i 



January 6, 191 6] 



NATURE 



517 



and he gave a course of these lectures himself in 1904. 



To those who knew the amount and value of Dr. 



Oliver's work, it was a constant source of wonder 



why he was not elected to a fellowship of the Royal 

 t Society. His death is a great loss to medicine^ for 

 ' although he was seventy-four years of age he was still 



active and energetic. 



We announce with regret the death, at Kilmarnock, 

 on December 26, 1915, of Mr. A. D. Darbishire, lec- 

 turer on genetics in the University of Edinburgh, and 

 known by his experiments bearing on the laws of 

 heredity, and his book on " Breeding and the Men- 

 delian Discovery." While at Oxford Mr. Darbishire 

 came under the influence of the late Prof. Weldon, 

 and he took up and carried on Prof. Weldon 's 

 researches on the inheritance of colour in mice — re- 

 searches which were designed to test the continuous 

 character of variations in colour, and to prove the un- 

 tenability of the idea of the clear-cut, sharply distin- 

 guishable mutations postulated by Mendel and his 

 followers. A floor case in the Natural History 

 Museum, containing a score of mice of various colours, 

 shows in a most instructive way the practical mean- 

 ing of the results obtained by him in breeding. After 

 his graduation, Mr. Darbishire became demonstrator 

 of zoology in the University of Manchester, and 

 pursued his investigations there, and gradually he 

 became convinced of the general soundness of the 

 Mendelian position. In 1905 he was appointed demon- 

 strator of zoology in the Royal College of Science 

 (afterwards incorporated in the Imperial College of 

 Science), which post he held until 191 1, when he was 

 appointed lecturer on genetics in the zoological depart- 

 ment of the University of Edinburgh. Mr. Darbi- 

 shire endeared himself to all who came into 

 contact with him ; his personal charm was 

 really irresistible. During the summer of 1914 

 he gave a course of lectures on heredity at the 

 Graduate School held biennially in different centres 

 under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Agri- 

 culture. Upon reaching home after the outbreak of 

 the war he offered his services as a munitions worker, 

 ♦ and spent some months in arduous training for this 

 I work. Later, though conscious of the fact that he was 

 really unfit for service in the ranks, he enlisted as a 

 j private in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. 

 His appointment to a commission in the Royal Garri- 

 son Artillery was published three days after his un- 

 timely death, which has deprived British science of a 

 brilliant follower devoted to sound research. 



The death is announced, at Cambridge, Mass., of 

 Mr. C. A. R. Lundin, who won distinction with the 

 firm of Messrs. Alvan Clark and Sons in the con- 

 struction of many of the largest telescope lenses in 

 the world. He was born in Sweden in 185 1, and went 

 to America in 1874, when he became associated with 

 Messrs. Clark. Among the telescope objectives upon 

 which he was engaged are the 30-in. objective for Pul- 

 kowa Observatory, the 36-in. lens of the Lick Observa- 

 tory, the 40-in. lens of the Yerkes Observatory, the 

 i6-in. lens of the University of Cincinnati, and the 

 i8-in. lens of Amherst College. He had also devised 

 and put into operation several important optical tests. 

 NO. 2410, VOL. 96] 



With the death last week of Mr. H. A. Taylor, at 

 the a/ge of seventy-four, there has passed away, a dis- 

 tinguished pioneer in the development of electrical 

 science, who was chiefly identified with most of the 

 submarine cable enterprises undertaken within the 

 last forty-five years. A mathematician and physicist 

 of a high order, he was associated with the late 

 Latimer Clark in a number of electrical researches in 

 connection with the electromotive force of the standard 

 cell, the effect of temperature on the electrical resist- 

 ance of guttzk-percha, etc. The Clark cell, if carefully 

 used, will remain constant for years, but it polarises 

 quickly, and is generally only used for those tests 

 in which the batteries are tested when they are not 

 sending any current at all, but simply maintaining a 

 potential difference. Taylor was associated with Dr. 

 Muirhead in the development of a system of duplex- 

 ing submarine cables, which is a modification of the 

 bridge method, and has proved remarkably successful, 

 many important cables, such as those of the Eastern 

 Telegraph Co. and the various Atlantic cables being 

 worked on this plan. The introduction of automatic 

 transmission for cable circuits was also in a large 

 measure due to him. 



From Wiirzburg comes the news of the deatTi there 

 on December 2, 1915, of Dr. Fritz Regel, the pro- 

 fessor of geography and director of the Geographical 

 Seminar at the University. Regel was born on 

 January 17, 1853 ; and his first teaching work was done 

 at the Stoy Institute, in Jena. In 1892 he was given 

 the first full chair in geography at the Jena University, 

 where he taught until 1908, when he moved to Wiirz- 

 burg. His skill as a teacher of geography was re- 

 nowned; no less so was his fame as a writer. He 

 was one of the best authorities on his own native dis- 

 trict, Thuringia, about which he wrote the " Landes- 

 kunde " (fourth edition in 1913), and a " Handbuch " 

 in three volumes. But he also had more than a pass- 

 ing knowledge of other portions of the globe, as his 

 various books testify — " Kolumbien " (1899), "Die 

 Nord- und die Siidpolforschung " . (1905), " Der 

 Panamakanal " (1908), his admirable survey of South 

 America (1910), and his description of western," 

 northern, and eastern Europe (1909), the second and 

 first volume respectively of the " Geographisches Hand- 

 buch " ; and last, but by no means least, his " Landes- 

 kunde der Iberischen Halbinsel" (1905), based on 

 travels in Spain. 



Dr. C. F. Holder, who died in October last, was 

 a good type of the open-air naturalist, who combined 

 in a somewhat unusual way a love of sport with a 

 devotion to the cause of wild-life protection. He was 

 born in 185 1 in Massachusetts, of Quaker stock, and 

 was devoted to natural history from boyhood. His 

 early work was as a curator in the American Musejim 

 of Natural History in New York City, but considera- 

 tions of health led him in 1885 to Pasadena, in 

 southern California, where he spent the rest of his 

 life, observing and fishing and writing. He was a 

 good citizen of a notably beautiful city, and took a 

 great interest in local educational affairs. Shortly 

 before his death he was appointed honorary professor 

 of zoology in the Throop College, the foundation of 

 the chair being due to a lifelong friend. Dr. George E. 



