404 



NATURE 



[December 9, 1915 



was established, and a more ambitious and successful 

 attempt was made in the following year. The cable 

 here consisted of gutta-percha covered wires protected 

 by coated hemp yarn, and an outside covering of 

 galvanised iron wire. The weight of this cable was 

 about 200 tons, and the electrical testing was carried 

 out by Mr. Wollaston. This work took place on 

 October 31, 185 1, and on November 13 of the following 

 year the cable was opened for public use between Eng- 

 land and France. 



We regret to announce the death, on December 3, 

 at forty-seven years of age, of Dr. A. Vaughan, 

 lecturer on geology in the University of Oxford- 



The death is announced at Ranchi, India, of Colonel 

 F. J. Drury, of the Indian Medical Service, Bengal. 

 He was Inspector-General of the Civil Hospitals of 

 Bihar and Orissa, and formerly professor of pathology 

 at the Medical College, Calcutta. 



The death has occurred, in his sixty-eighth year, of 

 Dr. M. A. Veeder, of Lyons, N.Y., who wrote largely 

 on water supply and other questions relating to public 

 health. He also made a study of the relation of pack 

 ice in the great lakes of North America to the Glacial 

 period, and carried out an extensive investigation of 

 electromagnetic phenomena of solar origin, especially 

 with reference to the causation of the aurora. 



Dr. George Sternberg died on November 3, in 

 his seventy-eighth year. He graduated at the College 

 of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, in 

 i860, entered the United States Army as assistant- 

 surgeon in 1861, and retired with the rank of Briga- 

 dier-General in 1902. He served throughout the Civil 

 War, and was in charge of the American Medical 

 Service in the war with Spain in 1898. Dr. Sternberg 

 had a special knowledge of cholera and yellow fever, 

 and the Yellow Fever Commission of 1900 was 

 appointed on his initiative, and practically solved the 

 mode of transference by the mosquito. He founded 

 the U.S. Army Medical School at Washington, and 

 was the author of two large manuals of bacteriology, 

 a treatise on malaria, a book on photomicrography, 

 and a work on immunity, serum therapy, and protec- 

 tive inoculation, as well as many Government reports. 



Mr. George Smith, who died on November 19, at 

 the age of sixty-four, was one of the oldest and most 

 experienced chemists and works managers in the 

 employ of Nobel's Explosives Company, Limited, Glas- 

 gow. Born at Woolwich, he went through the School 

 of Mines, and after some experience at the Woolwich 

 Arsenal Laboratory, and at the Stowmarket Works 

 of the New Explosives Company, he entered the ser- 

 vices of Nobel's Explosives Company in 1879, as the 

 works manager of their Westquarter Factory in Stir- 

 lingshire, where detonators and sulphuric acid were 

 produced. During his capable management the fac- 

 tory grew in size and importance, other manufactures 

 were added, and when Westquarter was no longer 

 able to satisfy the demands placed on it a new factory 

 was built at Linlithgow for powder fuse. Mr. Smith 

 retired from active work In 1913, and lived afterwards 

 at Hastings and St. Leonards. He was a fellow of 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Institute of 

 NO. 2406, VOL. 96] 



Chemistry, and took out various patents during his y_ 



active life. His numerous friends will long rememb«r 

 him and mourn his loss. 



The following are among the lecture arrangements 

 at the Royal Institution before Easter :— Prof. H. H. 

 Turner, a course of six illustrated lectures, adapted to a 

 juvenile auditory, on "Wireless Messages from the 

 Stars"; Prof. C. S. Sherrington, six lectures on the 

 physiology of anger and fear, and nerve tone and 

 posture; Dr. E. J. Russell, two lectures on the plant 

 and the soil ; Prof. A. Keith, two lectures on sea 

 power as a factor in the evolution of modern races; 

 Prof. F. Keeble, three lectures on modern horticulture ; 

 Prof. W. A. Bone, three lectures on utilisation of 

 energy from coal; Sir F. Watson Dyson, Astronomer 

 Royal, on measurement of the brightness of stars; 

 Prof. L. W. King, two lectures on recent excavations 

 in Mesopotamia; Prof. H. E. Armstrong, two lectures 

 on organic chemistry in war; Sir J. J. Thomson, six 

 lectures on radiation from atoms and electrons. The 

 Friday evening meetings will commence on January 

 21, when Sir James Dewar will deliver a dis- 

 course on problems in capillarity. Succeeding dis- 

 courses will be given by Prof. L. Hill, Prof. W. Bate- 

 son, Prof. E. G. Coker, Prof. S. P. Thompson, Slr 

 Napler Shaw, Dr. A. Strahan, Prof. W. M. Bayliss, 

 Prof. A. Fowler, and Sir J. J. Thomson. 



The theory that the possession of territory, and the 

 struggle which this involves, was a factor in sexual 

 selection was first definitely formulated by Mr. H. 

 Eliot Howard, in his remarkable book on "The British 

 Warblers." The soundness of this view is now 

 attested by Mr. J. M. Dewar in his studies on the 

 oyster-catcher in relation to its natural environment. 

 In the Zoologist for November he goes still further, 

 and holds that the " law should be extended to apply 

 to the birds in winter, as they then have territories, 

 though no opportunity has come under notice of a 

 territory needing to be defended against intruders." 

 Howard's view that the possession of territories is a 

 biological advantage, both to the individual and to the 

 species, by securing an adequate, and no more than 

 an adequate, supply of food, is borne out by the 

 general evidence derived from the areas under observa- 

 tion in regard to the oyster-catcher. 



In an article entitled "Reactions to the Cessation of 

 Stimuli" {Psychological Review, vol. xxIi.,No. 6), Mr. 

 H. Woodrow describes some experiments which show 

 that the reaction to the cessation of a sound or light 

 stimulus Is In all cases the same as the reaction time 

 to the beginning of that stimulus, and that the 

 lengthening in reaction time due to a decrease in 

 Intensity of stimulus is equal In amount, and follows 

 the same law, In the case of both beginning and cessa. 

 tion reactions. The author, in attempting to find an 

 adequate hypothesis which shall subsume these facts, 

 criticises both the latent period view and synaptic 

 resistance, and develops his theory of the central 

 nervous system as the seat of a complex system of 

 Inter-related activities and potential energies, which is 

 disturbed throughout by any change in any part of 

 the system. The physiological disturbance in this case 

 is in part the process of becoming aware of a stimulus 



