

Marcu 4, 1915] 
NATORE 
ts) 

passed by the managers was approved by the members 
on March 1 :—‘* That the managers of the Royal Insti- 
tution desire to express to the Hon. Sir Charles A. 
Parsons, K.C.B., F.R.S.,, who has unconditionally 
placed at their disposal, for the purposes of the insti- 
tution, the sum of 5oo0ol., their most grateful appre- 
ciation of his munificence and discernment. They 
accept the gift as a timely and noble recognition of the 
good public work the institution has done in the past, 
and is still doing, in the acquisition and diffusion of 
scientific knowledge, and as an incitement to maintain 
and extend its usefulness in the unique position which 
it has for more than a century occupied.” 
News received from the Russian Arctic voyager 
Vilkitski now definitely locates him in Taimyr Bay, 
to the west of Cape Chelyuskin. A wireless message 
from him has been picked up by Captain Sverdrup, 
who is laid up further to the south-west on the same 
inhospitable coast. Vilkitski, having set out in July 
from Vladivostok to make the passage to European 
Russia, has thus accomplished about three-fifths of 
the voyage along the Russian arctic coast. He pro- 
poses to send some of his men to Sverdrup, thus 
relieving the pressure upon his supplies, for he has 
encountered such heavy ice conditions hitherto that 
it does not seem certain that he will be able to get 
on with his ships next summer. The expedition has 
ample opportunity to add to geographical knowledge 
(as it has done already) on the coast where it is now 
imprisoned. 
Tue appeal for subscriptions to the Sir William 
White Memorial Fund has resulted in a sum of 
3076l. 14s. 6d., contributed by 455 subscribers. The 
committee of the fund has decided that the most suit- 
able form which the memorial could take would be 
the establishment of a research scholarship in naval 
architecture to be named after Sir William White; 
and it has been arranged to hand over to the council 
of the Institution of Naval Architects the greater part 
of the funds subscribed so that a sum of at least 
rool. a year shall be available for the scholarship, 
which will be administered by the council of that insti- 
tution. In addition, a medallion portrait will be 
placed in the new building of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers; and, finally, at the suggestion of Lady 
White, a donation of one hundred guineas has been 
made to the Westminster Hospital, where Sir William 
White passed away. 
A REVISED memorandum on cerebro-spinal menin- 
gitis, or “‘spotted fever,’ has been issued by the Local 
Government Board in view of cases of the disease 
which have occurred in various part of the country. 
It is issued as a purely precautionary measure, and 
is intended to indicate to medical practitioners, especi- 
ally village doctors, that the department is watching 
the outbreak, and that should suspicious cases occur, 
free bacteriological examination and isolation accom- 
modation will at once be provided. Suspicious cases 
should be isolated immediately, and any contact cases 
closely watched. A warning is issued against over- 
crowding, and as the germs are first located at the 
back of the throat any person even slightly. suspected 
NO. 2366, VOL. 95] 

medical circles. 
; retired, and lived in London, devoting himself with 
| energy and enthusiasm to the study of music. 

| of having contracted the disease should refrain from 
kissing anyone else. So far as the general public is 
concerned, the outbreak may be regarded with indiffer- 
ence. In London it is stated that not more than 
twenty cases of the disease have been recognised 
during the last two months. 
We have recorded already the sudden death, on 
February 13, of Prof. Wesley Mills, emeritus pro- 
fessor of physiology, McGill University, Montreal. 
From an obituary notice in the issue of the British 
Medical Journal of February 27 we learn that Prof. 
Mills took the degree of M.D. in McGill University 
in 1878. He was for several years demonstrator of 
physiology with Sir William Osler, and studied at 
University College with Sir J. Burden-Sanderson and 
Sir E. A. Schafer. In 1884 he became lecturer in 
physiology, and in 1886 professor of the subject at 
McGill University.. He organised the teaching of 
physiology on modern lines, and was the first Cana- 
dian teacher of the subject to have a thoroughly up- 
to-date, well-equipped laboratory. Among his early 
contributions to physiology were the studies of cardiac 
innervation. He became much interested in compara- 
tive physiology, and the results of a long series of 
studies are embodied in a work on ‘‘The Nature and 
Development of Animal Intelligence.’ In 1889 ap- 
peared his ‘‘ Text-bools of Animal Physiology,’ which 
was modified in the new edition of 1890 to the ‘*‘ Text- 
book of Comparative Physiology.” In 1906 appeared 
his ‘‘ Voice Production in Singing and Speaking,” a 
work which brought him much reputation outside of 
After a serious iliness in 1910 he 
Tue Royal Swedish Academy otf Science, Stockholm, 
has recently erected a monument in the Swedish 
cemetery at Brookwood, Woking, to the memory of 
Daniel Solander, F.R.S. The memorial consists of 
an obelisk of unhewn Swedish stone, with the inscrip- 
tion of the name, and dates of birth and death, and 
that the memorial was erected by the Academy. 
Daniel Solander was the son of a clergyman in Pite 
Lappmark, was born in 1733, entered the University 
of Uppsala as a student in 1750, and left his native 
country ten years later for London. Here he became 
employed in the British Museum, in 1764 was elected 
a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1767 made the 
acquaintance of Banks, who induced Solander to 
travel with him in that eventful voyage in the Endea- 
vour which was Cook’s first expedition to the southern 
seas. On returning from this voyage in 1771, 
Solander was adopted by Banks as his secretary and 
librarian, until his death in 1782 from an apoplectic 
seizure, in the presence of Sir Charles Blagden and 
the younger Linnaeus, dying ten days later. There 
exist several portraits of Solander; one, a full-length 
engraving depicting him as “a Simpling Sala- 
mander,’’ another of head and bust to left; and, by 
far the best, a full-length portrait in oil, by John 
Zoffany, which belongs to the Linnean Society, and 
copied for Sir Joseph Hooker’s edition of 
Journal, published in 1896. 
was 
Banks’s 
