Scottish Origin Research Articles

Common Sense over the Atlantic

When Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet in Philadelphia to justify and encourage the revolutionary war, it was entitled Common Sense by Benjamin Rush, a Continental Congressman who had studied medicine in Edinburgh under Willam Cullen. Since Cullen was quite familier with the literati of the Scottish Enlightenment including such pioneers of the common sense school of philosophy as Lord Kames, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart, their vocabulary might have been popular among medical students. Thus it is almost certain that Rush took the words common sense from the Scottish Enlightenment to give it to Paine's pamphlet. However, by this trans-Atlantic transfer the word changed its meaning from conservative to radical. Needless to say Paine's common sense was that of the American common peope longing for independence whereas in the Scottish origin it was the common sense of those men of taste who were vehemently attacking the revolting colonies.Although it is an open question how clearly Rush was conscious of the total change of the meaning of the words, it might have been that he had at least a vague idea of the change before he met Paine. He wrote that he introduced Paine to the revolutionary cause to which he had joined earlier. He had been a regular member of Catharine Macaulay's salon in London. In any case, he later clearly denied the universal validity of common sense. He critisized Cullen's Greco-worship in medicine and even the personal worship towards Cullen himself. Thus Rush changed his attitude towards common sense twice, that is say, first as a revolutionary and secondly as an empirical scientist in medicine. He was a surgeon in the revolutionary war, and a medical practitioner and professor after the war. True he was a empirical scientist he has never doubted Christianity.

Patterns of muscle growth in early and late maturing populations of Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar L.)

Muscle growth was investigated in two populations of Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar L) derived from an early maturing stock of West Coast Scottish origin (strain X) and a late maturing stock (strain Y) of Norwegian origin. Fish from six families per population were PIT-tagged and reared together in a 5×5×5 m sea cage between April 1997 and September 1998. The distribution of muscle fibre diameters in different age classes was investigated using non-parametric smoothing and bootstrapping techniques. Body mass and the total cross-sectional area of white muscle at the level of the first dorsal fin ray increased at a significantly faster rate in strain X than in strain Y after the first 6 months in seawater (April–October). The relative contributions of fibre recruitment and hypertrophy to muscle growth were very different for the two populations. The number of white muscle fibres per trunk cross-section was around 150,000 in June and 250,000 in July for both populations. The majority of fish sampled in June, July and August 1997 showed a unimodal distribution of fibre diameter. Between July and August fish from strain Y recruited two times more fibres for each square millimeter increase in white muscle cross-sectional area than fish from strain X. Fibre number in strain X had caught up with strain Y by January with 545,000 fibres per cross-section. There was no significant increase in the number of white fibres in strain Y between January and September 1998, such that growth was entirely by fibre hypertrophy. In contrast, fibre number continued to increase in strain X until the final sample in June, reaching 718,000 per trunk cross-section. All fish showed a bimodal distribution of fibre diameter in the October and subsequent samples with significant differences between strains. The right-hand peak of the distribution was shifted towards higher diameters in strain X than in strain Y, indicating superior hypertrophic growth performance in the early maturing population. For example, in the May 1998 sample, the 95th percentile of fibre diameter was at 215 μm in strain X and 171 μm in strain Y. In March and subsequent samples, the left-hand peak of the distribution was shifted to higher fibre diameters in strain Y relative to strain X, reflecting the cessation of new fibre recruitment in strain Y. Immature fish within strain X had a lower density of small diameter fibres and the right-tail of the distribution was shifted to higher diameters relative to fish that had begun to sexually mature. Thus greater muscle fibre hypertrophy was observed in immature than maturing fish of the same strain. It was concluded that the superior growth performance of the early maturing population was associated with a longer period of fibre recruitment and greater fibre hypertrophy than in the late maturing population, although these differences were not directly related to sexual maturation.

George Francis Mitchell. 15 October 1912 — 25 November 1997

George Francis Mitchell, Frank to all who knew him, died peacefully at the age of 85 in October 1997 after a short illness. He was the son of David William Mitchell and Frances Elizabeth Mitchell ( née Kirby ), and had led an extraordinarily distinguished, productive and varied life. The Mitchells were a family of Scottish origin who came to Dublin in the mid-nineteenth century. They were in a variety of businesses, from upholstery for railway carriages to fine fabrics, from furniture and hardware to laboratory suppliers of glassware and chemicals. Frank and his brother David, a consultant physician, and his sister Lillias, who maintained a family tradition as a teacher of fine textiles, were the first generation of the family to experience third-level education.

