8o 



NATURE 



[November 26, 1891 



was fond of adopting the free discourse and chafif of 

 school-boy days. His friendship was like that of the 

 explorers and prairie-hunters of whom he loved to read 

 — absolutely staunch. If you had the good fortune to be 

 his " chum," he would stand by you through thick and 

 thin, and share all he had with you. I do not think there 

 was any limit to what he would have done for his friend. 

 We took our degrees together in 1868 ; and in the fol- 

 lowing spring— he having been elected Radcliffe Travel- 

 ling Fellow, and I Burdett-Coutts Scholar — we spent six 

 weeks in the Auvergne and the country between that and 

 Marseilles. In the following winter (February 1870) we 

 took up our quarters together at Vienna, and studied with 

 Strieker, and in Rokitanski's laboratory. He entered, 

 on our return, at University College, London, as a student 

 of the Medical Faculty. In 1871, after his winter medical 

 session, he joined me at Leipzig, where his great abilities 

 were discerned and thoroughly appreciated by Prof. Lud- 

 wig, in whose laboratory we had the privilege of working. 

 His first scientific memoirs were published whilst he was 

 here — one, on the nerves of the cornea of mammals, as 

 shown by the gold method (then not so familiar as it is 

 now), and one on the circulation in the wing of the cock- 

 roach. 



In the autumn of the same year, Moseley went,as member 

 ofthe Government Eclipse Expedition, to Ceylon,under Mr. 

 Norman Lockyer, whilst I joined Anton Dohrn at Naples. 

 Moseley made valuable spectroscopic observations of the 

 eclipse at Trincomali, and also brought home a large booty 

 of Land Planarians, which he at once studied by means of 

 sections, going to Oxford for the purpose of using the 

 laboratory and the library attached to the Museum. This 

 admirable piece of work delighted RoUeston, who com- 

 municated it to the Royal Society ; it was published in 

 the Philosophical Transactions after Moseley had sailed 

 on the Challenger, as one of the naturalists of the 

 Expedition, in December 1872. We did not see him 

 again until May 1876, but I had frequent letters from 

 him, and sometimes a small parcel, or some photographs. 

 Of the scientific staff of the Expedition, Wyville Thom- 

 son and Suhm are dead, as well as Moseley; John Murray 

 and J. Y. Buchanan are the two survivors. Moseley, 

 although not a botanist, undertook the collecting of plants 

 whenever the Expedition touched land ; he also made 

 important anthropological studies on the Admiralty 

 Islanders, and has published a wonderful mass of notes 

 and observations, accompanied by plates and woodcuts, 

 in his " Notes of a Naturalist on the Challetigcr.'^ He 

 showed the stuff he was made of very soon after 

 the Expedition started, viz. on the arrival of the 

 Challenger at the Cape. He immediately started off 

 in quest of Peripatus — a strange, imperfectly described 

 beast which we had discussed together over some 

 spirit specimens of it which I had received from Roland 

 Trimen, of Cape Town. Moseley had made up his mind 

 before he left England to "tackle" Peripatus, and he 

 did so. He obtained living specimens, discovered the 

 tracheee and the most important features in the develop- 

 ment, showing that the "jaws" are in-turned parapodia 

 — and sent home a memoir which was at once published 

 in the Philosophical Transactions. In the later part of 

 the voyage he was occupied with the corals, and especially 

 the Milleporesand Stylasterids. The wonderfully elaborate 

 plates, and the discovery they embodied, necessitating 

 the formation of a new group of animals, the Hydro- 

 corallinae, were the first-fruits of his voyage which he 

 produced on landing in 1876. During his absence both 

 his father and his mother had died. His old College, 

 Exeter — where I became a Fellow in the year of the 

 Challenger's departure — now was inspired through the 

 good offices of an eminent Greek scholar, with the happy 

 thought of offering Moseley a Fellowship and a home in 

 the College, so that he found on landing a welcome 

 awaiting him, and a place in which to store for a while 



NO. I 152, VOL. 45] 



his treasures. I do not think that a College Fellowship 

 was ever better bestowed : that was in the good old days 

 before Lord Selborne's Commission. In his rooms in 

 Exeter, Moseley displayed his Japanese and Melanesian 

 curiosities, and wrote many papers embodying the ob- 

 servations made during his voyage, besides the book 

 above mentioned. He was elected F.R.S. in 1879, and 

 after a visit to Oregon (of which he published an account) 

 was appointed (1879) Assistant Registrar ofthe University 

 of London. He took up his residence in Burlington 

 Gardens, but not for long. In 1881 he married the 

 youngest daughter of Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, F.R.S., the 

 distinguished conchologist, and in the same year was 

 elected, on the death of his teacher and close friend. Prof. 

 Rolleston, to the Linacre Professorship in the University 

 of Oxford. 



Moseley had had no previous experience in teaching, 

 but he set to work with that unbounded energy and 

 strength which characterized him. He spared no pains 

 to make his lectures absolutely up to date, and arranged 

 a thorough laboratory course extending over two years to 

 illustrate them. The regulations of the University as to 

 examinations and curriculum were at that time not un- 

 favourable to the study of animal morphology, and 

 Moseley usually had ten or a dozen serious students 

 besides the elementary class. Lincoln, University, and 

 New Colleges encouraged his and their efforts by offering 

 and awarding Fellowships to students of the University 

 distinguished in animal morphology ; and after six years 

 all was progressing as satisfactorily as possible, when he 

 was attacked by illness which brought his work to an 

 end. Not only was he unable to carry on his work, but his 

 absence naturally enough was unfavourable to the in- 

 terests of those studies which he would have fostered 

 and guarded, had he been able to take part in the legisla- 

 tion of the University. 



During the happy and busy six years which Moseley 

 spent as Linacre Professor at Oxford, he trained Bourne, 

 Hickson, and Fowler to carry on his coral work ; with 

 Baldwin Spencer he investigated the pineal eye of 

 Lacertilia, and himself published his remarkable dis- 

 covery of eyes and other sense-organs in the shells of 

 Chitonidas. He was largely instrumental in securing 

 the Pitt- Rivers collection of anthropological objects for 

 the University, and superintended the preliminary ar- 

 rangement of the collection in the building erected for 

 it. He served twice on the Council of the Royal Society, 

 was a founder and member of Council of the Marine 

 Biological Association, and was President of Section D 

 of the British Association at the Montreal meeting. 



His love of travel was shared by his wife, who went 

 with him from Montreal to Arizona to visit the town- 

 building Indians of that remote region, and who, only 

 a year before his illness, accompanied him on an 

 Easter holiday trip to Tangier and Fez. During his 

 illness she has been his constant companion. He leaves, 

 besides her, two daughters and a sop. 



E. Ray Lank ester. 



ON THE VI RIAL OF A SYSTEM OF HARD 

 COLLIDING BODIES. 



A RECENT correspondence has led me to examine 

 the manner in which various authors have treated 

 the influence of the finite size of molecules in the virial 

 equation, and I should like to lay a few remarks upon the 

 subject before the readers of Nature. 



To fix the ideas, we may begin by supposing that the 

 molecules are equal hard elastic spheres, which exert no 

 force upon one another except at the instant of collision. 

 By calling the molecules hard, it is implied that the col- 

 lisions are instantaneous, and it follows that at any 

 moment the potential energy of the system is negligible 

 in comparison with the kinetic energy. 



