October 21, 1897] 



NATURE 



591 



Messrs. Baur and Adams in 1891. Although the subject 

 is by no means as yet exhausted, Mr. Robert Ridgway, 

 the able and energetic Curator of the Department of 

 Birds at Washington, has thought it expedient to collate 

 the knowledge thus far secured, and to facilitate future 

 investigations by the preparation of the memoir now 

 before us. 



The last complete account of the avifauna of the 

 (lalapagos was that given by Mr. Salvin in the Trans- 

 actions of the Zoological Society of London in 1876, in 

 which he showed that fifty-seven species of birds were 

 then known to occur in the Galapagan group, of which 

 thirty-eight were peculiar. Mr. Ridgway's revised list 

 proves that good progress has been made in our know- 

 ledge of the birds of these islands during this past twenty 

 years. He shows us that 105 species are now known to 

 be included in the Galapagan avifauna. These he 

 refers to forty-six genera, of which five {Nesontiinus, 

 Cerf/tidea, Geospiza, Cainarhynclms and Nesopelia) are 

 peculiar to the group. The first four of these, besides 

 some others, are represented in many of the islands by 

 peculiar species. Mr. Ridgway treats of all the Gala- 

 pagan species one after another in a most complete 

 manner, stating their specific characters, synonyms and 

 distribution, and adding a list of the specimens contained 

 in the National Museum of the United States. More- 

 over, the ranges of the different species are clearly shown 

 in a series of outline maps. 



As regards the explanation of the fact that the species 

 of the Galapagan fauna are mostly confined to certain 

 islands of the group. Dr. Baur, in his biological lectures 

 delivered in 1894, put forward the view that at a former 

 period the islands were connected with one another and 

 formed a single large island, of which all but the higher 

 points (which now constitute the islands) have been 

 since submerged. Mr. Ridgway does not positively 

 adhere to this view, although he pronounces it to be " at 

 least worthy of serious consideration." 



THE LATE PROFESSOR ROY, M.D., F.R.S. 



Tip OR some long time past Prof. Roy, of Cambridge, 

 ^ has been in very serious ill-health. On Monday, 

 the 4th of this month, death somewhat suddenly removed 

 him from among us. He was only forty-three- years of 

 age. The news of the loss of so gifted a worker, and 

 so enthusiastic a leader in investigation, will come as a 

 heavy blow to many throughout the civilised world who 

 have at heart the progress of scientific pathology. His 

 adopted University had already had to deplore its loss in 

 his failing health and powers. - 



Prof. Roy — Charles Smart Roy — was a native of 

 Arbroath. His education was received at first in that 

 town, then in the University of St. Andrews, then in 

 that of Edinburgh. At the last-named he graduated in 

 medicine as a Bachelor in 1875, and was subsequently 

 appointed a resident physician at the Royal Infirmary in 

 the wards of Dr. Balfour, well known as an authority on 

 valvular lesions of the heart. On the completion of the 

 term of that office Roy migrated to London, and opened 

 original research work on the contagious pleuro- 

 pneumonia of cattle. However, at the outbreak of the 

 Turkish-Servian war he volunteered for service. As a 

 Surgeon-Major in the Turkish army he was given charge 

 of the large garrison hospital at Janina in Epirus. 

 Epirus remained untouched by the active fighting of the 

 campaign, and during his period of service Roy in spare 

 hours designed an instrument for recording changes in the 

 volume of the frog's heart — his frog-cardiometer. At the 

 close of the war he returned to London and finished his 

 investigation into pleuro-pneumonia, conducting it at the 

 Brown Institution, where Prof. Burdon- Sanderson was 

 then superintendent. This work is the only one by him 



NO. 1460, VOL. 56] 



which deals mainly with morbid anatomy. He proceeded 

 next to Berlin. At that time he had the intention of 

 devoting three years on the continent to improvement of 

 his medical knowledge, with a view to returning ulti- 

 mately to medical practice. At Berlin he studied 

 1 pathology in Prof. Virchow's laboratory, but he also 

 j commenced in Du Bois' laboratory an investigation into 

 the physiology of the heart, chiefly with use of the 

 cardiometer already alluded to. He was thus one of 

 ; the earliest workers in Du Bois-Reymond's new and 

 palatial Physiological Institute, where Prof. Kronecker 

 was then chief assistant. The results of his research 

 were embodied in a dissertation for the degree of 

 Doctor of Medicine of Edinburgh : the thesis was 

 awarded a gold medal by the University, and the 

 Doctor's degree was proceeded to in 1878. In the same 

 year his remarkable paper " On the influences which 

 modify the work of the heart" was published in Foster's 

 Journal of Physiology, a paper based chiefly on the 

 work done for his thesis. 

 I In the course of the next year Roy was appointed 

 I assistant at the Physiological Institute of the Strass- 

 I burg University, under Prof. Goltz. As assistant there, 

 his time could be given practically entirely to research, 

 and was so with noteworthy results. He devoted him- 

 self to "Observations on the form of the pulse-wave as 

 studied in the carotid of the rabbit." The paper showed 

 more clearly than either of his previous the advent of an 

 investigator of originality and power. An instrument 

 was invented for the research — the sphygmotono- 

 meter, an ingenious plethysmograph adapted to record 

 the changing volumes of the free but unopened 

 blood-vessel. Specimens of the original tracings ob- 

 tained by it hang now as models of reference in more 

 than a few laboratories both at home and abroad. It 

 was also about this date that he devised his instru- 

 ments for measuring and recording graphically the 

 measurements of the extensibility and elasticity of the 

 walls of blood-vessels. These latter are the subject ot 

 his second paper in Foster's Journal, and the data he 

 obtained are now incorporated as part of text-book 

 knowledge in physiology. The chief instrument he used 

 presents points of similarity to the myographion, the 

 principle of which was suggested to Prof. Blix by the 

 late Fritjof Holmgren ; but Roy's instrument preceded 

 the Holmgren- Blix instrument, and was evolved alto- 

 gether independently of that. 



In the same year (1879) appeared his work, done in 

 conjunction with Dr. Graham Brown, on capillary blood- 

 pressure, published in Foster's Journal. The research 

 carried out, we believe at odd hours in the dwelling- 

 room of the two friends, furnished more trustworthy 

 measurements than any pre-existing. By an ingenious 

 apparatus these absolute measurements, very important for 

 the physiology of the circulation, were unexceptionably 

 obtained. It was in the same, or in the previous, year 

 that Roy devised the ether-freezing microtome. The 

 instrument came into use largely in Great Britain and 

 on the continent, and his original pattern, little modified, 

 is still employed in many laboratories. 



Roy now, always keen to apply his work to practical 

 medicme, moved from the physiological to the patho- 

 logical laboratory at Strassburg ; but he soon left v. 

 Recklinghausen's to attend Cohnheim's institute at 

 Leipzig. There, in personal communication with Cohn- 

 heim, his attention was attracted especially to problems 

 concerning vascular changes in the kidney. He devised 

 the instrument by which perhaps his name is best known, 

 the renal oncometer, for the study of the variations of 

 the blood-flow through the kidney. The observations 

 accessible by this instument have become familiar to 

 every physiologist and pathologist. The research which 

 by its aid its inventor, with Cohnheim, prosecuted on the 

 renal circulation remains a classic in the literature of th 



