Reports

Met last week that august and efficient, if sometimes long-winded body, the French Academy of Science. Among many reports read before them, two merited international attention.

Diabetes. Drs. Bertrand and Macheboeuf were wise enough to announce, not a cure, but a new treatment "effective in a large percentage of cases." It is a solution of nickel and cobalt, administered by injection, or in the form of little pale pills.

Butterflies prosper, indeed, live longer, when their heads have been cut off. Professeur Bouvier based his report on research made by Abbe Cambouet, missionary to Madagascar, who experimented there on 80 big, bloom-patterned flutterers.

Sheep. Impoverished at home, France is more and more turning her hopeful attention to the North African empire carved and welded for her by Marshal Lyautey. Africa was a central theme at the meeting last week of the French Association for the Advancement of Science. Alfred Lacroix, the Association's president, described the part scientists must play in developing Tunis, Algeria, Morocco, Senegambia, Niger, Guinea. The Association voted to hold its 1927 meeting in Constantine, Algeria. Dr. Serge Voronoff, famed gland man, reported the latest progress of his gland-grafting experiments upon 3,000 Algerian sheep (TIME, Aug. 11, 1924). An extra sex gland grafted in young rams so increased their weight and hair-growing processes that they averaged 19 Ibs. heavier than two-gland rams; yielded half a pound more wool per clipping. The mutton increase, if "glanding" were continued, would be about 13%.