366 



NATURE 



[May 20, 1^20 



Notes. 



The general meeting of the Linnean Society on 

 June 17 will be devoted to a celebration of the cen- 

 tenary of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) with essays 

 on various aspects of his life-work, and an exhibition. 



Dr. H. D. Curtis, astronomer at the Lick Ob- 

 servatory, has been appointed director of the Allegheny 

 Observatory in succession to Dr. Frank Schlesinger, 

 who assumed charge of the Yale Observatory on 

 April T. 



The Linnean Society has elected the following as 

 foreign members : — Prof. Gaston Bonnier, Prof. 

 Victor Ferdinand Brotherus, Prof. Giovanni Battista 

 de Toni, Prof. Louis Dollo, Prof. Paul Ma^rchal, and 

 Prof. Roland Thaxter. 



The Natural History Museum Staff Association 

 has arranged a special scientific reunion to be held at 

 the museum (by permission of the Trustees) on 

 Thursday, June 3, at 3.30 p.m., in connection with 

 the Imperial Entomological Conference. The exhibits 

 which will be shown will illustrate some of the 

 problems of economic interest, or arising out of the 

 war, which have been studied at the museum during 

 the past few years. 



The motion for the second reading of the Importa- 

 tion of Plumage (Prohibition) Bill was carried in the 

 House of Commons on May 14. Lt.-Col. Archer- 

 Shee expressed a wish to propose that it be an 

 instruction to the Standing Committee by which the 

 Bill will be considered to insert a schedule of the 

 birds the plumage of which should be prohibited from 

 importation, but the Speaker pointed out that it 

 wpuld be out of order to give a mandatory instruction 

 to a Standing Committee, which could, if it wished, 

 take such action without any instruction. 



A notice from the Department of Anatomy, Johns 

 Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, Maryland, 

 informs us that the Ellen Richards research prize 

 offered by an association of American college women, 

 hitherto known as the Naples Table Association, is 

 available for the year 192 1. This is the tenth prize 

 offered. The prize has been awarded four times, 

 twice to American women and twice to English- 

 women. The competition is open to any woman in 

 the world who presents a thesis written in English. 

 The thesis must represent new observations and new 

 conclusions based upon laboratory research. 



The medal of the Society of Chemical Industry for 

 1920 has been awarded to M. Paul Kestner in recogni- 

 tion of his distinguished services to chemical industry. 

 The medal is awarded biennially, and among the 

 recipients in recent years have been the Right Hon. 

 Sir Henry Roscoe (1914), Mr. C. F. Cross (1916), and 

 Sir James Dewar (1918). M. Kestner was born in 

 Alsace prior to the German occupation in 187 1 ; he 

 was one of the chief founders and the first president 

 of the Soci^t^ de Chimie Industrielle in France, which 

 was established in 1917. He has been connected with 

 engineering as applied to chemical industry through- 

 out his career, and among his more notable achieve- 

 NO. 2638, VOL. 105] 



ments are the use of forced draught in acid towers, 

 automatic acid elevators, the climbing film evaporator^ 

 the scaleless water-tube boiler, and several inventions- 

 in connection with beet-sugar manufacture. 



An invitation from the Mayor and Corporation of 

 Barrow-in-Furness to hold the annual autumn meeting; 

 of the Institute of Metals in that town on Wednesday 

 and Thursday, September 15 and 16 next, has been 

 accepted by the council of the institute. Particulars 

 of the meeting can be obtained from the secretary, 

 Mr. G. Shaw Scott, 36 Victoria Street, S.W.i, who 

 will also be glad to forward tickets for the tenth 

 annual May lecture, which will be delivered by Prof. 

 C. A. F. Benedicks, of Stockholm, at 8 p.m., orb 

 June 10, at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 

 Westminster, the subject of the lecture being " The 

 Recent Progress in Thermo-Electricity." The presi- 

 dent. Engineer Vice-Admiral Sir George Goodwin,. 

 K.C.B., will preside. 



A short account of the Department of Scientific 

 Research and Experiment, which the Admiralty has 

 set up under the Third Sea Lord, was given in 

 Nature of April 22, p. 245. A vote for 302,oooL for 

 scientific services under the Navy Estimates was 

 agreed to in Committee of the House of Com- 

 mons on May 17. Mr. Long, in reply to points raised 

 concerning this vote, said that after an investigation 

 into the conditions the Government decided to ask 

 the Lord President of the Council, who was specially 

 charged with the care of all scientific work in the 

 country, to set up a Committee to inquire into the 

 whole of the work done in the Government Depart- 

 ments in order to prevent overlapping, and to 

 prevent two Departments doing the same work. The 

 Admiralty had appointed a Director of Scientific Re- 

 search at Teddington, where they were going to con- 

 centrate on naval scientific research. When it came 

 to sea-water research they proposed that that should 

 be carried out at the sea-ports. Teddington would be 

 carried on this year, but they hoped that before 

 the end of that time they would have the benefit 

 of the report of the Lord President's Committee, and 

 they would then be in a position to avoid overlapping 

 and duplication of work. The Admiralty would not 

 hesitate to ask Parliament for such money as they 

 thought necessary to give the fullest effect to scien- 

 tific research and the development of the results of 

 that research. The sum of 430,300!. was voted for 

 educational services, and Mr. Long said in connec- 

 tion with it that the departure, taken only recently, 

 under which reception was secured at the L^niversity 

 of Cambridge for a certain number of naval officers 

 as undergraduates, had abundantly justified itself. He 

 assured the Committee that the Government is ex- 

 tremely sympathetic to this scheme, and hopes to 

 increase the number of officer undergraduates. 



An interesting conference on "The Relations of the 

 Inventor to the State," organised by the Institute of 

 Inventors, was held at the rooms of the Royal Society 

 of Arts on May 13. The discussion was opened by 

 Mr. D. Leechman, who gave a good risumi of the 

 present state of the patent law in the light of the 

 new Patent Act. It was remarkable that in a meeting 



