6l2 



NA TUBE 



[April 28. 1898 . 



Prof. James E. Keeler, of the Allegheny Observatory, 

 has definitely accepted the post of director of the Lick Observ- 

 atory, and will go to Mount Hamilton next month. It will 

 be remembered that he offered to remain at the Allegheny 

 Observatory if 200,000 dollars could be collected to erect and 

 endow a new observatory. The subscriptions did not reach 

 this amount in the two weeks allowed, but 150,000 dollars was 

 subscribed, so that a new observatory will be built. 



A NEW coherer for use in connection with telegraphy without 

 intervening wires has been invented by Dr. H. Rupp, of Stutt- 

 gart. Instead of using an electro-magnetic tapper to tap the 

 coherer tube, and so loosen the iron filings in it, Dr. Rupp has 

 devised a simple contrivance for making the coherer rotate 

 round the axis of the leading-in wires. It is stated that the 

 Morse signals obtained with this rotating coherer are much 

 more distinct than those given by the tapping arrangement. 



Dr. Henry Marshall, a distinguished member of the 

 medical profession, died on Sunday at Clifton, Bristol. Dr. 

 Marshall received his medical education at Edinburgh'; and in 

 1854, was dresser and afterwards assistant under Lord Lister, 

 whom he succeeded as house surgeon. Whilst in Edinburgh he 

 held the presidency of the Royal Medical Society there. When 

 the British Medical Association met at Bristol in 1863 Dr. 

 Marshall acted as secretary, and he was president of the Bristol 

 branch when in 1877 the Association met at Bath. 



We have just received, with regret, the announcement of the 

 death, on March 24, of Mr. Alfred U. Allen, of Bath, at the 

 age of sixty-four. Mr. Allen's name will be long remembered 

 by microscopists as the secretary of the Postal Microscopical 

 Society, which came into existence about twenty-five years ago 

 largely through his exertions. It is only a few months since we 

 announced that Mr. Allen had found it necessary to discontinue 

 the Journal of Microscopy and Natural Science, which he edited 

 since 1882. In addition to this, Mr. Allen issued a monthly 

 journal, under the title of The Scientific Enquirer, during the 

 years 1886-88. 



Col. Sir Vivian D. Majendie, K.C.B., the chief inspector 

 of explosives to the Home Office, died suddenly on Sunday. 

 He was the author of the Official Guide-book to the Explosives 

 Act of 1875, and several other professional works. In his official 

 capacity he was responsible not only for the periodical inspec- 

 tion of the various gunpowder and kindred manufactories scat- 

 tared throughout the country, and for the investigation of the- 

 circumstances attending the accidents that occur in them from 

 time to time, but also had to examine very many of the bombs 

 and infernal machines that fell into the hands of the police, or 

 were left for felonious purposes in public places. He was also 

 concerned with drawing up regulations for the storage of in- 

 flammable liquids such as petroleum, and it is not very long 

 since he returned from a tour in America undertaken to study 

 the methods of storage and transport in operation there. 



Zoology has lost an 'able student and a fpromising in- 

 vestigator by the death, at the age of twenty-six years, of Mr. 

 B. B. Griffin, announced in Science. Mr. Griffin took part in 

 the zoological expeditions to the noith-west coast of America, 

 sent out by Columbia University in 1896 and 1897. He was 

 the author, wholly or in part, of several papers relating to the 

 fauna of that region, one of which, dealing with the nemer- 

 tines of Puget Sound and describing a number of species new 

 to science, had been sent to press immediately before his last 

 illness. His principal work lay, however, in the field of cellular 

 biology, and a brief but important paper by him on the fertilis- 

 ation of the egg in Thalassema, published in the Transactions 

 of the New York Academy of Sciences for 1895-6, had attracted 

 considerable attention, both in the United States and elsewhere. 



NO. T487, VOL. 57] 



A more extended paper along the same lines, bringing forward 

 new and important evidence on the nature of fertilisation, the 

 history of the centrosome, the phenomena of chromatin-re- 

 duction and other vexed problems of cytology, was practically 

 ready for the printer at the time of his death. 



We regret to record the death of the distinguished geologist M. 

 Jules Marcou. He was born at Salins in the Department of 

 Jura in France, in 1824. In 1848 he joined Agassiz at Boston, 

 in the United States, and spent two years in studying the 

 geology of various portions of North America. In 1853 he 

 published a Geological Map of the United States, and the 

 British Provinces of North America. For a period of about 

 twelve years M. Marcou appears to have spent much of his 

 time alternately in Europe and America. In 1855 he became 

 professor of geology and palaeontology at the Polytechnic School 

 of Zurich, but relinquished this office on his return to the 

 United States in i860. In 1861 he published his well-known 

 Geological Map of the World, of which a second edition was 

 issued in 1875. In addition to his works on the geology of 

 North America, he published many papers on the European 

 secondary rocks, and was specially interested in the Jura- 

 Cretaceous formations. Some of his articles were of a con- 

 troversial nature. In 1879 he was elected a Foreign Member 

 of the Geological Society of London. He died on April 18, 

 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged seventy-four. 



It is with much regret that we record the death of Dr. John 

 Shearson Hyland, E.G. S., at the early age of thirty-two. The 

 second son of Captain P. Hyland, of Great Crosby, he was 

 educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, at University College, 

 Liverpool, and subsequently at Leipzig. At the University of 

 Leipzig he studied mineralogy and petrology under Dr. Zirkel, 

 and took the degree of Ph.D., his thesis being entitled " Ueber 

 die Gesteine des Kilimandscharo und dessen Umgebung," and 

 published in 1888. In the same year he joined the staff of the 

 Geological Survey, and was for three years occupied in the 

 Irish branch in investigations on the eruptive rocks of the 

 country. During this period he published several papers on petro- 

 logical subjects, and gave great promise of a brilliant career. 

 Being of an active, enterprising nature, he relinquished the 

 work of the microscope, and throwing up his post on the 

 Geological Survey, took to the more practical work of reporting 

 on mineral resources in the United States, subsequently in 

 British Central Africa, and finally on the treacherous west coast 

 of Africa, where he died at Elmina on April 19. 



The death is announced of Dr. J. . G. N. Dragendorff, for 

 many years director of the Pharmaceutical Institute at Dorpat, 

 in Russia, which, while he was there, had the highest reputation 

 as a pharmaceutical training college and school of research. 

 From the Chemist and Druggist we learn that Dr. Dragendorff 

 was born in Rostock in 1836. After qualifying as an apotheker, 

 he studied chemistry in the Heidelberg University, which he 

 left in i860 to become assistant to Prof, F. Schultze, in the 

 chemical laboratories of the Rostock University. In the same 

 year he graduated as Ph.D., his thesis being on the action of 

 phosphorus upon some carbonates and borates. In 1862 he went 

 to St. Petersburg to take charge of the Pharmaceutischen 

 Zeitschrift fiir Rtissland, as editor, and of the laboratories of 

 the Pharmaceutical Society there. While acting in that capacity 

 his reputation grew, and his appointment as Professor of 

 Pharmacy and Director of the Pharmaceutical Institute at 

 Dorpat in 1864 was the beginning of thirty years' work which 

 made the Dorpat Institute famous all over the world, for 

 Dragendorffs skill as a teacher and discoverer of talent brought 

 students to him from all quarters. He retired to his native 

 town in 1894, and devoted his leisure to a monumental work 

 on medicinal plants, of which at least one part has been 



