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NATURE 



[January 5, 1893 



NOTES. 

 In consequence of the unavoidable absence abroad of the 

 new President of the Institution of Klectrical Engineers, Mr. 

 W. H. Preece, F.R.S., on the 12th inst., he will deliver his 

 inaugural address on the 26th inst. 



A PUBLIC meeting, arranged by the Technical Instruction 

 Committee of the Essex County Council, will be held in the Shire 

 Hall, Chelmsford, on Friday afternoon, January 13, at 4.30 

 p.m., Lord Rayleigh in the chair. An address will be given 

 by Sir Henry E. Roscoe on technical instruction in agricul- 

 tural counties, with especial reference to science teaching. 

 Afterwards a discussion will take place. 



Dr. Percy Rendall, F.Z.S., has accepted an appoint- 

 ment as Resident Medical Officer to the Sheba Gold-mining 

 Company in the Barberton District of the Transvaal. He will 

 reside at Eureka City, at an elevation of 5000 feet above the 

 sea-level. Dr. Rendall made a good collection of birds during 

 his recent residence at Bathurst on the Gambia, of which be has 

 given an account in the Ibis for last year {Ibis, 1892, p. 215). 

 He has also made many valuable donations to the Zoological 

 Society's Menagerie, amongst which is the unique example of 

 the Nagor Antelope {Cervicapra redunca), presented by him in 

 June, 1890. Of this scarce animal there is, we believe, no ex- 

 ample in the British Museum. Dr. Rendall's new appointment 

 will give him many opportunities of extending our zoological 

 knowledge of a little known district. 



Lord Walsingham, who has devoted much of his attention 

 to the micro-lepidoptera, has filled the vacancy on the staff of 

 the Entomologists' Monthly Magazine occasioned by the death 

 of Mr. Stainton. 



Last week a preliminary meeting was held at the house of 

 Sir James Paget to consider what steps should be taken with 

 regard to a memorial of Sir Richard Owen. It was decided that 

 a committee should be formed to make the necessary prepara- 

 tions. The following, among others, have consented to serve 

 as members : — The Presidents of the Royal Colleges of Physi- 

 cians and Surgeons and of most of the scientific societies, the 

 Duke of Teck, Lord Playfair, Prof. Huxley, Sir Joseph Hooker, 

 Sir Henry Acland, Sir John Evans, Dr. Michael Foster, Mr. 

 Sclater, Sir W. Savory, Mr. Hulke, Sir Joseph Fayrer, Sir 

 Edward Fry, Dr. Giinther, Mr. Carruthers and Dr. H. Wood- 

 ward. Sir William Flower will act as treasurer, and a general 

 meeting will shortly be called. It has been suggested that the 

 memorial should be a marble statue, to be placed in the hall of 

 the Natural History Museum. 



Prof. Westwood, who died on Monday at the age of eighty- 

 seven, will be greatly missed at Oxford. To most people he is 

 known chiefly as a writer on the archaeology and palaeography 

 of art, but he was equally eminent as an entomologist. He was 

 one of the founders of the Entomological Society, and received 

 one of the Royal Society's gold medals for his entomological 

 researches. 



We regret to record the death of General Axel Wilhelmovitch 

 Gadolin, an old member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

 He was born of Finnish parents on July 10, 1828, received his 

 education in the Finnish Corps of Cadets, and till his death re- 

 mained in the Russian Artillery, devoting his leisure time to 

 mineralogical, and especially to mathematical, researches into 

 the molecular forces which act in the formation of crystals. One 

 of his earlier works, published in the Verhandlungen der 

 Mineralogischen Gesellschaft zu St. Petersburg, was on some 

 minerals from Pitkaranta. His chief work, published in 1867, 

 was his "Deduction of all the Systems of Crystals and their 

 Derivates from a Unique Principle." A deep impression was 

 NO. 1210, VOL. 47] 



produced upon the members of the R'lssian Mineralogical 

 Society by Gadolin's first communication upon this subject. 

