6i6 



NATURE 



[October 23, 1890 



ethereal salts by reacting upon them with the haloid 



N 

 ethers. The phenyl salt thus prepared, CgHsNY |1 , is in 



e^'cry way identical with the diazobenzene imide, so long 

 ago prepared by Griess. 



A. E. TUTTON, 



PROF. S. A, HILL, 



THE last Indian mail of September brings us the sad 

 news of the death of Prof. S. A. Hill, one of the 

 best-known of that small band of scientific workers, to 

 whom we owe our present knowledge of Indian meteoro- 

 logy. He has been struck down suddenly, in the full 

 maturity of his powers, and in the prime of life, after a 

 few days' illness which gave no reason to anticipate so 

 fatal a result. The son of a clergyman in the north of 

 Ireland, Mr, Hill, after studying in the London School 

 of Mines, and taking the degree of Bachelor of 

 Science in the London University, was appointed, 

 in 1876, to the Professorship of Physical Science 

 in the Muir College, Allahabad, and, shortly after 

 his arrival in India, received the additional appoint- 

 ment of Meteorological Reporter to the Government of 

 the North-West Provinces, in succession to Mr. John 

 Eliot, now the head of the Meteorological Department of 

 the Government of India. In these combined offices, 

 Prof. Hill has laboured for nearly fifteen years. In such 

 spare hours as he could dispose of amid the exacting 

 duties of his educational appointment and the adminis- 

 trative work of his office, in a climate which is but little 

 favourable to mental or physical exertion, he devoted 

 himself assiduously to those original investigations which 

 have made his name familiar to the meteorologists of 

 Europe and America. On subjects dealing with ques- 

 tions of terrestrial physics, he published numerous papers 

 of high value and much originality in the Indian Meteoro- 

 logical Memoirs, the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal, the Austrian Zeitschrift fiir Meteorologie, and 

 the Meteorologische Zeitschrift j and an elaborate me- 

 moir on some anomalies in the winds of Northern India, 

 in the 178th volume of the Philosophical Transactions. 

 In this memoir he boldly endeavoured to map out the 

 distribution of atmospheric pressure over India, at a 

 height of 10,000 feet above sea-level, and showed how 

 this distribution, differing greatly from that at the earth's 

 surface, explains much that is otherwise anomalous in 

 the winds experienced at the lower level, and especially 

 the dry land-winds which play so conspicuous, and oc- 

 casionally disastrous, a role in the meteorology of India. 

 To the pages of this journal he was also a not infrequent 

 contributor. 



Having regard to Prof. Hill's high powers and his 

 single-minded devotion to the work, of whatever kind, 

 that lay before him, it is somewhat sad to read the 

 following passage in an obituary notice in the Allahabad 

 Pioneer, evidently written by one who knew him well. 

 It need hardly be said that the Government referred to is 

 that of the North- West Provinces and Oudh ; not that of 

 India, nor of Bengal, the relations of which to their 

 scientific officers are known to be of a very different 

 character. The writer says : — " Many of our readers who 

 will recall their late friend's clear and accurate mind, his 

 knowledge and his powers of application, will feel with a 

 sense of bitterness that men of his capacity are not meant 

 for the service of a Government, which is not only always 

 ready to pass them over for a joint-magistrate who has 

 been unlucky in his promotion, but will maintain that 

 the latter is the best man. Mr. Hill was, officially speak- 

 ing, the most unfortunate man of an unfortunate service 

 [the educational service of the North- West Provinces] ; 



NO. 1095, VOL. 42] 



but, no doubt because he had a talisman always with him 

 in his devotion to science, he was never embittered by 

 his ill-luck. With none of the eccentricities of a disciple 

 of science, but with all the modesty and virtue of that 

 character, he will pass away from us respected by all, 

 and much more than respected by all those who were 

 privileged to know him with intimacy." 



H. F. B. 



JOHN HANCOCK. 



A T the venerable age of eighty-four years this well- 

 -^"^ known British naturalist has passed away, and it 

 would be an injustice to his memory not to recall in these 

 pages the effect of his life-work on the zoology of this 

 country. He seems to have inherited his natural history 

 tastes from his father, who was in business in Newcastle 

 in the early part of the century, but was apparently 

 devoted to natural history pursuits ; and, in company 

 with other kindred spirits, was intent on working up the 

 natural history of Newcastle and the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood. Unfortunately the father died at the early age 

 of forty-three, in September 1812, leaving a widow and 

 six children, of whom^ the eldest was only eight years of 

 age. Mrs. Hancock,' however, carefully preserved the 

 collections which her husband had formed, and it was 

 doubtless due to her affectionate interest that three of her 

 children— Albany, John, and Mary— pursued the study of 

 natural historywith such success. The subject of this notice, 

 John Hancock, seems to have turned his attention to ornitho- 

 logy in particular, and as early as 1826 he commenced 

 the study of the artistic mounting of animals, which, as 

 Mr. Bowdler Sharpe has said, has made John Hancock's 

 name a password wherever the art of taxidermy is men- 

 tioned. Those who remember the celebrated groups of 

 mounted animals which Mr. Hancock sent to the Great 

 Exhibition of 1851, will testify to the revulsion of feeling 

 which his beautiful work created, and every real naturalist 

 felt in his heart that in this way alone could art and 

 nature be combined in a Museum, and the public pro- 

 perly instructed in a due realization of the beauty and 

 symmetry of form which animals possess in nature — 

 beauties which are not reproduced in a Museum gallery 

 once in a hundred times. That Hancock's influence 

 should have been so little felt by the authorities of 

 the British Museum is a reflection upon the officers 

 of this institution, who ought to have utilized the 

 genius of their countryman in making the collection 

 of British animals in the National Museum a model 

 for all nations to envy and copy. Anyone who knew 

 John Hancock, his untiring energy and his unas- 

 suming amiability, will vouciti for the fact that, if the 

 British Museum had wished to have a collection of 

 native birds naturally mounted, and worthy of this in- 

 stitution, he would have been only too delighted to 

 aid in the achievement of such a task. As it is, the 

 Museum of his native town, which really seems to have 

 appreciated his genius, possesses a collection of birds of 

 which any nation might be proud, and now that he is 

 gone, those Museums (like the one at Leicester, for in- 

 stance) which have series of birds mounted by this true 

 lover and cotmoisseur of birds in nature, are to be con- 

 gratulated. Of late years it is true that our National 

 Museum has trodden the path indicated by Hancock, 

 and a vast improvement in its taxidermy has been the 

 result ; but it will be a long time before any Museum can 

 show such a beautiful series of birds as that which John 

 Hancock has mounted for the Museum of his native 

 town. An excellent biography of this esteemed naturalist ; 

 has been published in the Newcastle Daily Chrofticle aij ; 

 October 13. 



