June 3, 1920] 



NATURE 



431 



ham under Edward Thring, and at Balliol under 

 Benjamin Jowett, with fellow-undergraduates who 

 in various ways iiecame men of light and leading. 

 As a poet and preacher, and in general a quick- 

 ^ner of life and energy wherever demands were 

 made upon his active genius, he met with well- 

 deserved appreciation. As the obituary notice 

 in the Times observes, "perhaps his chief work 

 was the founding of the National Trust for the 

 Preservation of Places of Historic Interest and 

 Natural Beauty," For the qualifying word "per- 

 haps " it would be better to substitute 

 the word "undoubtedly." Men like Canon 

 Rawnsley, by setting a courageous example, often 

 accomplish much more than their immediate 

 object. 



By the death, at fifty-eight years of age, of 

 Dr. George Ernest Morrison, "Morrison of 

 Peking," as he was familiarly known, the Empire 

 has lost a great explorer and expert in the politics 

 of the Far *East. An Australian by birth. Dr. 

 Morrison began by explorations in that continent. 

 New Guinea, and the South Sea Islands, his most 

 notable exploit being his famous crossing from the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne in 1882, when 

 he marched 2043 miles on foot in 123 days. 

 Coming to Europe, he took his degree of M.D. 

 at Edinburgh, and wandered in the United States, 

 Spain, and Morocco. Reaching China, he crossed 

 to Rangoon and explored Siam. His life-work 

 really began in 1897, when he was appointed 

 correspondent of the Times at Peking. Here he 

 recorded from day to day with the prescience of 

 a statesman and the accuracy of a historian the 

 momentous struggle which resulted from the 

 German occupation of Kiao-chao, and he took an 

 active part in the defence of the Peking Legations 

 during the Boxer rising of 1900. In 1907 Dr. 

 Morrison crossed China from Peking to Tonquin, 

 and in 1910 he rode from Honan City to Andijan 

 in Russian Turkestan. Two years later he re- 

 signed his post as correspondent of the Times, 

 and became political adviser to the first President 

 of the Chinese Republic. During his stay in 

 Peking he collected one of the most comprehensive 

 libraries of Chinese literature. His contributions 

 to the study of the Far East, except his well- 

 known book, "An Australian in China," largely 

 consist of newspaper articles. 



We much regret to announce the death, on 

 May 28, in his forty-third year, of Prof. Leonard 

 DoNCASTER, F.R.S., fellow of King's College, 

 Cambridge, and Derby professor of zoology in 

 the University of Liverpool. 



We notice with regret the announcement in the 

 Times of the death in India, at the early age of 

 thirty-two years, of Prof. Srinivasa Ramanujan, 

 F.R.S., fellow of Trinity College. Cambridge, and 

 distinguished by his brilliant mathematical re- 

 searches. 



NO. 2640, VOL. 105] 



Notes. 



The Romanes lecture at Oxford was delivered on 

 May 27 by Dr. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, before a 

 large audience, by whom the lecturer's brilliant 

 epigrams and trenchant criticism of conventional 

 catchwords were evidently much appreciated. Deal- 

 ing with the "idea of progress," the Dean made it 

 clear that he had no belief in any natural law of 

 continued progress in the sphere of morals or intel- 

 lect, or even of physical organisation. The concep- 

 tion of such a law was, in fact, of comparatively 

 recent growth, and had no foundation in the thought 

 of antiquity or of the Middle Ages. At the same 

 time he wouTd not deny a temporary improvement 

 of the race in fulfilment of a finite purpose, though 

 he found little or no evidence of any advance during 

 the historical period in either physical organisation 

 or morals. The results of accumulated experience 

 must not be confounded with a real progress in 

 human nature. Dean Inge would scarcely be con- 

 cerned to deny that the emergence of rational 

 humanity from previous non-human conditions de- 

 served in some sort the name of "progress," but he 

 saw no warrant for the belief that such " progress " 

 would be continued indefinitely under the domain of 

 natural law. Huxley had pointed out in a previous 

 Romanes lecture that ethical improvement ran counter 

 to the process of cosmic evolution. Progress was a 

 task for humanity, not a law of Nature. • Civilisation 

 was a disease that had hitherto been invariably fatal. 

 The ancient civilisations had fallen by the attacks of 

 outer barbarians; "we breed our own barbarians." 

 But progress was possible for the individual, if not 

 for the race, and hope was not only a virtue, but also 

 a solid fact. 



On May 17 Mr. H. Morris, of Lewes, read a paper 

 to the Oxford University Archaeological Society on 

 the evolution of Wealden flint culture from pre- 

 Palaeofithic times, including that of Piltdown Man. 

 He exhibited many flints, which he claimed as inter- 

 mediate between the early Harrison types of the 

 North Downs plateau and the recognised Paleeolithic 

 types, representing man's transition from the stage 

 in which he subsisted on a vegetable diet to the 

 hunting stage. The earliest spear-head accompanies 

 the Piltdown skull and marks the beginning of man 

 the hunter. The flints are confined to a limited 

 number of patches, and many prolific "river gravel" 

 areas fail to produce anything resembling them ; the 

 proportions in which the various types appear are 

 found to agree closely in all the patches. When the 

 cortex of the flint did not interfere with the design 

 of the implement, it has been cleverly and intentionally 

 preserved; many of the fractures are of thermal 

 origin, but man utilised these natural fracture-surfaces 

 in the same way as he utilised cortex. It is signi- 

 ficant that signs of man's work appear only in ihe 

 places where it is essential for the attainment of the 

 required form. Sir Arthur Evans, Prof. Sollas, Dr. 

 Marett, Mr. Henry Balfour, Mr. Reid Moir, and others 

 discussed Mr. Morris's paper, and hesitated to accept 

 his conclusions. 



