58o 



NATURE 



[October io, 1901 



The sixtieth anniversary of the foundation of the Pharma- 

 ceutical Society has just been celebrated by the presentation of 

 a badge of office to be worn by successive presidents of the 

 Society. An illustration of the badge appears in the current 

 issue of the Pharmaceutical fourtial. 



An expedition is about to be despatched to Christmas Island, 

 under the auspices of the London School of Tropical Medicine, 

 for the purpose of investigating beri-beri. The leadership of the 

 expedition has been accepted by Dr. H. E. Durham, who will 

 join the s.s. hlatidey at Port Said on or about October l6. 

 The inquiry will probably extend over a period of twelve 

 months. 



Sir Francis Lovell, Surgeon-General of Trinidad, will, 

 according to the Hospital, leave England during the present 

 month on a mission to tropical and other countries on behalf 

 of the London School of Tropical Medicine. Lord Brassey 

 will preside at a meeting at the Royal United Service Institution 

 on October i6 to deliver an inaugural address on the opening 

 of the third winter session of the school and to give a send-off 

 to Sir F. Lovell. 



The return of Dr. H. F. Knowlton, of the U.S. Geological 

 Survey, from a trip through the John Day Basin, Oregon, is noted 

 in Science. The special object of the expedition was to secure 

 collections of fossil plants, and of the vertebrate fauna of the 

 neighbourhood, and much valuable material has, it is reported, 

 been obtained. 



Magnetic observatories are being established under the 

 auspices of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey at Sitka, 

 Alaska and in Honolulu. 



A cotTRSE of six popular science lectures for young people, 

 entitled " Peeps into Nature's Secrets," will be delivered at the 

 Kensington Town Hall on October 17, 24, 31, November 14, 

 28, and December 5. Particulars as to the subjects of the 

 lectures and the names of the lecturers are to be found in our 

 advertisement columns. 



Free popular science lectures will be delivered in the 

 museum of the Whitechapel Free Library as follows : — 

 November 12, at 8 p.m., "The Faroe Islands and Iceland," 

 by Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan, and December 11, at the same 

 hour, "The Instincts and Intelligence of Animals," by Lord 

 Avebury. In connection with the course, Dr. T. K. Rose 

 lectured on Tuesday last on " Alloys, and what we know 

 about them." 



The Athenaeum states that the Berlin Kiinigliche Akademie 

 dcr Wissenschaften and the Danish Academy at Copenhagen 

 have decided to prepare a collection of all the medical works 

 of antiquity under the title of "Corpus Veterum Medicorum," 

 and will cause a thorough examination to be made of all 

 libraries. Oriental and European, which are likely to contain 

 MSS. dealing with medical subjects. 



A MEETING of the Royal Microscopical Society will be held 

 on Wednesday, October 16. A paper on the fungi found on 

 germinating farm seeds will be read by Miss A. Lorrain Smith ; 

 it will be preceded by an exhibition of mounted specimens of 

 marine zoological objects by Mr, C. L. Curties. 



A VERY successful meeting of the British Mycological Society 

 was held at Exeter from September 23 to 28, when several 

 scarce ,'pecimens of fungus were obtained. At the evening 

 gatherings papers were read by the president (Prof H. Marshall 

 W.ird), Miss A. Lorrain Smith, Dr. C. B. Plowright, and Mr. 

 B. T. P. Barker. 



NO. 1667, VOL. 64I 



The Paris correspondent of the Times states that the French 

 Post Office has decided to print upon letters the hours of collec- 

 tion numbered, as in Italian and other railway time-tables, from 

 I to 24, or rather to O, which will signify midnight. 



According to the Lancet, the New York City Board of 

 Health has adopted resolutions to the effect that the officers of 

 "public institutions, hospitals, homes, asylums, &c., be required 

 to report all cases of malarial fever which come under their 

 observation, giving the name, age, sex, occupation and present 

 address of the patient," and "also information as to whether 

 the attack is a primary infection or a relapse, and the address 

 where the disease was probably contracted" ; also "that all 

 physicians in the city of New York be requested to furnish 

 similar information in regard to patients suffering from malarial 

 fever under their care." 



Dr. Adolph Gehrmann, director of the Chicago City 

 Laboratory, and Dr. W. A. Evans, of the Columbus Medical 

 Laboratory, have devised a plan of investigation, the main 

 feature of which is to make the experiment with lupus. They 

 hold that just as satisfactory a test can be obtained by inoculating 

 the skin of a human being with the bacillus from an animal as 

 could be got from experiments with pulmonary tuberculosis, 

 with the great advantage that there is no risk to life. Prepara- 

 tions are being made for the experiments, and two persons 

 have already consented to be inoculated. 



Scientific visitors to Ceylon, and botanists generally, will 

 be interested to know that a small residential laboratory has 

 been opened at the Hakgala Botanic Gardens, near Nuwara 

 Eliya, at an elevation of 5600 feet above sea-level. The labora- 

 tory is a branch of the Peradeniya institution, described in 

 Nature, November 9, 1899, and consists of a small building 

 containing a working room 21 feet x :2A feet, a living room, 

 two bedrooms, kitchen, &c. The climate is temperate, fires 

 being required in the evenings at least. The botanic garden 

 itself is very beautiful, and occupies an unrivalled position for 

 the study of equatorial hill vegetation, for on one side there are 

 jungles stretching for 25 miles or more into the wet region of 

 the hills, on the other grassy plateaux (patanas, cf. Pearson in 

 Journ. Linn. Soc, 1899), reaching for an equal distance into 

 the dry region, and extending from 3000 to 7000 feet above sea- 

 level. The garden itself contains both jungle and patana reserves 

 of several hundred acres. 



The Daily News of October 7 contains a long interview 

 with Mr. Cheesewright on the scheme for constructing a high- 

 speed electric railway between London and Brighton. The 

 system proposed to be adopted is not described, but it is stated 

 that the monorail, of which so much has been heard of late, 

 is not to be used and that each car will carry its own motor. 

 A speed of nearly 90 miles an hour is aimed at, so that the 

 whole journey of 47 miles will only occupy 32 minutes. 

 This high speed is to be made possible partly by having no 

 intermediate stations, and partly by avoiding all curves and 

 gradients by tunnelling wherever hills occur along the route. 

 In addition to the benefit conferred by a half-hourly service 

 of express trains, the public is to be attracted by the cheapness 

 of the fares. The Bill will, without doubt, meet with serious 

 opposition in Parliament from the London, Brighton and South 

 Coast Railway, but we wish the promoters of the scheme every 

 success. We feel sure that the public have only to be taught, 

 by a few striking examples, the immense improvements that 

 electric traction can effect in railway travelling to insist upon 

 its adoption in suitable cases by our existing steam railroads. 

 It is only by healthy competition of the kind that such railways 

 as this will introduce that it will ever be possible to eradicate 



