470 



NA TURE 



[March 17, 1892 



coveries and important inventions. It has witnessed the 

 birth of new elements, the creation of new analytical 

 methods, and an extraordinary development in the in- 

 strumental resources of our laboratories. Chemists will 

 never forget that it is to your unwearied assiduity and 

 single-minded devotion that science owes some of the most 

 momentous of these discoveries, and some of the most 

 valuable of these inventions. Your investigations will 

 ever be regarded as models of the highest type of scien- 

 tific research, and the memoirs in which you have em- 

 bodied them shed an imperishable lustre on our literature. 

 Your methods of analysis are among the most common 

 of our manipulative operations, and the very furniture 

 and instruments of our laboratories are an ever-present 

 testimony to the obligations under which experimental 

 chemistry will always remain to you. 



Many of our members are proud to be numbered 

 among your pupils, and those among them who have 

 become teachers, have, we trust, caught and transmitted 

 something, not only of the method, but also of the spirit, 

 in which they themselves were taught. They have an 

 abiding memory of your kindliness, of your constant and 

 unselfish devotion to their interests, and of the generous 

 sympathy and ready help Which you extended to their 

 efforts to enlarge the boundaries of our science. 



We, the undersigned Fellows of the Chemical Society 

 of London, now beg to offer you our heartfelt felicita- 

 tions on the occasion of your Jubilee as a member of 

 cur body. It is our fervent hope that you may be able, 

 for many years to come, to enjoy in health and happiness 

 the leisure and repose which you have so justly and so 

 honourably earned. 



NOTES. 



The course taken by the Government with regard to a Teach- 

 ing University for London has met with general approval. The 

 proposed Charter, if it had been accepted, would have done 

 almost irreparable injury to the cause of higher education in 

 the capital. Now we have got rid of it, and the way is clear 

 for new and more carefully considered schemes. The Royal 

 Commission to which the question is to be referred will be free, 

 if it chooses, to examine the question whether, after all, the 

 institution needed by London might not be most readily and 

 most effectually obtained by the development of the existing 

 University. It may be hoped that on this and ail other aspects 

 of the question full evidence will be taken. What is wanted is 

 that any recommendations which may be made by the Com- 

 mission shall be based on extensive and accurate information as 

 to the organization and the proper functions of Universities. 

 On this subject some very crude notions are still current in 

 England. 



The sixth annnal Photographic Conference in connection 

 with the Camera Club will be held in the theatre of the Society 

 of Arts, on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 22 and 23,«under 

 the presidency of Captain W. de W. Abney, F.R.S. All 

 photographers are invited to take part in the Conference. 



The Botanical Society of France will hold an extraordinary 

 meeting at Biskra, Algeria, during the first half of April. 



A Royal Commission has been appointed to consider the 

 question of the water supply of London. Its task will be to 

 inquire whether the present sources of supply are adequate in 

 quantity and quality, and, if inadequate, whether such supply 

 as may be required can be obtained within the watersheds of 

 the Thames and the Lea, or must be obtained elsewhere. 

 Among the members of the Commission are Sir Archibald 

 Geikie and Prof. James Dewar. 



NO. II 68, VOL. 45] 



A NUMBER of gentlemen, representing institutions interested 

 in science-teaching, recently applied to the Vice-President of 

 the Committee of Council on Education for permission to wait 

 upon him with reference to the changes indicated in the circular 

 issued by the Department of Science and Art, dated November 

 12, 1891. In answer to a question put by Mr. Schwann, Sir 

 W. Hart Dyke stated in the House of Common?, on Tuesday 

 evening, that he had informed the deputation that he did not 

 think any good purpose would be served by his receiving them. 

 He was, however, willing to reconsider the matter. Sir William 

 expressed his belief that the changes announced in the circular 

 would greatly stimulate more advanced scientific instruction. 

 The minute had been well received in the better schools. 



A NEW "Jahrbuch der Chemie " is to be issued by the 

 German publisher, H. Bechhold, Frankfort. It will be edited 

 by Prof. R. Meyer, who has secured the co-operation of many 

 eminent men of science. The intention is that the progress of 

 pure and applied chemistry shall be recorded every year in a 

 connected series of articles. 



Dr. M. C. Cooke announces that, with the next number of 

 Grevillea, his connection with it as editor and proprietor will 

 come to a close, and it will rest with others whether the journal 

 is to be continued. Grevillea is "A Quarterly Record of 

 Cryptogamic Botany and its Literature.'' With the next 

 number it will have completed its twentieth volume. 



Dr. B. Arthur Whitelegge will begin at the Royal In- 

 stitution, on Thursday, March 24, a course of three lectures on 

 epidemic waves. In the first lecture he will deal with cyclic 

 waves; in the second (March 31), with superadded waves; in 

 the third (April 7), with pandemic waves. 



The fifth ordinary meeting of the Egypt Exploration Fund 

 was held last Friday, Sir John Fowler presiding. The balance- 

 sheet was one of the most satisfactory ever presented to the 

 members. The Fund, it was pointed out, was now used in two 

 classes of operations — surveying and excavating ; and both 

 "seemed likely to be very successful." In the course of a brief 

 discussion on the report, reference was made to "the generous 

 contributions which had been handed to the Fund from America, 

 in comparison with those received from England." 



The half-yearly general meeting of the Scottish Meteoro- 

 logical Society was held at Edinburgh on Monday, March 7. 

 The following was the business : — (i) Report from the Council 

 of the Society ; (2) changes in the temperature of Scotland 

 since 1764, by Dr. Buchan ; (3) on the squall of February i, 

 1892, by R. C. Mossman ; (4) sunshine values at the Ben Nevis 

 Observatory, by R. C. Mo-s nan. 



Mr. E. J. Stone, F.R.S., and Mr. A. G. Vernon Har- 

 co.ut, F.R.S,, have been elected members of the Athenaeum 

 Club, under the rule which provides for " the annual introduc- 

 tion of a certain number of persons of distinguished eminence 

 in science, literature, or the arts, or for public services," 



The fifteenth Convention of the National Electric Light 

 Association, lately held at Buffalo, U.S., seems to have been 

 unusually successful. This is attributed by the American 

 journal Electricity to the fact that at previous meetings mem- 

 bers attended " not for business but for pleasure." The counter- 

 attractions were so varied and fascinating that it seems to have 

 been difficult " to obtain a creditable attendance on the reading 

 of the papers and the transaction of business." " The plan of 

 doing away with these outside attractions," says Electricity, 

 "was therefore an experiment, but so successful did it prove in 

 this instance, that this last Convention will go down in history 

 as 'the business Convention,' unless the increased success of 

 succeeding meetings shall make it necessary to give this one the 

 more specific title of ' (he first business Convention.' " 



