544 



NA TV RE 



[April 5, 1500 



NOTES. 



The Antarctic expedition equipped and sent out by Sir 

 George Newnes in August 1898, under the direction of Mr. 

 Borchgrevink, has safely returned. The following cablegram, 

 sent from the Bluff, Campbelltown, which is one of the 

 southernmost ports on the south coast of the South Island of 

 New Zealand, has been received by Sir George Newnes from 

 Mr. Borchgrevink : — " Object of Expedition carried out. 

 Furthest south with sledge ; record, 78 '50. Present position of 

 South Magnetic Pole located. Zoologist Nicolai Hanson dead. 

 Southern Cross safely at Stewart Island. Leaving for Hobart, 

 All well. Borchgrevink." The expedition has thus been a 

 very successful one so far as geographical results are concerned, 

 and we trust that its success may be taken as an earnest of what 

 will be accomplished by the expeditions which depart next year. 

 The highest latitude reached by Ross, in 1842, was 78° 10' S., 

 this being the latitude at which his ships met with the great ice 

 barrier. Mr. Borchgrevink has gone further than this, and he 

 must have made a long journey by land to have reached 

 lat. 78° 50' S. It will be interesting to know the position of 

 the magnetic pole located during the expedition. From the 

 observations made during Ross's expedition it has been inferred 

 that a magnetic pole is situated in lat. 73° 5' S., and long. 

 147° 5' E. This places the real southern magnetic pole not far 

 from the position assigned to it by the calculations of Gauss, 

 viz. lat. 72^ 35' S. and 152° 30' E. Since Ross's expedition, how- 

 ever, nearly sixty years have passed, and it will be interesting 

 to compare Mr. Borchgrevink's determination of the present 

 position of the magnetic pole with that deduced by Ross, and 

 that predicted from theoretical considerations. While upon the 

 subject of Antarctic exploration, it is noteworthy that Prof. 

 J. W. Gregory, who has succeeded the late Sir Frederick M'Coy 

 as professor of geology at Melbourne, has been appointed 

 director of the scientific staff of the British Antarctic expedition 

 to start next year. The Scottish expedition referred to last 

 week (p. 518) is to be a private expedition organised by Mr. 

 W. S. Bruce, and will not be officially connected with the 

 Royal Scottish Geographical Society. 



The Paris correspondent of the Times announces the death, 

 after a long illness, of M. Joseph Bertrand, the eminent 

 mathematician. 



We regret to record that Dr. St. George Mivart, F.R.S., the 

 distinguished biologist, died on April i, at the age of seventy- 

 three. 



At yesterday's meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects, 

 the gold medal of the Institution was presented to Mr. J. Bruhn, 

 and the premium to Prof. W. E. Dalby. 



At a recent meeting of the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, the Rumford medal was presented to Mr. C. F. 

 Brush for his electrical work. 



Prof. P, Tacchini has resigned the directorship of che 

 Royal Italian Bureau of Meteorology and Geodesy after forty 

 years of service. Prof. Luigi Palazzo has been appointed 

 temporary director. 



Sir William T. Gairdner, F.R.S., professor of medicine 

 in the University of Glasgow, has resigned his chair because he 

 feels unequal to the task of the enormous amount of reading 

 necessitated by the professorship in order to keep in touch with 

 the developments of medical science, and also because he wished 

 to give way to "a younger pair of eyes, and perhaps a younger 

 brain as well." 



A Pasteur institute was opened at Antananarivo, the capital 

 of Madagascar, on Friday last. 



NO. 1588, VOL. 61] 



The Actonian Prize of 100 guineas has been awarded by the 

 Royal Institution to Sir William and Lady Huggins for the! 

 work, " An Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra." 



The celebration of the jubilee of the Royal Meteorol o^ic.il 

 Society began on Tuesday with an afternoon meeting, held in 

 the Institution of Civil Engineers, with Dr. C. Theodore 

 Williams, the president, in the chair. The president read an 

 interesting paper on the history of the society, written by the late 

 Mr. G. J. Symons. In the evening the Fellows and their 

 friends attended a conversazione held in the galleries of the 

 Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. 



Prof. H. G. Seeley, F.R.S., sends the following particulars 

 from a communication received by him from Dr. Corstorphine. 

 While Messrs. Rogers and Schwarz, of the Geological Survey 

 of Cape Colony, were examining the Uitenhage or Sundays 

 River beds, which are of Middle or Lower Jurassic age, Mr. 

 Schwarz came upon the skeleton of a small Plesiosaurian about 

 four feet long. The remains include the head showing the 

 snout and palate, and the lower jaw. The teeth are in sockets, 

 as usual, with fluted conical crowns and a cylindrical base. The 

 largest teeth are in front. Thirty-eight vertebrae were col- 

 lected, and one of the limb-girdles, regarded as that of the fore 

 limb. The greater part of the flat, paddle-shaped hand is pre- 

 served. With this fossil were found Astarte browni, large 

 Trigonias and Olcostephamis atherstoni. 



We regret to see in Science the announcement of the death, 

 at her home in New York City, of Miss Catherine Wolfe Bruce, 

 who made generous gifts for the advancement of astronomy to 

 Harvard University, Columbia University and other insti- 

 tutions. 



Many naturalists and archaeologists will regret to see the 

 announcement of the death of Canon J. C. Atkinson, on March 

 31, within a few weeks of completing his 86th year. His well- 

 known volume, " Forty Years in a Moorland Parish," published 

 in 1 89 1, was at once recognised as a work of permanent value, 

 worthy of a place beside the immortal " Natural History of 

 Selborne." Indeed, Canon Atkinson had many points in 

 common with Gilbert White, being a keen naturalist and sports- 

 man, as well as a highly-trained antiquary and philologist. 

 Many generations of school- boys have derived their first interest 

 in country matters from his still popular book on " British 

 Birds and their Nests " and the contemporary volumes, " Walks 

 and Talks " and " Play-hours and Half-Holidays," all of which 

 are still in circulation. 



A FEWr particulars of the career of M. Samson Jordan, the 

 distinguished French engineer and metallurgist, whose death we 

 referred to last week, are given in the Times. He was born in 

 Geneva in 183 1. In 1855 he constructed the Saint-Louis blast 

 furnaces, near Marseilles, of which works he was for some years 

 engineer and afterwards a director. These blast furnaces were 

 the first in France built for the purpose of smelting the pure, 

 rich iron ores from Elba, Spain and Algeria, with coke as a fuel. 

 To M. Jordan is due the introduction into France of iron and 

 manganese ores from Spain and from the Mediterranean coast, 

 as is also the manufacture of a special quality of cast iron. In 

 1862 M. Jordan removed to Paris, where he continued his 

 professional work, and in 1865 he was appointed professor of 

 metallurgy at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, of 

 which he was a former pupil. This appointment he held at the 

 time of his death. M. Jordan in numerous ways promoted the 

 advancement of the iron and steel industries in France. He 

 was the author of several valuable metallurgical treatises. In 

 1874 he was elected President of the Societe des Ingenieurs 

 Civils de France, and an honorary member of the Society of 



