i6 



NATURE 



[March 3, 192 1 



particles following in the comet's wake must 

 have been something like 550 million miles 

 long. This need not, however, occasion great 

 surprise, for observations have proved that in the 

 case of the great Leonid stream of November 

 the debris or meteoric particles are distributed 

 completely around the orbit, which extends in its 

 outer limits to beyond the path of the remote 

 planet Uranus. 



Formerly we had no special meteor shower to 

 distinguish the midsummer period, but it is quite 

 possible that in future years June may acquire a 

 similar notoriety for meteors as that which has 

 been long held by August and November, and 

 should the new shower fully justify expectation 

 it will in a certain measure prove a recompense 

 for the lack of grand displays of meteors which 

 has characterised the past thirty-five years. There 

 were great storms of meteors in November, 1866, 

 1872. and 1885, but the Leonids of Tempel's 

 comet (1866) and the Andromedids of Biela's 

 comet have failed to furnish a really brilliant 

 display of first-class importance during more than 

 the third of a century, and it seems difficult to 

 predict the dates of great revivals, although the 

 years 1933 and 1934 are likely to bring a con- 

 siderable shower, if not a grand exhibition, of 

 meteors at the middle of November. 



Including the periodical comet of Pons-Win- 

 necke, we now have six comets of which the 

 orbits bear so striking and suggestive a simi- 

 larity to those of rich meteoric streams that we 

 may certainly conclude them to have the same 

 derivative sources. There are also a number of 

 other comets which furnish significant evidence 

 that they are closely connected, if not identical, 

 with active meteor showers. For example, the 

 comet of Mechain-Tuttle seems to present con- 

 formity with a radiant point observed from 

 220^ + 76° from December 20 to 25. The comet 

 Lexell (1770) agrees with a radiant point in June 

 at about 28o°-24*^. The comet of 1739 agrees 

 with a radiant point at 15304-400 from October 14 

 to 22, and the comet Denning (1881) presents 

 similar features of orbit to a meteor shower ob- 

 served during the period July 25 to August 8 

 from a radiant at 303O-10O. 



There are many other instances in which 

 cometary and meteoric accordances may be 

 assumed with a fair degree of probability, yet 

 when we consider the large number of orbits now 

 definitely computed for comets and meteor streams 

 we are bound to admit that chance coincidences 

 must sometimes occur, and that it is difficult, 

 except in special cases, to select the genuine in- 

 stances of agreement. 



Obituary. 



Prof. L. C. Miall, F.R.S. 

 T^HE death of Prof. Miall, announced in our 

 -»- columns last week, removes from the 

 world a man who stood in natural history eminent 

 in a position of his own, in education as one of 

 the most sane and enlightened reformers of his 

 time, and in personality one of the truly great 

 among men. 



Louis Compton Miall was born in 1842, the son 

 of a Congregational minister in Bradford. After 

 his early education at Silcoates he entered the 

 teaching profession as an assistant master, but 

 was soon tempted to accept the curatorship of the 

 newly founded Literary and Philosophical Society 

 of Bradford, where he developed a keen interest 

 in geology and palaeontology. A little later he 

 was appointed to the curatorship of the Museum 

 of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 

 and in 1876, two years after the foundation of the 

 Yorkshire College of Science, he was appointed 

 as its first professor of biology, a position vvhich 

 he continued to hold in the University of Leeds 

 until his retirement in 1907. With Sir Edward 

 Thorpe, the late Sir Arthur Rucker, and Prof. 

 A.. H. Green he was one of the four scientific 

 pipneers of university education in Yorkshire. 

 KL^ held the Fullerian professorship of physiology 

 ifltithe Royal Institution, 1904-5, was president of 

 S.ection D (Zoology) of the British Association at 

 the- Toronto meeting in 1897, and president of the 

 Education Section at Dublin in 1908. He was 



NO. 2679, VOL. 107] 



elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1892, and 

 made an honorary D.Sc. of Leeds in 1904. 



On his retirement from Leeds in 1907 Prof. 

 Miall took up his residence at Letchworth, within 

 easy reach of Cambridge and of the British 

 Museum, and he continued active in writing and 

 teaching. In 1918, soon after the death of his 

 gifted wife, to whom he was married in 1870, he 

 returned to his native county, residing at Ben 

 Rhydding. For some time he maintained an active 

 interest in his books, and he left practically com- 

 plete a work on "Garden-craft in the Past." Lat- 

 terly his health failed somewhat, but almost until 

 his death he retained wonderful vigour of mind 

 and intellectual interest. In the middle of January 

 he had a slight paralytic stroke, followed by a 

 second, which left him in a weak state. From 

 then his strength slowly ebbed, and he passed 

 away peacefully, without suffering, in the house of 

 his daughter, Mrs. Harold Wager, at Leeds. 



To those who did not know him it is scarcely 

 possible to give an adequate idea of the kind and 

 strength of the influence which Prof. Miall exer- 

 cised, or of the veneration in which he was held 

 wherever his labours lay. In attempting to 

 describe any section of his work there arises, at 

 once the memory of the man himself, his arrest- 

 ing personality, the scale and strength of his 

 principles of heart and mind, his austere simplicity 

 arid perfect sincerity, his delibfef^ate Jiidgment, the 

 comprehensiveness and sanity of his mental atti- 



