412 



NATURE 



[November 24, 192 1 



Obituary. 



Sir Charles Douglas Fox. 

 /"^NE of the last representatives of a gcnera- 

 ^-^ tion of distinguished engineers, Sir Douglas 

 Fox died on November 13 in his eighty-second 

 year. His father. Sir Charles Fox, had assisted 

 Ericsson in building the "Novelty," one of the 

 three locomotives which competed at Rainhill in 

 1829, and as a member of the firm of Messrs. 

 Fox, Henderson and Co. constructed the Crystal 

 Palace in Hyde Park in 1850-51. 



Articled to his father at the age of seventeen, 

 Sir Douglas Fox acted as resident engineer of the 

 AVitney and Ramsey railways. In 1863 he was 

 taken into his father's firm, which still subsists 

 with the title Sir Douglas Fox and Partners. In 

 this relation he was responsible for the construc- 

 tion of the London, Chatham, and Dover, and 

 the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railways. 

 He became consulting engineer to the Queensland 

 Government Railways and to various railways in 

 South Africa. Amongst the latter may be men- 

 tioned the Beira Port and Railway, and the Rho- 

 desian railways, and the remarkable bridge over 

 the Zambesi river at the gorge below the Victoria 

 Falls. With Mr. Brunlees Sir Douglas was engi- 

 neer for the Mersey Tunnel, and with Mr. Great- 

 head for the Liverpool overhead railway, a new 

 type of construction in this country. In the Argen- 

 tine he was consulting engineer for several rail- 

 ways. When the Manchester, Sheffield and Lin- 

 colnshire Railway became the Great Central, Sir 

 Douglas's firm was responsible for the works on 

 the Southern and Metropolitan divisions and the 

 Marylebone terminus. Sir Douglas was interested 

 in the London traffic problem, and constructed the 

 Great Northern and Hampstead tube railways. 

 His firm are consulting engineers to the Channel 

 Tunnel Co. 



Sir Douglas Fox was president of the Institu,- 

 tion of Civil Engineers in 1 899-1 900, and received 

 the large party of American civil and mechanical 

 engineers who came to England in that year. He 

 contributed papers .to that institution (in collabora- 

 tion with his brother. Sir Francis Fox, and some 

 of his chief assistants), and took part in important 

 discussions on excavating machines ; long-span 

 bridges ; broad-gauge, narrow-gauge, and light 

 railways ; Indian tramways ; break of gauge ; re- 

 sistances on railways ; and other subjects. 



Sir Douglas Fox took an active part in the 

 foundation of the British Standards Committee 

 (now Association). This is doing an immense 

 work in preventing waste of effort and facilitating 

 production in engineering manufacture. 



w. c. u. 



Prof. A. S. Delepine. 

 Prof. Auguste Sheridan Delepine, whose death 

 was announced in Nature last week, was edu- 

 cated in Paris, Geneva, and Lausanne, graduating 

 in science at the last-named. He then proceeded 

 NO. 2717, VOL. 108] 



to the University of Edinburgh, where he pursued 

 medical studies, graduating with first-class 



; honours in 1882. His interest from the first 



1 centred in pathology and in the then new science 

 of bacteriology, and after acting for a time as 



j demonstrator in these subjects at Edinburgh he 

 settled in London, and soon afterwards was ap- 

 pointed demonstrator of pathology and curator of 

 the museum at St. George's Hospital, where he 

 did excellent work. In 1891 Delepine was ap- 

 pointed the first Procter professor of pathology 

 and morbid anatomy in the University of Man- 

 chester. Here he organised the pathological de- 

 partment and designed the new buildings of the 

 department. During his tenure of this professor- 

 ship he carried out many investigations of a public 

 health character, so that when, twenty years later, 

 a department of pubhc health was established at 

 the University, he resigned the chair of pathology 

 and was appointed to the new chair of public 

 health and bacteriology and to be director of the 

 public health laboratory, posts which he retained 

 until his death. 



At the laboratory Prof. Delepine gave instruc- 

 tion to a large number of graduates proceeding 

 to the diploma of pubHc health, some of whom 

 assisted in conducting research work, while others 

 surveyed the health of the district by inquiries and 

 reports upon the incidence and spread of prevent- 

 able disease. In this way close co-operation was 

 maintained between the laboratory and the public 

 health department of the city. 



Among his researches may be mentioned his 

 report to the Local Government Board in 1908 on 

 the prevalence and sources of tubercle bacilli in 

 milk, the connection between summer diarrhoea 

 and food-poisoning (1902), and his report to the 

 Manchester City Council on the conditions neces- 

 sary to obtain a clean milk supplv (191 8). 



During the war Prof. Delepine did good work in 

 a consultative capacity as sanatarian and bacterio- 

 logist, and in particular investigated the nature 

 and prevention of trench-foot, a malady which in 

 the early days of the war was costing the Allied 

 Armies many lives and an enormous amount of 

 disability, and which he showed was due to a com- 

 bination of damp, cold, and constriction. 



Prof. Delepine was a warm and genial friend, 

 and his place will be hard to fill. The tragedy of 

 the loss of his only son during the war doubtless 

 conduced to the ill-health from which he suffered 



of late. R. T. H. 



M. Henry Bourget. 



We regret to announce the death last Septem- 

 ber, after a long illness, at the age of fifty-seven 

 years, of M. Henry Bourget, director of the Mar- 

 seilles Observatory. After taking his degree, 

 in which he gained distinction both for 

 literary and mathematical studies, M. Bourget 



