440 



NATURE 



[December 2, 1920 



work, in addition to his university duties, proved 

 beyond iiis strength, and brought about the break- 

 down «hich led to his early death, cutting short 

 a career of great usefulness and promise. We are 

 indebted for the details given above to an article 

 in Scunca for October Z2. 



N'atlkalists interested in the marine and fresh- 

 water fisheries will regret to hear of the sudden 

 death of Sir Charles E. Fryer at the age of 

 seventy. Sir Charles Fryer was born in 1850, and 

 entered the Civil Service, at the age of twenty, as 

 Clerk to the Inspectors of Fisheries. In 1870 he 

 became associated with Frank Buckland and Sir 

 Spencer Walpole, and acted as secretary during 

 the well-known inquiry into the natural history of 

 the marine fisheries held during that and succeed- 

 ing years. He had a unique knowledge of the 

 history of the fishing industry and of the many 

 inquiries that have been held with regard to its 

 administration, and, though in no sense a man of 

 science, he was keenly interested in all fishery 

 biological questions — particularly with regard to 

 the river fisheries. Sir Charles was due to retire 

 at the beginning of the war, but continued to act 

 at the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries during 

 191 5 and 1916. Many fishery naturalists will 

 regret his death. 



The death, on August 20, at Mussoorie, India, 

 of Mr. Frank Milburn Howlett. at the early 

 age of forty-three, is greatly to be regretted. Mr. 

 Howlett represented a type of entomologist com- 

 paratively rare in this country, being particularly 

 interested in the physiological aspects of his sub- 

 ject. Educated at Wymondham Grammar School 

 and at Christ's College, Cambridge, he went 

 out to India in 1905, and in 1907 joined the staff, 

 of the Pusa Research Institute, where he after- 

 wards became pathological entomologist to the 

 Government of India. Although his published 

 papers are relatively few, they exhibit marked 

 originality of ideas. His studies of the chemo- 

 tropic responses of various Diptera attracted very 

 wide attention, and subsequent research has 

 demonstrated that they were the forerunners of a 

 line of investigation which has a promising future. 

 Mr. Howlett was also a capable athlete and a 

 clever artist, but his activities suffered severely 

 from ill-health during his Indian service. 



The brief announcement of the death of 

 Daniel Pauline Oehlert- made to the Paris 

 -Academy of Sciences on October 11 will 

 arouse in many British geologists a host of 

 delightful memories, for he guided an ex- 

 cursion of the Geologists' Association through 

 the beautiful country of Mayenne, as well 

 as an excursion of the International Geo- 

 logical Congress. Than Oehlert and his 

 accomplished wife, who shared his labours, 

 no, better guides could be found, for thev had 



NO. 2666, VOL. 106] 



surveyed the district for the Carte d^taill^e G60- 

 logique de France. Together also they published 

 some sound palaeontological papers, chiefly on 

 Devonian fossils. Since the death of Mme. 

 Oehlert some years ago, Oehlert had withdrawn 

 from active geological work, and devoted himself 

 to the museum of his native city, Laval. He 

 was a fine man in body and in spirit. 



The death, on November 7, is reported, in his 

 seventieth year, of Dr. Samuel James Meltzer, 

 head of the department of physiology and phar- 

 macology in the Rockefeller Institute of Medical 

 Research. Dr. Meltzer is best known for his dis- 

 covery, in 1912, of an improved method of arti- 

 ficial respiration by which he was able to resusci- 

 tate persons whose hearts had stopped beating. 

 Three years later he announced a successful treat- 

 ment for tetanus, which consisted in the injection 

 of a prophylactic dose of serum into the wounded 

 patient, combined with the injection of a solution 

 of Epsom salts into the spinal membrane, which 

 produced complete relaxation of the muscles long 

 enough for the serum to take effect. Dr. Meltzer 

 was a native of Russia, was educated at Konigs- 

 berg and Berlin, and went to America in 1883. 

 At the time of his death he was president of the 

 American Association for Thoracic Surgerv and 

 of the Medical Brotherhood. 



Science of November 5 announces that Prof. 

 Arthur Searle, Phillips professor emeritus of 

 astronomy at Harvard University, died at his 

 home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 

 October 23. Prof. Searle, who was born in 

 England in 1837, and graduated from Harvard 

 in 1856, became assistant in the Harvard College 

 Observatory in 1869. He was appointed assistant 

 professor of astronomy in 1883, and full professor 

 in 1887, retiring in 1912 with the rank of pro- 

 fessor emeritus. He contributed largely to scien- 

 tific magazines, and in 1874 published a text-book 

 of astronomy. 



The death is announced of Dr. H. N. Morse, 

 professor of chemistry and director of the chemical 

 laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. 

 Morse was born in 1848, and became associate at 

 the Johns Hopkins University in 1876. He was 

 the author of a number of scientific papers, among 

 which may be mentioned communications on the 

 atomic weights of cadmium and zinc, the prepara- 

 tion of osmotic membranes by electrolysis, and 

 cells for the measurements of high osmotic 

 pressures. 



The death of Mr. Charles McNeil is recorded 

 in Engineering for November 26. Mr. McNeil 

 was born in Glasgow in 1847, and '"'^s the founder 

 of the Kinning Park Hydraulic Forge, Glasgow. 

 He was the inventor of the well-known manhole 

 door which bears his name, and was elected a 

 member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1891. 



