June 13, 1918] 



NATURE 



289 



logical Society of Ontario. In 1894 he was elected a 

 fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. For many 

 years his main interest in life was entomology, and he 

 brought together a large collection of Canadian 

 Coleoptera and Hymenoptera. He was a systematist 

 of recognised standing, and probably the highest 

 authority on Hymenoptera in the Dominion of Canada. 



Prof. P. Giacosa gives elsewhere in this issue his 

 impressions of the recent visit of university representa- 

 tives from Italv to some of our educational institu- 

 tions. The Italian delegation, which was invited by 

 "the British Government to visit the universities of the 

 United Kingdom, consisted of Profs. Arcangeli, 

 Bianchi, Borgese, Columba, Credaro, De Viti de 

 Marco, Giacosa, Lori, Nasini, Romagnoli, Ruffini, 

 and Volterra. For various reasons Profs. Borgese, 

 De Viti de Marco, and Romagnoli were unable to 

 accept the invitation. Prof. Ruffini, who was detained 

 in Rome on political business, delegated Prof. Galante 

 to represent him. The delegates visited Winchester, 

 Portsmouth, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, 

 Manchester, Sheffield, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. 



There have been several rumours during the last 

 few months to the effect that the Germans' were 

 building even larger raiding aeroplanes than the 

 Gothas with which we are already acquainted, and 

 it now appears that these rumours were well founded. 

 A giant machine has been recently brought down in 

 France, of which some partitulars appeared, in the 

 Times for June 8. The information given shows that 

 the machine had a span of about 140 ft. and a leggth 

 of about 70 ft. The weight, fully loaded, was about 

 14^ tons, of which two tons consisted of bombs. The 

 machine carries four engines of 300 h.p. each, and 

 the speed is stated to be seventy-five to eighty miles 

 per hour. If these figutes are correct, the aeroplane 

 in question appears to be the largest machine which 

 has yet been fiown. It is not by any means definitely 

 established that the largest possible bombing machines 

 will be the most effective; indeed, it is reasonable to 

 suppose that a larger number of smaller machines 

 with a higher speed would be the more effective and 

 less easy to attack. The larger a machine becomes, 

 the more difficult it is to land in the dark, and the 

 more vulnerable it will be when there is a chance of 

 definite aim from the ground or of attack by fighting 

 machines. While this new development is highly 

 interesting from the point of view of the possible 

 development in the size of machines, it does not seem 

 likely that these giant aeroplanes will appreciably 

 increase the effectiveness of the enemy's night raids. 



Mr. Frank Harwood Lescher, who died on May 12, 

 aged seventy-five, was for many years one of the best- 

 Icnown men in the wholesale drug trade, into which 

 he made his entry more than sixty years ago. lAs a 

 student he distinguished himself by carrying off the 

 medal for botany and materia medica, a success which 

 was soon followed by the Pereira medal, the blue 

 ribbon of the Pharmaceutical Society. In after-life 

 materia medica remained his favourite study,, the 

 results of which were, to a considerable extent, em- 

 bodied in his "Recent Materia Medica," in which all 

 the newer remedies were ably discussed. Averse to 

 publicity, his contributions to the current journals were 

 not numerous, but his work was, nevertheless, con- 

 tinuous and his store of knowledge profound. Those 

 who were fortunate to hear it will not readily forget 

 the fascinating and scholarly address delivered a short 

 time a^o to the students of the Pharmaceutical Society, 

 in which he summed up the result*? of his researches 

 on the drug-routes of the world. By his death a 

 genial, active, and intellectual worker has been lost. 



NO. 2537, VOL. lOl] 



The interim report of the Gas Traction Committee, 

 noticed in Nature of May 9, p. 188, referred to the 

 need for experiments and tests in connection with the 

 determination of factors affecting portable gas- 

 generating plants, and the cornmercial use of gas for 

 traction purposes in containers at high pressures, 

 together with questions relative to liquefaction, ab- 

 sorption, and enrichment, as well as in regard to 

 improvements in the existing arrangements for effect- 

 ing the admixture of gas and air in the requisite pro- 

 portions under varying conditions. A sub-committee 

 of the Gas Traction Committee has now been ap- 

 pointed for the purpose of giving effect to this recom- 

 mendation and of furnishing periodical statements on 

 it. The sub-committee consists of Sir Boverton Red- 

 wood (chairman) ; Lieut. -C6l. R. K. Bagnall-Wild, 

 Mr. W. Worby Beaumont, Major A. McN. Cooper- 

 Key, Prof. C. Vernon Boys, Major B. Hopkinson, 

 Mr. E. S. Shrapnell-Smith, and Mr. S. Straker, with 

 Mr. Cecil H. Lamb, of H.M. Petroleum Executive, 

 as secretary. 



The death of M. Jules Lachelier, at the age of 

 eighty-six, which occurted recently, deprives us of an 

 eminent French philosopher who marked a distinct 

 stage in the development of the philosophical move- 

 ment of his country. He linked Poincare and Bout^ 

 roux and Bergson with Ravaisson and Maine de 

 Biran. Lachelier was not widely known, and he con- 

 tributed very little to philosophical literature— two 

 volumes on " Le Fondemejit de I'lnduction" and an 

 edition of Leibniz — but his influence as a teacher was 

 immense. His own philosophical theory was a refined 

 form of idealism which goes for its origin direct to 

 Leibniz. A science of Nature, he held, would be an 

 impossibility if the law%of thought were not at the 

 same time, as Kant maintained, the constitutive laws 

 of Nature ; but he went further than Kant, believing 

 that there is a method, which he named reflection, by 

 which thought possesses itself in its very essence, and 

 has nothing to seek beyond. Sensible knowledge he 

 conceived, in the manner of Leibniz, as an obscure 

 form of intellection. His chief work and his influence 

 dates back to the years 18^4 and 1877, during which 

 period he lectured regularly on philosophy as Maitre 

 de Conferences in the Ecole Normale Superieure. In 

 the latter year he was appointed Inspecteur General 

 de rinstruction publique. Since 190 1 he lived in prac- 

 tical retirement, but continued to take a keen interest 

 in philosophy, especially as a member of the Societe 

 Fran<jaise de Philosophie, assisting in discussions and 

 in the work of producing the "Vocabulaire philo- 

 sophique." He died on January 18 last at Fontaine- 

 bl^au. 



Fn 1896 Dr. Guiliano Vanghetti, an Italian phy- 

 sician, when seeking to ameliorate the condition of 

 the hapless soldiers who had been mutilated by the 

 Abyssinians after falling into their hands as prisoners, 

 of war, conceived the idea of utilising the muscles iji 

 the stumps of amputated limbs as the "driving-power" 

 for artificial limbs. The technical difficulty of yoking 

 such muscles to the levers of artificial limbs proved to 

 i be very great, and up to 1914 only twenty patients had 

 ' been operated on. With the outbreak of the present 

 I war this new departure of surgery — the "kinematisa- 

 I tion of stumps" — was taken up by a young Italian 

 i surgeon. Prof. V. Putti, professor of orthopaedic sur- 

 gery in the University of Bologna and director of the 

 Rizzoli Institute. Prof. Putti has improved the 

 technique needed to make such operations a success, 

 and has now operated on fifty cases. His patients, 

 by means of muscles retained in the stumps of their 

 limbs, are able to execute movements in artificial 

 hands, knees, and feet. During a recent visit to 

 England Prof. Putti demonstrated h\< nirthoSs and 



