Feb. 27, 1890] 



NA TURE 



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ceeded to his B.A. degree in the spring commencements 

 of 1835, taking the LL.D. in the summer of 1868. In 

 1834 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy 

 to the Dublin (now the Royal Dublin) Society, and he at 

 this period devoted himself with great ardour to original 

 research in the field of chemistry, as the long list of his 

 papers in the Royal Society's list will testify. He studied 

 in Germany during his summer vacations under both 

 Liebig and Alitscherlich, and passed some time under 

 Dumas at Paris. In 1831 he was elected a member of 

 the Royal Irish Academy ; he was Secretary of its 

 Council from 1842 to 1846, and was elected President in 

 1877. In 1849 he was made a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society : shortly afterwards he was selected by the 

 Government as head of the Museum of Irish Industry, 

 which post he held until appointed the first President of 

 the Queen's College, Cork. He was a Fellow of the King 

 and Queen's College of Physicians, Ireland, a Com- 

 missioner of National Education, and a Justice of the 

 Peace, Ireland. 



After over twenty-two years of hard and earnest work 

 in the development of the Cork College, he resigned the 

 presidency in 1873, and took up his residence in Dublin, 

 where he died on Sunday, the i6th instant. 



Sir Robert Kane, in addition to the very numerous 

 papers above referred to, was the author of a large and 

 most important work on the industrial resources of Ire- 

 land, a theme which he handled in a painstaking and 

 judicious manner. In his very early days he had acquired 

 a practical knowledge of the value and importance of 

 many of the neglected industries of Ireland, and from his 

 chair in the lecture theatre of the Dublin Society, he 

 often called attention to this subject, one which through- 

 out his long life he never lost sight of. It is not without 

 interest to note the fact that much is owing to the Royal 

 Dublin Society for the ready help afforded to their two 

 Professors, now both deceased. Sir Richard Griffith and 

 Sir Robert Kane, in their efforts to advance the industries 

 of Ireland. 



In 1841, Sir R. Kane was awarded by the Royal 

 Society a Royal Medal for his researches into the chemical 

 history of archil and Htmus ; and in 1843, the Cunningham 

 Gold Medal of the Royal Irish Academy, for his researches 

 on the nature and constitution of the compounds of am- 

 monia. These memoirs will be found published in the 

 Transactions of the respective institutions. 



In recognition of his scientific labours, and on his 

 appointment to the presidency of Queen's College, Cork, 

 he received knighthood in 1846 from Lord Heytesbury, 

 the then Irish Viceroy. On the passing of Mr. Fawcett's 

 Act in 1875, which altered the constitution of the Uni- 

 versity of Dublin, and appointed a Council, Sir Robert 

 Kane was elected one of the first Roman Catholic 

 members of that body, a post which he held until 1885, 

 when the late Dr. Maguire was elected. 



In this brief obituary notice, it is not necessary to 

 attempt any analysis of the scientific work accomplished 

 by Sir Robert Kane, but it is impossible to conclude it 

 without a tribute of respect and affection to the many 

 high and excellent qualities of the man, who in the 

 various positions of Professor, head of a young educa- 

 tional establishment, or President of an Academy, won 

 equally, from all with whom he came in contact, regard 

 and esteem. 



NOTES. 



Trof. Schuster has been elected Bakerian Lecturer for the 

 present year. The lecture is to be delivered in the apartments 

 of the Royal Society on March 20, 



Last week Mr. Justice Kay complained that judicial time is 

 sadly wasted over patent cases, and he declared that the smaller 



and more petty the dispute the more time seemed to he 

 expended. Now, as we have pointed out more than once, 

 enormous waste of time is inevitable where the suitors in patent 

 cases, especially in cases which involve scientific details, as most 

 of them do at the present day, have to appear before a judge who 

 is not himself a man of science. They have to begin by teach- 

 ing his lordship the rudiments of that branch of science of which 

 the disputed patent is a practical application. That our judges 

 are painstaking, rapid, and acute pupils may readily be granted, 

 but still time has to be consumed in the task, and there is some- 

 thing pathetic in the spectacle of an able and conscientious 

 lawyer wrestling with the problems presented by the highest 

 applications of, say, electricity or chemistry to industry, while 

 scientific witnesses are contradicting each other all round him. 

 We fear that judicial time will continue to be wasted so long as 

 judges without a knowledge of science are left unaided to decide 

 questions which demand long scientific training. There can be 

 no change for the better until judges have sitting on the 

 bench with them scientific assessors as they have now nava 

 assessors, or until scientific cases are passed on as a matter of 

 course to qualified referees as cases involving accounts are. It 

 requires at least as much special training, and is as far outside 

 the experience of ordinary lawyers, to settle a scientific case, as 

 to decide whether a ship has been properly navigated, or whether 

 a set of accounts tell in favour of a plaintiff or a defendant. 



On Tuesday evening there was some discussion in the House 

 of Commons as to the supplemental vote of ;^ic>o,ooo for the 

 purchase of a site at South Kensington for a suitable building 

 for the housing of the science collections. Mr. Jackson ex- 

 plained that the extent of the land was four and a half acres, 

 and the sum at which it was valued included a building for 

 which the Government now paid a rent of ;^ 1 500 a year, which 

 would, of course, fall out of the Estimates when the Government 

 became the proprietors of the land in question. No commission 

 was to be paid to any person on either side in respect of this 

 transaction, which was a direct one between the Commissioners 

 of the 185 1 Exhibition and the Government. Sir H. Roscoe 

 thought it desirable that the money should be voted at once. 

 The plot of land was the only one ever likely to be available for 

 the purpose. Mr. Mundella said that as he had been pressing 

 upon Governments for the last ten years the necessity for them 

 to acquire this laud, he thought that he ought to say something 

 in defence of what the Government had done in asking for 

 the sum on the present occasion. He did not approve 

 of supplementary estimates, and he thought that no one 

 would be more glad to get rid of them than the 

 Government themselves. This question, however, had been 

 pressing for the last ten years, because for the whole of that 

 period the most valuable national science collections, such as no 

 other country in the world possessed, had been housed in the 

 most disgraceful manner. The Treasury had all along resisted 

 the demands made upon them to sanction the expenditure neces- 

 sary for the erection of a Museum to hold these collections, not- 

 withstanding that three departmental committees had reported 

 in favour of that expenditure. The only question, therefore, 

 was whether the Government were getting good value for their 

 money in making this purchase. He knew something of the 

 value of the land, which had been fixed by eminent surveyors at 

 ;^ 200, 000, while the Government were going to get it for 

 ;^ 70,000. The money which the Commissioners would receive 

 in respect of the sale would be appropriated to providing 

 scholarships for the promotion of technical education to the 

 amount of ;!^5000 per annum, which were to be open to all 

 schools of every denomination in the United Kingdom. He 

 therefore urged the Committee to agree to this proposal at 

 once. Sir L. Playfair explained that the Commissioners 

 of the Exhibition of 1851 had formed their estimate of 



