396 



NATURE 



{Feb. 2 1, 1889 



In the presence of a distinguished company of men of 

 science, the King of Sweden recently opened the sealed papers 

 containing the names of the two successful competitors for the 

 mathematical prizes offered by him five years ago. The 

 successful competitors were found to be Prof. H. Poincare, 

 of the Faculte des Sciences, Paris, who receives £\()0, and 

 M. Paul Appert, Professor in the same Faculty, who receives a 

 gold medal valued at £\o. The papers, with reports by 

 Profs. Weierstrass and Hermite, will be published in the 

 Acta Mathematica. Twelve papers were sent in for the 

 competition. 



We regret to have to record the death, at the early age of 

 twenty-four, of a biologist of great promise, Mr. Richard 

 Spalding Wray, B.Sc. Lond. The son of the Rev. William 

 Wray, a Nonconforming minister in Yorkshire, he early developed 

 a strong taste for natural history pursuits, which led him to 

 become a student at the Normal School of Science at South 

 Kensington, where he eagerly followed the teaching of Prof. 

 Huxley and Mr. Howes. When, at the close of the year 1884, 

 the present Director of the Natural History Museum was seeking 

 some one to assist him in the formation of an elementary series 

 of biological preparations to be placed in the great hall of the 

 Museum, as an introduction to the study of the subjects more 

 fully developed in the special galleries, he fortunately became 

 acquainted with Mr. Wray, who entered with enthusiasm into 

 the project, and soon showed that he possessed every natural 

 capacity requisite for such a work. A neat-handed, skilful 

 dissector, a good mechanician, an excellent draftsman, he displayed 

 great taste and ingenuity in can7ing out and often improving upon 

 every suggestion made to him by the Director. While he was 

 engaged in the formation of a series of preparations to illustrate the 

 arrangement of the bones and feathers of the wings of birds, the very 

 insufficient state of the knowledge upon the subject as recorded 

 in ornithological works became apparent, and Mr. Wray made 

 some valuable origin al observations, which were embodied in a 

 paper " On some Points in the Morphology of the Wings of 

 Birds," published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society 

 for 1887. This and two minor papers on kindred subjects were 

 all that he was able to communicate to the world, for, unhappily, 

 his powers were greatly diminished by long- continued ill-health, 

 which finally developed into pulmonary phthisis, to which he 

 succumbed on the 12th of this month. He has, however, left a 

 lasting memorial of his patience, ability, and knowledge in the 

 preparations which enrich the Museum ; and his simple, modest, 

 unaffected character, and the genuine earnestness with which he 

 entered into the performance of every duty, will not be easily 

 forgotten by those who had the pleasure and advantage of being 

 in anyway associated with him. 



The Hunterian Oration was delivered on Thursday last, in 

 the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons, by Mr. Henry 

 Power, senior ophthalmic surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 

 Speaking of Hunter's career as a student, Mr. Power pointed out 

 that he took six or seven years to learn anatomy and surgery, 

 whereas in the present day a medical student has only four years 

 to acquire a knowledge of many more subjects. Mr. Power 

 urged that another year is necessary, that it is, in fact, taken by 

 the best students, and that it should be compulsory on all. This, 

 he thought, could be easily obtained if every student were 

 obliged to pass a thoroughly practical examination in chemistry, 

 physics, and elementary biology, before being permitted to 

 register. 



In a letter addressed to MM. Henry, of the Paris Observa- 

 tory, and printed in La Nature (February 16), Mr. J. A. 

 Brashear says that the Photographic Society of San Francisco 

 obtained 167 negatives of the recent solar eclipse, the majority 

 of them being very successful. Mr. Brashear himself was able 

 to do good work at Winnemucca, Nevada. 



The Naples Correspondent of the Times, writing on the 14th 

 inst., says : — " On the 12th inst. a perpendicular shock of earth- 

 quake was felt here, lasting about four seconds. It was stronger 

 at the Observatory of Vesuvius, and in the towns at the foot. After 

 the lapse of a minute another shock, the return shock, was felt at 

 the Observatory. ' Meanwhile,' says a reporter from the spot, 

 ' small streams of lava continue to run down on the eastern side, 

 and at the time when we are writing the seismograph is less 

 animated.' " 



The Paris Correspondent of the Daily News, telegraphing on 

 Tuesday, February 19, says: — "The district of Pont de Beau- 

 voisin, in the Department of the Isere, was disturbed yesterday 

 by a shock of earthquake which lasted about three seconds. 

 Many houses were violently shaken. Field labourers were very 

 much frightened. A good many villages suffered from it, but 

 no lives appear to have been lost." 



At the meeting of the French Meteorological Society on 

 January 15, the President, M. Renou, on taking that office for 

 the third time, delivered an address on the progress of meteoro- 

 logy since the establishment of the Society in 1853. He referred 

 to the great improvement that had taken place in the construction 

 and use of the various instruments, and to the progress made in 

 weather prediction, and stated that in order to further improve 

 the system more frequent and direct intercourse by telegraph 

 between the various central offices was necessary, and the 

 extension of telegraphic communication rather than refinement 

 in observations. He also alluded to the importance of automatic 

 or hourly observations at selected stations, and to the differences 

 existing in thermometric exposure, the screens employed in 

 different countries being far from uniform. (That used in 

 France is open to objection, being liable to the influence of 

 radiation.) M. Angot communicated the results of his discus- 

 sion on the diurnal variation of the barometer, deduced from 

 above fifty stations spread over the surface of the globe, and 

 based on means varying from five to twenty years and upwards. 

 The whole of the values will be published in the Annals of the 

 French Central Meteorological Office. 



Mr. H. C. Russell, the Government Astronomer of New 

 South Wales, has published his results of rain and river 

 observations for 1887, and of the meteorogical observations for 

 1886. The form of publication is the same as before (see 

 Nature, vol. xxxvi. pp. 546 and 566), but the amount 

 of valuable materials dealt with is continually increasing. 

 The rain and river stations for which monthly and annual 

 observations are given amount to 866. 



In their fifth Annual Report on the Museum of General and 

 Local Archaeology, the Antiquarian Committee of the University 

 of Cambridge call attention to a discovery of unusual interest 

 made in Cambridge at the beginning of 1888. A field was being 

 levelled at the back of St. John's College, when the workmen 

 cut into a Saxon burying-ground. For several days no notice 

 was taken of it ; and during that time a number of skeletons and 

 urns (the workmen said several hundreds) had been found and 

 destroyed. As soon, however, as the discovery was made known, 

 steps were taken, with the co-operation of the authorities of St. 

 John's College and Christ's College, the owners and lessees of 

 the land, to have the ground thoroughly examined, under proper 

 supervision, in the interest of the Museum. The excavations 

 occupied more than six weeks, during which time they were 

 never left unwatched. At least thirty skeletons, one hundred 

 urns, and a large quantity of ornaments were discovered. The 

 entire " find " has been placed in the Museum, and forms a most 

 valuable addition to the local Saxon collections. 



In an interesting paper on the Eskimo of Hudson's Strait, re- 

 printed from the Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, Mr. F. 

 F. Payne says that, as a rule, the Eskimo deserve to be called 



