December i6, 19 15] 



NATURE 



435 



attention by his invention of a steam pump, and later 

 came into further prominence through his investiga- 

 tions in electric batteries, the outcome of which was 

 the foundation of a business which ranks to-day among 

 the leading electrical works in England. It was while 

 manager of the Coalbrookdale Company's works that 

 he discovered the great value of concentrated nitric acid 

 in facilitating the formation of the oxide in secondary 

 batteries. R. L. G. Plants, who had been working 

 on the problems of electrolytic polarisation since 1859, 

 made a similar discovery, which resulted in the pro- 

 duction of a cell having a high E.M.F., a low resist- 

 ance, a large capacity, and almost perfect freedom 

 from polarisation. The rival claims were contested in 

 the courts, who divided the patent between Parker and 

 Plants. In 1882 Mr. Parker entered into partnership 

 w-ith Mr. P. B. Elwell, and commenced manufacturing 

 accumulators, and, later on, dynamos. This business 

 was afterwards transferred to the Electric Construc- 

 tion Company of Wolverhampton, of which Mr, Parker 

 became manager and engineer. During the five years 

 which he occupied this position he designed the elec- 

 trical plant for the Liverpool Overhead Railwav. Later 

 he became engineer of the scheme for electrifying the 

 Metropolitan Railway in London. Mr. Parker was 

 foremost in the electro-deposition of copper for subse- 

 quent use in the refining of copper, and the extraction 

 of gold and silver. Then the smoke abatement problem 

 occupied his attention, and he invented a slow-combus- 

 tion grate, and a substance now known as coalite, 

 which, though in appearance like gas coke, was easily 

 ignited and burnt with a bright but smokeless flame. 

 In 1894 he was awarded the Stephenson medal and 

 Telford premium by the Institution of Civil Engineers. 

 By the death of Dr. Arthur Vaughan, at the early 

 age of forty-seven, science has again to mourn the loss 

 of a distinguished investigator. Vaughan 's early 

 training was in mathematics, which he made his chief 

 subject at Cambridge, where he obtained a first class 

 in both parts of the Mathematical Tripos. After apply- 

 ing his mathematics to an original investigation of 

 certain problems presented by the earth's crust, he 

 devoted himself with great ardour to geology, which 

 had always been his favourite subject, especially on 

 its palaontological side, with its bearings on the great 

 problem of life. Some original work on the Jurassic 

 beds of Somerset, accomplished in conjunction with his 

 friend, Prof. Reynolds, prepared him for an attack on 

 the zonal succession of the Lower Carboniferous rocks, 

 a difficult problem which had resisted all previous 

 attempts at solution. He commenced his investigation 

 in the Avon Gorge, near Bristol, and achieved there a 

 remarkable success. Having firmly established the 

 succession in this section he extended his researches 

 to adjacent regions, and then into provinces more re- 

 mote, bringing into harmony the order of the Lower 

 Carboniferous rocks and fossils in England, Wales, 

 Ireland, Belgium, and elsewhere. The solution of this 

 problem led to many fresh lines of inquiry, bearing on 

 the laws governing the evolution of animal forms, and 

 on the distribution of the Lower Carboniferous land 

 and sea. While in the final stage of the disease from 

 which he died he left the sanatorium at Buxton to give 

 fan account of his latest investigation on this last sub- 

 NO. 2407, VOL. 96I 



ject to the British Association at Manchester. In 19 10 

 he/ accepted an invitation to the newly created post of 

 lecturer in geology in the University of Oxford. Here 

 his brilliant powers as a teacher were at once recog- 

 nised; he gained the afi'ection of his students and 

 awakened their interest; indeed, it would have been 

 hard to resist the stimulus of his lectures on " Palaeon- 

 tology and Evolution," with their suggestive views on 

 the trend of the great currents of ancient life. He 

 leaves unfinished an important text-book on palaeon- 

 tology, which had occupied many years of his life, and 

 on which he was engaged up to within a few days of 

 his death. 



The reading of Mr. S. H. Haughton's paper on a 

 fossil man from Boskop, Transvaal, before the Royal 

 Society of South Africa on October 20 (reported in 

 Nature of December 2 (p. 389), was followed by a dis- 

 cussion in which Dr. L. P<^ringuey expressed the opinion 

 that none of the associated stones were human imple- 

 ments. It was very difficult to correlate the superficial 

 deposits of South Africa with those of Europe, but it 

 was clear that the Boskop man had no connection with 

 the Neanderthal race. Both the Boskop specimens and 

 another less fossilised human jaw which was exhibited 

 must rather be compared with the corresponding 

 bones of existing African types, to which they might 

 be ancestrally related. As to the real importance ">f 

 these remains there could be no doubt. 



The FitzPatrick lectures recently delivered by Dr. 

 W. H. R. Rivers before the Royal Society of 

 Physicians dealt with the relations between medicine, 

 magic, and religion. Magic he defined to be a group 

 of processes in which man used rites which depended 

 on his own power, or on powers believed to be in- 

 herent in, or the attributes of, certain objects and 

 processes which were used in these rites. Religion, 

 on the contrary, dealt with processes dependent on a 

 Higher Power, whose intervention was sought by rites 

 of supplication or propitiation. But the savage mind 

 distinguishes with difficulty between these two groups 

 of ideas. Savage philosophy attributes disease to 

 human agency, to some spiritual being, or to what 

 we ordinarily call natural causes. He dwelt on the 

 important part played by suggestion in the causation 

 of disease among the Papuans and Melanesians, and 

 he remarked that from the physiological point of view 

 the difference between their rude methods and our 

 medicine was not one of kind, but only of degree. 

 The chief lesson to be learnt from the facts described 

 was the rationality of the leechcraft of such peoples. 

 They practised an art of medicine in some respects 

 more rational than our own, for diagnosis and treat- 

 ment followed more directly their ideas of causation. 

 There were examples of leechcraft, such as the use 

 of bleeding and massage in New Guinea, which did 

 not follow a system so strictly logical and consistent. 

 This led to another set of problems, the transforma- 

 tion of medical beliefs . and practices as a result of 

 contact and blending of peoples. 



The Museums Journal for December contains a 

 very suggestive article on " Museums and Folk-art," 

 more especially in reference to the folk-arts of the 

 British Isles. Some striking examples of this art are 



