May 24, 19 1.;*] 



NATURE 



247 



^Museum ; and the present writer, who is secretary 

 of the Board. 



The Dominion and Provincial Governments 

 have been active in the establishment of animal 

 parks for the protection of game and non-game 

 mammals and birds, and many thousands of square 

 miles of territory have now been reserved as 

 animal refuges, w-here hunting is absolutely 

 prohibited. 



The successful effort of the Canadian Govern- 

 ment in preventing the extermination of the 

 American bison, or buffalo, is noteworthy. The 

 original herd of 750 buffalo that the Government 

 purchased in the United States in 1907 and placed 

 in a special enclosed buffalo park of 168 square 

 miles at Wainwright, Alberta, has now increased to 

 more than 2400, and altogether above 3000 buffalo 

 are now under Government protection, including 

 the wild herd of about 500 head in the Peace River 

 region south-west of Great Slave Lake. With 

 the view of ascertaining the possibilities of the 

 buffalo in relation to agriculture, the Canadian ' 

 Department of Agriculture is now carr>ing on 

 experiments in crossing the buffalo with domestic 

 cattle, as the cross-bred animals, like the buffalo, 

 are so admirably suited to withstand the most 

 Tigorous conditions of a northern environment and 

 produce excellent beef and superior robes. 



A report published by the Commission of Con- 

 serAation on the fishes, birds, and game of Canada 

 last year gives an excellent account of the manner 

 in which these problems are being dealt with in 

 Canada. Constituting as Canada does the last 

 stronghold of the big-game animals of the North 

 American continent, it is hoped and believed that 

 we shall be successful in preventing the reduction 

 to the point of extermination of the many forms 

 )f wild life of interest and importance alike to 

 the settler, the sportsman, and the zoologist. 



C. GoRDOX Hewitt. 



PROF. JOSEPH RIBAN. 



PROF. JOSEPH RIBAN, honorary professor 

 of the Faculty of Sciences of Paris, who 

 has just died at the ripe age of eighty, was one 

 of a type of French chemists which is fast dis- 

 appearing. Born at Montpellier, he was 

 originally destined for a career in medicine, but 

 under the influence of Balard, the discoverer of 

 bromine, he was led to interest himself in 

 problems connected with pharmacological 

 chemistr}-, and took up the study of the toxic 

 principle of redoul {Coriaria myrtiiolia), which 

 he found to be a glucoside and named corian- 

 myrtine. His work on the physiological, 

 chemical, and physical properties of the new 

 substance occupied him during the greater part 

 of 1864, and the results appeared in a couple of 

 memoirs which were published in the journal de 

 Pharmacie and in the Bulletins of the Chemical 

 Society of Paris. Although he continued to 

 follow medicine, Riban was more and more 

 attracted to chemistry, and his nomination as 

 professor of chemistr\- and technology at the 

 Ecole Normale of Cluny eventually settled his 



NO. 2482, VOL. 99] 



career. In 1869 he joined his old master Balard 

 at Paris as prefarateur of his course at the 

 College de France. 



The Franco-German War interrupted his 

 chemical studies, and during the siege of Paris 

 he was a zealous collaborator of Alphonse 

 Guerin at the military hospital in the Rue des 

 RecoUets. On the termination of hostilities he 

 was able to resume his chemical work, and a 

 number of papers appeared in rapid succession, 

 on the products of the condensation of valeric 

 aldehyde, and on aldehydes condensed by the 

 elimination of water, known as aldanes, on the 

 terpenes and their chlorohydrates, on terebene, 

 and on camphene. Riban 's investigations in 

 what is confessedly one of the most intricate and 

 difficult fields of organic chemistr\' attracted con- 

 siderable attention at the time of their publica- 

 tion. They gained for him his degree of doctor 

 of physical sciences, and eventually, in 1875, the 

 Jecker prize. The first samples of synthetic 

 camphor arising out of these researches were 

 shown in the Exhibition of 1878. 



Riban now became associated with Berthelot 

 at the College de France, and was transferred to 

 the Sorbonne, where he became assistant-profes- 

 sor of quantitative chemical analysis. He 

 practically abandoned inquiry in organic 

 chemistry, devoting himself more particularly to 

 general problems of applied chemistry, especially 

 to questions of hygiene. In addition to his work 

 as director of the analytical laboratories at the 

 Sorbonne, he lectured at the Ecole des Beaux- 

 Arts, and was named a member of the Conseil 

 d' Hygiene. These various public duties left 

 Riban little time for original research, but he 

 published a number of notes and minor com- 

 munications on compounds of phosphine and on 

 the decomposition of metallic formates and 

 acetates in presence of water, as well as some 

 papers relating to eudiometry and analytical 

 chemistry. He was an active contributor to the 

 "Encyclopedic Chimique " and to the "Dic- 

 tionnaire de Chimie," and in 1899 published a 

 treatise on electrochemical analysis which 

 enjoyed a considerable reputation. 



Riban became a vice-president of the French 

 Chemical Society in 1898, and a vice-president 

 of the Conseil d 'Hygiene in 1899. He was a 

 careful, conscientious teacher, distinguished for 

 the clarity and simplicity of his exposition, and 

 a painstaking and accurate experimentalist 

 whose work rests upjon a solid and durable 

 foundation. 



NOTES. 



The valuable article on rhubarb which appears else- 

 where in the present issue was prepared for the Kew 

 Bulletin, the publication of which has been suspended 

 on the ground of shortage of paper. When we see 

 the waste of paper used in Parliamentary Reports, 

 National Service propaganda, and bv Government de- 

 partments generally, and place this by the side of the 

 amount required for the continued publication of such 

 a periodical as the Kew Bulletin — Imperial in its scope 

 and influence — we beg^in to despair that our State 



