APRIL I1, 1907 | 
NATURE 
565 
It is proposed to issue the collected papers in two 
quarto volumes of about 450 pages each. The 
volumes will contain a portrait of Lord Lister, and 
will be prefaced by a short account of the development 
of Lister’s ideas and work and their relation to the 
growth of knowledge of infectious processes. They 
will be published at a subscription price of one 
guinea for the two volumes. 
NOTES. 
Sir James Dewar has been appointed a corresponding 
member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Denmark. 
Tue U.S. Congress has voted 20,0001. for the erection 
of a monument to Christopher Columbus at Washington. 
Pror. S. P. Tuompson, F.R.S., has been elected a 
member of the Atheneum Club under the provisions of 
the rule which empowers the annual election by the com- 
mittee of three persons ‘‘of distinguished eminence in 
science, literature, the arts, or for public services.”’ 
Mr. J. pe Graar Hunter, assistant in the physics de- 
partment of the National Physical Laboratory, has been 
nominated by the India Office to the post of mathematical 
expert to the Survey of India. 
THE monument erected by subscription in the garden 
of the Paris Institut national agronomique to Eugéne 
Risler, the director of the institute from 1879 to 1900, 
was unveiled by M. Ruau, the French Minister of Agri- 
culture, on March 24. 
Tue British Medical Journal states that a laboratory for 
the study of human nutrition is to be built by the Carnegie 
Institute of Washington on a site adjacent to the Harvard 
Medical School. The work will be under the direction of 
Prof. F. G. Benedict, of Wesleyan University. 
IN many places the rainfall measured already this 
month is greatly in excess of the aggregate measurement 
for the whole of March. On the night of April 6-7 there 
was a somewhat heavy fall of snow over the south of 
England, and at Warlingham, in Surrey, the ground was 
covered to the depth of 6 inches. In London, snow fell 
for some time in the early morning of Sunday, April 7, 
and the rainfall as yet this month already exceeds an inch. 
Thunderstorms have also occurred in different parts of the 
country. Notwithstanding that the aggregate rainfall at 
Greenwich for the first three months of the year was 
deficient by 1-63 inches, the total for the six winter 
months, October-March, was 0-75 inch in excess of the 
average for the past sixty years. 
Tue earthquake at Bitlis on March 29, briefly recorded 
in last week’s NatuRE, appears to have been of unusual 
severity, and was registered by seismographs at several 
distant stations. The earthquake occurred at 10 a.m. on 
March 29, no fewer than fourteen severe shocks being 
felt on that day. Shocks stronger than the first were 
felt at Bitlis all night on March 31, resulting in fresh 
casualties and further destruction of houses. Violent 
shocks of earthquake were felt on April 2 in the island 
of San Miguel, Azores, particularly in the town of Villa 
Franca, which was formerly destroyed by earthquake. 
Tue two Royal medals of the Royal Geographical 
Society have been awarded, with the King’s approval, to 
Dr. Francisco Moreno, who for more than twenty years 
has been personally occupied in the work of South 
American exploration, and Captain Roald Amundsen, the 
NO. 1954, VOL. 75] 
Norwegian explorer, who recently completed the North- 
west Passage for the first time in a ship, made 
observations in the neighbourhood of the North Magnetic 
Pole. The Murchison bequest of the society has -been 
awarded to Captain G. E. Smith, for his various surveys 
in British East Africa; the Gill memorial to Mr. C. Ray- 
mond Beazley, for his work in three volumes on “ The 
Dawn of Modern Geography’; the Back bequest to Mr. 
C. E. Moss, for his researches on the geographical distri- 
bution of vegetation in England; and the Cuthbert Peek 
fund to Major C. W. Gwynn, C.M.G., R.E., for the 
geographical and cartographical work carried out by him 
in the Blue Nile region and on the proposed Sudan- 
Abyssinian frontier. 
and 
To the long list of eminent men of science that have 
lately been lost to France by death must be added the 
name of Colonel Laussedat, for many years the director 
of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. More than 
sixty years ago he began his public career in the Ecole 
Polytechnique, and his long life was one of successful 
achievement. He served his country both in the field and 
in the study. During the siege of Paris he had charge 
of the optical contrivances for maintaining communications 
with the outside world, and later, at the close of the war, 
he was a member of the co mission for arranging the 
new frontiers of the country. Besides filling the office of 
professor of geodesy, he was at different times member 
of many committees and numerous commissions, where his 
experience, knowledge, and ingenuity were gratefully 
acknowledged. But it is in the department of photography 
and in its applications to scientific purposes that he will 
be longest remembered. If he did not originate the appli- 
cation of photography to surveying and photogrammetric 
inquiries, he so encouraged its employment, improved its 
methods, and demonstrated its usefulness that he won 
for it a foremost place in the training of every modern 
topographer. Colonel Laussedat was a member of the 
French Academy and of many learned societies in his own 
and other countries. 
As previously announced, the annual meeting of the 
Iron and Steel Institute will be held on May 9 and 1o- 
At the opening meeting, the retiring president, Mr. R. A. 
Hadfield, will induct into the chair the president-elect, 
Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., the Bessemer gold medal for 1907 
will be presented to Mr. J. A. Brinell (Stockholm), and 
the president wil! deliver his inaugural address. Among 
the papers to be submitted on May 9 and ro are the 
following :—The use of steam in gas-producer practice, 
Prof. W. A. Bone, F.R.S., and R. V. Wheeler; the 
influence of process of manufacture on some of the proper- 
ties of steel, F. W. Harbord; the ageing of mild steel, 
C. E. Stromeyer; carbon-tungsten steels, T. Swinden; 
the nomenclature of iron and steel, report of a committee 
of the International Association for Testing Materials. 
Reports on research work carried out during the past year 
will be submitted by C. A. F. Benedicks (Sweden), 
O. Stutzer (Germany), E. F. Law (London), E. Hess 
(United States), P. Breuil (Paris), H. C. Boynton (United 
States), L. Guillet (France), W. H. Hatfield (Sheffield), 
A. Campion (Glasgow), E. G. L. Roberts (London), E. A- 
Wraight (London), and W. Rosenhain (Teddington), 
Carnegie research scholars. The annual dinner of the 
institute will be held in the Grand Hall of the Hotel Cecil 
on May 10, under the presidency of Sir Hugh Bell, Bart. 
The council has accepted an invitation to hold the autumn 
meeting of the institute in Vienna on September. 23-25. 
| After the meeting there will be alternative excursions to 