"A Learned, Intelligent, and Judicious Traveller"

My title was written not about Johann Reinhold Forster but by him. It appears in the dedication of his translation of Louis de Bougainville's Voyage round the World, published in 1772, which he describes as Work written by a learned, intelligent, and judicious Traveller, which abounds with remarkable events and curious observations; equally instructive to future navigators, and interesting to science in general, and Geography in particular (Bougainville 1772, 1). These words apply precisely to Forster's own Observations Made during a Voyage round the World, published in 1778, a work of infinitely greater interest in the history of science - and geography in particular. The publication of a new edition of Forster's Observations (Thomas, Guest, and Dettelbach 1996) is truly an event in the history of the subject and can only strengthen the continuing review of what has been central in its intellectual development - and, likewise, what has not. Johann Reinhold Forster was in his early forties and his son Georg in his late teens when they were called in May 1772 - with Linnaeus's student Anders Sparrman as assistant - to join Captain James Cook on his second voyage in Resolution after Joseph Banks abruptly withdrew. The Forsters had exactly seven weeks to prepare for a voyage that was to last for more than three years. J. R. Forster (1729-1798), a Prussian from a family of Scottish origin, had come to England in 1766 after studying the German colonies on the Volga for Catherine the Great. He taught for two years at the Warrington Academy while publishing works on Russian natural history as well as treatises on mineralogy and entomology and catalogs of both the plants and animals of North America. In London he met Daniel Solander, botanist on Cook's first voyage, and in February 1772 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His son Georg (1754-1794) served as his father's assistant in natural history but became increasingly concerned with social and cultural matters. Geographers remember him primarily because of his later association with Alexander von Humboldt. The elder Forster was undoubtedly a difficult man. Indeed, he was roundly condemned by Cook's biographer and editor, J. C. Beaglehole, as of the Admiralty's vast mistakes, as dogmatic, humourless, suspicious, pretentious, contentious, censorious, demanding, rheumatic (Beaglehole 1961, xlii), and as tedious, preposterous, exasperating (Beaglehole 1962, 1: 111). Some of these characteristics must have been inevitable, considering that the conditions under which he worked almost defy belief. The water on board, he recorded, stinks intolerably and was full of putrified insects; the meat very little better than putrid and its smell extremely offensive; the bread infested by weevils in the thousands. Soon after leaving Plymouth most intolerable stench began to spread through the ship from the bilges; throughout the voyage everyone was afflicted with sciatica and rheumatism, toothache and the flux, vomiting and hiccuping, and eruptions all over. In bad conditions the naturalists were surrounded by the Oaths and Execrations, curses and Dam's of drunken sailors (G. Forster 1777, 610-649; Hoare 1982, 3: 441). The Forsters' cabin was beset by cattle and stench on both sides, the previous quarters having been given over to sheep on a stage raised up as high as my bed, shit & pissed on one side, while 5 Goats did the same afore on the other (Hoare 1982, 2: 233). And there is no doubt that the attitudes of the naval men toward these philosophers, who were not - unlike Banks on the first voyage - gentlemen, were far from unbiased. The original edition of J. R. Forster's book, published in 1788, marked the beginning of modern geography, in that it deployed the comparative method to make sense of firsthand observations across perhaps one-quarter of the surface of the earth. With this new edition it is time to turn our historical attention from the schoolmen - Varenius and the rest - who talked about places they had never been to and who are so venerated by our traditional historians of geography. …

A common variant in the gene for lipoprotein lipase (Asp9-->Asn). Functional implications and prevalence in normal and hyperlipidemic subjects.

