how much blood had passed. meanwhile discoveries were being made which tended to elim- inate the chief factor responsible for the fatal results of some of the earlier transfusions. it had long been known that the bloods of different species of animals were incompatible, that is to say, the blood of a calf introduced into the circulation of a man was inevitably and rapidly destroyed, this process being attended by more or less serious symptoms, or even by death, according to the amount of blood introduced. in 1907 it was shown by jansky in scandinavia that an analogous incompatibility existed in all races of man between the bloods of different individuals, so that a given recipient might safely reccive the blood of certain selected donors only. hitherto no such selection had been practised. jansky’s work was repeated by moss in america in 1910, and human beings have since that time been classified into four defi- nite groups, the blood of only one of these being suitable for more or less indiscriminate injection into all recipients. ‘this group (no. 4 of moss’s classification) includes over 40%) of the individuals of western peoples and its members have been called “ universal donors.” further research has shown that this term must not be interpreted too literally, but it may be regarded as a close approximation to the truth. the blood of any individual can readily be assigned to its correct group for clinical purposes, and the test is now never omitted before trans- fusion except in cases of great urgency. a further advance was made in 1914 when agete of buenos aires first used sodium citrate as an anti-coagulant for the donor’s blood. this substance, when mixed with the blood as it issues from the donor’s vein, combines with, and renders inert, the calcium which is present in the blood in small quantity and is an efsential factor in the coagulation reaction. the blood then remains fluid for an indefinite time, and the small amount of citrate which it contains is usually harmless to the recipient. direct transfusion by crile’s method was technically difficult to perform, and it was soon abandoned in favour of citrated blood. this method was introduced opportunely for use in the treat- ment of the wounded during the world war, 1914-8, though it was largely employed only after the entry of the american surgeons into the hospitals in france, transfusion being more widely known in their country than elsewhere. some surgeons, however, believed, and still believe, that citrate is responsible for the reactions, usually mild in degree, which follow a certain percentage of all transfusions, however carefully the bloods of donor and of recipient may have been tested. in spite of much controversy the supposed harmful effect of citrate has not yet been proved, and this method, which has many advantages, is more often used than any other. if whole, or untreated, blood be preferred, coagulation may be retarded by receiving the blood into a glass vessel coated on the inside with paraffin; it must then be transferred to the recipient as rapidly as possible. several forms of apparatus have also been invented depending on the use of a syringe, which is alternately filled from the donor and at once emptied into the recipient. the use of such an instrument demands that donor and recipient should be lying side by side, and this may be a disadvantage. in 1923 a return was made by storer to the older method of using defibrinated blood to which no foreign substance has been added, and it is possible that this may prove to be the method of choice in the future. storcr’s ground for eliminating the antt- coagulant was the belief that its presence impaired the anti- bacterial properties of the donor’s leucocytes, but his contention still has to be substantiated in practice, and could only be of weight in treating patients with bacterial infections. blood transfusion has been found to have its greatest clinical value in the treatment of acute anacmia (see anaemia) due to loss of blood following injury, or in conditions such as bleeding from a gastric ulcer or post-partum haemorrhage. the picture 399 of depletion of the patient’s circulating fluid is here presented in its simplest form, and replacement of the blood which has been lost is the obvious and most satisfactory remedy. transfusion is also of value in combating the shock following severe surgical operations or injury, which may or may not have been accom- panied by much loss of blood, and in the treatment of several diseased conditions in which, for one reason or another, the pa- tient’s blood is deficient in its power of coagulation. thus, in the hereditary disease known as haemophilia, the patient may be rendered temporarily normal by transfusion of blood, and persistent bleeding will cease. transfusion has been used in the treatment of a very large number of patients suffering from pernicious anaemia, some having received as many as thirty injections of blood over a period of several years; but, although a temporary remission of the disease may be obtained by this means and the patient’s life be prolonged, the disease cannot thereby be cured. transfusion has a distinct value in the treat- ment of many conditions in which the patient has become exhausted by prolonged illness, particularly those due to chronic bacterial infection, but here again improvement rather than cure is to be expected. the limitations of transfusion as a thera- peutic measure, are, therefore, fairly well defined. it is still used more widely in america than in other countries, but it is coming to be employed more frequently everywhere. transfusion may also be considered from the point of view of the donor. here the chief point of interest is the amount of blood which he can afford to lose without danger. it has been found that a healthy young man can part with any amount up to a litre of blood without experiencing anything more than a tran- sient faintness. usually he is not called upon to give more than 500 to 750 cu. cm. jor one transfusion. sibliography.