114 



NATURE 



[NOVEMIJER 24, 1940 



forest officers and subordinates, admired and honoured 

 him. 



He married, in 1876, Mary, eldest dau^^hter of the 

 late Dr. Briscoe, civil surgeon of Cooch Behar, in 

 Bengal, and leaves one son, a lieutenant in a Ghurka 

 regiment, and two daughters. By his death the 

 Empire loses an enthusiastic forester, who can ill be 

 spared at the present time. 



NOTES. 

 We regret to see the announcement of the death on 

 November 11, at sixty-two years of age, of Prof. Jules 

 Tannery, the distinguished French mathematician. 



Councillor Wieiil has just bequeathed, says the Revue 

 scientifique, the whole of his fortune, of about a milliorf 

 crowns, to the Bohemian .\cademy of Sciences at Prague 

 to encourage scientific and technical research. 



A short time ago it was suggested that the Eiffel 

 Tower should . be used as a station for the daily trans- 

 mission of time-signals to ocean-going vessels by means 

 of wireless telegraphy. The Paris correspondent of the 

 Times reports that this service was inaugurated on 

 November 21 with satisfactory results. In future, time- 

 signals will be sent out twice dally, at' 11 a.m. and 

 12 midnight. Three signals will be made on each occasion 

 at two-minute intervals. The morning transmission will 

 not, however, take place on Sundays and holidays. 



The Earl of Stair has accepted the presidency of the 

 Royal Scottish Geographical Society in succession to 

 Prof. James Geikie, F.R.S., who has held the office of 

 president for the last six years. The anniversary meeting 

 of the society was held on November 11, and was addressed 

 by Sir John Murray, K.C.B., F.R.S., who chose for his 

 subject "The Deep Sea." Before the address Prof. 

 Geikie was presented with the society's gold medal in 

 recognition of his distinguished services to geographical 

 science, and Sir John Murray with the Livingstone medal 

 in recognition, not merely of his prolonged and valuable 

 oceanographical research, but also in commemoration of 

 the completion of the great national work " The Bathy- 

 metrical Survey of the Fresh-water Lx>chs of Scotland." 



In the interests of precision in scientific diction, a corre- 

 spondent asks that the familiar expression " thunder and 

 lightning " should be inverted in accordance with the 

 natural sequence of cause, and effect, and become 

 " lightning and thunder." He adds : — " I never could 

 grasp how the confusion originated, considering that, in 

 agreement with the transmission of light and sound, the 

 flash is seen before the thunder is heard." 



The eighty-fifth Christmas course of experimentally 

 illustrated lectures adapted to a juvenile auditory, to be 

 given at the Royal Institution by Prof. Silvanus P. 

 Thompson, F.R.S., promises to be of exceptional interest. 

 The subject is " Sound, Musical and Non-musical." The 

 dates and subjects of individual lectures are : — 1910, 

 December 29, production of sound; December 31, trans- 

 mission of sound; 1911, January 3, reception of sound; 

 January 5, combination of sounds ; January 7, registration 

 of sounds ; January 10, reproduction of sound. 



At a meeting of the executive committee of the British 

 Science Guild, held on November 16, on the motion of 

 Mr. A. Moseley, C.M.G., it was decided to form a special 

 combined education committee to deal, in the first instance, 

 with education of the governing classes of England. It 

 Was resolved to defer the circulation of the synchronisa- 

 tion report until a later date. It was decided to consider 



NO. 2143, VOL. 85] 



further the reduction of the rate of postage on scientific 

 literature. It was also suggested that the annual meeting 

 should in future be held in the month of .April, and that 

 the annual dinner should, if convenient, be held on the 

 same day. 



We regret to announce the death, at sea, at the age of 

 thirty-one, of Mr. Richard Froude Tucker, Archaeological 

 Surveyor of the Northern Circle, India. Mr. Tucker held 

 the post of curator of the Delhi Museum, and the cata- 

 logue of the archaeological collections deposited there was 

 recently prepared by him in collaboration with Dr. J. Ph. 

 \'ogel. Appended to this catalogue is a memoir by Mr. 

 Tucker on the elephant statues at the Delhi Gate of the 

 Delhi Fort. The untimely death, of this promising 

 archaeologist is a severe loss to antiquarian research in 

 India. 



During the summer of this jear excavations were 

 carried on, under the superintendence of Dr. Felix Oswald, 

 at the site of the Roman station of Margidunum on the 

 Fosse Way, midway between Leicester and Lincoln. Some 

 local pottery, Samian ware, coins of Victorinus, Carausius, 

 Constans, and Eugenius, dated between 265 and 395 a.d., 

 have been discovered. The main feature of the finds was 

 the relative abundance of iron objects, such as swords, 

 knives, a bolt of a spring-lock, rings, and nails. A 

 skeleton of an old man and three infants was associated 

 with bones of the Celtic ox (Bos longifrons) and other 

 domesticated animals. These antiquities have been 

 deposited in the museum at Nottingham Castle, where it 

 is hoped they may form the nucleus of a Romano-British 

 section. 



The Rome correspondent of the Times announces that 

 a decree was published on November 20 creating a com- 

 mission to examine the view that pellagra is produced by 

 a protozoal infection conveyed by an insect, and to formu- 

 late any changes in the existing law of protection that 

 may be considered desirable. The commission consists of 

 nine members, all doctors with the exception of Prince 

 Teano, deputy, who was chiefly instrumental in directing 

 the attention of the Italian Government to the work of 

 the English Pellagra Investigation Committee. An article 

 upon the investigations made by Dr. Sambon for this, 

 committee appeared in Nature of October 27. 



On November 12 an extension of the natural history 

 section of the Hull Public Museums was opened by Mr. 

 T. S. Taylor, Mayor of Hull. In the ornithological 

 section of the museum there is an unusually extensive 

 collection of British birds. The extension rr>nsists of three 

 large rooms, the largest of which is occupied by a collec- 

 tion of British birds containing more than goo specimen*. 

 In the second room is a collection of local mammali|« 

 including the group of otters, badgers, stoats, weasel*, 

 and so on. The third room contains a collection of skele- 

 tons — animals and birds. The museum is fortunate 

 having been presented with the collection of birds formi 

 by the late Sir Henry Boynton. This collection consiM| 

 of about 200 cases containing 450 birds. 



Attention has already been directed in Nature to 

 scheme of the British Empire League for the erectk)n 

 London of a memorial to Captain Cook. We are 

 to notice that the secretaries of the Royal Society ha 

 written to Lord Brassey, the honorary treasurer of th- 

 fund, expressing, on behalf of the Royal Society, approval 

 of the scheme, and enclosing a subscription of twenty-fiv 

 guineas from the society. Their letter includes the follow 

 ing paragraph : — "We are instructed to express the grati 

 fication of the Royal Society that public opinion has ;r 



