402 



NATURE 



[December 9, 1915 



the export from British ports of the more obvious 

 fatty materials used as food, but the fact that 

 oils contain glycerine seems to have been largely 

 overlooked, though the belated announcement 

 made last July by Sir F. E. Smith, then Solicitor- 

 General, that "it had recently ( ! ) been discovered 

 that glycerine could be made from lard " must 

 not be forgotten. Some oils or oil-yielding 

 materials are still being allowed to go to neutral 

 countries ; for example, linseed or linseed oil, and 

 palm kernels, have been exported to Holland ; 

 whale oil is being largely shipped to Norway. 

 Linseed oil, which was formerly only of use as a 

 drying oil, can now be saturated with hydrogen 

 and converted into a hard, white fat suitable for 

 use in margarine. The same applies to whale oil ; 

 and there is a very large factory in Norway 

 engaged in this work. 



It was claimed in the debate that it is necessary 

 to send these oils to Holland in order that cheap 

 margarine may be returned to Britain. If this 

 be so, the question arises whether all that is 

 possible has been done to protect and foster our 

 own margarine industry, and if the English out- 

 put of margarine is at its maximum. The answer 

 is probably in the negative — the English maker 

 is short of labour and he is being undersold by 

 his foreign rivals, who are making huge profits 

 in the German markets. 



PROF. C. R. ZEILLER. 



/^HARLES RENE ZEILLER, whose death 

 ^^ after a long illness was announced from 

 Paris a few days ago, was a member of the Insti- 

 tute, chief engineer of mines, and professor of 

 paleeobotany in the National School of Mines. 

 Despite the heavy claims of official duties, Zeiller 

 devoted himself to palaeobotanical investigation 

 for nearly forty years. His earlier papers dealt 

 with the Carboniferous and Permian plants of 

 France, and the most important of these is the 

 volume, published in 187S, on the plants of the 

 French Coal Measures. The beautifully illus- 

 trated and scholarly monographs of Palaeozoic 

 floras, including those of Valenciennes, Commen- 

 try (in collaboration with the late M. Renault), 

 Autun, Brive, Creusot, and Blanzy, are models of 

 scientific exposition and thorough workmanship. 

 The two volumes on the Rhaetic flora of Tonkin, 

 published in 1903, are the most important of his 

 contributions to the botany of the earlier phase 

 of the Mesozoic era. He also wrote several 

 papers on later Mesozoic plants from different 

 parts of the world, and added considerably to our 

 knowledge of the Permo-Carboniferous floras of 

 South Africa, Brazil, and India, both by his 

 description of new types and his masterly treat- 

 ment of the wider problems presented by the so- 

 called Glossopteris flora of the southern hemi- 

 sphere. I 

 Though mainly concerned with impressions of | 

 Palaeozoic and Mesozoic plants, Zeiller 's re- J 

 searches into the structure of the Palaeozoic fern , 

 Psaronius and, more recently, his work on the i 

 NO. 2406, VOL. 96] 



anatomy of Lepidostrobus bear witness to his 

 skill as a morphologist. For many years he con- 

 tributed to the Revue Generate de Botanique a 

 critical and comprehensive survey of recent 

 palaeobotanical literature ; the enormous amount 

 of work represented by these articles illustrates, 

 his untiring energy and his unselfish devotion to 

 the subject which he loved. In 1905 Zeiller wa.s^ 

 elected a foreign member of the Linnean Society, 

 and in 1909 he received the same recognitior» 

 from the Geological Society of London. In the 

 latter year he visited England for the first time 

 to attend the Darwin celebration at Cambridge, 

 and was one of the distinguished band of foreigners, 

 upon whom the University conferred honorary 

 degrees. 



Zeiller had a remarkably wide and accurate 

 knowledge of his subject. He was much more 

 than a learned systematist ; while scrupulously 

 accurate in his exceptionally lucid descriptions, he 

 always took a broad view. He had the power of 

 synthesis as well as that of analysis. He never 

 wrote too much, and all that he did bore testi- 

 mony to his courtesy, singleness of purpose, and 

 modesty. Zeiller was a man of simple dignity 

 and great personal charm ; his death is a severe 

 blow to a department of knowledge which claims 

 a comparatively small number of students. He 

 leaves a rich legacy of scientific achievement to a 

 younger generation, and to his friends the stimu- 

 lating memory of a noble character. 



A. C. Sewakd. 



PROF. F. R. BARRELL. 



jyV the sudden death, on December 2, of Prof. 



■L' F. R. Barrell, at fifty-five years of age, the 

 University of Bristol has lost one of the senior 

 members of its staff. After graduating at Cam- 

 bridge (Math. Trip., 1882, 14th wrangler; Nat. 

 Sci. Trip., 1883) and in London University (B.Sc.,. 

 1884), he was for two years lecturer in Ham- 

 mond Electrical College and for five years in- 

 structor in natural science in the Britannia. In 

 1890 he was appointed lecturer in mathematics, 

 in University College, Bristol, and was given the 

 status of professor in 1893. When the University- 

 College was merged in the University of Bristol 

 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Science, 

 and was one of the representatives of Senate on 

 Council. At the time of his death he was Dean 

 of the Arts Board, and again a member of 

 Council. 



Sound, especially in fundamental conceptions,, 

 rather than brilliant as a mathematician, his 

 main interests lay in the application of mathe- 

 matics to practical problems in physics and in 

 methods of teaching, with constant insistence on 

 the importance of a securer basis clearly and 

 adequately grasped. His work bore fruit in its 

 influence on those whom he trained. In his 

 earlier days he wrote on electrical problems 

 ("Electricity and Magnetism," 1894), ^^d later 

 on "Elementary Geometry" (1904). He was a 

 pioneer in the localisation of a needle or bullet by 



