November 21, 19 18] 



NATURE 



231 



bv the Industrial Reconstruction Council, a second 

 series lias been arranged for January, February, and 



March of next year. The first conference, under the 

 title of "Reconstruction or Restoration?" will deal 

 with the general principles which should guide us 

 during 1 In - difficult transition period, and will be 

 .|»n. II. J. Gillespie on January 14. The 



other meetings will discuss "The Workers' Interest 



-tin-," "The Place of the Merchant in British 

 Industry," "Welfare Work," "Wages and Conditions 

 of Employment in Relation to Future Industrial 

 Prosperity," and "Industry and Educational Recon- 

 struction." No tickets will be issued, but all those 

 who intend to In- present are asked to inform the 



ary, l.R.C, 2 and 4 Tudor Street, E.C.4, who 

 will be glad ;.. send a full prospectus of the series on 

 application. 



I .11 British Scientific Instrument Research Ass<>- 



n. ..in- of the earliest associations formed under 

 th( scheme of the Department of Scientific and Indus- 

 trial Research, has secured premises at 26 Russell 

 Square, W.C.I, where offices and research labora- 

 - will be equipped. The first chairman of the 



i itinn was Mr. A. S. Esslemont, whose recent 

 lamented death has been a severe loss to the associa- 

 The council has elected Mr. H. A. Colefax, 

 K.C., as chairman to fill the vacancy. The vice-chair- 

 man is Mr. Conrad Beck, to whose energ) and per- 

 gonal influence is largely due the successful formation 

 of the association. Almost all the hailing optical and 

 scientific instrument manufacturers are members. The 

 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research is re- 

 presented by Major ('. J. Stewart, ('apt. F. O. Creagh- 

 o-l... me, R.N., Mr. S. W. Morrison, Col. R. E. Home, 

 R.A., and Mr. Percy Ashley. The council has recently 

 pted as members of its body the Hon. Sir 

 Charles \. Parsons, F.R.S., and Prof. J. W. Nichol- 



F.R.S. Sir Herbert Jackson, K.B.E., F.R.S., 

 has been appointed director of research, and Mr. 

 J. W. William-. .11 seen tarv of the association. 



Mr. William Llewellyn Preece, the eldest son of 

 a 1 William Preece, whose death, at the age 

 of lift) -two, occurred in London on November 10, was 

 educated at King's College School and the Hanovei 

 ■squat. School of Electrical Engineering. In 1898, 

 p.nt twelve years in the Midland Rail- 

 way Co.'s telegraph department, he joined his father's 

 firm (now Preece, Cardew„ Snell, and Rider) as a con- 

 sulting ' ngineer. Sir William Preece had for many 

 tously held the appointment of consulting 

 a the Crown Agents for the Colonies, and 

 Mr. Pri ice on joining the firm took charge of the 

 a of the practice dealing with telegraph and 

 telephone matters in the principal Colonies and 

 Dominions, including those under the Crown Agents 

 and High Commissioners for South Africa and New 

 /.. aland. He had made a special study of wireless 

 aphy, and was responsible for the wireless plant 

 blished in many of our distant Colonies; he was 

 of tin- expert witnesses examined by the Select 

 Committee of the House of Commons appointed to 

 inquire into the Post Office contract with the Marconi 

 Co. for the proposed stations of the Imperial Wireless 

 Chain. At the time of his death Mr. Preece held a 

 commission in the R.N.V.R., and was employed at 

 the Admiralty. He was a member of the Institution 

 ivil Engineers and also of the Institution of Elec- 

 trical Engineers, and was serving on the council of 

 •h. latter body at the date of his death. He read a 

 paper in 1915 before the latter body on "Telephone 

 Troul.l. s in the Tropics," and had also at various 



NO. 2560, VOL. I02] 



ni.s written many papers on Church matters, in 

 which he was deeply interested, for private circulation. 



Sik Hermann Weber, the distinguished physician, 

 who died on tin- day of the signing of the armistice, 

 was in his ninety-fifth year, and had practised in 

 London for three-quarters of a century. He was a 

 true lover of England; his desire was to live to see 

 the victory of the Allies and the end of the war. To 

 those who knew him he represented the very best and 

 most beautiful aspect of that Germany which was. 

 He died as gently as he had lived, lie was one of 

 those rare men whose lives are made up of all friends 

 and no enemies; and that, not because he was 

 negative or poor-spirited, but because lie was 

 honourable, courteous, pure in heart, unselfish, 

 lie was a man of culture and a great collector of 

 Greek coins, and was known as an expert on this 

 subject. Above all, he was a wise and far-seeing 

 adviser. It was he who taught us the saving power 

 of the Engadine for consumptive patients; he thus 

 helped to bring about the open-air treatment of that 

 disease. On questions of climate and of health 

 resorts Sir Hermann Weber was the first, and one of 

 the greatest, authorities in London. He was a 

 member of the Alpine Club ; he knew the meaning of 

 fresh air; he was still an Alpine climber at eighty. 

 He could still, in his ninety-fifth year, walk his seven 

 or eight miles a dav, walking fast, and preferring to 

 walk bareheaded. He was in that splendid circle of 

 Victorian physicians and surgeons whose names are 

 as household words to many of us ; he outlived 

 them all. His length of davs is not to be ascribed to 

 any force of abstinence; he was " anti " nothing; 

 merelv, he lived a very temperate, diligent life. The 

 secret of longevity is not altogether explicable; we live 

 so long as we were originally wound up to live. But 

 we may at least believe that peace of mind and a quiet 

 enjoyment of the verv best sort of things have some- 

 thing to do wath a man's continuance. 



Mr. W. Airy has published an interesting paper 

 entitled " On the Ancient Trade Weights of the East." 

 His object has been to present a simplified account 

 of the ancient weights of the East; not including 

 those of China and japan, and to illustrate their inter- 

 relations. He finds that practically all Eastern 

 weights mav be referred to one or other of the fol- 

 lowing systems: — The Egyptian kedet system, based 

 on a kedet of 140 grains; the Egyptian shekel 

 system, based on a shekel of 245 grains; the 

 Phoenician shekel system, based on a shekel of 

 220 grains; the Babylonian and Assyrian systems, 

 based on a shekel of 254 grains; the Greek /Eginetan 

 system, based on a shekel of 254 grains; the Greek 

 Solonian system, based on a drachma of 675 grains; 

 and the Roman system, based on a libra of 5050 

 grains. 



Messrs. G. A. Natesan and Co., Madras, have 

 issued short biographies of two well-known Indian 

 men of science, Sir J. C. Bose and Dr. P. C. Ray. 

 The former, after receiving some elementary educa- 

 tion at a Bengali "patshala," or village school, went 

 to Christ's College, Cambridge, and there laid the 

 foundations of the scientific training which led to his 

 investigations of the transmission of excitations in 

 plants like the mimosa, developed in his important 

 work on "Plant Response." Dr. P. C. Ray was 

 trained under Tait and Crum Brown at Edinburgh, 

 and became professor of chemistry at the Presidency 

 College, Calcutta. His most important work has 

 been the foundation of an Indian chemical school and 

 the establishment of the Bengal Chemical and Pharma- 



