April 22, 1922] 



NATURE 



525 



College of Science, as well as King's College, showed 

 that a striking increase in growth occurred when small 

 amounts of this bacterised peat were added to the soil. 

 This led to the chemical fractionation of such treated 

 peat, the extract being used to test the stimulus to 

 growth of the aquatic plant Lemna, and other plants, 

 in culture solutions. It was found that 368 parts per 

 million added to the culture solution gave in six weeks 

 an increase in weight of 62 times the control plants. 

 Other equally remarkable results were obtained. 

 Various papers on the subject were published in Proc. 

 Roy, Soc. and the Annals oj Botany. 



The method was patented, and in the early years of 

 the war great hopes were entertained that peat deposits 

 in many parts of the world could thus be made of direct 

 service in stimulating food crop production. The con- 

 troversies to which this commercialising of the process 

 led, together with the loss of a son in the war, no doubt 

 contributed to Prof. Bottomley's subsequent break- 

 down. 



The discovery of auximones will remain a landmark 

 in the long history of plant nutrition. These sub- 

 stances differ from vitamines in that they will with- 

 stand a temperature of 150° C, while the latter are 

 largely destroyed by boiling. Moreover, unlike vita- 

 mines, auximones apparently have no effect on animals. 

 They are probably derivatives of nucleic acid, and appear 

 to be generated in soils through the activity of soil 

 bacteria. Their presence indicates that these bacteria 

 stand in somewhat the same relation to plants that 

 plants do to animals ; for the auximones appear to be 

 bacterial products stimulating plant growth, while the 

 vitamines are plant products which are essential for 

 healthy animal development. 



It is greatly to be hoped that these remarkable 

 rowth-stimulating substances can be isolated, their 

 imposition determined, and the method of their pro- 

 duction standardised. They would then be of the 

 utmost value to agriculture. 



Prof. Bottomley was a member of the Council of 

 the Royal Botanic Society, Regent's Park, where some 

 of his experiments were carried out. He leaves a 

 widow and two sons at liuddersfield, where the family 

 removed from Hampstead a few months before his 

 death. R. R. G. 



Dr. II. N. Dickson, C.B.E. 



Henry Newton Dickson, born in Edinburgh in 

 1866, studied at the University of Edinburgh and 

 came under the influence of the remarkable activities 

 in experimental physics, meteorology, and ocean- 

 ography directed by P. G. Tait and G. Chrystal in the 

 University and by A. Buchan and John Murray out- 

 side. Like many other Edinburgh students of the 

 later 'eighties of the last century Dickson seized the 

 opportunity of acting as volunteer assistant in the 

 work of the Challenger Commission, the Scottish Marine 

 Station, and the Ben Nevis Observatory, and by this 

 practical training in physiography he was fitted to 

 take up the reviving study of geography on a basis 

 of sound physical science. Thus, while his researches 

 dealt exclusively with the special fields of meteorology 

 and oceanography, his appointments were mainly in 



NO. 2738, VOL. 109] 



the teaching or the application of geography in its 

 wider aspects. 



In 1 89 1 Dickson was engaged at the Marine Biological 

 Association's laboratory at Plymouth in investigations 

 on the salinity and temperature of the English Channel, 

 and on his removal to Oxford in 1893 he extended 

 this work to the whole surface of the North Atlantic. 

 The water-samples were obtained by the officers of 

 Atlantic liners and analysed by Dickson in the Univer- 

 sity chemical laboratory. It took several years to 

 bring the methods of collection and discussion to 

 perfection, and finally, with the co-operation of the 

 Meteorological Office, Dickson produced his most im- 

 portant work, " The Circulation of the Surface Waters 

 of the North Atlantic Ocean," which appeared in the 

 Philosophical Transactions for 1901, and included 

 monthly maps of temperature and salinity for the two 

 complete years 1896 and 1897. This won him the 

 Oxford D.Sc. degree in physical geography. 



At Oxford Dickson joined the lecturing staff of the 

 School of Geography and was very successful as a 

 teacher. He moved to Reading in 1906, where he 

 acted as professor of geography in the University 

 College until 1920. During the war he gave practically 

 his whole time to work at the Intelligence Division of 

 the Naval Staff, where, amongst other duties, he 

 undertook the preparation of an important series of 

 handbooks descriptive of regions in which military 

 operations were being carried on or where they might 

 occur. For this he was decorated with the C.B.E. 



In 1893 Dr. Dickson pubHshed a small volume on 

 " Elementary Meteorology," which showed originality 

 in conception and presented the principles of weather 

 study in a very attractive form. This was followed 

 in 1912 by a little book on " Climate and Weather," 

 which was equally happy. He also wrote a book on 

 " Maps and Map Reading." Dickson devoted much 

 time to the study of underground water in the chalk 

 formations near London, and the outbreak of war 

 interrupted a most important investigation on which 

 he was engaged with regard to the evaporation from 

 an exposed water-surface. For this purpose he devised 

 an automatic recording evaporimeter, which, so far as 

 can be ascertained, was never made available for general 

 use. 



For many years Dr. Dickson was regular in attending 

 the meetings of the British Association, acting as 

 Secretar\' and Recorder of Section E, and in 1913 he 

 was President of the Section. He was also a member 

 of Council of the Royal Meteorological Society for many 

 years and was President of the Society for 1911-1912. 



His last work was in the Editorial Department of 

 the additional volumes of the " Encyclopsedia Britan- 

 nica" for the 12th edition. Into this, as into all his 

 other work, he threw his whole heart, and probably 

 the most remarkable feature of his character was his 

 indefatigable energy in whatever he undertook. He 

 was married in 189 1, and leaves a widow, a son in the 

 Royal Navy, and a daughter. H. R. M. 



We much regret to learn from the Lister Institute 

 that Mr. A, W, Bacot, head of the department of 

 entomology, died at Cairo from typhus on April 12, 



