526 



NATURE 



[June 24, 1920 



Notes. 



By the gracious command of the King, the Society 

 of TropicaJ Medicine and Hygiene, which was founded 

 in June, 1907, will henceforth be known as "The 

 Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene." 



We recorded last week that at the anniversary 

 meeting of the Linnean Society on May 27 the gold 

 medal of the society was handed by the president to 

 Sir Ray Lankester, to whom it had been awarded 

 by the president and council. The president's anni- 

 versary address was devoted to an account of our 

 present knowledge of the earliest known fossil fishes 

 — the Ostracoderma — in the investigation of which 

 Sir Ray Lankester was a pioneer, his monograph on 

 Cephalaspis and Pteraspis having been published by 

 the Palaeontographical Society in 1870. 



The first gold medal ever given by the Institution 

 of Sanitary Engineers was presented at the annual 

 summer meeting of the institution last week to Major 

 A. J. Martin "for his services in originating Health 

 Week and in the development of civil and military 

 sanitation before and during the war." 



Mr. Marconi, who has just returned from Italy by 

 sea, has favoured us with the following appreciative 

 reference to the late Prof. Righi : — "Although I never 

 had, as is often stated, the privilege of being a pupil 

 of Prof. Righi, I have always had, as is well known, 

 a very deep admiration for him and for his great and 

 far-reaching work in connection with physics, and 

 particularly electric waves. Prof. Righi, whom I 

 knew well personally, was a man of singularly un- 

 assuming character, and by his death not only has 

 Italy lost one of her foremost scientific men, but the 

 world also loses a brilliant and original worker in 

 the field of electrotechnics. " 



Dr. F. G. Cottrell, Director of the U.S. Bureau 

 of Mines, has been awarded the Willard Gibbs medal 

 of the Chicago Section of the American Chemical 

 Society. 



The annual summer meeting of the Anatomical 

 Society of Great Britain and Ireland is to be held 

 at Cambridge on July 2 and 3. Papers on the 

 morphology and development of the central nervous 

 system have been promised, and there will be dis- 

 cussions on the structure of the earliest land verte- 

 brates, the partial transposition of the mesogastric 

 viscera, and avian structure as bearing upon problems 

 of bird migration. 



We are informed by the Secretary of the Depart- 

 ment of Scientific and Industrial Research that the 

 Research Association for the British Motor Cycle 

 and Cycle Car Industry has been approved by the 

 Department as complying with the conditions laid 

 down in the Government scheme for the encourage- 

 ment of industrial research. As the association is to 

 be registered as a non-profit-sharing company, the 

 promoters have applied to the Board of Trade for the 

 issue of a licence under Section 20 of the Companies 

 (Consolidation) Act of 1908. The secretary of the 

 committee engaged in the establishment of this asso- 

 ciation is Major H. R. Watling, "The Towers," 

 Warwick Road, Coventry. 



NO. 2643, VOL. 105] 



At the eighty-sixth annual general meeting of the 

 Royal Statistical Society, held on June 15, the fol- 

 lowing elections took place : — President : Sir R. Henry 

 Rew. Treasurer: Mr. R, Holland-Martin. Honorary 

 Secretaries : Mr. A. W. Flux, Mr. M. Greenwood, and 

 Sir J. C. Stamp. Honorary Foreign Secretary : Mr. 

 R. Dudfield. Council: Mr. W. M. Acworth, Dr. J. 

 Bonar, Dr. A. L. Bowley, Miss Clara E. Collet, Major 

 L. Darwin, Mr. G. Drage, Mr. R. Dudfield, Mr. 

 A. W. Flux, Sir D. Drummond Fraser, Mr. J. H. 

 Gorvin, Mr. M. Greenwood, Sir Robert Hadfiefd, Bart., 

 Sir Edgar J. Harper, Mr. R. G. Hawtrey, Sir H. E. 

 Haward, Mr. R. Holland-Martin, Dr. L. Isserlis, the 

 Right Hon. F. Huth Jackson, Mr. A. W. W. King, 

 Mr. H. W. Macrosty, Mr. E. R. P. Moon, Sir" 

 Shirley F. Murphy, Mr. H. V. Reade, Mr. C. P. 

 Sanger, Dr. E. C. Snow, Mr. J. C. Spensley, Sir 

 J. C. Stamp, Sir A. D. Steel-Maitland, Bart., Mr. 

 T. H. C. Stevenson, and Mr. H. Withers. It was 

 announced that the Guy medal in gold had been 

 awarded to Dr. T. H. C. Stevenson. 



Mr. Julian Baker has been re-elected chairman of 

 the London Section of the Society of Chemical 

 Industry, and Dr. Monier Williams is to take the 

 place of Dr. S. Miall as honorary secretary. Dr. Miall 

 having resigned the position. The new members of 

 the committee are Mr. A. Chaston Chapman, Mr. J. 

 Conner, Mr. A. H. Dewar, Dr. B. Dyer, and Prof. 

 W. R. E. Hodgkinson. 



The U.S. National Research Council, a co-operative 

 organisation of leading scientific and technical men 

 of the country for the promotion of scientific research 

 and the application and dissemination of scientific 

 knowledge for the benefit of the national welfare, has 

 elected the following officers for the year beginning 

 July I : — Chairman: H. A. Bumstead, professor 

 of physics and director of the Sloane Physical 

 Laboratory, Yale University. First Vice-Chairman : 

 C. D. Walcott, president of the National Academy 

 of Sciences and secretary of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion. Second Vice-Chairman: Gano Dunn, president 

 of the J. G. White Engineering Corporation, New 

 York. Third Vice-chairman: R. A. Millikan, pro- 

 fessor of physics, University of Chicago. Permanent 

 Secretary : Vernon Kellogg, professor of biology, 

 Stanford University. Treasurer: F. L. Ransome, 

 treasurer of the National Academy of Sciences. The 

 Council was organised in 19 16 under the auspices of 

 the National Academy of Sciences to mobilise the 

 scientific resources of America for work on war 

 problems, and re-organised in 1918 by an executive 

 order of the President on a permanent peace-time 

 basis. Although co-operating with various Govern- 

 ment scientific bureaux, it is not controlled or sup- 

 ported by the Government. It has recently received 

 an endowment of five million dollars from the Car- 

 negie Corporation, part of which Is to be expended 

 for the erection of a suitable building in Washington 

 for the joint use of the Council and the National 

 Academy of Sciences. Other gifts have been made to 

 It for the carrying out of specific scientific researches 

 under its direction. 



