58 



NA TURE 



[May 19, 1898 



SEvenlode Valleys, on the Oolites and Lias of the Cotteswold 

 Hills, &c. In 1887 he published an essay on the origin of the 

 •Cotteswold Club, with an epitome of its Proceedings. He died 

 on May 11, aged seventy-five. 



The British Medical Journal states that the Pasteur Institute 

 at Constantinople, which recently had to close its doors owing 

 •to want of funds and the utter indifference as to its well-being 

 shown by the Turkish Government, has been reopened. This 

 •gratifying result is due partly to the intervention of M. 

 Bjuliniere, Charge d'Affairesof the French Embassy, and partly 

 to the action taken by the Imperial Society of Medicine, which 

 addressed a strong protest on the subject to the Sultan. His 

 Majesty's attention having thus been drawn to the condition of 

 'the institution, in which he had always taken the keenest 

 interest, at once gave instructions that Dr. NicoUe should be 

 furnished with everything that he required, and satisfactory 

 guarantees were given that funds and all other assistance that 

 ■might be needed should henceforth be abundantly supplied. It 

 is expected that the outcome of the affair will be a considerable 

 •development of the usefulness of the Institute. 



We regret to see the announcement, in the Manchester 

 • Guardian., of the untimely death of Dr. C. Herbert Hurst, 

 iformerly on the staff of the Zoological Department of the Owens 

 College. Dr. Hurst was an alumnus of the Manchester Grammar 

 School, and studied biology under Prof. Huxley with con- 

 spicuous success. After some experience as resident science 

 master in a boys' school he entered the Owens College as a 

 student in 1881, and in January 1883 was appointed to the 

 post of demonstrator and assistant lecturer in zoology under the 

 late Prof. Milnes Marshall. For eleven years he filled this 

 office with conspicuous diligence and success, and not only 

 earned the grateful recollection of several generations of students 

 of the College, but also laid under obligation a much wider 

 ■ circle of zoologists by his share in the production of the " Text- 

 'bo;)k of Practical Zoology," which has made the names of 

 Marshall and Hurst familiar in every biological laboratory not 

 only in this country but in the world. In 1889 he took ad- 

 vantage of a prolonged leave of absence granted by the College 

 authorities to pursue his studies at the University of Leipzig, 

 where he carried out a valuable investigation into the life-history 

 of the gnat Culex, for which he was awarded the degree of 

 Ph.D. Latterly he had undertaken what he termed "a 

 -systematic criticism of biological theory," in the course of 

 which he published discussions on "The Nature of Heredity," 

 " Evolution and Heredity," " The Recapitulation Theory," and 

 other kindred topics. In these essays certain modern views were 

 subjected to trenchant and unsparing criticism, for Dr. Hurst 

 was a keen controversial writer, and never hesitated to express 

 himself clearly and forcibly even at the risk of obloquy and un- 

 popularity. His last writings were " The Structure and Habits 

 of Archaeopteryx " and " A New Theory of Hearing." In 1895 

 Dr. Hurst left the Owens College to fill a similar position in the 

 .Royal College of Science, Dublin. His premature death de- 

 .prives zoology of a zealous and upright worker, who was most 

 esteemed by those who knew him best. 



During the past two months the Plymouth laboratory of the 

 Marine Biological Association has been well filled with investi- 



.gators, particularly during the Exster vacation, when all the 

 available space was in requisition. The following is a list of 

 the gentlemen who visited the laboratory during this period, 



■ together with the subjects of their researches : — Dr. N. B. 

 Hartman, St John's College, Cambridge (Sense-organs of 

 -Fishes), Mr. T. H. Taylor, Yorkshire College, Leeds (Polyzoa), 

 Mr. F. W. Gamble, Owens College, Manchester (Nervous 

 .System of Polychseta), Mr. A. H. Church, Jesus College, 

 NO. 1490, VOL. 58] 



Oxford (Algae), Mr. E. T. Browne, University College, London 

 (Hydroids and Medusre), Mr. E. S. Goodrich, Merton College, 

 Oxford (Nephridia of Polychaeta), Mr. G. Brebner, University 

 College, Bristol (Algpe), Mr. S. D. Scott, King's College, 

 Cambridge (Excretory Organ? of Tunicata), and Mr. W. I. 

 Beaumont, Emmanuel College, Cambridge (General). Mr. 

 Garstang's Easter class for the study of marine biology was 

 attended by eight undergraduate students from Oxford, Cam- 

 bridge, Eton, and the Yorkshire College, Leeds. Among 

 the more recent captures of interest may be specially men- 

 tioned Mr. Browne's rediscovery in quantity of the remarkable 

 bitentaculate Hydroid known as J^ar sabellarum, which gives 

 rise to the aberrant Medusa Willia stellata. 



The Council and Parliamentary Bills Committee of the 

 British Medical Association have drawn up a report on the 

 Vaccination Bill now before Parliament. Referring to the 

 clause for the extension of the age limit for infantile vaccination, 

 the opinion is expressed that the proposal to extend the limit 

 from three to twelve months is injudicious and would prove 

 prejudicial in the presence of an outbreak of small-pox. In 

 Scotland the age limit is six months; and this is the limit which 

 is recommended. As vaccination should be practically an 

 aseptic operation, it is suggested that some modification of the 

 clause referring to domiciliary vaccination is needed. The home 

 of a child may be in a slum, dirty, overcrowded, and infected ; 

 and asepsis cannot be secured in such surroundings. The pro- 

 posal is therefore made that, where the hcu-se is uncleanly, it 

 should be possible to insist on the child being taken not neces- 

 sarily to a public station but to the consulting-room, either of the 

 public vaccinator or of some private practitioner. The main 

 defect of the Bill is considered to be the omission of all reference 

 to re-vaccination, and the Council and Committee are of the 

 opinion that re-vaccination should be insisted upon at the age of 

 twelve years. 



A PLEA for a kinematograph bureau is put forward by M. 

 Boleslas Matuszewski, Paris, in a pamphlet of which a copy has 

 been sent to us. His view is that a national or international 

 bureau, directed by a responsible Government official, should 

 be established to receive kinematographs and preserve them for 

 their historical value. 



From the Bulletin of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Trinidad, 

 we learn that in the botanical department of the Agricultural Ex- 

 hibition, recently held in the Colony, a new form of machine for 

 the extraction of rubber was exhibited in action. The rubber in 

 the space of two minutes is separated from the latex, or milk, of 

 the Castilloa tree, and is then put to dry. In the space of some 

 three hours, sheets or slabs of fine clear marketable rubber is 

 produced, free from the usual amount of proteid and albuminoid 

 matters which are usually found in rubber produced by the 

 ordinary proc&s. 



An important contribution to the theory of warning colours 

 and mimicry is made to the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal (vol. Ixvii. part 2, No. 4, 1897) by Mr. F. Finn, 

 Deputy Superintendent of the Indian Museum. The paper is 

 the final one of a series of four, and in it Mr. Finn gives an 

 account of his experiments with birds other than the Babblers, 

 to which his first paper was devoted, together with a general 

 summary of the results and inferences. He concludes from 

 his experiments :'(i) That there is a general appetite for butter- 

 flies among insectivorous birds, even though they are rarely 

 seen when wild to attack them. (2) That many, probably most, 

 species dislike, if not intensely, at any rate in comparison with 

 other butterflies, the '■' warningly-coloured " DanainiB, AcrcEa 

 violce, Delias eucharis, and Papilio aristolochice ; of these the 

 last being most distasteful, and the Danaina the least so. (3) 



