82 



NATURE 



[January 19, 1922 



lections among schools and libraries. The number 

 of pupils reached by this outside work cannot be 

 less than a million. 



To this direct appeal of the museum specimens 

 the publications are supplementary. Confining our 

 attention to those of educational character, we find, 

 as elsewhere, guides, handbooks, and leaflets, for 



Fig. 2. — Bryozoa group : detail. By the courtesy of the A 

 of Natural History, New York. 



use primarily in the museum. But reaching far 

 beyond its walls is the well-known Journal of the 

 museum, now issued as a bi-monthly under the title 

 Natural History. A copy of this is received by 

 every member, and additional subscriptions amount 

 to 1,570 dollars. The circulation may therefore be 

 taken as well over 6000. Besides its own publica- 



tions, the American Museum avails itself of the 

 newspaper Press, and by the steady contribution of 

 interesting paragraphs obtains valuable advertise- 

 ment. 



We have by no means finished with the ways in 

 which the American Museum increases its member- 

 ship and otherwise raises its funds. There is, for 

 example, the luxuriously furnished members' room 

 " near the elevator " (Natural History Museum, 

 please note !), and there is the exchange of member- 

 ship privileges w-ith other museums. But enough 

 has been said to show that all the energy is spent 

 on lines that are productive, and that fact explains 

 how it can be done. In the larger cities of our own 

 country circumstances are not the same. There are 

 limited appropriations for definite purposes, and 

 the governing body, whether municipal or bureau- 

 cratio> is not going to take risks with the taxpayers' 

 money. Possibly some of our museum officials re- 

 joice that they do not have to spend their time beat- 

 ing the big drum, and prefer to devote most of 

 their energy and the services of their museums to 

 the advancement of learning rather than to its 

 vulgarisation. Research, they say quite rightly, 

 must come first. None the less, there are features 

 in the educational work of the American Museum 

 which could and should be imitated by more of 

 our Government museums. With them, as with the 

 private corporation of the American Museum, the 

 question reduces itself to on? of business. Addi- 

 tional officers must be appointed in charge of these 

 activities, and these officers must be paid. But the 

 public is ready to pay for what it wants, and the 

 case of the guide-lecturers has shown that the 

 Government will respond to intelligently directed 

 and strongly enforced public opinion 



Obituary. 



Dr. Edward Hopkinson, M.P. 



THE news of the death of Edward Hopkinson 

 wdll be received with acute regret by a very 

 wide circle of friends in all branches of science and 

 engineering. Since the General Election of 1918, 

 when Dr. Hopkinson became Member for the Clay- 

 ton division of Manchester as a Unionist, he was 

 the victim of repeated attacks of influenza, for w^ant 

 of a 'better name, and was little seen in London ; 

 gradually failing, he died on Sunday, January 15, 

 at the age of sixty-two years. 



Dr. Hopkinson w^as the fourth among five sons 

 in a Manchester family, peculiarly united and bril- 

 liant, belonging to an aristocracy of industry. His 

 father, John Hopkinson, sometime Mayor of Man- 

 chester, was of the firm of Wren and Hopkinson, 

 mechanical engineers, who constructed the machinery 

 for grinding the glass for Chance's lighthouses, a 

 successful demonstration of science and higher in- 

 dustry. His mother, always the true focus of the 

 family, was a Dewhurst of Skipton. The Wills's of 

 Bristol were relatives. The eldest brother, John, 

 the great electrician, whose work was cut short by 

 his untimely death in the Alps, is nobly com- 

 NO. 2725, VOL. 109] 



memorated in Cambridge ; he started on his work 

 as Senior Wrangler. The next brother. Sir Alfred 

 Hopkinson, K.C., of Lincoln College, Oxford, 

 formerly a Member of Parliament for a division 

 of Manchester and for the Cricklade division of 

 Wiltshire, who is still active, had a distinguished 

 legal career, was principal of Owens College, and 

 first vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester. 

 The third son, Charles, a consulting engineer, who 

 died recently, was the trusted counsellor of the 

 whole family. Albert, the youngest brother, of 

 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, became a successful 

 medical practitioner in Manchester, and is now 

 back again in Cambridge as a teacher of anatomy. 

 Of the next generation, Bertram, the lamented head 

 of the Engineering School at Cambridge, lost his 

 life in a flying accident in 1918, and Austin, a 

 successful manufacturer and M.P., is a very vigor- 

 ous controversialist in social questions. These 

 different distinctions merely represent prominences 

 of characteristics w^hich all shared. 



Edward Hopkinson w^as born in Manchester, and, 

 after completing the course at Owens College, 

 joined Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as scholar, 



