SCIENCE AND SEX.

Clutha Leader, Volume XL, Issue 40, 18 November 1913, Page 7

SCIENCE AND SEX.

REMARKABLE DIS&OVERIES., ■ BROOD OF MONSyROtS ERQGS. ' Mr Burt, who dcTvcred at a "British ' Association meeting this : af tcrnoon u most original and scientific* paper in the differences of the sexes, is ihe firtd man who.has evoV studied the subject from official compulsion (stated the special correspondent of "Ihe Daily Mail' on September 15, writing from Birmingham). The London County Council iound for him a post of a wholh new character. He is official psychologist to the county, and as such "one of the bus est men in Luid-.n.-We em imagine the number of teacl.eis who pursue him with requests to follow up some curious mental clue in this or that child under his oi her charge: -His subject to-day n.is the human male and female, and, like Disraeli, he is on the side of tlio a.igels, onh hi:, unguis are female. He has had a great deal of material to po on, and these ,'al'o bis conclusions: Men excel ph.ysic.iliv bv a huge pioportion, bnt lie"can find no differences in intellect or even 1.1 ch.uacter and instinct to coiroaie \uth this physical difference. On what are called yb psychologists the lower levels of "'.the mind women surpass men by a .huge margin. They especially excel in what Mr Burt calls discrimination, detecting differences through touch or other senses. They are, indeed, just about twice as acute in this. They excel again in almost all sensory tests except in lifting and judging weights, where the j males have a neater discrimination. The lecturer's material showed that the higher up the scale of intellect you go \ the nearer do the powers of the two sexes coincide. Mr Geoffrey Smith, a young and brilliant Oxonian, who recently journeyed to a Tasmanian lake for his' researches, stated that he discovered a crab of which the gender was changed during life by the action of a parasite.

DOUELE-SEXEI) PHEASANT

A pheasant was described which was all male on one side both in plumage and in anatomy and ail female on the other. In some mollis sex is entirely determined and passed on by one of the parents. Perhaps the most directly practical investigation announced during the meeting fvas not heard by more than a dozen.people. This was a marvellous account of the healing properties of radium by Dr Dawson Turner. Radium has such an effect on embryonic and generative, cells that a German has produced in the case of a frog,monstrous products which ho calls Radium Larvae. Among the actual apparatus shown at the meeting none has a more' general interest than what may be called the stuffiness machines) which Profess:*:Leonard Hi'l has invented. What !:e has, helped to prove by these odd ctherijiometers of his is that the stuffiness of a room gives us colds and headaches and depression not because the air is bad &{• used up. What is fatal is its stillness and warmth combined, which prevent the body losing heat as it ought* to. You could almost infer from the leadings on these wet and dry thermometers so designed as to imitate the functions of the skin whether people Were feeling jolly or depressed.