s 
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Se “as 
June 30, 1923] 
NATURE 
889 

Current Topics and Events. 
THE approaching twenty-fifth anniversary of Sir 
Ronald Ross’s epoch-making discovery of the mosquito 
transmission of malaria is made the subject of a 
powerful letter in the Times advocating the establish- 
ment of a Ross Institute in London, to be called the | 
Ross Clinique for Tropical Diseases. The letter is 
signed by the Marquess of Lansdowne and Lord 
Hardinge, ex-Viceroys of India, by a number of 
business men connected with the Tropics, and by 
presidents and directors of scientific societies at 
home and abroad. Among the latter are included 
the directors of the Pasteur Institutes of Paris and 
Brussels, of the Gorgas Institute in Panama, and of 
the School of Hygiene, Johns Hopkins University, 
the president of the International Health Commission 
of the Danube, and the Director-General of the 
United States Public Health Service. The object 
of founding a Ross Institute is twofold. On one 
hand, it is in honour of an Englishman to whom the 
whole civilised world and the British Empire in 
particular owe a debt of gratitude, and it is intended 
to be a public recognition of his services while he is 
still among us, and a lasting memorial to him after 
his death. On the other hand, it is to enable Ross, 
a man of genius, assisted by other experts in medical 
science, to exercise his special gifts in the initiation 
and continuation of researches into the still unsolved 
problems of tropical medicine and hygiene. It is to 
be clearly understood that the Ross Clinique is 
intended to supplement and not compete with the 
existing schools of tropical medicine. Its aim is 
research alone, for which there is plenty of room in 
the great capital of the British Empire. 
In its issue for June 19 the Times reported the 
great outbreak of lava on the north-eastern flank of 
Etna, which occurred on the early morning of 
Saturday, June 16, and was already causing wide- 
spread devastation. Further details, with a map, 
have appeared in later issues of the Times, together 
with a report by Prof. Ponte, who has ascended the 
slope as far as possible. As in so many previously 
recorded eruptions on the slopes of Etna, the lava 
has broken out from several mouths arranged along 
a fissure, which in this case is near the crater of 1879. 
At the time at which this note is written, it is early 
to speculate as to the extent to which the flow may 
spread, and the experiences of Catania on the southern 
side, often repeated in historic times, indicate the 
magnitude and the vitality of the great reservoir 
that has played so important a part in the physio- 
graphy of Pleistocene times. Charles Lyell, from 
1830 onwards, roused an interest in Etna as one of 
the most appealing examples of earth-structures 
reared by forces now in action. A detailed map, on 
which dates are inserted, such as that published by 
O. Silvestri in his “ Viaggio all’ Etna” in 1879, 
shows how, layer by layer, the vast composite mass 
continues to be built up and mairtained. The 
neighbourhood has now been evacuated, and the 
scenes of flight depicted in d’Annunzio’s amazing 
NO. 2800, VOL, III] 

film “‘ Cabiria’”’ are repeated in the tragedy of to-day. 
Activity is also reported in the small cones that are 
growing within the crater of explosion formed in 
Vesuvius in 1906. 
THE memorial portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace 
was unveiled at the Natural History Museum and 
presented to the Trustees on June 23. Wallace was 
born in 1823 and died in 1913, so that the presenta- 
tion has appropriately taken place in the centenary 
year of his birth. Shortly after his death a com- 
mittee was formed to collect funds for the memorial, 
which was to take two forms, a tablet in Westminster 
Abbey and a portrait in the Natural History Museum. 
The first was completed and placed in position in 
1914, but the latter was deferred owing to the War 
/ and was only recently finished. Sir James Marchant, 
in offering the portrait to the Trustees, gave a short 
account of the formation of the memorial committee, 
and concluded by asking Sir Charles S. Sherrington, 
President of the Royal Society, to unveil it. In his 
address the latter alluded to the fact that much of 
the fruit of Wallace’s expedition in the Malay Archi- 
pelago is incorporated in the Museum collections, 
and dwelt upon the happy circumstance of the 
juxtaposition of Wallace’s portrait and of Darwin’s 
statue, two men whose discoveries at the same 
moment and on the same theme were placed before 
the scientific world. Prof. E. B. Poulton, a co- 
worker of Wallace, spoke of his life and work, and 
testified to the generosity of his character and to the 
unselfish enthusiasm with which he encouraged and 
assisted the work of others. The portrait was 
accepted on behalf of the Trustees by the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, who undertook that it should receive 
the care that the Museum accorded to its treasures. 
He remarked upon the interest which students felt 
at seeing what manner of men they were who had 
made such great advances in natural science. The 
portrait, which is an extremely good likeness, was 
painted by Mr. J. W. Beaufort from photographs. 
A WRITER under the most appropriate pen-name 
of AZolus has recently contributed to the Wimbledon 
Borough News two lengthy letters of protest against 
the by-pass road that is planned to run alongside 
the ground recently added to Wimbledon Common 
on the further side of Beverley Brook. While we 
sympathise with his love of a Nature unspoiled by 
the dust, noise, and smell of motor cars, we cannot 
forget that this road is only part of a scheme settled 
years before the War, and already modified in this 
area to meet the views of those who obtained the 
extension of the Common. A further scheme, 
already mooted by the John Evelyn Club for Wimble- 
don, which might well receive support, is to fence 
off part of this tract as a Nature reservation. 
Wimbledon is singularly rich in birds, and it is even 
possible that some of our wild mammals may yet 
linger in the district. If the Common Conservators - 
could see their way to provide a sanctuary for them 
they would earn the thanks of all lovers of Nature. 
