298 
1862 he had been officially connected with the Peabody 
Institute, Baltimore. Dr. Uhler was the author of 
many contributions to scientific journals, and his col- 
lection of locusts, presented several years ago to the 
U.S. Government, was considered one of the best 
ever made. 
_ Tue death is announced, at sixty-seven years of age, 
of Dr. H. F. Parsons, formerly of the Medical De- 
partment of the Local Government Board. An 
obituary notice in The Times reminds us that Dr, 
Parsons served on many Departmental Committees, 
including those on water, gas, regulations as to 
cremation, the work of the Geological Survey, and 
the medical inspection and feeding of children in 
public elementary schools. He contributed papers to 
the Transactions of the Epidemiological Society, of 
which he became president, and to those of other 
scientific bodies. He was a fellow of the Geological 
Society, and among his works were memoranda on 
the sanitary requirements of cemeteries, disinfection 
by heat, a report on the influenza epidemic of 1899-90, 
and an examination of the comparative mortality of 
English districts. . 
Tue jubilee of the practical realisation of the 
ammonia-soda process by the chemist, Ernest Solvay, 
~was recently celebrated in Brussels, and was marked 
‘by munificent gifts of five million francs for scientific 
‘purposes by the veteran inventor, who on the same 
occasion celebrated.his seventy-fifth birthday.. The 
Institute of. Applied Chemistry of the faculty of 
sciences at Paris received 500,00 francs, and the same 
sum was allotted to the University of Nancy to create 
a chair of electrotechnics. A fund of 500,000 francs 
‘was also put aside for a quadrennial prize to be 
awarded by the International Congress of Hygiene 
for researches in transmissible disease. On the occa- 
‘sion of the jubilee, M. Solvay delivered an enthusiastic 
eulogy of pure science and its results, and made the 
interesting avowal that the pursuit of science was the 
réve doré de toute sa vie, and had it not been for the 
necessity of providing for a family he would probably 
have taken it up as his profession. On the occasion 
of this jubilee King Albert honoured M. Solvay by 
naming him a grand officer of the Order of Leopold. 
IMPORTANT proposals for another British Antarctic 
Expedition, to start next year, are made public by a 
letter to the Press from Sir Clements Markham, and 
by Mr. J. F. Stackhouse, who is to lead the expedi- 
tion. The completion of work in the McMurdo Sound 
‘region by the expeditions under Shackleton and Scott 
directs attention elsewhere in the British section of 
Antarctica, and Sir Clements Markham regards as 
one of the next most important problems the investi- 
gation of the connection between King Edward VII. 
Land and Graham .Land. It is proposed by Mr. 
Stackhouse to begin his work at the eastern or 
Graham Land end of the British quadrant, and to 
follow the coast, hoping to prove or disprove its con- 
tinuity, and thus to solve a leading question regarding 
the physiography of Antarctica in outline. The 
scheme depends largely upon the incidence of an open 
season, when the ice-pack leaves a passage along the 
NO. 2297, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
[NoveMBER 6, 1913 
coast; Scott himself held the chances of such 
opportunity to be good. Financial support is invited, 
and headquarters for the expédition have been estab- 
lished at Sardinia House, Kingsway, W.C. ia 
Tue National Council of Public Morals has estab 
lished a private commission to inquire into the extent 
and character of the decline in the birth-rate, its 
causes, its effects, and its economic and national 
aspects. This commission is both a strong and repre- 
sentative one, and the fact that Dr. Stevenson, the 
Superintendent of Statistics for the Registrar-General, 
and Dr. Newsholme, Medical Officer to the Local 
Government Board, have joined it gives one confidence 
that it will be able to obtain and use in an effective 
manner the best statistical data available to anyone, 
It will be remembered that these two authorities pub- 
lished in 1906 a paper on the decline in human fer-— 
tility, which attracted considerable attention. The 
commission is also to be congratulated on obtaining 
as members several well-known lady doctors, includ- 
ing Dr. Mary Scharlieb and Dr. Ettie Sayer, who 
through their professional work have had special 
opportunity for studying fertility and its absence from 
the woman’s point of view. Economic science, medi- 
cine, law, and journalism are all well represented, — 
and the biological aspects of the questions to be dis- 
cussed will not be forgotten with Mr. Walter Heape 
to stand for this branch of science. As might per- 
haps have been expected, the clerical element some-— 
what predominates. | Bishop Boyd-Carpenter is the 
chairman of the commission, and the Rev. James 
Marchant the secretary, and there is besides‘a galaxy 
of bishops, deans, and well-known preachers. Among 
these we are plad to find the Dean of St. Paul’s, 
whose sane and broad-minded treatment of such sub- 
jects as eugenics has done so much to focus the atten- 
tion of serious people on them, 
The Falmouth Packet of September 17 contains an 
account of the recent visit of the surveying ship 
Carnegie, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 
in charge of Capt. W. J. Peters. This is the second 
visit paid by the vessel to Falmouth for the purpose 
of magnetic observations, the first having been paid 
four years ago. From Falmouth the Carnegie left 
for New York, whence she set out in June, 1910. The 
cruise has extended over a large part of the world, 
calls having been made at, amongst other places, 
Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Colombo, Mauritius, 
Manila, Fiji, Falkland Islands, and St. Helena, Its 
geographical position and the presence of a magnetic 
observatory have in the past rendered Falmouth a 
specially favourable port for linking up observations 
on the Atlantic with land observations in western — 
Europe. The discontinuance of magnetic work at 
Falmouth has been so recent that its usefulness as a 
base has scarcely as yet been impaired, but in future 
years unfortunately greater uncertainty will prevail — 
as to the secular change there of the magnetic 
elements. 
THE opening meeting of the Institution of Electrical 
Engineers for the present session will be held on 
November 13, when the premiums awarded for papers — 
read or published during the session 1912-13 will be 
