July 14, 1923] 



NA TURE 



61 



gave him its cordial support and set apart certain 

 volumes of the. Journal for their publication. Opinion 

 turned after a time^ and the Society became the centre 

 of a great literary movement. His work, however, 

 never reached completion in those volumes, because 

 excavations by Botta, Layard, and others at Nineveh 

 and Babylon brought out overwhelming material ; new 

 duties trenched on his time, and other scholars finished 

 what he had so well begun. 



Notwithstanding the interest of these revelations, 

 the Society's condition remained anxious, for local 

 societies in the East appropriated much local inquiry ; 

 its efforts to aid commerce became exhausted, and 

 it developed more towards learned research, while 

 Oriental studies attracted little pubhc interest. The 

 committees of correspondence, of Oriental translation, 

 and of agriculture and commerce gradually fell into 

 neglect, and a later effort to revive them had but 

 transient success. The East India Company had 

 generously subsidised the Society, and the loss of its 

 patronage on its abolition in 1858 caused discourage- 

 ment. The Government after some vacillation con- 

 tinued the subsidy, yet the Society's fortunes still 

 continued low. It changed its abode in 1869, and 

 through want of room made over its museum to the 

 India Office. 



The tide turned, however, when Mr. Vaux became 

 secretary in 1877 and devoted himself to the Society's 

 welfare, and more interest in Oriental studies began 

 to be manifested then among the educated. The 

 late Prof. Rhys Davids becajne secretary from 1887 

 to 1905 and edited the Journal, and enhanced the 

 improvement. The Society's course since then has 

 been one of steady expansion and influence, and its 

 Journal has risen to acknowledged excellence with 

 a wide and attractive range of subjects. The member- 

 ship consists of those " resident " within fifty miles 

 from Charing Cross and " non-residents," and also 

 thirty honorary members elected from among eminent 

 foreign scholars. 



To reward British erudition the " Gold Medal Fund " 

 was inaugurated in memory of Queen Victoria's 

 Jubilee, and the medal was awarded in 1897 to Prof. 

 Cowell, and since then triennially. Two other funds 

 were established in 1903, the " Public Schools' Gold 

 Medal Fund " and the " Prize Pubhcations Fund." 

 Under the former a prize medal has been awarded 

 yearly on an essay on some Oriental subject in competi- 



tion among the boys of the public schools. A new 

 " Oriental Translation Fund " was started privately 

 in 1 89 1 and transferred to the Society afterwards, 

 and it began a " Monograph Fund " in 1902. By 

 these three funds many treatises have been issued, 

 and the proceeds of the sale of published books provide 

 the means of printing fresh works. Thus the Society 

 encourages Oriental research, honours Oriental learning, 

 and makes the results pubhc, free of expense to the 

 authors. Another fund, the Forlong Fund, is managed 

 by the Society for the benefit of students at the School 

 of Oriental Languages. 



The Society is now established at 74 Grosvenor 

 Street, London, W., and completed its hundredth 

 year on March 15 last. It has issued a centenary 

 volume, displaying its history and the achievements 

 of its members in research, and will celebrate the 

 event by a reunion of Orientalists and festivities on 

 July 17-20. It has a very large and comprehensive 

 library of about 30,000 volumes, important collections 

 of MSS. in many Oriental languages, portraits and 

 busts of eminent members, and valuable objects of 

 antiquity and art. Its most outstanding figures have 

 been its three directors, H. T. Colebrooke (1823-37), 

 Prof. H. H. Wilson (1837-60), and Sir H. Rawhnson 

 (1862-95), ^"d its late president. Lord Reay (1893- 

 1921). 



The Journal abounds with articles elucidating all 

 the subjects mentioned in the inaugural discourse 

 regarding all the countries of Asia and those in Africa 

 into which Mohammedanism overflowed, and India 

 has occupied as much attention as all the other countries 

 combined. Archaeology has been a leading subject, 

 especially since exploration has brought ancient 

 inscriptions and other material to light from Asia 

 Minor to Further India, and the old texts have become 

 available for study. The Society's representations 

 have largely contributed to archaeological enterprise in 

 India. Ancient remains have been examined, inscrip- 

 tions deciphered, coins read, language and literature 

 investigated, and rehgion studied. The researches 

 have been so varied, that it is impossible to speak 

 of them here except in general terms. They have 

 not only amphfied what was known of the ancient 

 world, but have also reconstructed kingdoms and 

 history that had vanished, disclosed much of the 

 course of civilisation and religion through Asia, and 

 revealed unknown languages that have perished. 



Obituary. 



Prof. John Chiene. 



JOHN CHIENE, late professor of surgery in the 

 University of Edinburgh, to which chair he had 

 succeeded on the death of James Spence in 1882, and 

 held for twenty-eight years, died on May 29 at the 

 age of eighty. Chiene does not claim a record in this 

 journal on account of original scientific work — for 

 scientific inquiry was not much in his line — but he was 

 deeply impressed with the importance of it, and, 

 though not himself an experimenter, he set up in the 

 University the first teaching laboratory of bacteriology 

 and surgical pathology in the United Kingdom. To 

 quote the words of his pupil Sir Harold Stiles, who now 



NO. 2802, VOL. I 12] 



occupies the chair once held by Syme and Lister, 

 " Chiene set the example, in the academic teaching of 

 surgery, of cultivating the subject as a science so that 

 its art might be better taught and promoted. ... He 

 spared neither time nor money to encourage research 

 by his assistants." 



Chiene may be said to have belonged to the school 

 of anatomical surgeons ; but he had been Syme's house- 

 surgeon and John Goodsir's demonstrator, and from 

 both of these distinguished men he inherited the habit 

 of scientific thought and logical expression. He was 

 a very successful lecturer on operative and systematic 

 surgery in the extra-mural school, and in this way 



