December 24, 1891] 



NATURE 



183 



Cambridge, where he distinguished himself equally in mathe- 

 matics and in classics. He acted as Chairman of the Royal 

 Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of 

 Science, whose reports might have marked an era in our 

 national progress if there had been a scientific depart- 

 ment of the Government to give effect to them. At 

 Cambridge he did what he could to encourage scientific study 

 by his splendid gift of the Cavendish Laboratory. The Duke 

 was the first President of the Iron and Steel Institute ; and the 

 Owens College, Manchester, owed much to the zeal and 

 liberality with which, on every suitable occasion, he sought to 

 promote its interests. 



Mr. E. Ray Lankester, Deputy- Professor of Human and 

 Comparative Anatomy, has been elected to the Linacre Pro- 

 fessorship of Human and Comparative Anatomy, Oxford, 

 vacated by the death of Prof. Moseley. 



Prof. Marshall Ward has been engaged lately in studying 

 the strange compound organism called by villagers the " ginger- 

 beer plant." We print elsewhere an abstract of an interesting 

 paper in which he submitted his results to the Royal Society last 

 week. 



At the annual meeting of the Academy of Medicine of Paris, 

 on the 15th instant, the Alvarenga Prize, which is given annually 

 for the best treatise on some medical subject, was awarded to 

 Dr. Bateman, of Norwich, for his work on aphasia, and to 

 Dr. Legneu, of Paris, for his treatise on renal calculi, these 

 gentlemen being bracketed together ex cequo. This prize confers 

 the title of Laureate of the Academy. 



The " Committee of Council on Education " have sanctioned the 

 appointment of Mr. George Brebner as first Marshall Scholar in 

 Biology at the Royal College of Science, London. Mr. Brebner 

 has passed through both the botanical and zoological advanced 

 classes of the Biological Division in the Royal College, 

 and in 1889 obtained the Edward Forbes Medal and Prize 

 awarded to the best student of the year in biology. Mr. Brebner 

 has already been engaged in botanical research, and has pub- 

 lished two original papers on structural subjects, in conjunction 

 with Dr. D. H. Scott. He has also assisted Dr. E. Schunck, 

 F.R.S., of Manchester, in his investigations of the chemistry of 

 chlorophyll, and is about to publish a joint paper with him. Mr. 

 Brebner's researches as Marshall Scholar will be carried on in 

 the Huxley Research Laboratory, and will be concerned with 

 questions relating to the histology of plants. 



The Paris Museum of Natural History has been partly re- 

 organized by a recent decree. The financial mangement is 

 changed ; and it has been decided that the Professors shall, 

 as a rule, retire from their Professorships at seventy-five years 

 of age. To this rule, however, there are to be exceptions. 

 An exceptional case is that of M. de Quatrefages, who 

 retains his post, although Profs. Fremy and Daubree will 

 have to retire. The name of " aide-naturaliste " disappears, and 

 that of "assistant" takes its place — a fact which is rather 

 curious, since " assistant," in French, has not the same meaning 

 as in English, or as the corresponding word has in German. 

 The assistants are empowered, under some limitations, to 

 deliver courses of lectures, and their financial position is to be 

 improved. 



The Royal Geographical Society is to be congratulated on 

 the success of its system for the proper spelling of geographical 

 names. When its rules on the subject were drawn up, it was 

 not anticipated that foreign nations would make any change in 

 the form of orthography used in their maps. As a matter of 

 fact, however, considerable changes are being effected. In the 

 circular letter, the principal passages of which we print else- 

 where, it is noted as a most satisfactory piece of news that 

 France and Germany have both promulgated systems of ortho- 

 NO. I 156, VOL. 45] 



graphy for foreign words, which in many details agree with the 

 English system. 



An Italian correspondent of the Lancet writes that on De- 

 cember 10 the academic world of Rome entertained at a banquet 

 the Senator Stanislao Cannizzaro, in celebration of the bestowal 

 on him of the Copley Medal by the Royal Society of London. 

 The AccademiadeiLincei(the "Royal Society" of Rome), the 

 Accademia di Medicina, and the Senatus Academicus of the 

 " Sapienza " were fully represented on the occasion. The Chair- 

 man was the eminent mathematician and engineer, the Senator 

 Brioschi, who, in a few felicitously chosen sentences, conveyed 

 the sense of pride shared by all Italians at the bestowal on their 

 compatriot of the "blue ribbon" of science. Signor Villari, 

 Minister of Public Instruction, also spoke. The Senator Todaro, 

 the Professor of Anatomy in the University, gave the toast of 

 "The Royal Society of London," which was as cordially re- 

 ceived as it was eloquently proposed. Prof. Cannizzaro there- 

 after delivered an effective speech, in which he showed that it 

 was in the effort to make his prelections clear to successive 

 generations of students that he had trained himself to reach 

 those laws, the co-ordination of which had won for him the 

 recognition of the greatest court of scientific arbitration in the 

 world. 



According to a despatch from Philadelphia, published in the 

 New York Sun, it has been decided that an Expedition shall 

 be sent to Greenland for the relief of Lieutenant Peary and 

 his party. Dr. Keeley, who accompanied Lieutenant Peary on 

 his exploring expedition, but afterwards returned, has said that, 

 unless such an Expedition, fully equipped for an Arctic season, 

 were sent to his assistance, Lieutenant Peary and his companions 

 would never reach the bounds of civilization. 



Mr. Richard Boxall Grantham, who died lately in his 

 eighty-sixth year, was one of the engineers who helped Brunei 

 in the construction of the Great Western Railway. He made 

 the branch line from Gloucester to Cheltenham. He was an 

 authority on sanitary matters, and in 1869 became Chairman of 

 the Committee appointed by the British Association to inquire 

 into the treatment and utilization of sewage. In 1876 he suc- 

 cessfully completed the reclamation of Brading Harbour, in the 

 Isle of Wight. This had been attempted by Sir Hugh Middle- 

 ton 250 years previously, but his work had afterwards been 

 destroyed by the sea. 



Dutch newspapers announce the temporary nomination of 

 Mr. E. Engelenburg, meteorologist at the Royal Meteoro- 

 logical Institution at Utrecht, as Director of the Observa- 

 tions on land. This directorship had become vacant by the 

 appointment of Dr. M. Snellen to the position of Chief Director 

 of the same Institution, which had been held by the late Prof. 

 Buys Ballot. Mr. Engelenburg accompanied Dr. E. van 

 Ryckevorsel to Brazil, acted as his assistant during the magnetic 

 survey of that country, 1882-85, ^■nd prepared a part of the 

 report on this survey published in 1890 by the Royal Academy 

 of Sciences at Amsterdam. In 1887 he was attached by Prof. 

 Buys Ballot to the Meteorological Institution, and has since 

 been responsible for the yearly report on the thunderstorms 

 observed in the Netherlands, formerly prepared by Dr. Snellen. 

 He has also investigated the quantities of rain in different 

 parts of the Netherlands and in the different months of the 

 year. His results on this subject have lately been published 

 in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Amster- 

 dam ; the accompanying rain-maps give a clear idea of the 

 dependence of the rainfall on the distance from the sea- 

 shore. He has repeatedly directed his attention to the tides 

 at the coast of the Netherlands ; to the variation of the 

 velocity of the tidal currents in the Dutch *^ zeegaten" i.e. 

 the entrances to the Dutch roads or harbours [de Ingenieur, 



