396 



NA TURE 



[February 22. 1900 



tradition, has been left chiefly to the energy of private enter- 

 prise. King's College will, without question, be one of the 

 great teaching centres of the new London University. It 

 requires at this moment, to enable it to carry out that great 

 function, the assistance of the public to supply it with adequate 

 scientific accommodation, especially, I am informed, in the 

 matter of bacteriological and physiological laboratories and 

 lecture-rooms ; and it may be a matter of some consolation to 

 those who take little interest in scientific matters, unless they 

 can see their immediate application, that both bacteriology and 

 physiology have a most immediate and direct bearing upon the 

 life and happiness of mankind. In both branches of study 

 King's College has proved itself rich in teachers of eminence. 

 I am not going to discuss — it would be almost impertinent of 

 me even to touch upon — the enormous interests bound up with 

 the successful prosecution of these two great branches of 

 research ; but I may, perhaps, remind you of the enormous 

 practical importance to us, of all people in the world, 

 of some of the more recent researches in bacteriology. 

 Bacteria are a very humble class of organisms, very unjustly 

 abused, as far as I can discover, by ordinary public opinion, in 

 which they suffer, as other classes sufi'er, by having among them 

 a certain number of black sheep ; but for the most part they are 

 not only innocent, but most useful allies to industry, and almost 

 necessary co-operators in some of those great functions which 

 have to be discharged if the health of great cities is to be 

 maintained. But, apart from that, no doubt our chief interest 

 in them lies in the pathogenic members of the group, and we, 

 of all people in the world, are especially interested in treating 

 of those forms of tropical disease which they have produced, 

 since we are engaged in maintaining a number of our population 

 in countries where the diseases born of these bacteria are the 

 greatest scourges. It is, perhaps, to a distinguished professor 

 of King's College more than to any other man in this country 

 that we owe some of the most useful discoveries in these matters. 

 As the last speaker called attention to Mr. Chamberlain's great 

 work in drawing together the bonds of Empire and knitting in 

 closer unity the various elements that make up that Empire, so 

 I may be permitted, in the wholly different subject with which 

 I have to deal to-night, to remind you that he, as Secretary of 

 the Colonies, has done his best to encourage these bacterio- 

 logical investigations of which I, at all events, entertain such 

 great hopes that science will soon be able to combat, by its dis- 

 coveries, the inherent difficulties which have hitherto so greatly 

 militated against Europeans in the tropical climates of the 

 world. 



WilAT LONDON SHOULD DO. 

 I do not know that it is necessary for me at greater length to 

 impress upon you the theme which has been committed to my 

 charge ; but I confess I cannot conclude without admitting that 

 I think this great city has been somewhat remiss in the support 

 which it has hitherto given to scientific investigation in the 

 commercial metropolis of the world. Technical education, if I may 

 revert for an instant to that subject, has in it almost necessarily 

 some element of competition. We hear it said Germany is 

 doing this, France is doing that, some other country is doing 

 the other, unless you keep abreast of them in your methods of 

 education you will fall behind them in your industrial enter- 

 prises. That is a very proper argument ; it is a very patriotic 

 argument ; it is an argument I myself have used before and 

 shall use again ; it is an argument I should think myself justified 

 in using ; but I am appeaHng to you on behalf of a case which 

 has in it none of this element, this inferior and lower element, 

 of competition whatever. Every scientific discovery, whereso- 

 ever it be made, be it made in Berlin, Paris, London, New 

 York, Vienna, as soon as it is made is the common property of 

 every man of science. Nations may erect against each other 

 some barrier of tariffs, they may engage in some absurd rivalry 

 animated by I know not what sort of suicidal policy ; but men 

 of science wherever they live, to whatever nation they belong, 

 have a cause common to humanity at large, which knows no 

 provincial boundaries, which is not interfered with by any 

 sectional rivalries. To that great common fund of knowledge, 

 the basis after all of your civilisation as it is, the basis after all 

 of the industrial progress you propose to make, I think London 

 should contribute its full share. London takes a well-earned 

 tribute from every discovery made throughout the world for the 

 advancement of civilisation ; from all these some section of 

 London gels the benefit. Let those who are dwellers in London 

 feel that they have some obligation to the world at large cor- 



NO. 1582, VOL 61] 



responding to the great, the international position we occupy. 

