426 



NATURE 



[August 28, 1890 



NOTES. 

 At a meeting lately held at Stonyhurst College, as we have 

 already recorded, it was decided that a memorial of the late 

 Father Perry should be established. It is proposed either that 

 a new telescope with a 15-inch object-glass shall be erected at 

 Stonyhurst, or that the present equatorial stand shall be furnished 

 with a 15-inch objective. Whichever be adopted, the telescope 

 and the house in which it stands will be called the "Father 

 Perry Memorial," and the work done with the instrument will 

 be published under this name. For the complete telescope and 

 house, £'2.'joo would be required ; for the objective alone the 

 sum needed would be £']oo. It is hoped that funds large enough 

 for the more magnificent monument may be obtained. A more 

 appropriate memorial could not have been suggested, and we 

 have no doubt that many friends and admirers of the late Father 

 Perry will be glad to take this opportunity of expressing their 

 appreciation of his character and work. Subscriptions should 

 be sent either to the " Father Perry Memorial" account, at the 

 London Joint Stock Bank, Limited, Pall Mall Branch, London, 

 S.W., or to Arthur Chilton Thomas, Hon. Secretary and 

 Treasurer, pro tern., Marldon Chambers, 30 North John Street, 

 Liverpool. 



The remains of Captain John Ericsson are now being con- 

 veyed across the Atlantic to their last resting-place in Sweden. 

 The transfer of the body, on Saturday, from New York to the 

 war-ship Baltimore, was made the occasion of a striking 

 ceremony in honour of the memory of the great inventor. 

 The coffin, wrapped in the flag which floated from Ericsson's 

 famous naval ram, the Monitor, in the struggle with the Merri- 

 mzc, was escorted down Broadway by a procession ; and among 

 the mourners were the Secretary of the Navy, Admiral VVordon, 

 who commanded the Monitor in the engagement with the 

 Merrimac ; Admiral Braine, commanding the Navy ; General 

 Howard, commanding the Army ; the Mayors of New York 

 and Brooklyn; and the members of the Swedish Legation. 

 The New York correspondent of the Daily Neivs says that 

 dense crowds witnessed the procession, standing with bare heads 

 as it passed. Flags, Swedish and American, were displayed in 

 great profusion throughout the city and harbour. Great bands 

 of streamers festooned fronts of the buildings along the city's 

 main thoroughfare, and from the windows hung colours in 

 endless profusion and variety. The harbour never presented a 

 more charming picture. All the shipping along the water front 

 were dressed for the day with the flags of all nations, at half 

 mast. The body was placed upon a tug at the Battery, and was 

 taken down a long line of shipping to the Baltimore, which lay 

 waiting to receive it. The day was rarely beautiful, and the 

 great harbour swarmed with craft of all descriptions. Below 

 the Baltimore, stretching in a long line down the bay, were 

 ranged other war-ships. Minute guns were fired till the body 

 reached the ship, when the brief ceremonies of receiving the 

 body were completed. The Baltimore then ran up the Royal 

 naval ensign of Sweden, and steamed slowly down the line of 

 battle-ships towards the sea, each vessel raising the same ensign 

 as she passed and firing a salute of 21 guns. The forts at the 

 Narrows also saluted as she passed. 



The meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute in America pro- 

 mises to be very successful. About 300 members and many of 

 their friends will leave England for New York next month. The 

 week beginning on September 29 will be devoted to the reading 

 of papers and discussions by members of the American Insti- 

 tute of Mining Engineers and the English Iron and Steel Insti- 

 tute; and, again, on October 9 and the two following days, 

 these two bodies will co-operate at an international meeting at 

 Pittsburg. Afterwards, excursions will take place to the iron 

 ore and copper regions of Lake Superior and to the new iron- 

 NO. 1087, VOL. 42] 



making district of Alabama. The American Reception Com- 

 mittee will provide sleeping and luncheon cars to take their 

 visitors over 3000 miles of the United States. 



The eighth meeting of the International Congress of 

 Americanists will be held in Paris from October 14 to 18. 

 Questions relating to history and geography, archaeology, 

 anthropology and ethnography, and linguistics and palaeography, 

 have been drawn up by the organizing committee for the con- 

 sideration of the Congress. Communications regarding the 

 forthcoming meeting should be addressed to M. Desire Pector, 

 General Secretary of the Organizing Committee, 184 Boulevard 

 Saint- Germain, Paris. 



The American Forestry Association is to meet at Quebec on 

 September 2, and will sit four days. By invitation of the 

 Government of the Province of Quebec, the meetings will be 

 held in the Parliament buildings. 



This week the Sanitary Institute has been holding its twelfth 

 Annual Congress at Brighton. The business of the Congress 

 was opened on Monday evening, when Sir Thomas Crawford 

 delivered his presidential address in the music-room of the 

 Royal Pavilion, before a large assembly. After a tribute to the 

 late Sir Edwin Chadwick, the president dealt with •' some frag 

 ments of the story of laws violated to the prejudice of health." 

 On Tuesday an interesting address on "The Living Earth " was 

 delivered by Dr. G. Vivian Poore, President of the Section for 

 Sanitary Science and Preventive Medicine. Mr. W. H, Preece 

 lectured on Tuesday evening on the sanitary aspects of electric 

 lighting. 



The new number of the Journal of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society contains a full and interesting report of the Daffodil 

 Conference held at Chiswick in April last. The Conference 

 lasted two days, and on the first day the chair was taken by 

 Prof. Michael Foster, who, in the course of his opening address, 

 offered some remarks on the naming of different forms of the 

 daffodil. He urged that new names should be given only to 

 forms which can be readily recognized as distinct by ordinary 

 people, and are more beautiful than, or differ in beauty from, 

 their forerunners. A new name should also, he thought, be, if 

 possible, one that can be easily written, and easily read, and 

 that "can be spoken, if not easily, at least without great effort." 

 Mr, J. G. Baker, who presided on the second day, said that 

 twenty years ago very few people took any interest in daffodils, 

 but now the daffodil shared with the primrose the honour of 

 being the most popular flower of the spring-time. " The genus," 

 he added, "is of great interest from a botanical point of view. 

 We are obliged as botanists to deal with all plants on one uniform 

 plan as regards arrangement and nomenclature. From that 

 point of view we look upon Narcissus pseudo-narcissus as a single 

 aggregs-te species, and, comprised within this, there are in 

 gardens about 200 forms. In the whole genus we have only 

 about twelve or sixteen distinct species in this sense. The 

 greatest change at the present time is the raising of forms from 

 species or varieties not known to hybridize before, and it is 

 wonderful that all the Narcissi cross so freely, many of them — 

 as, for instance, N, pseudo-narcissus and N. poeticus — being so 

 distinct from each other in form." 



The Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science 

 has published a volume containing a report of its first meeting, 

 held at Sydney, New South Wales, in August and September 

 1888. The editors are Prof. A. Liversidge, F.R.S., and Prof. 

 R. Etheridge, Jun. The volume includes many valuable 

 addresses and papers, and is well illustrated. 



The death is announced of Dr. Felix Liebrecht, an early and 

 highly successful student of folk-lore and comparative mythology. 



