XL 



election in 1885 he was returned for the Southern Division of Leeds 

 and was appointed Vice-President of the Council on Education. He 

 continued to represent Leeds until he was raised to the Peerage in 

 1892. 



Play fair was an original member of the Chemical Society of London, 

 over which he presided in 1857 1859. He was elected a Fellow of 

 this Society in 1848, and of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh in 1859. 

 He was President of the Chemical Section of the British Association in 

 1855 and in 1859, and of the Association in 1885. He was an honorary 

 member of many foreign learned bodies and held many foreign decora- 

 tions. He died in London, on Sunday, May 29, 1898. 



Playfair had a truly scientific mind and was always busy, and yet we 

 do not find a great deal of original scientific work recorded under his 

 name in the * Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers.' His work 

 lay mostly in another direction. As he belonged not only to the world 

 of science but also to that of practical business, he was specially fitted 

 to act as an interpreter between them. Such an interpreter is needed. 

 The man of science does not always know what the business man wants, 

 and the business man often does not understand what the man of 

 science tells him. Such services are perhaps appreciated more highly 

 by the man who immediately feels the benefit of them, the statesman, 

 the manufacturer or the merchant, than by the man of science, but we 

 should remember that if science takes a higher place now than it 

 took fifty years ago, if the opportunities for the genuine study of 

 science and for the prosecution of scientific investigation are greater 

 now than they were then, if science is taking more nearly its right 

 place in the education of the country, that is due to a large extent 

 to Playfair's wisdom and hard work. Of Playfair's contributions 

 to pure chemistry the most important is the discovery and inves- 

 tigation of the nitroprussides, and to applied chemistry, the report 

 on the work undertaken by him along with Bunsen on the gases 

 evolved in iron furnaces. But besides what was published in scientific 

 journals, or in the Transactions of learned societies, Playfair did a 

 great deal of original scientific work, how much no one can now tell, 

 incidentally in the course of the investigations of the numerous com- 

 missions of which he was a member. 



A. C. B. 



Brigade-Surgeon JAMES EDWARD TIERNEY AITCHISON, M.D., C.I.E., 

 F.R.S., F.L.S., LL.D.,* died at Kew, on September 30, 1898, after a 

 considerable period of suffering from a weak heart and other diseases. 

 He was a son of the late Major James Aitchison, and was born at 



* Much of this notice is word for word the same as one I drew up for ' Nature ' 

 and the ' Kew Bulletin.' W. B. H. 



VOL. XLIV. c 



