November 26, 1891] 



NATURE 



79 



repeating the whole series from left to right, as each successive 

 figure is arrived at. 



The power of multiplying as many as seven figures by seven 

 is not likely to be of much practical value, and when carried to 

 this stage the method is merely a curiosity ; but it may be of 

 use in helping us to multiply together small amounts, consisting 

 of two or three digits, which lie beyond the scope of the 

 multiplication table. 



I will conclude with a short example, showing what passes 

 through the mind in working the method. 



Multiply 987 by 654. 



987 

 654 



First figure. — \ x 7 = 28. Eight and carry two. 

 Answer (so far) 8 



Second figure.— 4 x 8 = 32 + 2 (carried) = 34 

 + 5 >< 7 (= 35) = 69. Nine and carry six. Answer 

 (so far) 98 



Third figure. — 4 x 9 = 36 + 6 (carried) = 42 + 5 x 8 

 (= 40) = 82 + 6 X 7 (= 42) — 124. Four and carry 

 twelve. Answer (so far) 498 



Fourth figure.— 5 x 9 = 45 + 12 (carried) = 57 

 + 6 X 8 (= 48) = 105. Five and carry ten. Answer 

 (so far) 5498 



Fifth and sixth figures.— 6 x 9 = 54 + 10 (carried) 



= 64, Answer 645498 



Clive Cuthbertson. 



A Rare Phenomenon. 



I HAVE read with much interest the accounts of " the rare 

 phenomenon " observed by several of your correspondents 

 (published in Nature, vol. xliv. pp. 494, 519), as I noticed a 

 similar appearance here in Nova Scotia, at about the same time 

 (September 11). 



A narrow ray — apparently of auroral light — spanned the 

 whole heavens from east to west, passing overhead a little to 

 the south of the zenith. There was little or no display of 

 auroral light in the north at the time. 



A " harvest-horne " was held here on September ir, and I 

 noticed the appearance, I think, the same evening about 

 1 1 o'clock. 



A number of persons in the town of Baddeck observed the 

 same or a similar phenomenon " very shortly before September 

 12." Alexander Graham Bell. 



Beinn Bhreagh, near Baddeck, Cape Breton, N.S., 

 November 6. 



HENRY NOTTIDGE MOSELEV, F.R.S. 



T HAVE been asked to write for the readers of Nature 

 A some account of my dear friend Moseley, who, after 

 an illness which removed him from all active life and 

 work for more than four years, died at Clevedon, in 

 Somersetshire, on November 10. He was only forty- 

 seven years of age ; and when seized with the illness which 

 necessitated his retirement from active life, was at the 

 zenith of a wonderful career of scientific productiveness 

 and value. He had for six years held the Linacre 

 Professorship of Human and Comparative Anatomy in 

 the University of Oxford ; and by his great energy and 

 commanding talent had succeeded in collecting around 

 him a most promising band of younger men devoted to 

 the investigation of embryological and morphological 

 problems. Baldwin Spencer, Gilbert C. Bourne, S. J. 

 Hickson, and G. Herbert Fowler, were his pupils, and 

 have shown by their numerous published works the value 

 of the teaching and impulse which he gave to them. In 

 the early days of his illness (1887), he was cheered by 

 receiving from the Royal Society the Royal Medal, in 

 recognition of the value of his researches on Peripatus, 

 the Hydrocorallina:, the Land Planarians, and the Chitons. 

 The blow caused by his serious illness was felt not only 

 in the scientific and social life of Oxford, but in many 

 other centres. We missed his valuable and practical 

 help in carrying to completion the Plymouth Laboratory 



NO. I 152, VOL. 45] 



of the Marine Biological Association, of which he had 

 been & most active and enthusiastic promoter ; in the 

 editorship of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical 

 Science I found myself once more deprived of the aid 

 of my most valued comrade, as I had been but a few 

 years previously when Frank Balfour died. The readers 

 of Nature and of the Athenceum missed his varied and 

 always strongly-original contributions ; and the Zoological, 

 Anthropological, and Royal Societies had to regret his 

 absence from their meetings and Councils. Moseley had, 

 moreover, at this time made it a practice to give evening 

 lectures in the larger provincial towns as well as in 

 London : from all quarters came expressions of the deep 

 regret which his retirement from public work excited. 

 The amount and variety of work in which he engaged, in 

 addition to the remarkable and extraordinarily minute 

 course of lectures and laboratory work provided by him 

 for his pupils, were certainly more than was wise for 

 him to undertake. But it was a strange and to him a 

 disastrous fact that he never felt tired. He was an ex- 

 ceedingly strong man, and I never saw him fatigued 

 either by physical or mental exertion. 



We made acquaintance in Rolleston's laboratory at the 

 Oxford University Museum in 1866, and became fast 

 friends and constant companions. Moseley's father was 

 a distinguished mathematician and Canon of Bristol, 

 Rector of Olvaston, near the Severn. Here, when I was 

 staying with Moseley in 1871, we dissected and prepared 

 the skeleton of a huge grampus which is now in the 0.\- 

 ford Museum ; the carcass had made a tour of the neigh- 

 bouring villages for three weeks before we obtained pos- 

 session of it. Moseley was at school at Harrow, where 

 he chiefly occupied himself in birds'-nesting and "bug- 

 hunting," in conjunction with a small band of kindred 

 spirits. He was essentially a sportsman, knew every 

 kind of game and how to pursue it. He thoroughly dis- 

 liked the ordinary routine of school work, such as it was 

 in those days, and it was not until he had entered at 

 Exeter College, and come under the teaching of the late 

 Prof. Rolleston, that his really keen and remarkable 

 intellectual powers began to show themselves. He had 

 somehow developed in early youth the most deep-rooted 

 scepticism which I ever came across among men of my 

 own age ; hence it was the reality of the work which he did 

 in the dissecting-room at the Museum which delighted 

 him and gave him confidence that there was " something 

 in it" worthy of his intellectual effort. With unfeigned 

 astonishment he would say, on dissecting out the nervous 

 system of a moUusk or some such structure, " It is like 

 the picture, after all ! " He had a profound disbelief in 

 the statements made in books unless he could verify them 

 for himself, and it was this habit of mind, perceived and 

 encouraged by Rolleston, which made him in after life so 

 admirable an observer and so successful as a discoverer 

 of new facts. Rolleston used to say that you had only to 

 put down Moseley on a hill-side with a piece of string 

 and an old nail, and in an hour or two he would have 

 discovered some natural object of surpassing interest. 

 He took great interest in all games, and was himself a 

 first-rate racket-player. In the vacations he got a fair 

 amount of shooting, and spent one "long" shooting and 

 fishing in Norway. In the summer of 1867 we visited the 

 Channel Islands together, for the purpose of studying 

 marine animals. Whilst in Sark, after I had left him, he 

 made the acquaintance of an American painter named 

 Dix, and discovered himself to be no mean artist, bring- 

 ing back a number of really clever water-colours, his first 

 attempts in that direction. At this time and throughout 

 his life, those who met him were struck by his singularly 

 soft and agreeable voice, and by his great courtesy and 

 power of interesting, I may even say fascinating, the most 

 unpromisingand unlikely of ihecompanions amongst whom 

 he chanced to find himself— I mean stiff old gentlemenand 

 demure old ladies. To companions of his own age he 



