March 28. 1901] 



NA TURE 



5.21 



director of the Museum of Practical Geology. The dinner will 

 be given at the Victoria Hall, Criterion Restaurant, and the 

 chair will be taken by Lord Avebury. The committee includes 

 many distinguished and representative 'men of science, among 

 «hem being Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister, Sir William Iluggins, 

 K.C.B., Sir Norman Lockyer, KC. B., Sir John Murray, 

 K.C.B., Sir Michael Foster, K.C.B., Sir William de W. Abney, 

 K.C.B., Sir William Turner, K.C.B., Sir Henry Howorth, 

 K.C. LE., and Profs. Judd, Bonney, Le Neve Foster, McKenny 

 Hughes, J. Geikie, Ray Lankester and Lapworth, as well as a 

 number of other Fellows of the Royal Society. Tickets for the 

 dinner can be obtained from the honorary secretary of the com- 

 mittee, Mr. F. W. Rudler, 28, Jermyn Street, S.W. 



Prof. Humbert has been elected a member of the section 

 of geometry of the Paris Academy of Sciences, in succession to ' 

 <he late M. Hermite. 



The summer meeting of the Anatomical Society of Great 

 Britain and Ireland will be held in the Yorkshire College, 

 Leeds, on Friday and Saturday, July 5 and 6. 



We learn from Science that Dr. Robert Bell has been 

 appointed director of the Geological Survey of Canada, in suc- 

 cession to the late Dr. G. M. Dawson ; and that Dr.' S. W. 

 Stratton has been appointed director of the newly-established 

 U.S. National Bureau of Standards, by Mr. McKinley. 



The Easter excursion of the Geologists' Association will be 

 to Kingsbridge, Salcombe and district, under the direction of 

 Mr. W. A. E. Ussher and Mr. A. R. Hunt. The members 

 taking part in the excursion will leave Paddington on the morn- 

 ing of Thursday, April 4, and return on the following Tuesday 

 evening. 



It is announced from Berlin that the German Emperor has 

 abandoned his original intention of opening in person the forth- 

 coming fifth International Congress of Zoology, which is to be 

 held in the German capital on August 12-16, and that, in con- 

 sequence of a special desire on the part of the Empress, the 

 German Crown Prince has undertaken to perform this task. 



Mr. Vaughax Cornish has returned from an expedition in 

 search of snow-waves in Quebec, Manitoba, the North-West 

 Territories and British Columbia. These waves were found to 

 be well developed on frozen rivers and lakes and on the open 

 prairie, where photographs and measurements were taken. They 

 are produced without the intervention of any obstruction, and 

 sometimes occur in groups or trains of waves comprising a 

 hundred succeeding ridges. Their movement is sufficiently rapid 

 to be readily visible. In certain conditions of the snow true 

 ripples are also formed, which are similar to the ripples produced 

 by wind in loose dry sand. In both ripples and]waves the steeper 

 face is on the lee side. In moist or coherent snow, such as 

 usually falls in England, the wind carves the surface into ridges 

 which have their steep face on the windward side. 



An outward and visible sign of progress in the arrangements 

 for the British Antarctic expedition which in July or August 

 will set out under the auspices of the Royal Society and the 

 Royal Geographical Society, was shown by the successful launch 

 of the Discovery, the ship specially built for the expedition, at 

 Dundee on March 21. Lady Markham christened the vessel, 

 which, when completed, will cost about 50,000/. ; and at a 

 banquet held after the ceremony Sir Clements Markham referred 

 to the lack of geographical knowledge of Antarctic regions and 

 the opportunities which will be afforded for the study of the 

 great ice barrier. The purely exploratory work of the expedi- 

 tion will, of course, be of interest, and as that appeals to the 

 public mind it is perhaps expedient to give prominence to it. 

 But the necessity for the expedition lies in the absence of infor- 



NO. 1639, VOL. 63] 



mation concerning the natural history, physics and meteorology 

 of the south polar regions, and it is with the provision made for 

 the investigation of these subjects that men of science are most 

 concerned. We are glad, therefore, to know that the scientific 

 work of the expedition is in the hands of Prof. Gregory. 



In the House of Commons on Friday, Sir J. Rankin asked 

 the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he would 

 consider the desirability of establishing pomological stations in 

 convenient parts of the country for the purpose of making ex- 

 periments in the growth of the apple and pear, so as to enable 

 persons employed in the fruit industry to obtain trustworthy in- 

 formation. In reply, Mr. Hanbury said: "Stations for agri- 

 cultural and horticultural experiments have not hitherto been 

 established directly by the State itself, and in the case of apples 

 and pears, which depend so much upon the climate in which 

 they are grown, no one central station would be of much use, 

 and it is only by local agency that experiment stations could be 

 established in so many varying districts. Both in the North and 

 South of England there are institutions, aided either by the local 

 taxation grants or by direct grants from the Board of Agri- 

 culture, in which experiments are made in the growth of pears 

 and apples, and this appears to be the proper system to be 

 adopted in those districts, such as Herefordshire, where there is 

 a special interest in the growth of these fruits." 



An account of the work of M. Theodore Moutard, the mathe- 

 matician, whose death was recorded last week in these columns, 

 is given by M. G. Darboux in the Comptes rendus. Aft^ 

 leaving the Ecole Polytechnique, Moutard for a long time de- 

 voted himself to private teaching, preferring this course to 

 serving under the Government, and he soon established for him- 

 self a unique reputation. But in 1870 he returned to the School 

 of Mines, and he rendered valuable services as Inspector- 

 General of Mines. The second part of his career was thus 

 spent in the midst of a circle of congenial and distinguished 

 colleagues. Moutard rarely published papers, but what he did 

 write was of great value. To him we are indebted for the theory 

 of anallagmatic surfaces, and especially of those of the fourth 

 order or general cyclides, and Moutard's theory has formed the 

 basis of numerous developments by Laguerre, Rebacour, 

 Mannheim and Humbert. In the theory of partial differential 

 equations of the second order, with two independent variables, 

 Moutard gave a complete solution of an important problem. 

 His manuscript, presented to the Academy, was burnt by the 

 Communists at Bertrand's house ; but Moutard re- wrote the 

 most important portions, and the remainder of the theory was 

 re-established by Cosserat. Moutard also wrote some valuable 

 notes to Poncelet's Applications d' Analyse et de G^ome/rie, and 

 his use of elliptic functions in connection with Poncelet's 

 theorems on inscribed and circumscribed polygons has been 

 characterised by Halphen as one of the best and most profound 

 writings on this interesting subject. Moutard sought no distinc- 

 tions, and never became a candidate for membership of the Paris 

 Academy, although the section of geometry of that body recog- 

 nised his merits by awarding him the Petit d'Ormoy prize, the 

 highest honour that could be conferred on him. He kept a 

 great many of his writings unpublished, although repeatedly 

 urged to allow them to be printed. 



It is with much regret that we record the death, on March 7, 

 of Mr. Arthur Coppen Jones, known to the scientific world as 

 the translator of Fischer's " Lectures on Bacteria," and by an 

 important paper, published in the Centralblalt f. Bcuteriologie 

 und Parasitenkunde in 1895, in which he sought to establish 

 the revolutionary discovery that the tubercle bacillus is probably 

 no bacillus at all, but a stage in some hyphomycetous fungus. 

 Mr. Jones was one of the last set of students who worked under 



