144 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for several years, but the crop is uncertain, 

 and a steady trade has therefore not been 

 built up. Experiments were made with lin- 

 den seeds, of which there never fails to be a 

 pood crop, with most satisfactory success. 

 They furnish much more oil than beechnuts ; 

 an oil that has a peculiarly fine flavor, does 

 not evaporate or become rancid, has no tend- 

 ency to oxidation, and does not solidify at a 

 temperature of three degrees below zero of 

 Fahrenheit. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



The eminent physicist Hermann Ludwig 

 Ferdinand von Helmholtz died, after a second 

 stroke of paralysis, at Charlottenburg, Prus- 

 sia, September 9th, in the seventy-fourth 

 year of his age. The outlines of his early 

 life and labors, including his principal re- 

 searches into the nature of the phenomena of 

 light and sound, the enunciation of the prin- 

 ciple of the conservation of force, and the in- 

 vention of the ophthalmoscope, were given in 

 the fifth volume of the Monthly (June, 1874). 

 His labors since were on like lines, and various, 

 in the fields of mathematics, physics, physi- 

 ology, psychology, etc. They involved ques- 

 tions of vortex motion, the discontinuity of 

 motion in liquids, the vibrations of sound at 

 the open ends of organ pipes, thermodynamics, 

 electrodynamics, stereoscopic vision, galvanic 

 polarization, the theory of anomalous disper- 

 sion, the origin and meaning of geometrical 

 axioms, the mechanical conditions governing 

 the motions of the atmosphere, metaphysics, 

 and mental science. On all these subjects he 

 shed a clearer light than the world had en- 

 joyed before, and in some he made order out 

 of chaos. The event of his seventieth birth- 

 day, in 1891, was made the occasion of an in- 

 ternational celebration, when the principal 

 rulers of Europe and the scientific institutions 

 of the world vied in conferring their honors 

 upon him. "Science," says Nature, "has 

 had few investigators who have furthered her 

 interests more than Helmholtz. He was con- 

 stantly exploring new fields of research, or 

 bringing his keen intellect to bear upon old 

 ones. With his contributions he helped to 

 raise science to a higher level." Like other 

 real masters of science, he believed in mak- 

 ing it intelligible to the whole intellectual 

 world, and did so. He was ready to recog- 

 nize the merits and acknowledge the achieve- 

 ments of other workers in the fields he cul- 

 tivated ; and while he did not always keep 

 out of controversies, he so bore himself when 

 engaged in them as to show that his sole de- 

 sire was to establish the truth. 



PiioF. JosiAH Parsons Cooke, of Harvard 

 University, died at his summer home in New- 

 port, R. 1., September 3d, after an illness of 

 about one month. He was graduated from 

 Harvard College in 1848, and, having served 

 for two years as an instructor, he was ap- 



pointed Erving Professor in the same institu- 

 tion in 1857. He rearranged the system of 

 instruction in chemistry in the institution and 

 brought it up to its present high state of 

 efficiency. He was the author of several im- 

 portant books and papers in chemistry and 

 qualitative analysis, among which may be 

 mentioned The New Chemistry in the Inter- 

 national Scientific Series, and a Manual of 

 Laboratory Practice. One of his best pub- 

 lished papers was a plea for a broader educa- 

 tion of men of science. He was a president 

 of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- 

 ences. A portrait and sketch of him were 

 published in The Popular Science Monthly 

 for February, 1877. 



George Huntington Williams, Professor 

 of Inorganic Geology in Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, died of typhoid fever July 12th. He 

 was born in Utica, N. Y., and was graduated 

 from Amherst College in 1878. He resided 

 for a short time in Berlin, and afterward 

 studied under Rosenbush in the University of 

 Heidelberg, where he obtained the degree of 

 Ph. D. in 1882. He was associate professor 

 at Johns Hopkins University from 1885 till 

 1892, and after that full professor. He was 

 author of a book on the Geology of Mary- 

 land, a text-book on crystallography, and 

 several memoirs on petrography, and was 

 preparing at the time of his death a work on 

 the microscopic structure of American crys- 

 talline rocks. 



Prof. H. K. Brugsch, a distinguished 

 philologist, and one of the most eminent of 

 Egyptologists, died September 9th, aged 

 sixty seven years. He was for many years 

 an officer in the Egyptian service, where he 

 held the rank of bey, and devoted much time 

 to archaeological exploration and the study of 

 the Egyptian records. His Histoi-y of Egypt 

 is one of the best of the works at first hand 

 on that subject. 



The British naval commander, Sir Edward 

 Augustus Inglefield, a distinguished arctic 

 navigator and explorer, died early in Septem- 

 ber, at the age of seventy- four years. During 

 a voyage in the Isabel, on private account, in 

 search of Sir John Franklin, he discovered an 

 open polar sea and traced a coast line eight 

 hundred miles long. From another expedi- 

 tion sent for the relief of Sir Edward Belcher 

 in 1853, an officer returned with him bearing 

 the news of the discovery of the northwest 

 passage. With a third expedition he brought 

 home the officers and crews of five ships which 

 had been abandoned in the ice. For these serv- 

 ices he received the arctic medal, and was 

 knighted at the fiftieth anniversary celebra- 

 tion of her Majesty's reign. He devised a 

 hydraulic steering apparatus, a screw-turning 

 engine, and an anchor, which were used on 

 various vessels. He was author of the books 

 A Summer Search for Sir John Franklin, 

 Maritime Warfare, Naval Tactics, and Ter- 

 restrial Magnetism. 



