470 



NATURE 



[March 19, 1896 



haps in a far longer interval of departmental work. Only 

 as one of his many assistants do I now put on paper my 

 own feelings on the loss we have all sustained. A full 

 record of his service and life can only be written by some 

 officer of the Survey who was closely and long associated 

 with him in his geodetical labours. 



General Walker passed out of Addiscombe into the 

 Bombay Engineers in 1844, and landed in India in 1846 ; 

 he retired in 1883. He was an officer of high training 

 and ability, who worked zealously in his profession, and 

 expected others to do the same, taking a keen interest in 

 their work. He had a good record of hard military 

 service durmg the Panjab campaign at the Siege of 

 Multan and Battle of Gujerat, and during the Mutiny at 

 the Siege of Delhi, where he was severely wounded ; he 

 also served in i860 with the Mahsood Waziri Expedition. 

 He was as good a field surveyor as a geodecist, with a 

 reputation outside his own corps and country; for twenty- 

 two years in charge of the Trigonometrical Survey, and 

 five years Surveyor-General of India ; and he was a con- 

 stant writer on many subjects relating to geography, 

 almost up to the time of his death. Fuller details of 

 these services are to be found in an excellent obituary 

 notice by Mr. Clements Markham, President of the 

 Geographical Society, in the March number of the 

 Geographical Journal. H. H. G.-A. 



NOTES. 



Lord Kelvin has communicated to us the following tele- 

 gram which he has received from Edison : ' ' Just found calcium 

 tungstate properly crystallised gives splendid fluorescence with 

 Rdntgen rays far exceeding platino-cyanide rendering photo- 

 graphs unnecessary." 



The Committee of the Athenaeum Club, acting under the 

 provisions of the rule of the Club which empowers the annual 

 election by the Committee of nine persons ' ' of distinguished 

 eminence in science, literature, the arts, or for public service," 

 have admitted to membership Prof. Arthur Schuster, F.R.S. 



We regret to announce the death at Madras, on February 14, 

 of Mr. Marmaduke Alexander Lawson, M.A., F.L.S., Govern- 

 ment Botanist and Director of Cinchona Plantations to the 

 Madras Government. Mr. Lawson held for many years the posts 

 of Sherardian and Sibthorpian Professor at Oxford, which were 

 separated on his resigning to take up a new position in India 

 in 1882. 



The French Government has decided to continue to M. 

 Pasteur's widow the annual pension of 25,000 francs (;^iooo) 

 granted to her regretted husband in 1883. 



Prof. Arthur Auwers and Prof. Karl Weierstrass, both 

 of Berlin, have been elected foreign members of the Royal 

 Academy of Mathematical and Physical Sciences of Naples, in 

 the place of the late Profs. Cayley and Hermann von Helmholtz. 



The Royal Academy of Mathematical and Physical Sciences 

 of Naples offers a prize of 1000 lire for the best essay (illustrated 

 by specimens) on the geology of the quaternary lakes of the 

 Basilicate. The essays have to be sent in on or before June 30, 

 1897. 



Mr. W. L. Sclater has left England to take up his ap- 

 paintment as Curator of the South African Museum, Capetown. 

 His successor in the science-mastership at Eton College is Mr. 

 M. D. Hill, of the University of Oxford. 



Mr. Edwin Wheeler, of Clifton, Bristol, has presented to 

 the Natural History Museum a valuable series of water-colour 

 drawings of fungi— 2449 in number — made by him in illustration 

 NO. 1377, VOL. 53] 



of the British fungus flora. The drawings, which fill twelve bulky 

 volumes, represent the result of assiduous labour and obset'ation 

 extending over many years, and the Museum authoritus are 

 fortunate in receiving so munificent a gift. 



The " Coral-Reef Expedition," under the command a Prof. 

 Sollas, F.R.S. , will shortly leave England for the Pacific Mr. 

 J. S. Gardiner, of Cambridge, who has been selected as 

 Assistant Naturalist, will devote himself to an examimtion of 

 the fauna and flora of the EUice Islands, while a dee» hole is 

 being bored into the coral-beds of Funa-fute, with the object of 

 ascertaining the depth and exact structure of the formjtions. 



Excellent accounts continue to be received of tb progress 

 made by Dr. Forsyth-Major in Madagascar, and se«ral valu- 

 able collections made by him have already arrived at he British 

 Museum. Amongst these are numerous remains of che extinct 

 gigantic birds of the family yEpyorniikidce, the stuci' of which 

 will, it is expected, considerably increase our kiowledge of 

 the structure of this group. The specimens are beiig examined 

 by the officers of the Geological Department. 



Amongst the natural history collections from British 

 Central Africa, last received from Sir Henry ohnston, is a 

 small series of birds obtained, by Mr. Alexande'Whyte, on the 

 previously unexplored mountain of Chiradzulu, hlf-way between 

 Blantyre and Zomba. With the specimens i an example of 

 a new and very beautiful species of Oriole, whia Captain Shelley 

 will describe and figure in the next number of t'e Ibis, as Oriolus 

 chlorocephalus. 



Mr. J. E. S. Moore, who is gone on : mission from the 

 Royal Society to explore the fresh- water funa of Lake Tan- 

 ganyika, arrived at Zomba, British CentralAfrica, on his way 

 there in December last. He was obligd to stop there on 

 account of the Stevenson Road being blcked by the Arabs ; 

 but the road having been since cleared y the Commissioner's 

 forces, will now be open for Mr. Morc's further progress to 

 Lake Tanganyika, where we have nodoubt he will reap an 

 abundant harvest. 



The Zoological Society have lost the large male Indian 

 elephant which was brought home V the Prince of Wales on 

 his return from India in 1876, and pisented by his Royal High- 

 ness to the collection. After carryig an innumerable number 

 of children up and down the wait fiJr the past twenty years, 

 "Jung Pasha" died quite suddenl'On the 8th inst. Although 

 tuskless, he was pronounced by fl those experienced in such 

 matters to be one of the finest^nd largest of living Indian 

 elephants. His skin has been p-sented to the British Museum 

 of Natural History, and is beif stuffed for exhibition in the 

 Mammal Gallery. 



As a direct outcome of M Saville-Kent's book on " The 

 Great Barrier Reef of Australi.," Prof. Alexander Agassiz has, 

 as already briefly announcec" determined to undertake an ex- 

 pedition, having as its expr^s object the investigation of the 

 many subjects associated wii this vast and specially interesting 

 biological area. Sounding and an examination of the ocean 

 bottom and the study ofthe pelagic and surface faunae, are 

 subjects which will espefiHy occupy Prof. Agassiz's personal 

 attention. In order to tilise the opportunities that will be 

 presented to their fulle.' extent. Prof. Agassiz takes with him 

 a trained staff of artist and assistants, and has also engaged 

 the services of the eyerienced American collector, Mr. W. 

 Ward, to make typica'collections of the Madreporarian corals 

 characteristic of the Ceat Barrier region ; and with the special 

 purpose of securing *tra large specimens, for exhibition at the 

 Cambridge, Mass., id other of the United States museums. 



