i6o 



NATURE 



[September 29, 1921 



Wilkins, naturalist; Mr. J. C. Bee-Mason, photo- 

 grapher and kinematographer ; Mr. G. Smith, 

 second engineer; Mr. J, Deil, electrician; Mr. 

 Harold Watts, wireless operator; D. Ericson, 

 gunner; C. J. Green, cook; Boy Scouts N. E. 

 Mooney and J. W. Marr. The members of the 

 scientific staff enumerated above will also work 



the ship, and on leaving Plymouth two additional 

 members were shipped for the first part of the 

 voyage in the persons of Mr. Gerald Lysaght and 

 Mr. McLeod. Of the complete ship's company 

 of twenty all told, no fewer than five accompanied 

 Sir Ernest Shackleton on his Antarctic expedition 

 in the Endurance in 191 4. 



Obit 



Dr. Walter George Ridewood. 

 "TJR. WALTER G. RIDEWOOD, whose sudden 

 -*-^ death occurred on September 19, was born 

 in London on February I, 1867. He was educated 

 at Enfield Grammar School, of which his father, 

 Mr. W. S. Rhdewood, was headmaster for many 

 years. He was at the Royal College of Science 

 from 1883 to 1887, becoming an associate and 

 taking first classes in both biology and geology. 

 In 1888 he took his B.Sc. degree in the University 

 of London, with first-class honours in zoology, 

 and in 1897 he became D.Sc. In the meantime, 

 in May, 1888, he had been appointed assistant 

 to the director at the British Museum (Natural 

 History), where he was employed in making the 

 wonderful series of anatomical preparations ex- 

 hibited in the Central Hall of that institution. In 

 this kind of work Dr. Ridewood was without rival, 

 his extraordinary manual skill and technical know- 

 ledge being supplemented by a thorough grasp 

 of the principles of morphology and a close 

 acquaintance with its literature. He also organ- 

 ised and prepared several special exhibitions, 

 among the most important being the Darwin 

 Centenary Exhibition and the series of prepara- 

 tions illustrating the different modes of flight in 

 the animal kingdom. This series is still on ex- 

 hibition, and is an excellent example of his work. 

 For these and other exhibitions he prepared valu- 

 able illustrated guide-books. He severed his con- 

 nection with the British Museum in 1917, after 

 twenty-nine years' service, his resignation being 

 greatly regretted by his colleagues. 



In addition to, and for the most part relating 

 to, his work in the museum Dr. Ridewood pub- 

 lished a long series of valuable memoirs, mostly 

 dealing with the comparative anatomy of the 

 Vertebrata. Only some of the more important of 

 these can be referred to : " On the Cranial Osteo- 

 logy of the Teleostei " (five papers in the Proc. 

 Zool. Soc, 1904, and in the Journ. Linn. Soc, 

 vol. 29 : these were intended to be used in a 

 general work on the osteology of fishes, never 

 published); "On the Air-bladder and Ear in the 

 British Clupeoid Fishes " {Journ. of Anatomy, 



uary. 



vol. 26); "On the Structure and Development of 

 the Hy^branchial Skeleton and Larynx in Xeno- 

 pus and Pipa " (Journ. Linn. Soc, vol. 26: this 

 was his thesis for the D.Sc. degree). He also 

 wrote on a new species of Cephalodiscus from the 

 Cape Seas, and on the Pterobranchia of the Ant- 

 arctic (Discovery, Scotia, Australasian, and 

 Terra Nova Expeditions). His chief paper re- 

 lating to the Invertebrata is the "Monograph on 

 the Gills of the Lamellibranchia " (Phil. Trans., 

 1903); this he illustrated by a series of models 

 in the British Museum. His last published work 

 is an important memoir, "On the Calcification of 

 the Vertebral Centra in the Sharks and Rays" 

 (Phil. Trans., 192 1). In this he was able to show 

 that Hasse in his great work on the same subject 

 had "overestimated the importance of the disposi- 

 tion of the calcified masses and laminae in the 

 centrum as a taxonomic feature." Another 

 completed paper on the development of the 

 skull in the whalebone whales remains to be 

 published. 



Dr. Ridewood was a man of a singularly quiet 

 and retiring disposition, which perhaps in some 

 cases led to his real character being misunderstood. 

 Actually his reticence was a mask covering a 

 genuine kindliness which often showed itself in 

 the great amount of trouble he would take to help 

 anyone who asked for his advice and assistance. 

 During the war he drove a Red Cross ambulance 

 in France for nearly two years. 



Apart from zoology, Dr. Ridewood 's chief in- 

 terest was in music. He was' an extremelv good 

 performer on the flute, and for many years was 

 a member of various amateur orchestras, espe- 

 cially of the Strolling Players. He made a 

 thoroughly scientific study of his favourite instru- 

 ment, but does not seem to have published any- 

 thing on the subject. 



He was for twenty-three years lecturer on bio- 

 logy in the Medical School of St. Mar\-'s Hos- 

 pital, London, and was reader in zoology in the 

 University of London. He was also a life member 

 of the Linnean, Geological, Zoological, and 

 Malacological Societies. C. W. A. 



Notes. 



We learn from the Times that Sir Thomas Holland, 

 who recently resigned his post as Minister of Indus- 

 tries in the Governor-General of India's Council as a 

 protest against the suspension of prosecution in con- 

 nection with alleged corrupt practices in the supply 

 of munitions, left Simla on Friday last for England. 

 NO. 2709, VOL. 108] 



The whole facts of the case are not before us, but so 

 far as we can make them out Sir Thomas Holland 

 has been sacrificed to political expediency. In a 

 recent speech the Viceroy, Lord Reading, suggested] 

 that the trouble would not have arisen had the postj 

 of Minister of Industries been filled by a lawyer! 



