stronger, for he took it that our original ancestors were physically stronger than ourselves. Dr. R. FARQUHARSON, M.P., said that he did not by any means think that Dr. Jones's conclusions were Utopian. He thought that they were absolutely practical views, which might be followed out to the advantage of the community at large. One great comfort was that Dr. Jones had rather put aside the idea of heredity; that is to say, the idea that we were physically deteriorating as a nation without any practical reason for doing so. Dr. Jones had put down in very forcible and proper terms the great influence of environment on the deterioration of the human race. There seemed to be considerations in connection with our modern civilisation which would lead one to suppose that a deterioration was going on. He was, on the whole, rather a pessimist in this matter, and he was not inclined to accept the optimistic view expressed by even such a great authority as the President of the College of Physicians. The very regrettable migration of the country people into the towns was bringing about a deterioration. If by any means the rural population could be induced to remain on the soil and a better prospect be given to the agricultural labourer, we might hope for a more healthy population, having good food and good air, and the terrible competition which now went on in the towns for the bare necessaries of life, would be prevented. What we wanted was more facts, so that we might find out whether the cry of deterioration was a mere scare. He wrote a letter to The Times some time ago, and that was very ably backed up by Dr. Jones, and interest had been awakened. Sir John Gorst was taking a very great interest in this question, and he had put a motion down on the paper of the House of Commons, for a Select Committee to be appointed to inquire as to the best method of keeping a record of the physical condition of children attending schools which were aided by parliamentary grants. As to the Departmental Committee now sitting, he thought that the gentlemen composing it were too much of the nature of officials. He thought that one of the great proofs of degeneration was to be found in the reports of the Recruiting Department of the army. Year after year there was a most formidable percentage of rejections, not only on account of specific physical ailments, but on account of lower physical vitality. This reached its culminating point in Manchester, where between 40 and 50 per cent. of recruits, examined by the medical officers, were found to be unfit on account of imperfect development. Then again, Dr, Hall had brought before the country, in a letter to The Times, most crucial evidence of the deterioration of school children in Leeds under the modern system of education. There was an enormous number of chil. dren who went to school, as evidenced by Sir James Crichton Browne's inquiry, underfed, or not fed at all. It was evident that such a state of things must tend to deteriorate the physical development of the children in after life. It was a terrible reflection that possibly the commercial battles of the world in the future would have to be fought by such persons, As to juvenile smoking, a very large number of facts had been adduced to show that a tremendous deterioration, both mental and physical, was brought about by that practice, and it had been suggested that there should be some legislation to stop the pernicious custom. There was at the present time a Bill on the subject in the House of Commons. Dr. HALL said that for fifty years he was a general practitioner amongst women and children, and for a portion of that time he was surgeon to the Women's and Children's Hospital at Leeds. With regard to physical degeneration, he thought that the want of proper food was the great cause. He could produce statistics which would show that children who were brought up in the midst of dirt, poverty, and overcrowding, could still be comparatively healthy if they were properly fed. Children needed bonemaking food. The public had got on to altogether wrong lines. The organic phosphates of lime were required to make bone, and an abundance of that material was contained in the maternal milk. It might be got from other materials, but with much greater difficulty. A medical eye could detect in the streets of London, or any other large town, that a large percentage of the people had rickets. The reason of this was that they had been improperly fed before they were two years of age. In these cases the rickets cramped the vital organs, so that the children never recovered their perfect form, and led to degenerated tissue. A rickety condition might be produced even before a child was born. Unless a good bony frame-work was produced the flesh could not hang properly on the body, and the child would be materially damaged. The degeneration associated with rickets was what was called fibrosis, and was closely allied to the degeneration caused by feeding on alcohol. [The speaker condemned the practice of feeding children by the bottle instead of with the natural milk of the mother. He exhibited a series of lantern slides show. ing the contrast between young Jewish children and young Gentile children in the same rank of life.] The Jews, he said, took a pride in providing proper nourishment for their wives