February io, 191 6] 



NATURE 



655' 



object will not be the collection of specimens — though 

 he hopes to send home a steady stream of living 

 creatures with special attention to the rarer types — 

 but the intensive study of birds and animals in their 

 own haunts. He proposes to build a bungalow at the 

 edge of the jungle, and to equip it with a complete 

 laboratory outfit. The Government of British Guiana^ 

 has offered Mr. Beebe the use of its botanical gardens 

 and of wild Government land. His associates in this 

 expedition will be Mr. I. Hartley, Mr. P. Holmes 

 (whose interest is in photography and work with in- 

 sects), and Mr. Carter, a collector. 



The shortage of synthetic dyes in this country and 

 the United States has naturally greatly increased the 

 demand for certain vegetable dyestuffs, which have in 

 their turn risen in price, and in some cases are prov- 

 ing very difficult to obtain. In particular there has 

 recently been a serious scarcity of logwood in this 

 country. In the past the chief British sources of 

 supply of this wood have been Jamaica and British 

 Honduras, but some years ago the Imperial Institute 

 investigated the possibility of exporting logwood from 

 another British Colony — Mauritius. A trial shipment 

 of this logwood was found to be of excellent quality, 

 and in 1912 an offer to take a considerable quantity 

 of the wood was obtained from a leading British dye 

 firm. At that time, however, the price offered for the 

 wood was not high enougfi to encourage the export, 

 but, in view of the higher value at present ruling, the 

 Imperial Institute has now succeeded in arranging for 

 a considerable supply of Mauritius logwood to be 

 utilised in this country. 



A British Industries Fair is to be held by the Board 

 of Trade in the ground floor courts of the Victoria and 

 Albert Museum on February 21-March 3. The co- 

 operation of the Board of Education, in permitting the 

 use of the museum for the present practical object, is, 

 says the Times, a healthy evidence of the desiro of the 

 Government to give to British industries and manu- 

 facturers some of that official assistance and encourage- 

 ment by which the commerce of other countries, of 

 Germany especially, has been so largely built up. For 

 the forthcoming fair at South Kensington the Board of 

 Trade has already sent out some 20,000 invitations to 

 probable buyers In foreign countries, and invitations 

 will in due course also be sent to about 80,000 persons 

 in the British Isles, the names having been largely 

 compiled from lists of customers which the manufac- 

 turers themselves have put at the disposal of the com- 

 mercial department of the Board. The manufactures 

 included in the exhibition will be : (i) toys and games ; 

 (2) china and earthenware ; (3) glass ; (4) fancy goods ; 

 and (5) printing and stationery. 



Dr. J. G. Bowman, of Chicago, director of the 

 American College of Surgeons, is reported by Science 

 to have stated recently that the college has obtained 

 from its fellows an endowment fund of loo.oooZ., to be 

 held in perpetuity, the Income of which only is to be 

 used in advancing the purposes of the college. The 

 college has been in the process of formation for the 

 last three years. It has a temporary office in Chicago, 

 and it is probable that permanent headquarters will be 

 NO. 2415, VOL. 96] 



decided upon within a few days. The president is 

 I Prof. J. M. T. Finney, head of the surgical clinic of 

 I Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. The college is 

 j modelled after the Royal College of Surgeons of Eng- 

 I land, and has the support, it is said, of nearly all the 



leading surgeons in the United States and Canada. 

 I The college, which is not a teaching institution, but 

 j rather a society or a college in the original sense, 

 j now numbers about 3400 fellows in Canada and in the 

 I United States. 



Dr. Rodolphe Engel, whose death was announced 

 I In Nature of January 27, was born at Fegersheim, in 

 j Alsace, in 1850. His father; who was professor of 

 I botany in the faculty of medicine at Strassburg, was 

 j transferred after the Franco-German war to the new 

 I University of Nancy, where his son, after serving his 

 time in the army, completed his studies, and was the 

 first doctor of medicine of the new faculty. Shortly 

 I after he graduated doctor of science at the Sorbonne, 

 and became successively professor of chemistry in the 

 I faculty of medicine at- Montpellier and at the 

 ! Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, where his 

 teaching powers were greatly appreciated. Prof. 

 Engel devoted himself to both pure and applied chem- 

 istry. Thus he investigated creatine, taurine, the syn- 

 thesis of aspartic acid, the allotropic form of arsenic, 

 and many crystallised hydrochlorides of metallic 

 chlorides. It was to Engel's ingenuity that the pro- 

 cess of transforming potassium chloride into carbonate 

 in the cold by the intermediate formation of a double 

 salt of magnesium is due, a process which was ex- 

 ploited by Germany and used at Strassburg for 

 many years. Prof. Engel was also engaged in the 

 commercial production of plastic substances such as 

 viscose. 



Mr. E. Heron-Allen has been elected president of 

 the Royal Microscopical Society for the ensuing year. 

 In his presidential address, delivered on January 19, 

 he referred to the extensive field now covered by work 

 in microscopy. The microscope is now an indispensable 

 i adjunct, not only to every branch of science, but a^so 

 to most trades. But though its applications have thira 

 been widely dispersed, its essential and peculiar scien- 

 tific principles remain as a field of specialised scientific 

 inquir}^ and this becomes more apparent every day in 

 these times of profounder and ever-widening research. 

 At the present time th? society has an excellent oppor- 

 tunity of increasing its influence- on the development 

 of microscopic technique and appliances, and the pro- 

 gramme for the new session should attract to the meet- 

 ings many fellows of the society, as well as other scien- 

 tific workers. Next week Messrs. Rousselet, Earland, 

 and Heron-Allen will give an exhibition, and a joint 

 paper "On the Progress and Development of Vision 

 and Definition under the Microscope." In March 

 Prof. J. Arthur Thomson will deliver an address on 

 " Original Factors in Evolution " ; and m April Prof. 

 Benjamin Moore, one on " Early Steps in the Evolution 

 of Life." Later, Mr. J. E. Barnard will deal with the 

 progress and results of some of his studies in branches 

 of microscopic research. .V paper Is expected from 

 Prof. S. J. Hickson, and one by Mrs. Helen P. Good- 

 rich, upon the history of, and the recent work done 



