432 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Malay Peninsula. On some of the subjects 

 for which prizes were offered no essays were 

 sent in, and some of the essays sent in were 

 held not to meet the terms of the compe- 

 tition. 



A committee of the British House of 

 Commons appointed to consider the advisa- 

 bility of adopting the metrical system of 

 weights and measures has found many con- 

 siderations in favor of the movement. An 

 engineering firm has used the system for 

 several years, having adopted it on account 

 of the advantage of working interchangea- 

 bly with engineers on the Continent. Their 

 workmen were agreed that the entire system 

 was easier to deal with than the English 

 measures, and was much less liable to error. 

 Dr. Gladstone insisted upon the superior fa- 

 cility of teaching the metric system. As the 

 children have to learn decimals, very little 

 more time would be needed by them for 

 learning the metric system. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Prof. Julius Lothar Meyer, one of the 

 greatest of chemists, died " suddenly, gently, 

 and painlessly," at Tubingen, Germany, 

 April 12th, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. 

 He was born in 1830; studied at Zurich, 

 Wiirzburg, Heidelberg, and Konigsberg, 

 medicine, chemistry, and mathematical phys- 

 ics ; was graduated doctor of medicine from 

 Wiirzburg in 1854; received leave to teach 

 chemistry and physics in 1859 ; and was suc- 

 cessively engaged in the Physiological Insti- 

 tute at Breslau, the Royal Prussian Forst- 

 akademie at Eberswalde, the Polytechnikum 

 at Carlsruhe, and the University of Tubingen, 

 where he was professor of chemistry for 

 nearly twenty years, and where he died. His 

 reputation as a philosophical chemist was 

 based upon a work on Modern Theories in 

 Chemistry, which he published in 1864, and 

 which has appeared in a fifth edition and in 

 an English translation. He was preparing a 

 sixth edition at the time of his death. In 

 1883 he with Prof. Seubert recalculated the 

 atomic weights of the elements from the 

 original data, and published a book embody- 

 ing their results. He was one of the earliest 

 investigators of the relations between the 

 properties and the atomic weights of the 

 elements, and published a memoir on that 

 subject in 1869, in which he arranged the 

 elements in the order of atomic weights, in 

 a single table, and indicated the periodic 

 character of the dependence of properties on 

 atomic weights. On this subject a question 

 of priority arose between him and Mendc- 

 leett*. The case appears to be one of those 

 of which the history of science offers many 

 illustrations, in which two investigators 

 reached similar results about the same time 

 independently. In experimental chemistry, 

 Lothar Meyer published memoirs in almost 



every branch, including those on the atomic 

 weight of beryllium, on determinations of 

 vapor densities, on the combustion of carbon 

 monoxide, on the preparation of hydriodic 

 acid, on the transpiration of gases, and on 

 various organic compounds, etc. 



Prof. Karl Ludwig, the eminent Ger- 

 man physiologist, died in Leipsic, April 25th. 

 He was born at Welzenhausen, in 1816, and 

 took the degree of doctor in 1839. He be- 

 came a privat docent at Marburg in 1842 ; 

 extraordinary professor at Zurich in 1849 ; 

 ordinary professor in the Academy for Army 

 Surgeons at Vienna ; and for the last thirty 

 years was professor of physiology at the 

 University of Leipsic. His first published 

 work was on the Mechanism of the Secretion 

 of Urine. He improved physiological meth- 

 ods by the introduction of apparatus for the 

 graphic recording of results ; was the author 

 of important researches on the circulation of 

 the blood, on the influence of respiration on 

 the circulation, and on the action of the me- 

 dulla oblongata on the circulation ; and he 

 made very valuable researches on the part 

 played by the nervous system in glandular 

 secretion. 



Prof. Carl Vogt, an eminent naturalist 

 and original investigator on his own lines, 

 from whom the Monthly has published sev- 

 eral charming as well as instructive articles, 

 died in Geneva, Switzerland, May 5th. He 

 was born at Giessen, in 1817, and was par- 

 ticularly industrious in the study of fresh- 

 water mollusks. In 1845 he published, with 

 Prof. Agassiz, a memoir on the anatomy of 

 fishes of the family Salmonidce, in prepara- 

 tion for which he had specially studied the 

 different phases of the development of these 

 fishes. This was the beginning of the in- 

 vestigation of the embryology of fishes. He 

 gained much fame by the researches which 

 he carried on, under the direction of Agassiz, 

 on the formation and movement of glaciers, 

 establishing a station, which was named the 

 Hotel of the Neufchatelais, on the lower 

 glacier of the Aar. In his later years he pub- 

 lished, in conjunction with M. Jung, a treatise 

 on zoology. 



Daniel Kirkwood, late Professor of 

 Mathematics in Indiana State University, and 

 a distinguished astronomer, died in Riverside, 

 Cal., June 11th. He was born in Bladens- 

 burg, Md., in 1814; studied in the academy 

 at York, Pa., where he became first assistant 

 and mathematical instructor ; was appointed 

 Principal of the High School at Lancaster, 

 Pa., in 1843 ; Professor of Mathematics in 

 Delaware College in 1851, and president of 

 the institution three years later ; and served 

 thirty years, from 1856 till 1886, as Professor 

 of Mathematics in Indiana University. He 

 was a frequent contributor on astronomical 

 subjects to scientific journals, and published 

 a book upon the asteroids, or minor planets 

 between Mars and Jupiter. 



