24 NATURE 
[NOVEMBER 12, 1903 
Hon. A. C. Gregory, formerly surveyor-general of Queens- 
land, who has done much for exploration and the promotion 
of science in Australia, has been promoted to the rank of 
K.C.M.G. 
Tue following is a list of those to whom the Royal Society 
has this year awarded medals. The awards of the Royal 
medals have received His Majesty the King’s approval :— 
The Copley medal to Prof. Eduard Suess for his eminent 
geological services, and especially for the original researches 
and conclusions published in his great work ‘‘ Das Antlitz 
der Erde’’; a Royal medal to Mr. Horace T. Brown for 
his work on the chemistry of the carbohydrates, and on the 
assimilation of carbonic acid by green plants; a Royal 
medal. to Sir David Gill for his researches in solar and 
stellar parallax, and his energetic direction of the Royal 
Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope; the Davy medal 
to M. Pierre Curie and Madame Curie for their researches 
on radium; the Hughes medal to Prof. J. Wilhelm 
Hittorf for his experimental researches on the electric dis- 
charge in liquids and gases. 
WE are informed that Dr. Charles J. Martin, F.R.S., 
has now entered upon his duties as director of the Lister 
Institute: of Preventive Medicine, and in ‘future the ad- 
ministrative work of the Institute will be under his control. 
THE annual course of Christmas lectures at the Royal 
Institution, specially adapted to young people, will be de- 
livered by Prof. Ray Lankester, F.R.S., whose subject is 
“Extinct Animals.’’ The first lecture will be given on 
Tuesday, December 29. 
An application has been made by the German Meteor- 
oldgical Office for daily telegraphic reports from the Ben 
Nevis Observatory, with the view of applying them in fore- 
casting the weather of north-western Europe. 
of the observatory have agreed to send the telegrams asked 
for. 
Many biologists will regret to know that Mr. I. C. 
Thompson, well known as a naturalist, and especially for 
his work in connection with the Liverpool Marine Biology 
Committee, died suddenly on November 6. 
Pror. Rapnart Pumpetty, of Newport, R.I., and Prof. 
W. M. Davis, of Harvard, have returned from a 
journey in Turkestan, made under the auspices of the 
Carnegie Institution, to study the ancient human occupa- 
tion of the region in relation to its physiography. Science 
states that the expedition proceeded from Baku to the end 
of the main line of the Central Asiatic Railway at Tashkent. 
Prof. Pumpelly, with one party, then made an excursion 
south-eastward across the Alai range and valley to Lake 
Karakul on the northern Pamir. Prof. Davis and his party 
went north-east, crossing the western Tian Shan ranges to 
Lake Issikul. 
Ir is reported in some of the daily papers that Dr. Otto 
Schmidt, of Cologne, has succeeded in isolating and culti- 
vating a parasite from cancer, and in preparing an anti- 
serum for the disease. So many positive statements of the 
isolation of a cancer-parasite have been made during the 
last few years, and have subsequently proved to be incorrect, 
and so many capable men have been investigating cancer 
without result, that reports of this kind cannot be accepted 
without further proof. The publicity given to matters of 
this kind is much to be deprecated; in the majority of in- 
stances false hopes are raised which must end in disappoint- 
ment for many sufferers. 
NO. 1776, VOL. 69] 
The directors 
Ligzut.-CoLtoneL Bruce, who has been investigating 
sleeping sickness in Uganda, has returned to England, 
having confirmed and extended the observations of 
Castellani upon the presence of a trypanosome parasite in 
this disease. The trypanosome was found to be present 
in practically every case in the cerebro-spinal fluid, and also 
in the blood. From analogy with nagana or tsetse fly 
disease of horses and cattle, it was surmised that a species 
of tsetse fly might carry the infection in sleeping sickness, 
and along the shores of the Lake Victoria Nyanza, where 
the disease is especially rife, large numbers of a tsetse fly 
(Glossina palpalis) were found, and were demonstrated by 
experiment to be capable of carrying the trypanosome. 
Moreover, freshly caught flies in infected areas were in some 
instances found to harbour trypanosomes. It is further 
suggestive that this fly is confined to certain well-defined 
areas which correspond absolutely with the distribution of 
sleeping sickness; in regions where no Glossina palpalis is 
found there is no sleeping sickness. These investigations 
therefore point to the conclusion that sleeping sickness is 
a human tsetse fly disease. 
At the Royal Geographical Society on Tuesday Com- 
mander Peary gave an address on his ‘* Four Years’ Arctic 
Exploration, 1898-1902.’’ In the year 1899 he obtained the 
material for an authentic map of the Buchanan Bay, Bache 
Peninsula, Princess Marie Bay region, crossed the Elles- 
mere Land ice-cap to the west side of that land, established 
a continuous line of caches from Cape Sabine to Fort 
Conger, and familiarised himself and party with the entire 
region as far north as Cape Beechey. During the journey 
in 1900 Commander Peary determined conclusively the 
northern limit of the Greenland archipelago, or land group, 
and practically connected the coast south-eastward to In- 
dependence Bay, leaving only that comparatively short 
portion of the periphery of Greenland lying between 
Independence Bay and Cape Bismarck indeterminate. The 
non-existence of land for a very considerable distance to the 
northward and north-eastward was also settled, with every 
indication pointing to the belief that the coast along which 
the party travelled formed the shore of an uninterrupted cen- 
tral polar sea extending to the Pole, and beyond to the Spits- 
bergen and Franz Josef Land groups of the opposite hemi- 
sphere. In 1901 Commander Peary left Conger for another 
northern trip, but on reaching Lincoln Bay it was evident 
that the condition of men and dogs negatived the possibility 
of reaching the Pole, so the party returned to the Windward 
at Payer Harbour. In 1902 a start was made from Payer 
Harbour for the northern journey, and latitude 84° 17! 27” 
N. was reached, but the party had to return, and in the 
autumn of the year the Windward steamed southward, 
arriving at Sydney, C.B., on September 17, 1902, after an 
absence of four years, three months, and ten days. Re- 
ferring to his future plans, Commander Peary said he hoped 
to start north next July, and if the season was favourable 
he would have his ship by September 3 on the northern 
shore of Grant Land, near the Alert’s winter quarters. 
Wintering there, he would start with the first of returning 
daylight in the following February to make a journey across 
the polar pack to the Pole and back again. 
Major Ronatp Ross read a paper on malaria in India 
and the colonies at the Royal Colonial Institute on Tuesday. 
In the course of his address he pointed out that scientific 
research has established three great laws concerning 
malaria :—first, that it is caused by numbers of micro- 
scopical parasites which live and propagate themselves in 
the blood; secondly, that these parasites are carried from 
sick persons to healthy ones by the agency of a genus of 
eer re 
