324 



NATURE 



\Feb. 6, 1890 



time of Descartes and Leibnitz, when physical science 

 and moral philosophy went hand in hand, to find an 

 equivalent. 



But it must be allowed that the science of Thermo- 

 dynamics may be treated with advantage from this 

 double point of view ; for, after its First Law has been 

 established, that heat and work are equivalent and inter- 

 changeable, the rate of exchange being fixed by the 

 mechanical equivalent of Joule and Hirn, when we come 

 to the Second Law, named after Carnot, we are compelled 

 to secure conviction of its truth by an appeal to the 

 arguments of analogy and metaphysics. 



Hirn spent the last years of his life at Colmar, in the 

 society of a few congenial friends, much interested in 

 metaphysics and meteorology, but cut off from his native 

 France by international strained relations. 



In this age of practical Thermodynamics his work will 

 not be lost sight of; but we are still far from a complete 

 reconciliation of the abstract theories of the books and 

 the observed realities of practice. 



A. G. Greenhill. 



NOTES. 

 The Croonian Lecture, which will be delivered before the 

 Royal Society on February 27 by Prof. Marshall Ward, will 

 be on " The Relations between Host and Parasite in certain 

 Epidemic Diseases of Plants." 



On Thursday last the Astronomer- Royal was elected by b&Hot 

 to fill the place of the late Father Perry upon the Council of 

 the Royal Society. 



Meteorologists will be sorry to hear of the death of Prof. 

 C. H. D. Buys-Ballot, on Sunday last. He was born in 181 7, 

 and had been Director of the Meteorological Institute, Utrecht, 

 for more than 30 years. 



Dr. David Sharp, the eminent entomologist, and late 

 President of the Entomological Society of London, has accepted 

 the appointment of Curator in Zoology in the Museum of the 

 University of Cambridge, rendered vacant by the resignation of 

 the Rev. A. H. Cooke, whose labours on the Macandrew Col- 

 lection in that Museum have been so highly appreciated by 

 conchologists. 



Sir WiixiAM Gull, F.R.S., was so distinguished a physi- 

 cian, and his name was so well known, that the tidings of his death 

 excited a widespread feeling of regret. He died on Wednesday, 

 January 29, from paralysis, and the funeral took place on 

 Monday at the churchyard of Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex. He 

 was in his seventy-fifth year. 



We regret to hear of the death of Dr. L. Taczanowski, which 

 took place at Warsaw on January li. He is best known for his 

 standard work " Ornithologie du Perou," but his contributions 

 to the ornithology of Poland, "of Siberia, and the Corea have also 

 been numerous and important. 



German papers announce the death of Otto Rosenberger, the 

 well-known astronomer. He was born in Courland in 1810, 

 and in 1831 was appointed to the charge of the Observatory at 

 Halle, and at the same time was made Professor of Mathematics. 

 This position he held during the rest of his long life. Rosen- 

 berger's name is known chiefly in association with his work 

 relating to Halley's comet. 



Another death which we are sorry to have to record is 

 that of Prof. Neumayr, the geologist, of Vienna. He was 

 only a little over forty years of age, and his death is a great 

 loss. 



On February 15, Lord Rayleigh will begin a course of seven 

 lectures at the Royal Institution. The subject will be electricity 

 and magnetism. 



The Council of the Society of Arts have arranged that a 

 course of lectures on " The Atmosphere " shall be given by 

 Prof. V. Lewes on the following Saturday afternoons : March 

 8, 15, 22, and 29, at 3 o'clock. 



Mr. B. a. Gould, Cambridge, Mass., has been appointed 

 President of the American Metrological Society for the present 

 year. Among the members of the Council of this Society are 

 Messrs. Cleveland Abbe, H. A. Newton, Simon Newcomb, 

 and S. P. Langley. The Society was founded in 1873, and its 

 objects are to improve existing systems of weights, measures, 

 and moneys, and to bring them into relations of simple com- 

 mensurability with each other ; to secure the universal adoption 

 of common units of measure for quantities in physical observa- 

 tion or investigation, for which ordinary systems of metrology 

 do not provide ; to secure uniform usage as to standard points of 

 reference, or physical conditions to which observations must be 

 reduced for purposes of comparison ; and to secure the use of 

 the decimal system for denominations of weight, measure, and 

 money derived from unit-bases, not necessarily excluding for 

 practical purposes binary or other convenient divisions. 



The Committee of the Cambridge University Antiquarian 

 Society in their fifth Annual Report state that, since the opening 

 of the Archaeological Museum in 1884, over 2800 objects and 

 900 books have been added to the collection. The most im- 

 portant additions have been made in the ethnological department, 

 including (during the past year) General Scratchley's collections 

 from New Guinea, a series of 500 specimens of implements 

 and ornaments from the West Indies, presented by Colonel 

 Fielden, who has also given many rare stone implements and 

 weapons collected in South Africa, and a series of 70 specimens 

 of dresses, weapons, &c., from the Solomon and Banks Islands 

 and from Santa Cruz, presented by Bishop Selwyn. The Curator, 

 Baron von Hiigel, reports that during the long vacation he 

 excavated with success a Roman refuse-pit and a burial-place at 

 the eastern side of Alderney. The digging is to be resumed. 



The seventh annual dinner of the Association of Public 

 Sanitary Inspectors was held on Saturday evening at the First 

 Avenue Hotel, Holborn. Dr. B. W. Richardson presided, and 

 proposed the toast of "The Association and its President, Sir 

 Edwin Chadwick." The duties of the Association, he said, 

 were to teach and protect its members, and all sanitary inspec- 

 tors ought to belong to it. He hoped that the apathy at present 

 shown by too many of them would not last any longer. 



Dr. a. N. Berlese, of Padua, has been appointed Professor 

 of Botany to the Royal Lyceum at Ascoli-Piceno ; and Dr. J. 

 H. Wakker, of Utrecht, Professor of Botany at the dairy school 

 at Oudshoorn, Holland. 



The Botanical Gazette published at Crawfordsville, Indiana, 

 gives some particulars of one of the most magnificent bequests 

 ever made for scientific purposes, that of the late Mr. H. Shaw 

 for the endowment of the Botanic Garden and School of Botany 

 at St. Louis, Missouri, amounting to not less than between three 

 and five million dollars. The trustees have determined to apply 

 the income to the maintenance and increase in the scientific 

 usefulness of the Botanic Garden ; to provide fire-proof quarters 

 for the invaluable herbarium of the late Dr. George Engelmann, 

 and to supply means for its enlargement ; to secure a botanical 

 museum ; and to gradually acquire and utilize facilities for 

 research in vegetable physiology and histology, the diseases 

 and injuries of plants, and other branches of botany and horti- 

 culture. To aid in the carrying out of this last purpose, 

 travelling botanical scholarships have been established. The 

 present very able director of the Botanic Garden is Dr. William 

 Trelease. 