 The lucidity with which he deduced all systems of crystalliza- 

 tion from fundamental principles of equilibrium of molecular 

 forces, and the simplicity of the exposition of his researches, 

 entirely based upon high mathematical analysis, reminded his 

 hearers of some of the best pages of Laplace's writings. The 

 work soon became widely known in a German translation. 

 A paper on the resistance of the walls of a gun to the pressure 

 of gunpowder gases also deserves mention, as, in addition to the 

 formerly known formulae of highest resistance of cylinder-;, he 

 gave a new formula of minimal resistance. Later oo his 

 method was used with great success by Klebsch, in his well- 

 known "Theorie der Elasticitiit fester Korper," for deducing 

 some general equations of equilibrium of solid bodies. 



The last issue of the Izvestia of the East Siberian Geo- 

 graphical Society (vol. xxiii. 3) contains an obituary notice by 

 V. Obrutcheff, of I. D. Chersky, who died in the far norih-east 

 of Siberia, during his expedition to the Kolyma river, after 

 having given many years of his life to the active geological ex- 

 ploration of Siberia. He began his work in 1872 at Omsk, 

 where he made most valuable discoveries of post-tertiary 

 mammals. During the next two years he explored the Tunka 

 and Kitoi Alps, but his rich materials were lost during the great 

 conflagration at Irkutsk in 1879. In 1875 and 1876 he explored 

 the Nijneudinsk caves, making again remarkable finds of 

 quaternary mammals ; and then he give fully five years to the 

 study of the stores of Lake Baikal, embodying the results of his 

 extensive researches in a map (6'7 milei to the inch), and in 

 vol. xii. of the Memoirs of the East Siberian Society, and vol. 

 XV. of the Memoirs of the Russian Geographical Society. In 

 1882 and 1883 he explored the Lower Tunguska, and again 

 made rich finds of fossil mammals. The next five years he 

 spent at the Academy of St. Petersburg, preparing the part of 

 Ritter's "Asia " which is devoted to Lake Baikal, and working 

 out the rich materials collected by another lamented Polish 

 explorer of East Siberia, Czekanowski. He also worked out 

 the collections brought in from the New Siberia Islands by 

 MM. Bunge and Toll, and came to such interesting and new 

 conclusions as to the recent geological history of Arctic Siberia, 

 that the Academy of Sciences sent him out in 1891, at the head 

 of a new expedition to the Kolyma region. There he died, in 

 the midst of his promising work. 



The twentieth annual dinner of the old students of the Royal 

 School of Mines will be held at the Holborn Restaurant, on 

 Tuesday, January 10, at 7 o'clock. The chair will be taken 

 by Mr. W. Gowland, late of the Imperial Mint, Osaka, 

 Japan. 



Mr. G. T. Atkinson has been appointed Professor of 

 Cryptogamic Botany at Cornell University, Ithaca, State of 

 New York, in the place of Prof. W. R. Dudley, who has gone 

 to the Leland-Stanford University, Paolo Alto, California. 



At the next public meeting of the French Academy, in December 

 1893, forty-five prizes will be awarded for the best work tending 

 to the advancement of the various branches of science. Of 

 these, the following are, by the terms of the bequests, open to 

 competitors of all nationalities. The Prix Lalande will be 

 awarded for the most intereresting observation, or the memoir 

 or work most useful for the progress of Astronomy. Its value 

 is 540 francs. The Prix Valz, of 460 francs, is offered under 

 the same conditions. Three prizes of lo.oco francs each, be- 

 queathed by M. L. La Caze, will be awarded annually for the 

 best contributions to Physiology, Physics, and Chemistry re- 

 spectively. The Prix Tchihatchef, of 3000 francs, is offered 

 annually to naturalists who have distinguished themselves most 

 in the exploration of the continent of Asia or the adjacent isles 



