450 
NATURE 
[April 6, 1871 
ee ES ae 
WILHELM von HAIDINGER 
0, Vell von HAIDINGER is no more. He died 
after some years of failing health, though the ill- 
ness to which he finally succumbed on the roth of 
March was a short one. Among his veteran contem- 
poraries in the mineralogist’s craft, such as Breithaupt, 
Karl F. Naumann, Gustav Rose, and Karl C. von 
Leonhard, he must have stood second on the ladder of 
time, the venerable Breithaupt being some four years 
his senior. His father, Karl Haidinger, was a mineralo- 
gist, and indeed was for several years Professor of Mining 
at Schemnitz. But, while Wilhelm was yet an infant, his 
father died at Vienna, where he had, in his latter days, 
filled a post in the Imperial Mint. 
The young Haidinger seems in some sort to have in- 
herited his father’s taste for minerals, for he joined the 
class of Mohs at Gratz, where that distinguished minera- 
logist was giving a new impetus to the study of his science 
by popularising it in what was termed a natural history 
system of classification, and by a systematic method of 
discriminating the different species of minerals ; and sub- 
sequently young Haidinger went to Freiberg to complete 
his training in Mining. Count Breunner, who came to 
England in 1822, and was made a Doctor in Civil Law 
at Oxford, invited the young mineralogist to accompany 
him. He embraced the offer, and they travelled together 
through England, and together reached Edinburgh, where 
the energetic and winning character of the young Austrian, 
fresh with the lore of the famous lecture-room at Gratz, 
at once made him friends in the Northern Athens, in the 
University of which capital Jameson had already made 
Minerals a fascinating study. Among the friends he 
there made was Mr. Allan, the wealthy banker, who 
during the next year invited young Haidinger to make 
a home of his house while employed in translating the 
Mineralogy of Mohs into English. So after returning to 
Vienna, he once more, in 1823, came to Edinburgh, and 
made Mr. Allan’s house his head-quarters till 1827. He 
appears to have been a sort of tutor to Mr. Robert Allan, 
the eldest son of his generous friend ; and with him he 
travelled during these four years through Cornwall, and 
then through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, 
Austria, Italy, and France. It was mainly during these 
travels that the famous collection, afterwards the pro- 
perty of Mr. Robert Greg, and now in the British Museum, 
was formed. 
During these four years he brought out his transla- 
tion of Mohs’ treatise, and wrote several Mineralogical 
papers for the Wernerian Society and the Transac- 
tions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Subse- 
quently he joined with his brothers in starting a 
porcelain manufactory at Elbogen near Carlsbad. Here 
he continued till 1840, still, however, bringing out from 
time to time memoirs on new minerals or new observa- 
tions on minerals already known. The minerals Eding- 
tonite, Sternbergite, Fergusonite, Herderite, Erinite, 
Picrosmine, Johannite, Botryogen, and Hartite, are among 
those he studied and described previous to and during 
this period. 
In 1840 he returned to his native city, Vienna, to devote 
himself more exclusively to the scientific pursuits he loved. 
Thenceforward his memoirs will be found distributed at 
pretty regular intervals through the Sitzungsberichte of the 
Vienna Academy. 
Among the subjects that he worked at during the next 
period of his life were the optical phenomena exhibited 
by crystals in regard to light and colour ; more particularly 
those of pleiochroism. He invented, for the investigation 
of these, the Dichroiscope, a simple but useful little instru- 
ment, enabling an observer to examine and compare the 
different characters of the absorption exercised by a bire- 
fringent crystal on light traversing it, according as the 
plane of vibration of the light is parallel or perpendicular 



to any one of the principal sections of the crystal. The 
description of Hauerite,a new mineral, in fact, a man- 
ganese pyrites, was given in 1847 ; that of Kenngottite in 
1857. The Haidinger brushes, a subjective phenomenon 
due to the eye itself, and observed in looking towards a 
window through a tourmaline or Nicol prism, was an 
illustration of the acuteness of his powers of observation. 
A compendious and valuable treatise on Mineralogy, 
brought out in 1845, to take the place of an earlier trea- 
tise, was also, during this period of his life, continually 
undergoing revision for new editions ; while new investi- 
gations of minerals were also appearing under his name 
From the moment’of the foundation of the Geological 
Institute for the Empire in Vienna, Haidinger was the 
obvious man to lead that younger generation by whose 
labours the new Institute was to be reared and supported. 
So he was its Director until some two or three years ago, 
when he retired from the position he had filled so well, 
with a Ritter’s rank and a well-earned pension. 
For the last twelve years of his life he had given his 
attention, almost to the exclusion of other scientific inquiry, 
to the subject of meteorites. He laboured indefatigably 
almost to the last in collecting specimens from any new 
falls of meteorites reported in any portion of the globe, 
that they might be added to the noble collection in 
the Imperial Museum; and he was always at work at 
the interpretation of the strange phenomena witnessed by 
those who have described the fall of meteorites in any 
language or country. 
Such is a rapid review of the main features in the 
life of a man who seems always to have been at work ; 
whose pen was one of the readiest and busiest ; whose 
nature was ever genial and generous; and who, at the 
age of seventy-seven, has finished an honourable life’s 
woik, and leaves behind him a name which Austria may 
cherish as that of one of her illustrious sons, and which 
many an Austrian and many a foreigner will remember 
with warm respect ; while those who enjoyed nearer rela- 
tions with Wilhelm von Haidinger will assuredly ever 
remember him with affectionate regard. 
N.S. M, 

4 TUBULAR POSTAL SERVICE 
om large iron pipes have just been laid from the 
General Post Office to the Branch Office at Charing 
Cross, through which pipes packages of letters are blown 
in either direction at will, by compressed air. These 
tubes are to be extended from Charing Cross to the 
Houses of Parliament ; and when the total expenses of 
laying pipes and of transmitting small packages through 
them is known by experience, very possibly the system 
may be extended, and letters intended for quick delivery 
may be sent by this method at a moderate charge. 
This plan of sending messages through pipes for short 
distances has been employed in the City for many years 
in connection with the late Electric and International 
Telegraph Company. Seventeen or eighteen years ago, Mr. 
Latimer Clark laid down tubes from the Central Office of 
the Company in Lothbury to the Telegraph offices in 
Cornhill and Mincing Lane. By means of a steam-engine 
which worked a great air-pump, messages enclosed in 
small gutta-percha carriers, each somewhat resembling a 
sausage in shape and size, were drawn from Cornhill and 
Mincing Lane to Lothbury. Additional and smaller pipes 
were afterwards laid down by him, so that the vacuum 
could be applied to the further ends of the carrying 
pipes, in order that messages might be sent in the 
opposite direction also. They were then easily trans- 
mitted to and from CornhilJ, but the Mincing Lane 
station being two-thirds ofa mile off, it was found that the 
friction of the air in the pipes was too great, so that carriers 
could be sent in one direction only, namely, from Mincing 
Lane to Lothbury. Some years later, when Mr. C. F. 
Varley became engineer to the International Telegraph 