 Let us do what we can as a community to further that investiga- 

 tion into the secrets of nature, that storming of the citadels of 

 natural knowledge in which all civilised men are, and ought to 

 be, co-operators. Let it not be that, while there are great 

 centres of scientific teaching in every other great metropolis, 

 we have allowed ours for one moment to fall behind in the 

 race. 



GENERAL A. A. TILLO. 



GENERAL A. A. TILLO, Vice-President of the 

 Russian Geographical Society, who died at St. 

 Petersburg on January ii, was the founder of an exact 

 physical geography of Russia, based on correct scientific 

 data. He was born in 1839, and received his education 

 in the Constantine Military School, from which he was 

 promoted officer in 1859. He completed next his educa- 

 tion by passing through two military academies, artillery 

 and General Stafif, and worked for two years at Pulkova 

 in the Geodetic Department of this last academy. In 

 the years 1879-82, in his capacity as educator of one of 

 theRussian.Grand-Dukes, he followed lectures on mathe- 

 matics in different West European universities, as also 

 a full course of Law at the University of Strasburg. He 

 began geographical work as the head of the surveys of 

 the Orenburg region, by publishing a catalogue of lati- 

 tudes and longitudes determined in that region, followed 

 by a study of the distribution of magnetical elements, and 

 by a description of the levelling made between the 

 Caspian Sea and Lake Aral. His next works were "On 

 the Byelgorod Magnetic Anomaly," " On the Present 

 Condition of the Science of Terrestrial Magnetism," and 

 " On the Yearly Amplitudes of Variations of Level in the 

 Lakes of Russia," " On the Average .Altitudes of the 

 Continents in Both Hemispheres." Settling some five- 

 and-twenty years ago at St. Petersburg, he began to 

 work out in a most systematic way the different portions 

 of a general physical geography of Russia. The sur- 

 faces of different parts of the empire having already been 

 calculated by Strelbitzky, General Tillo measured first, 

 with a very great accuracy, the lengths of the rivers of 

 the Russian Empire, their gradients, and the surfaces of 

 their basins, thus correcting many erroneous statements 

 of his predecessors. Then, he worked for years in col- 

 lecting all documents relative to the altitudes of European 

 Russia, and finally published in 1889 his most remark- 

 able hypsometric map of European Russia, on a scale of 

 40 miles to an inch, followed seven years later by the same 

 improved^ map on a still larger scale (27 miles to an 

 inch), in four sheets. This map, by showing the exist- 

 ence of three great depressions amidst the swelling of 

 Middle Russia, completely altered the hitherto current 

 conceptions as to the orography of European Russia. 

 His next work was a most elaborate atlas of isobars in 

 Russia and Asia altogether, and it was followed by still 

 more elaborate works on the distribution of magnetic 

 elements on the surface of the earth, " Variation s^cu- 

 laire et ^phdmerides du Magnetisme terrestre," " Loi de 

 la Distribution du Magnetisme moyen a la Surface du 

 Globe," "Atlas des Isanoinales et des Variations s^cu- 

 laires," and "Tables fondamentales du Magnetisme 

 terrestre," which won for Tillo a wide European repu- 

 tation. His smaller contributions to the publications of 

 the Russian Geographical Society were countless. He 

 was a member of both the St. Petersburg and the Paris 

 .A.cademies of Sciences. His extreme modesty and 

 willingness to undertake any amount of calculations to 

 work out the results of observations made by explorers in 

 Asia, made of him one of the most sympathetic figures 

 in the Russian Geographical Society, in which he pre- 

 sided over the Physical Geography Section. A pamphlet 

 containing an obituary notice of General Tillo, and a full 

 list of his works, has just been published by this Society. 



