468 



NATURE 



[OcTOBtR 13. 1910 



Tme States of the South African Union have decided to 

 present to His Majesty the King a representative collec- 

 tion of living specimens of the wild animals of the country, 

 and arrangements are already in progress for bringing 

 together the collection and transporting it to England. 

 The latter part of the task will be under the superintend- 

 ence of the Zoological Society of London, in whose 

 menagerie it is hoped that the whole collection will be 

 readv for exhibition next summer, under the title of the 

 King's African Collection. 



It is announced in Science that the original laboratory 

 of Liebig in Giessen is to be purchased and preserved as 

 a memorial to the eminent chemist. An anonymous donor 

 has guaranteed 3000/. for this purpose. 



We notice with deep regret the announcement that Mr. 

 J. W. Clark, who until quite recently held the post of 

 Registrary of the University of Cambridge, died on 

 Monday, October 10, at seventy-seven years of age. 



The death is announced of Prof. W. H. Niles, Meredith 

 professor of geology at the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology. Prof. Niles was appointed to the chair in 

 1871, and was known for his contributions to geology. 



The death is announced, at fifty-five years of age, of 

 Dr. F. W. D. Fraser, formerly professor of anatomy and 

 physiology at the Imperial University of Osaka, Japan ; 

 and also of Mr. A. H. Stokes, until recently Chief In- 

 spector of Mines in the Midland district, at sixty-eight 

 years of age. 



We record with regret the death, on October 5 at East- 

 bourne, of Mr. Cecil H. Leaf, known for his studies of 

 cancer. Mr. Leaf was in 1900 appointed to the staff of 

 the Cancer Hospital, and at the time of his death was 

 one of the senior surgeons of this institution. He was 

 the author of numerous important ' surgical works on 

 cancer of the breast, diseases of the rectum, experiments 

 with chloroform, and other subjects. 



Prof. A. Vambery, the well-known Orientalist, com- 

 pleted on Sunday his fiftieth year of membership of the 

 Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In honour of the 

 occasion the society presented him with a jubilee diploma 

 on Monday, October 10. The Times correspondent at 

 Vienna states that in the course of the day Prof. Vambery 

 received congratulatory visits from a large number of 

 Hungarian men of science and others, as well as tele- 

 grams of congratulation from learned bodies and friends 

 in England and America. A subscription has been opened 

 for the purpose of founding a VambiJ-ry scholarship in 

 philology. 



We notice with regret the death of M. Maurice Levy, 

 who became a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences 

 in 1883, when he took the place vacated by Bresse. 

 M. L^vy was born at Ribeauvill^ in .\lsace in 1838. After 

 studying at the Fcole Polytechnique he entered the corps des 

 Ponts et Chauss^es, becoming eventually inspector-general. 

 In 1885 he succeeded Serret as professor of mechanics in 

 the College de France. His work was chiefly connected 

 with mechanics and mathematical physics. His best 

 known mathematical researches were on elasticity, hydro- 

 dynamics, action at a distance, and conservation of 

 energy. 



The Berlin correspondent of the Times has announced 

 the death, on October 5 at Charlottenburg, of Prof. Ernst 

 von Leyden in his seventy-eighth year. In 1865 Leyden 

 was appointed professor at the University and director of 

 the Klinik at Kiinigsberg. In 1872 he was sent in the 

 same capacity to the newly founded university at Strass- 

 burg. Four years later he succeeded Traube at Berlin, 

 NO. 213;, VOL. 84] 



where he continued to work until 1907, when he retired. 

 Leyden was the author of a work on the diseases of the 

 spinal cord and of other medical books. He was a corre- 

 sponding member of various foreign medical societies, and 

 amongst other distinctions he received a patent of 

 hereditary nobility. 



The death is announced of Mr. John Roche Dakyns, 

 who for thirty-four years was attached to the Geological 

 Survey. He was born in St. Vincent, West Indies, on 

 January 31, 1836, and died at Beddgelert on September 27. 

 .\fter joining the Geological Survey in 1862 he was actively 

 engaged for twenty-two years in Yorkshire and the border- 

 ing counties of Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Westmorland; 

 for ten years he was occupied in mapping the central 

 Highland rocks in the counties of Perth, Stirling, and 

 Dumbarton, and he was engaged during two years in the 

 neighbourhood of Abergavenny before he retired from the 

 public service in 1896. He was part author of numerous 

 memoirs of the Geological Survey, and he contributed 

 papers, mainly on Carboniferous and igneous rocks, and 

 on Pleistocene deposits, to the Geological Society, the 

 Geological Magazine, and the Yorkshire Geological and 

 Polytechnic Society. 



The lecture list of the London Institution for the 

 session 1910-11 includes the following subjects: — Secrets 

 in a pebble-beach, Cecil Carus-Wilson ; malaria. Major 

 Ronald Ross, F.R.S. ; smoke and its prevention, Prof. 

 Vivian B. Lewis ; autumn and winter, the web of life, 

 F. Martin-Duncan ; Cretan discoveries, David G. Hogarth ; 

 the art of aviation, R. W. A. Brewer ; life and work of 

 Lord Kelvin, Prof. S. P. Thompson, F.R.S. ; and the 

 art of Palaeolithic man. Dr. .\. C. Haddon, F.R.S. 



In connection with the London County Council's work of 

 indicating the houses in London which have been the 

 residences of distinguished persons, a tablet has been 

 affixed to No. 4 Marlborough Place, St. John's Wood, 

 N.W., where at one time Huxley lived. Huxley moved 

 into the house in 1872, and lived there nearly twenty years. 

 Most of his letters in London were written at Marlborough 

 Place, and a picture of the house appears in his " Life and 

 Letters." 



A COPY of the list of the zoological gardens of the world 

 in September, compiled by Capt. S. S. Flower, of the 

 Zoological Gardens, Giza, Egypt, has been received. The 

 list includes the names of 104 such gardens in existence 

 at the date specified-, as well as references to many others 

 now closed or in process of formation. The oldest of the 

 gardens appears to be the Schbnbrunn in Vienna, founded 

 in 1752 ; the zoological garden in Madrid was opened in 

 1774, and that in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris was 

 inaugurated in 1793. The gardens in Regent's Park date 

 back to 1828. Two collections have been opened this year, 

 one in Munich and the other in the Edgbaston Gardens, 

 Birmingham. 



Prof. Raymond McFarlaxd, of Middlebury College, 

 Vermont, has just returned from a two months' tour of 

 exploration, during which he penetrated into parts of 

 western Labrador never previously visited by a white man. 

 During the first part of his journey, from Lake St. John 

 to the Mistassini post of the Hudson Bay Company, he 

 was accompanied by two colleagues, Profs. T. C. Brown 

 and P. N. Swett. His companions then left him in order 

 to make magnetic observations and to study geological 

 formations along the Fiel Axe and Chief Rivers. Prof. 

 McFarland, with a single Indian guide, then travelled a 

 hundred miles further north, visiting hitherto unexplored 

 regions to the east and north of Grand Lake, Mistassini, 



