Feb. 2, 1888] 



NATURE 



327 



always hold a high and honoured place. This place will 

 be his due, not only because of his own personal achieve- 

 ments in original exploration. His earlier work exhibits 

 much of that instinctive capacity for grasping geological 

 structure which is the main requisite for a field geologist. 

 He had a keen "eye for a country." But he likewise 

 possessed the art of choosing the best men for his assist- 

 ants, and the tact of attaching them to himself and his 

 corps. In this way he accomplished much excellent work, 

 keepinghimself latterly rather in the background so far as 

 actual personal geological investigations were concerned, 

 and contenting himself with the laborious task of organ- 

 ization and supervision, while he encouraged and pushed 

 forward his coadjutors. 



The abohtionof his Survey and the appointment of one 

 of his rivals to the post of Director of the reconstituted 

 Geological Survey of the United States, was a blow from 

 which he does not seem ever to have recovered. He was 

 treated, however, with great generosity by the new 

 Director, and had a share of the large annual appropria- 

 tion to enable him to complete his Reports. He was 

 urged to condense these voluminous works, and to present 

 a concise and readable account of what he and his fellow- 

 workers had done for the geology of the far West. But 

 he had no literary proclivities, and in the end gladly sur- 

 rendered the task of writing for the more congenial em- 

 ployment of renewing his personal acquaintance with the 

 geology of the Western Territories. Perhaps among those, 

 and there must be many, who personally knew and 

 esteemed him, there may be one competent and willing to 

 compile or complete the summary which he never com- 

 pleted, and thus to erect to his memory a more fitting and 

 lasting monument than one of brass or marble. A. G. 



NOTES. 



We regret to announce the death of Dr. Asa Gray, the most 

 eminent of American botanists. He died at Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts, on Monday, aged seventy-seven. Next week 

 we shall give some account of his services to science. 



Mr. George Godwin, F.R.S., well known as the editor 

 of the Builder, died on January 27. He was seventy-three 

 years of age. Among his writings were several works in which, 

 with great earnestne.s, he pressed upon the attention of the 

 public the evil consequences springing from the reglect of 

 sanitary laws. 



Mr. George Robert Waterhouse, late Keeper of the 

 Department of Geology in the British Museum, died at his resi- 

 dence, Curton Lodge, Putney, on January 21, in his seventy- 

 eighth year. 



We have also to record the death of the well-known botanist, 

 Dr. J. T. I. Boswell, who was for many years Curator to the 

 Botanical Society in London, and a Lecturer at the Charing 

 Cross and Middlesex Schools of Medicine. 



The Medals and Funds to be given at the annual meeting of 

 the Geological Society on February 17 have been awarded as 

 follows :—Wollaston Medal to H. B. Medlicott, F.R.S. ; 

 Murchison Medal to Prof. J. S. Newberry, M.D., of New York ; 

 Lyell Medal to Prof. H. Alleyne Nicholson, M.D., D.Sc. ; 

 Wollaston Fund to John Home, F. R. S. E. ; Murchison Fund 

 to E. Wilson of the Bristol Museum ; Lyell Fund to Arthur H. 

 Foord, and T. Roberts, B.A. 



The Academy of Sciences at Turin has awarded the great 

 Bressa prize of 12,000 francs (;^48o) to M. Pasteur. 



The eighteenth International Congress of Orientalists will meet 

 in Stockholm on September 2 next, and be opened by King 

 Oscar in person, attended by the whole of the Royal family. 

 The Congress will sit till September 6, when the members wilj 

 visit Chrisliania as guests of the King, in whose name they will 



be entertained in the Norwegian capital for two days. They 

 will then proceed to Gothenburg, where the Congress will be 

 dissolved. In honour of the Congress a bibliography is to be 

 issued, containing the portraits in heliography of all living 

 Orientalists, and a resume of the works published by each. The 

 work is to be most sumptuously got up. The editor is Count 

 Carlo Landbei^. 



The following arrangements have been made for the Penny 

 Science Lectures at the Royal Victoria Hall : February 7, by 

 Dr. Percy Frankland, " Germs in the Air, and what they do for 

 us"; February 14, by E. Wethered, "Earthquakes and 

 Volcanoes"; Februaiy 21, by F, R. Cheshire, "Insects as. 

 Florists and Fruit -makers " ; February 21, by E. Hodder» 

 "Incidents in the Life of Lord Shaftesbury." 



Information has been received of the arrival of H,M, sur- 

 veying-ship Egeria, Capt. P. Aldrich, at King George's Sound, 

 after a very successful deep-sea sounding cruise across the Indian 

 Ocean. Between latitudes 10° and 35° S., — a belt 1500 miles 

 wide, — not'a single sounding has heretofore been obtained in this 

 ocean, and it is therefore satisfactory to learn that forty-three 

 soundings, all of them accompanied with several sets of tem- 

 perature observations, have been now obtained. The Egeria's 

 track was from Sunda Strait to Mauritius, thence south to 

 latitude sS^'S, and thence to Western Australia. 



Memorials are being sent from various public bodies in 

 Hampshire to the Lord President of the Council, requesting 

 that the proposed Forestry School for England may be estab- 

 lished in that county. It is pointed out that the extensive 

 Crown lands of Hampshire are peculiarly well fitted for scientific 

 and practical forestry. 



A PAPER of exceptional interest was read by Prof. Victor 

 Meyer at the meeting of the Chemical Society of Gottingen 

 held on January 24 In it were embodied some remarkable 

 speculations upon the shape of the ultimate atoms of carbon. 

 These ideas are the outcome of his recent work upon the oxims 

 of benzil and certain other complicated organic compounds, and 

 may be briefly summed up as follows. Certain compounds o* . 



C = 3 

 the type | (where a represents a monad and b a dyad 



C = /' 



radicle) exist in two isomeric modifications which can only be 

 expressed by the following different geometrical arrangement i 

 a b a b 



\ // \ ^ 



C C 



I and I . This necessitates an expansion of the 



C C 



/ ^ ^ \ 



a b b a 



theory of Van t' Hoff and Wislicenus, according to which,, 

 by rotation of one of the carbon atoms in the first case, the 

 latter would be the only s-table form ; there are cases in which 

 this rotation is free to occur, and cases like the present where it 

 is prevented. From a consideration of the geometrical isomers 

 of the benzyl cyanides, Prof Meyer further shows that the 

 valencies of carbon may be displaced out of their normal posi- 

 tions at the corners of a regular tetrahedron by the unequal 

 attractions of unlike radicles. Finally, as the only means of 

 accounting for all these varied phenomena. Prof. Meyer ex- 

 presses his conviction that the atoms of carbon are spheres, each 

 surrounded by an ether-shell, which forms the seat of the four 

 valencies. On account of their probable electrical connection 

 he terms these valencies " electrules," and considers that the 

 electrules of the same atom are in isochronous oscillation, and 



