November 9, 191 1] 



NATURE 



49 



company among congenial friends, and in his own 

 home he was the best of hosts. He was remarkably 

 regular in his attendance at the meetings of the Royal 

 Society Club, and there his appreciation of a good 

 story and his own powers as a raconteur were always 

 in evidence. Like most Scotsmen, he was reserved in 

 his expression of the deeper feelings, but his sym- 

 pathies were true and his friendship staunch. 



C. G. Knott. 



NOTES. 

 His Majesty the King has been pleased to approve of 

 the following awards this year by the president and council 

 of the Royal Society : — a Royal medal to Prof. George 

 Chrystal, Sec.R.S. Edinburgh, for his researches in mathe- 

 matics and physics, especially his recent work on seiches 

 and free oscillations in the Scottish lakes ; and a Royal 

 medal to Dr. W. M,, Ba3fliss, F.R.S., for his researches 

 in physiology. The ' fOillowing awards have also been 

 made : — the Copley medal to Sir George H. Darwin, 

 K.C.B., F.R.S., for his scientific researches, especially in 

 the domain of astronomical evolution ; the Davy medal to 

 Prof. Henry E. Armstrong, F.R.S., for his contributions 

 to chemical science ; and the Hughes medal to Mr. 

 C. T. R. Wilson, F.R.S., for his investigations on the 

 formation of cloud and their application to the study of 

 electrical ions. 



The following is a list of those who have been recom- 

 mended by the president and council of the Royal Society 

 for election into the council for the year 1912 at the 

 anniversary meeting on November 30 : — President, Sir 

 Archibald Geikie, K.C.B. ; treasurer, Mr. Alfred Bray 

 Kempe ; secretaries. Sir Joseph Larmor and Sir John Rose 

 Bradford, K.C.M.G. ; foreign secretary. Sir William 

 Crookes, O.M. ; other members of the council, Lieut. - 

 Colonel A. W. Alcock, CLE., Prof. W. H. Bragg, Sir 

 A. H. Church, K.C.V.O., Mr. L. Fletcher, Prof. J. S. 

 Gardiner, Mr. W. B. Hardy, Prof. M. J. M. Hill, Prof. 

 F. S. Kipping, Mr. H. R. A. Mallock, the Duke of 

 Northumberland, K.G., Sir Ronald Ross, K.C.B. , Prof. E. 

 Rutherford, Prof. S. P. Thompson, Prof. Sir J. J. Thom- 

 son, Mr. H. W. T. Wager, and Prof, E, T. Whittaker. 



A Reuter message from Stockholm states that the 

 Swedish Academy of Science has decided to award the 

 Nobel prize for chemistry to Mme. Curie. Prof. W. Wien, 

 professor of physics in the University of Wiirzburg, is to 

 receive the prize for physics. The value of each prize this 

 year is 7773I. 



We regret to see the announcement of the death of Mr. 

 John Brown, F.R.S., of Longhurst, Dunmurry. Belfast, 

 on November i, at sixty-one years of age. 



The Physical Society's annual exhibition will be held on 

 Tuesday, December 19, and will be open both in the after- 

 noon and evening. 



The Berthelot memorial lecture of the Chemical Society 

 will be delivered by Prof. H. B. Dixon, F.R.S., on Thurs- 

 fbn , November 23. 



1 ME eighty-sixth Christmas course of juvenile lectures, 

 founded at the Royal Institution in 1826 by Michael 

 Faraday, will be delivered this year by Dr. P. Chalmers 

 Mitchell, F.R.S., secretary of the Zoological Society, his 

 subjeii being "The Childhood of Animals." 



I HE death is announced of M. E. F. Andr6, whose works 

 ... landscape gardening are widely known in the horti- 

 cultural world. Among various books of which he was the 

 NO. 2193, VOL. 88] 



author are " L'Art des Jardins," 1879, with numerous 

 plates and more than 500 illustrations in the text, and a 

 volume on the bromeliaceous plants collected in Colombia, 

 Ecuador, and Venezuela. For nearly thirty years he edited 

 La Revue Horticole, which has always held a high place 

 among botanical periodicals. 



The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall at its annual 

 meeting on October 31 presented the Bolitho gold medal 

 to Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., in recognition of the able 

 and conscientious manner in which he had superintended, 

 during the past ten years, the geological resurvey of the 

 county, the final memoirs of which are in the press. Mr. 

 Reid, in returning thanks, said that the work done has 

 widened the horizon and opened up new possibilities for 

 Cornish geologists ; but there is still a great deal to be 

 done. 



The Royal Society of Arts will begin its 158th session 

 on Wednesday, November 15, with an address from Lord 

 Sanderson, G.C.B., the chairman of the council. Five 

 meetings are announced before Christmas, at which papers 

 will be read on the industrial progress of America, by 

 Prof. James Douglas ; the efficiency of the aeroplane, by 

 Mr. A. E. Berriman ; British Guiana, by Mr. J. A. J. 

 de Villiers ; London transport, by Mr. W. Yorath Lewis ; 

 and Bengal fisheries, by Dr. J. Travers Jenkins. Four 

 Cantor lectures on "The Carbonisation of Coal" will be 

 delivered by Prof. Vivian Lewes, and two juvenile lectures 

 on " Soap Bubbles " will be given in January by Mr. 

 C. V. Boys, F.R.S. A long list of papers for the meet- 

 ings to be held after Christmas is also published. 



The winter session of the British Fire Prevention Com- 

 mittee was commenced on November i with a meeting to 

 conduct a series of fire tests dealing with a small hand 

 extinguisher intended to put out electrical and petrol fires^ 

 There was a large attendance at the committee's Regent's- 

 Park Testing Station, the Earl of Londesboroughy 

 K.C.V.O., Mr. Alexander Siemens, and Mr. Edwin O. 

 Sachs, members of council, receiving the visitors, among 

 whom were leading officials concerned in fire matters from 

 the War Office, Board of Trade, and other public depart- 

 ments. There will be another series of tests this month 

 dealing with the flannelette question, which is of such 

 importance to child life ; and in December some fire-resist- 

 ing doors and partitions from the United States will be 

 under investigation. 



Authentic details of the recent Wright gliding experi- 

 ments are now to hand, from which it appeais that the 

 machine used was very similar to a recent type of Wright 

 aeroplane with power. The glider had no front elevator, 

 but an elevating tail placed 12 feet in the rear of the trail- 

 ing edge of the main planes. The dimensions of the main 

 planes were 32 feet by 5 feet respectively, with a smaller 

 camber than that used in the powered machine. Other- 

 wise the only alterations made were to increase the sizo 

 of the vertical rudder in the rear "and to cut down the 

 length of the skids. With this glider Mr. Orville Wright, 

 starting from one of the sand-hills near Kill Devil Hill, 

 twice succeeded in remaining in the air for rather more 

 than im. 25s. The height of the hill from which he started 

 was 75 feet. With regard to the automatic stability device 

 which is stated to have been tried, no details are yet 

 available. The objects of the gliding trials were to 

 decrease the head-resistance of the machine, and incident- 

 ally to solve in a practical manner several pioblmis in 

 wind pressure. 



By the de_ath, at the age of seventy-onr. ol Mr. W. 

 Irvine, a retired member of the Indian Civil Scrvic', 



