3H 



NATURE 



by exploding shells or otherwise agitating the air. 

 The action is compared with that of a trigger, a 

 large amount of energy being released by a small 

 effort. An essential feature is, however, over- 

 looked. For a trigger to work, there must be a 



[November 3, 1921 



large supply of potential energy only awaiting re- 

 lease. Precipitation from partially saturated air 

 would require an actual supply of new energy. 

 Therefore a trigger action cannot produce pre- 

 cipitation. 



Obituary. 



Prof. Ch. Fran^ois-Fraxck. 



CH. FRANgOIS-FRANCK, the distinguished 

 physiologist, and officer of the Legion of 

 Honour, who passed away in September last at the 

 age of seventy, was the successor, at the College 

 de France, of Marey, whose assistant he had been 

 from the time of his arrival from Bordeaux to 

 work for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. The 

 acquaintance was most fortunate. Marey, always 

 in more or less delicate health and naturally desir- 

 ous of saving his strength, seldom delivered the 

 annual course of forty lectures which necessitated 

 so much original work^ — for the lectures of the 

 College de France are not given for the instruc- 

 tion of students in preparation for examinations, 

 but to further the advancement of science. Marey 

 continued in his own laboratory that admirable 

 series of experiments on the flight of birds, the 

 motions of the horse and man, and the compila- 

 tion of his book, " La Methode Graphique," of 

 universal renown. 



Fran9ois-Franck was therefore appointed by 

 Marey to lecture in his stead, and thus he gained 

 the opportunity of doing original work for the 

 foundation of the lectures. His subject was the 

 physiology of the circulation in general and of 

 the heart and lungs in particular ; and for more 

 than thirty years Fran9ois-Franck delivered the 

 course of lectures annually. The number of ex- 

 periments he made must have been enormous, for 

 all the lectures were illustrated on the board in 

 the room by means of most ingenious apparatus 

 and registering instruments. The talent for 

 exposition he possessed and the extreme pre- 

 cision of the details and results he showed were 

 never forgotten by those who attended the 

 lectures. 



It was in another department of physiology 

 that Francois-Franck accomplished his magnum 

 ol:)iis, "La Physiologic du Cerveau," published 

 in 1887. He was on intimate terms of friendship 

 with Pitres, afterwards the distinguished professor 

 . of neurology at Bordeaux, who, coming with 

 Francois-Franck to take the degree of Doctor of 

 Medicine in Paris, had gone direct to Charcot at 

 the Salpetri^re. At that time Charcot was work- 

 ing very hard to establish what he called 

 " la belle doctrine " of cerebral localisation, and 

 Pitres became his most enthusiastic and useful 

 assistant. He engaged the interest of Frangols- 

 Franck in this field of work, and they began a 

 series of experiments which ultimately was con- 

 tinued and terminated by Francois-Franck alone. 

 The work is a remarkable production, as physiolo- 

 gists know, both for the originality of treat- 



NO. 2714, VOL. 108] 



ment and the extreme precision of the experi- 

 ments. Francois-Franck also published a number 

 of articles in the "Dictionnaire des Sciences Medi- 

 cales " of Dechambre that are models of lucidity 

 and sound learning, on the sympathetic nervous 

 system, besides more than eighty papers or notes 

 in the " Comptes rendus de la Society de Bio- 

 logic," the meetings of which he seldom missed; 

 he had also been a vice-president of this society. 

 The reputation he had gained amongst physicians 

 was such that he had become a much-sought con- 

 sultant for heart and circulatory disorders and 

 diseases, although he was never connected with 

 any hospital. 



Fran9ois-Franck lived in retirement for the last 

 few years owing to failing health, and was much 

 missed by his scientific friends. Some twenty 

 years ago the Academy of Medicine had most 

 justly elected him to take a seat near the masters, 

 Marey and Channeau, for he was the one man in 

 France who was able to demonstrate in detail the 

 great work of these physiologists who established 

 the unalterable foundations of our knowledge 

 of the functions of the heart and the circulatory 

 organs. 



E. J. Bevan. 



Mr. Edward John Bevan, who died suddenly 

 on October 17, in his sixty-fifth year, was edu- 

 cated at private schools, and at the age of seven- 

 teen entered the laboratory of the Runcorn Soap 

 and Alkali Co. Thence, in 1877,. he proceeded to 

 Owens College, Manchester, where he met Mr. 

 C. F. Cross, and the student friendship continued 

 after the college career, each entering upon re- 

 search work in connection with cellulose indus- 

 tries, upon which they kept up an active corre- 

 spondence and a certain amount of collaboration. 

 This resulted in a definite joint adventure, and tlie 

 work was continued at the Jodrell Laboratory, 

 Kew Gardens. 



The publication of results in the Journal of the 

 Chemical Society (1882-83) led to a research ap- 

 pointment with the firm of Thomson, Bonar and 

 Co., actively engaged in the pioneer development 

 of the " Ekman " wood pulp (cellulose) process ; 

 the work was undertaken under the formal part- 

 nership "Cross and Bevan." They were next en- 

 gaged in technical research work in connection 

 with textile bleaching processes — the "Thomp- 

 son " process, the " Hermite " electrolytic process 

 — and as a necessary incident prosecuted investi- 

 gations of the alkali-boiling treatments by which 



