482 
to two recent matters of national importance in which 
scientific advice was apparently not invited from the 
Royal Society or any. other expert body. One case is 
that of the rearrangement of the lightning conductors 
on St. Paul’s Cathedral. During the structural 
examination made in the past summer the iron bars, 
inserted at the instance of Benjamin Franklin, the 
originator of lightning-rods, were found; and it was 
recalled also that the protection of the cathedral had 
then (about 1780) been unde: the consideration of a 
special committee of the Royal Society. Sir Joseph 
Larmor asks, therefore, whether in the recent re- 
arrangement the Royal Society, or the Institution of 
Electrical Engineers, or other expert public body con- 
versant with electrical matters, was approached, or 
consulted, upon the matter. The other instance men- 
tioned by him relates to the problem of the decaying 
stone in public buildings. It was recently reported 
that funds have been obtained from the Treasury, at 
the instance of the Office of Works, to institute a 
scientific inquiry on this subject, and it was proposed 
to move ‘‘the Foreign Office to inquire of the Govern- 
ments of France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and America 
whether any man of science in those countries had 
evolved any treatment to combat this very serious evil.” 
Here again it does not appear that the Royal Society, 
the Chemical Society, or the Society of Chemical In- 
dustry have been asked for advice on a national matter 
especially within their domain, or to provide the in- 
formation which the Foreign Office proposes to collect 
from various Governments, though in these days of 
intimate international cooperation and rapid spread 
of information in science they could no doubt do so. 
At the meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of 
Scotland on December 8, Mr. A. Henderson Bishop 
read a paper on his recent.excavations in the Island 
of Oransay. The excavation of the MacArthur Cave 
at Oban in 1895 had revealed certain indications which 
seemed to point to the possibility of there having been 
a human occupation on or about the line of the 30-ft. 
beach at-a time when the sea had not permanently 
retired from this level. The evidence, however, was 
much too meagre and insecure to admit of such a 
revolutionary theory being founded upon it, but that 
theory has now for the first time been demonstrated 
from the shell mounds of Oransay. The line of the 
beach was found on a contour of approximately 30 ft. 
round the hill, and the disposition of its constituents 
was exactly what might have been looked for as the 
result of powerful seas washing against the talus of 
food refuse. Very interesting was the attempted re- 
construction of the configuration of the site at the 
time of occupation.. What is now a turf-covered sandy 
hill, some 54 ft. in height, standing about 650 ft. from 
the present high-water mark, was then an elliptical 
peninsula washed round nearly the whole of its circeum- 
ference by the sea and connected by the stone ridge of 
the beach with the rest of the island. Further, the 
excavation supplied exhaustive material for a picture 
of the culture-stage of the inhabitants, and the result 
is a demonstration of the existence in Scotland of a 
culture presenting an extremely close affinity to that 
discovered in thé Pyrenees grottos by the late M. 
Piette, to which he has given the name Azilian. The 
NO. 2304, VOL. 92| 
NATURE 
[DECEMBER 25, 1913 
characteristic implements of both sites are the same— 
flat harpoons of bone and horn, sometimes with one, 
sometimes with two, rows of barbs, and generally ~ 
perforated near the base; shoe-horn-like chisels of — 
deer horn, and bone pins, along with pieces of pumice- ~ 
stone on which they were fashioned. Very striking 
was the large number of convex faceted chisels—about — 
1000 were found—hitherto unexplained, which are re-_ 
garded as implements worn by gouging the molluse 
of the limpet from the shell, J 
Tue death is announced, in his eighty-seventh year, 
of Mr. J. W. Wilkins, one of the pioneers of the - 
telegraph system in this country. a 
WE regret to see the announcement of the death on — 
December 18, at seventy-two years of age, of the Rev. © 
Edmund Ledger, professor of astronomy at Gresham 
College, London, from 1875 to 1908, and the author © 
of several popular works and articles on astronomical © 
subjects. 
Ir is proposed to place a tablet suitably inscribed 
to commemorate Benjamin Franklin in the Church of 
St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield—the 
parish in which he worked as a printer. Subscriptions 
for this memorial may be sent to Mr. E. A. Webb, 
rector’s warden, 60 Bartholomew Close, London, E.C. 
By the will of Mr. Arnold Friedlander the sum of 
50001. is bequeathed for a Cancer Research Fund, to 
be applied as his executors may direct towards increas- 
ing the knowledge of the cause, characteristics, and 
effects of cancer and allied diseases, and the best means 
of the prevention, alleviation, and cure thereof. 
Pror. E. L. Trouessart, of Paris, and Prof. W. B. 
Scott, New Jersey, U.S.A., corresponding members 
of the Zoological Society of London, have been elected — 
foreign members of the society. Prof. E. Ehlers, 
Gottingen, Mr. J. H. Fleming, of Toronto, and Dr. 
C. Gordon Hewitt, Ottawa, have been elected corre- 
sponding members of the society. wae 
A LEADING article in The Northern Whig of Decem- 
ber 19 reminds us that the day of publication was 
the centenary of the birth of Prof. Thomas Andrews, 
one of the most notable men whom Belfast can claim. 
The article gives an interesting and instructive sum- 
mary of Andrews’s career, and of the scientific work 
which won for him a place among the foremost 
discoverers of the Victorian era. 
Tue twelfth general meeting of the Association of 
Economic Biologists will be held at Liverpool on 
December 30-31.. Among the papers to be presented 
are :-—“‘Some Observations on the Bionomics ~of 
Glossina morsitans in Nyasaland,” Prof. R. New- 
stead, F.R.S.; “The First-stage Larva of Hypoderma 
bovis,” Prof. G. H. Carpenter; ‘‘The Food and Feed- 
ing Habits of Some Game Birds,” W. E. Collinge; 
“Pollination in Orchards,” F. J. Chittenden. 
In Man for December Mr. T. C. Hodson records 
a curious account of silent bargaining from India. 
When the person making an offer for a horse at a 
fair suggests a hundred rupees, he takes one finger. 
of the person’ to whom the proposal is made under 
a sheet spread over both their hands, and whispers 
