100 YEARS AGO

MR. H.G. Wells commences, in the current number of the Fortnightly Review, a series of speculative papers upon some changes of civilised life and conditions of living likely to occur in the new century. To construct a prehistoric animal from one or two fossil bones is a much easier task than the prediction of future developments from the point of view of the present; but Mr. Wells attempts to do this . . . The subject of the first article is land locomotion in the twentieth century, and it scarcely requires a prophetic afflatus to know that the present systems will be largely superseded or modified. Horse traffic, with its cruelty and filth, while the animals exhaust and pollute the air, must give place to motor carriages in a few years. The railways will then develop in order to save themselves. There will be continuous trains, working perhaps upon a plan like that of the moving platform of the Paris Exhibition, or utilising the principle of the rotating platform outlined by Prof. Perry in these columns . . . Nothing is said about the possibilities of aeronautics, not because of any doubt as to its final practicability, but because ‘I do not think it at all probable that aeronautics will ever come into play as a serious modification of transport and communication.”

From Nature 4 April 1901.

50 YEARS AGO

Annual Review of Plant Physiology. It is, perhaps, inevitable that, in a volume of 364 pages, a few errors should have escaped the diligence of the proof readers. Apart from trivial errors of spelling which will scarcely overtax the ingenuity of the informed reader, the generic name Hibiscus is spelt in a way which might surprise Virgil and Linnaeus (p.126). There is no real ambiguity in the use of the symbol 0−2 for the oxygen anion (p.325); but it might have been helpful to distinguish on p.55 between published and unpublished data. It would be the height of folly, however, to attempt to judge the quality of fruit merely by inspection of the surface bloom. It would indeed be difficult to over-estimate the very great debt which we owe to the promoters of this new “Review”. There is little doubt that the new series here inaugurated will prove indispensable to all those interested in the growth of plants.

From Nature 7 April 1951.