Subjects with combined hyperlipidemia (CHL) were screened for mutations in the lipoprotein lipase (LPL) gene by single-strand conformational polymorphism, and a previously reported G-->A DNA sequence change in exon 2, causing substitution of Asp by Asn at position 9, was identified in 2 individuals. Because this substitution destroys a recognition site for Taq I, pooling of DNA samples, amplification, and digest with Taq I allowed the rapid screening of 1563 healthy individuals and patients of Dutch, Swedish, English, and Scottish origin. In the general populations of all four countries, healthy carriers of the mutation were detected at a frequency of 1.6% to 4.4% (mean, 3.0%; 95% confidence interval, 2.0% to 4.0%). The frequency of carriers was roughly twice as high (range, 4.0% to 9.8%) in selected patients with CHL or type IV hyperlipoproteinemia or in subjects with angiographically assessed atherosclerosis; the frequency was consistently higher in each patient group compared with its matched control group. In 773 healthy men from two general practices in the United Kingdom, 25 carriers and 2 homozygotes for the mutation were identified. In these 27, plasma triglyceride but not plasma cholesterol levels were significantly higher than in noncarriers (2.25 versus 1.82 mmol/L, P < .02), and this difference was maintained in three subsequent annual measurements. Postheparin LPL activity data were available for some carriers and for 7 of 9 individuals from the patient groups, and 6 of 6 individuals from the control groups had LPL activity that was lower than the respective group mean. In vitro mutagenesis and transient expression in COS cells showed that compared with the LPL-Asp9 construct, LPL-Asn9 activity and mass were reduced by 20% to 30% in the culture media. Overall however, LPL-Asn9 had only slightly reduced specific activity (by 18%). Thus, although the precise mechanism of the effect is unclear, the data strongly suggest that the LPL-Asn9 variant is associated with and may play a direct role in predisposing carriers to develop hypertriglyceridemia.

Michael Ondaatje by Douglas Barbour

anglophones rather than to only the ethnically English or if there is any difference in the prestige Canadians in general attach to English or Scottish origin — or Dutch or Scandinavian. As an unwilling beneficiary of whatever advantages Englishness brings I am the wrong person to ask, but I would guess that Morris dancing these days confers about as much social prestige as wearing a helicopter beanie. Greenhill refers a few times to the Bakhtinian notion of the carnivalesque, carnival as politically subversive. She claims that the ethnically English “are located solely in the domains of power” because they have been seen “as lacking carnivalesque traditions” (4). I would have liked to see this discussion expanded, especially in the concluding chapter. Greenhill defines ethnic Englishness in relation to a group of chosen activ­ ities and observances. It would be fascinating and politically important to continue her work by looking at the way it is defined by other ethnic groups, all the time, of course, being very precise about which of the many meanings of Englishness is in play. julie b e d d o e s / University of Saskatchewan Douglas Barbour, Michael Ondaatje (New York: Twayne, 1993). xiv, 247. $29.95 Douglas Barbour’s opening epigraphs to his new book on Michael Ondaatje are appropriately quirky. He cites a passage from the 1970 issue of Cana­ dian Who’s Who that identifies Ondaatje not as a poet (he had by this time published two books of poetry) but rather as the mastermind behind a new strain of spaniel. In the second epigraph Barbour cites Ondaatje as claim­ ing, “I’m a great believer in the mongrel.” These epigraphs reflect Barbour’s fine and confident, and canny, grasp of Ondaatje’s work as a poet, novelist, dramatist, filmmaker, and editor. To date Ondaatje criticism has been lim­ ited to two book length studies: Leslie Mundwiler’s largely phenomenologi­ cal (although admittedly eclectic) and theoretically dense Michael Ondaatje: Word, Image, Imagination published almost ten years ago (1984) and Sam Solecki’s edited collection of essays and interviews, Spider Blues: Essays on Michael Ondaatje (1985). Very few of the essays published after these works in the mid-eighties, moreover, deal with Ondaatje’s later work, and thus, with Linda Hutcheon as a notable exception, Barbour’s study offers one of the first serious treatments of Ondaatje’s later works. It is the first book length study to be published on Ondaatje’s work as a whole in almost ten years. 106 Barbour chooses to divide his chapters according to Ondaatje’s individual works with an introductory chapter briefly situating Ondaatje’s writing in a theoretical context. This context is multifold, from specific critics like Marjorie Perloff (in relation to Ondaatje’s poetry) and Mikhail Bakhtin (in relation to the longer narrative works) to critical movements from modernism to postmodernism and postcolonialism. Marjorie Perloff’s able and incisive approach to postmodernist poetics is a welcome context for a discussion of Ondaatje’s work and leads to Barbour’s argument that Ondaatje “begins as a writer in the Stevens tradition, as a modernist lyricist, and generally remains true to that tradition in his shorter poems before Secular Love. In his longer works, Ondaatje not only joins the Pound tradition, but also becomes a specifically postmodern writer” (6). It would have been useful, however, if Barbour had developed the reference to Perloff in a more sustained manner. Indeed, this book is weakest in its attempt to integrate the various theoretical positions with Ondaatje’s work itself. Most critics are not likely to take issue with the claim that Ondaatje is a postmodern writer, for example, but the suggestion that In the Skin of a Lion is “truly postcolonial in both subject matter and approach” (5) needs to be elaborated in considerably more detail. The representation of immigrant experience is surely not enough to make this novel postcolonial (179), and yet its other postcolonial characteristic — its challenge to the “official, politicians’ version of truth” (179) — does not significantly distinguish it from Barbour’s definition of the postmodern. And the explicitly political thrust with which postcolonial writing is aligned in Barbour’s text is itself undercut in several of...

