i6 



NATURE 



[May 3, 1900 



L. E, Levy for his acid-blast method of etching metal plates ; and 

 to Prof. W. O. Atwater and Mr, E. B. Rosa for their respir- 

 ation calorimeter. 



The Daily News states that Lieut. R. E. Peary has for- 

 warded some interesting relics to the Royal Naval College, 

 Greenwich. These consist of the sextant left behind in Repulse 

 Harbour by Lieut. Beaumont in 1876, and subsequently 

 recovered by Lieut. Peary, and the original record deposited in 

 a cache by Sir George Nares on Norman Lockyer's Island in 

 1875. The great meteorite which Lieut. Peary brought back 

 from his last Arctic expedition still remains on the Cob Dock of 

 the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The meteorite weighs- 200,000 

 pounds, and Lieut. Peary wishes to obtain 15,000/. for it. 



The Trinity House steam vessel Irene, with the deputy 

 master, Captain G, R. Vyvyan, on board, accompanied by a 

 committee of the Elder Brethren and their scientific adviser. 

 Lord Rayleigh, has proceeded to the Bristol and English 

 Channels in order that special surveys in connection with new 

 lighthouse works, and observations on both English and French 

 lights from seaward, may be made. 



The death is announced of Mr. G. V. Ellis, who succeeded 

 Prof. Quain as professor of anatomy in University College, 

 London, in 1850, an appointment which he held for twenty- 

 seven years, resigning in 1877, when he was appointed Emeritus 

 Professor. Mr. Ellis was co-editor with the late Dr. William 

 Sharpey of the sixth edition of " Quain's Elements of Anatomy," 

 published in 1856, and the author of several works for students 

 of anatomy. 



Among the items included in the Prussian Budget is a sum 

 of 7,300,000 marks, for the purchase of lands in Berlin, on 

 which is to be erected a building for the Academy of Sciences 

 and the Royal Library. The value of the land is estimated at 

 more than 11,000,000 marks, but about 3,000,000 marks is 

 obtained by the exchange of other property, and i,ooo,oco 

 marks is to be voted next year, 



A summer meeting of the Anatomical Society of Great 

 Britain and Ireland will be held at the Owens College, 

 Manchester, on Thursday and Friday, June 21 and 22. Op- 

 portunities will be afforded to members of seeing things of 

 local interest during their visit to Manchester. An excursion to 

 the Lake District will be arranged, and members who desire to 

 join the party are requested to inform the local secretary, Dr. 

 Peter Thompson, the Owens College, Manchester. 



A committee composed of many eminent men of science in 

 France has been formed for the purpose of obtaining funds for 

 the erection of a modest monument at Langres in honour of 

 Auguste Laurent, the renowned chemist. Laurent was born at 

 La Folie, near Langres, in 1808, and in 1831 became assistant 

 to Dumas, under whom he acquired a special knowledge of 

 organic chemistry, and carried on his original researches on 

 naphthalene and carbolic acid, together with their derivatives. 

 After filling various posts, the last of which was a chemical 

 professorship at Bordeaux, Laurent became Warden of the 

 Mint at Paris, where he remained in intimate connection with 

 Gerhardt until his death in 1853. Subscriptions for the pro- 

 posed monument should be sent to the treasurer of the 

 Committee, M. Caublot, 45 rue de Belleville, Paris. 



Mr. James Mansergh has been elected president of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers, in succession to Sir Douglas Fox. 

 Sir William White, K.C.B., F.R.S., Mr Charles Hawksley, 

 Mr. J. C. Hawkshaw, and Mr. F. W, Webb have been elected 

 vice-presidents. The following awards have been made for 

 papers read and discussed before the Institution during the past 

 session : — A George Stephenson medal and a Telford premium 

 NO. 1592, VOL. 62] 



to Sir Lowthian Bell, Bart., F.R.S. ; Telford medals and 

 premiums to Messrs. H. H. Dalrymple-Hay, B. M. Jenkin, 

 F. W. Bidder and F. D. Fox ; a Watt medal and a Telford 

 premium to Mr. J. Dewrance ; a Crampton Prize to Sir Charles 

 Hartley ; and Telford premiums to Messrs. C. N. Russell and 

 R. A. Tatton. The presentation of these awards, together with 

 those for papers which have not been subject to discussion, and 

 will be announced later, will take place at the inaugural meeting 

 of next session. 



American ethnology has been deprived of a prominent 

 worker by the death of Mr. Frank H. Gushing. Mr. Gushing, 

 says the Scientific Af?ierican, was born in 1857, at Northeast, Pa., 

 and when he was only eighteen years of age his work was 

 brought to the attention of the late Mr. Spencer F. Baird, who 

 was then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and in 1875 

 he went to Washington as an assistant in that institution. He 

 had charge of the ethnological exhibit at the Centennial Ex- 

 position of 1876, and in 1879 he accompanied an expedition 

 from the Smithsonian Institution to investigate the Pueblos of 

 New Mexico, and at his request was left at the Pueblo of Zuni, 

 where he lived almost continuously for six years. He returned 

 to Washington in 1884 and began to work up his voluminous 

 notes. Two years later he was made Director of the Hemenway 

 South-western Archaeological Expedition. Extensive excava- 

 tions were made in South Arizona and New Mexico, and the 

 large collection of objects of prehistoric art which he gathered 

 is in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Mass. This work 

 took up two and one-half years of his time, and then Mr. 

 Gushing returned to the United States Bureau of Ethnology to 

 supervise a memoir on the Zuni myths printed by the Bureau. 

 Three years later he became director of the expedition fitted 

 out by Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst and the late Dr. William 

 Pepper, conducted under the auspices of the National Museum, 

 the Bureau of Ethnology and the University of Pennsylvania. 



The motion for the second reading of the Sea Fisheries Bill 

 in the House of Commons, on Monday, resulted in a lively dis- 

 cussion. The Bill prohibits the sale of flatfish below a specified 

 size, and its rejection was moved on the grounds that it would not 

 have the effect of preventing the destruction of immature fish, 

 or of increasing the supply of fish. In the course of the discus- 

 sion, an honourable member said that the whole of the trouble 

 arose from the institution of a number of committees composed 

 of farmers, lawyers, and captains of the horse, foot, and artillery, 

 who knew little of fishing, and who ventilated strange theories 

 and supported them with portentous and irrelevant statistics. 

 This remark was used as an argument against the Bill, but it 

 may also be taken to mean that if fishery matters were controlled 

 by scientific men familiar with the natural history of the sea, and 

 questions concerning fisheries were referred to marine biologists, 

 recommendations would be made upon which reasonable regu- 

 lations might be based. Board of Trade statistics prove that 

 there is a large destruction of immature fish, and that the quantity 

 of fish landed has decreased during recent years. The Govern- 

 ment, wishing to preserve a great national industry, have put for- 

 ward the present Bill, which is really the Undersized Fish Bill of 

 last year, and has appeared under various other titles in previous 

 years. The discussion upon the Bill was not completed whea 

 the House adjourned on Monday. 



The report presented at the anniversary meeting of the Zoolo- 

 gical Society, held on Monday, stated that the number of Fellows 

 of the Society at the end of last year was 3246. The total in- 

 come of the Society during the past year was 28,880/. The 

 average annual receipts of the Society for the previous ten years 

 have been 26,370/., so that the receipts for 1899 exceeded that 

 average by 2509/. The number of visitors to the Society's- 



