140 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



positions in London, and ultimately became Director of the Physiological 

 Laboratory of the University of London, Prof. Waller was a very versatile 

 physiologist, and had published nearly 200 articles : among Waller's best 

 pieces of work was the development of the string galvanometer in connection 

 with the clinical diagnosis of diseases of the heart. Waller became a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society in 1892, and several foreign Academies recognised his 

 work by the award of various honours. Prof. Waller was exceedingly 

 impetuous and extraordinarily energetic in the pursuit of what he believed 

 to be a scientific truth, and his extreme keenness brought upon him occasional 

 criticism, but remembering the pureness and truth of his scientific quest and 

 disputation, his friends, of whom he had very many, understood him and 

 overlooked his rashness. 



Prof. Waller leaves a widow and two sons, and all those who knew 

 Prof. Waller will extend to Mrs. Waller and her children their warmest 

 sympathy in their sad loss. 



Prof. Benjamin Moore died of appendicitis at the age of fifty-five. He 

 was born in Belfast, and was first of all an engineer ; but he later went to 

 Germany and studied physical chemistry in Ostwald's Laboratory. He 

 afterwards worked with Sharpey-Schafer in London. He was subsequently 

 appointed to a Chair of Physiology at Yale Medical College, where he worked 

 for some years. He returned from Yale to the Charing Cross Medical School, 

 where he lectured in Physiology, and at the same time took a degree in 

 medicine ; subsequently he was elected to a Chair of Biochemistry at Liver- 

 pool. During the war he did excellent service in the Department of Applied 

 Physiology, and in 191 8 was elected to the Whitley Chair of Biochemistry at 

 Oxford. 



Benjamin Moore had an extraordinary career ; he was a man of brilliant 

 imagination and great enthusiasm. It was Moore who showed that, in 

 munition factories, tri-nitro-toluene poisoning was caused mainly by absorp- 

 tion of the poison through the skin, a result which was at first keenly disputed. 

 But it was this discovery which enabled proper precautions to be taken against 

 this form of poisoning. 



Organic Evolution according to Major L. DarWin. 



Major Leonard Darwin has lately published a small book on Organic 

 Evolution dealing with its outstanding difficulties and their possible explana- 

 tions. The contents of this publication is divided into six sections as 

 follows : — 



1. The selection of infrequent mutations and the inheritance of acquired 

 characters could not alone account for evolution. 



2. To admit the selection of small and frequent mutations amongst the 

 explanations of evolution demands the solution of several unsolved problems. 



3. The existence of a system of mutations due to imperfect segregation 

 is suggested as one of the possible explanations. 



4. The problems to be solved include the appearance of new forms and 

 the bifurcation of species. 



5. In fertility between species, the facts connected with pure lines have 

 also to be explained. 



6. In experiments designed to test this hypothesis, natural conditions 

 should be imitated. 



Major Darwin states that recently there has been a growing belief in the 

 efi&cacy of the inheritance of acquired characters, and in the direct effects of 

 environment as factors in evolution, these being agencies on which Charles 

 Darwin relied to some extent. Major Darwin himself maintains that 

 standing alone they cannot account for evolution, even if this tendency to 

 revert to Charles Darwin's views should prove to be thoroughly justifiable. 