European aspen (Populus tremula L.): a review with particular reference to Scotland II. Values, silviculture and utilization

Interest in European aspen ( Populus tremula L.) has increased in recent years as a result of efforts to restore and extend native woodland, and to diversify the range of species used in forestry plantations. Aspen is a straightforward tree to manage; it is of considerable ecological value and capable of producing utilizable timber. Planting of aspen in native woodland is currently limited by a shortage of plants of Scottish origin. Propagation from seed, whilst possible, has not been practised, and recent efforts to produce stock have concentrated on vegetative means. The use of aspen as a component of plantation forestry could be increased on appropriate sites; it is an excellent amenity species and its timber is currently acceptable as chipwood and could complement the production of poplar timber in the lowlands. However, on the basis of limited data, growth rates and stem form of aspen in Scotland appear to be rather poorer than on the European continent where aspen is a significant timber producing species. More would also need to be known about its susceptibility to disease before its timber production potential could be evaluated properly.

Frank Campbell MacIntosh, 24 December 1909 - 11 September 1992

The MacIntoshes were displaced from the Western Isles of Scotland by the Highland clearances at the end of the eighteenth century and like many of their compatriots moved to Nova Scotia. Around 1816 the Macintoshes were settled on a farm at Big Harbour Island on the Bras d’Or Lake of Cape Breton Island, that large detached part of Nova Scotia separated from the mainland by the narrow Straits of Canso - so narrow that they were frequently crossed by swimming deer. This part of Nova Scotia had a considerable resemblance to the old home in its landscape and its sea-tom ruggedness, which must have assuaged some of the pain of exile. Frank (who was always known as Hank) was born at Baddeck in Cape Breton on 24 December 1909, the son of the Reverend C.C. Macintosh, a well-known pastor of the United Church of Canada, who spoke and preached in Gaelic in the Canadian Maritimes and in New England. His mother Beenie Matheson, also of Scottish origin, came from Prince Edward Island. She had trained as a teacher and had moved to the north-west territories as a pioneer. As a child Hank frequently went visiting with his father in the horse and buggy. He was a precocious child and taught himself to read at the age of three - largely from the Encyclopedia Britannica - becoming especially interested in the geographical places described therein. At nine he was driving the family Model T. He was very proud of the fact that when he was just one year old, Alexander Graham Bell dandled him on his knee at his home in Beinn Bhreagh.

Genetic characterisation of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) lines farmed in Ireland

Five reared lines of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., constituted over 90% of the smolt production of the Irish farming industry in 1990. They were assayed for the six polymorphic enzyme loci, which contribute most of the reported electrophoretically-detectable variation in the enzymes of S. salar. The lines, four of Norwegian and one of chiefly Scottish origin, were sampled as parr in late 1989 and early 1990. Mean heterozygosity (H) and mean number of alleles per locus (Na) in the most popular farmed line were comparable to the values observed in wild Irish populations, but the other lines had lower values. It seems likely that genetic variability in the latter lines has been decreased by management practices, though it should be noted that wild donor populations were not investigated. The five reared lines analysed differed significantly from each other in genetic composition despite the fact that four lines originated from the same Norwegian source. The probability that many sub-groups of the major farmed lines differ from each other genetically is suggested and the implications for genetic investigations of escape incidents is discussed.

