DECEMBER 21, 1916] 
NATURE 
313 
was elected F.R.S. During his short stay at Dur- 
ham he communicated results of his observations 
of minor planets to the Royal Astronomical 
Society, following them up with further contribu- 
tions, and was elected a fellow of the society in 
1864. Soon after succeeding Glaisher in 1875, he 
became a fellow of the Royal Meteorological 
Society, and was president in 1886 and 1887, also 
serving as official referee for papers for nearly 
thirty years. 
The most important Greenwich publication 
associated with Ellis’s name is that which deals 
exhaustively with air temperature for fifty years, 
1841-90, in the production of which he did a 
very great amount of hard work in rendering the 
earlier observations comparable with those taken 
under his own superintendence. But he is prob- 
ably better known in connection with his contribu- 
tion to the Philosophical Transactions of the 
Royal Society for 1880, in which he showed for 
the first time a relation between sun-spot fre- 
quency and terrestrial magnetic disturbance, a 
subject which he followed up with further contri- 
_ butions to the R.A.S. Monthly Notices. He 
strongly objected to the notion that the moon 
affects the weather, and so long ago as 1867 
maintained in the Philosophical Magazine that 
the idea of the moon’s clearing away clouds was 
nothing but a poet’s fancy. To the subject of 
cloudiness he returned later, dealing in one of his 
presidential addresses to the Royal Meteorological 
NOTES. 
By the will of the late Mr. Percival Lowell, a fund 
amounting to 10 per cent. of the income of his total 
| estate of a million dollars is set apart for the main- 
Society with seventy years’ cloud observations at | 
Greenwich. His association with the Time Depart- 
ment is reflected in a highly interesting article in 
the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical 
Society dealing with the rating of several clocks 
destined for use during the observations of the 
transit of Venus in 1874, in which he showed 
that the oscillation of one pendulum was dis- 
tinctly affected by that of another in the vicinity, 
especially if the clocks were mounted on the same 
stand. 
Ellis was a frequent contributor also to the 
Quarterly Journal of the Royal: Meteorological 
Society, and for many years a member of the 
Institution of Electrical Engineers, in connection 
with which he investigated the effect of the City 
and South London Electric Railway trains on the 
earth-current registers at the Royal Observatory. 
He was keenly interested in the new magnetic in- 
struments introduced at Greenwich by the present 
Astronomer Royal, which he was unfortunately 
unable to see for himself, as his sight had practi- 
cally failed for some years before his death. He 
insisted to the last on attending the annual visita- 
tion of Greenwich Observatory, putting in his 
seventy-fifth consecutive appearance at that func- 
tion last June, but no one who saw him then can 
be surprised that it was his last visitation day. 
He was able to appreciate a reference in the cur- 
rent issue of the Observatory magazine only a 
few days before his death, but had been for some 
weeks confined to his bed, though suffering from 
no specific ailment of any great importance. 
Though twice married he had no children, but he 
leaves a widow. He was buried at Charlton Ceme- 
tery on Saturday, December 16. WwW. W. B. 
No. 2460, VoL. 98] 
tenance of the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, 
Arizona, to be used especially for ‘‘the study of our 
solar system and its evolutions.’ It is specified that 
the observatory is never to be merged or joined with 
any other institution. The fund devoted to this pur- 
pose is to be held in trust by the late astronomer’s 
brother-in-law, Mr, W. ‘Lowell Putnam. 
WE regret to announce the death on December 14, 
at seventy-three years of age, of Prof. T Purdie, 
F.R.S., emeritus professor of chemistry in the Univer- 
sity of St. Andrews. 
Carr. C. Baruurst has been appointed Parlia- 
mentary Secretary of the Food Control Department in 
the new Ministry, and not of the Board of Agriculture, 
as was expected last week. This office is held by Sir 
R. Winfrey, who occupied the same post in 1906-10, 
when Earl Carrington was Minister of Agriculture. 
Tue death is announced of Dr. Hugo Miinsterberg, 
since 1892. professor of psychology, and director of the 
| psychological laboratory, Harvard University. 
Mr. W. Kewtey has been appointed secretary-super- 
intendent of the Middlesex Hospital in succession to 
the late Mr. F. Clare Melhado. 
Dr. A. YeErRsIN, director of the’ Pasteur Institute of 
Indo-China, has been awarded the Lasserre prize for 
the present year for his work on anti-plague serum. 
Ir is announced in the issue of Science for Novem- 
ber 17 that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 
on November 15 presented the Rumford medals to 
Dr. C. G. Abbot, of the Smithsonian Institution, for 
his researches on solar radiation. 
WE learn from the Times that Sub-Lieut. O. J- 
| Hobbs, previously reported missing, is now reported 
killed on or about November 13. At the outbreak of 
war he was science master at the King Edward VI. 
Grammar School, Southampton. Announcement is 
also made that Lieut. J. C. Simpson, R.E:, an asso- 
ciate of tthe Royal School of Mines anda fellow of the 
Geological Society, was killed on December 4. 
WE regret to note that Engineering for December 15 
| records the death, on December 11, in his sixty-fourth 
year, of Mr. Archibald Colville, the chairman of 
Messrs. David Colville and Sons, Ltd., the well-known 
steel-makers of Motherwell. Mr. Colville was chair- 
man of the Scottish Steel Makers’ Association, and 
was a member of the Board of Trade Iron and Steel 
Industries Committee. 
A FuND is being raised to purchase the very valuable 
scientific library of the late Prof. Silvanus Thompson 
and to present it to the Institution of Electrical 
Engineers as a memorial of his life and work, the 
library to be accessible to the public on the same 
‘conditions as the Ronalds Library. Those who wish 
to subscribe to this fund or to have further informa- 
tion regarding it are requested to communicate with 
Mr. W. M. Mordey, 82 Victoria Street, London, S.W. 
AT a recent meeting of the Anatomical Society of 
Great Britain and Ireland the following members were 
appointed to edit and manage the Journal of 
Anatomy :—Prof. T. H. Bryce, University of Glas- 
gow; Prof. E. Fawcett, Uniyersity of Bristol; Prof. 
J. P. Hill, University College, London; Prof. G. 
Elliot Smith, University of Manchester; and Prof. A. 
