50 Years Ago

The Continental Shelf Bill, which received its second reading in the House of Lords on December 3, originated in the Conference on the Law of Sea at Geneva in 1958, which resulted in the Continental Shelf Convention and the High Seas Convention. The former, which the Government intends to ratify if the Bill becomes law, clarified international law concerning those large submarine areas outside the territorial seas where the depth of the water allows the natural resources of the sea-bed and subsoil to be exploited ... In the North Sea ... Britain will have rights over any deposits up to a line half-way across to Holland, Belgium and other coastal States, subject to any adjustments resulting from the negotiations that the Government proposes to undertake after ratifying the Convention.

From Nature 4 January 1964

100 Years Ago

Major H. G. Joly De Lotbinière has contributed to The Quarterly Review for October a valuable and timely article on the position of forestry in England and abroad, in which he reviews the principal timber resources of the world, and the steps that have been taken in England and elsewhere to provide for the future. As he points out, experts in every country are agreed that the world's supply of timber is rapidly diminishing, and that unless vigorous steps are taken in the afforestation of suitable waste lands a shortage of material must be experienced long before the close of the present century. The author indicates in a general way the lines on which the work of afforesting the sixteen million acres of mountainous and heath land in this country should be proceeded with, and urges the necessity for immediate action.

From Nature 1 January 1914