May 12, 1910] 



:\'A TURE 



515 



young privat-doctnt, working alone in his single 

 room night after night for two years without an in- 

 terruption until, in i»59. he published his accumulated 

 results in a bulky volume, " L'ntersuchungen ueber 

 d'jr Physiologic des Elektrotonus," Berlin, 1859? 



By- the siae cf this picture of the active young 

 searcher in the 'fifties of last century might be placed 

 a picture of the no less active learner of the 'nineties 

 who, at the age of seventy, with forty years of ser- 

 vice behind hsm as professor of physiology in the 

 I'niversity of Bonn, and with no worldly reward in 

 front of him cf money or position or of lame, day bv 

 day and month by month carried out with his own 

 nand the mechanical minutiae of daily quantitative 

 *-stimation of nitrogen necessary to satisfy his mind 

 as to the balance sheet of nitrogen of a dog under 

 physiological conditions strictly supervised by himself, 

 and, as is shown by the 131 volumes of Pfliiger's 

 Archiv, of which the first volume appeared in i868 

 and the 131st in 1910. His faithful serxtce to physio- 

 l<^y continued for ten years longer, to the fifty-first 

 year of his ordinary professorship, to the eighty-first 

 \ear of his life. 



Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pfliiger. born in 1829, a 

 pupil of Johannes Muller, is the last of the great 

 German school of physiological and biological workers 

 • — Haeckel, Lieberkiihn. Du Bois Reymond, Henle, 

 Ludwig. Briicke, Helmholtz, Pfliiger. 



Pfliiger Kved a retired life, devoted to his work in 

 the laboratory and in the librar\-. which he hardly 

 ever left, and in which he did not welcome the inter- 



' ruption of the visitor ; no one admitted except on 

 business might well have been the inscription upon 

 his door, and he was never seen at physiological con- 

 gresses. I count among one of the pleasantest recol- 



- lections of my life a day spent in Pfliiger *s laboratory 



with Pfliiger himself and Heinrich Herz, whose simple 



demonstration of Maxwell's^ forecast had been made 



in the previous year, and whom death so soon cut 



short. We spent the day watching the movements of 



T.ippmann's capillary- electrometer, and the time passed 



^noticed; there was no inhumanity Tn connection 



ith the author of Pfliiger's law when the accuracy 



a physiological assertion of fact was to be 



rutinised. 



To the scientific world Pfliiger's permanent monu- 

 ment consists in the 131 volumes of Pfliiger's Archiv. 



■ Many workmen have contributed to that monument, 

 and, among the mass of contributions, the work of 

 Pfliiger himself stands good as well and truly laid. 

 The mechanism of spinal action in the frog, and his 

 law of reflex action as studied upon the decapitated 

 animal, were his earliest subjects of study, and are 

 to-day still classical. We cannot discuss the mechan- 



" ism of ner\'Ous coordination without at once appealing 

 to the experiments of Pfluger and the decapitated frog 

 more than fifty years ago. in preface to our discussion 



of the experiments of Sherrington on the spinal mam- 

 mal which belongs to the last decade. 



The tenth volume of Pfliiger's Archiv (1875), ^on- 

 taining his paper. " Ueber die Physiologische Verbren- 

 nung in den lebendigen Organismen." has plaj^ed an 



' important part in our knowledgre and notions as to 

 the chemical respiration of the tissues. 



Pfliiger's bloodless and salted frog continuing to 

 discharge COj in an atmosphere of nitrogen or in 

 vacuo is clear evidence that CO, is not due to the 

 immediate action of oxygen, but that it is formed 

 from the dissociation of some storage compound, or, 

 as Pfliiger expressed it. previously absorbed oxygen 

 has helped to wind up the physiological dock, the 

 CO, discharged at the moment is a sign that the 



'ckM;k is running down. In discussing the latest con- 

 tribution to our knowledge of this subject, those, for 

 iiyitance. brought out by Leonard Hill as regards the 

 NO. 2 1 15, vol! 83"! 



beneficial effect of oxygen upon muscular work, we 

 are obliged to refer to Pfliiger's teaching. 



Nutrition, its debtor and creditor account in the 

 body in terms of nitrogen and of carbon; glycogen, its 

 relation to carbohydrate antecedent and its question- 

 able relation to protein antecedents ; fat, its absorption, 

 relation to carbohydrate, the problem of diabetes and 

 (he origin of diabetic sugar, formed the principal 

 field of Pfliiger's unceasing labours during the last 

 twenty-five years of his life. 



Pfliiger died on March 17, aged eighty-one, at the 

 end of over sixty years of single-minded and un- 

 swerving devotion as a student of physiology', fifty 

 years of which were spent as ordinary professor of 

 physiology in the University of Bonn. 



A. D. Waixek. 



NOTES. 

 I\ consequence of the lamented death of the King, and 

 out of respect to his memor>', niany scientific meetings 

 and other functions have been postponed or cancelled. 

 The soir^ of the Royal Society, announced for May 25, 

 will not take place. The meetings. of the society will 

 not be resumed until Mar 26. The president of the Royal 

 Institution has decided that the lectures and evening meet- 

 ings be discontinued until further notice. The anniversary 

 dinner of -the Royal Geographical Society, which was 

 arranged for May 23, will not be held ; the anniversary 

 meeting will be held as arranged, at 3 p.m. The meet- 

 ing of the Royal Meteorok^ical Societj- which had been 

 fixed for Wednesday, May 18, has been postponed to 

 Wednesday, May 25. 



We notice with regret the announcement of the death of 

 Prof. S. Cannizzaro, Foreign Member of the Royal Societj- 

 and professor of chemistry in the University of Rome, at 

 eight>--three years of age. 



At the meeting of the Royal Societ>" on May 5 the 

 following candidates for fellowship were elected into the 

 societ> :— Mr. J. Barcroft, Prof. G. C. Bourne. Prof. .\. P. 

 Coleman, Dr. F. A. Dixey, Dr. L. N. G. Filon. Mr. A. 

 Fowler, Dr. A. E. Garrod, Mr. G. H. Hardy, Dr. J. A. 

 Harker, Prof. J. T. Hewitt. Prof. B. Hopkinson, Dr. A. 

 Lap«x)rth, Lieut.-Colonel Sir W. B. Leishman, Mr. H. G. 

 Plimmer, and Mr. F. Soddy. 



Now that our returning summer migrants are being 

 eagerly looked out for, and the arrival of many of them 

 has been recorded during the last few weeks, the question 

 arises in the minds of many people, " Do the same in- 

 dindual birds which nested last year come back to nest 

 in the same place? " This is a question, of course, which 

 might be equally well asked of our "* resident " birds, but 

 in the case of migrants, such as the swallow, which we 

 know for certain does not winter anywhere north of .Africa, 

 actual proof that the same individuaJ returns after its 

 long journey to and fro, and its sojourn in its far off «-inter 

 quarters, to the verj- same spot in which it nested the 

 year before is sensational. , Such proof in the case of one 

 swallow, in any case, is just to hand. Dr. C. B. Tice- 

 hurst records the following in the last number of Britisk 

 Birds : — ^" On .April 12, 1910, the first swallow (Hirundo 

 rustical was seen at 4 p.m. passing the house at Hunt- 

 boume. High Halden,' Kent, which lies in the line of a 

 small migration-route ; at 6 p.m. a small flight or swallows 

 passed over to the north, and from it four birds separated, 

 and after flying round the bouse and settling on - the 

 chimney-pots, finally went to roost in a shed where two 

 pairs bred last year. Two days afterwards I caught a 



