Dec. 4, 1884] 



NA TURE 



109 



of the Guil, a torrent discharging into the Durance, in the 

 Department of the Hautes Alpes. Three days afterwards, on 

 Thursday the 27th, a severe shock was felt at Grenoble, about 

 100 km. west-south-west from the Queyras valley. It lasted 

 thirty seconds, passing in a direction from west to east. All the 

 houses were shaken, but no injury is reported beyond the fright 

 sustained by the inhabitants. The same night, almost at the 

 same hour, six shocks were felt at Lyons, moving in the same 

 direction ; and commotions of a similar kind are announced from 

 Turin and the sea-coast of Provence, at Cannes and Nice in 

 particular. 



WE regret to hear that M. Duprez de Lonce, the celebrated 

 naval engineer and Member of the French Academy of Sciences, 

 is dangerously ill, and that his life is almost despaired of. 



We regret to announce the death, at Paris, at the age of 

 seventy-four, of M. Quet, a distinguished French mathematician, 

 well known for his works in connection with capillarity, elec- 

 tricity, &c, most of which have appeared in the Compies Rendus 

 of the Paris Academy of Sciences. 



M. W. de Fonvielle has published a pamphlet on " L'Aero- 

 stat dirigeable de Meudon,'' in which he endeavours to show 

 that the reports current in the French Academy respecting the 

 experiments in question are exaggerated, though at the same time 

 he seeks to do justice to his distinguished countryman, who has 

 twice succeeded in proving that by means of electricity the power 

 of resistance may be imparted to balloons. He concludes by 

 recommending that, the electric fluids having done their part, 

 la parole est a le vapeur. 



Interesting researches with so-called Paradise fish (Macropus 

 venustus) were made at the Berlin Aquarium recently. The fish 

 is a native of China, its body, only a few centimetres long, is of 

 the brightest hues, and its bluish-green fins are so enormously 

 large that the fish seems almost to succumb under their weight. 

 It i- easily kept, and breeds frequently in captivity ; the tem- 

 perature of the water it is kept in must, however, not be allowed 

 to sink below 20° C. 



One result of the recent expedition sent from Quetta under Sir 

 Oriel Tanner to punish the inhabitants of the Zhob Valley is 

 stated in a telegram from Calcutta to be a complete survey of 

 the whole of that valley. It has been ascertained that the best 

 road from the Gomul Pass to Candahar does not lie, as had been 

 supposed, through the Zhob Valley, but through the valley of 

 the Khwandar, and that the route is practicable for a large army. 



Dr. Otto Finsch left Sydney on September 10 by the 

 steamer Samoa, en route for the Phcenix and Union Island , 

 where he intends staying for some time and making extensive 

 ethnographical collections. 



The Boletin of the National Academy of Sciences in Cordova, 

 Argentine Republic (Buenos Ayres, 1884), has a very long paper 

 by Senor Ameghino on his geological and palreontological inves- 

 tigations in the province of Buenos Ayres. The only other paper 

 is by Heir Doering, and deals with the sinking of artesian wells 

 in the Argentine Republic. 



The Rev. Henry H. Higgins publishes in a separate form a 

 paper on " Museums of Natural History," read before the 

 Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool. After an 

 experience of over a quarter of a century, during which he 

 passed several times every week through museum rooms, the 

 author calculates that out of a thousand visitors to the Liverpool 

 Museum, ten to twenty were students, 7S0 interested observers, 

 and 200 loungers. 



Mr. Charles C. Sherrington, B.A. of Caius College, 

 Cambridge, has been elected to the vacant George Henry Lewes 

 Studentship. 



The additions to the Zoological Society's Gardens during the 

 past week include a Macaque Monkey (Afacacus cynomolgas ? ) 

 from India, presented by Mr. W. J. Bennett ; a Rhesus Monkey 

 {Macacus rhesus) frOTn India, presented by Mr. Samuel Levi ; 

 an Ocelot (Felis partialis) from America, presented by Mr. H. B. 

