March 30, 1899] 



NA TURE 



515 



NOTES. 

 The meeting of the International Geological Congress, which 

 is to be held in Paris in 1900 (August 16 to 28), promises to be 

 one of exceptional interest and success. It takes place at a 

 time when a grand universal exhibition will attract many men 

 of science from all countries. It represents a science of pro- 

 gressive character, which deals not only with the history of the 

 earth and of the life which has existed, but furnishes the basis 

 for geographical study, lends aid in art and manufactures, and 

 is of essential importance in mining, agriculture, and hydrology. 

 Subjects such as these draw men together irrespective of their 

 nationality, and form bonds of union which political* differences 

 cannot rend asunder. The Committee of Organisation is con- 

 stituted as follows : President, M. Albert Gaudry, Professor in 

 the Museum of Natural History ; Vice-Presidents, MM. Michel 

 Levy and Marcel Bertrand ; General Secretary, M. Charles 

 Barrois. The excursions which have been planned to follow 

 the ordinary meeting number no less than nineteen, and they 

 are so arranged that every important district in France and along 

 its borders, and all formations of particular geological interest 

 will be visited. Among the districts are the Paris Basin, the 

 Boulonnais, Normandy, the Ardennes, Picardy, Brittany, 

 Touraine, Dordogne, the Alps and Mount Blanc, Bordeaux, 

 and the Pyrenees. 



We regret to see the announcement of the death of Prof. 

 Gustav Wiedemann, professor of physics in the University of 

 Vienna, at .seventy-three years of age. 



The death is announced of M. Naudin, member of the section 

 of botany of the Paris Academy of Sciences, at eighty-three 

 years of age ; and of Dr. Franz Ritter von Hauer, the dis- 

 tinguished geologist, at Vienna, at seventy-seven years of age. 



At a meeting on Monday of the Royal College of Physicians 

 of London, Dr. William .Selby Church, senior physician to St. 

 Bartholomew's Hospital, was elected the president of the 

 college. 



Scientific visitors to Paris at Easter will be interested to 

 know that the Societe Franjais de Physique will hold its annual 

 exhibition of new apparatus and experiments on Friday and 

 Saturday, April 7 and 8. The exhibition will be held in the 

 rooms of the Society, 44 rue de Rennes. 



The French Minister of Public Instruction will preside at 

 the closing meeting of the thirty-seventh Congres de Societes 

 savantes on April 8. The Congress opens at Toulouse, on April 4. 

 The Toulouse Geographical Society has organised in connection 

 with the Congress an exhibition of apparatus for the decimal 

 measurement of time and angles. 



A REi>ORT by Prof. T. E. Thorpe, F.R S., Principal of the 

 Government Laboratory, and Prof Thomas Oliver, physician to 

 the Royal Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, concerning the 

 employment of components of lead in the manufacture of pottery, 

 and their influence upon the health of the workpeople engaged 

 in that industry, has been issued as a Blue Book. 



At the last meeting of the Institution of Mechanical En- 

 gineers Mr. Arthur T. Walker, a member of the Council of the 

 Iron and Steel Institute, was elected a vice-president in 

 succession to the late Sir Douglas Galton. 



The British Medical Jonnial armouncQs, that Dr. T. Grigor 

 Brodie, at present lecturer on physiology at St. Thomas's 

 Hospital Medical School, has been nominated by the labora- 

 ratories committee of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and 

 Surgeons to be director of the research laboratories on the 

 Thames Embankment. 



NO. 1535, VOL. 59] 



At Monday's meeting of the Royal Geographical Society the 

 President made the gratifying announcement that Mr. L. W.. 

 Longstaff, a Fellow of the Society, had subscribed the sum of 

 25,000/. to the fund for the scientific exploration of the Antarctic 

 regions. A vote of thanks to Mr. Longstaff for his munificent 

 gift, proposed by Sir Clements Markham, was seconded by Lord' 

 Lister, and enthusiastically carried. This generous donation 

 brings the fund at the disposal of the Joint Antarctic Committee 

 up to 40,000/., which is sufficient to ensure our co-operatiorii 

 with Germany in 1900, but is not enough to enable the expeciitior» 

 to be carried out on a scale worthy of our country. It is to he 

 hoped that the example set by Mr. Longstaff will be followed, 

 by others who think that England should take the first place iT> 

 Antarctic exploration, and are in a position to enable her to 

 do so. 



It is announced that the Russian expedition for taking 

 meridian measurements in Spitsbergen will leave St. Petersburg 

 on May i. Two steamers have been placed at the disposal of 

 the expedition by the Russian Ministries of Marine and Ways 

 and Communications, and the Minister of Finance has granted' 

 50,000 roubles for two years. M. Bjalinizki, the zoologist, and 

 Dr. Bunge, the Polar explorer, will accompany the expedition, 

 which will be under the leadership of Staff-Captain Sergie\-5ki. 



The fortieth meeting of the Institution of Naval .\rcbitects 

 was held in London on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of 

 last week, the Earl of Hopetoun, president of the Institution, 

 presiding. The annual report, read at Wednesday's n>eeting, 

 states that the Council have had for some time under consider- 

 ation the rules for the election of members and associates. 

 Following the example of the Institution of Civil Ejigirseers 

 and of the Mechanical Engineers, they proposed that 

 a new class should be introduced, to be called associate 

 members, who would consist mainly of young men fully 

 trained, but not yet holding positions of importance. The 

 candidates must have served a four years' apprenticeship to a 

 naval architect and shipbuilder, or must have had four years' 

 training in a recognised naval college. This change in the 

 rules was adopted by the meeting. The new rules will not 

 come into force until Friday, March 24, 1900. A gold medal 

 was presented to Prof. Captain Kriloff, for his pipers on " The 

 general theory of the oscillations of a ship on waves'' and " On 

 stresses experienced by a ship in a seaway " ; and also one to 

 Prof. Hele-Shaw, for his two papers describing his " Investiga- 

 tion of the nature of surface resistance of water and of stream- 

 line motion under certain experimental conditions." The 

 annual dinner of the Institution was held at the Hotel Cecil on 

 Wednesday evening, March 22. 



Reference has already been made to the new scheme for the 

 Physic Garden at Chelsea. It is now definitely announced that 

 the garden has been handed over to the Trustees of the Londorj 

 Parochial Charities, who have agreed to dedicate a sum of Soo/. 

 yearly to its maintenance. Under the new scheme the garden 

 is to be administered exclusively for the promotion of the study 

 of botany with especial reference to the requirements of genera! 

 education, scientific instruction, and research in botany, in- 

 cluding vegetable physiology, and instruction in technical 

 pharmacology as far as the culture of medical plants is con- 

 cerned. The practical management 01 the garden will be vested 

 in a committee formed of representatives nominated by the 

 Trustees of the London Parochial Charities, the Treasury, the 

 Lord President of the Council, the Technical Education Board, 

 the Royal Society, the Royal College of Physicians, the Society 

 of Apothecaries, the Pharmaceutical Society, the London 

 County Council, and the Senate of the University of London. 

 Earl Cadogan and his successors, as representing Sir Hans- 

 Sloane, who conveyed the garden in 1722 to the Apothecaries' 



