314 COL. JAMES ll\SL()l'. 



in his company. His first wife was at one with him there, and 

 endeared herself to all; while his second wife, Lady Steel, widow 

 of a former Lord Provost of Ediaiburgh, sup{X)rted the tradi- 

 tions of his house and shed the lustre of her charming per- 

 sonality over all. 



The Colonel iiiid the true di])lomaitic spirit. He instinct ivel\ 

 kaiew how to gild the i)ill and dissipate oi>position ; whilst his 

 enthusiastic nature, tempered by a full measure of Caledonian 

 caution, was of the greatest advantage in all his undertakings. 



The admiration of his ifriends found a fitting chmax when 

 they presented him with his jx^rtrait, executed by the well-known 

 Edinburgh artist, Fiddes Watt. 



He was a persona grata in Government circles; and he 

 deserved well of his country, not only for his long, exemplary 

 and meritorious services, but by reason of the sacrifice of health 

 and life in the ])resent great struggle, .\lthough he died not vn 

 the turmoil of the front where he would have chosen to be, had 

 health and age |)ernfitted. yet he did ihis duty well like the gallant 

 soldier that he was. and South Africa and the h'mpire arc the 

 richer for his honouraljlc and distinguished career. 



D. C. W. 



OXANS- — Hr. C. Scott Garrett, in a recent issue of Science 

 Progress,^' calls attention to what he calls " one of the most im- 

 portant advances which have been made in the domain of 

 inorganic chemistry of recent years." The reference is to a 

 series of investigations made by A. i'. Lidov with regard t(j the 

 reactivity of carbon, the results of which have been printed 

 . in the Reports of the Kharkov Technol()gical Institute. f By 

 aid of a catahst he claims to have succeeded in getting carbon 

 to enter iiUo slow combination at the ordinary- icniperatiu'e. At 

 first a-monocyanogen and /J-monocyanogen are formed, and 

 these afterward give rise to a-oxan (OCN ) and /i^-oxan (ONC) 

 by the addition of oxygen. These oxans exhil)it an atialogy to car- 

 bon dioxide, and so Lidov was led to search for them wherever 

 carbon dioxide occurs in nature, i.e., in the air, in natural waters, 

 and in mineral carbonates. He found the density of the carbon 

 dioxide from calcite to be considerably lower than theorv re- 

 quires for CO^, while the gas from marble and dense limestones 

 was higher than, and that from chalk and aragonite approxi- 

 mately equal, to the theoretical value. The low density of the 

 calcite gas is due, it is suggested, to the j)resence of (|uantities 

 of a-oxan, calcite itself consisting largely of calcium oxanate. ]f 

 it be indeed the fact that calcite contains nitrogen, then agricul- 

 tural lime from that source will be specially useful as a fertilizer, 

 and at the same time a new vista would open up in connection 

 with the problem of the fixation of atmo.spheric nitrogen. 



*(i9!7). 12 [45], 25-27. . 



■\Joitrii. Soc. Chem. liid. (1916), 35 [24], 1260. 