 Whitmarsh ; two King Parrakeets {Aprosmictus scapu'.atus) from 

 New South Wales, presented by Mr. E. Meek ; a Cheer Pheasant 

 (Phasianus luallichii 9 ) from North India, presented by Mr. E. 

 Buck ; a Pig-tailed Monkey (Macacut nemestrinus & ) from 

 Java, deposited ; a Rufous-necked Weaver Bird (HyphanUrnis 

 textor) from West Africa, received in exchange ; four Long- 

 fronted Gerbilles {Gerbillns longifrons), born in the Gardens. 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY AXN1VERSARY 

 "THIS meeting took place on Monday last, the time-honoured 

 *• date — St. Andrew's Day — falling on Sunday. In the 

 regretted absence of the President, Prof. Huxley, who, the 

 Fellows were rejoiced to learn, is rapidly recovering his health 

 from his sojourn in Italy, the Treasurer, Mr. John Evans, 

 occupied the chair and read the following address : — 



The absence of our President from his post to-day must of 

 necessity cast a certain amount of gloom over the proceedings 

 at this our anniversary meeting, and, personally, I feel addi- 

 tional regret that it devolves upon me, as your Senior Vice- 

 President and Treasurer, to be the unworthy occupant of the chair 

 on the present occasion. My regret at the absence of the President 

 is, however, in one respect tempered by a strong hope, in which 

 I am sure that you will all fervently join, that the timely retire- 

 ment from arduous work which has been enforced upon him by 

 his medical advisers may produce those beneficial results which 

 we all so cordially desire, and that we may ere long again see 

 among us our accomplished and valued President in renewed 

 health and strength. 



I must, however, turn from the expression of our hopes for 

 the future, to that of our regrets for the past, and for a short 

 time dwell upon the mournful list of vacancies which the ever- 

 active hand of death has caused in our ranks during the past 

 twelve months. In one respect only can a topic of consolation 

 be found in this list. It is that in extent it is less than that 

 of last year, the total number of our deceased Fellows being 

 only eighteen on the home list and two on the foreign list, whire 

 those numbers were twenty-one and two respectively at our last 

 anniversary. 



Both the foreign members whose loss we have on the present 

 occasion to deplore were men of the highest distinction in 

 chemical science. Both were residents at Paris, and both had 

 Chairs in the French Academy, of which the one had been 

 since 1S68 one of the permanent secretaries. I cannot dwell 

 upon the discoveries and the remarkable career of M. Jean 

 Baptiste Andre Dumas, whose energy and perspicuity, even when 

 past the limit of fourscore years, all those who of late have had 

 the opportunity of being present at a meeting of the French 

 Academy must have found reason to admire. An appreciative 

 memoir of him by one of our own Fellows, who of all men 

 living is perhaps the best qualified to judge of the value of 

 his labours — Prof. Hofman — written while Dumas was still 

 among us, will be found in the pages of our own Proceedings 

 (vol. xxxviii. x.i, and those of Nature (vol. xxi. February 6, 

 1S80). It will give some slight idea of the extent of time over 

 which the labours of M. Dumas have extended if I mention 

 that, so long ago as in 1S43, he received the Copley Medal at our 

 hands, at a time when his chemicil and physiological researches 

 had already extended over a period of twenty-two years. M. 

 Dumas died at Cannes on April 1 1 last, and among the most 

 touching of the speeches at his obsequies wa< that of M. Wtirtz, 

 whose own decease took place on the 12th of the following 

 month. 



Although nearly twenty years younger than M. Dumas, M. 

 Karl Adolph Wtirtz had for a long time been one of the most 

 distinguished leaders of modern chemical science, especially in 

 the department of organic chemistry, aud his merits were recog- 

 nised by this Society in 1864, when he was elected one of our 

 foreign members, and again in 1881, when the Copley Medal 

 was awarded to him. 



Among our English Fellows was a contemporary of Wtirtz, 

 who, like him, had been a pupil of the illustrious Liebig, but 

 whose bent was more on the practical than on the theoretical 



