April 7, 192 1] 



NATURE 



Calendar of Scientific Pioneers. 



April 7, 1823. Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles 

 died. — The first to substitute hydrogen for the hot air 

 used in Montgolfier's balloons, Charles was originally 

 a clerk, but rose to be professor of physics in the 

 Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. He is remem- 

 bered by "Charles's law." 



April 7, 1912. Abbott Lawrence Rotch died.— A 



pioneer in the study of the upper atmosphere, Rotch 

 in 18S5 founded the Blue Hill Observatory, which he 

 bequeathed to Harvard University. 



April 9, 1626. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Vis- 

 count St. Albans, died. — Bacon was the contemporarv 

 of Galileo, Kepler, and Napier. He took all know- 

 ledge as his province. His " Novum Organum " — 

 which was written and rewritten several times with 

 the most minute care — entitles him to be considered 

 as one of the leaders in the reformation of modern 

 \ science. He is buried at St. Albans. 



April 9, 1889. Michel Eugene Chevreul died.— For 



many years Chevreul was connected with the Musee 

 d'Histoire Naturelle. His researches related mainlv 

 to the chemistry of fats. 



April 10, 1813. Joseph Louis Lagrange died.— 



Though his parents were of French extraction, 



Lagrange was born at Turin, where he spent the first 



thirty years of his life. In 1766, on the invitation of 



Frederick the Great, he went to Berlin. "The greatest 



king in Europe " wished to have " the greatest mathe- 



; matician in Europe " at his Court. On Frederick's 



; death Lagrange accepted an offer of Louis XVL and 



! removed to Paris. Equally great as an investigator in 



t pure mathematics and in applied mathematics, he has 



never been surpassed as a mathematical writer. 



April 11, 1875. Samuel Heinrich Schwabe died.— 



The name of Schwabe, who lived and died at Dessau, 

 is imperishably connected with the discoverv of the 

 periodicity of sun-spots. 



April 11, 1884. Jean Baptiste Andre Dumas died.— 



Few scientific men in France have been held in higher 

 esteem than Dumas. His success as a chemist was 

 not less marked than his success as a public man, and 

 in 1882 the French .'\cademy struck a gold medal to 

 commemorate his great services to science. His 

 statue stands at Alais, where he was born in 1800. 



April 11, 1895. Julius Lothar Meyer died.— The 



fellow-student of Roscoe in the laboratorv of Bunsen 

 at Heidelberg, Mever afterwards held chairs of 

 chernistry at Breslau. Neustadt, Karlsruhe, and 

 Tubingen. His name is best known for the share he 

 had in the periodic classification of the elements. 



April 11, 1902. Marie Alfred Cornu died.— A bril- 

 liant experimentalist, Cornu in 1867 became professor 

 of physics at the Ecole Polytechnique, and in i8q6 

 was elected president of the Paris .\cademv of Sciences. 

 His original work related mainly to optics. He also 

 made a re-determination of the velocitv of light. 



April 12, 1897. Edward Drinker Cope died.— Curator 



to the -Academy of Natural Sciences, and later pro- 

 fessor of geology and palaeontologv at Philadelphia, 

 Cope greatly extended the knowledge of fossil verte- 

 iorates. 



April 13, 1855. Sir Henry Thomas de la Beche 



died.— Like Murchison, de la Beche left the .Army at 

 the end of the Napoleonic wars and devoted hiniself 

 to geologv. He became the first director of the Geo- 

 lA£*ical Survey of Great Britain, and founded the 

 Museum of Practical Geology. E. C. S. 



NO. 2684, VOL. IO7I 



Societies and Academies. 



London'. 



Linnean Society, March 17.— Dr. A. Smith Wood- 

 ward, president, in the chair.— W. B. Alexander : The 

 vertebrate fauna of Houtman Abrolhos Islands, West 

 Australia. Prof. P. Fauvei : "Ann61ides Polych^es de 

 I'Archipel Houtman Abrolhos, recueillies par M. lo 

 Prof. Dakin."— F. Chapman; Sherbornina, a new 

 genus of fossil Foraminifera from Table Cape, Tas- 

 mania.— Miss E. L. Turner : Some birds from Texel. 

 The author devoted most of her attention whilst on 

 the Island of Texel to the avocets, ruff and reeve, 

 godwit, and two species of tern, describing the habits 

 of the birds observed, especially during the nesting 

 period. 



Mineralogical Society, March 22.— Dr. A. E. H. 

 Tutton in the chair.^ — Prof. H. Hilton : The vibrations 

 of a crystalline medium. The paper attempts to give 

 an indication of the kind of vibrations which the 

 molecules of a crystal may be expected to make about 

 their positions of equilibrium. The case of an ortho- 

 rhombic crystal in the form of a rectangular paral- 

 lelepiped is considered in detail, and the normal 

 modes of the molecular motion are completely deter- 

 mined.— Prof. R. Ohashi : Augite from Nishigatake, 

 Japan. The crystals have been detached from basalt 

 by natural weathering; the specific gravity is 3338 

 at 4° C. The prism angle agrees with that of 

 diopside, but that of the pyramid does not. Etched 

 figures show that the crystal belongs to the holo- 

 symrnetric class. Both the optical properties and 

 chemical composition show that in this augite the 

 diopside molecule predominates. — Dr. G. T. Prior : 

 The chemical composition of the Adare and Ensisheim 

 meteorites. The results of the analyses supported the 

 idea that in meteoric stones the ratio of MgO to FeO 

 in the magnesium silicates varies directlv with the 

 ratio of Fe to Ni in the nickel-iron. For .\dare these 

 ratios were resoectively 45 and 11, and for Ensisheim 

 3 and 3i.^W. Barlow : Models representing the 

 atomic structure of calcite and aragonite. 



Cambridge. 

 Philosophical Society, March 7.— Prof. A. C. Seward, 

 president, in the chair. — Prof. R. C. Punnett : A 

 peculiar case of heredity in the sweet pea. — C. G. 

 Lamb : (i) Insect oases. Certain species of Diptera 

 occur for several consecutive years in extremely 

 localised patches in a certain locality which was 

 characterised by extreme uniformity in respect to its 

 flora, etc. Several of the species are so far only 

 known from that locality, and are of South European 

 distribution. The suggestion was made that the 

 species is putting- up its last fight against extinction. 

 (2) Venational abnormalities in Diptera. The great 

 rarity of teratological conditions in the wings of flies 

 other than the Nematocera was illustrated. An excep- 

 tion exists in the Ortalid, PtUonota guttata. The in- 

 stability of the species is confirmed by the common- 

 ness of great diversity in the acrostichal bristles, and 

 by its having afforded the only known dipterous case 

 of Batesonian teratology in an antenna. — Prof. S. J. 

 Hickson : Some Alcyonaria in the Cambridge Museum. 

 Two specimens collected by Darwin in the Beagle 

 in the Galapagos Islands in 1835. One is clearlv a' 

 representative of a species that has not hitherto been 

 described, and the author proposes to name it Cavermi- 

 laria Darwinii. The character which distinguishes it 

 from all other species that have been described is seen 

 in the spicules, which are short rods with two, three, 

 or four knobs at each end. The other specimen pre- 

 served by Darwin in the Galapagos Islands is a frag- 



