January 19, 1922] 



NATURE 



83 



was ninth Wrangler in 1881, and D.Sc. of London 

 Jn the same year. He became a fellow of Em- 

 luel in 1883. He began his fellowship by in- 

 illing electric light in the hall and chapel for the 

 jrcentenary of the college in the following year, 

 id thus anticipated by a few weeks the installation 

 rhich Lord Kelvin introduced into Peterhouse. He 

 ?as first with Siemens Brothers, and was resident 

 [electrician for the Portrush and Bushmills Railway 

 and the Bessbrook and Newry Railway. He after- 

 wards joined the firm of Mather and Piatt when 

 they began electrical work, and ultimately became 

 vice-chanman of the company. He carried out the 

 scheme for the City and South London Railway, and 

 while engaged upon industrial work of that kind he 

 joined his brother John in a paper on dynamo- 

 electric machines in the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society, a paper which speedily became classical. 

 Thereafter he was engaged in electrical and engi- 

 neering work which brought him into contact with 

 all the active electrical and engineering experts of 

 the country. During the war he was engaged in 

 India on the Indian Industrial Commission. He 

 was president of the Institution of Mechanical 

 Engineers in 191 9, but not well enough to deliver 

 the presidential address which he wrote for that 

 body. 



Electricity and machinery were not Dr. 

 Hopkinson's only interest ; like other members of 

 his family, he was deeply and sanely interested in 

 social questions, and his latest writings are to be 

 found in letters to the Times and Morning Post 

 on financial matters. Like all the rest of his family, 

 too, he was a keen Alpine climber and member of 

 the Alpine Club, and, like so many climbers, was 

 a remarkably genial host and an ever-welcome guest. 

 He lived in an atmosphere of business, science, and 

 common sense, to which access was easy on account 

 of his family associations ; but he contributed his 

 own full share to its maintenance, and the loss of 

 l}is knowledge and experience is a grave misfortune. 

 He and his brother Charles married sisters, the 

 I laughters of John Campbell, of Whiteabbey, near 

 Belfast. His wife survives him. They have one 

 son, formerly an officer in the Army, who is now 

 devoted to anthropology at Cambridge, and a 

 daughter. Napier Shaw. 



Sir William Matthews, K.C.M.G. 

 The civil engineering profession has lost an 

 eminent personality by the decease of Sir 

 William Matthews, who died on January 8 at the 

 age of seventy-eight. From the obscurity of a little 

 Cornish town he rose in the practice of his pro- 

 fession to become the trusted consultant of Govern- 

 ment authorities on the most important harbour 

 undertakings in the Empire. His name will long 

 be associated with the annals of harbour construc- 

 tion, and substantial breakwaters in various parts 

 of the world remain as a testimony to his engineer- 

 ing skill. The firm of Coode, Matthews, Fitz- 

 maurice, and Wilson, of which he was until lately 

 the senior surviving partner, have acted as technical 

 advisers to the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and 

 NO. 2725, VOL. 109] 



the Crown agents to the Colonies. At home they 

 were chief engineers for the National Harbour at 

 Dover ; abroad they have been consulting engineers 

 for similar undertakings at Gibraltar, Malta, 

 Cyprus, Colombo, Singapore, and Hong-Kong. 

 They are also consultants to several Colonial 

 Goverrunents, the Mersey Conservancy, the Humber 

 Conservancy, and the Tyne Commissioners. 



Sir William Matthews was a native of Penzance, 

 where he was born in March, 1844. He served part 

 of his apprenticeship in an engineering works at 

 Hayle, a few miles away. Afterwards he entered 

 the office of his father, who practised as a civil 

 engineer in Penzance. There in 1864 he came 

 under the notice of the late Sir John Coode, 

 who had been called in to advise the Cor- 

 poration of Penzance. The young assistant 

 was employed to make a survey of the harbour, and 

 acquitted himself so creditably that Sir John took 

 him into his office in London, and ultimately in 

 1892 into partnership. 



The value of Sir William Matthews's services to 

 the Government gained him the C.M.G. in 1901, 

 and the K.C.M.G. in 1906. In 1907 he was elected 

 president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He 

 became a member of the International Commission 

 on the Suez Canal in 1908, and during the later 

 portion of his career served on a number of com- 

 mittees of public and scientific utility. 



Col. Charles Edward Cassal, who died on 

 December 22 last, in his sixty-fourth year, was 

 public analyst for the Metropolitan Borough of 

 Battersea, the Royal Borough of Kensington, the 

 Parts of Holland and Kesteven (Lines), and Chip- 

 ping Wycombe (Bucks), and joint public analyst 

 for the City of Westminster. He was educated at 

 University College School, and received his pro- 

 fessional training at University College, London, 

 where he was demonstrator in the department of 

 hygiene and public health from 1879 to 1888. He 

 was a fluent and forcible speaker, and, having quali- 

 fied, by examination, for the fellowship of the In- 

 stitute of Chemistry, he took a prominent part in 

 the discussions relating to the interests of his pro- 

 fession, particularly those of public analysts and 

 official agricultural analysts. Col. Cassal served on 

 the council for six periods of three years each, and as 

 a censor for one year. He frequently accompanied 

 deputations from the institute to Government 

 departments. For fifteen years he was editor of 

 the British Food Journal, to which, as well as to 

 other journals, he contributed many articles on the 

 chemistry of food and drugs, on water supplies, and 

 on sewage treatment and disposal. 



We regret to have to record the death of Mr. 

 B. P. Lascelles, who was a science master at 

 Harrow from 1885 to 1901. His great success as 

 a teacher rested on his unbounded interest in every- 

 thing which appealed to him. It was not enough 

 for him to know about dyes ; he made them and 

 coloured his own ties to his fancy ! That was in 

 the early days of the synthetic industry. Such 



