December 29, 192 1] 



NATURE 



589 



The Chemical Age announces that the trustees of 

 the Ferguson Bequest Fund have unanimously ap- 

 proved the appointment of Mr. Henry Hyman to be 

 the first Ferguson fellow for research in applied 

 chemistry. The fellowship is of the annual value of 

 200/. for two years, and the research may be carried 

 out at Glasgow University, the Royal Technical Col- 

 lege, or elsewhere, as the fellowship committee may 

 direct. 



The proprietors of the Practical E)igineer, by ar- 

 rangement with the International Correspondence 

 Schools, are offering a scholarship in mechanical 

 engineering of the value of 30L The scholarship, 

 which is open to subscribers to that periodical of all 

 ages and both sexes, will be awarded to the candi- 

 date submitting the best essay on "Why I would 

 Choose an Engineering Career To-day." Full par- 

 ticulars may be obtained from the Practical Engineer 

 offices, 8 Breams Buildings, Chancery Lane, E.G. 4. 



The British Federation of University Women is 

 giving practical expression to its belief in international 

 ideals by the offer of a travelling fellowship, value 

 300/., which is open to members of all national federa- 

 tions of university women forming branches of the 

 International Federation. The fellowship will be ten- 

 able for the academic year 1922-23, the main condition 

 being that research or post-graduate study shall be 

 undertaken in some country other than that in which 

 the fellow has received her previous education or 

 habitually resides. Full particulars can be obtained 

 from the Secretary, British Federation of University 

 Women, 73 Avenue Chambers, Vernon Place, W.C.i. 



Calendar of Scientific Pioneers. 



December 29, 1731. Brook Taylor died.— Educated 



at Cambridge and a man of means, Taylor was 

 devoted to the arts and sciences, served as secretary 

 to the Royal Society, and in 17 15 published his 

 " Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa," a 

 treatise dealing with the calculus of finite differences 

 and containing the important theorem which bears 

 his name. 



December 30, 1644. Johann Baotista van Helmont 

 died. — A student of medicine at Louvain, van Hel- 

 mont settled on his estate near Brussels. Though 

 imbued with the superstitions of his dav, he was a 

 careful experimenter, and is remembered for his earlv 

 researches on various gaseous substances. 



December 30, 1691. Robert Boyle died.— The son 

 of an Irish earl, Boyle devoted his life to the advance- 

 ment of science and the spread of religion. He made 

 numerous additions to physics and chemistrv, and his 

 name is perpetuated by the well-known Bovle's law, 

 discovered by him in 1662 and independentlv bv 

 Mariotte about 1676. 



December 31, 1719. John Flamsteed died.— The 

 first of a long line of distinguished Astronomers- 

 Royal, Flamsteed began his observations at Green- 

 wich on October 29, 1676, the erecrion of the observa- 

 tory being directly due to the need for improving the 

 means of finding the longitude at sea. Flamsteed in- 

 vestigated the fundamental points of astronomv and 

 formed a catalogue of 2935 stars, but his " Historia 

 Coe'estis " was not published in its complete form 

 until 1725. 



December 31, 1868. James David Forbes died.— 



For twenty-seven years professor or natural philosophv 

 at Edinburgh, Forbes was best known for his re'- 

 searches on heat and on glaciers. Like Brewster, he 

 was one of the founders of the British Association. 



E. C. S. 



NO. 2722, VOL. 108] 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 

 Geological Society, December 7. — Mr. R. D. Old- 

 ham, president, in the chair.— S. S. Buckman : 

 Jurassic chronology : II., Preliminary studies. Cer- 

 tain Jurassic strata hear Eype's Mouth (Dorset) : the 

 junction-bed of Watton Cliff and associated rocks. A 

 detailed section is recorded of a white lithographic 

 bed in Watton Cliff which shows faunal inversion. 

 The dating of this bed is discussed, and a theory of 

 stratal repetition and coalescence is discussed. Its 

 main date is taken to be Yeovilian, Hammatoceras 

 hemera. The white lithographic bed of Burton Brad- 

 stock is cited as evidence of stratal repetition, and a 

 theory as to its deposition and partial destruction is 

 put forward. Both beds are cited as evidence of 

 Alpenkalk conditions prevailing in western Europe at 

 two well-separated Jurassic dates, both of them 

 earlier than the- times of Alpenkalk deposits in cen- 

 tral and eastern Europe. A new species of rhyncho- 

 nellid from a deposit at Thorncombe Beacon is 

 described. — J. Stansfield : Banded precipitates of 

 vivianite in a Saskatchewan fireclay. The pale grev 

 Tertiary fireclay worked for firebricks contains bluish- 

 black patches, the central portions of which are deeplv 

 coloured and usually surrounded bv a uniformlv 

 stained area or by several concentric stained layers of 

 varying tint. The colour is due to an amorphous 

 variety of vivianite, formed presumablv by precipita- 

 tion brought about by iron-solutions reacting on solu- 

 tions of phosphates of organic origin, such solutions 

 being brought together by diffusion through the col- 

 loidal clay. The spacing of the vivianite-bands is 

 irregular, and appears to follow no known law. 



Optical Society, December 8.— Mr. R. S. Whipple, 

 president, in the chair. — L. C. Martin : The phvsical 

 meaning of spherical aberration. Experimental deter- 

 mination of the intensity of light near the focus of a 

 lens system shows that the "spurious disc" appear- 

 ance persisted at the best visual focus, even with 

 large amounts of aberration. Increasing the aberra- 

 tions draws light from the central concentration and 

 scatters it in the surrounding field ; from measure- 

 ments of the loss the necessity of restricting the phase 

 residuals to within A/6 is inferred. Spherical aberra- 

 tion produces marked asymmetrv on each side of 

 the focus. — F. L. Hopwood : An auto-stroboscope and 

 an incandescent colour top. The production of a variety 

 of stationary dark images, due to the eclipse of an in- 

 candescent wire by an adjacent cold wire or opaque 

 object when both are revolving about a common axis, 

 was described. The phenomena might be practicallv 

 applied to the studv of the behaviour of a rotating 

 body by converting it into an auto-stroboscope. — J. W. 

 Clifford : Achromatic one-radius doublet evepieces. 

 Eyepieces both of the Huygenian and the Ramsden 

 tyoes have been constructed from pairs of one-radius 

 achromatic doublets with external plane surfaces to 

 the flint lenses. They compare well with the German 

 orthoscopes in definition, while the cost of orod"?-- 

 tion, since the same radius serves for each doublet, 

 or in the case of the Ramsden throughout, is sensiblv 

 less. Such eyepieces are adapted either for the tele- 

 scope or the microscope. By their use a more perfect 

 achromatism is obtained, and also in both of th»m n 

 flat field, very extensive in one case, likely to be useful 

 in such operations as counting blood corpuscles, etc. 



Association of Economic Biologists, December q. Sir 



David Prain, president, in the chair. — J. H. Priestley: 

 The resistance of the normal and injured olant-surface 

 to the entry of pathogenic organisms. When the pro- 

 tective surface of the flowering plant is injured the 



