November 7, 19 18] 



NATURE 



191 



which the nationals ol thi Empires would collaborate. 

 (5) Inquiry should t»- made as to the steps to b 

 n to establish intimati collaboration between the 

 Allies and the United States, particularly in the 

 domain of allied science and in the publication of 

 certain bibliographical works. 



The death is announced of Prof. Samuel Wendell 



Williston, of Chicago, aged sixty-six. Prof. Wil- 

 liston began his career as one of the collectors em- 

 ployed by Prof. < ). ('. Marsh in the 'seventies to 

 obtain vertebrate fossils from the western territories 

 of th( ites. During the winter season he 



1 Prof. Marsh to prepare the fossils in the Yale 

 University Museum, and at the same time he pursued 

 medical studies which eventually resulted in his 

 graduating as M.D. He was always a keen 

 naturalist, and, being prevented from publishing his 

 observations on palaeontology, he turned to dipterous 

 insects, and soon became one of the leading authorities 

 in America on that branch of entomology. Leaving 

 Prof. Marsh in the early 'eighties, Williston was 

 appointed professor of id palaeontology in 



the State University of Kan-,!-, at Lawrence, where 

 he established a flourishing school and brought 

 : ier a great collection of Kansas fossils. Among 

 numerous important papers he wrote especially on 

 Pterodactyls and the marine reptiles found in the 

 chalk of Kansas. In IQ02 Prof. W'illiston removed 

 to the newly founded chair of palaeontology in the 

 University of Chicago, where he not onlv continued 

 his researches on Cretaceous reptiles, but also col- 

 lected and investigated the still more interesting 

 Permian reptiles from Texas and Illinois. His writ- 

 form no inconsiderable part of the valuable con- 

 tributions to vertebrate palaeo received from 

 America during the last thirty years, and several of 

 his devoted pupils and associates have followed 

 worthily in his wake. 



V>\ the death on October 2;,, at ninety years of age, 

 of Mr. Robert Brudenell Carter, consulting ophthalmic- 

 surgeon to St. 1 11 urge's Hospital, the medical profes- 

 sion and the public have lost a striking personality. 

 Since the Crimean War to within a few weeks of his 

 death Mr. Brudenell Carter was a constant contributor 

 to the Times. On most medical subjects in which the 

 publii contributed leading 



■ re always marked by clear languagi 

 and sound reasoning. lie wrote extensively also on 

 nic and educational matter-. As examples may 

 be mentioned bis paper on the constituents of London 

 dust and its effects on health. His conclusions led 

 him to advocate the substitution in our houses of 

 parqu tbolition, so far as 



possible, of blinds and curtains — recommendations 

 which he conscientiously carried out in his own house. 

 His pamphlet on "The Artificial Production of 

 Stupidity in Schools" might still be read with profit 

 by our educational authorities. He was always a 

 strenuous opponent of the so-called system of homoeo- 

 pathy, and his correspondence with the late Lord 

 Grimthorpe in the Times on this subject will be re- 

 membered. With his purely medical writings, which 

 were numerous, this is not the place to deal, but his 

 book entitled " Eyesight Good and Had," which was 

 written for the general public, ma- be mi ntioned. 

 It was a succinct and clear explanation of the physio- 

 logy of normal vision and of the causes of its common 

 defects. Mr. Brudenell Carter was an active member 

 of the General Medical Council, a body little known 

 to the public, the most important function of which 

 is to protect the public against improper practices by 

 medical men. The writer was privileged to see him 



NO. 2558, VOL. I02] 



on his ninetieth birthday, and found him lying on a 

 sofa, in full possession of his faculties, and' although 

 his voice was weak, be discussed freely and with his 

 usual good sens, the topics of the day. 



THE Christmas course of juvenile lectures at the 

 Royal Institution will bi by Prof. D'Arcy 



Thompson upon the subject of "The Pish of the Sea." 



The FitzPatrick lectures of the Royal College of 

 Physicians of London will be given at the college at 

 s o'clock on November 12 and 14 by Dr. Arnold 

 Chaplin. The subject will be "Medicine in Ki. 

 during the Reign of George 111." 



Tin: death is announced in the British Medical 

 Journal of Dr. F. !■'. Wesbrook, president of the 

 University • of British Columbia, formerly professor 

 of pathology in the University of Manitoba, and pro- 

 fessor of public health and bacteriology in the Uni- 

 versity of Minnesota. 



THE death is announced, in his sixty-fourth year, 

 of Prof. William Leslie Hooper, who had been pro- 

 fessor of electrical engineering at Tufts College, 

 Massachusetts, since 1890. He had previously been 

 for seven years assistant professor of physics in the 

 same institution. Prof. Hooper was the author of 

 " Electrical Problems," published in 1902. 



Major Baird, Parliamentary Secretary to the Air 

 Board, announced in the House of Commons on 

 November 3 that the post of Medical Administrator of 

 the Board has been offered to Col. M. II. G. Fell, 

 C.M.G. One of the conditions of the office is that 

 the Administrator will be guided by the principles laid 

 down by the Watson-Cheyne Committee. Col. Fell 

 is at present engaged in visiting stations in this 

 country and abroad, and his answer has not vet been 

 received. 



In the Times of October 29 Col. H. A. Haines 

 describes the discovery of a human skeleton with mili- 

 tary equipment in a shallow grave in the chalk near 

 Rochester, Kent. The feet of the skeleton were 

 directed eastward, a spear-head lay near the tight 

 shoulder, and the boss of a shield was found over 

 the ankles. Another piece of iron occurred behind the 

 waist. Writing in the same newspaper on October 31, 

 Sir Hercules Read points out that the burial may be 

 regarded as that of a Jutish settler in Kent of the 

 fifth or sixth century. The fragment of iron near the 

 waist may have been either a knife or a strike-a-light 

 to be used with a flint. 



The second national reunion of the Argentine Society 

 of Natural Sciences will be In Id in Mendoza in the 

 spring of 1919. We have just received Xos. 14 to 16 

 of Physis, the society's journal, which shows much 

 activity, especially in entomology and botany. In 

 No. it) Mr. Carlos Ameghino returns to the subject 

 of fossil man at Miramar, where the numerous imple- 

 ments are supposed to be contemporaneous with the 

 remains of extinct mammals. Among other imple- 

 ments he describes and figures bolas of the modern 

 South American type made of fossil bone. He arrives 

 at the remarkable conclusion that while Europe was 

 Still inhabited by men of the Neanderthal race, Argen- 

 tina was already peopled by advanced tribes of Homo 

 sapiens. 



Tin', annual Harveian oration was delivered by Dr. 

 Pern Kidd at the Royal College of Physicians on 

 October 18. The subject was the doctrine of con- 

 sumption in Harvey's time and to-day. Dr. Kidd sur- 

 I the views of medical writers on phthisis or 