— g. w. crile, zaemorrhage and transfusion (1909); w. l. moss, “a simple method for the indirect transfusion of blood,” amer. jour. afed. sci. (1914); l. agete, ‘nuevo procedi- micnto para la transfusione del sangre,” anal, del inst, modelo de clin, med. (buenos aires, 1915); b. m. bernheim, blood transfusion llaemorrhage and the -inaemias (1917); w. m. baglin, intravenous injections in wound shock (1918); l. w. famulener, ‘ anaemia in professional donors,” -tmer. jour. pub. health (1922); “human blood relationships,’ nature (1922); g. l. keynes, blood trans- fusion (1922); w.f. dutton, intravenous therapy (1924). (g. l. k.) plue sky laws.—this name is popularly applied in the united states to those statutes enacted in many states to protect purchasers of stocks and bonds from fraud. the first blue sky law was passed in kansas in rgf1, requiring investment com- panies among other things to file with the secretary of state a full description of their business and forbidding them to sell securities until authorised by the bank commissioner. within two years no fewer than 18 other states had enacted similar legislation, and in 1926 some form of blue sky law was to be found in 45 states. requirements vary in the different states, but in every case information must be filed with a designated official or commission and licence obtained. in 1914 there developed considerable opposition to blue sky legislation. its constitutionality was attacked on the ground that it violated the commerce clause of the federal constitution; that it delegated legislative and judicial power to an executive official; that it deprived citizens of liberty and property without due process of law. in michigan, iowa and ohio these conten- tions were upheld by the lower courts; but in 1917 the u.s. supreme court decided that such laws were constitutional on the ground that “‘prevention of deception 1s within the competency of government.” | | blum, leon (1872- _>), french politician, was born april 9 1872 in paris, a member of an alsatian jewish family. in 1890 he entered the “ ecole normale superieure,” taking his degrce in philosophy. he also studied law, and in 1895 entered the conseil d’etat. in 1919, however, he was elected to the chamber. whilst still engaged in law he became prominent as a brilliant literary and dramatic critic. his first book, nouvelles conversations de goethe uvec eckermann, was pub- lished anonymously in 1902. h1e took part in the dreyfus cam- paign (sce 10.882) with jaures whom he loved and admired. 400 blunt from 1905-14 he was dramatic critic on comoedia and le matin. he joined the socialist party in 1899, but it was only during the world war and after, that he became an active member. in 1919 he was returned for the seine to the chamber of deputies and strenuously opposed poincare’s policy concerning the occu- pation of the ruhr. he played a leading rele in the international socialist congresses of ilamburg in 1923 and marscilles in 1925. although opposed to the participation of socialists in the gov- ernment, he favoured a policy of ‘‘ support ” to such govern- ments as herriot’s and the painleve second ministry in 1925. blunt, wilfrid scawen (1840-10922), british writer (see 4.93), died at crabbett park, sussex, sept. ro 1922. he pub- lished a complete edition of his poetical works in 1914 and two volumes of afy diaries (1919 and 1920). his wife, lapby anne biuntt, became baroness wentworth on the death of her nicce, daughter of the and earl of lovelace, in to17. she died dec. 25 1917, and the barony of wentworth descended to her daughter, the wife of the hon. neville lytton. boehm von bawerk, eugen (1851-1914), austrian economist (see 4.112), died aug. 28 1914. bohemia: see czechoslovakia. bohr, niels henrik david (1885- ), danish physicist, was born at copenhagen, and graduated as a doctor in ig1t. from rgri—2 he studied at cambridge and manchester under j. j. thomson and ernest rutherford. in 1913 he became a lecturer at the university of copenhagen, and from 1914-6 was reader in mathematical physics at the university of manchestcr. in 1916 he was appointed professor of practical physics at the university of copenhagen, and in 1921 head of the institute for theoretical physics, copenhagen. in 1922 bohr was awarded the nobel prize for physics, and in 1923 received the honorary de- grec of doctor of scicnce from the universities of cambridge and liverpool. the most important of bohr’s researches are those concerned with the application of the quantum theory to the problems of the structure of atoms and molecules, the interpretation of their spectra and the interchange of encrgy between matter and radiation. his pioneer work in this field, on the mechanics and the spectrum of the hydrogen atom, was set forth in two papers in the philosophical magazine for 1913-4. later developments include the extension of the theory to the structure and the opti- cal and x-ray spectra of more complicated atoms, and the ex- planation of the regularitics in the properties of different elements which are expressed by the periodic table. (see atom.)