October io, 1895] 



NA TURE 



577 



amount of detached work, chiefly of the nature of prospecting 

 and reporting upon mineral occurrences, has been done in Cape 

 Colony, while many European geologists have written papers 

 <lealing with the rocks, fossils, and in some cases the structural 

 characters of different portions of the Colony which at various 

 times they happened to have visited. The Commission intends, 

 as one of its first duties, to have a bibliography of all such 

 papers and reports published, but will at the same time have 

 an organised systematic scheme of field work entered upon. A 

 topographical map on a scale of two miles to an inch has already 

 been published for about one-twelfth of the entire area of the 

 Colony, and it is intended to utilise this for the geological 

 <letails. 



Dr. W. S. Church will deliver the Harveian oration before 

 the Royal College of Physicians, on Friday, October i8. 



Prof. Raoult, of Grenoble Universit)', has been awarded the 

 prize of twenty thousand francs given biennially by one of the 

 bodies constituting the Institute of France, and awarded this year 

 liy the Academy of Sciences. 



We regret to notice the death of Prof. .\. von Bardeleben, 

 the eminent surgeon, and for many'years one of the Presidents of 

 the Berlin Medical Society. The death is also announced of 

 Baron Felix Larrey, member of the Paris Academy of Medicine, 

 and author of a number of works on military surgery. 



The Bulletin of the Royal Gardens, Kew , announces that Sir 

 Joseph Hooker has presented the Gardens with a replica of a 

 portrait of the lale Dr. T. Thomson, F.R.S. Dr. Thomson 

 was the first botanist to enter the Karakoram mountains, and was 

 for some time Director of the Calcutta Botanic Gardens. 



DuRl.NG the Leyden Zoology Congress a small volume, 

 entitled "Guide Zoologique de la HoUande," was presented to 

 the members. This little book, containing a number of photo- 

 graphs, was compiled by the General Secretary to the Congress, 

 Dr. Hoek, and is full of information on the zoological labora- 

 tories, the museums, the zoological station and the zoological 

 gardens, as well as concerning the study and the teaching of 

 zoology in Holland. Several chapters are, moreover, devoted 

 to the fauna of the country. 



At last week's meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society of 

 Great Britain, the Hanbury Medal was presented to Dr. .A. I",. 

 Vogl, Professor of Phannacology- in the University of A'ienna, 

 through Count Clary, Prof. \'ogl being unable to attend in 

 jierson. The medal is awarded biennially in accordance with 

 the condition of the Hanburj- Memorial P'und, and the award 

 rests with the Presidents of the Pharmaceutical Society, Linnean 

 Society, Chemical Society, and the British Pharmaceutical Con- 

 ference. The first presentation was made in iSSi, the recipient 

 being Prof. FUickiger. 



At the Royal Microscopical Society, on Wednesday, October 

 16, the following papers will be read : — " On the Division of 

 the Chromosomes in the Pollen Mother-Cell of I.ilium," by 

 Prof. J. B. Farmer ; " New and Critical Fungi," by G. Massee ; 

 " A p'Uiorescent Bacillus," by F. J. Rcid. 



The inaugural lecture of the newly-instituted " Course of 

 Scientific Instruction in Hygiene and Public Health " at Bedford 

 College for Women, was delivered by Dr. Louis Parkeson Saturday 

 afternoon, October 5. The course aims at promoting systematic 

 instruction in hygiene and all those allied branches of science 

 necessary to a thorough knowledge of sanitation and laws of 

 health, and so qualifying women to become teachers and 

 NO. 1354, VOL. 52] 



lecturers, and inspectors of workshops and factories where female 

 labour is employed. 



A MEETixo of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers will be 

 held on Wednesday, October 23, and Thursday, October 24, a 

 the Royal United Ser\'ice Institution, Whitehall. The chair 

 will be taken by the President, Prof. Alexander B. W. Kennedy, 

 F.R.S., and the following papers will be read and discussed, as 

 far as time permits : — " The Electric Lighting of Edinburgh," by 

 Mr. Henry R. J. Burstall ; " Report on the Lille Experimenu 

 upon the Efliciency of Ropes and Belts for the Transmission of 

 Power," translated by Prof. David S. Capper; " Observations on 

 the Lille Experiments upon the Efficiency of Ropes and Belts for 

 the Transmission of Power," also by Prof. Capper. 



The death of Moritz Wilkomm, the eminent botanist and 

 geographical explorer, is announced in the Geographual Journal. 

 Of his life we read : — "Born in 1821, at Herwigsdorf, in the 

 kingdom of Saxony, after 1841 he studied medicine and natural 

 science at Leipzig. In 1844 he for the first time \-isited the 

 Pyrenean peninsula, which he subsequently traversed so often, 

 sometimes by the year together, making thorough investigations 

 into the botanical, geognostical, and geographical relations of 

 the country. After having, in 1852, gained some experience as 

 teacher of botany at Leipzig, and having been called thence first 

 to Tharandt, and afterwards, in 1868, to Dorpat, he occupied 

 the chair of Botany at the German University at Prague from 

 1873 until the receipt of his pension in 1892, being at the same 

 time Director of the Botanical Garden in that city. He did 

 much good work by his rich botanical collections, principally 

 from Spain and the Balearic Isles, as well as by his special 

 botanical works dealing especially with the descriptive side of the 

 science ; whilst as a geographer he did lasting service, not only 

 in connection with the geography of plants — in particular in 

 South-West and Central Europe — but also by his comprehensive 

 geographical description of Spain and Portugal ; and, above all, 

 he threw light on the geography of Austria by his excellent work 

 on the Bohmerwald (1878), which region he was the first to 

 throw open to science in its most inaccessible parts, still at the 

 time clothed with primeval forest." 



With reference to the letter by Mr. Pillsbury on " Colour 

 Standards" (Nature, August 22, p. 390), Mr. J. W. Lovibond 

 writes from Salisbury : — " In justice to myself, may I be allowed 

 to point out that the difficulties named no longer exist, since it 

 remains as an experimental fact that the solution of every position 

 which Mr. Pillsbury describes as desirable and lacking is now a 

 matter of ever)'day routine in many laboratories and manu- 

 factories. . . . Every sensation, whether of light or colour, 

 which can be differentiated by the vision can be matched by 

 means of the Tintometer Standard Glasses, and defined by means 

 of a system of colour terms ; the colour sensation itself can be 

 re])roduccd at any future time by simply using the matching 

 glasses. The operation of matching a colour is so easy that in 

 those factories where frequent changes of colour require noting, 

 or where it is neces.sar)' to work up to a given colour, an 

 intelligent workman is found competent to effect them." 



Tn¥. cwxieni rwxmher ol Hiiiiiiicl und Erdi contains the con- 

 cluding part of two interesting articles on scientific balloon 

 ascents, by Dr. R. Siiring, of Potsdam. The author briefly 

 reviews all ascents since that by Jeffries and Blanchard on 

 November 30, 1784, and shows that relatively little use has been 

 made of the observations, probably because they have not always 

 been free from objection, or from the flict that most ascents have 

 been of an isolated character. The principal exceptions, among 

 the older .ascents, are the celebrated voyages of Welsh a 

 Glaisher, and more recently those made by the Bavarians and 



