536 



NATURE 



[January 14, 19 15 



difficult to construct a stronger, handier, and 

 better ice-boat than the Scotia. 



The most generally interesting parts of the de- 

 tailed reports in this volume are those relating to 

 the detection of icebergs by temperature observa- 

 tions. A Callendar self-recording electrical resist- 

 ance thermometer held at a depth of 2 ft. below 

 the surface failed to indicate any effect of icebergs 

 on the temperature of the sea. In most cases the 

 passage of the Scotia by an iceberg did not corre- 

 spond with any hump or depression in the tem- 

 perature curve, and when it did it was impossible 

 to distinguish these from the ordinary variations 

 in the temperature of the sea. As this thermo- 

 meter, which indicated trustworthily variations of 

 1/10°, was unaffected by passing icebergs it 

 would be useless in practice to employ such a 

 method of detection. In fact, any variation un- 

 recognisable by an ordinary thermometer would 

 be valueless to the seaman. In his investigation 

 on the Montcalm Prof. Barnes came to the con- 

 clusion that the real effect of an iceberg on the 

 surrounding water is to warm it slightly. Mr. 

 G. I. Taylor found indications of this, but the 

 effect could not be utilised to detect the presence 

 of bergs on the Newfoundland Banks because the 

 temperature of the sea in that region undergoes 

 small rises in places independent of icebergs. 

 Prof. Barnes found his striking indications of 

 these rises of temperature near inshore, but the 

 Scotia, on the other hand, was at work hundreds 

 of miles off the land. It cannot have been that the 

 electrical thermometer of the Scotia failed to 

 detect these changes, since check temperatures 

 taken in bucket samples with a thermometer read- 

 ing to 1/20° gave little or no such indication. 



Nor did Mr. D. J. Matthews, the oceanographer 

 on board, find any relation between icebergs and 

 sea temperature. He noticed no rise in tempera- 

 ture in the vicinity of ice, but, on the other hand, 

 found sudden changes in many parts of the North 

 Atlantic where there certainly was no ice within 

 500 miles. 



Similar changes in temperature in the sea far 

 removed from icebergs were noted by the patrol 

 of the "U.S.SS. Chester and Birmingham in 1912. 



In fact, all that a sudden fall in surface tem- 

 perature means is that the ship has entered the 

 polar current and may meet ice if there is any in 

 the neighbourhood. A rise in temperature shows 

 that the chances of ice are less, but not that the 

 ship is safe. 



Therefore, unless wireless warnings of the 

 extent of the pack and the position of bergs can 

 be satisfactorily circulated, which is doubtful, 

 ships will have to rely on a careful watch from 

 near the water-line, and the development on the 

 part of the look-out or ice-pilot of that extra sense 

 which all polar navigators gain in time that 

 enables them, as they say, to " smell " the pres- 

 ence of ice. The report ends with a lengthy study 

 of the plankton distribution by Mr. L. R. Craw- 

 shay, who reached results similar to those of the 

 physical observers on ice-bearing currents. 



R. N. R. B. 



NO. 2359, VOL. 94] 



LIEUT.-COL. D. D. CUNNINGHAM, F.R.S. 



WE recorded last week, with much regret, the 

 death on December 31, in his seventy- 

 second year, at his residence, Tormount, Torquay, 

 of Lieut. -Col. D. D. Cunningham, formerly of 

 the Indian Medical Service. 



D. D. Cunningham was born at Prestonpans 

 on September 29, 1843, and was the son of the 

 Rev. \V. B. Cunningham, one of the most 

 scholarly of the clergymen who left the Church 

 of Scotland at the Disruption of that year. After 

 leaving school young Cunningham entered the 

 University of Edinburgh, where he graduated with 

 honours in the Faculty of Medicine in 1867. Early 

 in 1868 he joined the Indian Medical Service, 

 and at the Army Medical School, Netley, he took 

 a position as distinguished as that which he had 

 attained in his university. 



While Cunningham was at Netley the attention 

 of pathologists in this country was directed to the 

 theories regarding the causation of cholera ad- 

 vanced by Hallier and De Bary, and at the in- 

 stance of the teaching staff of the Army Medical 

 School the Secretaries of State for War and for 

 India resolved to depute the two young officers 

 who should secure the highest places in the 

 Queen's and the Indian Medical services respec- 

 tively to learn at first hand the nature and bearing 

 of the theories. Cunningham was the young 

 Indian surgeon thus chosen ; the officer of the 

 British Medical Service selected was T. R. Lewis, 

 a man of the same academic standing as Cun- 

 ningham, but a few years his senior in age, who 

 had graduated with honours in medicine, also in 

 1867, in the sister university of Aberdeen. 



As a result of this selection Cunningham spent 

 some time as an inmate of the house of the Rev. 

 M. J. Berkeley, F.R.S., and acquired a knowledge 

 of the technique employed by that distinguished 

 mycologist. In company with Lewis he paid visits 

 to Hallier and to De Bary, proceeding thereafter 

 to Munich to study under the celebrated Petten- 

 kofer, with whom both young men contracted ties 

 of close personal friendship, which subsisted in the 

 case of Lewis until the latter died, and in the case 

 of Cunningham until the close of Pettenkofer's 

 career. 



After this period of study in Germany Lewis 

 and Cunningham left for India, where they 

 arrived in 1869. Immediately on landing both 

 officers were attached for special duty to the 

 department of the Sanitary Commissioner with the 

 Government of India, and commenced partly in 

 collaboration, partly independently, the series of 

 pathological studies the excellence of which led 

 to the selection of Lewis for the Fellowship of 

 the Royal Society, at the age of forty-five, in 

 1886, and to the election of Cunningham to the 

 Society, at about the same age, in 1889. This 

 period of activity continued for eleven years with 

 the happiest results, and the eloquent testimony 

 borne to Lewis's share in their work, in the pages 

 of Nature for May 27, 1886, on the occasion 

 of the untimely death of that distinguished patho- 

 logist, will better enable workers of the present 



