May 6, 1922J 



NA TURE 



587 



the name to the picture is a wide expanse of country 

 with distant blue hills in the background showing de- 

 lightful lights and shades. The effect is spoilt rather 

 than improved by the somewhat wooden sitters so 

 obviously posing in the foreground. 

 Turning to agricultural scenes, the two ploughs seem 

 It of place alongside the rick in " Farm Lands in 

 issex " (459) while hay still lies in the field uncarted. 

 ;ain in " Harrowing " (827) the crop seems to consist 

 >i heather, surely a somewhat unusual occupation. 



In " A Summer Gale " (610) R. G. Brundrit has 

 (juite failed to convey the impression of a gale, ordinary 

 cumulo - nimbus which might be associated with a 

 shower being all that is indicated in the picture. The 

 idea of a gale is introduced more effectively in Sir 

 Arthur Cope's " An Evening in October " (750), though 

 wind is not mentioned in this case. A very direct 

 reference to the work of the Meteorological Office is 

 made in " The South Cone " (250), though it is not 

 indicated which of the two hundred gale warning 

 stations round the British coasts is referred to. The 

 warning seems to have been successful, judging from 

 the flag at the masthead and the spray dashing against 

 the shore, but the sea in the foreground, curiously 

 enough, is scarcely rippled. The reference to a fore- 

 cast in the title of 175, " A Hopeful Forecast," suggests 

 further possibilities of reference to the work of the 

 Meteorological Office, such as a forecaster studying 

 the movements of Bjerknes' Polar Front, or plotting 

 ships' observations received by wireless telegraphy 

 from the Atlantic and deducing the probability of a 

 week of fine weather. But any such expectations are 

 destined to be disappointed, since what the picture 

 reveals is a young lady with golf clubs tapping an old 

 dial type of barometer, the hand of which is hard 

 over in the " Set Fair " position. 



Rain falling at a slant owing to the difference in 

 velocity of upper and lower wind currents is a common 

 sight, but Norman Wilkinson has shown the increase 

 of wind aloft in a striking manner through the agency 

 of falling rain in his picture of the King's yacht 

 Britannia racing in a squall (395). The wind is blow- 



ing across the picture from left to right and making 

 the yacht heel over until the mainsail is awash, while 

 in a shower near by the rain slants backwards as it 

 falls through air of diminishing velocity. One is almost 

 tempted to commence calculating the rate of change 

 of velocity with altitude. 



An optical phenomenon figures prominently in " The 

 Charcoal Burner's Hut " (632), where bright coloured 

 rings surround the moon at a radius which is too small 

 for a halo, while of unusual size for a corona ; but such 

 varied optical forms have been seen in the sky from 

 time to time that it is unwise to dogmatise upon the 

 unreality of this representation. 



Adrian Stokes' " Sunset " (i88) is suggestive of a 

 sun pillar in the bright vertical extension above the 

 sun, though it is improbable that a real sun pillar was 

 the source of his inspiration. The moonlit scene in 80, 

 " The Dead of the Night," is curious from the whiteness 

 of the tower and wall in the moonlight and yet the 

 absence of shadows where these would be expected 

 under the trees. 



Much interest naturally attaches to W. L. Wyllie's 

 picture of the towing of the old Victory into her resting- 

 place in dry dock. The execution of the water in 

 Portsmouth Harbour is so good that the frame at the 

 lower edge of the picture causes quite a shock, the eye 

 being deceived by the reality of the representation. 

 J. Olsson has a pleasant sea and island scene in the 

 Scillies (42), which gains greatly over some former 

 works by restraint in the use of brilliant colouring. 



This year's exhibition is conspicuous for the number 

 of portraits it contains, these forming a more than 

 usually high proportion of the whole. It is gratifying 

 to notice in a place of honour in one of the principal 

 galleries, and adjacent to a painting of the Royal 

 Wedding, a portrait of Sir Charles Parsons by Sir W. 

 Orpen. Men of science are not numerously represented, 

 and careful search was needed to disclose a tablet of 

 Sir William Ramsay destined for Westminster Abbey 

 and a silver medallion of Prof. James Thomson for 

 Belfast University. 



J. S. D. 



Obituary. 



Sir Patrick Manson, G.C.M.G., F.R.S. 



rHE death of Sir Patrick Manson, which occurred 

 in London on April 9, has taken from the medical 

 profession one of its most distinguished leaders. Born 

 in 1844, and educated at his native University of 

 Aberdeen, Manson decided to follow his calling in the 

 Far East, and in 1866 went to Formosa, whence in 

 1871 he moved to China, where he continued during 

 eighteen years. From the very beginning of his career 

 Manson made the causation of disease his study. He 

 was naturally interested in the elephantiasis so pre- 

 valent around him, but it was not until 1874, when he 

 came home to marry a wife, that he learned fully of 

 Lewis's discovery of a microscopic filaria (now known 

 as Microfilaria bancrofti) in the blood of Indian sufferers 

 from the chyluria often associated with that disease. 



On his return to China he settled down to the study 

 of " elephantoid " pathology, and began with a survey 



NO. 2740, VOL. 109] 



of the blood of a thousand Chinamen. Having satisfied 

 himself that the microfilariae found in the blood are 

 the issue of parent filarial locked up in the lymphatics 

 of the host — a discovery in which, however, he was 

 anticipated by Bancroft of Brisbane — and that they 

 are embryos incapable of any further development in 

 the blood, he saw that the series of events by which 

 the microfilariae living in the blood of one man became 

 the adult filariae living in the lymphatics of other men 

 must take place in the outside world, and might pos- 

 sibly be initiated by some such free-ranging, blood- 

 sucking insect as a mosquito. His selection of the 

 mosquito was decided by his further discovery that 

 the microfilariae make their show in the cutaneous 

 blood of their host only after sunset, when mosquitoes 

 are active ; in the daytime they flock to the host's 

 lungs and central blood-vessels. In 1877, with the 

 compliance of an infected Chinaman, he put his theory 



