544 



NATURE 



[January 13, 1916 



from 1871 to 1887V and of experimental physics from 

 1887 to IQ06. From 1883 to 1906 he was in charge 

 of the Sloane physical laboratory at Yale, which was 

 built under his supervision from his own plans. Earlier 

 in his career he had been professor of physics and 

 chemistry at Williams College, and a consulting 

 specialist in the U.S. signal service. He was sent by 

 the American Government to Colorado in 1878 to 

 observe a total eclipse of the sun, and at that time 

 made the first measurement of the polarisation of the 

 solar corona. He was the first to observe the electric 

 shadow in air, discovered and analysed gases in stony 

 meteorites, and applied kathode discharge in vacuo to 

 form metallic films for mirrors. Prof. Wright is said 

 to have been the first American to obtain definite 

 results with X-rays, and his papers upon the subject 

 attracted wide attention. 



By the death of Prof. F. W. Putnam, honorary 

 director of the Peabody Museum of American Archae- 

 ology and Ethnology, Harvard, news of which reached 

 us only a few days ago, anthropology throughout 

 the w^orld has suffered a grievous loss. His interest 

 in the subject began in 1857 ; in 1873 he was appointed 

 first curator of the Peabody Museum, and in 1886 

 professor of American archaeology and ethnology in 

 Harvard University. His activity was shown in 

 museum organisation rather than in field work, and 

 under his control the great collections in his charge 

 were systematically arranged and catalogued. In 

 spite of his absorption in museum work, he found 

 time to publish a large number of scientific papers, 

 the anniversary volume presented to him in 1909 con- 

 taining no fewer than four hundred titles. But it was 

 by the encouragement of research and by his kindly 

 sympathy with younger workers that his best work 

 was done, and he will rank with Brinton and Powell 

 as one of the founders of the American school of 

 scientific ethnology. 



The death of Sir Frederic W. Hewitt on January 6 

 deprives us of one of our most prominent anaesthetists. 

 Born in 1857, he graduated at Cambridge, receiving 

 his medical training at St. George's Hospital. Hewitt 

 specialised early in his career, and, becoming attached 

 to a dental hospital, experimented with the combined 

 use of oxygen and nitrous oxide. Bert had demon- 

 strated its value, employing it under plus-pressure; 

 more recently it had been used on the Continent at 

 normal pressure, but Hewitt it was who by his in- 

 genious apparatus introduced a practical method into 

 this country. In the wider field of general anaesthetics 

 he had done much most valuable work. In "Anses- 

 thetics and their Administration," he focused his 

 individual views. The book reveals the meticulous 

 care of Hewitt's clinical observations. Indeed, few 

 men worked harder or strove more whole-heartedly to 

 advance our knowledge of anaesthetics. In his hospital 

 appointments at the London Hospital, and afterwards 

 at St. George's Hospital, as anaesthetist and lecturer, 

 his teaching was hi_ghly and rightly appreciated. He 

 was appointed anaesthetist to the late King, and 

 received the M.V.O. for his personal services to that 

 monarch. Later he held the same post to King 

 George, and received a knighthood. Hewitt contri- 

 NO. 241 T, VOL. 96I 



l^uffed 'some v'iilUablfe" articles to the transaTitions * of 

 medical societies atid journals, notably one on the 

 effect of posture on anaesthesia. He, always a most 

 strenuous fighter, endeavoured to obtain legislation itd 

 protect patients from the dangers of unskilled persons 

 using anaesthetics. On this subject he gave useful 

 evidence before a Departmental Committee. Science 

 and practice have lost much through his early death. 



The Indian Journal of Medical Research for Octo- 

 ber, 1915 (vol. iii., No. 2) contains a number of valu- 

 able papers. Lieut. -Col. Sutherland details notes on 

 2643 medico-legal cases, in which 6566 articles, sus- 

 pected to be bloodstained, were examined. The 

 method of examination was by the precipitin test, by 

 which it is possible to determine the kind of blood, 

 and by chemical, microscopical, and spectroscopical 

 examinations. Major Grieg has noted the production 

 of gall-stones in rabbits following intravenous inocu- 

 lations of cholera-like vibrios. These observations 

 may throw some light on the formation of gall-stones 

 in the human subject, a lesion which is frequently 

 observed in Calcutta. 

 I A VERY interesting summary of the more striking 

 [ of the Batrachia of the world, now living in the Gar- 

 I dens of the Zoological Society of New York, appears 

 ; in Zoologica, vol. ii.. No. i, by Mr. Richard Deckert. 

 ] The author gives the more important features of the 

 ! life-history of each of the species described, supple- 

 menting his remarks with some most excellent photo- 

 graphs. His review is greatly enhanced in value by 

 means of a coloured plate giving figures of some 

 extraordinary harlequin frogs from tropical America. 

 Two of these are of a brilliant scarlet, and one species 

 has blue legs, forming a most striking contrast. A 

 third species is of an emerald green, boldly marked 

 with black. These frogs, which belong to the genus 

 Dendrobates, are remarkable for the virulence of the 

 poison secreted by the skin^glands, and some interest- 

 ing notes on this subject find a place here. 



Ax ingenious attempt to demonstrate "a Tetra- 

 pteryx Stage in the Ancestry of Birds " has just been 

 made by Mr. C. W. Beebee in Zoologica, vol. ii.i 

 No. 2. The author insists that the precocious and 

 conspicuous development of the femoral tract in the 

 pterylosis of nestling birds points conclusively to a 

 stage in the development of the pro-aves when this 

 tract was formed of large quill-like feathers, which, 

 with similar feathers along the post-axial border of the 

 fore-limb, afforded a parachute-like mechanism, com- 

 parable to the flying-membranes of flying-squirrels, 

 and preceded true flight. The hypothetical restora- 

 tion of this four-winged . stage, which forms the 

 frontispiece to his essay, is curiously like that which 

 appeared in Knowledge in 1906, save that this lacked 

 the ■■ femoral wings." Mr. Beebee seeks to justify his 

 hypothesis by an appeal to photographs of the remains 

 of the Afchaeopteryx in the Berlin Museum. These, 

 however, certainly seem to have been misinterpreted, 

 for the feathers to which he evidently refers are those 

 which invested the , tibia. No one who has studied 

 the original remains of this fossil would for a moment 

 agree that these afford evidence for this " femoral 

 tract." 



