June i, 191 i] 



NATURE 



453 



been his assistant in the British Museufn for a short 

 period (1862-4), and his suggestive book, published in 

 1866, was one of the first deaUng with tiiis subject; 

 much that appeared in the books of both authors was 

 doubtless the result of their discussions during this 

 period. 



Maskelyne's own "Treatise on the Morphology of 

 Crystals " did not appear until 1895, the year in which 

 he resigned his professorship in Oxford, but much of 

 it had been written thirty years before, and, if it had 

 been published at that time, the book would have 

 been regarded as a highly original treatise. The proof 

 sheets were familiar to many of his students, and 

 introduced them to a very attractive treatment of what 

 was then a new subject. Owing to the late appear- 

 ance of this book, his methods were chiefly made 

 known to the world in an indirect way through his 

 pupils, and it is possible that he may not have re- 

 ceived the credit that is due to him. For example, it 

 is mentioned in Lewis's "Crystallography" that the 

 mathematical establishment of the angles possible 

 between planes of symmetry in a crystal was first 

 given by Maskelyne in his lectures in i86q, but no 

 publication of such a result was made until that by 

 Prof. Gadolin in 1871. 



Among those who worked with him at the British 

 Museum, in addition to his old friend von Lang, were 

 Thomas Davies (1862-80), who was responsible under 

 him for the arrangement of the " Collections " ; Dr. 

 Walter Flight, F.R.S. (1867-80); W. J. Lewis (1875- 

 7), now professor at Cambridge ; and his successor, 

 Lazarus Fletcher (1878-80), now director of the 

 Natural History Museum. He always spoke with 

 particular admiration of Grailich, of Vienna, who was 

 an early and intimate acquaintance. One of his 

 dearest friends was that remarkable man, Henry 

 Smith, of Oxford, with whom he frequently discussed 

 mathematical problems. It was the good fortune of 

 the present writer, when an undergraduate, to receive 

 instruction from Maskelyne in an informal way in 

 Henry Smith's house; on these occasions the lecture 

 was delivered from an armchair in the drawing-room. 

 Smith himself playing the part of a second student, 

 and illuminating the discourse by questions and com- 

 ments of profound significance. An example of the 

 stimulus which Maskelyne's active mind gave to those 

 with whom he came in contact is the investigation by 

 Smith of the conditions under which lines in a crystal 

 can be perpendicular to each other. 



It is not necessary here to give a detailed account 

 of Maskelyne's scientific papers. They range over a 

 wide field, and are characterised by a charm of 

 literary style which is well known to all who received 

 letters from him. His activities date from so early 

 a period that it is difficult now to ascertain what per- 

 sonal part he played in some of the scientific dis- 

 coveries of the middle of the nineteenth century, but 

 he worked for a time in Faraday's laboratory at the 

 Royal Institution, was one of the earliest to take a 

 practical interest in the newly invented process of 

 photography, and, indeed, throughout his long life 

 interested himself in almost every branch of scientific 

 inquiry. 



Faraday stayed with him during the British Asso- 

 ciation meeting at Oxford in 1847. when, he writes : — 

 " I showed Faraday for the first time the making and 

 developing of a photo of the College Quad from the 

 window. His joy was that of a boy." 



Maskelvne's interests outside science were also very 

 wide, and he was the owner of one of the best and 

 most carefully selected private collections of antique 

 engraved gems ; his catalogue of the Marlborough 

 gems, which was privately printed, is well known. 



NO. 2170, VOL. 86] 



He possessed a remarkable elasticity and alertness 

 of mind, as of body, even in advanced years, and his 

 enthusiasm for all that was new in science, literature, 

 and art was maintained to the end. Only four jears 

 before his death he was occupied on a scientific hand- 

 book for the use of the dairy farmers of Wiltshire, 

 and was well known throughout the county as a man 

 whose intellectual activities were always available for 

 a good cause. Everything that he did was evidence 

 of his taste, and was marked by a conspicuous refine- 

 ment and distinction of style and manner. 



In a letter written only three years ago he said : — 

 " I think there must be some cement in the smaller 

 sciences like mineralogy and crystallography that links 

 their students by a bond unlike the relations that exist 

 between the advocates of the larger sciences ; jealousies 

 and rivalries seem to hold aloof, and certainly from 

 the days of Grailich and Lang to those of my old age 

 some of my dearest and most honoured friends have 

 come to me through the sciences that you and I have 

 professed at Oxford since 1856." 



It was in reality his own warm, impulsive, quick- 

 tempered, and sympathetic nature which united him 

 by the closest ties of affection to so many of his pupils 

 and scientific friends. The charm of his manner and 

 the astonishing versatility of his mind were the quali- 

 ties that most impressed those who met him in the 

 later years of his life. 



He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science 

 at Oxford in 1903, and the Wollaston Gold Medal from 

 the Geological Society in 1893. He was an honorary 

 fellow of Wadham College, and a corresponding mem- 

 ber of several foreign societies. In 1858 he married 

 a daughter of Mr. J. D. Llewelyn, F.R.S. ; she sur- 

 vives him, together with three daughters, one of whom 

 married the late Mr. H. O. Arnold-Forster, and 

 another Sir Arthur Riicker. H. A. M. 



MRS. W. P. FLEMING. 

 O Y the death of Mrs. Williamina Paton Fleming, 

 ■^ astronomy has suffered an almost irreparable 

 loss. Concerning the general spectral classification 

 of stars Mrs, Fleming had accumulated a store of 

 knowledge which was second to none. 



Born at Dundee, Scotland, in 1857, she became an 

 assistant at the Harvard College Observatory, Cam- 

 bridge, Mass., in 1879, '^"d i" ^898 was officially 

 appointed as the curator of astronomical photographs, 

 a department wherein Harvard holds a unique posi- 

 tion. Here Mrs. Fleming was charged with the super- 

 vision of a number of ladies whose duty it is to 

 examine minutely, and to classify, the ever-growing 

 library of plates taken at the Cambridge and Arequipa 

 stations. Her special personal labours were chiefly 

 devoted to the study of the enormous number of 

 stellar-spectra plates which form the Draper Memo- 

 rial. This collection was commenced in 18S6 as a 

 memorial to the late Dr. Henry Draper, and consists 

 of an immense number of photographs of stellar 

 spectra taken with the 8-inch and ii-inch Draper tele- 

 scopes. Each plate covers a comparatively large area, 

 and contains the spectra of a large number of stars, 

 and when we learn, from Prof. Pickering's latest 

 report, that there are now 18,182 plates taken with 

 the 1 1-inch, and 36,852 taken with the 8-inch tele- 

 scope, it is easy to understand that Mrs. Fleming's 

 task was no light one. 



The chief result of these studies was, perhaps, the 

 production, in 1890, of the "Draper Catalogue of 

 Stellar Spectra," in which Mrs. Fleming classified 

 the spectra of 10,351 stars down to about the eighth 

 magnitude. This Durchmusterung, with its revision, 



