NoveMBER 9, 1916] 
books and MSS. in the Hunterian Library, on the 
catalogue of which he was engaged at the time of his 
death. On many occasions he was sent to represent 
the university at centenary and other academic cele- 
brations at home and on the Continent. His fine 
presence and courtly manner made him an acceptable 
delegate on such occasions. He had accumulated a 
vast collection of medieval books and manuscripts 
dealing with alchemy, natural magic, ‘secrets,’ and 
“origins.”’ It is to be hoped that the collection will be 
kept together for the benefit of students of scientific 
history. 
Tue leading article in Engineering for November 3 
is devoted to a discussion on the status of the engineer. 
The divorce of the engineer from public affairs, and 
the minor place he occupies in popular estimation, are 
causing disquietude on the other side of the Atlantic, 
where a case has occurred recently of a lawyer having 
been appointed to the post of county engineer because 
it was held that the post must be filled by a politician. 
The actual engineering work has therefore to be done 
by deputy. This is characteristic of our own national 
services, where it has been common to appoint clerks 
as heads of departments, even when these are con- 
cerned with highly technical matters. The official 
view is that expert knowledge is unnecessary in such 
Cases, as trained assistants can be secured to do the 
work, whilst the nominal chief signs the inevitable 
forms. As Lord Sydenham puts it, the results of such 
a system are that the man who knows all about some 
subject has to refer to, and be overruled by, someone 
who knows nothing whatever about it. The working 
of the system as exemplified during the recent times 
of stress has been more instructive than edifying. 
We record with much regret the death on 
November 5, in his forty-ninth year, of Prof. H. M. 
Waynforth, professor of engineering, King’s College, 
University of London. 
Pror. G. Carey Foster, a past president of the 
Institution of Electrical Engineers, has been elected 
by the council an honorary member of the institution. 
THE opening of the next annual meetings of the In- 
stitution of Naval Architects has been fixed for Wed- 
nesday, March 28, 1917. 
Dr, D. F. Lincotn, a former secretary of the 
American Social Science Association, died recently in 
Boston at the age of seventy-five. He was the author 
of ‘‘School and Industrial Hygiene,’ ‘‘ Electro-Thera- 
aero “Hygienic Physiology,” and ‘Sanity of 
ind,” 
WE regret to note that Engineering for November 3 
records the death of Dr. C. A. Harrison at the age of 
sixty-eight. Dr. Harrison was for many years 
engineer-in-chief to the North-Eastern Railway; the 
structures which remain as monuments to his skill are 
principally bridges. He was for a time a member of 
the council of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and 
received the degree of D.Sc. at Newcastle in 1906, as a 
tribute of honour to his work in connection with the 
King Edward Bridge. 
Tue death on October 29 of Prof. O. V. Muller is 
announced. Prof. Muller was professor of history and 
political economy at Elphinstone College, Bombay. A 
Times correspondent writes that during the plague in 
Bombay he laboured hard to persuade the plague- 
stricken to allow themselves to be taken to hospital, 
and for his efforts towards stamping out the plague 
he received the Kaisar-i-Hind medal. Prof. Muller 
was a keen archeologist, and formed valuable collec- 
tions of Danish, English, and Indian stone and bronze 
antiquities. 
NO. 2454, VOL. 98] 
- NATURE 
193 
Tue death is announced, in his seventy-first year, of 
Mr. V. G. Bogue, a leading American engineer. He 
was a member of a commission appointed by President 
Harrison to investigate the methods for improving the 
navigation of the Columbia River, and acted as con- 
sulting engineer for the Government of New Zealand 
on the proposed railway across South Island. He pre- 
pared the plan and report for Greater Seattle and for 
the harbour of Tacoma. While employed from 1880 
to 1886 as an assistant engineer in the construction of 
the Northern Pacific Railway, Mr. Bogue discovered 
the Stampede Pass in the Cascade Mountains. From 
1886 to 1891 he was chief engineer of the Union Pacific. 
WE regret to learn of the death of Lance-Corpl. 
J. W. Hart, who, having volunteered in the early days 
of the war, was killed on September 15, while taking 
part in the first wave of an attack against the enemy 
trenches. Mr. J. Hart received his early training at 
University College, Reading, and showed the greatest 
promise as a student. He obtained the diploma in 
horticulture at Reading, and afterwards the B.Sc. 
(war) degree of London University. At the beginning 
of the war he held the post of horticultural assistant 
at Bedford College, London, and was in charge of the 
botany garden, the successful development of which 
was largely due to his skill and energy. Mr. Hart 
was no militarist; hating the wastefulness of war, he 
abandoned the constructive work he had at heart for 
that greater cause for which he believed his country 
to be fighting. His death will be keenly felt by the 
many friends to whom his manly, enthusiastic, and 
cheerful outlook on life had endeared him, while scien- 
tific horticulture has lost one of its most promising 
adherents. 
‘A QUOTATION in the Morning Post from the Gazette 
de Hollande emphasises the use made in Germany of 
geological advice in trench warfare, and Prof. Salo- 
mon, of Heidelberg, is said to have urged the forma- 
tion of a special organisation of geologists in connec- 
tion with the Army. It is probably no secret that 
excellent use has been made by the British military 
authorities of our own Geological Survey staff, mem- 
bers of which have been of technical assistance in 
fields as wide apart as the deeply dissected strata of 
Gallipoli and the undulating Cretaceous expanses of 
the Paris-Brussels basin. The geologist has been 
found of service in military mining as well as in ques- 
tions of water supply, and the memoir recently issued 
by the Geological Survey on ‘Sources of Temporary 
Water Supply in the South of England and Neigh- 
bouring Parts of the Continent’’ (see NaTuRE, 
vol. xcv., p. 244) was drawn up specially to meet the 
needs of camps. 
A LECTURE was delivered at the Royal Society of 
Medicine on October 31 by Dr. Sherman, of Pittsburg, 
on the method of sterilising wounds introduced by Dr. 
Carrel, the well-known American surgeon. The 
method consists in opening up the wound so far as 
necessary to reach every part of it, and rubber tubes 
are passed into all the recesses, and are kept in place 
by gauze packing. An antiseptic solution is then 
allowed to flow from a container, and by means of the 
tubes flushes out every part of the wound. This is 
done every two hours, and the wound is re-dressed 
every day. The effect is very striking, and the wound 
is rendered completely sterile in a few days. The 
antiseptic solution employed by Dr. Carrel is Dakins’s 
solution somewhat modified; this was finally adopted 
after a trial of 200 different antiseptics. The solution 
consists of chloride of lime, sodium carbonate, and 
sodium bicarbonate in ordinary water compounded in 
a particular manner, details of which will be found in 
the Lancet of November 4, p. 800. It is claimed that 
