214 
NATURE 
[NovEMBER 16, 1916 F 
seasonal fluctuations of the invertebrate life exposed at 
low tides on the rocks around the lighthouse, and of 
the birds visiting it and the lantern. On his trans- 
ference to the Bass Rock he turned his attention to 
the hosts of sea-fowl resorting to that famous nesting 
haunt, more particularly to the gannet, on which he 
contributed many valuable notes to Mr. Gurney’s 
monograph of that bird. Mr. Campbell also made 
some useful contributions to Mr. Evans’s papers on 
the moths occurring at the lanterns of the northern 
lighthouses, which recently appeared in the Scottish 
Naturalist. 
By the death on November 5, after a long illness, of 
Prof. H. M, Waynforth—until recently professor of 
engineering in King’s College, London—engineering 
teaching has suffered a great loss. Born in 1867, 
Prof. Waynforth was educated at the Haberdashers’ 
School and at the Finsbury Technical College, his 
apprenticeship being served at Messrs. Bennett and 
Sons, engineers. He was assistant to Prof. Perry at 
Finsbury for some time, after which he went to Mason 
College, Birmingham, as demonstrator in engineering, 
leaving Mason College to join the engineering staff of 
King’s College, London, in 1896. He was appointed 
assistant-professor of engineering in 1902, and Univer- 
sity professor in 1912. His work for engineering 
teaching in the University of London was most valu- 
able and important. The present syllabus for the 
B.Sc. degree in engineering, especially in theory of 
structures, strength of materials, and theory of 
machines, owes much to his energy and professional 
ability. An eminently practical man, he laboured 
assiduously to keep the syllabus as practical as pos- 
sible, and at the same time to maintain a high standard 
of academic attainment. He did a good deal of 
original work on the testing of materials, but it will 
be as a great teacher that he will be best remem- 
bered. His lectures at King’s College were marked 
by great freshness and vigour, and his breadth of mind 
and cordial sympathy endeared him to all his students. 
His. loss will be felt by his old colleagues at King’s 
College and in the University of London, but he will 
be especially mourned by the large number of King’s 
College men who now, on many battle-fronts and in 
the Grand Fleet, are applying the principles he taught 
so well to the engineering problems of the war. 
Tue Kelvin lecture delivered before the Institution 
of Electrical Engineers on November 9 by Dr. Alex- 
ander Russell dealt with some aspects of Lord Kelvin’s 
life and work. After giving a short account of his 
early life, Dr. Russell showed how, in many fields of 
fundamental importance to the electrical engineer, Lord 
Kelvin’s work had provided the basis on which his 
successors had built. His solution of the problem of 
the transmission of signals along a submarine cable 
given in 1851 only requires a slight extension to make 
it suitable for the electric transmission of power in a 
three-phase system, while his proof that the tempera- 
ture of a heated body may be less when it is surrounded 
by a bad conducting covering than when it is left bare 
has been reproduced by others as a new discovery. 
Many of the theoretical extensions of Lord Kelvin’s 
work we owe to Dr. Russell himself, as, for example, 
the calculation of the force between electrified spheres, 
As, in addition, he is a former pupil of Kelvin, it 
would have been difficult to find one more fitted than 
* Dr. Russell to treat of Lord Kelvin’s work with under- 
standing and with sympathy. As a teacher of the 
natural philosophy class at Glasgow University, with 
pupils whose principal ambition was to pass the M.A. 
examinations, Lord Kelvin was to a great extent 
wasted. If-he could have spent his time in inspiring 
with his own spirit and enthusiasm for research a 
NO. 2455, VOL. 98| 
selected body of students more capable of appreciating 
his genius, how much richer science would have ~ 
been. May we hope that by the time another Kelvin 
appears we shall have learnt how to utilise his powers 
to greater advantage than in preparing undergraduates ~ 4 
for their degree examinations. 
At the annual meeting of the Society for ees) é 
the Rothamsted Experiments, held on November 6, 
Mr. J. F. Mason, M.P., being in the chair, an address 
was given by the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Crawford and 
Balcarres, President of the Board of Agriculture, who 
sketched briefly the history of the Rothamsted Experi- 
ment Station and the part it has played in the develop- 
ment of British agriculture. During the war the work 
of the station has necessarily been modified. Two- 
thirds of the total staff are either fighting or engaged 
on direct war work, the special experience gained at 
Rothamsted having proved unexpectedly useful in cer- 
tain highly important directions. Some of the staff 
hold commissions in the Sanitary Corps; some are 
engaged under the Ministry of Munitions in the large- 
scale manufacture of a certain indispensable consti- 
tuent of high explosives; while some are fighting in 
infantry regiments. Those left at the laboratory are 
kept occupied with special inquiry work sent by 
the Board of Agriculture and other departments, 
Nevertheless, the ordinary work is still being con- 
tinued. Women workers have come in to take the 
place of some of the men who have gone, and they 
are keeping nearly all the lines of experiment alive, so 
that not only is nothing being lost, but steady pro- 
gress in the experiments is being made. The whole 
of the organisation is thus being kept in Mia 
order, and in readiness for full development to dea 
with the problems of the new situation which will 
undoubtedly arise after the war. The director of the 
station, Dr. E. J. Russell, was able to announce 
some handsome gifts during the year, including 1oool. 
from the widow and daughter of the late treasurer, 
Dr. Hugo Miiller; 3o00l. from the Carnegie Trustees 
for the purchase of books for the library; 2321. from 
the Rt. Hon. Sir John T. Brunner, P.C., for furnish- 
ing the library; as well as other gifts for the labora- 
tories and the library. The sum of 5ool., needed to 
clear off the Building and Equipment Fund, was 
raised at the meeting on November 6. 
In the third issue of Folk-lore for the current year 
Mr. S. A. H. Burne discusses some examples of sur- 
vivals of folk memory in Staffordshire. Thus he. 
points out that local tradition describes with some 
correctness Cromwell’s action in regard to the rights 
of freeholders in Needwood Forest, and a local rhyme, 
still current, expresses the popular joy at the Restora- 
tion, the despotism of the Executive under Cromwell 
being much disliked. The idea, still prevalent, that 
the corpse of a person dying through violence should 
not be touched before the arrival of the police is traced 
back to medieval criminal procedure, which imposed a 
certain presumption of guilt upon the first finder of a 
dead body. Hence it was manifestly wise to let some- 
one else discover it, and the current idea is a survival 
from coroners’ law in the Middle Ages. 
Tue tests used for determining colour vision and 
tactile discrimination by the Cambridge Anthropo- 
logical Expedition to the Torres Straits fifteen years 
ago are criticised in great detail by Prof. E. B. 
Titchener in the Proceedings of the American Philo- 
sophical Society (vol. lv., No. 3). The findings of this 
expedition have been so often quoted, and so many 
generalisations from these tests made about the native 
mind, that the writer of the paper thinks that more 
attention should be paid to the technique and suitability 
