JuNE 18, 1914] 
too great to mention. He served during the cam- 
paign of 1866 and the war of 1870-71, and 
obtained the decoration of the iron cross. His 
death is a great loss to physiology, and will be felt 
as a personal sorrow by physiologists throughout 
the world. LAUDER BRUNTON. 
NOTES. 
WE regret to announce the death on June 6, at 
seventy-eight years of age, of Prof. Adolph Lieben, 
emeritus professor of general and pharmaceutical 
chemistry in the University of Vienna, and foreign 
member of the Chemical Society. 
Tue death is announced, in his seventy-first year, 
of Dr. Barclay V. Head, correspondant of the In- 
stitute of France, corresponding member of the Royal 
Prussian Academy of Sciences, and keeper of the 
Department of Coins and Medals at the British 
Museum in 1893-1906. 
PortsMOUTH has been selected as the place of meet- 
ing for the autumn conference of the Institute of 
Metals. The conference, which will be presided over 
by the president, Sir Henry J. Oram, K.C.B., F.R.S., 
will be held on Thursday, September 10, and Friday, 
September 11, in the Municipal College, a number of 
important papers being read each morning. 
THE annual June conversazione of the Royal Society 
was held at Burlington House on Tuesday. Most of 
the exhibits of apparatus and specimens were the same 
as were shown at the May conversazione, of which an 
account was given in Nature of May 21 (p. 304), and 
others have been described in our reports of the pro- 
ceedings of societies and academies, so that no further 
reference need be made to them here. 
Tue Aero Club of America has appointed a com- 
mittee of seventy, with Admiral Peary as its chair- 
man, to supervise the preparation of a map of the 
permanent air currents over the United States. The 
committee will begin by formulating rules for making - 
aerial observations at points to be agreed upon in 
various parts of the country. Local aero clubs will 
then make the observations by means of balloons and 
aeroplane flights. The committee will also prepare a 
topographical map _ indicating convenient landing 
places for airmea 
A SERIES of severe thunderstorms passed over the 
southern area of the metropolis on Sunday afternoon, 
June 14. The lightning was exceptionally severe and 
prolonged, and torrents of rain fell with much hail at 
times. Six persons, of whom four were children, were 
killed at about one o’clock, whilst sheltered under two 
different trees on Wandsworth Common, and several 
persons were injured, one of whom has since died. 
Many buildings were struck by lightning, and 
immense damage was sustained by,flooding due to the 
heavy rain. The damage was almost wholly limited 
to an area stretching from east to west, from Black- 
heath and Lewisham through Streatham and Wands- 
worth to Wimbledon and Kingston. At Streatham 
Hill thunder was first heard at 12.30 p.m., and the 
NO. 2329, VOL. 93] 
NAT ORE 
AII 
storms continued with more or less intensity until 
after 5 p.m. There were four distinct disturbances 
moving from east to west, and apparently subsidiary 
to the low-pressure area over France and Germany. 
The heaviest downpour of rain and hail occurred at 
Streatham Hill for a quarter of an hour, from 1.30 
p-m.; at 2 p.m. the rainfall measured 1-10 in., at 
4 p.m. an additional 0-45 in., and at 6 p.m. 0-05 in., 
giving an aggregate 1-60 in. At Wandsworth Common 
the rainfall by 3 p.m. measured 1-23 in., and at 
4.30 p.m. an additional 0-65 in. was measured, giving 
an aggregate 1:88 in. At Kew the rainfall was 
1-34 in., at Greenwich 0-32 in., South Kensington 
0:23 in., Westminster 0-16 in., Camden Square, 0-04 in., 
at Hampstead nil. 
Tue address upon the relation of science to the 
modern State, and the inadequate encouragement given 
to the scientific discoverer, delivered by Sir Ronald 
Ross at the annual meeting of the British Science 
Guild on May 22 has produced a valuable and interest- 
ing correspondence in the Morning Post during the 
past few weeks. Sir Ronald Ross’s main thesis was 
that however good the educational and laboratory 
opportunities may be, discoveries are not likely to be 
made so frequently if they impoverish the workers, or 
at least confer no benefits upon them, as is the case 
in Great Britain at present. He also pointed to the 
injustice of the treatment of scientific men by the 
State in accepting great services with little or no com- 
pensation, whereas for far less valuable services from 
other professional men high fees are paid. Readers of 
Nature know how persistently the claims of scientific 
investigation to adequate recognition have been urged 
in these columns, and that an article upon the subject 
appeared in our issue of June 4. The letters pub- 
lished in the Morning Post, most of them by well- 
known men of science, should be the means of making 
a large section of the general public acquainted with 
the poor prospects, measured by monetary standards 
or worldly success, offered by a career devoted to 
scientific research in comparison with those of pro- 
fessions which do not demand exceptional qualities 
of originality and genius. The State may not be able 
to select and endow a race of discoverers, and it 
cannot assess the ultimate value of a discovery, but 
what it can and should do is to see that the men and 
women who are contributing to the advancement of 
knowledge are given the most generous encourage- 
ment and the fullest opportunities of carrying on their 
work. 
AmonGst the terrible loss of life in the Empress of 
Ireland disaster in the St. Lawrence River recently 
there comes as a shock to all geologists and mining 
men interested in the occurrence of ore-deposits in the 
Archean crystalline rocks of Canada the loss of 
one who, for the past thirty years, took a most 
active part in the deciphering of the structure of the 
earth’s crust in the great crystalline areas of North 
America. In Dr. Barlow, Canada had the last court 
of appeal on the genesis of its ore-deposits. Trained 
first at home in Montreal, Barlow studied at McGill 
University under Sir William Dawson, Dr. Harring- 
ton, and other geologists, and was asked to join the 