and children, and this practice resulted greatly to the advantage of Jewish children, and caused them to be far superior in their general bodily condition to the children of the Gentile population. There would not be found more than 2 per cent, of the Jewish mothers who did not suckle their children; but more than 90 per cent. of English mothers declined to do so. A great deal had been said about the necessity of physical development, but every Jewish boy of seven years of age and upwards spent most of his leisure time during the day, out of school hours, at the Synagogue studying the Hebrew language and the Talmud, and yet, notwithstanding this, the Jewish boys were superior in size and weight to the Gentile children, and had better teeth and a better bony development. Dr. Hall referred to the evils of "mouth breathing." The best advice to give to the rising generation was that they should keep their mouths shut, and become nose-breathers, instead of mouthbreathers. Dr. HARRY CAMPBELL said that it must be remembered that the Jews for the last two thousand years had been a town-bred people, and it was not unlikely that they had become adapted to the conditions of town life, and to the conditions of diet which prevailed in towns. There must have been among the Jews during the last two thousand years an enormous elimination of children who were not able to adapt themselves to the conditions which prevailed in towns; and this might be a factor in explaining how much better Jewish children throve in towns than Gentile children. In regard to the question of diet, there was a point which, although it was not generally recognised, was of very great importance. A great defect in the diet of all classes was that it was altogether too pappy and did not call the masticatory organs sufficiently into action. He believed that the condition of mouth-breathing to which Dr. Hall had alluded was due to adenoids or the blocking up of the back of the nose and the throat, and he believed that the main cause of adenoids was that the food taken was too pappy, and that consequently the jaws were not properly exercised. He should call this age an age of pap. If the jaws were not properly exercised, there was not a proper stimulation of the circulation of the blood in the mouth. A very large quantity of starch was taken in pappy food, and this substance did not get properly digested by the saliva. If it was properly masticated in the mouth, it was converted into maltose, which was practically malt extract. But otherwise it passed into the stomach and caused trouble, and predisposed to catarrh and adenoids. Dr. Jones, among the recommendations which he had made of improving the present state of affairs, had omitted to mention the importance of impressing upon all classes that those persons who were unfit to marry, ought not to do so. Dr. SHUTTLEWORTH said that they ought not to lose sight of the influence of heredity. Heredity and surroundings determined the condition of the individual. He wished to urge that some notion of how to avoid marriages among the unfit, should be instilled into the growing generation of young people. In the performance of his duties of examining defective children on behalf of the London School Board, one of the things that struck him most in connection with such children was the fact of their being underfed. Of those who were unable to cope with the conditions of ordinary school work, about two-thirds were simply the victims of ill-nutrition or defective feeding. Allusion had been made to the deleterious effect of tobacco smoking among young people. He should like to back up what had been said on that subject. The teachers sometimes found that the boys who came to school were in the habit of spending their halfpence, not in sweets or cakes, but in cigarettes sold at three a penny, and some of the boys had injured their physical and mental condition by smoking. There seemed to be very diverse opinions as to whether there was really any evidence or not of physical deterioration. Why should not an attempt be made in a simple manner to obtain the necessary evidence, without waiting for a report from a Royal Commission. Sir John Gorst had suggested that, at all the schools of the country, there should be a simple system of registration of the heights, weights, and ages of the children. This could be carried out at a very small expense, and it would be one means of gauging the condition of the population, and in a few years we should have, at any rate, a certain number of facts to go upon. He held that it was highly desirable that all the schools in the country should be snbject to a certain amount of medical supervision, in order that any deviations from the normal which were going on might be ascertained. Such things were often due to ill-fitted seats and desks and various matters which could be easily remedied if they were pointed out. He thought that the teaching of hygiene and of temperance, and also of the ill results of an infraction of nature's laws should form part of the curriculum of the elementary schools. Dr. FLETCHER BEACH, referring to the subject of marriage of the unfit, said that he thought that it was very undesirable that epileptics should marry. That idea might appear to be Utopian in England, but it had been carried out in some parts of