October 21, 1915] 



NATURE 



205 



theories." It is not evident that he studied these 

 theories, or those that have developed from them, 

 with the open mind and carefulness with which 

 he approached his insects in the Orange wilder- 

 ness, but he felt that they were all loo mechanical, 

 and perhaps he was not far wrong. He did not, 

 however, criticise constructively, or take account, 

 so far as we know, of evolutionist yet not Dar- 

 winian positions, such as that of Samuel Butler, 

 with whom he would have found himself, in his 

 recoil from the mechanistic, in hearty sympathy. 



While Fabre's aloofness from evolutionist inter- 

 pretation must be regarded as a defect in his 

 scientific work, there is surely truth in what has 

 been said, that " in his sense of the dignity of 

 facts ; in his high standard of precision ; in his 

 appreciation of the trivial, Fabre came, in spite 

 of himself, into felfowship with Darwin." Per- 

 haps he occasionally read too much of the man 

 into the insect — and he was himself as much a 

 man of feeling as a man of science — but he made 

 a big contribution to the interpretation of animate 

 nature by his convincing evidence of its pervasive 

 mentality and purposiveness. Fabre was a 

 Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and a corre- 

 sponding member of the Institute. 



NOTES. 



As an outcome of the recent Manchester meeting, the 

 British Association has invited the following gentle- 

 ment to serve on a committee to consider and report 

 upon the question of fuel economy (utilisation of coal 

 and smoke prevention), from a national point of 

 view : — Prof. VV. A. Bone, of the Imperial Col- 

 lege of Science and Technology, London (chairman) ; 

 Mr. E. D. Simon, chairman of the Manchester Air 

 Pollution Committee (secretary) ; Profs. P. P. Bedson 

 {Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne), J. W. Cobb 

 and J. B. Cohen (Leeds University), H. B. Dixon 

 {Manchester University), Thomas Gray (Royal Tech- 

 nical College, Glasgow), H. S. Hele-Shaw (London;, 

 L. T. O'Shea and W. P. Wynne (Sheffield University), 

 and Richard Threlfall (Birmingham), together with 

 Dr. G. T. Beilby (Glasgow), Mr. Ernest Bury, and 

 Dr. J. E. Stead (Middlesbrough and the Cleveland dis- 

 trict). The committee, which is empowered to add if 

 necessary to its members, has been selected so as to 

 include representative chemists, engineers, and tech- 

 nologists from all the principal industrial areas. 



We are informed that the council of the University 

 of Manchester has received from an anonymous bene- 

 factor the sum of 1368/. to pay off the debt which 

 remained on the new extension of the museum that 

 was added recently for the housing of the Egyptian 

 antiquities and of collections of minerals. 



An exhibition of photographs in monochrome and 

 natural colours, by Mr. H. Essenhigh Corke, will be 

 open free to the public, on presentation of visiting 

 card, at the Royal Photographic Society of Great 

 Britain, 35 Russell Square, W.C., until Saturday, 

 November 27, daily from y a.m. until 5 p.m. 



The death is announced, in his eighty-six year, 

 of Mr. Charles Fortey, who was for many years 

 NO. 2399, VOL. 96] 



honorary curator of the Ludlow Natural History 

 Society's Museum. He is gratefully remembered by 

 many geologists and palaeontologists for the rnanner 

 in which he made the unique collection of Upper 

 Silurian fossils in his charge 'available for purposes 

 of research. 



The death is announced in Science, in his eighty- 

 seco|nd year, of Prof. W. Watson, from 1865 to 1873 

 professor of mechanical engineering and descriptive 

 geometry in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, and since 1884 recording secretary of the 

 American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 



In 1903, at the International Geological Congress, 

 Mr. Emmons, supported by the late Prof. E. Suess, 

 proposed the establishment of an institute for the study 

 of geological physics. A preliminary meeting was 

 held on October 14, with Prof. Benjamin Moore in the 

 chair, at which it was decided to form forthwith a 

 society for the encouragement and study of geological 

 physics, commencing with the subject of segregation 

 in rocks. Under the presidency of Prof. Moore the 

 society hopes to do good work by the exchange of 

 specimens, photographs, and literature between its 

 members. An annual subscription of 2s. 6d. has been 

 fixed for the first two years. Communications are 

 invited by the hon. sec. pro. tern., Mr. G. Abbott, 

 2 Rusthall Park, Tunbridge Wells. 



We mentioned in our issue of July 8 (p. 514) the 

 case of an officer who had sent to the Natural History 

 Museum at South Kensington the skins of some small 

 animals trapped by him in the trenches in northern 

 France. Dr. Ugolini, of the Royal Technical Insti- 

 tute at Brescia, Italy, writes to tell us that one of 

 his four sons serving in the Italian Army, a doctor 

 of natural science, has been able amid the perils of 

 war on the high mountains of the Trentino, to make 

 valuable geological observations, and to collect and 

 dry plants of particular botanical interest. The keen 

 naturalist always makes use of opportunities of acquir- 

 ing knowledge; and no doubt many other instances 

 could be given of the persistence of this ruling passion 

 under conditions in which scientific work would 

 scarcely be expected. 



The death is announced, in the Engineer for Octo- 

 ber 15, of Mr. J. S. Graham, the general manager 

 and a director of the Northumberland Shipbuilding 

 Company, Ltd., of Howden-on-Tyne. Mr. Graham 

 was born at Kingborn, Fifeshire, in 1864, and had 

 varied experience in shipbuilding. A notable piece of 

 work under his charge was the construction and 

 delivery of the Havana pontoon dock. During the 

 Spanish-American war he returned to this country, 

 where he joined the Northumberland Shipbuilding 

 Company in 1898. 



The Aristotelian Society will begin its session on 

 November i with the inaugural address by the presi- 

 dent, Dr. Wildon Carr, on "The Moment of Experi- 

 ence." At the second meeting on December 6, Lord 

 Haldane will read a paper on "Progress in Philo- 

 sophical Research." Some papers of specially scien- 

 tific interest are announced, including one by Prof. 



