J.\NUARY 7, 191 5] 



NATURE 



513 



ll 



NOTES. 

 The Royal Society is represented in the New Year's 

 Honours List by Dr. J. J. Dobbie, principal of the 

 Government Laboratories, and Dr. F. \V. Dyson, 

 Astronomer Royal, each of whom has received the 

 honour of Knighthood. Sir William MacGregor, 

 G.C.M.G., who retired recently from the Governor- 

 ship of Queensland, and whose scientific work is well 

 known to geographers and anthropologists, has been 

 made a Privy Councillor. Prof. J. Marnoch, regius 

 professor of surgery, Aberdeen University, has been 

 appointed a commander of the Royal Victorian Order 

 (C.V.O.). Dr. J. H. Marshall, director-general of 

 archaeology in India, is among the new knights in the 

 Indian list; while Major S. R. Christophers, officer in 

 charge of the Malarial Bureau of the Central Re- 

 search Institute, Kasauli, and Mr. Montague Hill, 

 Chief Conservator of Forests, Central Provinces, have 

 been appointed Companions of the Order of the Indian 

 Empire (CLE.). Dr. C. A. Bentley, special officer 

 under the Sanitar}' Commissioner, Bengal, has been 

 awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind medal for public ser\'ice 

 in India. 



It is highly gratifying to be able to record that 

 the board of trustees of the University of Illinois has 

 given the sum of five hundred dollars to the fund 

 inaugurated for the purpose of erecting a laboratory 

 at Rothamsted in commemoration of the centenary 

 of the birth of Lawes in 1814 and of Gilbert in 1817. 

 There has always been a great community of interest 

 between the agricultural experiment stations in the 

 United States and those in this country, and in few 

 branches of science is there better organisation for 

 ensuring that results obtained at any one institution 

 -hail be known at the others. Having regard to the 

 iact that the University of Illinois includes such dis- 

 tinguished agricultural investigators as Dean Daven- 

 port, Prof. Cyril Hopkins, and others of wide repute, 

 the British workers have reason to be pleased with 

 this practical recognition of the value of tlie Rotham- 

 sted investigations. Although the war has automatic- 

 ally put an end to all attempts to collect money, the 

 fund is now so far complete that only looi. is wanted 

 to make up the i2,oooi, necessary to build and equip 

 the new laboratory. 



Mr. Franxis H. Carr, who for sixteen years was 

 chief of the chemical manufacturing operations of 

 Messrs. Burroughs Wellcome and Co., at Dartford, 

 has been appointed to Boots Pure Drug Co., Ltd., 

 Nottingham, with a seat on the board of directors. 



We regret to see the announcement of the death, at 

 seventy-one years of age, of Lieut. -Col. D. D. Cun- 

 ningham, F.R.S., honorary physician to the King, 

 and formerly professor of physiology in the Medical 

 College, Calcutta. 



News has been received of the following French 

 geologists and palaeontologists : — ^Jean Boussac, 

 wounded in the foot ; Jean Cottreau, in a territorial 

 regiment at Creuzot, well ; Robert Douvill^ and G. 

 Groth, either killed or wounded ; Marius Filliozat, 

 paymaster attached to the Fourth Army Corps, well. 

 NO. 2358, VOL. 94] 



I We learn from the Scientific American that the 

 I American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New 

 j York, has awarded the John Frick medal to Prof. 

 j J. E. Sweet, honorary member and past president of 

 the society, •* for his achievements in machine design 

 and for his pioneer work in applying sound engineer- 

 ing principles to the construction of the high-speed 

 steam engine." 



The death is reported, in his sixty-sixth year, of Dr. 

 .\lbert Charles Peale, who was a geologist in the 

 U.S. Geological Survey from 1883 to 1898. He had 

 since been employed in the section of palaeobotany in. 

 the U.S. National Museum. In addition to contribu- 

 tions to scientific reports. Dr. Peale's published work 

 consisted mainly of volumes on the mineral springs of 

 the United States. 



With the death of Mr. Thomas Br^'ant, on Decem- 

 ber 30, there has disappeared the last of the leading 

 British " surgeons of the Victorian period. Although 

 in his eighty-seventh year, he still retained the erect 

 carriage and mental vigour of his younger days. 

 When he commenced the study of medicine at Guy's 

 Hospital in 1846, Lister was already in his second 

 year at University College, and the "cell-doctrine" 

 was still in its infancy. Bryant was eminently a 

 practical surgeon, applying himself to the various 

 problems which confronted the surgical leaders of his 

 time. He opened up no new field of surgical 

 endeavour, but he brought an inquiring mind and an 

 industrious pen to help in the general progress of his 

 art. He retired from the surgical staff of Guy's Hos- 

 pital in 1888, delivered the Hunterian oration in 1893 

 (having H.M. King Edward VII. in his audience), 

 and served as president of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons of England from 1896 to 1899. 



The death is announced of Mr. Henry William 

 Manly, actuary- of the Equitable Life Assurance 

 Society, and a distinguished member of the actuarial 

 profession. He completed his third year's examina- 

 tion as an associate of the Institute of Actuaries as 

 long ago as 1867, when he was on the actuarial staff 

 of the London and Provincial Law Assurance Society. 

 He became in due course a fellow, ser\-ed for several 

 years as one of the honorar}- secretaries, was elected 

 vice-president, and ultimately became president of the 

 institute in its jubilee year. In all these capacities 

 he took a leading part in its work, contributing many 

 papers to its journal. He was also a prominent mem- 

 ber of the International Actuarial Congresses, being 

 the treasurer and secretary for home correspondence 

 of that held in London in 1898. He made the intri- 

 cate subject of superannuation allowances one of his 

 special studies, and was for that reason consulted by 

 the Royal Commission on Civil Ser\ice Superannua- 

 tion, of which Lord Courtney of Penwith was chair- 

 man. It was under Mr, Manly's advice that the new 

 and liberal system of combining life insurance and 

 the provision of a capital sum with the allowance 

 for old age was finally adopted. 



We regret to see that one of the pioneers of the 

 Indian Forest Service has just passed away in his 

 seventy-sixth year— Col. J. C. Doveton, of the Madras 