America. The Rt. Hon. Sir HENRY KNOX, K.C.B., said that he was somewhat familiar with the practical bearing of the question of degeneration. He was inclined to agree that there was no exact proof that the race was deteriorating to the extent that some people would like them to believe, although there was no doubt that the condition of things was very bad in some places. For many years he had been in a position to watch the recruiting of the army and the rejections of the men who offered themselves, and he had found that the number of rejections made by the medical officers had been very uniform during the whole of that time. Very nearly half of the men who offered themselves had been rejected for a very long series of years, but men rejected in one locality presented themselves in another, and were rejected again, and, therefore, the statistics as to the percentage of rejections were of no value whatever. As a measure of the general physical condition of the whole populace, there was another fact with regard to recruits, which illustrated what a wonderful thing the examination of the service was. Month after month returns had come to him showing that the doctors who had examined the recruits for the army had passed youngsters of seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, and even thirteen years of age, under the belief that they were eighteen. In these cases the physique of the recruits had led the doctors to pass them for the army at ages below that at which they were legally admissible, and their parents had obtained their discharge, and the country had been put to expense, which was sometimes very considerable. He was Dr. ROBERT JONES, in reply, said that he had been quite prepared for the very optimistic opening remarks of the Chairman. He had been struck with the view taken by Sir H. Knox, who was also a very keen optimist. If there was no definite proof of degeneration, still there was no definite proof of progress. He thought that Dr. Farquharson had struck the nail on the head in saying that environment was the great point. If we could find any practical solution of the problem of bringing the agricultural labourer back to the land, the difficulty with regard to degeneration would to a very great extent be solved. It had been asserted by Dr. Hall that food was the chief thing. No doubt food was the chief contributor, but after all there were also ancillary matters in connection with the question, such as light, air, and healthy exercise. sure that the little Jew boy would be very much better if, instead of spending his, leisuretime in study at the synagogue, he devoted the time to physical exercise. He (Dr. Jones) took a very strong view of the effect of environment, and speaking generally he thought that environment knocked heredity into a cocked hat. He thought that abstinence from marriage on the part of the unfit was a counsel of perfection upon which they must not insist. Nature did not always select the course which was most desirable. He had been interested in Dr. Shuttleworth's remarks as to the cases within his experience in which deterioration was due to malnutrition. Mal-nutrition was the fault of the mother, and the neglect of the mother arose from deficient education. He felt sure that if the education of mothers with regard to domestic duties, was properly taken in hand, the numerous cases of the mal-nutrition of children would be very much less than they were. A vote of thanks to Dr. Jones was proposed by the CHAIRMAN, and carried unanimously. Correspondence. THE REPRESSION OF THE BRITISH INVENTOR. I hope that Mr. Lowry's letter in the Journal of the 19th inst. may prove the starting point for a reconsideration by the Society of Arts of the whole question of British Patent-law, with a view to urging an alteration so as to make things smoother for the inventor, who, unless a rich or influential man (which almost always he is not), has difficulties and expenses enough in all conscience to contend with in the working out and introduction of his invention in a nation whose ideas of enterprise and honour are summed up in the following couplet, which I have more than once had thrown in my teeth as a reason for not trying something new : "Be not the first by whom the new is tried, In other words, show no enterprise yourself, but when your neighbour has sunk money and undergone worry and anxiety in doing the pioneer work, pounce in and rob him of as much of his just reward as you can! A question that has long puzzled me, is: Why is there such an enormous difference in the laws of patentright and copyright? Patentees and authors are both inventors, and in each case the invention may be of great, little, or no value, and be the result of much or little labour and expense. Here, however, the similarity ceases. The author can place his invention on the market at a very moderate further expense; the patentee may be impotent to proceed until he has in some way secured the application of large sums of money. There can be little doubt that on the average it costs very many times as much to put a patented article on the market as to publish a book, and takes far longer. In view of this difference, how does the law help the patentee? It first gives him a good chance of losing protection altogether by "publication," before he files his