236 
livered on Friday, November 14, by Prof. W. J. 
Sollas, F.R.S., who will take as his subject ‘* Paviland 
Cave.” Prof. A. Keith, F.R.S., president of the 
institute, will occupy the chair. 
THe death is announced, at sixty-two years of age, 
of Mr. H. Herbert Smith, vice-president of the Sur- 
veyors’ Institution, a member of the council of the 
Royal Agricultural Society, and Gilbey lecturer on 
the history and the economics of agriculture, Cam- 
bridge University, 1900-03. 
’Tue Paris Temps has just instituted an inquiry in 
scientific, industrial and medical circles as to directions 
in which developments of research are most desired. 
The object is to suggest the most useful discoveries 
which it is possible to make in the present state of 
scientific knowledge, and to indicate those awaited 
eagerly by workers in such various branches of science 
as electricity, mechanics, chemistry, physics, bacterio- 
logy, astronomy, &c. The result of the 
show the point of view from which, at 
this year, men of science are looking 
future. 
inquiry will 
the close of 
toward the 
Tue council of the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union 
has elected Mr. T. Sheppard, of Hull, the president 
for next year. The Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union 
is one of the most successful associations of its kind 
in Great Britain, and has published many important 
monographs on the flora and fauna of the county, and 
also issues The Naturalist, which is one of the oldest 
scientific monthly magazines in the country. The 
union has a membership of nearly four thousand, and 
about forty important natural history societies are 
affiliated with it. 
Tue Harveian oration was delivered before the 
president and fellows of the Royal College of 
Physicians, on October 18, by Dr. J. Mitchell Bruce, 
who took for his subject ‘*The Origin and Nature of 
Fever.”’ The president of the college, Sir Thomas 
Barlow, presented the Baly gold medal to Dr. J. S. 
Haldane, F.R.S. The award of this medal is made 
every alternate year, on the recommendation of the 
president and council, to the person who shall be 
deemed to have most distinguished himself in the 
science of physiology, especially during the two years 
immediately preceding the award. 
THE report of the council of the Cardiff Naturalists’ 
Society adopted at the recent annual meeting shows 
that the membership is now 505, of whom twenty are 
life members. We notice that the council in May, 
1913, adopted a suggestion made by Principal Griffiths 
that steps should be taken towards securing an early 
visit to Cardiff of the British Association. At the 
subsequent meeting of the City Council the sugges- 
tion was approved. An invitation has been forwarded 
to the council of the British Association, but the 
earliest practicable date now vacant is 1919. The 
programme for the present session deals with a diver- 
sity of topics, among which various aspects of animal 
and plant life are prominent. 
Tue council of the Institution of Civil Engineers 
has made the following awards for papers published 
NO. 2295, VOL. 92| 
NATURE 
[OcTOBER 23, 1913 
in the Proceedings without discussion during the ses- 
sion 1912-13 :—A Telford gold medal to Mr. James 
Mackenzie (Johannesburg); Telford premiums to 
Messrs. H. Hawgood (Los Angeles), J. K. Robertson 
(Bombay), G. S. Perry (Sydney, N.S.W.), and Ger- 
vaise Purcell (Los Angeles); and the Crampton prize 
to Mr. William Mason (Liverpool). The council has 
made the following awards in respect of students’ 
papers read before provincial associations of students 
during the past session:—The James Forrest medal 
and a Miller prize to Mr. P. M. Chadwick (Birming- 
ham); and Miller prizes to Messrs. A. J. S. Pippard 
(Bristol), T. P. Geen (Bristol), C. E. Holloway (Bris- 
tol), J. W. Burns (Glasgow), and B. A. E. Heilig 
(Birmingham). 
Tue Faraday Society has arranged for a general 
discussion on the passivity of metals to be held on 
Wednesday, November 12, in the rooms of the Chem- 
ical Society, Burlington House. The president-elect, 
Sir Robert Hadfield, F.R.S., will preside, and the 
following provisional programme has been arranged : 
Dr. G. Senter will open the discussion with a general 
introduction to the subject, and there will be papers 
by Dr. G. Grube (Dresden) on some anodic and 
kkathodic retardation phenomena and their bearing 
upon the theory of passivity; Dr. D. Reichinstein 
(Ziirich) on interpretation of recent experiments bear- 
ing on the problem of the passivity of metals; Dr. 
H. S. Allen on photo-electric activity of active and 
passive irons. Communications will also be read 
from Profs. G. Schmidt (Miinster), Max LeBlanc 
(Dresden), E. Shoch (Texas), and Gtinther Schulze 
(Reichsanstalt, Charlottenburg). 
A Paris telegram announces the death, in a state 
of destitution, of M. Charles Tellier, the inventor of 
the cold storage system, at eighty-six years of age. 
Appreciative accounts of M. Tellier’s work appear in — 
The Times of October 21, and are here summarised. 
Born at Amiens, he devoted himself to scientific re- 
search, and his experiments found a practical out- 
come in 1876, when the first experimental cargo of 
frozen meat left France for Buenos Aires in Le 
Frigorifique, which had been built under his direction 
with cold storage compartments. His invention met 
at first with little appreciation, but at the present day 
cold storage has not only changed completely the set 
of the world’s food trade, but has deeply affected the 
economic development of many important nations. 
Although Le Frigorifique was M. Tellier’s finest — 
achievement, he did not cease from the early ‘sixties 
on to his death to apply all his forces to the adyance- 
ment of that scientific knowledge on which practical 
refrigeration depends. His two books, written in 
very early days, ‘‘Le Froid appliqué a la Biére,” and 
‘La Conservation de la Viande par le Froid,” Jaid 
the foundation of our knowledge of cold storage, and 
they have been followed by numerous other publica- 
tions and papers, setting forth, as he made them, the 
results of his researches. 
Ir is announced in the October number of The 
Museums Journal that the next meeting of the 
Museums Association will be held at Swansea, the 
