May 25, 1899] 
NATURE 83 
o 
work undertaken by the Observatories of Sydney and 
Melbourne. Another part of his address is devoted to 
urging the importance of a systematic magnetic survey 
of the Australasian Colonies,and establishing a permanent 
magnetic observatory in New Zealand. Among other 
communications to this Section, we may mention an 
elaborate account of the Trigonometrical Survey of New 
South Wales, by Mr. T. F. Furber. This work is 
apparently being carried out with great judgment and 
skill. The author gives a comparative table, showing 
the mean errors of the angles in a large number of sur- 
veys carried out in Europe, the United States, and else- 
where, which seems to justify him in saying that “‘The 
above figures speak for themselves in showing that our 
work is probably equal to that done in any part of the 
world.” A tide-predicting machine, described by Captain 
A. Inglis, seems to be recommended by simplicity of 
construction ; the periodic components are represented 
by templates cut to accurate sine-curves, with appro- 
priate differences’of wave-length, which are all fed 
through the machine at the same speed. 
Naturally Australasian fauna and flora, geography and 
geology, supply material for a large number of descriptive 
papers. Among these, “A short Dichotomous Key to 
the hitherto known Species of Eucalyptus,” may be re- 
marked. The author, Mr. J. G. Luchmann, identifies no 
less than 140 species of this, the most important Aus- 
tralian genus of timber-trees. In connection with this 
paper, we may mention a timely and very earnest protest 
by Mr. W. S. Campbell against the wantonly improvident 
destruction of forest trees which is, unfortunately, so 
common in Australia, as well as in the United States and 
Canada. 
Some of the fundamental questions of social economy, 
including the production and distribution of wealth, are 
ably dealt with by Mr. R. M. Johnston, Government 
Statist of Tasmania, in a presidential address to the 
Section of Economic Science and Agriculture. Some of 
Mr. Johnston’s conclusions by no means coincide with 
what are at present fashionable in certain circles in this 
country, as will be evident from the following quotation : 
“Tt is the country which relatively places the smallest 
number of hands on the land for the production of food 
and raw products which has also attained the highest 
stage of progress. I deny, therefore, most em- 
phatically that whatever distress in the United Kingdom 
still exists would be lessened by any scheme which would 
place more hands on the land than its economic conditions 
demand for the production of food and raw products.” 
The social conditions of the Colonies apparently en- 
courage a relatively great development of governmental 
participation in industrial operations. After giving some 
interesting records of his experience as Engineer-in-Chief 
of Railways and Public Works in South Australia, Mr. 
A. Bb. Moncrieff strongly urges the adoption, by the 
different Colonies, of a uniform system of preparing esti- 
mates and keeping records of public engineering work ; 
for, as he rightly points out, in the absence of such a 
system it is not possible to institute fair and useful com- 
parisons between the works carried out by the engineers 
of the different Colonies, such as are needed to promote 
a healthy rivalry among them. The work undertaken 
for supplying water for agricultural purposes over large 
areas of dry country seems likely to have very important 
and beneficial results. Mr. Moncrieff gives some in- 
teresting particulars of these operations, and mentions 
one boring that has been carried to a depth of 3000 feet, 
which yields 800,000 gallons per day of excellent water 
at a temperature of 176° F. 
A large proportion of the most interesting papers in 
the volume, including most of those we have mentioned, 
are due to men who are at the head of various official 
departments. If the authors of these papers may be 
taken as fairly representative of their colleagues, we 
NO. 1543, VOL. 60] 
think there is ground for congratulating the Australasian 
Colonies on the intellectual quality of their chief officials. 
It appears clear that these men do not rely for depart- 
mental efficiency on a blind following of routine, but on 
an intelligent recognition of the conditions under which 
they are placed, and of the true nature of the facts with 
which they have to deal. 
Taking the volume as a whole, it gives evidence of 
solid progress achieved and assurance of future advance. 
SIR FREDERICK McCOY, K.C.M.G., F.R.S., &c. 
ii N the death of Sir Frederick McCoy, geological science 
loses one of its most devoted and enthusiastic 
disciples, one who in early life was associated with 
Sedgwick in the preparation of that classic work, the 
“Synopsis of the Classification of the British Palaeozoic 
Rocks ; with a systematic description of the British 
Paleozoic Fossils in the Geological Museum of the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge,” a quarto volume published in 
1855. 
Sir Frederick McCoy was the son of Dr. Simon 
McCoy of Dublin, in which city he was born in 1823. 
He was educated at the Universities of Dublin and 
Cambridge, and intended at first to devote himself to 
the medical profession, but natural history, and the study 
especially of fossil organic remains, absorbed his chief 
attention. When but eighteen years of age he had pre- 
pared and published a Catalogue of Organic Remains 
exhibited in the Rotundo, Dublin. Later on, he assisted 
Sir Richard Griffith in his researches on the fossils of 
the Carboniferous Limestone of Ireland, and afterwards 
they prepared a joint “Synopsis of the Silurian Fossils 
of Ireland,” which was issued in 1846. In the same year, 
McCoy went to Cambridge to help Sedgwick, and we learn 
(from the “‘ Life and Letters” of that eminent professor) 
that the new assistant devoted himself for at least four 
years ‘“uninterruptedly and with unflinching zeal” to the 
determination and arrangement of “the whole series of 
British and Foreign Fossils” in the Museum. In 1850, 
he was appointed Professor of Geology in the Queen’s 
College, Belfast. Meanwhile, he continued to labour at 
the great work previously mentioned, and which associates 
the names of Sedgwick and McCoy in the minds of all 
students of the Cambrian and Silurian rocks. This work 
was barely finished when McCoy, in 1854, accepted the 
newly-founded Professorship of Natural Science in the 
University of Melbourne. 
Apart from the larger works to which he had con- 
tributed while in this country, McCoy had published 
numerous papers dealing with fossil Fishes, Crustacea, 
Echinoderms, Corals, and Foraminifera. He was indeed 
well prepared for the arduous and successful labours 
which he now undertook in a new home. Becoming 
associated with the Geological Survey of Victoria, he 
established the “Prodromus of the Paleontology of 
Victoria ; or Figures and Descriptions of the Victorian 
Organic Remains,” issued in decades, and he contributed 
many palzeontological reports for the Survey. He also 
founded the Melbourne National Museum. His latest 
contribution to science, ‘Note on a New Australian 
Pierygotus, was printed in the Geological Magazine 
during the present month. d 
In 1879, he received the Murchison Medal, which was 
awarded to him by the Geological Society of London, of 
which society he became a Fellow in 1852. In 1880, he 
was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he was 
one of the first to receive the honorary degree of D.Sc. 
from the University of Cambridge. In 1886, he was 
made a C.M.G., and in 1891 he was worthily promoted 
to be K.C.M.G. It is astonishing to note that, while for 
fifty-eight years he contributed to paleontological litera- 
ture, his age at his death in May 1899 should be no more 
than seventy-six. H. B. W. 
