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NATURE 



[December 6, 1917 



We referred in our issue of May 31 (p. 267) to a 

 proposal to present the portrait of the late Prof. R. 

 Meldola to the Royal Society and the Institute of 

 Chemistry. The total sum received in response to this 

 intimation, which was circulated only among Prof. 

 Meldola's friends, was just above two hundred pounds, 

 which has been paid to the artist, Mr. Solomon, for 

 the portraits. Prof. E. B. Poulton informs us that 

 the portrait presented to the Royal Society will be un- 

 veiled by Sir George Beilby on December 18, at 3 p.m. ; 

 and that presented to the Institute of Chemistry of 

 Great Britain and Ireland, Russell Square, fcy the 

 president. Sir James Dobbie, at 4.30 on the same after- 

 noon. Prof. Poulton adds : — " I am sure that sub- 

 scribers will feel a deep debt of gratitude to Col. S. J. 

 Solomon, R.A., for the generous manner in which he 

 has carried out their wishes, and produced a lasting 

 memorial of a great man, and one that will co-operate 

 with and complete the memories of his friends." 



We regret to announce the death of Mr. Charles 

 Hawksley, on November 27, at seventy-eight years of 

 age. An account of Mr. Hawksley 's career is given 

 in Engineering for November 30. He was born in 

 Nottingham in 1839, and completed his education at 

 University College, London, when he entered, as a 

 pupil, the offices of his father, the late Mr. Thomas 

 Hawksley, F.R.S. He was a partner with his father 

 from 1866, and continued the business after his father's 

 death in 1893. The firm was associated with water- 

 works engineering in Great Britain, and also practised 

 in connection with gas undertakings and sewerage 

 works. Mr. Hawksley was president of the Institu- 

 tion of Civil Engineers in 1901, and at the time of his 

 death was a member of council of the Institution 

 of Mechanical Engineers. His death will leave a gap 

 in these institutions not easily filled. In 1907 Mr. 

 Hawksley founded a lectureship of the Institution of 

 Mechanical Engineers to commemorate the centenary 

 of the birth of his father, and by a melancholy coin- 

 cidence this year's lecture was delivered last Friday 

 evening. 



By the death in action on September 28 of Major 

 Harry Clissold, D.S.O., R.E., the world of education 

 sustains a grievous loss. For more than twenty vears 

 Major Clissold was on the science staff of Clifton 

 College, where he had himself been educated, and 

 to which until the end of his life he ungrudgingly 

 devoted his exceptional gifts. After taking a first class 

 in the Natural Science Tripos at Cambridge, he be- 

 came an assistant-master at Marlborough, but very 

 soon returned to his old school. He at once threw 

 himself wholeheartedly into all the interests and activi- 

 ties of school life, intellectual and athletic. This 

 devotion to the interests of the school undoubtedly pre- 

 vented him, as it has done so many others in similar 

 positions, from making those contributions to scientific 

 knowledge which were to be expected from his great 

 abilitv and energy. When called upon to take com- 

 mand of the school contingent of the Officers Training 

 Corps he somewhat reluctantly consented, and 

 devoted all his spare time, including many of his 

 holidays, to making himself as efficient as possible in 

 his military duties. Thus, when in 1914 he was 

 offered the command of a new field company of the 

 South Midland Royal Engineers, he accepted it with 

 alacrity. He went to France in April, 1915, in command 

 of a field company, and served with such distinction 

 that he was awarded the D.S.O. in the summer of 

 1916. Major Clissold's scientific knowledge and habit 

 of mind made him a most valuable officer on the 

 technical side, and his constant devotion to the welfare 

 of his men caused him to be one of the most popular 

 officers in the Army. The loss to Clifton is greater 



NO. 2510, VOL. 100] 



than can be described, and to a wide circle of friends 

 in all parts of the globe the world is a darker and a 

 poorer place by his death. 



The supplement to the forty-sixth annual report of 

 the Local Government Board, containing the report of 

 the Medical Officer for 1916-17, has recently been 

 issued. In the general summary Sir Arthur News- 

 holme directs attention to the need for increased effort 

 to save child-life. In 1914 the excess of births over 

 deaths in England and Wales was 362,354, in 1915 

 it was 252,201. In 1916 the rateof infant mortality was 

 the lowest on record ; there were 29,073 fewer births and 

 54,099 fewer deaths than in 1915, with a result that 

 the excess of births over deaths for the year was 

 277,227. Sir Arthur Newsholme expresses the opinion 

 that there should be no insuperable difficulty in reduc- 

 ing the total deaths in childhood to one-half their 

 present number. 



Several articles of topical interest appear in the 

 October number of the Scientific Monthly (vol. v., 

 No. 4). Dr. Burgess writes on the applications of 

 science to warfare in France. Prof. Graham Lusk ■ 

 discusses food in war-time. He points out that carbo- 

 hydrates are the great food-fuels of the human 

 machine. Based on their value in calories, proprietary 

 cereal foods are very costly, and it would be a great 

 advance if the value in calories were placed on every 

 food package sold. Dr. Ida Pritchett describes specific 

 preventive and curative therapy by means of serums 

 with special reference to gas gangrene. She believes 

 that an antitoxic serum can be prepared for this 

 condition, and that there is every reason to hope that 

 serum treatment will bring about a decrease in the 

 incidence of, and fatalities from, gas gangrene due to 

 war wounds. 



In Man for November Mr. J. Reid Moir describes 

 a piece of wood from the Cromer forest bed which is 

 believed to show traces of human workmanship. The 

 flat end of it appears to have been produced by saw- 

 ing, and at one spot it seems that the line of cutting 

 has been corrected, as is often necessary when begin- 

 ning to cut wood with a modern saw. Other examples 

 of pieces of wood pointed by early man are known, and 

 it is believed that Mr. Hazzledine Warren discovered 

 a wooden stake or spear in the ancient impiement- 

 iferous deposit at Clacton-on-Sea. 



Mr. Neil M. Judd, of the United States National 

 Museum, has just returned to Washington after com- 

 pleting six months of archaeological work in Arizona 

 and Utah. He has been engaged in repairing and 

 restoring Betatakin, or Hillside House, one of the 

 most interesting cliff houses in northern Arizona, con- 

 sisting of nearly one hundred rooms, built on the 

 sharply sloping floor of a crescent-shaped cave. The 

 presence of hidden springs, causing damage to the 

 structure and leading to the accumulation of silt, has 

 been dealt with, and the restoration has been con- 

 ducted in the most conservative wa>-. The age of 

 Betatakin cliff house is still uncertain, and no definite 

 results can be obtained until the examination of this 

 and other neighbouring ruins has been systematically 

 undertaken. 



The question of the character and origin of the local 

 go6s of Egypt is still obscure ; but a paper by Prof. 

 Flinders Petrie, published in Ancient Egypt, part iii., 

 1917, does much to clear it up. Prof. Petrie has col- 

 lected the original records of these cults, and by 

 marking the headquarters of each deity he arrives 

 at important results. Ra appears in only one southern 

 city, and his cult seems to have come from the 

 north-east. The distribution of Mut, the mother- 

 goddess, is decidedly eastern, while that of Amen is 