The incidence of different cystic fibrosis mutations in the Scottish population: effects on prenatal diagnosis and genetic counselling.

We present an analysis of the frequency of 16 different cystic fibrosis (CF) mutant alleles in the Scottish population. Each allele was detected in DNA amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) either directly on polyacrylamide gels, on agarose gels after restriction enzyme digestion, or by using allele specific oligonucleotides. Among 506 CF chromosomes, of predominantly Scottish origin, the frequencies of the different mutations were delta F508 0.71, G551D 0.05, G542X 0.04, R117H 0.01, 1717-1G----A 0.01, A455E + delta I507 + R553X + R560T + W1282X + 621 + 1G----T combined 0.03, unpublished 0.01, and unknown 0.13. No examples of D110H, R347P, S549N, S549I, or 2566ins AT mutations were found. The relevance of this type of analysis for both prenatal diagnosis and heterozygote screening is discussed.

Reproductive and kid performance of a newly established feral goat herd being graded up for cashmere production

Interest in farming goats for cashmere production has recently arisen, both as a means of farm diversification and, through goats grazing preferences, to utilise previously under exploited resources on hill farms.A herd of 160 feral does of Irish and Scottish origin was established at the West of Scotland College's Kirkton Unit in June 1987 to investigate the potential for cashmere production from goats on a hill sheep farm. The Irish goats are of mixed ancestry with obvious dairy crossbreds in addition to many of more feral phenotype. The Scottish feral does came as an established group but proved excitable and difficult to handle. Whenever goats were grouped together for handling or at feeding points there was considerable fighting and other agonistic behaviour. A year later the level of this has reduced.One hundred and fifty eight does were divided into four groups and oestrus synchronised (goats sponges 45 mg progesterone supplied by Intervet). These were then artificially inseminated by laparoscope in two, two day sessions a week apart (21/10, 22/10, 29/10 and 30/10).

The Quakers and Emigration From Ireland to the North American Colonies

The Quakers and Emigration From Ireland to the North American Colonies Audrey Lockhart* The Quaker movement developed rapidly in Ireland in the course of the sixth decade of the seventeenth century, having been introduced in 1654 by William Edmundson. The first missionaries from England directed much oftheir proselytising zeal at the large military establishment. The Cromwellian army had been recruited mainly among the non-conformist sects in England and so, not surprisingly , it yielded many convincements. Although most of the English soldiers, even those who received Irish land as payment for their military service, returned home, numbers of them stayed to settle in Ireland, either as farmers, or, after selling their land grants, as shopkeepers.1 Significant among these was Captain Thomas Holme from the north of England who gained experience as a landowner in County Wexford before becoming Surveyor-General of Pennsylvania.2 Another Quaker convert was the boy-soldier, Robert Turner, from Cambridge, who, after selling his allotted lands, became a successful linen merchant in Dublin.3 A close friend and agent of William Penn, he was proprietor of land in three colonies before he also emigrated to North America in 1683." When the Quaker preachers turned to the civilian population of Ireland they drew most response from the recently established Protestant settlers, known as "planters", as well as from the early AngloProtestant plantations in the south of Ireland, that is, from among people of "British stock" and, significantly, with few exceptions, * Audrey Lockhart received an M.A. in history from Trinity College, Dublin, and is the author of Some Aspects of Emigration from Ireland to the North American Colonies, 1665-1775. 1.Robert Dunlop, ed., Ireland under the Commonwealth, Documents, (2 vols., Manchester, 1913). 2.Wexford, register of births, microfilm reel no. 212, 2; Wexford Monthly Meeting register of births, microfilm reel no. 215, 265, Friends House Library, London (hereafter referred to as FHL, which is the depository of all the microfilm reels cited, unless otherwise indicated); Abraham Fuller and Thomas Holme, A Compendious View ofSome Extraordinary Sufferings of the People Called Quakers. . . (Dublin, 1731), 51. 3.Dublin register of births of Quakers, 1655-1750, reel no. 213, 19-20. 4.John Bowne, The Journal of John Bowne, 1650-1694, ed. H.F. Ricard, (New Orleans, 1975),29. 67 68Quaker History from the same social classes as in England.5 These might be called the middle-income entrepreneurial classes—merchants, artisans and yeoman farmers—in fact, the sort of people who had been coming to Ireland for centuries, irrespective of politics and the sword. To them belonged William Edmundson who has been dubbed "the father of Irish Quakerism." He came from the north of England in 1652 for the prime purpose of setting up shop.6 Quakerism made little headway, however, among the Presbyterians of Scottish origin who were concentrated in the north of Ireland , while only in unusual circumstances did any of the native Roman Catholics join the movement. From the first, therefore, most of the Quakers of Ireland claimed English birth or descent. Notable exceptions included the parents of James Logan, secretary to William Penn, and some relatives of Robert Barclay, the Apologist, who came from Scotland later in the century.7 Quakers in Ireland, as elsewhere, endured much vilification and persecution, although often unauthorised and seldom instigated by the highest officials in the land.8 In fact, except in the matter of tithes, the harassment of Quakers in Ireland was less severe than in England after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During the reign of Charles II, therefore, Ireland became the chief refuge of English Quakers seeking to carry on their business in a less prohibitive environment. As a result, the Quaker community in Ireland reached its peak of strength and influence in those years.' Outstanding among Englishmen who transferred their businesses to Ireland at this time were Anthony Sharp of Gloucester who became Dublin's leading wool merchant, the Stretteli brothers from Cheshire, and members of the Jacob and Penrose families, all of whom were soon to establish connections with the North American colonies.10 The founder of Pennsylvania himself had been associated 5.Thomas Wight, A History of the Rise...

