420 



NA rURE 



[March i, 1900 



the far more satisfactory and dignified method of appointment 

 by invitation is necessarily excluded. Nevertheless, it is con- 

 fidently hoped that Prof. Osier may be induced to send in a 

 formal application for the chair, since it is certain that his 

 claims would receive every consideration from the present 

 Board of Curators, who have more than once, on recent occa- 

 sions, shown that they are superior to merely local considera- 

 tions, and that they have regard in making thescappointments 

 solely to the best interests of the University. Prof. Osier is 

 a Canadian by birth, and although he has for many years 

 successively occupied the important chairs of medicine in Phila- 

 delphia and Baltimore, he has, we believe, never renounced 

 his British nationality. His appointment to Edinburgh, al- 

 though it would be felt as a serious loss by our kinsfolk on the 

 other side of the Atlantic, would doubtless be considered by 

 them, and especially by our Canadian fellow-subjects, as a 

 graceful recognition that we are one people bound together in 

 science, as in politics, by common interests, and that we are 

 prepared to welcome the best man from whichever side of the 

 water he may hail. Applications for the post, with testimonials, 

 must be lodged with Mr. R. Herbert Johnston, Secretary to 

 the Curators, at 66 Frederick Street, Edinburgh, on or before 

 April 14. 



The Bakerian Lecture of the Royal Society will be de- 

 livered, on March 8, by Prof. Tilden, F.R.S., on "The 

 Specific Heat of Metals, and the Relation of Specific Heat to 

 Atomic Weight." The Croonian Lecture will be delivered, on 

 March 22, by Prof. Paul Ehrlich, of Frankfurt-on-Main ; the 

 subject will be " Immunity, with especial reference to Cell 

 Life." 



Prof. Zittel, professor of pakeontology and geology in the 

 University of Munich, has been elected a correspondant of the 

 Paris Academy of Sciences in the section of mineralogy. Prof. 

 Pfeffer, professor of botany at Leipzig, has been elected a 

 correspondant in the section of botany. 



The Electrician states that the late Prof. D. E. Hughes has 

 bequeathed to the Paris Academy of Sciences a sum of 4000/., 

 the income of which is to be used as a prize for the most 

 important discovery in physical science, preference being given 

 to a discovery in electricity or magnetism. 



Pkof. C. Piazzi Smyth, for forty-two years Astronomer 

 Royal for Scotland, and professor of practical astronomy in the 

 University of Edinburgh, died on February 21, at the age of 

 eighty-one. 



The committee of the Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases 

 has decided to send out almost immediately another expedition 

 to West Africa. The expedition will make its headquarters in 

 Old Calabar, and carry on researches in Southern Nigeria. 



The Times states that Mr. Charles Whitehead, who has acted 

 as technical adviser to the Agricultural Department of the Privy 

 Council, and subsequently to the Board of Agriculture, during 

 the past fifteen years, has been compelled to resign that appoint- 

 ment owing to ill health. 



Dr. C. L. Griesbach, the Director of the Geological Survey 

 in India, has gone for a tour in the famine districts of the 

 Central Provinces, Bombay and Rajputana, with a view to 

 examining into the practicability of sinking artesian wells. 



A Bacteriological Institute for Ceylon, erected from 

 funds provided by Mr. J. W. Charles de Soysa, after the best 

 European models, was oflicially opened at the end of January. 

 The Director of the Institute will be Dr. Marcus Fernando, who 

 has personally superintended its construction. 

 KG. 1583, VOL. 61 I 



The Government of India have- added to Mr. John Eliot's 

 designation of " Meteorological Reporter to the Government 

 of India" the words "and Director-General of Indian Ob- 

 servatories." The meteorological office has been removed to a 

 house specially built for it. The address of the otiice will hence- 

 forth be — Alipore (Calcutta), Bengal, India. 



The Sugar Beet Committee of the Central Chamber of Agri- 

 culture have decided to make arrangements for a series of not 

 less than twenty experiments in the growth of sugar beet in 

 different parts of Great Britain and Ireland during the forth- 

 coming season, each experimental plot to be at least one acre 

 in extent. As, in certain cases, previous expsriments have demon- 

 strated the value of sugar beet for the feeding of stock, inde- 

 pendently of the value of the root for the manufacture of sugar, 

 this point will be specially kept in view in connection with the 

 proposed experiments of the present year. 



Mr. a. a, Campbell Swinton will give a lecture upon 

 "Steam Turbines, Land and Marine," at the Camera Club, on 

 Thursday, March 8. 



As the Royal Meteorological Society will attain its jubilee on 

 Tuesday, April 3, having been founded on April 3, 1850, it is 

 proposed to observe this fiftieth anniversary in a special manner. 

 The Council have arranged for a commemoration meeting on 

 that day, at which the President will deliver an address, and 

 delegates from other societies will be received. In the evening 

 a conversazione will be held at the Royal Institute of Painters 

 in Water-Colours. On the following day, April 4, the Fellows 

 will visit the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and in the evening 

 will dine together at the Westminster Palace Hotel. In view of 

 this Jubilee Celebration, Mr. G. J. Symons, F.R.S., was 

 elected President at the annual meeting of the Society on 

 January 17, but owing to illness he has since been obliged 

 to resign this office. In these circumstances the Council at 

 their last meeting appointed Dr. C. Theodore Williams as the 

 President of the Society. 



The awards of prizes by the Reale Istituto Lombardo for 

 the past year seem to indicate rather a lack of essays of real 

 merit. The "ordinary" prize offered by the Institution for the 

 best catalogue of remarkable meteorological phenomena prior 

 to 1800 was unawarded, but premiums of 400 lire have been 

 awarded to three of the competitors, and the judges consider 

 that the publication of the results arrived at conjointly by the 

 three would be of great value. Under the Cagnola foundation 

 five prizes were offered, and none awarded, the only award being 

 a premium of 1000 lire to the sole competitor who sent in an 

 essay on illustrations of Hertz's phenomena. On two of the 

 other subjects no essays were sent in, and on the other two the 

 essays were not of sufficient merit to justify an award. The 

 Pizzamiglio prize and the Ciani prize, for essays in political 

 science, and the Zanetti prize, for discoveries in pharmaceutical 

 chemistry, are all unawarded. The Fossati prize, for an essay 

 illustrative of the macro- and micro-scopic anatomy of the central 

 nervous system, has been conferred on Dr. Emilio Veratti. In 

 striking contrast to the paucity of competitors in subjects of a 

 more or less academical character is the keen competition for 

 the Brambilla prize, given "to one who has invented or intro- 

 duced into Lombardy some machine or some industrial process 

 from which the population may derive a real and proved 

 benefit." Seventeen competitors entered for this prize, the 

 awards including a gold medal and 500 lire each to Bianchi 

 and Dubini, for desiccators of silk-cocoons ; to Aurelio Masera, 

 for new processes connected with the textile industry ; and to 

 M. Rusconi, for developing the " Mercer" process in the cotton 

 industry. In addition, gold medals and 400 lire are awarded to 

 Carlo Carloni, for his invention of a mastic called magnesite, 