application for a patent, and it then taxes him to the extent of £99-which in the aggregate produces, I think, over £100,000 per annum beyond the expenses of the Patent Office-in return for which it grants him a patent for the maximum term of fourteen years. The author, on the other hand, cannot lose protection by publication-in fact he thereby obtains it— and the fee to empower him to enforce his rights is 5s. Finally, his protection lasts about three times as long as a patent. In other words, the patentee has to pay for protection 1,188 times as much per annum as the author. Can any man say that this is just? Why should the patentee be charged so incomparably more than the author? Why should his protection be for only one-third of the copyright time? And why, in the name of all that is extraordinary, should publication in the one case prevent protection, and in the other be the means of procuring it? 20, Park-road, Wandsworth, S.W. 22nd February, 1904. W. S. BOULt, MEETINGS FOR THE ENSUING WEEK. Royal Institution, Albemarle-street, W., 5 pm. Engineers, in the Theatre of the United Service "Observations on Cotton and Nitrated Cotton." Surveyors, 12, Great George-street, S.W., 8 p.m. Victoria Institute, 8, Adelphi-terrace, W.C., 4 p.m. TUESDAY, MARCH 8...United Service Institution. Whitehall, S.W., 3 p.m. Mr. C. Jerram, "Short Service and the Naval Reserves." Asiatic, 22, Albemarle-street, W., 3 p.m. Life and Royal Institution, Albemarle-street, W., 5 pm. Medical and Chirurgical, 20, Hanover-square, W., Civil Engineers, 25, Great George-street, S. W., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9... SOCIETY OF ARTS, Jobn-street, "MeAdelphi, W.C., 8 p.m. Mr. J. W. Coward, chanical Piano Players." Biblical Archæology, 37, Great Russell-street, Geological, Burlington-house, W., 8 p.m. THURSDAY, MARCH 10...SOCIETY OF ARTS, John-street, Mr. Frank Birdwood, "China Grass: its Past, Present, Royal, Burlington-house, W., 41 p.m. African Society, United Service Institution, White- Royal Institution, Albemarle-street, W., 5 p.m. Mathematical, 22, Albemarle-street, W., 5) p.m. FRIDAY, MARCH 11... Royal Institution, Albemarle-street, W., 9 p.m. Prof. F. T. Trouton, "The Motion of Viscous Substances." Civil Engineers, 25, Great George-street, S.W., SATURDAY, MARCH 12...Botanic, Inner Circle, Regent'spark, N.W., 31 p.m. Royal Institution, Albemarle-street, W., 3 pm Lord Rayleigh, “The Life and Work of Stokes. (Lecture IV.) THE ALBERT MEDAL. The Council will proceed to consider the award of the Albert Medal for 1904 early in May next, and they, therefore, invite members of the Society to forward to the Secretary, on or before the 2nd April, the names of such men of high distinction as they may think worthy of this honour. The medal was struck to reward "distinguished merit in promoting Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce," and has been awarded as follows in previous years : In 1864, to Sir Rowland Hill, K.C.B., F.R.S., "for his great services to Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, in the creation of the penny postage, and for his other reforms in the postal system of this country, the benefits of which have, however, not been confined to this country, but have extended over the civilised world." In 1865, to his Imperial Majesty, Napoleon III., “for distinguished merit in promoting, in many ways, by his personal exertions, the international progress of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, the proofs of which are afforded by his judicious patronage of Art, his enlightened commercial policy, and especially by the abolition of passports in favour of British subjects." In 1866, to Michael Faraday, D.C.L., F.R.S., "for discoveries in electricity, magnetism, and chemistry, which, in their relation to the industries of the world, have so largely promoted Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce." In 1867, to Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. Fotherg Cooke and Professor (afterwards Sir) Charles Wheatstone, F.R.S., "in recognition of their joint labours in establishing the first electric telegraph." In 1868, to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Joseph Whitworth, LL.D., F.R.S., "for the invention and manufacture of instruments of measurement and uniform standards by which the production of machinery has been brought to a state of perfection hitherto unapproached, to the great advancement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce." In 1869, to Baron Justus von Liebig, Associate of the Institute of France, For. Memb. R.S., Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, &c., "for his numerous valuable researches and writings, which have contributed most importantly to the development of food economy and agriculture, to the advancement of chemical science, and to the benefits derived from that science by Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce." In 1870, to Vicomte Ferdinand de Lesseps, Member of the Institute of France, Hon. G.C.S.I., "for services rendered to Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, by the realisation of the Suez Canal." In 1871, to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry, Cole, K.C.B., "for his important services in promoting Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, especially in |