ii6 



NATURE 



[January 26, 1922 



established at South Kensington, and this con- 

 tinues its good work as part of the Royal Naval 

 College. 



This institution had the great advantage that the 

 Admiralty students from the dockyard schools were 

 well prepared for advanced instruction. It has, 

 through the distinguished careers of many of its 

 students, exercised an important influence on the 

 shipbuilding industry in this country, and on the de- 

 velopment of the great Navy which commanded the 

 seas in the late war. The organisation of the theo- 

 retical part of the instruction was mainly due to the 

 ability, industry, and originality of Prof. Cotterill. 

 An account of the courses of study is given in the 

 later editions of his " Applied Mechanics." The 

 school was open to private students, and some of 

 these obtained important positions in private ship- 



yards and in the constructive departments of foreign 

 navies. 



Prof. Cotterill's earliest papers were on least 

 action, on the theory of propellers, and on the 

 reaction of an elastic fluid escaping frcan an 

 orifice. In 1878 he published a treatise on " The 

 Steam Engine considered as a Thermodynamic 

 Machine"; and in 1884, a treatise on "Applied 

 Mechanics." Both these have passed through several 

 editions, are still in use, and have much influenced 

 the teaching of the subjects in engineering schools 

 in this country and in America. 



We record with much regret the death on 

 January 22, at seventy-six years of age, of Sir 

 William Christie, K.C.B., F.R.S., Astronomer- 

 Royal from 1881 to 1910. 



Not 



In a letter to the Times of January 23 Mr. F. P. 

 Mennell recalls his description of the bone-cave at 

 Broken Hill, Rhodesia, published in the Geological 

 Magazine in 1907, and adds some further details in 

 reference to the recent discovery of Homo rhodesiensis 

 in a deeper extension of the cave. He emphasises the 

 fact that all the stone and bone implements found 

 with this extinct cave man are such as are used 

 to-day by the Bushmen and Hottentots in outlying 

 places, while all the mammalian bones, evidently 

 broken for food, belong either to living species or to 

 species closely allied to those still existing in the 

 neighbourhood. The Rhodesian man is therefore 

 probably not . so old as the primitive types of man 

 who wielded the Palaeolithic implement in western 

 Europe. We may add that Mr. .Mennell's original 

 paper was referred to in Nature of November 17 last 

 by Dr. Smith Woodward, who also expressed the 

 opinion that Rhodesian man would prove to be of 

 comparatively recent date. 



It was resolved by the General Committee of Sub- 

 scribers to the Rayleigh Memorial, after arranging for 

 the erection of the tablet in Westminster Abbey, which 

 was unveiled recently, " that the executive committee 

 be empowered to use the balance for the establishment 

 of a library fund at the Cavendish Laboratory." The 

 amount subscribed to the memorial fund was 1575Z., 

 and after defraying all expenses connected with the 

 tablet the balance was 687I. 15s. Sd. In accordance 

 with the resolution of the general committee, Sir 

 Richard Glazebrook and Sir Arthur Schuster, secre- 

 taries of the fund, have now sent a cheque for this 

 amount to the Vice-Chancellor of the University- of 

 Cambridge. The committee desires that of this sum 

 600I. should be treated as capital, the interest upon 

 which is to be at the disposal of the Cavendish pro- 

 fessor annually for the purposes of the library ; the 

 balance of the capital, namely, 87Z. 155. Sd., may be 

 drawn upon at once in order to bring the library up 

 to date. It is suggested that a book-plate should be 

 prepared connecting the books purchased out of the 

 fund with Lord Rayleigh'. 



NO. 2726, VOL. 109] 



es. 



The Pfere Lachalse cemetery in Paris, which has 

 during the last few days witnessed several acts of 

 homage to the memory of the great dramatist Moli^re, 

 contains a large number of tombs and monuments of 

 remarkable interest. Among these are many to the 

 men of science of last century. The cemetery was 

 laid out In 1804, and the monument to Mollfere was 

 one of the first erected in it. Walking round the 

 paths familiar names of statesmen, poets, musicians, 

 writers, soldiers, and painters catch the eye at every 

 turn. Science Is represented by the mathematicians 

 Poinsot, Monge, Hachette, and Charles; the astro- 

 nomers Arago and Delambre ; and the chemists 

 Dulong, Gay Lussac, Chaptal, Boussingault, and 

 Raspail. Comte, Cuvier, BIchat, Claude Bernard, 

 and Geoffrey St. Hllaire are also commemorated. 

 Quite close together will be found the tombs of 

 Madame Lavoisier who made such an unhappy 

 alliance with Rumford, and Madame Blanchard, the 

 intrepid aeronaut who perished in 1819. Other 

 pioneers In the conquest of the air whose names are 

 perpetuated In the cemetery are Robertson, Charles, 

 Croce-Splnelll, Gaston, and TIssandier. 



From the Daily Telegraph we learn that the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences has received an invitation, 

 through Prof. Kriloff, a specialist In naval construc- 

 tion, to send representatives to Moscow to the cele- 

 bration of the bicentenary of the Russian Academy 

 of Sciences, to be held in 1925. Prof. Kriloff, in his 

 speech, expressed the hope that science would throw 

 solid bridges over the chasms made by war, and that 

 the relations of all the peoples would be re-estab- 

 lished with the same cordiality asi before. The in- 

 itiation of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences 

 was due to Peter the Great, though its actual Inaugu- 

 ration was carried out by his widow, Catherine L It 

 was she who invited the great mathematician, 

 Leonhard Euler, to her capital, but her death 

 occurred on the day Euler set foot on Russian soil. 

 Joined by Daniel Bernoulli and the astronomer 

 Delisle, Euler continued to work at Petrograd until 

 1741, His surroundings, however, were not always 



