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FEBRUARY 15, 1917| 
Tue gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 
thas been awarded to Prof. W. S, Adams, of the Mount 
Wilson Observatory, California, in recognition of his 
research work and papers on solar and stellar spectro- 
scopy. 
A BRANCH of the Ministry of Munitions, to be known 
as the Munitions Petroleum Supplies Branch, has 
been established. It will deal with the provision and 
distribution of petroleum and similar mineral oils for 
the purposes of the Ministry, and be under the'direction 
of Mr. E. Houghton Fry. Sir Boverton Redwood has 
consented to take charge of the research section, and 
will be known as Director of Munitions Petroleum 
Research. 
Tue Marquess of Crewe has been appointed a 
member of the Committee of the Privy Council on the 
Organisation and Development of Scientific and In- 
dustrial Research. 
Tue following awards of the Society of Engineers 
(Incorporated) were presented on February 5: The 
president’s gold medal to Prof. C. G. Cullis for his 
paper on ‘‘The Mineral Resources of the British Em- 
pire as regards the Production of Non-Ferrous Indus- 
trial Metals "’; the Bessemer Premium to Prof. W. G. 
Fearnsides for his paper on ‘‘The Mineral Require- 
ments of the British Iron and Steel Industries’’; the 
Bernays Premium to Prof. J. A. Fleming for his 
paper on ‘! Engineering and Scientific Research”’; the 
Nursey Premium to Mr. J. E. Lister for his paper on 
““Modern Coal and Coke Handling Machinery as 
used in the Manufacture of Gas”; and the Society’s 
Premium to Mr. Ewart S. Andrews for his paper on 
“The Design of Continuous Beams.” 
Tue Alvarenga prize of the Swedish Medical 
Association for 1916 has been awarded to Dr. E. 
Nilsson for his study of the physical development and 
fitness for military service of the young men of 
Sweden between the years 1861 and 1913. The jubilee 
prize of the association has been won by Mr. H. B. 
Lundborg for his medical-biologic study of genera- 
tions of certain Swedish families. 
Tue following have been elected as the officers of 
the Optical Society for the year 1917-18: President, 
Mr. F. J. Cheshire; Hon. Treasurer, Mr. H. F. 
Purser; Hon. Secretary, Mr. W. Shackleton; Hon. 
Librarian, Mr. J. H. Sutcliffe; New Members of the 
Council, Mr. L. G. Martin, Dr. W. Rosenhain, Mr. 
T. Smith, Mr. F. Twyman, Dr. R. Mullineux Walms- 
ley, Mr. R. S. Whipple, and Lt.-Col. A. C. Williams. 
THE annual general meeting of the Institution of 
Mechanical Engineers will be held at the Institution 
of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, Westminster, 
at 6 o’clock to-morrow evening, when the annual re- 
port of the council will be presented, and a paper read 
by Dr. W. Mason entitled ‘‘ Alternating Stress Ex- 
periments.” 
THE trustees of the late Lord Kitchener have loaned 
to the London County Council, for exhibition at the 
Horniman Museum, Forest Hill, the collection of 
Eastern weapons and armour made by Lord Kitchener. 
Most of the weapons of northern India, and of the 
advanced peoples of other parts of India, are repre- 
sented in the collection, together with a few from 
Persia, China, Japan, the Sudan, and elsewhere. The 
collection is in course of arrangement, but may be 
seen whenever the museum is open to the public. 
WE regret to have to record the death, on Sunday 
last, at the age of sixty-nine years, of the Duke of 
‘Norfolk, Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. 
NO. 2468, VoL. 98] 
NATURE 
475 
Tue Aurora, under the command of Capt. J. K. 
Davis, with Sir Ernest Shackleton on board, arrived 
at Wellington, N.Z., last Friday, bringing the sur- 
vivors of the Ross Sea party of the Imperial Antarctic 
Expedition. A despatch from Sir Ernest Shackleton 
to the Daily Chronicle amplifies the brief account sent 
by wireless last week, which announced the death of 
Capt. Macintosh, Mr, V. G. Hayward, and the Rev. 
A. P. Spencer Smith. Between January and March, 
1915, this party of men had been engaged in laying 
depéts as far as 80° S. lat. in anticipation of Shackle- 
ton’s cross-continental journey. On March 14, 1915, 
one sledge party returned to Hut Point three days 
after the Aurora had been forced to move to Cape 
Evans on account of MacMurdo Sound freezing. 
Eight days later the second sledge party returned, 
badly frost-bitten, and having lost all their dogs. Open 
water or thin ice prevented their reaching Cape Evans 
until June 1, when they found the Aurora had gone. 
The winter was spent in the hut at Cape Evans. Pro- 
visions were abundant, but coal was short, as the 
main coal supply had been washed away soon after 
being landed. Blubber, however, served as fuel, and 
the deficiency in clothing was made good from the 
materials left by the Scott expedition. In September, 
1915, a Sledge party again set out for the south, and 
a depét was successfully laid near Mount Hope, at 
the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, on January 26, 
1916. Two of Capt. Scott’s sledges were found. 
On the return journey scurvy appeared among the 
party, and Capt. Macintosh and Mr. Spencer Smith 
were seriously affected. Near One Ton Depét they 
were overtaken by a furious blizzard, just as Scott 
was, from February 17 to March 1, but they decided 
to push on, as their provisions were very short. Forty 
miles from Hut Point the strength of the six men 
was almost exhausted. Capt. Macintosh then elected 
to be left behind to give the others a chance, as 
neither he nor Spencer Smith could walk, and had 
to be carried on sledges. The following day (March 9) 
Spencer Smith died, and two days later Hut Point 
was reached. A relief party succeeded in bringing 
Capt. Macintosh back in safety, Early in May the 
ice between Hut Point and Cape Evans seemed thick 
enough for travel, and Macintosh and Hayward, who 
had by that time recovered from scurvy, set out to 
reach Cape Evans, but broke through thin ice on the 
way and perished. The winter of 1916 was spent in 
sledging stores from Shackleton’s old hut at Cape 
Royds to Cape Evans, in view of a possible third 
winter of detention. On January 10 this year the 
Aurora arrived at Cape Evans and picked up the seven 
survivors, H. E. Wild, E. Joyce, A. Stevens, Cope, 
Gaze, Richards, and Jack. No new geographical dis- 
coveries were made and none were expected, for this 
Ross Sea party was merely a supporting one in the 
event of Shackleton crossing the continent. However} 
the meteorological records will prove of great value. 
By, the death of Dr. C. V. Burton on February 3, 
owing to an accident at the Royal Aircraft Factory, 
the country loses a mind of great originality and 
power. In 1891, when his strain figure theory of the 
constitution of matter was first published, he was 
only twenty-four years of age, and had already shown 
his capability as an investigator. During the next 
four or five years he added greatly to his reputation 
by his papers on the propagation of explosive waves 
through gases, on the rise of pitch of the note of a 
tuning-fork as it dies away, and on the mechanism of 
electrical conduction in metals. In 1905 he gave in 
these columns an account of his researches on the 
artificial production of diamonds, and three years 
later investigated the pressure oscillations in an atmo- 
sphere subjected to periodic heatings and coolings. 
