60 
NATURE 
[May 18, 1899 
of the Exchequer may decline further aid on the ground 
that no representation was made in the present year 
pointing out the exact state of the case. 
It is apparently one of the prices we have to pay for 
the long neglect of Science in this country, and its small 
representation among those in political office, that so 
many arrangements touching our scientific institutions 
give rise to a hopeless feeling among those who are 
familiar with both the history and the facts connected 
with them. é : 
NOTES. 
M. PRILLIEUX has been elected a member of the Paris 
Academy of Sciences, in succession to the late M. Naudin. 
WE regret to see the announcement of the death of Sir 
Frederick McCoy, K.C.M.G., F.R.S., Professor of Natural 
Sciences in the University, Melbourne. 
Mr. W. H. PREECE, C.B., F.R.S., has accepted the presi- 
dency of the eighteenth Congress of the Sanitary Institute to be 
held in Southampton from August 29 to September 2. 
THE foundation stone of a museum of Oceanography was laid 
at Monaco on April 25. The museum will contain the col- 
lections made by the Prince of Monaco during the expeditions 
of the yacht Przxcess Adzce. It will contain not only exhibition 
rooms, but also laboratories for the use of men of sciencé who 
wish to work upon the collections. 
Dr. J. BucKLEy Brappury, Downing Professor of Medicine 
in the University of Cambridge, will deliver the Croonian 
lectures of the Royal College of Physicians of England in June, 
on ‘‘ Some Points in Connection with Sleep, Sleeplessness, and 
Hypnotics.” 
WE learn from the Botanical Gazette that the Museum and 
laboratory building in the New York Botanical Garden is 
making fair progress towards completion. It is now entirely 
enclosed, and the partition walls and other rough interior work 
are nearly finished. It will probably be ready for occupancy 
late in the spring. 
Tue Department of Science and Art has received through 
the Foreign Office an intimation that the Ghent Horticultural 
Congress has been postponed from June 3 to July 8. 
THE projected expedition of the Duke of the Abruzzi, nephew 
of King Humbert, to the North Pole is exciting great interest 
in Italy. _A Reuter telegram from Rome states that the Duke, 
who will be accompanied by three officers of the navy, two 
sailors, four mountain guides, ten Norwegian sailors, and an 
Eskimo, will embark about the middle of June at Laurvig, 
Norway, whence he will proceed to Franz Josef Land, trying to 
attain as northerly a point as possible. The party will winter in 
the most northerly port attainable, and will spend enforced 
leisure in making scientific observations and preparing revictual- 
ding stations. In the spring the Duke and his companions will 
proceed towards the North Pole on sledges drawn by dogs, 120 
of which he will embark at Archangel, or, if necessary, in a 
balloon. The expedition takes two balloons. If all goes well, 
the Prince will be away some eighteen months. The ship in 
which the Duke of the Abruzzi will sail is called the Ste//a 
Polare. 
THE Rev. T. Neville Hutchinson, whose death occurred on 
May 6, did much to advance the interests of science by his work 
some years ago as senior science master at Rugby. Forty 
years ago Rugby was the only public school in which science 
was taught at all. Harrow and Eton followed, though not with 
NO. 1542, VOL. 60] 
the same liberality as Rugby, where a few years later a special 
suite of lecture-rooms and laboratories was devoted to science. 
It was Mr. Hutchinson who reorganised the science work at 
Rugby in 1870, andin the first volume of NATURE he described 
the new laboratories and other buildings erected there for pur- 
poses of scientific instruction, Mr. Hutchinson was born in 
1826. He was second master at King Edward’s School, Birming- 
ham, in 1860-65, and science master at Rugby from 1865 to 
1883, when he became vicar of Broadchalke, Wilts. He re- 
signed his vicarage last October, and was made Canon of Salis- 
bury.. He was a gifted teacher and lecturer, and old Rugbeians 
will sincerely regret to learn of his death, 
THE death, shortly before completing his sixtieth year, of 
Mr. Philip Thomas Main, of St. John’s College, Cambridge, is 
announced in the Athenaeum. Mr. P. T. Main published ‘* An 
Introduction to Plane Astronomy ” for University use in 1865, 
and also assisted his father, the Rev. Robert Main, who was for 
twenty-five years Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, 
Greenwich, and afterwards for eighteen years Radcliffe Observer 
at Oxford, in his large work on “ Practical and Spherical 
Astronomy,”’ which appeared in 1863. Subsequently he turned 
his chief attention to chemistry, and for many years held the 
post of superintendent of the laboratory at St. John’s College. 
Tue Council of the British Medical Association desire to 
remind members of the profession engaged in researches for the 
advancement of medicine and the allied sciences that they are 
prepared to receive applications for grants in aid of such re- 
search. Applications for sums to be granted at the next annual 
meeting must include details of the precise character and 
objects of the research which is proposed, and must be made on 
or before June 15 in writing addressed to the General Secretary 
of the Association, The Council are prepared to receive appli- 
cations for one of the three research scholarships which is 
vacant, of the value of 150/. per annum, tenable for one year, 
and subject to renewal by the Council for another year. Appli- 
cations may also be sent in for a scholarship of 200/., for the 
study of some subject in the department of State Medicine, in 
memory of the late Mr. Ernest Hart. 
THE thirtieth general meeting of the Institution of Mining 
Engineers will be held in London on May 25. Among the 
papers to be read, or taken as read, are the following :—Presi- 
dential address, by Mr. J. A. Longden; alternating currents 
and their possible applications to mining, Part i., by Mr. Sydney 
F. Walker ; metric weights and measures, by Mr. J. Emerson 
Dowson; Petroleum in Burma, by Dr. Fritz Noetling ; mineral 
resources of Vancouver and adjacent islands, British Columbia, 
by Mr. Wm. M. Brewer; anda new process of seasoning and 
preserving timber and other fibrous substances by means of 
electricity, by Mr. H. Baillie-Weaver. 
ARRANGEMENTS are being made for a visit of the Institution 
of Electrical Engineers to Switzerland in September next. As 
at present arranged, members will visit the Rheinfelden works 
on Saturday, September 2, will proceed on the same day to 
Ziirich, and will remain there until September 6. During this 
time visits will be paid to various industrial works, and to 
certain power stations and tramway and lighting installations in 
the district, including, it is hoped, a visit to the Schaffhausen 
works. The members will then proceed to Lucerne, and, after 
inspecting the street railways of that town and, if time permit, 
the Rathhausen works and the Stansstad-Engelberg Railway, 
will travel, vza the Briinig Pass, to Interlaken. Here oppor- 
tunity will be given for visiting both the Jungfrau Railway (vza 
the Wengern Alp route) and the Burgdorf-Thun Railway, as 
well as other places of electrical interest in the neighbourhood ; 
and the visit will end on Saturday, September 9. The annual 