A note on some hangers possibly of Scottish origin

A note on some hangers possibly of Scottish origin

Placenames of Scottish Origin in Nova Scotia

(no abstract)

Geographical origins and movements of shorebirds using the firth of forth

This paper describes the movement of ringed shorebirds to and from the Firth of Forth. Wintering Knots belong to the breeding population from Greenland and arctic Canada which migrate via Western Europe. There is evidence of movement within Britain during winter. Dunlins are largely from the northern Scandinavian and Russian breeding grounds and move little outside the main migration periods. Oystercatchers are mostly of Scottish origin. Some move through the Forth in autumn, particularly to the Irish Sea coast. Both European and Icelandic Redshanks winter on the Forth. Redshanks, Turnstones, and Oystercatchers which winter on the Forth are site faithful during the winter and return in subsequent years.

A Scottish Origin for English Palladianism

It is becoming clear that the Neo-Classical movement known as English Palladianism had complex origins: or, to put it in other terms, the triumph of Burlingtonian Palladianism was preceded by several false starts and private initiatives which for one reason or another failed to accomplish the revolution in taste over which Lord Burlington was to preside in the course of the 1720s. Let us look for a moment at some of these pre-Palladians. In Oxford there was Dean Aldrich of Christ Church (died 1710), whose Peckwater Quadrangle might easily be mistaken for a Georgian square in John Wood's Bath. Aldrich's architectural revolution was almost confined to his own college, but he also had a programme of Palladian publication. It is not I think generally known that although his Elementa Architecturae- a treatise strictly based on Vitruvius and Palladio - was not published until forty years after his death, 44 pages were printed in his lifetime, and that before his death he had set a young Oxford don called Fairfax the task of translating Palladio's Antichita di Roma. But the translation, characteristically, was not from Italian into English, but from Italian into Latin. We may conclude that Aldrich's initiative was too academic to be influential on a national scale, too local to affect the general course of English architecture.

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, 1897-1967.

