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© 1935 Nature Publishing Group

FEBRUARY 23, 1935 NATURE 297 

News and Views 
Robert Hooke's Diary 

THE tercentenary of the birth of Robert Hooke, 
Gresham professor of astronomy, surveyor to the City 
of London and curator of experiments to the Royal 
Society, occurs on July 18 of this year. Hooke 
appears to have kept a continuous diary for the 
greater part of his life ; and parts of his daily journal 
have been found in three different libraries. The 
importance of the first part was realised by Dr. Jean 
Pelseneer of Brussels, who directed the attention of 
the Royal Society to its existence in 1928; with the 
permission of the authorities of the Guildhall Library, 
Mr. H. W. Robinson made extracts, some of which 
were published by Dr. Pelseneer in Isis (February 
1931). Afterwards, Mr. Robinson discovered another 
and later part of the diary in the British Museum, 
where for more than a hundred and sixty years it had 
been catalogued as the diary of James Petiver. The 
Guildhall portion of Hooke's diary is the most im-
portant, and is full of interest from all points of view. 
It records meetings of the Royal Society of which 
no minutes occur ; elections of which there are no 
official records extant ; details of his work as architect, 
surveyor and contractor ; his daily visits to the coffee-
houses and taverns, where h e joined in the discourses 
and gossip of the city men ; details of his private 
life, his income, his purchase of books and necessaries 
of life. 

BY the courtesy of the Library Committee of the 
Guildhall, the part of Hooke's diary in the Guildhall 
Library can now be published. For many years 
Mr. H. W. Robinson and Mr. W. Adams have been 
carefully transcribing the diary, and it will be 
published, together with a short life of Hooke, by 
midsummer. The work of printing and publishing 
has been entrusted to Messrs. Taylor and Francis, 
who have undertaken to produce the book with the 
aid of a subsidy from the Royal Society. Of more 
than passing interest is the fact that the house 
occupied by Messrs. Taylor and Francis is supposed 
to have been built during the period of the diary, 
and most probably by Sir Christopher Wren and 
Robert Hooke. It may be remembered that Dr. 
R. T. Gunther has already published three volumes 
of Hooke's works in his series of books on "Early 
Science in Oxford". 

Tribal Justice in Australia 

A PERTINENT example of the practical bearing of 
the results of anthropological investigation is afforded 
by the defence set up in a trial for murder of two 
aborigines from Alice Springs, South Australia. The 
facts of the case are set out in a dispatch from the 
Adelaide correspondent of The Times in the issue of 
:February 15. The defence rested on a plea of tribal 
justice. It has been put forward that the two accused 
were acting in accordance with custom and under 
the instructions of the elders of the tribe in putting 
to death a man who had revealed ceremonial secrets 

to a woman. Failure to comply, it was stated, would 
have entailed death. As might be expected, anthro-
pologists have not failed in the endeavour to bring 
the aboriginal point of view before the court. Expert 
witnesses, however, were not heard; but their special 
knowledge was placed at the service of the defence. 
Ever since Spencer and Gillen first recorded, nearly 
forty years ago, the special reverence of the natives 
of Alice Springs for everything pertaining to tribal 
ceremonial, anthropologists would have been pre-
pared to expect death as the logical consequence of 
so grave a threat to tribal safety as the breaking of 
taboo involved in the disclosure of ceremonial objects 
or procedure to a woman. It is, at the very least, 
the equivalent of a combination of high treason and 
sacrilege in a civilised community. As recent trials 
in Africa have shown, a court rooted in European 
law is not prepared to admit that in such cases tribal 
justice may demand and exact the supreme penalty, 
in the manner in which in a civilised society a traitor 
who discloses State secrets may be imprisoned for 
life or condemned to death. Those who carry out 
the sentence of the tribe must, in accordance with 
the laws of the country, be adjudged guilty of 
murder, even though the extreme penalty may not 
eventually be imposed. 

Organisation of Agriculture in Australia 

DIFFICULT circumstances in the agricultural in-
dustries of Australia are giving rise to much-needed 
co-operation between Commonwealth and States. In 
December last a conference of ministers at Canberra 
determined to establish an Australian Agricultural 
Council, to provide for continuous consultation among 
the Governments on economic aspects of agriculture, 
the members to be the Federal Minister for Commerce, 
the Minister-in-Charge of Development and Scientific 
Research and the State ministers concerned. This 
body will be supported by a permanent technical 
committee which is identical in personnel with the 
former Standing Committee on Agriculture of the 
Council for Scientific and Industrial R esearch, but 
which will now have greatly increased responsibilities. 
Its m embers are the six permanent heads of the State 
Departments of Agriculture, the three executive 
members of the Council for Scientific and Industrial 
Research, the Secretary of the Department of Com-
merce and the Director-General of Health. Besides 
its duties on the side of agricultural economics, this 
committee is charged with (i) securing co-operation 
and co-ordination in agricultural research throughout 
the Commonwealth ; (ii) advising Commonwealth 
and State Governments, directly or through the new 
Council, on matters pertaining to the initiation and 
development of research on agricultural problems; 
and (iii) securing co-operation b etween Common-
wealth and States, and between the States them-
selves in all quarantine measures relating to pests 
and diseases of plants and animals, and advising 
Governments thereon. 


	Tribal Justice in Australia