April 15, 1922J 



NATURE 



499 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



April 13, 1742. John Lofting died. — Born in 

 llolland about 1659, Lofting removed to London in 

 1688, where he became well known as a successful 

 inventor and maker of fire-engines. 



April 13, 1874. James Bogardus died. — An 

 \merican inventor, Bogardus made improvements in 

 I locks, constructed a delicate engraving machine, 

 invented the dry gas meter, a deep-sea sounding 

 machine, and a dynamometer, while his plan for 

 manufacturing postage stamps was accepted by the 

 British Government. 



April 13, 1894. William Haywood died. — For 



forty-eight years Haywood was chief engineer to 



the Commissioners of Sewers in London, and he 



was also the constructor of the Holborn Viaduct. 



J He introduced the use of asphalt for city roads. 



April 15, 1908. J. Wigham Richardson died.— The 

 founder of an important shipbuilding firm on the 

 Tyne, Richardson contributed much to the advance- 

 ment of the building of large mercantile vessels and 

 served as President of the North-East Coast Institu- 

 tion of Shipbuilders and Engineers. 



April 17, 1899. Sir James Wright died. — The 

 successor of Thomas Lloyd as Engineer-in-Chief 

 of the Navy, Wright held this position from 1872 to 

 1887. Trained at Dundee, he became an assistant 

 in Woolwich Dockyard in 1845, and was transferred 

 to the Admiralty two years later. He was intimately 

 connected with the adoption of the compound engine, 

 t\vin screws, forced draught, high pressures, and the 

 triple expansion engine. 



April 18, 1916, Sir John Durston died. — One of 

 the few fellows of the Royal School of Naval Archi- 

 tecture and Marine Engineering, Durston entered the 

 Royal Navy in 1866 as an assistant engineer and rose 

 to be the Engineer-in-Chief. Taking office in 1889, 

 at a time of great difficulty, Durston held office till 

 1907, and to him was mainly due the introduction 

 into the Navy of the water-tube boiler and the Parsons 

 steam turbine. 



April 18, 1920. Rudolph Messel died. — Educated 

 at the University of Tubingen, where he studied 

 chemistry under Strecker, Messel after the Franco- 

 Prussian War came to England, where he joined 

 Squire. He worked out a method for the manufacture 

 of fuming sulphuric acid, and with Squire erected 

 important chemical works at Silvertown. 



April 19, 1904. Sir Clement Le Neve Foster died. — 

 From the Royal School of Mines Foster passed to the 

 Mining Academy at Freiburg, and in i860 joined the 

 Geological Survey. He was an inspector of mines 

 from 1872 to 1 90 1, and in 1890 succeeded Warington 

 Smyth as professor of mining in the Royal College 

 of Science. His important work on " Ore and Stone 

 Mining " appeared in 1894. In 1903 he was knighted. 



April 19, 19 1 4. Alfred Noble died. — After serving 

 in the American Civil War, Noble studied civil 

 engineering in the University of Michigan, and 

 became an eminent constructor of canals, docks, and 

 bridges. He was a member of various commissions 

 appointed to report on the feasibility of a ship canal 

 across the Isthmus of Panama, and he played an 

 important part in solving some of the engineering 

 problems connected with the Panama Canal. He 

 served as President of the American Society of Civil 

 Engineers, and in 1910 received the John Fritz medal 

 for " notable achievements as a Civil Engineer." 



E. C. S. 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 



Royal Society, March 30. — Sir Charles Sherrington, 

 president, in the chair. — The late W. G. Ridewood : 

 Observations on the skull in foetal specimens of 

 whales of the genera Megaptera and Bala?noptera. 

 Five foetal skulls were described. The presence of 

 an interparietal bone in some whales, and the meeting 

 of the parietals in a median suture in others, is of 

 httle use in taxonomy. Syncondyly is associated 

 with suppression of the atlanto-epistropheal joint. 

 There is no separate foramen for the hypoglossal 

 nerve. The periotic bone shows no separate centres 

 of ossification, but a diffuse endochondral granular 

 deposit. The orbitosphenoid ossifies independently 

 of the presphenoid. In whales there is no " external 

 pterygoid plate " of ahsphenoidal origin ; the 

 aUsphenoid is the ossified ala temporalis. The 

 growth of the malleus and of the tympanic bone, and 

 the relations of the great bulla to the primary annulus 

 tympanicus, were described. — W. L. Balls : Further 

 observations on cell-wall structure as seen in cotton 

 hairs. The daily growth rings consist of large num- 

 bers of fibrils, spirally arranged, with frequent reversals 

 of the direction of the spirals. This arrangement 

 is predetermined for the secondary cellulose of the 

 growth rings by the initial pattern laid down in the 

 primary wall. The individual fibrils have a cross- 

 sectional area of the order of 005 square microns. 

 Some of the evidence suggests stereo-isomerism in 

 cellulose.— L. T. Hogben and F. R. ^yinton : The 

 pigmentary effector system. I. Re-action of frog's 

 melanophores to pituitary extracts. The posterior 

 lobe of the pituitary gland contains a specific stimu- 

 lant which, if injected into the frog, brings about a 

 condition of general and complete expansion of the 

 dermal melanophores. A minute dose induces a 

 darkening of the skin readily visible to the naked eye. 

 The pituitary melanophore stimulant is not destroyed 

 by pepsin or boiling. It is rapidly destroyed by 

 trypsin but not so quickly by acid hydrolysis. After 

 cocaine, curare, atropine and apocodeine it still 

 evokes its characteristic response, and therefore acts 

 directly upon the melanophores. The results con- 

 firm the endocrine significance of the condition of 

 general pigmental contraction found by Allen and 

 others to follow removal of the pituitary gland in 

 tadpoles. — Agnes Arber : On the development and 

 morphology of the leaves of palms. The leaf-stalk 

 is the basal or proximal region of the true petiole 

 while the " fan " or " feather " limb is a modification 

 of the distal region of the true petiole. The complex 

 phcation of the limb arises through the development 

 of a series of invaginations penetrating the leaf-stalk 

 tissue between the bundles. The " hgule " and 

 " dorsal scale " of the fan-palms represent adaxial 

 and abaxial distal margins of the uninvaginated 

 proximal region of the petiole. The palm leaf, as a 

 whole, is a petiolar phyllode with a pseudo-lamina. — 

 H. E. Roaf : The acidity of muscle during maintained 

 contraction. Records of electrical changes by a 

 manganese dioxide electrode in combination with a 

 calomel electrode show that : (a) In a veratrinised 

 muscle the acidity remains as well as the tension. 

 (6) In decerebrate rigidity reflex inhibition is accom- 

 panied by a decrease in acidity. Thus acidity and 

 tension are related and a single mechanism is sufti- 

 cient to account for both tetanus and tone. 



Geological Society, March 22. — Prof. A. C. Seward, 

 president, in the chair. — Sir Charles J. Holmes : 

 Leonardo da Vinci as a geologist. Leonardo was the 



NO. 2737, VOL. 109] 



