NATURE 



[March i8, 1920 



to its annual reports. His advice was duly 

 appreciated and considered in framing- legislation. 

 Dr. Hewitt was a corresponding member of 

 the Zoological Society of London, and he received 

 the gold medal of the Royal Society for the 

 Protection of Birds. 



By the death of Sir Robert Morant at the early 

 age of fifty-seven the Civil Service loses one of 

 its ablest and most remarkable members. His 

 great powers of organisation found full scope for 

 their exercise when he was, in 1902, appointed 

 Secretary of the recently created Board of Educa- 

 tion. The appointment was well merited, for it 

 was to his indefatigable industry in supplying 

 material, to his skill in dealing with details, and 

 to his ingenuity in overcoming difficulties that the 

 Education Bill of 1902 was safely carried through 

 Parliament. As permanent head of the Board of 

 Education his restless energy and ceaseless activity 

 bore down all opposition, and made him ready at 

 all costs to carry out his own ideas. Organisation 

 was indeed with him a ruliifg passion, and the 

 smooth working of a complicated machine tended 

 to become more important than the purpose the 

 machine was intended to serve. During the ten 

 years that he held the post of Secretary he served 

 under five different Presidents, and the rapid suc- 

 cession of his temporary chiefs was not altogether 

 unconnected with his own remarkable tenacity of 

 purpose and skill in carrying it into effect. While 

 his undoubted talents and magnificent powers of 

 work have thus left their mark on the educational 

 system of the country, it still remains to be seen 

 if the vast and expensive machinery he called into 

 existence will be more of a help than a hindrance 

 in the development of our national education. In 

 191 2, on the appointment of Mr. J. A. Pease as 

 President of the Board of Education, Sir Robert 

 Morant was promoted to the chairmanship of the 

 English Commission formed under the National 

 Health Insurance Act. He lived to see the early 

 opposition to this Act gradually die away, and 

 the Act itself become part of a great scheme of 

 health legislation. To this Commission he devoted 

 the same power of organisation and intensity of 

 effort, and his early death is probably largely 

 owing to his unsparing use of these great talents 

 in the public service. — C. A. B. 



The death is announced of the veteran Italian 

 botanist. Dr. Pier Andrea Saccardo, emeritus 

 professor in the Royal University of Padua. Born 

 at Treviso in 1845, Prof. Saccardo joined the Royal 

 Botanic Garden of Padua in 1866 as assistant 

 director, and in 1878 became director — a post 

 which he retained for the remainder of his official 

 life. He was also professor of botany in the Royal 

 University. He is best known for his systematic 

 work on the fungi ; his " Sylloge Fungorum 

 omnium hucusque cognitorum " has been, since 

 the publication of vol. i. in 1882, the working 

 handbook of systematic mycology. Succeeding 

 NO. 2629, VOL. 105] 



parts or volumes appeared at intervals, the last, 

 vol. xxii., in 191 3; other eminent mycologists 

 have co-operated in this great work. Prof. 

 Saccardo also published numerous separate 

 memoirs dealing with the fungi. His " Notse 

 Mycologicae " was a series of descriptive papers 

 in various journals devoted to mycology from 1890 

 to 1916, when series xx. appeared in the Nuovo 

 Giornale Botanico Italiano. But his activities 

 were not limited to the fungi. Under the title 

 "La Botanica in Italia" (1895, 1901), an 

 exhaustive compendium of Italian botanists and 

 their work from the Roman epoch onwards, he 

 made a valuable contribution to botanical biblio- 

 graphy. In 1909 he contributed a supplemental 

 volume to the "Flora analitica d'ltalia" (by 

 Fiori, Paoletti, and B^guinot), entitled " Crono- 

 logia della Flora Italia," a systematic list of the 

 earlier records of the species of ferns and flower- 

 ing plants, native or naturalised in Italy. Prof. 

 Saccardo was also the author of a pamphlet, 

 "Chromotaxia," on colour nomenclature, for the 

 use of botanists and zoologists. In recognition of 

 his eminent services to botany he was elected in 

 1916 a foreign member of our own Linnean 

 Society. 



We regret to note that Engineering for March 5 

 records the death of Mr. William Richards 

 Williams on February 23. Mr. Williams studied 

 engineering at the Royal Engineering College, 

 Coopers Hill, and was appointed in 1887 assistant 

 engineer to the Public Works Department by 

 H.M. Secretary of State for India. His work in 

 India was chiefly connected with irrigation. In 

 1901 he was appointed to the Irrigation Service in 

 Egypt, and ultimately became Inspector-General 

 of Irrigation, Lower Egypt. Mr. Williams had 

 been a member of the Institution of Civil 

 Engineers since 1906. 



We have received from Dr. Angel Gallardo, 

 now president of the Argentine National Council 

 of Fiducation, a copy of his obituary notice of 

 Dr. F. p. Moreno in El Monitor de la Educacion 

 Comun (Buenos Aires, December 31, 1919). Dr. 

 Gallardo gives some account of Dr. Moreno's 

 later work for education, to which we briefly 

 referred in Nature for January 15, and empha- 

 sises especially the importance of his efforts to 

 provide for the children of the poorer classes. 

 Among other institutions. Dr. Moreno established 

 the Boy Scouts in Argentina. The notice is 

 accompanied by an excellent portrait, which is, 

 however, a little blurred in the printing. 



We much regret to see the announcement of 

 the death, on March 13, in his seventy-eighth 

 year, of Prof. Charles Lapworth, for many 

 years professor of geology and physiography in 

 the L^niversity of Birmingham. 



