August 4, 192 1] 



NATURE 



721 



'General as Liberal member for Tiel, and again in 

 1875, the year in which his father succeeded to 

 the Scottish title of Reay, on the death of the 

 ninth baron. In 1877 he resigned his seat in the 

 Dutch Chamber of Representatives, and became 

 naturalised as a British subject. He was created a 

 baron in the peerage of the United Kingdom in 

 1881, and in 1884 was elected rector of St. 

 Andrews University. 



In 1885 Lord Reay was appointed Governor 

 of Bombay, where he brought about an 

 •amelioration of the Forest Laws, which gave 

 universal satisfaction to the natives. Fore- 

 most among other questions which arose for solu- 

 tion was that of education, a subject which was 

 always of the greatest interest to Lord Reay. His 

 policy was to substitute local control for direct 

 governmental supervision, to establish grants in 

 aid in place of payment by results, and to develop 

 a modern side in secondary schools. Technical 

 education received a great impetus, and a per- 

 manent memorial of its development is the Vic- 

 toria Jubilee Technical Institute for Mechanical 

 Industries at Bombay. His Governorship ended 

 in 1890, and his services to the Presidency were 

 commemorated by the erection of a marble statue 

 in Bombay. 



Afterwards, as president of University College, 

 London, of the Institute of International Law, 

 and of the Franco-Scottish Society, and as 

 member of the Senate of London University, Lord 

 Reay found full scope for his energies. He 

 Tjecame the first president of the British Academy 

 in 1901, and was president also of the Royal 

 Asiatic Society. On the resignation of the late 

 Lord Londonderry in 1897 Lord Reay was unani- 

 mously elected chairman of the London School 

 Board, a post which he retained until the abolition 

 •of the Board in 1904. 



Mr. William Taylor, of Lhanbryd, who 

 died recently at Elgin, aged seventy-two, 

 was a most active zoologist and geologist, and 

 made many contributions to science. Trained as 

 a pharmaceutical chemist, he emigrated early in 

 the 'seventies to Texas, where in the intervals of 

 business he devoted much attention to the reptiles 

 and small mammals. He corresponded with the 

 British Museum, to which he sent many valuable 

 specimens, accompanied by notes on their mode 

 of life. In 1892 Mr. Taylor returned to Scotland, 

 and henceforth lived in retirement in his native 

 village of Lhanbryd. Here again he studied the 

 mammals, especially the cetaceans stranded on 

 the coast; but his most important work was the 

 collection of fossil reptiles from the Triassic 

 •sandstone of Morayshire, and of fossil fishes 

 from the Old Red Sandstone of the same county. 

 Some of his fossils were sent to the Royal Scot- 

 tish Museum, Edinburgh, where they were 

 described by Dr. Traquair, but the greater part 

 of his collection was acquired by the British 

 Museum, where much of it was described by Dr. 



NO. 2701, VOL. 107] 



G. A. Boulenger and Dr. Smith Woodward. 

 Several new species were named after him. Until 

 1914 Mr. Taylor made an annual tour to the south 

 as far as London, thus keeping in touch with 

 those who were interested in his researches, and 

 he often attended the meetings of the British 

 Association. He did not write much himself, 

 but was always a keen observer, and gave valu- 

 able help to those who published technical 

 accounts of his discoveries. He also did much to 

 spread an interest in natural science in the dis- 

 trict in which he lived. 



The death is announced of Dr. J. E. Blomfield 

 at Sevenoaks on July 8. Dr. Blomfield was 

 educated at Winchester, and later at the Uni- 

 versity of Oxford, where he obtained a demyship 

 at Magdalen College in natural science. He after- 

 wards entered the medical course, was elected 

 Radcliffe travelling fellow, and worked at Jena, 

 Vienna, and Paris. His clinical studies were pur- 

 sued at L'niversity College Hospital, where he 

 became house physician. On the advice of friends 

 Dr. Blomfield decided to enter general practice, 

 and from 1889 onwards practised at Sevenoaks. 

 He was an accomplished microscopist, at an early 

 date in his career published a paper on spermato- 

 genesis, which attracted the attention of Charles 

 Darwin, and later made a number of notes on, 

 and preparations of, new growths in trees. 



The death is announced, at the age of sixty- 

 one, of Prof. Francis Bacon Crocker, professor 

 of electrical engineering at Columbia University, 

 from 1893 to 1914, and president of the American 

 Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1897. Prof. 

 Crocker's work in the standardisation of electrical 

 equipment throughout the world won him high 

 praise from Lord Kelvin. He was the author of 

 books on electric lighting, electric motors, the 

 management of electrical machinery, and related 

 subjects. 



Dr. W. E. Stone, whom a cablegram in the 

 dailv Press reports to have lost his life in the 

 Assiniboine Mountains while trying to carry his 

 wife up a cliff from which she had fallen, had 

 been president of Purdue University, Indiana, 

 since 1900. He had previously been professor of 

 chemistry in the same institution, and earlier still 

 had been officially employed as a chemist by the 

 States of Massachusetts and Tennessee. He had 

 published reports of numerous researches upon the 

 carbohydrates. Dr. Stone was in his sixtieth 

 year. 



We regret to see in the Times of August 2 the 

 announcement of the death of Prof. Edmond 

 Perrier, member of the Paris Academy of 

 Sciences and of the Academy of Medicine, and 

 honorary director of the Paris Museum of Natural 

 History. 



