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can capture a millionaire philanthropist ready todonate a large sum and until that happy day arrivesfor St. George’s its supporters are relying on repeatedefforts to secure many smaller contributions. Theday may arrive soon or may be delayed, but untilit comes endeavour must be constant, and all mustwish it success and help towards the great achievement.

POLLEN STATISTICS

A MOST fascinating account of a laborious methodof investigation has been contributed by Prof. GunnarErdtman, of Stockholm, to a work on Pollen Grainsreviewed on another page. He describes how bymaking borings to various depths in the peat bogsit is possible to reclaim and recognise the. variouspollen grains, and thus try to make some estimateof what plants, and in particular what trees, weregrowing in the various localities hundreds or eventhousands of years ago. The method has itsdifficulties, as Dr. Erdtman is careful to point out :pollen may fly for hundreds of miles (e.g., from Canadato Greenland) and thus be caught in bogs remotefrom the vegetation which has produced it ; thevarious pollens are produced in very different

quantities by different plants, will fly very differentdistances, and, if they get on to a bog, are preservedin it to a varying extent. Again the finding ofpollen to-day does not necessarily tally with the

presence or absence of corresponding trees or plants ;thus there is really no

"

pine-time " occurring inAlberta at the present day, though the pollen findingsin Alberta bogs would certainly suggest the contrary.Still, to detect errors goes a long way to overcomingthem, and Prof. Erdtman is convinced that his

pollen statistics, if calculated from a great number oflocalities in different countries and then comparedwith each other, could yield results that would atleast show the lines along which further researchcould profitably be conducted. It seems to us a

little doubtful whether the labour involved in suchinvestigations would prove to have been well directed.

MORE PEP WANTED

THE Royal Society of Medicine has reached a stageat which everyone speaks well of it, including theMinister of Health. At the biennial dinner last week,reported on another page, Sir Kingsley Wood revelledin the fact that the society had nothing to do withmedical politics, and he could therefore himself enjoya night out. More than that, it provides the Ministerwith standards on which to model his work. Itwas left to the retiring president to find the onlyfault with the society’s present conduct. Dr.Hutchison spoke of the three functions it had to

perform-to supply the apparatus of knowledge,to provide for the interchange and diffusion of

knowledge, and to promote good fellowship. Allthese functions he had found efficiently fulfilled.One thing however was lacking: there were manysections and they were well attended, but, he said,the discussions are too polite ; and turning to theMinister he obtained his assent that unparliamentarylanguage is at times a useful tonic. The fact is thatat a certain stage of specialisation gatherings are aptto lose vivacity, so learned are the participantswho attend the meeting with their case made outand the intention to let off what they have to saywithout reference to what has been said or what willbe said. There is perhaps inevitably in suchdiscussions a lack of the freshness met with at a

rotary club meeting in which each member representssome different outlook on life and manners, or in a

society at which many different groups of medicalpractice are represented. Happily it is not the casethat medical politics are rigidly excluded from allsections of the society, although this weakness maybe attended with a sense of shame, for the press andeven the medical press has several times been excludedon such occasions. But this may be going ratherfurther than Dr. Hutchison intended, for he went onto quote an old Latin tag which says that " in orderto speak the truth it is not necessary to pull a longface," and to welcome the increasing use of the

society’s house as a club and the increasing frivolityof the receptions held there. Perhaps what is mostwanted is the ability for the introducer of a discussionnot merely to read his paper, but, as Dr. Bruce Lowsuggested a year or two ago, to render and performhis contribution just as an actor performs a part ora musician renders a piece of music. It is not

enough to garner his observations or to marshal theemergent facts; he must present them in a way toelicit discussion and even, as Dr. Hutchison suggested,to provoke retort.

A CLEARING HOUSE FOR HUMAN GENETICS

FOR the last four years there has been a branchin this country of the International Human HeredityCommittee founded by the International Federationof Eugenic Organisations. This has recently beenenlarged as the British National Human HeredityCouncil and, in collaboration with the Galton

Laboratory, aims at setting up a clearing housefor material on human genetics. The council consistsof a number of geneticists and leading medical men,with Prof. R. Ruggles Gates, F.R.S., as chairman,Sir Laurence Halsey as treasurer, Mr. J. A. FraserRoberts, D.Sc., as hon. scientific secretary, andMrs. C. B. S. Hodson as hon. general secretary. Thedirection of the work is to be in the hands of a smallexecutive committee. The council, we understand,would be grateful to receive, from institutions andindividuals, well-authenticated data on the trans-mission of human traits-e.g., family histories or

pedigrees, twin studies, and statistical researches.Authors of published work may have collecteda number of pedigrees which they have been unableto reproduce in detail. Such records by inclusionin the clearing house would be preserved. Anyonewho wishes to have a copy of the standardinternational pedigree symbols may obtain one fromthe office at 115, Gower-street, London, W.C.I.

THE ORIGIN OF CHILBLAINS

THE conception of chilblains as a manifestationof tuberculosis, or at least of the activities of thetubercle bacillus, is by no means new. Its latestexponent is Dr. Jeanne Stephani-Cherbuliez, of Geneva,and her thesis, published in Revue de la Tuberculosefor March, is the outcome of thirteen years’ observa-tion. As she points out, Darier in the 1918 editionof his " Precis de Dermatologie" adumbrated thepossibility of chilblains being some day recognisedas a manifestation of attenuated tuberculosis, inthe same class with the tuberculides. Calmettealso suspected a causal connexion between the tuberclebacillus and chilblains. The author of the paper hasdispensed with laboratory methods of research andhas not even made systematic use of any tuberculintest. Instead, she has studied the incidence andseverity of chilblains in various groups classifiedaccording as their constituent members were healthyor suffered from, or gave a family history of, tuber-culosis. Of 350 persons examined, 250 were tuber-