MARCH 7, 1907 | 
NATURE 
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amount of precipitation depend upon the moon’s 
nodes. These cycles are shown very distinctly over 
the few years that he was able to bring under dis- 
cussion, but his explanation has not been generally 
accepted. This is a small matter in comparison 
with the value of the information which he was able 
to furnish, and which has contributed in no small 
degree to the prosperity of the colony. This collec- 
tion of observations will be of the greatest service 
in subsequent inquiries. 
Mr. Russell has left a character for industry and 
closeness of application that cannot but prove stimu- 
lating to future astronomers in the southern hemi- 
sphere. He was much esteemed by many friends in 
this country, who regretted his retirement from the 
observatory; and besides being a Fellow of the Royal 
Society, to which he was elected in 1886, he was a 
member of many learned bodies, :and was well known 
as a contributor of frequent and welcome papers. 
W aE -P. 
DR. ALLAN ‘'MACFADYEN. 
ACTERIOLOGICAL science in England has 
sustained a great loss by the early death of Dr. 
Allan Macfadyen, who passed away on March 1, a 
martyr to that science he loved so well and to which 
he had devoted his best days, his last illness being 
caused by accidental infection in the laboratory. 
Dr. Macfadyen was a distinguished graduate of 
Edinburgh University, and subsequently studied at 
Bern, Gottingen, and Munich. One of his earliest 
investigations was on the behaviour of the bacteria 
in the digestive tract, in which he proved that the 
gastric juice and intestinal secretions protect but 
little against the invasion of pathogenic microbes. 
This was soon followed by a joint paper, with Prof. 
Nencki and Dr. Sieber, on the chemical processes 
occurring in the small intestine of man, in which 
the intestinal contents were examined and the exact 
chemical changes produced by several intestinal 
microorganisms in pure cultures were studied. With 
Sir Lauder Brunton, an investigation of the ferment 
action of bacteria was contributed to the Proceedings 
of the Royal Society, and his chemical bent was 
further shown by a paper on the action of bacteria 
on albumins and peptones, which appeared in the 
Reports of the Local Government Board. 
thermophilic bacteria, organisms which thrive at high 
temperatures, attracted his attention, and with Dr. 
Blaxall he carried out an investigation on them in 
which, almost for the first time, a number of species 
were differentiated and their action studied. With 
Dr. Harden, Mr. Rowland, and the late Dr. Morris, 
researches were conducted on the nature of the yeast 
zymase of Buchner, and the phosphorescent bacteria 
and problems of disinfection were other subjects in 
which he made additions to our knowledge. 
Dr. Macfadyen was early inspired with the idea of 
the paramount importance of the contents and ex- 
tracts of the unit of life—the cell—and the happy 
culmination of Sir James Dewar’s researches on low 
temperatures gave him an unlooked-for means of 
obtaining these in a comparatively unaltered state. 
He showed that the low temperatures of liquid air 
and of liquid hydrogen had little or no effect on either 
the vitality or the functions of microorganisms. 
With Mr. Rowland he attacked the problem of grind- 
ing up bacteria with liquid air, and by a number of 
ingenious devices he finally succeeded in obtaining 
the juices of bacteria in sufficient quantity for in- 
vestigating their characters. The comparative failure 
of attempts to produce therapeutic sera for such 
diseases as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, cholera, pneu- 
NO. 1949, VOL. 75] 
The | 
monia, &c., the organisms of which produce little or 
no extra-cellular toxins, suggested that the juices of 
these organisms, the ‘‘ endotoxins,’? obtained by 
liquid-air grinding, might be used for immunising. 
He showed successively that the :virulence of an 
organism varied directly with the amount of endo- 
toxin that could be obtained from it, that an animal 
might be immunised by means of these endotoxins, 
and that the serum of such an animal possessed 
immunising and curative properties. 
The application of these principles to the typhoid 
bacillus, cholera vibrio, pneumococcus, and _ hog- 
cholera bacillus was described in a series of papers. 
Latterly, the application of the results to the treat- 
ment of human disease occupied Dr. Macfadyen’s 
attention with encouraging prospects, and it is a 
tragic circumstance that he should be cut off just as 
his life-work seemed to be nearing completion. 
As secretary and head of the Bacteriological De- 
partment of the British, Jenner, and Lister Institute 
of Preventive Medicine, as it was successively named, 
Dr. Macfadyen had a large share in the organisation 
of the institute at Chelsea, and much of the bacterio- 
logical work that emanated from there was inspired 
by him. As Fullerian professor of physiology at the 
Royal Institution, 1g01—4, his courses of lectures on 
the cell, antitoxins, physiology of digestion, and other 
subjects made him known to a wide circle. 
een, ARS el 
NOTES. 
Tue following candidates were selected on Thursday last 
by the council of the Royal Society to be recommended 
for election into the society:—Frank Dawson Adams, 
Hugh Kerr Anderson, William Blaxland Benham, Lord 
Blythswood, William Henry Bragg, Frederick Daniel 
Chattaway, Arthur William Crossley, Arthur Robertson 
Cushny, William Duddell, Frederick William Gamble, 
John Ernest Petavel, Henry Cabourn Pocklington, Henry 
Nicholas Ridley, Grafton Elliot Smith, and William Henry 
Young. 
Pror. W. A. TiLpen, F.R.S., has been elected a member 
of the Atheneum Club under the provisions of the rule 
of the club which empowers the annual election by the 
committee of three persons ‘‘ of distinguished eminence in 
science, literature, the arts, or for public services.”’ 
A DEPUTATION representing the Anthropological Institute, 
the British Science Guild, and other scientific bodies, 
waited upon the Prime Minister on Tuesday to urge the 
establishment of a national anthropometric survey. Mr. 
R. C. Lehmann, M.P., who introduced the deputation, 
said that, in the first instance, the survey should have 
for its obiect the periodic measurement of children and 
young people in schools and factories. Besides this, a 
comprehensive survey of the general population of the 
whole country should be undertaken. The sum asked for 
is 4o0ol. or 5000]. The need for such a survey was de- 
scribed by Dr. D. J. Cunningham, Mr. J. Gray, Dr. Gow, 
Sir Lauder Brunton, and Dr. A. C. Haddon. In his reply 
to the deputation, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman con- 
fessed that he has been much impressed by the arguments 
adduced as to the great lack that there is in this country 
of knowledge of the quality of the population. It 
obviously desirable to have a record of the kind proposed 
in order to be able to study the changes in the condition 
of the people at large as a guide to action in administra- 
tion and in legislation regarding it. Any test applied to 
the condition of the inhabitants of any district is a test 
of their surroundings, of the mode in which they live 
is 
