NATURE 
[APRIL 2, 1914 
116 
adopted by Prof. Minchin consisted of two 
selenium-coated aluminium wires dipping into 
certain solutions. His ‘* Seleno-aluminium 
Bridges,” described in a paper to the Royal 
Society in May, 1908, consisted of two plates of 
aluminium separated by a very thin flake of mica 
and having a thin layer of sensitive (or conducting) 
selenium spread across one edge of the mica and 
the two adjacent portions of the aluminium plates. 
This further development of his photo-electric 
work was carried out in the electrical laboratory 
at Oxtond: 
Prof. Minchin’s application of selenium cells to 
the measurement of starlight was a notable ex- 
tension of his experiments. In 1894, in conjunc- 
tion with Mr. W. E. Wilson, he used his cells to 
obtain measurable electro-motive forces from the 
light of planets and stars; and he was thus able 
to determine the relative intensities of the light of 
Jupiter, Venus and Sirius. Shortly afterwards, 
an improvement in the construction of the cells 
enabled measurements to be made of the E.M.F.’s 
of the light of Vega, Arcturus, Regulus, Procyon 
and other stars. A comparison of the results 
obtained by photo-electric measures with those of 
photometric measures of stellar magnitude showed 
close conformity. 
Prof. Minchin was an M.A. of Dublin and a 
member of Queen’s College, Oxford. He was 
elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1895, and 
his many friends within the society and without 
join with the widow and his» two children in sym- 
pathetic sorrow that the finger of death has 
touched one who was so rich in the physical and 
intellectual attributes of life. 
NOTES. 
WE announce with deep regret the death on March 
30, in his sixty-second year, of Prof. J. H. Poynting, 
F.R.S., professor of physics in the University of 
Birmingham. 
PRINCE ARTHUR OF CONNAUGHT has been elected a 
fellow of the Royal Society, under the statute which 
provides for the election of Princes of the Blood Royal. 
WE record with regret the announcement of the 
death on March 30, in his sixty-fifth year, of the 
Hon. Rollo Russell, author of a number of works on 
meteorology and other scientific subjects. 
Tue death is announced, at eighty-one years of age, 
of Mr. G. Sharman, for more than forty years 
paleontologist to H.M. Geological Survey at the Geo- 
logical Museum, Jermyn Street, London. 
A HANDSOME brass tablet to the memory of Captain 
Scott and the southern party of the British Antarctic 
Expedition was unveiled at St. George’s Chapel Royal, 
Naval Barracks, Chatham, on March 29, by Admiral 
Sir Richard Poore, Commander-in-Chief at the Nore, 
and dedicated by Archdeacon H. S. Wood, Chaplain 
of the Fleet. 
Dr. C. H. Brownine has been appointed first 
director of the new Institute of Pathology of the 
NO. 23198; VOL: 63] 
Middlesex Hospital, which has been erected as the 
gift of Sir J. Bland-Sutton at a cost of between 
15,0001. and: 20,0001. Dr. Browning is at present 
director of the clinical research laboratories in con- 
nection with the University of Glasgow. 
A STRONG committee, with the Speaker as president, 
has been formed in Cumberland, according to the 
Times of March 27, with the object of affording pro- 
tection to the local fauna. Wherever possible tracts 
of natural ground will be set apart as ‘reserves, one 
such tract, Kingmoor, near Carlisle, having been 
already secured. A ‘‘watchers’ fund,” to provide 
keepers for such reserves, is being formed, and a close 
watch is to be kept on nesting ravens, peregrines, and 
buzzards throughout the county. 
In the Times of March 27 attention is directed to 
the lateness of the arrival in this country of spring 
migratory birds. This lateness is specially notable in 
regard to a great spring flight of immigrants from 
Central Europe, which, as recorded by a Norfolk 
correspondent in the same journal a few days pre- 
viously, reached Yarmouth on March 11. In normal 
seasons such flights are usually over by the beginning 
of the month. A partial explanation may be found 
in the great drop in temperature which occurred on 
the Continent between March to and March 11, when 
there was a fall of 13° in the minimum. 
Tue President of the Local Government Board has 
authorised the following special researches to be paid 
for out of the annual grant in aid of scientific inves- 
tigations concerning the causes and _ processes of 
disease :—(1) An investigation by Dr. Eardley Holland 
into the causes of still-births; (2) a continuation of the 
Board’s inquiry into the cellular contents of milk, by 
Prof. Sims Woodhead; (3) a continuation of the 
Board’s inquiry into the causes of premature arterial 
degeneration, by Dr. F. W. Andrewes; (4) an inves- 
tigation by Dr. M. H. Gordon and Dr. A. E. Gow 
into the etiology of epidemic diarrhoea in children. 
Announcement of further investigations will be made 
at a later date. 
A wisH has been expressed in many quarters that 
the distinguished services which Prof. Charles Lap- 
worth, F.R.S., has rendered to geology should be 
commemorated in some permanent manner. The 
council of the Vesey Club, Sutton Coalfield, of which 
Prof. Lapworth has been a vice-president for more 
than twenty-five years, proposes to make a donation 
from the funds of the club towards such a memorial, 
and to enable members of the club who desire to be 
identified personally with the project to participate 
also, a small committee has been appointed to collect 
subscriptions. The amount subscribed by members 
will be handed over in one sum with a list of names 
only of subscribers. Donations may be sent to Mr. 
H. H. Sherwood, tog Colmore Row, Birmingham. 
In honour of the memory of the late Henri Poin- 
caré, and in order that his name may be associated 
with a fund for the encouragement of research in 
science, the president of the Institute of France, on 
behalf of the institute, is inaugurating an international 
