November 15, 19 17] 



NATURE 



209 



of necessity follow that the system was bad. Before 

 condemning it he desired first of all to learn whether 

 or not it worked well or ill ; whether or not. it was 

 economical, and if there was friction. With reference 

 to this question, it may be pointed out that Lord 

 Rhondda has stated that the Board of Education and 

 the Local Government Board have had differences of 

 opinion as to their respective shares in the work of 

 child welfare, but that before he left the latter Board 

 an agreement had oeen arrived at. Possibly it was 

 because there had been an agreement that Mr. Fisher 

 desired to be non-committal. 



The organisers of the meeting held to take steps to 

 form a representative association of British chemists, 

 held at the Manchester School of Technology on 

 November lo, are to be congratulated on the result of 

 their efforts. Seldom have chemists been brought to- 

 gether in such numbers, at least 500 being present. 

 Much criticism was levelled at the Institute of Chem- 

 istry, which has hitherto been held to be too exclusive 

 and not sufficiently representative of the rank and file. 

 In justice to the institute, however, it was recognised by 

 the speakers that it has done a great deal for chemists 

 and has within recent times evmced a disposition, as 

 I war measure, to open its doors to properly trained 

 .md qualified chemists on a more liberal basis within 

 the limitations of its constitution. The Provisional 

 Committee of the new association obtained the support 

 of the meeting to the main objects, but it agreed to 

 submit its scheme to the council of the Institute of 

 Chemistry before proceeding to definite incorporation, 

 on the understanding that the institute, which has 

 been established for forty years, should be asked in 

 the first place to adopt its aims. The chairman of the 

 meeting, Dr. Ree, intimated that the Provisional Com- 

 mittees for Manchester and Birmingham have already 

 had an informal conference with the representatives 

 of the institute, and that the latter has expressed its 

 sympathy with the general aims of the proposed asso- 

 ciation.' A great deal depends on what constitutes a 

 chemist, and much will yet depend on the extent of 

 the training and qualifications regarded by the 

 organisers as necessary to justify registration of a 

 candidate under the scheme. The meeting showed no 

 disposition to claim that pharmaceutical chemists, many 

 of whom are held to be sound chemists in the technical 

 and technological sense, should be deprived of their 

 right to the title. The meeting showed a healthy sign 

 of activity among chemists, and it should produce far- 

 reaching results. We trust that the Institute of Chem- 

 istry will welcome the opportunity of developing its 

 sphere of usefulness. There is much to be considered 

 and much to be done yet to secure for British chemists 

 the position and recognition to which by their work they 

 are clearly entitled. 



The death is announced, while leading his platoon 

 during one of the recent advances in France, of 2nd 

 Lieut. F. Entwistle, second assistant at the Observa- 

 tory, Cambridge, aged twenty-one years. Mr. Ent- 

 wistle was a computer at the Royal Observatory, 

 Greenwich, and he went to Cambridge as second 

 assistant in December, 19 14. He was there a few 

 months only before he was given a commission in the 

 Norfolk Regiment as 2nd Lieutenant. Mr. Hartley, 

 first assistant at the Cambridge Observatory, was killed 

 on the Vanguard on July 9. The double tragedy ex- 

 hausts the staff of the observatory, as distinct from 

 the Solar Physics Observatory, except for the director. 



Mr. F. N. Ha ward, writing from 95 Uxbridge Road, 

 Ealing, W.5, points out that the late Mr. Worthington 

 G. Smith, whose work was referred to in Nature of 

 November 8, p. 191, was not only a botanist, but had 

 also a world-wide reputation as an antiquarian. 

 NO. 2507, VOL. 100] 



"W. G. S. was one of the most practical authori- 

 ties in matters relating to prehistoric man, of whose 

 implements of flint he made many discoveries of great 

 importance. Besides being the author and illustrator 

 of such a classic as * Rlan, the Primeval Savage * 

 (1894), he contributed largely and wisely to the 

 current literature of the subject, and, being an expert 

 engraver, he illustrated many of the works of his 

 contemporaries on various scientific matters." 



Mr. J. A. Hardcastle, whose death on November 10 

 we much regret to record, was a grandson of Sir John 

 Herschel, and himself a very capable astronomer in 

 the fourth generation of that illustrious race of scien- 

 tific men. Always a man of delicate health, and 

 obliged in early manhood to winter abroad, he had 

 been able by care and courage to carry through several 

 important pieces of work in the intervals of illness, 

 and the friends who had the privilege of knowing him 

 recognised how considerable a share of the ifemily 

 talent was his. About fourteen years ago he under- 

 took the measurement for the late Mr. S. A. Saunder 

 of a series of lunar negatives from the Paris and 

 Yerkes Observatories, which formed the observational 

 basis of the now classic catalogue of precise positions 

 on the moon's surface. Never, perhaps, in the history 

 of observational astronomy has there been a more 

 striking improvement on previous results than was 

 shown in this work, and Mr. Saunder was always 

 insistent on giving to Mr. Hardcastle a large part of 

 the credit for his remarkable skill and judgment in a 

 difficult task. A second large piece of work that he 

 carried to a successful end was the examination and 

 classification of the nebulae on the 210 plates of the 

 Franklin-Adams photographic chart of the whole sky, 

 the results of which are published in the Monthly 

 Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for June, 

 19 14. This has the unique merit that it is the only 

 examination of the nebulae of the whole sky made with 

 the same instrument and of approximately uniform 

 standard. For a number of years Mr. Hardcastle was 

 a very successful University Extension lecturer in 

 astronomy; he had served as secretary of the British 

 Astronomical Association, and as member of council of 

 the Royal Astronomical Society. A few months ago he 

 was appointed to succeed Dr. Dreyer as director of the 

 Armagh Observatory, and was looking forward with 

 the keenest pleasure to the enjoyment of better health 

 and the responsibilities of an official post, when a 

 return of illness disappointed his hopes, and he died 

 after much suffering at the early age of forty-nine. 



The Royal Geographical Society has sustained a de- 

 plorable loss in the death of one of its most active 

 and most valued supporters, Brig. -Gen. Cecil Raw- 

 ling, C.M.G., one of the gold medallists of the society 

 this year. Many famous names are to be found in the 

 list of soldier-geographers who have made exploration 

 the one great objective of their lives, but there is not 

 one which recalls a personality more inspired with high 

 ideals or better endowed with all those qualities of 

 mind and body which are the necessary outfit for the 

 true explorer than Rawling. His best contributions to 

 geographical science were gathered in Tibetan fields. 

 He was there responsible for the results of an expedi- 

 tion in 1897-98 which added considerably to our know- 

 ledge of about 40,000 square miles of that inho^itable 

 country. Such an experience fitted him well for the 

 leadership of a subsequent expedition which was 

 planned, after th^ Tibetan campaign under Sir F. 

 Younghusband, for the determination of the sources of 

 the Brahmaputra and Indus. Col. Ryder was attached 

 to the expedition as surveyor, and brought back excel- 

 lent mapping of the wild districts bordering the great 

 Tibetan high road between Gartok and Lhassa, but 

 the success of the expedition was doubtless due to the 



