June ii, 1891] 



NATURE 



135 



NOTES. 

 We print elsewhere the proceedings of the important deputa- 

 tion to the Board of Trade on the subject of the Institute of Pre- 

 ventive Medicine. There can be no doubt that, after the statement 

 made by the Minister, the registration of the Society will shortly 

 be an accomplished fact ; a few words in the deed of registration 

 or a few minutes of reference between the Board of Trade and 

 the Home Office are all that is needed to safeguard Sir Michael 

 Hicks-Beach's official scruples. The importance of the deputa- 

 tion, however, will not be limited to this : it shows again, as in 

 the case of the Art Gallery, that men of science are no longer 

 willing to be snubbed by men in office. 



The annual meeting for the election of Fellows was held at the 

 Royal Society's rooms, in Burlington House, on Thursday last, 

 when the following gentlemen were elected into the Society : — 

 William Anderson ; Prof. Frederick Orpen Bower ; Sir John Con- 

 roy, Bart. ; Prof. Daniel John Cunningham ; Dr. George Mercer 

 Dawson ; Edwin Bailey Elliott ; Prof. Percy Faraday Frank- 

 land ; Percy C. Gilchrist ; Dr. William Dobinson Halliburton ; 

 Oliver Heaviside ; John Edward Marr ; Ludwig Mond ; William 

 Napier Shaw ; Prof. Silvanus Phillips Thompson ; Captain 

 Thomas Henry Tizard, R.N. 



Mr. George Holt, of Liverpool, last week sent the 

 Treasurer of the University College there a cheque for ten 

 thousand pounds as endowment for a Chair of Physiology, and 

 candidates for the appointment are forthwith to be advertised 

 for. It is only a few weeks since Mr. Brunner, M.P., sent a 

 similar cheque to endow a Chair of Political Economy. The 

 latter post has been offered to and accepted by Mr. E. C. K. 

 Conner. 



The Prince of Wales has fixed 4 o'clock on Wednesday, 

 June 17, for the delivery by Lord Rayleigh of the first of the 

 two lectures at the Royal Institution in connection with the 

 centenary of the birth of Michael Faraday ; and Friday evening, 

 June 26, at 9 o'clock, has been appointed for the second of these 

 lectures, which will be given by Prof. Dewar. 



Students of geology were sorry to hear of the death of Dr. 

 P. M. Duncan, F.R.S. He died on May 29 in his sixty-seventh 

 year. Dr. Duncan was Professor of Geology at King's College, 

 London, and was intimately connected with the Geological 

 Society, of which he was President in 1876 and 1877. He was 

 also a member of the Linnean Society. 



Mr. G. V. Poore, the Government Inspector, who has 

 recently drawn up a report upon experiments performed on 

 living animals during the year 1890, states that during the many 

 visits he has paid to places licensed for the performance of such 

 experiments, it has never fallen to his lot to see a single animal 

 which appeared to be in bodily pain. 



We are glad to be able to announce that Mr. J. Graham- 

 Kerr, of the University of Edinburgh, Naturalist to the Pilco- 

 mayo Expedition, has returned safely to this country, and has 

 succeeded in bringing with him a portion of his natural history 

 collections. As is well known, the Bolivia, in which Captain 

 Page and his expedition ascended the Pilcomayo, was stranded 

 in that river, in April 1890, in the middle of the Gran Chaco. 

 After the death of Captain Page, which occurred while he was 

 returning in a canoe down the Pilcomayo to get medical assist- 

 ance, the Bolivia remained stuck fast nearly in one spot until 

 March of this year, when Mr. Kerr, finding the vessel still im- 

 movable, and no prospects whatever of a rise in the river, decided 

 to come away as best he could. After a very rough journey he 

 reached Asuncion on mule-back, bringing as many of his light 

 things as possible, and arrived in this country last week. Some 

 very interesting letters of Mr. Kerr's, describing the natural 

 history of the Gran Chaco, will be found in the two numbers of 

 <he Ibis for January and April last. 

 NO. I 128, VOL. 44] 



Under the will of Dr. Fothergill (1821), funds were be- 

 queathed to the Society of Arts for the offer of medals for sub- 

 jects, in the first instance, relating to the prevention of fire. A 

 Society's Gold Medal, or ;,{^2o, is now offered for the best inven- 

 tion having for its object the prevention or extinction of fires in 

 theatres or other places of public amusement. 



Messrs. Newton and Co. have been appointed philosophical 

 instrument makers to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 

 an appointment which we believe has not been held by any 

 firm for some years. 



Mr. John T. Brunner, M.P., has been elected President 

 of the Sunday Society in succession to Prof. G. J. Romanes. 

 Mr. Brunner will deliver his presidential address at the Society's 

 public annual meeting on June 27. 



The Societe Botanique de France recently held its annual 

 meeting in the little town of CoUioure, near Perpignan, on the 

 Mediterranean coast. After the meeting many excursions were 

 made in the neighbourhood, which is interesting to botanists. 



On behalf of Prof. E. C. Stirling, of the University of 

 Adelaide, South Australia, Prof. Newton communicated to the 

 Zoological Society of London, at its meeting last week, a figure 

 of the new Australian Marsupial, originally described by Dr. 

 Stirling in this journal in 1888 (Nature, vol. xxxviii. p. 588), 

 together with some notes on this extraordinary animal. Notoryctes 

 typhhps, as Dr. Stirling now proposes to call it, is a small mole- 

 like animal belonging to the order of Marsupials, of which it 

 forms an entirely new type. A general description of it has 

 already been given, as above referred to, but Prof. Stirling now 

 adds that the Marsupial bones are exceedingly small nodules, 

 and escaped his notice at first. Four or five of the cervical 

 vertebrae are fused, and there is a keeled sternum, an enormously 

 thick and short first rib, which serves a purpose of buttressing 

 the sternum in lieu of coracoids, and a bird-like pelvis. The 

 penis is in the uro-genital canal, and the testes are external in 

 front of it. The eyes are mere spots underneath the skin. The 

 four specimens as yet received of Notoryctes typhlops were ob- 

 tained in the centre of Australia, on the telegraph line between 

 Adelaide and Port Darwin. The animal is said to burrow in 

 the sand with great rapidity. A full description of it, it is 

 understood, has appeared in the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society of South Australia, but no copy of this journal has as 

 yet reached England. 



MM. Gr£hant and Quinquaud conclude from some recent 

 experiments on dogs that under the influence of alcohol muscular 

 strength is much diminished. 



Prof. John M. Coulter, the well-known botanist, has been 

 elected President of the State University of Indiana, located at 

 Bloomington ; and Dr. Douglas H. Campbell has been ap- 

 pointed Associate Professor of Botany at the new Stanford 

 University of California. 



According to the Botanical Gazette, Mr. Thomas Meehan, 

 of Philadelphia, is about to establish, in conjunction with his 

 sons, a new journal of gardening and botanical miscellany. It 

 will be called Median's Monthly, and the first number will 

 appear on July i. 



We learn from the /ournal of Botany that Mr. Worthington 

 G. Smith is preparing for the public gallery of the Botanical 

 Department of the British Museum a series of 96 tables illus- 

 trating the British Fungi. Every species of the Hymenomycetes 

 will be figured in its natural colours, the drawings being taken 

 from Mr. Smith's own series already in the Museum, with 

 others from original figures lent by Mr. Plowright and others. 



TiiK nnmhtx oi Neplunia for April 30 gives a brief descrip- 

 tion of the following stations for the study of natural history : — 



