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NATURE 



[February i6, 1893 



Mr. Maskelyne, for whom he was right-hand man, and 

 almost sole working helper during upwards of twenty 

 years, looks back with fond regret on the uninterrupted 

 happiness of their association. According to my own 

 -experience of the last fifteen years, he was an excellent 

 colleague, always cheerful, good-tempered, and kind- 

 hearted, ever ready to help in any direction, however 

 much it might interfere with the particular work he had 

 immediately in hand. At home he was an enthusiastic 

 gardener ; wet or fine, absolutely reckless of weather, he 

 was at work from early sunrise, and could boast the pos- 

 session of one of the best managed gardens in the neigh- 

 bourhood. His love of fresh air and the bustling east 

 wind never left him ; even after recovery from the long 

 illness which two years ago had taken him to the verge 

 of the grave, he did not hesitate to show the greatest 

 contempt for the protection of an umbrella, and notwith- 

 standing the remonstrances of his friends, might still be 

 occasionally seen enjoying the beating of the wind and 

 rain on his unprotected face. 



He was an Original Member of the Mineralogical 

 Society, and Foreign Secretary for several years pre- 

 ceding his death. 



Mr. Davies leaves a widow and nine children to mourn 

 his loss. L. Fletcher. 



NOTES. 

 At the last meeting of the Council of the Mineralogical 

 Society, it was resolved to initiate a "Thomas Davies 

 Memorial Fund " on behalf of the widow and children of the 

 late Mr. Thomas Davies, F.G.S., of the British Museum. The 

 following gentlemen have consented to act as an Executive 

 Committee :— Prof. N. S. Maskelyne, F. R. S. (chairman), Dr. 

 HugoMiiller, F.R.S. (treasurer), Mr. H. A. Miers, F.G.S. 

 (secretary), Prof. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., Mr. L. Fletcher, 

 F.R.S., Dr. Henry Hicks, F.R.S., W. H. Hudleston, F.R.S., 

 Prof. J. W. Judd, F.R.S., Mr. F. W. Rudler, F.G.S., Mr, F. 

 Rutley, F.G.S. , Rev. Prof. T. Wiltshire, F.G.S., Dr. Henry 

 Woodward, F. R. S. Subscriptions for the fund should be sent 

 to Dr. Hugo Miiller, 13 Park Square East, Regent's Park, 

 London, N.W. 



An extra meeting of the Chemical Society will be held on 

 February 20, at 8 p.m., the anniversary of the death of Herman 

 Kopp, when a lecture will be delivered by Prof. T. E. Thorpe, 

 F.R. S. Lord Play fair will be in the chair. 



An International Botanical Congress is to be held during the 

 Columbian Exposition at Chicago. Prof. C. E. Bessey will 

 receive communications on the subject. 



M. P. DucHARTiE has been elected president, and M. L. 

 •Guignard first vice-president, of the Botanical Society of France 

 for the year 1893. 



The annual public meeting of the University College 

 Chemical and Physical Society will be held at University 

 College, Gower Street, on Friday, February 24. The chair 

 will be taken at eight o'clock by Prof. F. T. Roberts, and Prof. 

 Watson- Smith will deliver an address on diseases incident to 

 work-people in chemical and other industries. 



Mr. Thomas Bryant, president of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, delivered the Hunterian oration on Tuesday afternoon 

 in the theatre of the college, in the presence of the Prince of 

 Wales and the Duke of York and a large and distinguished 

 company. Mr. Bryant began by thanking their Royal Highnesses 

 for their presence on the special occasion of the centenary of the 

 death of John Hunter, the great founder of scientific surgery. 

 In the course of his oration Mr. Bryant said that the whole 

 world of vegetable and animal life was Hunter's subject, but that 

 NO. 1216, VOL. 47] 



his main objects were the improvement of surgery by the eluci- 

 dation of pathology ; the examination of the causes which de- 

 termine any departure from the normal type, whether of form or 

 function ; and the study of the means which nature adopts for 

 the healing of wounds and the repair of injuries. It was one of 

 his special merits that he raised surgery out of the position of a 

 a poor art, based on empirical knowledge and practised too much 

 as a trade, to establish it firmly as a high and elevating science, 

 at the same time raising its practitioners in the social scale, and 

 doing as much for medicine as for surgery, for he considered 

 them inseparable. He made the profession scientific by basing 

 it upon the widest knowledge of the structure and functions of 

 all living things, and educed therefrom laws and principles for 

 the guidance of future generations in their study and treatment 

 of disease in any of its forms. This alone should render him 

 worthy of the thanks of civilised mankind. 



Mr. George Mathews Whipple, whose death we briefly 

 recorded last week, had done much solid and valuable work in 

 various departments of physical science. Among the subjects 

 in which he was especially interested were wind force and wind 

 velocities, and throughout the greater part of his life, as the 

 Times has said in a brief sketch of his career, he was constantly 

 carrying on experiments with a view to determine wind force 

 and to find out what were the best instruments for securing 

 accurate results. He improved the Kew pattern magnetic in- 

 struments ; he designed, among other instruments, the apparatus 

 for testing the dark shades of sextants ; and at various periods 

 he was associated with Captain Heaviside, Major Herschel, 

 and General Walker, in carrying on pendulum experiments for 

 the determination of the force of gravity. The magnetic part 

 of the report of the committee appointed by the Royal Society 

 to investigate the Krakatoa eruption and the subsequent 

 phenomena was prepared by Mr. Whipple, and valuable papers 

 were from time to time submitted by him to the Royal Society 

 and the Royal Meteorological Society. He was fifty years of 

 age at the time of his death. He entered the Kew Observa- 

 tory in 1858, became magnetic assistant in 1862, and 

 was appointed superintendent in 1876, This office is one of 

 great and growing importance, and we trust that a capable 

 successor may be found. The Kew Observatory is the central 

 standardising station of the Meteorological Office, and numerous 

 magnetical observatories in other countries are similarly con- 

 nected with it. New instruments are tested there, and 

 experiments are made, and it has now grown into an institution 

 where the verification of scientific instruments of many kinds, 

 including thermometers, sextants, telescopes, watches, and 

 recently photographic lenses, is carried on on a large scale, as 

 described in the annual report of the Kew committee to the 

 Royal Society. 



The Rev. F. O. Morris died at Nunburnholme, in Yorkshire, 

 on Friday last, at the age of eighty-two. He was well-known 

 as a popular writer on science, and did much to create and 

 foster interest in some branches of natural history, especially in 

 ornithology. Among his many books were " A History of 

 British Birds," issued in six volumes from 1851 to 1857, and 

 his " Natural History of the Nests and Eggs of British Birds," 

 published in three volumes in 1853. In 1854 he was presented 

 to the rectory of Nunburnholme, which he continued to hold 

 until his death. 



A destructive earthquake has taken place in the island of 

 Samothrace. All the buildings are said to have been destroyed. 

 Renewed shocks, accompanied by loud subterranean rumblings, 

 have also occurred at Zante. 



On Sunday a shock of earthquake was experienced in New 

 Zealand. It caused little damage, but was felt in both the North 



