March 26, 1908] 



NA TURE 



493 



The Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, F.R.S., has been elected 

 a corresponding member of the French Academy of Moral 

 and Political Sciences in succession to Lord Reay, who has 

 been elected an associate. 



The Paris Academy of Sciences has accepted a legacy 

 of 40oJ. from M. Sabatier to found a biennial prize to be 

 known as the Sabatier prize. 



On the drill ground at Issy-les-Moulineaux on Friday, 

 March 20, Mr. H. Farman traversed the complete circle 

 two and a half times with his aeroplane, the length of 

 the flight being 2750 yards, and the time 2m. 15s. 



With regard to the inquiry of a correspondent (N'.^ture, 

 March 5, p. 417) for particulars concerning the mist and 

 Sicilian earthquake of 17S3, Mr. E. A. Martin, The 

 Museum, Croydon, writes to point out that Gillx-rt White 

 has a reference thereto in his Letter 65 to Barrington 

 ('■ Natural History of Selborne "). 



Dr. Hall-Edw.^rds, who recently had his left hand 

 amputated in consequence of X-ray dermatitis, has been 

 granted a Civil List pension of 120;. a year. When Dr. 

 Hall-Edwards has recovered from the effects of the 

 amputation, another operation will be necessary, and at 

 least four fingers of his right hand will have to be 

 amputated. 



On Thursday next, .\pril 2, Mr. R. Lydekker will begin 

 a course of two lectures at the Royal Institution on (i) 

 •' The Animals of Africa," (2) " The Animals of South 

 .America." The Friday evening discourse on .April 3 will 

 be delivered by the Right Hon. Lord Montagu of Beau- 

 lieu on " The Modern Motor-car," and on -April lo by 

 Prof. J. J. Thomson on " The Carriers of Positive 

 Electricity." 



The death is announced, in his seventieth year, of Dr. 

 D. B. St. John Roosa, president of the New York Medical 

 Post-graduate School, and professor of diseases of the eye 

 in that institution. He formerly held chairs in the Uni- 

 versity of the City of New York and the University of 

 Vermont. He was the author of a pocket medical lexicon 

 and of various treatises on the eye and the ear. 



Prof. W. .A. Kellerman, who has held the professor- 

 ship of botany at the Ohio State University since 1891, 

 has died of malaria in Guatemala, which country he was 

 visiting in order to study its flora. He was born in 1850, 

 graduated at Cornell in 1874, and had taught botany at 

 the Wisconsin State Normal School and the Kansas State 

 .Agricultural College. He was perhaps most widely known 

 as founder and editor of the Journal of Mycology. .Among 

 his books were " Flora of Kansas," " Spring Flora of 

 Ohio," and " Phyto-Theca." 



Referring to the article on " Some London Problems " 

 published in our issue of March 19, a correspondent directs 

 attention to the arrangement for the construction of deep- 

 water wharves near Gravesend, in Long Reach, about five 

 miles above Tilbury. These wharves have been licensed 

 by the Thames Conservancy and approved by the Board 

 of Trade, though their construction has been delayed 

 because of the Port Bill. This wharf will be capable, our 

 correspondent states, of dealing with three million tons 

 of traffic a year. 



The Royal Commission on Coast Erosion has been 

 directed to inquire whether, in connection with reclaimed 

 lands or otherwise, it is desirable to make an experiment 

 in afforestation as a means of increasing employment during 

 periods of depression in the labour market, and, if so, by 



NO. 2004, VOL. 77] 



what authority and under what conditions such experiment 

 should be conducted. The following new members have 

 been added to the commission : — Mr. J. Galvin, Mr. E. S. 

 Howard, C.B., Mr. H. C. Monro, C.B., Dr. W. Somer- 

 ville, Mr. F. Story, and Mr. J. Ward, ^LP. 



The sixty-first annual meeting of the Pakeontographical 

 Society was held on March 20 in the rooms of the Geo- 

 logical Society, Burlington House, Dr. Henry Woodward, 

 F.R.S., president, in the chair. The annual report alluded 

 to the unusually varied contents of the volume for 1907, 

 due to an attempt to provide indexes and title-pages for 

 several monographs which were either complete or dis- 

 continued. The council is beginning to favour the plan 

 of publishing smaller works, and has included in the 

 current volume a complete monograph of British 

 Conularite, by Miss Ida L. Slater, with five plates drawn 

 by the author. The council welcomed a contribution from 

 the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, which 

 provided five plates of .Scottish Carboniferous fishes de- 

 scribed by Dr. Traquair. Mrs. G. B. Longstaff, Mr. 

 H. A. Allen, Dr. F. A. Bather, and Mr. William Hill 

 were elected new members of council. Dr. Henry Wood- 

 ward, F.R.S., Dr. G. J. Hinde, F.R.S., and Dr. A. Smith 

 Woodward, F.R.S., were re-elected president, treasurer, 

 and secretary respectively. 



No. 3 of the 1908 issue of the Bulletin of the Imperial 

 .Academy of St. Petersburg contains an elaborate and well- 

 illustrated account of the developmental history of the 

 echinoderm Echiurus, by Dr. N. Salensky. 



The third part of vol. vii. of the Emu — issued as a 

 special supplement — is devoted to a list of .Australian birds 

 on the model of the one now in course of issue by the 

 British Museum. The compiler, Mr. G. M. Mathews, 

 who has recently come to reside in this country, announces 

 his intention of issuing an illustrated work on the birds 

 of .Australia, to which the present " hand-list " is a pre- 

 liminary. 



Recent issues of the Proceedings of the U.S. National 

 Museum include papers by Mr. .A. H. Clark on the crinoid 

 genus Comatula (No. 1585), and on the occurrence of 

 infrabasals in certain modern pentacrinids (No. 1582), as 

 well as one (No. 1580) by Mr. C. B. Wilson on North 

 American parasitic copepod crustaceans, and another (No. 

 1586) by Miss Richardson on isopods from the northern 

 Pacific. 



In an article published in the National Geographic 

 Magazine for February under the title of " The Police- 

 men of the .Air," Mr. H. W. Henshaw raises the question 

 as to what would happen if birds w'ere completely exter- 

 minated. " No one," he observes, " can foretell with 

 absolute certainty, but it is more than likely — nay, it is 

 almost certain — that within a limited time not only would 

 successful agriculture become impossible, but the destruc- 

 tion of the greater part of vegetation would follow. It 

 is believed that a permanent reduction in the numbers of 

 our birds, even if no species are actually exterminated, 

 will inevitably be followed by disastrous consequences." 

 It is added that bird-protection in the United States re- 

 quires specially stringent laws on account of the large 

 influx of immigrants from southern Europe, to whom every 

 bird, no matter how small, is regarded as food which 

 ought not to be wasted. 



.A FURTHER contribution to the controversy with regard 

 to the alleged existence of a British willow-titmouse {Partis 

 alricapillus kleinschmidli) is made by Mr. H. B. Booth 

 in the March number of the Naturalist. It has been stited 



