JUNE 19, 1902] 
On September § the whole day will be devoted to visits to works. 
In the evening the exhibition grounds will be specially illumin- 
ated in honour of the Institute. On September 6 there will be 
an excursion to the picturesque district of Vohwinkel, to the 
Elberfeld suspended railway and to the Kaiserbridge, near 
Miingsten. A detailed programme will be issued when the 
arrangements are further advanced, 
ON June 14 the Essex Field Club visited those portions of the 
old Lambourne and Hainhault Forests which, according to the 
scheme proposed by Mr. E. N. Buxton, are to be re-afforested 
and to become an open space for London second only in im- 
portance to Epping Forest. It is proposed to make free some 
859 acres, of which seventy are detached from the main portion. 
These form Grange Hill Forest, and the purchase of them for 
7000/, is now assured. For the rest, 20,000/. is asked. It is 
hardly necessary to point out the importance from a natural 
history point of view which the grounds will possess if they 
become public property. Not only will the naturalist find 
happy} grounds for study, but others who feel the necessary 
primness of London parks will be able to enjoy nature less 
adorned. 
° 
QUEENWOOD COLLEGE, near Stockbridge, Hants, was de- 
stroyed by fire on June 10, Mr. Charles Willmore, the principal, 
meeting his death in the disaster. Several distinguished men, 
both in Mr, Willmore’s time and in that of his predecessor, Mr. 
George Edmondson, made their temporary home at Queenwood. 
Prof. Fawcett, Postmaster-General and political economist, was 
a scholar there ; and in the roll of its science masters we find 
the names of Tyndall, Frankland, Debus, Field and Hake. 
There have been few schools in this country in which the pursuit 
of science was more earnestly and heartily encouraged. It is 
now about seven years since the college, as such, ceased to 
exist. 
DuRING atrial witha French naval balloon off Toulon on 
June 9, Lieut. Baudic, who was alone in the car, was thrown 
into the sea and drowned. The object of the ascent was to 
ascertain whether it is possible, from the car of a balloon, to 
perceive submarine boats at a distance of a mile orso. The 
balloon started from the Maritime Aéronautical Works estab- 
lished in 1890 at Garrouban. The Garrouban Aéronautical 
Station is provided with two balloons, the Awxz/are, and a larger 
one measuring 500 c.m. capable of carrying three persons, called 
the Normal. These marine balloons are intended to be sent 
up captive from a large warsteamer for inspecting the surrounding 
sea and sending up signals at a distance. 
WE learn from Sczence that at the recent annual meeting of 
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences it was decided to 
award the ‘‘ Rumford premium ” to Prof. George E. Hale, of the 
Yerkes Observatory, ‘‘ for his investigations in solar and stellar 
physics, and in particular for the invention and perfection of 
the spectro-heliograph.” It was also resolved to grant the sum 
of 750 dollars from the income of the Rumford fund to be 
expended for the construction of a mercurial compression pump 
designed by Prof. Theodore W. Richards and to be used in 
his research on the Thomson-Joule effect. A grant from the 
Rumford fund was also made to Prof. Arthur A. Noyes in aid 
of his research as to the effect of high temperatures upon the 
electrical conductivity of aqueous solutions, 
THE 7Zimes reports that the jubilee festival of the Germanic 
Museum at Nuremberg was celebrated on Monday in the 
presence of the German Emperor and Empress and members of 
the Royal Houses of Bavaria, Baden and Wiirtemberg. The 
collections in the museum illustrate every aspect of the growth 
of the Germanic peoples ; special collections, for example, have 
been formed to illustrate the development of the trade guilds 
and of characteristic German industries, such as the Bavarian 
NO. 1703, VOL. 66] 
NATURE 
183 
breweries. From a collection of antiquities in the narrow sense 
of weapons, heraldic devices and the like, the museum has 
_grown into a complete historical exhibition. 
DuRING the researches of the seventh expedition of the 
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which visited the 
Gambia in the summer and autumn of last year, a new parasite 
associated with symptoms resembling those occurring in 
animals suffering from the tse-tse fly disease was found in the 
blood of a native child. The committee of the school has 
now resolved to despatch a new expedition to the Gambia and 
to Senegambia to study the disease further. The expedition, 
which will start ina few weeks, will, as at present organised, 
consist of Dr. J. Everett Dutton and Dr. J. L. Todd, of 
McGill University, Montreal. Its principal object will be to 
investigate the conditions under which the disease occurs in 
both Europeans and natives and its distribution, and also to 
ascertain how it is conveyed from man to man. 
AMoNG the subjects discussed at the annual meeting of the 
Sea Fisheries Committees of England held in London on 
June 10 and presided over by Mr. Gerald Balfour were the 
establishment and maintenance by the Government of one or 
more laboratories for carrying on the work of fishery research, 
or, failing that, the provision from Imperial resources of the 
funds necessary to render more efficient and useful the labora- 
tories which at present exist. Mr. Gerald Balfour, in welcom- 
ing the delegates, said some of the subjects discussed last year, 
such as the registry, lettering and numbering of fishing boats, 
had been carried out ; and the artificial fertilisation of ova had 
been referred to the Committee on Ichthyological Research 
now sitting, as was also the establishment and maintenance of 
laboratories and hatcheries. 
In the popular mind, the medical and other sciences are 
regarded as too severely precise to have romantic aspects, yet in 
the history of scientific discovery records can be found of many 
noble deeds and sacrifices for the sake of others. Sir Frederick 
Treves referred to the romance of medicine in an address at 
the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School on June 11. He 
remarked that the exploits of discoverers of new countries 
had always been surrounded with a halo of romance, but the 
discoveries in medicine had not been less romantic. No story 
of the past could exceed the romance of the history of the work 
of Pasteur, Lister and Koch. They had not discovered any 
new garden of the Hesperides, but they had travelled far into 
the valley of the shadow of death. He did not think there was 
anything in the history more tragic than the account of Laénnec 
holding on the point of a needle a minute scrap of tissue and 
saying ‘‘ I have found the seed of tuberculosis.” When Koch 
demonstrated the bacillus of tuberculosis he was practically 
reaching one of the limits of philosophic inquiry. Could there 
be anything more profoundly interesting than the way in which 
malaria was studied and finally explained ? 
SEVERAL matters of meteorological interest have been recorded 
during the past few days. The drought in Australia came to an 
end at the beginning of last week, when good rains occurred in 
portions of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. 
Less hopeful news comes, however, from India, for an Exchange 
telegram from Simla states that the official monsoon forecast, 
which this year for the first time is withheld from the public, 
foreshadows a deficient rainfall all over India and drought in 
Gujerat and Western Punjab. At Karachi, however, a terrific 
storm occurred on Monday. The Dazly Maz/ states that the 
city is halfsubmerged by extraordinarily high tides. Telegraphs 
and telephones have all been destroyed, and there has been 
serious loss of life and property. Exceptionally stormy weather 
is also being experienced in South Africa. At Middleburg, 
