36 



NATURE 



[jNIav 9, 1 90 1 



in geological discussion and the little petulances and whims that 

 made his society so irresistiUy amusing. His beneficent in- 

 fluence was long one of the great features of the service, and we 

 owe to him. not only the recollection of his delightful personality, 

 but the guidance and encouragement which have carried us 

 through our work. 



To my colleagues in the Survey who have prepared and signed 

 this beautiful address my heartiest acknowledgments are due. 

 It will remain with me as a precious memorial of many close 

 and enduring friendships. Each signature will remind me, now 

 ol some delightful ramble in the country when geological 

 problems were eagerly discussed on the ground, now of some 

 momentous conference in the office when the plan of campaign 

 or the details of maps and memoirs were fully considered and 

 settled. 



During my tenure of office as Director-General I have been 

 ever supported by the loyal and unstinted devotion of the staff, 

 lit has been an honour and a pleasure to be placed at the head 

 of such a body of men — so enthusiastic in their whole-hearted 

 consecration to science and so unwearied and Io5'al in their 

 efforts for the interests of the service. I feel sure that in no 

 branch of the public service could the esprit tie corps be higher 

 than it has been among us. Vou can well understand that it is 

 impossible without regret to sever one's connection with com- 

 •rades such as these. At the end of my official career, however, 

 I can truthfully claim to have striven to the utmost of my power 

 for the welfare of the staff and for the scientific renown of the 

 service. I have sought to secure the very best men whom it 

 was possible to obtain, and I feel very confident that the 

 ■Geological Survey, as regards the zeal, capacity and attainments 

 of its members, may challenge comparison with any scientific 

 institution in any country of the world. I rejoice to think that 

 the service is being now put on a firmer footing than it has ever 

 held before, that the prospects of pay and promotion have been 

 lately broadened and brightened, and that, under the guidance 

 of my distinguished friend and successor, the Survey may look 

 forward to a future even more illustrious and more useful than 

 its past. Gentlemen, I thank you all once more from the very 

 bottom of my heart. 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY SELECTED 

 CANDIDA TES. 

 "POLLOWING our usual course, we print the quali- 

 -'- fications of the fifteen candidates selected by the 

 Council of the Royal Society on Thursday last, for elec- 

 tion into the .Society : — 



Alfred Willi.a.m Alcock, 



Major, I. M.S., M.B., C.M.Z.S. Superintendent of the Indian 

 Museum ; Professor of Zoology in the Medical College, Cal- 

 cutta. Distinguished as a zoological investigator and teacher, 

 and as a museum curator. Was Surgeon Naturalist to the 

 Marine Survey of India, from 1S88 to 1892, on board the 

 Royal Irjdian Marine Ship [iwesligator, also to the Pamir 

 Boundary Commission in 1895. Has devoted himself chiefly 

 to the study of marine zoo'logy with especial reference to fishes, 

 Crustacea, echinoderms and madreporaria, and to problems 

 -connected with the geographical distribution of the Indian 

 ■representatives of these groups, and the phenomena of vivi- 

 parity in fishes. Author of an extensive series of memoirs, 

 papers and reports dealing with the aforementioned subjects, 

 published during the past ten years in the Proceedings of the 

 Royal Society, the Joutnal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 

 the Annals and Magazine of Naltiral Niftory, and in the series 

 of publications of the Indian Museum, and " Scientific 

 Memoirs " by the Medical Officers of the Indian Army, and 

 elsewhere. Some of these {e.g. the series entitled " Materials 

 for the Carinological Fauna of India") are revisionary mono- 

 graphs of the groups with which they deal, and in others (e.g. 

 the Survey of the Deep Sea Zoological work of H.I. M.S. 

 /nz'estigalor iox i884-iS97,and the "Deep Sea Madreporaria") 

 the general bearing of the .loogeographical problems arising 

 out of the work are fully discussed in their association with the 

 facts and theories of oceanographical research. In connection 

 with the work of the Invest i:;alor he originated, in 1892, the 

 serial publication, " Illustrations of the Zoology of the Inves- 

 tigtilor" now progressing. 



NO. 1645, VOL. 64] 



Frank. Watson Dvson, 



M.A. (Cantab.), Chief Assistant (since 1894) Royal Obser- 

 vatory, Greenwich. Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cam- 

 bridge. Secretary of Royal Astronomical Society. Author of 

 various papers on mathematics and astronomy, among which 

 may be mentioned : — "The Potential of Ellipsoids of \'ariable 

 Densities" (Quart. Journ., Pure and Applied Mathematics, 

 No. 99, 1891) ; "The Potential of an Anchor Ring" (two 

 papers — Pliil. Trans., 1S93, pp. 43-95 and 1041-1106); "The 

 Motion of a Satellite about a Spheroidal Planet" (Quart. Journ., 

 Pure and Applied Mathematics, No. 105, 1S94) ; " The Effect 

 of Personality in Observations of the Sun's Right Ascension on 

 the Determination of the Position of the Ecliptic" (with W. G. 

