October 12, 191 1] 



NATURE 



491 



of the earth during its solidification, but he does not 

 explain why these reservoirs are arranged in chains 

 or lines. With a few words respecting the part that 

 radio-activity and the expansion of silicates in 

 solidification may play in connection with 

 volcanic action, the writer points to these 

 various theories as indications of the uncertain 

 and contradictory knowledge we possess respecting 

 =.uch phenomena. After a brief resume" of the inves- 

 tigations to be carried out at the new institute, the 

 author tells his readers that the International Institute 

 of Weights and Measures at Paris, that of Seismology 

 at Strasburg, and that of Agriculture at Rome, have 

 conferred upon those cities a great prestige. In like 

 .nanner an International Institute of Vulcanology 

 will be a new glory for Italy and for Naples. 



J. M. 



THE ARCH.-EOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT OF 

 INDIA. 



LORD CURZON has done good service to the 

 cause of archaeology by his spirited protest pub- 

 lished in The Times of October 7 against the change 

 of system in regard to the ancient monuments of the 

 country proposed by the Government of India. Up 

 to the time when, as Governor-General, the attention 

 of Lord Curzon was directed to this question, the 

 State policy in connection with the excavation of sites 

 of historical interest and the conservation of the 

 Buddhist, Hindu, and Mahomedan religious and civil 

 buildings was ill-considered and ineffectual. In the 

 early days of our rule these buildings, which are due 

 to the munificence of vanished dynasties or the reli- 

 gious devotion of their subjects, were usually neglected 

 and often desecrated. Excavations were undertaken 

 by unskilled workers in a haphazard way, and many 

 objects of interest and value were lost or destroyed. 

 Under General Cunningham as director, between 

 1870 and 1885, some useful excavations were carried 

 out. But the result of the w-ork as a whole was not 

 commensurate with the expense which had been in- 

 curred. 



When Lord Curzon took up the question in 1902, 

 the department was reorganised under Mr. J. H. 

 Marshall, a good scholar and competent archaeologist, 

 as director-general. Lord Curzon quotes many 

 examples to show the urgent necessity of this course 

 of action. At Lahore the exquisite Pearl Mosque had 

 been converted into a Government treasury, the Audi- 

 ence Hall into a barrack, the Sleeping Hall of Shah 

 Khan into a church. The beautiful mosque at 

 gJimedabad was used as a revenue office; the pavilion 

 at Selimgarh in the Agra Fort as a canteen ; the 

 marble pavilion of Shah Jahan at Ajmer as the Com- 

 missioner's dining-room ; a fine mosque at Lahore 

 as the office of the railway traffic superintendent ; one 

 at Mijapur as a dak bungalow, another as a post- 

 office ; the gilded palace at Mandalay had been utilised 

 partly as a church, partly as a clubhouse. 



Under the new system such destruction and desecra- 

 tion were discontinued. Many beautiful buildings 

 have been tenderly repaired. Museums have been 

 opened at the chief historical cities, and whenever 

 excavations have been conducted the scientific prin- 

 ciples established by the work of Prof. Flinders Petrie 

 in Egypt, the British School at Athens, and in many 

 other places, have been followed. Mr. Marshall has 

 published a series of progress reports which have been 

 received with admiration by scholars in Europe and 

 America. 



Now it is proposed, from some petty considerations 

 of economy, to bring to a close this admirable work, 

 which costs 30,000?. per annum out of a revenue of 

 NO. 2189, VOL. 87] 



eighty millions. The control of the head archaeologist 

 is to cease, and the provincial governments are to 

 start again the inefficient methods of which we have 

 had disastrous experience. These governments are 

 habitually pressed for funds, and they neither possess 

 nor can employ a staff competent to undertake the 

 care of the ancient buildings or to conduct excavations. 

 Now that this proposed change of policy has been 

 brought to the knowledge of the scientific world by 

 the one man competent to express an opinion on such 

 a subject, the result cannot be doubtful. The indig- 

 nant protests of archaeologists throughout Europe and 

 America must compel the Indian Government to 

 abandon these ill-considered proposals. It will be a 

 bad omen for the future administration of India if, 

 in the year when his Majesty the King-Emperor visits 

 the country, a scheme which has commended itself 

 not only to archaeologists, but to the princes and 

 rulers of India, is suddenly, without adequate reason, 

 brought to an end, and the old system of neglect and 

 maladministration re-established. 



LOUIS JOSEPH TROOST. 



BY the death of Troost, on September 30, at the 

 ripe age of eighty-five, France loses the last 

 surviving member of that group of w r orkers — pupils 

 of Henri Sainte-Claire Deville at the Ecole Normale — 

 who created, mainly under his inspiration and leader- 

 ship, what was practically a new department of 

 chemical science. Thermal chemistry, as we under- 

 stand it to-day, may be said to have originated in 

 mid-Victorian times. It may be urged that the rela- 

 tions of chemistry to heat are so intimate that the 

 study of these relations is necessarily as old as the 

 study of chemistry itself. But it was only at the 

 beginning of the latter half of the last century that 

 the subject of thermal chemistry was attacked. 

 Systematically, and for the most part in France, at 

 the instigation of Deville, who, with the aid of Troost, 

 Debray, Isambert, Hautefeuille, and Ditte, laid the 

 foundations of that imposing superstructure to which 

 this special department of knowledge has now 

 attained. 



Troost, who was born in 1825, was educated at the 

 Lycee Charlemagne. He entered the Ecole Normale 

 in 1848, becoming an assistant there in 1851, and 

 receiving his doctorate of science in 1857. For some 

 time he taught in the provinces, but ultimately took 

 charge of the chair of chemistry at the Lycee Bona- 

 parte at Paris, and, then, in 1868, became Mattre de 

 Conferences at the Ecole Normale. In 1874 he became 

 a professor in the faculty of sciences of Paris, where 

 he remained until 1900, when he retired. In 1884 he 

 succeeded Wurtz at the Academy of Sciences. For 

 many years he was a commander of the Legion of 

 Honour. 



Troost was an indefatigable experimentalist and a 

 prolific writer. His published memoirs, either alone 

 or in association with Deville, Marie-Davy, and Haute- 

 feuille, number close upon a hundred. His earliest 

 essays were in pure inorganic chemistry : he prepared 

 and studied the salts of lithium, which, in the middle 

 of the nineteenth century, was regarded as a rare 

 element. By the student, however, Troost is mainly 

 remembered by reason of his work with Deville on 

 the determination of vapour densities at high tempera- 

 tures, the study of which had received an enormous 

 impetus on account of the applications of the doctrine 

 of Avogadro and Ampere. The values so obtained 

 have become classical and are to be found in prac- 

 tically every systematic treatise of chemistry. With 

 Deville. he largely developed the conception of dis- 



