32 



NA TURE 



[November i i, 1897 



of energy and high spirits ; and at the time of his death 

 he was President of both Warwickshire societies. 



Mr. Brodie was the author of many geological papers 

 communicated to the Geological Society, the British 

 Association, and various scientific journals. In 1887 

 the Council of the Geological Society awarded to Mr. 

 Brodie the Murchison M.edal for his long and valuable 

 geological labours ; an agreeable testimony to good work 

 achieved by one who, all his life, was a dweller in the 

 provinces. H. B. W. 



NOTES. 



The Royal Society's medals have this year been adjudicated 

 by the President and Council as follows : — The Copley Medal 

 to Prof. Albert von KoIIiker, Foreign Member R.S. ; a Royal 

 Medal to Prof Andrew Russell Forsyth, F.R.S. ; a Royal 

 Medal to Lieut. General Sir Richard Strachey, F.R.S. ; the 

 Davy Medal to Dr. John Hall Gladstone, F.R.S.; the 

 Buchanan Medal to Sir John Simon, F.R.S. Her Majesty has 

 signified her approval of the award of the Royal Medals. 



The following is a list of those who have been recommended 

 by the President and Council of the Royal Society for election 

 into the Council for the year 1898 at the anniversary meeting 

 on November 30 : — President : Lord Lister. Treasurer : Sir 

 John Evans, K.C.B. Secretaries : Prof Michael Foster, 

 Prof Arthur William Riicker. Foreign Secretary : Sir 

 Edward Frankland, K.C.B. Other Members of the Council 

 (the names of new Members are printed in italics) : Prof 

 William Grylls Adams, Prof Thomas Cliftbrd Allbutt, Sir 

 Robert Stazvell Ball, Rev. Thomas George Boniiey, Prof. John 

 Cleland, Prof Robert Bellamy Clifton, Prof James Alfred 

 Ewing, Alfred Bray Kempe, John Newport Langley, Joseph 

 Larinor, Prof. Nevil Story Maskelyne, Prof Raphael Meldola, 

 Prof. Edwai'd Bagnall Poiilton, William James Russell, Diikin- 

 field Henry Scott, Prof Waller Frank Raphael Weldon. 



We learn from the Times, with regret, that in consequence of 

 the heavy demands on his time in connection with his duties at 

 the Natural History Museum, Sir William Flower, acting on 

 medical advice, has reluctantly resigned the presidency of the 

 International Congress of Zoology, which is to meet at Cam- 

 bridge on August 23, 1898. Sir John Lubbock, on the un- 

 animous invitation of the General Committee, has accepted the 

 office, and will accordingly preside over the Congress. 



We announce with great regret the death, on October 31, of 

 Prof Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin. We hope in a 

 subsequent number to publish an obituary notice of Prof. 

 Haughton. 



It is with much regret that we record the death of Herr 

 Geheimrath Prof Ernst Schering, of Gottingen, who passed 

 away at Gottingen on November 2, at the age of sixty-four, 

 after a long illness. Schering, besides being professor of 

 mathematics at the University, was director of the Magnetic 

 Department of the Observatory, the se.it of Gauss' monumental 

 researches in this branch of science. 



The Queen has conferred the Jubilee Medal upon Prof 

 W. R. Smith, the President of the Royal Institute of Public 

 Health ; Sir George Duffey, President of the Royal College 

 of Physicians, Ireland ; Sir WiUiam Thomson, President of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland ; and Mr. Walter Hills, 

 President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 



Prof. A. A. Michelson, of the University of Chicago,. has 

 been elected a member of the International Committee of Weights 

 and Measures, in the place of the late Dr. B. A. Gould. 



NO. 1463, VOL. 57] 



Prof. Henry S. Pritchett, of Washington University, St. 

 Louis, has been appointed superintendent of the U.S. Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey, as successor to General Duffield. 



Mr. Edgar Worthington has been elected secretary of 

 the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, in the place of Mr. 

 Alfred Bache, who has retired on account of ill-health. 



Sir William Gowers is to be entertained at dinner by the '■ 

 Society of Medical Phonographers on November 25. The 

 dinner, over which Sir William Broadbent will preside, is to. 

 take place at Limmer's Hotel, and has been arranged for the 

 purpose of congratulating Sir W. Gowers upon his honour of 

 knighthood. 



The members of the Gerlache Antarctic expedition were 

 entertained at Rio de Janeiro by President Moraes, and left on 

 October 28 for Buenos Ayres, en route to the Antarctic region. 



On the day of his arrival in New York, Dr. Nansen was 

 the guest of the American Geographical Society, which elected 

 him an honorary member and conferred upon him the Cullum 

 Geographical Medal. He was subsequently the recipient of 

 receptions by the Swedish and Norwegian inhabitants of the 

 city, and the National (jeographical Society, Washington, and 

 read a paper on " Some of the Scientific Results of Recent 

 Arctic Explorations " before a special meeting of the American 

 Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. He delivered his first 

 public lecture at New York on November 6. 



A Reuter telegram from Rome states that for some days 

 past Vesuvius has been in active eruption, and large quantities 

 of lava have been pouring from the crater called Atrio del 

 Cavallo, which was opened in 1895. The lava has divided 

 into two large streams flowing towards Vitrava and the country 

 north of Piano del Tristre respectively, the latter current having 

 again divided into two. The central crater is also distinctly 

 active, throwing forth ashes and lava at frequent intervals. 



On Friday last the inaugural meeting of the recently con- 

 stituted Rontgen Society took place at St. Martin's Town Hall, 

 when Prof Silvanus P. Thompson delivered his presidential 

 address, particulars of which we gather as follows from the 

 Times. After giving an account of the circumstances in which 

 Prof Rontgen made his famous discovery nearly two years ago, and 

 referring to the antecedent investigators of whose work that dis- 

 covery was a development. Prof Thompson proceeded to make a 

 brief review of what has been achieved with respect to X- radia- 

 tions. He first discussed the improvements which have been 

 made in appliances, such as in the construction of the tubes, in 

 the materials used for fluorescent screens, in photographic 

 plates, and in the methods of exciting the tubes. Turning to 

 advances in results attained and to applications of the discovery, 

 he said that, excepting only Lister's introduction of antiseptics 

 and the discovery of anaesthetics, no discovery in the present 

 century had done so much for operative surgery as that of 

 the Rontgen rays. The first great application of the rays had 

 been to the diagnosis of dislocations and fractures, the study of 

 bone disease, and the detection of foreign bodies in various 

 parts of the human frame. The localisation of foreign bodies 

 embedded in more transparent tissue had claimed the attention 

 of many surgeons. In this department Mr. Mackenzie Davidson 

 had devised an ingenious apparatus by which any intelligent 

 -person could at once localise to within one-hundredth of an inch 

 the exact position, say, of a needle in the hand or foot, the com- 

 plicated geometry of oblique projection being simplified down 

 by the instrument itself, and reduced to the application of 

 callipers and a divided scale. As regards the physical problems 

 presented by the rays, while there was much progress to chronicle, 

 there was also a vast prospect opening out of problems awaiting 



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