 Thackeray, Monthly Notices, Roy. Aslron. Soc, vol. liv., 1S94); 

 " Account of the Measurement and Comparison of a set of four 

 Astrographic Plates" (with W. H. M. Christie, ibid., vol. Iv. , 

 1S94) ; " On the Determination of the Positions of Stars for the 

 Astrographic Catalogue at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich " 

 (with W. H. M. Christie, ibid., vol. Ivi., 1896); "New 

 Division Errors of the Greenwich Transit Circle and their 

 Effect upon the observed N. P. D.'s (with W. G. Thackeray, 

 Mem. Koy. Aslron. .Soc, vol. liii., 1899) ; "Comparison of the 

 Diameters of the Images of Stars on the Greenwich Astro- 

 graphic Plates, with the Magnitudes given in the ' Bonn 

 Durchmuslerung' " (with H. P. Hollis, Monthly Notices, Roy. 

 Aslron. Soc, vol. I.v., 1899). Distinguished as an astronomer. 



Arthur John Evans, 

 M.A. Hon. Fellow of Brasenose College, Vice-President of the 

 Society of Antiquaries, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, 

 Oxford. Distinguished as an archaeologist and anthropologist. 

 Mr. Evans's recent discoveries in Crete have been of the highest 

 importance as throwing an entirely new light on the early civili- 

 sation of the .Egean and Mediterranean areas, and proving the 

 hitherto unknown fact that a Prre-Phcenician form of writing was 

 in use within those areas during the Mycenaean period. Starting 

 from certain engraved gems, some of them found in Crete, the 

 figures on which he suspected to be alphabetic or syllabic 

 signs, he was led by inductive reasoning to infer that in that 

 island there must exist monuments of a prce-historic system of 

 writing. For some years he has carried on investigations in 

 Crete, with the final result of bringing to light, in what seems 

 to be the Palace of King Minos, or the famous Labyrinth, up- 

 wards of a thousand clay tablets, inscribed with documents in 

 both a pictographic and a linear system of writing, as well as 

 remains of artistic work of remarkable interest. The existence 

 of a high stage of Mediterranean culture, about 2000 B.C., has thus 

 been established, and the use of writing among Hellenic peoples 

 has itself been carried back to a date at least 500 years earlier 

 than has hitherto been regarded as possible. Of Mr. Evans's 

 other published works may be cited his researches in the anthro- 

 pology and antiquities of Illyricum and Dalmatia, and his 

 numerous memoirs relating to the Iron Age, the Mycenaean 

 Period, the late Celtic or Early Iron Period, and generally the 

 connection of Egypt and the East with the dawn of European 

 civilisation. His works on the coinages of Tarentum and Sicily 

 are standard authorities, and after the death of Prof. Freeman 

 he completed that eminent writer's " History of Sicily." 



John Walter Gregory, 



D.Sc, F.G.S. Professor of Geology in the University o. 

 Melbourne. Explorer of Mount Kenya, and author of " The 

 Great Rift Valley." Has contributed a large number of papers 

 to] scientific publications on Palaeontological, Petrological and 

 Physiographical questions ; for example, on the Maltese fossil 

 Echinoidea (Trans. Roy. Soc, Edin.) ; on British Palceogene 

 Bryozoa (Trans. Zool. Soc); on the Echinoidea of Cutch and 

 on the Corals of Cutch (Palxont. Indica) ; on Pseudodiadema 

 Jessoni ; on Archaeodiadema ; on Echinocystis, &c., besides 

 the volumes in the British Museum Catalogue on the Jurassic 

 and the Cretaceous Bryozoa. In Petrology he has written in 

 the Quarterly lourn. Geol. Soc. on the Tudor specimen of 

 Eozoon, the Variolites of the Fichtelgebirge, the Waldensian 

 Gneisses, the Schistes Lustrees of Mont Jovet, the Geology of 

 British East Africa (three parts), and (in collaboration) the 

 VarioHtes of the Mont Genevre, the Geology of Monte 

 Chaberton, the Eozoonal structure of ejected blocks, Monte 

 Somma, &c., and among several papers in Physical Geology, 

 the Glacial Geology of Mount Kenya, and (in collaboration) 

 Contributions to the Glacial Geology of Spilzbergen. 



