November 8, 191 7] 



NATURE 



19: 



At the annual general meeting of the London Mathe- 

 matical Society, held on November i, the president 

 announced the award of the de Morgan medal to Prof. 

 W. H. Young, and stated that, owing to Prof. Young's 

 absence from England, the medal would be given into 

 the charge of the Master of Peterhouse. The follow- 

 ing were elected as council and officers for 1917-18 :— 

 President, Prof. H. M. Macdonald ; Vice-Presidents, 

 Prof. H. Hilton, Prof. E. W. Hobson, and Sir J. 

 Larmor; Treasurer, Dr. A. E. Western; Secretaries, 

 Dr T. J. I'A. Bromwich and Mr. G. H. Hardy; Other 

 Members of the Council, Prof. W. Burnside, Dr. S. 

 Chapman, Mr. A. L. Dixon, Miss H. P. Hudson, 

 Mr. A. E. Jolliffe, Mr. J. E. Littlewood, Prof. A. E. H. 

 Love, Major P. A. MacMahon, and Prof. J. W. >Jichol- 

 son. 



There is a widespread feeling of regret among 

 metallurgists and chemists at the death of Mr. G. T. 

 Hoiloway, which occurred, after a long and painful 

 illness, on October 24. Mr. Hoiloway entered the 

 Royal College of Science in 1881, and obtained the 

 associateship in chemistry in 1884. He was assistant- 

 demonstrator in chemistry in the college from 1884 to 

 1886. He spent some time in Newfoundland, and, 

 returning to England, established a practice as 

 analytical and consulting metallurgist in Chancery 

 Lane. This practice was afterwards transferred to 

 testing works and laboratories in Limehouse, and the 

 business conducted in the form of G. T. Hoiloway, 

 Ltd. He specialised in some of the less common 

 metals, and few had more knowledge of their occur- 

 rence or methods of treatment. Mr. Hoiloway was 

 a fellow of the Institute of Chemistry and a member 

 of various other societies. He was specially interested 

 in the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, on the 

 council of which he served for many years. He had 

 considerable experience as an examiner, having acted 

 in this capacity for the University of Birmingham, the 

 Institute of Chemistry, and other bodies. His most 

 recent work, and that perhaps by which in future he 

 will be best known, was the chairmanship of the 

 Canadian Government Commission on nickel. The 

 report of this commission has been issued during the 

 present year, and will long be a standard of reference 

 and a model of what such reports should be. Handi- 

 capped from the first by pecuniary circumstances, per- 

 manent lameness, and a weak constitution, he had a 

 remarkably clear intellect and a charming personality. 

 He lived to accomplish more than many men who 

 had all the advantages which he lacked. For one who 

 found all physical effort a trial he was wonderfully 

 active and had travelled considerably. 



Prof. Dastre, whose death was announced in 

 Nature of October 25, was one of the rriost distin- 

 guished pupils of the great physiologist, Claude 

 Bernard. Another pupil, Paul Bert, succeeded 

 Bernard in the chair of physiology at the Sorbonne, 

 and, on Bert's death in 1886, Dastre was elected to 

 the post. Portraits of all three of these noted men 

 are to be seen in the well-known picture by Lhermitte, 

 in .which Dastre is represented as taking notes of an 

 experiment shown by Bernard to a number of his 

 friends. Dastre was for many years one of the editors 

 of the Journal de physiologie et de pathologie ginirale, 

 and his kindness in offering to Physiological Abstracts, 

 on its foundation, the free use of the excellent abstracts 

 published in his journal was much appreciated by 

 British physiologists. His work in research covers a 

 wide field, both in chemical and in what is sometimes 

 called "experimental" physiology, but that done in 

 conjunction with Prof. Morat on the vasomotor system 

 of nerves is perhaps best known. In this work the 

 existence of vaso-dilator nerves was shown to be more 

 general than had previously been supposed, and much 



NO. 2506, VOL. 100] 



new light was thrown on the functions of the sym- 

 pathetic nerves. Allied to these problems we find ex- 

 periments made in order to elucidate the relations be- 

 tween the nervous regulating mechanism of the heart 

 and the functions of the muscular structure itself. A 

 number of papers was published relating to the diges- 

 tion and metabolism of fats and sugars. The part 

 played by the bile in the digestion and absorption of 

 fats was pointed out. Of other important work, the 

 rapid accommodation of the vascular system to the 

 injection of large amounts of saline solutions and the 

 method of mixed anaesthesia with morphine and chloro- 

 form may be mentioned. Contrary to general opinion 

 at the time, Dastre showed that expired air does not 

 contain any toxic substance. He also devoted some 

 attention to the more morphological problems of 

 embryology. 



Mr. Worthington G. Smith, whose death was 

 announced in Nature of November i, was a man with 

 varied interests and a broad outlook. A good towns- 

 man (he was the first Freeman of Dunstable to be 

 elected since the foundation of the borough by Henry I.), 

 a keen politician, originally by profession an architect, 

 a draughtsman and engraver, an antiquary of note, 

 he was also among the first botanical artists in black 

 and white, and an admitted authority on the larger 

 British fungi. At the age of twenty-three he gave up 

 the practice of architecture in favour of book illustra- 

 tion, and for many years drew architectural subjects 

 for the Builder. Plant-forms, and especially the 

 larger fungi, had attracted him, and in 1867 he drew, 

 lithographed, and described two large coloured sheets 

 of " Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms " for Mr. Hard- 

 wicke, the publisher. In 1869 he was discovered by 

 Dr. Maxwell Masters, and from (then onwards for 

 nearly half a century supplied the drawings of new or 

 noteworthy plants with which readers of the Gardeneps' 

 Chronicle are familiar. To his training as an archi- 

 tect we doubtless owe the sharp, clear accuracy of his 

 drawings and his careful attention to detail. In 1884 

 was published his " Diseases of Field and Garden 

 Crops," chiefly such as are caused by fungi, written 

 and illustrated by himself. A beautiful memorial of 

 his work on the larger fungi is exhibited in the botan- 

 ical gallery at the Natural History Museum in the form 

 of more than a hundred large sheets of coloured draw- 

 ings of our British species. His " Synopsis of British 

 Basidiomycetes," published by the trustees of the 

 British Museum iii 1908, is descriptive of these draw- 

 ings. His "Guide to Sowerby's Models of British 

 Fungi" (British Museum, 1891) is a capital little hand- 

 book on the larger species. Many of his drawings 

 have been acquired by the museum, including a fine 

 series illustrating the larger British fungi. Worthing- 

 ton Smith was a fellow of the Linnean and various 

 other societies, and in 1903 he was elected president of 

 the British Mycological Society. The Royal Horticul- 

 tural Society showed its appreciation of his work by 

 several awards, including the Knightian gold medal in 

 1895 for his researches into the life-history of the 

 potato-disease fungus. An appreciation of Worthing- 

 ton Smith's work, with an excellent portrait, forms the 

 leading article in the issue of the Gardeners' Chronicle 

 for November 3. 



The trustees of the British Museum have issued three 

 more of the useful pamphlets (Nos. 4, 5, and 6) of the 

 "Natural History Economic Series." These describe 

 mosquitoes, the bed-bug, and species of Arachnida and 

 Myriopoda injurious to man, and are written respec- 

 tively by Mr. F. W. Edwards, Mr. Bruce F. Cum- 

 mings, and Mr. Stanley Hirst. The outward form, 

 life-histories, and habits of the various creatures are 

 clearly described, with good figures and some practical 

 advice for the destruction of pests. Most readers of 



