448 



NATURE 



[February 7, igi8. 



The following arrangements have been made in con- 

 nection with the Royal College of Physicians of Lon- 

 don : — The Harveian oration will be delivered on 

 October 18 by Dr. P. Kidd, and the Bradshaw lecture 

 in November by Dr. Aldren Turner. Prof. H. R. 

 Kenwood is to be the Milroy lecturer this year, and Dr. 

 J. McVail in IQ19. 



The next meeting of the Faraday Society will b.e held 

 at the Municipal School of Technology, Manchester, on 

 February 14, when there will be a general discussion on 

 electric furnaces. The discussion will be preceded by 

 the reading of the following papers : — Application of 

 electric furnace methods to industrial processes, H. 

 Etchells ; electric furnaces for steel refining, J, Bi^by ; 

 electric furnace control, A. P. M. Fleming and F. E. 

 Hill ; and a high-temperature electric resistance fur- 

 nace, E. A. Coad-Pryor and W. Rosenhain. 



The death is announced of Prof. J. P. Remington, 

 chairman of the Committee of Revision of the United 

 States Pharmacopoeia and professor of the theory and 

 practice of pharmacy in the Philadelphia College of 

 Pharmacy. Prof. Remington was the author of 

 numerous papers on pharmacy, many of which were 

 contributed to the American Pharmaceutical Associa- 

 tion, and of the "Practice of Pharmacy," the sixth 

 edition of which was recently published by Messrs. 

 J. B. Lippincott Co. 



The death of Mr. M. Beazley, which is recorded in 

 the Engineer for February i, is the third death among 

 Indian engineers announced last week. Mr. Beazley 

 was born in Bath in 1833. He assisted Mr. Cubitt in 

 the piercing of the Shakesipeare Tunnel at Dover for 

 the South-Eastern Railway. He proceeded to India in 

 1859, and was engaged in the construction of a portion 

 of the Central Indian Railway. Afterwards he served 

 for ten years in the Imperial Chinese Customs. 



We note with regret that the Engineer for February i 

 records the death of Mr. T. Anderson on January 15. 

 Mr. Anderson spent about thirty-three years in India, 

 thirty of which were in the service of the Royal Indian 

 Marine. He was born in Greenock in 1842, and went 

 to India in 1864. After occupying various positions, he 

 became, in 1881, engineer-surveyor to the Port of Bom- 

 bay, and was made chief engineer in 1885. After the 

 Burmese vv^ar he was sent to Mandalay to value the 

 factories of King Theebaw. Mr. Anderson was an asso- 

 ciate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.. 



We notice with regret the announcement of the 

 deaths of several distinguished medical men. Surg.- 

 Gen. Sir Adam Scott Reid, who died in London on 

 February 2, at the age of sixty-nine, was for many 

 years in the Indian Medical Service. — Sir George H. 

 Philipson, ex-president of the British Medical Associa- 

 tion and representative of the University of Durham 

 on the General Medical Council, died on January 24, 

 in his eight3f-third year. — Sir James A. Russell, for 

 some years demonstrator of anatomy in the University 

 of Edinburgh, afterwards inspector of anatomy and 

 vivisection for the whole of Scotland, and an active 

 fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, died on 

 January 22, at seventy-two years of age. 



The death has occurred of Prof. Amos P. 

 Brown, professor of mineralogy and geology in the 

 Towne Scientific School of the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, at fifty-two years of age. A resolution passed 

 at a recent meetmg of the faculty of the Towne Scien- 

 tific School, and published in Science, states that 

 among the most notable recent investigations in 

 America was the work done by Prof. Brown in the 

 field of crystallography; specifically the investigations 

 in the classes of crystals found in the haemoglobins of 

 NO. 2519, VOL. 100] 



the entire range of the vertebrate animals. In the 

 course of this investigation Prof. Brown prepared, 

 examined, and talculated the functions of thousands, 

 of intricate and minute crystals, deducing from them 

 conclusions highly important alike to organic and in- 

 organic science. This work, carried out in collabora- 

 tion with Prof. Reichert, is referred to as one of the 

 greatest contributions to exact science ever made in 

 America. 



Maj.-Gen. H. P. Babbage, who died at Cheltenham 

 on January 29, aged ninety-three, inherited much of the 

 mathematical ability of his distinguished father, 

 Charles Babbage, mathematician and mechanician, 

 whose famous calculating machine, after many vicissi- 

 tudes, was pronounced by a committee of the British 

 Association to be, " in the present state of the design, 

 not more than a theoretical possibility." Maj.-Gen. 

 Babbage was educated at University College School 

 and at University College. He joined the East India 

 Company's Army in 1843, served in Assam and dur- 

 ing the Mutiny, and was then transferred to civil em- 

 ployment, where he gained reputation as a builder of 

 bridges. He was a learned mathematician, and is best 

 known by his account of his father's work and of the 

 principles of calculating machines, besides papers on 

 mechanical notation and occulting lights. After his' 

 retirement from Indian service he engaged in muni- 

 cipal work at Bromley and Cheltenham, and did good 

 service as a vigilant critic of the accounts of these 

 corporations. 



Prof. A. N. Talbot, professor of municipal and 

 sanitary engineering, University of Illinois, has been 

 elected president of the American Society of Civil 

 Engineers. The American Society of Civil Engineers 

 is the oldest American engineering society. It has a 

 membership of 8225, an annual budget of 30,000?., and 

 assets of i2o,oooZ. As a consulting engineer Prof. 

 Talbot has been connected with many large enterprises, 

 such as the Galveston Causeway, the Chicago City 

 Hall, and numerous waterworlcs and sewage purifica- 

 tion problems. Prof. Talbot is a past-president of the 

 Society for the Promotion of Engineering Educa- 

 tion and a past-president of the American Society for 

 Testing Materials. The University of Pennsylvania 

 has conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor 

 of Science, and the University of Michigan the 

 honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering. 



An interesting example of the audibility of the sound 

 of a distant fog-horn has been communicated to us by 

 Mr. W. T. Evans, of Treharris, Glam. On January 

 14, from about 6 to 7 a.m., he heard series of four 

 consecutive blasts, each followed by an interval of 

 silence— the distinctive note of the siren at Nash 

 Lighthouse, on the southern coast of Glamorganshire.-- 

 Treharris is about twenty miles inland, and is separated 

 from the coast by several ranges of hills. Though all 

 the blasts were distinctly audible, they varied in 

 strength, some being as loud and clear as when heard 

 at other times from a distance of four miles. The fog- 

 horn at Nash, according to a statement by the light- 

 house-keeper, was sounding on account of a snow - 

 shower from 6.15 to 7 on the morning in question. A 

 thick mantle of snow lay over the ground at the, 

 time, and the air was absolutely calm. The conditions 

 were thus favourable for the transmission of the' 

 sound to so great a distance. 



Mr. H. S. Wellcome has presented to the War 

 Office, for the use of the British'Army Medical Depart- 

 ment, a completely equipped motor bacteriological 

 laboratory. The bodv of the car and its extended 

 weather-proof annexe form a laboratory with a total 

 working space of 219 sq. ft. The equipment includes 



