i 4 4 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pass plant, the property of twisting its stem 

 leaves into a vertical position, with the edge 

 directed north and south. It is one of two 

 well-marked compass plants. It is not likely 

 to be exterminated, and can at most be kept 

 down by timely mowing and uprooting. 



The result of an inquiry by Dr. J. S. 

 Cameron, of Huddersfield, England, into the 

 conditions of the dwelling as affecting re- 

 covery from measles, points to the conclusion 

 that fresh air provided by a through draught 

 tends to produce recovery when measles has 

 attacked the family ; while overcrowding, 

 dirt, and structural or other insanitary con- 

 ditions assist in bringing about a fatal re- 

 sult. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Dr. W. S. W. Ruschenberger, Presi- 

 dent of the Philadelphia Academy of Natu- 

 ral Sciences from 1869 to 1891, and medical 

 director, United States Navy, retired, died in 

 Philadelphia, March 24th, aged eighty-eight 

 years. He served in the navy from 1826 to 

 1869, and was successively fleet surgeon of 

 the East India squadron, 1835-37 and 1847- 

 '50; the Pacific squadron, 1854-'57; and 

 the Meditei'ranean squadron, 1860-61. Dur- 

 ing the civil war he was surgeon at the Naval 

 Hospital, Brooklyn, and there organized the 

 laboratory for supplying the service with un- 

 adulterated drugs. He was President of the 

 College of Physicians and Surgeons in Phila- 

 delphia, 1879-'83. His literary and scien- 

 tific publications include Three Years in the 

 Pacific (1834) ; A Voyage Around the World 

 (1835-'37); Elements of Natural History 

 (1850); A Lexicon of Terms used in Natural 

 History (1850) ; A Notice of the Origin, Prog- 

 ress, and Present Condition of the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1852); 

 Notes and Commentaries during Voyages to 

 Brazil and China, 1848 (1854). He also 

 contributed many papers to scientific jour- 

 nals; published articles on Naval Rank and 

 Organization, and edited the American edition 

 of Mrs. Somerville's Physical Geography. 



Sir Henry Rawlinson, of much fame as 

 a British general and statesman and of great- 

 er fame as the first decipherer of the cunei- 

 form inscriptions, died in London, March 5th. 

 He was born in 1810 ; went to Bombay as a 

 military cadet of the East India Company 

 in 1827; studied Oriental languages, and 

 served as an interpreter. In 1833 he was 

 transferred to Persia, whence he was recalled 

 to India on the breaking out of the Afghan 

 difficulty in 1838-'39, and there won distinc- 

 tion in military service. He began copying the 

 cuneiform inscriptions on the rock tablets at 

 Behistun as far back as 1835. Mastering the 

 old Persian character in these inscriptions, 

 he found the key, by the aid of which the 

 deciphering of the other cuneiform languages 

 was achieved. The years 1844 and 1845 



were specially devoted to this task, and in 

 1846 Rawlinson's first work on the cuneiform 

 inscriptions was published. The next year 

 he obtained complete copies of all the Behis- 

 tun inscriptions, standing, to do the work, on 

 a ladder placed on a shelf of rock jutting 

 from the precipice three hundred feet above 

 the plain. Since then he has been one of 

 the foremost in furthering the work of deci- 

 pherment he had so well begun. 



M. Jules Regnauld, Professor of the 

 Paris Faculty of Medicine, has recently died, 

 ninety years old. 



Dr. F. Schmitz, Professor of Botany at 

 Greifswald, who died January 28th, was best 

 known by his studies of alga?, and particu- 

 larly of the red seaweeds, of which he added 

 much to our knowledge of the life history. 

 He published an account of the formation 

 of auxospores in the diatoms in 1877, and a 

 description of the green algae of the Gulf of 

 Athens in 1877. 



The Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, the ethnologist, 

 who died in Washington February 5th, had 

 been connected with the United States Bu- 

 reau of Ethnology since 1 877, and was Presi- 

 dent of the Anthropological Section of the 

 American Association in 1893. 



The death is reported of Dr. Gerhard 

 Kriiss, Extraordinary Professor of Chemistry 

 in the University of Munich. He was per- 

 haps best known in connection with re- 

 searches concerning the metals of the rare 

 earths. 



Dr. D. Hack Tuke, editor of the Journal 

 of Mental Science and President of the Med- 

 ico-Psychological Association of Great Brit- 

 ain, died in London, March 5th, in the sixty- 

 eighth year of his age. He was author of 

 several standard works on mental diseases, 

 including such subjects as Sleep-walking and 

 Hypnotism, Insanity, Psychological Medicine, 

 the Influence of the Mind on the Body, etc., 

 and of several valuable essays for a Dictionary 

 of Psychological Medicine. 



George Newbold Lawrence, one of the 

 oldest and most eminent American ornithol- 

 ogists, died in this city, January 17th, aged 

 ninety-five years. He was the contemporary 

 of all American ornithologists, from Audu- 

 bon and NuUall down. The list of his pub- 

 lished writings contains one hundred and 

 twenty-one titles. The earliest appeared in 

 1844 and the latest in 1891. He was asso- 

 ciated with Baird and Cassin in the author- 

 ship of Baird's work on the birds of North 

 America, which was published in 1858. His 

 special field was in tropical American birds, 

 of which he described more than three hun- 

 dred new species. One genus and twenty 

 species were named in his honor. 



The Rev. T. P. Kirkman, a mathemati- 

 cian of considerable reputation, died Febru- 

 ary, 1895, eighty-eight years old. 



