August 3, 19 16] 



NATURE 



467 



Mr. Alexander Ross, the president of the Institution 

 of Civil Engineers, and now occupies a position on 

 the right hand of the entrance hall. The medallion 

 consists of a portrait of Sir William, carved in relief 

 in white stone, with a warship visible in the distance. 

 The carving is mounted on grey marble, and carries 

 underneath it a tablet, on which are inscribed the 

 words:— "Sir William Henry White, K.C.B., LL.D., 

 D.Sc, F.R.S., President, 1903-1904, Director of Naval 

 Construction, 1885-1902. A Tribute from the Ship- 

 builders of Many Nations." Above is a scroll bearing 

 the motto, "Build Staunch, Build True." 



News of Sir Ernest Shackleton's latest attempt to 

 rescue his comrades on Elephant Island is expected 

 daily. Last week the small Chilean steamer Yelcho 

 returned to Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, after tow- 

 ing to a point 240 miles south of Cape Horn the 

 schooner Emma, with the rescue party on board. The 

 Yelcho was in a damaged condition, but that may be 

 the result of heavy seas. The telegram makes no 

 mention of ice, and the report that the weather was 

 favourable when the Yelcho turned back has really 

 no bearing on the prospects of approaching Elephant 

 Island. As already announced, the Discovery will be 

 dispatched by the British Admiralty in the event of 

 the Emma failing. It will, of course, take the Dis- 

 covery some sixty days to reach Elephant Island, but, 

 whatever the condition of the pack may be, she is 

 powerful enough to force her way through and reach 

 the stranded men. 



A MAL.ARIA mosquito survey is being conducted, under 

 the supervision of Prof. W. B. Herms and Mr. S. B. 

 Freeborn, on behalf of the California State Board of 

 Health and the University of California. So far 

 endemic malaria has been found at a maximum height 

 of 5500 ft., and the anopheline carriers have been 

 located. It is estimated that three sumuicrs will be 

 required to complete the survey of the State. 



The Ellen Richards Research prize of 200Z. for the 

 best thesis written by a woman embodying new ob- 

 servations and new conclusions based on independent 

 laboratory research in biology (including psychology), 

 chemistry, or physics is offered by the Naples Table 

 Association for Promoting Laboratory Research by 

 Women. Application forms are obtainable from Mrs. 

 A. W. Mead, 283 Wayland Avenue, Providence, Rhode 

 Island, U.S.A. The competing papers must reach the 

 chairman of the committee before February 25, igi?- 



We regret to announce the death, on July 25, at 

 the age of seventy-six, of Mr. Roland Trimen, F.R.S. 



We note with regret the death, on July 28, at the 

 age of seventy-three, of Sir W. H. Power, K.C.B., 

 F.R.S. , from 1900 to 1908 principal medical officer of 

 the Local Government Board. 



The death is announced, at the age of eighty years, 

 of the anthropologist. Prof. Johannes Ranke, of the 

 L'niversity of Munich. 



It is with great regret that we learn that Lieut. 

 Harper has been killed in action. Edgar H. Harper, 

 who was thirty-three years of age, was bom at Ehm- 

 gannon, not far from Belfast. His university career 

 was one of exceptional brilliancy. At Trinity College, 

 Dublin, he won the McCullagh and Bishop Law's 

 prizes, and was awarded a special prize in the junior 

 fellowship examination. He also graduated with 

 first-class honours in the Royal University of Ireland. 

 About the year 1908 he was appointed assistant- 

 lecturer in pure and applied mathematics in the Uni- 

 versity College of North Wales, and six years later 

 he obtained the chair of mathematical physics at 



NO. 2440, VOL. 97] 



University College, Cork. Last year he took a com- 

 mission in the South Staffordshire Regiment. During 

 his tenure of office at Bangor Prof. Harper's talents 

 were turned to good account in the important part 

 that he played in developing the mathematical theory 

 of aeroplane stability. Although this work was under- 

 taken in collaboration, the numerous references to his 

 name in Prof. Bryan's " Stability in .\viation " bear 

 testimony to his powers as an original investigator, 

 quite a number of the results stated in that work 

 having been first discovered by him. It was 

 Prof. Harper, for example, who first discovered 

 the necessity of extending the theorj- of in- 

 herent stability to cases other than that of horizontal 

 flight. One result was the discovery of serious 

 theoretical limitations in the angle at which an aero- 

 plane could be expected to rise in the air. In con- 

 nection with the effect of a dihedral angle on lateral 

 stability we are also indebted to Prof. Harper for 

 a number of elegant geometrical and other artifices 

 by which the use of cumbersome algebraic expressions 

 is greatly reduced. He was also joint author with 

 Mr. Ferguson of "Aerial Locomotion" in the series 

 of " Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature." 



Second-Lieut. F. W. Caton, who was killed in 

 France on June 28, was a chemist of rare ability, 

 though he had contributed little to the literature of 

 the subject. His influence was chiefly through his 

 lectures on chemical and botanical subjects, but he 

 showed great promise in biochemical research, on 

 which he was engaged when war broke out. In 

 August, 19 15, he was gazetted to a commission in 

 the South Staffordshire Regiment, but it was felt 

 that his chemical knowledge could be of greater 

 service to his country, and he was transferred to the 

 Royal Engineers in March last, and soon afterwards 

 accompanied them to France. He had a brilliant 

 academic career-; he went to Oxford* from Brighton 

 Grammar School with a postmastership to Merton 

 College, and took his degree with honours in 1906, 

 afterwards taking the London B.Sc. with first class 

 honours in chemistry. For two years he was at the 

 Wellcome Chemical Research Laboratory, where his 

 work was productive of good results. In 1910 he 

 was appointed chemistry master at Taunton School, 

 leaving there in 19 12 to take up the appointment of 

 lecturer and inspector under the Staffordshire Educa- 

 tion Committee. His death at the early age of thirty- 

 two is sincerely deplored by those who knew him, 

 either as a man or as a scientific worker. 



Malacologists will learn with regret of the death, 

 at the age of fifty, of Henri Fischer, the son of Paul 

 Henri Fischer, the celebrated author of the " Manuel 

 de Conchyliologie " (a translation and extension of 

 S. P. Woodward's " Manual "). Henri was educated 

 at the Ecole Normale Sup^rieure and became " Maitre 

 de Conferences" attached to the Sorbonne. Follow- 

 ing in his father's footsteps, he took up the study of 

 mollusca, but more especially from the morphological 

 point of view. In his thesis, " Recherches sur la 

 morphologie du foie des Gast^ropodes," and in many 

 other memoirs of his he paid sjiecial attention to the 

 embryological development. Individually and in col- 

 laboration with other zoologists, he wrote numerous 

 important pap>ers on his chosen subject, besides contri- 

 buting articles on the mollusca collected on the " Mis- 

 sion Pavie" (1904), on those obtained by Prince Albert 

 of Monaco in his dredging expeditions (1906 and 1910), 

 and on the Arctic mollusca procured by the Duke of 

 Orleans in 1907 (1910), whilst with Prof. Jobin he 

 described the Cephalopoda obtained on the scientific 

 expeditions of the TravaQleur and Talisman in 1880- 

 1883 (1906). He was besides one of the editors of, and 



