514 
NATURE 
[ MakcH 2%, 1907 
behalf of the French Academy of Sciences, ‘‘ vous 
V’étendez en Ja généralisant.’’ But few men have 
united with the power to generalise such marvellous 
quickness and tenacity in working out detail. That 
quickness and tenacity may be estimated by the 
volume of his work. In his later life he had, of 
course, much help, but in his earlier years, when 
he often passed the night in the laboratory, he 
worked single-handed. Berthelot rejected until well 
into the ’nineties (as Bunsen did until his death) 
the use of the atomic notation, chiefly perhaps from 
a horror of the enthusiastic and somewhat uncritical 
faith of contemporaneous exponents of the atomic 
theory. 
In person Berthelot was short and slight, and with 
the stoop of the student. In lecturing he spoke 
rapidly and in a low voice, with no attempt at 
oratorical effect. But his fine, regular features and 
brilliant blue eyes left an impression not easily to be 
forgotten. Reserved and almost cold in manner, he 
cared for two things supremely, his work and _ his 
family. He survived the shock of his wife’s death, 
which took place on March 18, only by a few 
minutes. 
The French Parliament voted a public funeral; it 
took place on Monday in the Panthéon, where the 
remains of his wife rest beside his own. 
M. Berthelot left a daughter and four sons, of 
whom one, M. Daniel Berthelot, is well known for 
his researches in physical chemistry, and occupies a 
chair at the Ecole supérieure de pharmacie. 
P. J. Hartoc. 
NOTES. 
Men of science in this country will probably have to 
wait a long time before they will see the Government and 
the nation pay such a tribute to the greatness of one of 
their number as was witnessed in Paris on Monday, when 
the national funeral of M. and Mme. Berthelot took place 
at the Panthéon. Here politicians and people have little 
sympathy with intellectual greatness; and if M. Berthelot 
had lived in Great Britain instead of France death 
would have been mourned by the world of science, but the 
Government would certainly not have hastened to secure 
for him the honour of a national funeral, because our 
statesmen do not know the influence of scientific work 
on national character and progress; and to them men of 
science live in a world, far beyond the range of practical 
politics, where virtue finds its own reward. To understand 
the right spirit of appreciation of a great man of science we 
have to cross the Channel, and be present at a funeral like 
that of M. and Mme. Berthelot; for on such an occasion 
the French manifest incomparable qualities of organisation 
and tact. From the report of the Paris correspondent of 
the Times we learn that not since the funeral of Ernest 
Renan have the population of the capital been invited to join 
the authorities in such a solemn demonstration of mourn- 
ing for one of their great compatriots. Amid impressive 
surroundings all that is representative of the dignity of 
the State was assembled, from the President of the Re- 
public to the members of the several academies, the 
council of the Legion of Honour, the Ministers, the 
members of Parliament, and a host of the most eminent 
personalities of France. After a portion of Beethoven’s 
Symphony in C minor had been rendered, the Minister of 
Education, M. Briand, ascended a small platform erected 
near the academicians and read a funeral oration in which 
he worthily the illustrious dead. Berthelot’s 
attitude towards religious sentiment he accurately 
summarised terms of a formula borrowed from 
NO. 1952, VOL. 75 | 
his 
honoured 
the 
in the 
Renan—*‘ The real way of adoring God is to know and 
love what exists.’’ Respecting Berthelot as a savant, he 
dwelt particularly on his réle as a creator, the forerunner 
of more startling syntheses still. The great moral quality 
of the man, the natural consequence of his philosophical 
ideas, was tolerance. After the oration, the two coffins 
were carried to the peristyle of the Panthéon, where a 
monumental catafalque had been raised. A splendid 
military pageant followed, the troops defiling past the 
coffins to the strains of the ‘‘ Chant du Départ ’’ and “‘ Les 
Girondins,’’ while flags were lowered and swords raised 
in salutation of the dead. In the afternoon the public was 
allowed to visit the Panthéon, and in the evening the bodies 
were taken to the Panthéon vaults, where they occupy 
provisionally a place next to the remains of Victor Hugo. 
SCIENTIFIC will do well to watch the course of 
events connected with the subject of Mr. Haffkine’s pro- 
phylactic and the Mulkowal accident, referred to by Prof. 
Ross in last week’s NATURE, as it is important that labor- 
atories engaged in making prophylactics and sera shall 
not be lightly discredited on inadequate evidence—important 
not only for the laboratories, but for the public, which in 
its alarm is led to reject these valuable agents. In the 
House of Commons on March 20, Mr. Morley gave a 
cautious written reply to a question by Sir W. Collins on 
the subject. He stated that Mr. Haffkine is still in the 
employment of the Government of India, and has been 
offered ‘‘ employment in that country on research work 
at a salary equal to that of which he was in receipt when 
he left India.’’ But it is understood that Mr. Haffkine 
is holding out, not for the loaves and fishes of office, but 
for the vindication of himself, his laboratory, and his 
science from what appears to have been at least a very 
doubtful verdict. Mr. Morley also stated, somewhat too 
cautiously, that ‘* Dr. Haffline’s prophylactic continues to 
be one of the precautions which are recommended by 
Government to the general populations against outbreaks 
of plague. But this is quite an inadequate description of 
it. Mr. Morley appears to have overlooked the facts that 
in official statements other measures, such as segregation, 
disinfection, and evacuation, have been declared to be un- 
availing; that in the epidemic now raging in the United 
Province of Agra and Oudh, the Government of the province 
reported only last month (Bombay Gazette, February 18) 
to the effect that the prophylactic was the only measure 
affording real and substantial protection; and that in the 
Punjab alone, up to October, 1903, 1,327,075 people had 
been inoculated, with a declared reduction of mortality to 
about one-twelfth that occurring in the uninoculated 
(report on plague and inoculation in the Punjab by the 
chief plague medical officer, Lahore, 1904). But Mr. 
Morley may be trusted to see that justice (and, let us hope, 
something more) is done in ‘this case. 
Lorp Ketvin, O.M., has been nominated as president- 
elect of the Institution of Electrical Engineers for the 
session 1907-8, his term of office as president to begin ~ 
next November. Prof. J. J. YVhomson has been elected 
an honorary member of the institution. 
men 
ce 
” 
Lorp Avesury will preside at the annual soirée of the 
Selborne Society, which will be held at the Civil Service 
Commission (Old London University), Burlington Gardens, 
on Friday, April 26. Illustrated addresses will be given, 
and there will be a display of microscopes and objects of 
interest. ; 
A Times correspondent at Kingston, Jamaica, reports 
that earthquake shocks are recurring with alarming fre- 
quency, the latest being at 1.30 a.m. on March 25. All 
