October 13, 192 1] 



NATURE 



221 



Obituary. 



WE regret to see the announcement of the 

 death, at the ripe age of eighty-three, of 

 Mr. John Thomson, a well-known pioneer in the 

 application of photography to the furtherance of 

 geographical knowledge at a time when the photo- 

 grapher depended for success on his own skill 

 rather than on the improved appliances which 

 have since put the art within the reach of every 

 amateur traveller. Mr. Thomson started for the 

 Far East in 1862, and, after residing for a time 

 at Singapore, in 1865 undertook the first of his 

 more ambitious journeys, which took him to the 

 interior of Cambodia, where he secured excellent 

 pictures of the wonderful antiquarian remains 

 lying buried in the tropical jungles, particularly at 

 Xakhon Wat. Under the title "The Antiquities 

 of Cambodia " he pubUshed in 1867 a selection 

 of these photographs in book form, with descrip- 

 tive letterpress, thus making those imposing ruins 

 first generally known to the British public. Later 

 he extended his wanderings to China, both visit- 

 ing many of the ports and making trips into the 

 interior, one of which took him up the Yangtse 

 beyond the gorges of its middle course. In 1873 

 he issued an extensive series of photographs, illus- 

 trative of China and its people, in four folio 

 volumes. Two years later he published a general 

 narrative of his "ten years' travels, adventures, 

 and residence " in the Far East. Once more, in 

 1878, he made use of his camera for the illustra- 

 tion of a country more or less off the beaten track 

 -—this time the island of Cyprus — on which he 

 issued an illustrated work in two quarto volumes 

 in 1879. When, about this time, a scheme of 

 instruction for intending travellers was set on foot 

 by the Royal Geographical Society, Mr. Thom- 

 son, who had become a fellow of the society in 

 1866, was put in charge of the instruction in 

 photography, for their proficiency in which many 

 travellers have been largely indebted to his valu- 

 able hints. At his studio in Bond Street he had 

 the privilege of taking the portraits of manv dis- 

 tinguished modern travellers, and he extended his 

 collection to those of earlier times by photographic 

 reproductions of existing portraits. 



We announce with regret the death of Dr. 

 John Ward Cousins on September 22 at the age 

 of eighty-seven years. Dr. Cousins received his 

 medical training at St. Thomas's Hospital, and 

 proceeded to the degree of M.D. (Lond.) in 1859. 

 In the following year he became a fellow bv exam- 

 ination of the Royal College of Surgeons, and 

 after a short time at hospital practice devoted 

 himself entirely to surgery. In connection with 

 this work he quickly made himself prominent by 

 the numerous inventions and improvements in 

 surgical instruments which he devised. His in- 

 genuity received its reward in 1884, when he was 

 awarded a prize by the British Medical Associa- 

 NO. 271 1, VOL. 108] 



tion and a gold medal by the International Inven- 

 tions Exhibition. His administrative power.- 

 found scope from 1893—95, when he was 

 president of the Central Council of the British 

 Medical Association, and in 1899, on the occasion 

 of the Portsmouth meeting of the association, 

 Dr. Cousins was elected president. 



Sir James Digges La Touche, whose death at 

 Dublin is announced, belonged to an old Anglo- 

 French family, and was a member of the Indian 

 Civil Service for forty years before his retirement 

 in 1907. At the close of a successful official career 

 he was appointed to the post of Lieutenant- 

 Governor of the United Provinces of Agra and 

 •Oudh, and to a seat on the Council of India. He 

 was a typical civilian of the older school, hard- 

 working and devoted to the interests of the Indian 

 people, but lacking that breadth of view which 

 would have qualified him to meet the new political 

 conditions which arose after his retirement from 

 the Service. Though he knew the people inti- 

 mately, he possessed little imagination or literary 

 skill, and he published nothing except a gazetteer 

 of the Province of Ajmir. His memory will be 

 preserved by his educational policy — the improve- 

 ment of the teachers' position, the provision of 

 improved school buildings and boarding-houses, 

 and, finally, by his foundation of the Medical Col- 

 lege at Lucknow, which was the crown of his 

 official labours. 



The death is announced of Prof. Glstav Mann 

 at Tampico, U.S.A., on July 18, at the age of 

 fifty-seven years. Prof. Mann's vivid personality 

 will be best remembered by Oxford physiology 

 students of twenty years ago, and his translation 

 to the chair of physiology at the Tulane Univer- 

 sity-, New Orleans, was a grievous loss to the 

 progress of histology in this country. As a master 

 of the technique of his subject he was probably 

 unsurpassed, and his breadth of view and lively 

 imagination gave his instruction an unusual 

 interest and significance, carried on by his pupil 

 and successor at Oxford. S. G. Scott, until the 

 latter 's premature death. Too volatile to be largely 

 productive in the ordinary way, his " Physiological 

 Histolog}' " is often the most thumbed book in 

 laboratories where section cutting is taken seri- 

 ously, and many grateful pupils will lament a real 

 master whose determination to get himself dis- 

 liked led him into so manv troublous adventures. 



We much regret to announce the death, in his 

 eighty-third year, of Prof. Julius von Hann, 

 for many years director of the Zentralanstalt fiir 

 Meteorologie und Geodynamik, Vienna. 



