100 YEARS AGO

● I have just tested the inherited powers of swimming in newly hatched pheasants. I find that when placed in tepid water, at the age of about thirty hours, they swim easily with well-coordinated leg-movements and show very little signs of distress.

● Among the many useful publications issued annually by the Royal Observatory of Belgium we draw special attention to “Ephémérides météorologiques et naturelles”... The absolute maximum shade temperature was 95.4 °F and the minimum 4.4 °F. The average annual rainfall amounts to 28.56 inches and the mean number of rainy days is 190. The relative humidity at noon is fairly uniform.

● “Sunny Days at Hastings and St. Leonards” is the title of a well-illustrated and well-printed little handbook for south-east Sussex, by Messrs. W. H. Sanders and P. Row. There is a 'six-inch' map of Hastings and St Leonards, and another map, on the scale of an inch to four miles, of the country as far as Seaford, Tunbridge Wells and Ashford — all for the price of 6d.

From Nature 27 June 1901.

50 YEARS AGO

Polypeptide chains in certain synthetic polymers, in fibrous proteins of the keratin–myosin–fibrinogen group, and also in haemoglobin, appear to be coiled or folded to about half the length of a fully stretched chain. Many different chain configurations have been proposed to account for the X-ray diffraction data, the latest being those of Pauling, Corey and Branson. Until now, however, the lack of any simple and decisive criterion in the X-ray diffraction pattern has made it difficult to test the validity of proposed models. This communication describes a new reflexion, not hitherto observed, which is given by the proteins mentioned above. The spacing at which this reflexion appears excludes all models except the 3.7 residue helix of Pauling, Corey and Branson, with which it is in perfect concord.

This model has two types of repeat: (a) the distance between successive turns of the spiral (5.55 A.), and (b) the spacing along the chain of successive amino-acid residues (1.5 A.). Thus there are in this model 3.7 residues per turn... I have found a new reflexion from planes perpendicular to the fibre axis at a spacing of 1.50 A. which corresponds to the repeat of the amino-acid residues along the chain.

M. F. Perutz

From Nature 30 June 1951.