430 



NATURE 



[August i, 191 8 



assistance of everv kind — financial and protective — 

 which can be afforded. 



The progress made in this country in the produc- 

 " tion' of laboratory requirements formerly imported has 

 been referred to frequently in these columns. We learn 

 that arrangements have been made at the National. 

 Physical Laboratory for the testing of scientific glass- 

 ware and porcelain and of filter-paper. For the present, 

 while the organisation is in course of development, 

 . firms sending vessels for examination will be required 

 to give notice (on forms provided for the purpose) of 

 their wish to have apparatus examined not less than 

 a week before dispatching the goods. The tests will 

 include volumetric tests of graduated vessels and tests 

 on the resistance of vessels to chemical action and 

 their suitability for use in chemical operations. In 

 the latter case the tests to be applied have been dis- 

 cussed with the Glass Research Committee of the 

 Institute of Chemistry. With regard to the volumetric 

 accuracy of glassware the tests will be divided into 

 (i) vessels of the highest scientific accuracy, apd 

 (2) vessels intended to possess only conimercial 

 accuracy. It is intended that those in the first cate- 

 gory shall be examined at Teddington, and that 

 those in the second shall eventually be tested locally 

 when centres for the work have been established. 

 Information with regard to the scheme is . obtainable 

 from the director. 



We regret to announce the death on July 28, in his 

 seventv-ninth year, of Dr. F. T. Roberts, University 

 College, London and author of a "Handbook of the 

 Theorv and Practice of Medicine" and many pro- 

 fessional papers, as well as of articles in Quain's 

 " Dictionary of Medicine," of which he was formerly 

 the assistant editor. 



Mr. Frank N. Meyer, a botanical expert on the 

 staff' of the American Department of Agriculture, was 

 recently found drowned in the Yangtse River. For 

 nearly ten years he had travelled as an explorer 

 through China, Turkestan, and Siberia, and had intro- 

 duced into the United States hundreds of species and 

 varieties of Eastern plants. 



The death is announced, in his eightieth year, of Dr. 

 George M. Searle, of Washington, D.C. Dr. Searle 

 graduated at Harvard in 1857, and shortly afterwards 

 entered the service of the U.S. Coast Survey. . He 

 next became assistant professor of mathematics in 

 the U.S. Naval x\cademy. In later life he devoted 

 himself especially to astronomy. He established the 

 observatory in the Catholic University at Washing- 

 ton, where for several years he held the chair of 

 mathematics. 



We regret to note that the Engineer for July 26 

 records the death on July iS of Mr. Edmund Herbert 

 Stevenson. Mr. Stevenson, who was sixty-five years 

 of age, was responsible for the design and execution 

 of many gas, water, and drainage works, and was 

 joint author of books dealing with legislation affect- 

 ing gas and water undertakings and with the water 

 supplv of the metropolis. He was a well-known 

 expert witness, and a member of the Institution of 

 Civil Engineers. 



The death occurred on July 26, in his sixty- 

 fourth year, of Mr. Henry R. Knipe, who produced 

 a sumptuous volume about twelve years ago entitled 

 " Nebula to Man." The work was an attempt to 

 sketch in rhyme the evolution of the earth on 

 the nebular "hypothesis, the subsequent sea and 

 land movements, and successive appearances of 

 life, as revealed by the geological strata. It was 



NO. 2544, VOL. lOl] 



embellished by a remarkable series of illustrations of 

 prehistoric scenes and creatures, fourteen reproduced 

 in colour and seventy-seven by the half-tone process, 

 and all of them by artists distinguished for their skill 

 in portraying such subjects. 



We have just learned that Prof. Vladimir 

 Amalitsky, of Warsaw, died suddenly at Kislovodsk, 

 in the Caucasus, on December 28, 19 17. Born in 

 Volhynia in i860. Prof. Amalitsky completed his educa- 

 tion at the University of Petrograd, where he made a 

 special study of geology under Prof. Inostransev. Early 

 in his career he was appointed professor of geology 

 and palaeontology in the University of Warsaw, and 

 he eventually became director of the Polytechnic 

 Institute in the same city. With the aid of his 

 accomplished wife, he devoted himself to the study 

 of the Permian rocks of Russia, and will always be 

 remembered by his discovery of the great deposits 

 of fossil reptiles in the cliffs of the northern Dvina. 

 During 1899 and 1900 he excavated from these deposits 

 numerous skeletons of Pariasaurus, Dicynodonts, and 

 Theriodonts, closely resembling those from the Karoo 

 formation of South Africa ; and with them he found 

 abundant remains of the typical Glossopteris flora. 

 For several years Prof. Amalitsky superintended the 

 preparation of the fossil skeletons in the museum 

 of the University of Warsaw, but, unfortunately, they 

 still remain undescribed. With Mme. Amalitsky he 

 paid repeated visits to the British Museum, where he 

 spent many months in special studies, but his only 

 detailed publications were on the Permian fresh- 

 water bivalved shells. These small fossils, however, 

 proved to be of exceptional interest, and in a paper 

 read before the Geological Society of London in 1895 

 Prof. Amalitsky showed the close correspondence 

 between the Permian species of Russia and the Karoo 

 species of South Africa. Just before the outbreak of 

 war he had arranged for one of his students to visit 

 the British Museum to prepare himself for mono- 

 graphing the Russian Permian reptiles, but in the 

 circumstances the work had to be postponed. 



Dr. a. D. Bevan in his presidential address to the 

 American Medical Association (see Science, June 21, 

 p. 597) gives a good account of the organisation 

 of the American medical profession for purposes of 

 war. Surg.-Gen. Gorgas, who did .=uch splendid work 

 in Panama, is the chief of the American .\rmy Medical 

 Service, and he has enlisted to help him those who in 

 civil life are recognised leaders in their special fields 

 of work — men like Profs. Welch and Vaughan, Dr. 

 de Schweinitz, and scores of others. There are in 

 the United States more than 145,000 men and women 

 practitioners, so that there is ample personnel to draw 

 from. For an army in the field 10 per cent, of its 

 numbers will be in the medical department. Thus 

 for an army of 3,000,000 some 300,000 officers and 

 men are required for medical and sanitary work, of 

 whom 25,000 will be qualified physicians and surgeons. 

 .\lready 25,000 medical practitioners have gone into the 

 medical departments of the American Army and Navy, 

 and it is proposed to raise the number to 30,000 this 

 5-ear. 



Prof. Henry Louis stated in his presidential 

 address to the Society of Chemical Industry, at the 

 recent meeting in Bristol, that the chemical industry 

 in this country has been in some respects practically 

 stationary during late years, and that this fact is 

 most noticeable in the failure to take advantage of 

 modern mechanical methods of handling large bodies 

 of material ; that, in other words, not sufficient has 

 been made of the application of modern engineering 

 methods to the chemical industries. As he points out, 