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood was born in London on 19 June 1897, the only child of Norman Macmillan Hinshelwood, a chartered accountant, and EthelnéeSmith. His father was of Scottish origin, and once he remarked jokingly that some of his ancestors must have been well enough known because a street in Glasgow is named after them. His mother came from the west country. Several members of his family had artistic leanings but none appears to have had associations with science. As a small child he was taken by his parents to Canada, his father having some business there, and for a short time he was at a Montreal kindergarten, and later at a national school in Toronto for a few months. His health was not good, however, and at his father’s wish, his mother brought him back to England. His father died soon afterwards in 1904. Many years later, sailing back from Montreal down the St Lawrence River past Rimouski, he recalled with obvious emotion his childhood memory of how the pilot had been put off there. He went to Westminster City School, where there were two good science masters, H. F. Brand and E. B. Fisher, with whom he remained life-long friends. The Headmaster, too, E. H. Stevens, was scientist with wide interests who helped him a great deal. Here he won a Brackenbury Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, but was unable to take it up immediately because of the war. From 1916-18 he worked at the Department of Explosives, Queensferry Royal Ordinance Factory, where his remarkable ability was quickly noticed. Before leaving, at a very early age, he became deputy chief chemist of the main laboratory. His work there on the slow decomposition of solid explosives by measuring the gas evolved stimulated his interest in the mechanism of chemical change, which was to be the main theme of nearly all his subsequent scientific research.

The Occurrence of Hemoglobins E and Esaskatoonin Central Canada

A search for abnormal hemoglobin in central Canada conducted over a 7-year period has resulted in the finding of seven apparently unrelated individuals with a hemoglobin variant with the electrophoretic characteristics of hemoglobin E. By “fingerprinting” technics, five of these were shown to be hemoglobin ESaskatoon ( β 26 Glu→Lys) and two to be hemoglobin ESaskatoon ( β 22 Glu→Lys). Of the former, two instances occurred in Asiatics, and the rest in persons of European origin. Both persons with ESaskatoon were of Scottish origin. Only in one patient was there severe anemia, and this was associated with homozygosity for hemoglobin E. Two instances of hemoglobin E and one of hemoglobin ESaskatoon were found to be unstable on incubation at 50 C. for 60 min.

Variation in secretor and Lewis type frequencies within the British Isles.

A study of the ABO groups and secretor status of alcoholic patients which included individuals of English, Irish, and Scottish origin necessitated a comparison with appropriate normal controls (Camps, Dodd, and Lincoln, 1969). Although the figures most quoted for secretor/ non-secretor frequencies in the British Isles are those of McConnell (Race and Sanger, 1968), which show a non-secretor frequency of 22-7%, other figures quoted by Mourant (1954) from some otherwise unpublished observations of Ikin et al (1952) strongly suggested that this general figure of 22-70, might not hold for the Irish and Scottish. The fact that these ethnic groups probably have higher non-secretor frequencies can be derived from the frequencies Ikin et al found for Le(a + b -) since among 527 Scottish individuals and 106 Irish, 28-46% and 31-13% respectively were of this type. The corresponding saliva samples were apparently not tested but it may be assumed that all the Le(a + b-) individuals were non-secretors. In addition, a small number of non-secretors would be found in the Le(a b -) phenotype. A series of 531 salivas from school children in Belfast showed a non-secretor frequency of 26.550' (Dodge, 1967). These various results suggested that it was important to carry out a survey of the ABO groups and secretor status of an adequate number of individuals from various parts of the British Isles. A search of the literature reveals but few secretor/ non-secretor frequencies showing such a high percentage of non-secretors as those of Ikin for the Irish and Scottish based on Lewis types. Van Arsdel (1958) in testing a series of 3144 students from the University of Washington, found the proportion of non-secretors to be 24 110%. Nerell (1964) has collected together the figures of 12 investigated populations as far flung as Egypt and Canada with frequencies of non-secretors ranging from 11-1% to 25-4%. Several series from India show higher non-secretor frequencies than have

The Scots in Sydney

Although it is sometimes said of nineteenth century Sydney that it was an English city in contrast with the more Scottish city of Melbourne, people of Scottish origin have played important roles in the development and life of Sydney. They have been there from the very beginning: young Forby Sutherland, one of Captain Cook’s crew in 1770, was the first Briton to be buried in Australia, in a district now bearing his name. Major Robert Ross of the Marines and Captain John Hunter were among several Scots on the first fleet in 1788. Scots formed a small minority of convicts transported (perhaps 5 per cent) and were among the earliest free settlers in the 1790s.