42 

Tue death is announced, in his sixty-fifth year, of | 
Prof, H. W. L. Tanner, F.R.S., formerly professor of 
mathematics and astronomy at University College, 
Cardiff. 
We learn from the Morning Post that Jean Mas- 
pero, the son of Sir Gaston Maspero, the Egyptologist, 
was killed in the Argonne on February 18 while lead- 
ing his section into action. H 
Pror, SamMueL W. Suattuck, for forty-four years 
professor and comptroller of the University of Illinois, 
NATURE 

died at his home in Champaign on February 13. 
Since 1868, says Science, Prof. Shattuck served the 
University of Illinois. For thirty-seven years he was 
head of the department of mathematics and from 
1873 to 1912 he looked after the business affairs of the 
University. 
On Tuesday next, March 16, Sir J. G. Frazer will 
begin a course of two lectures at the Royal Institution 
on the belief in immortality among the Polynesians; 
and on Thursday, March 18, Dr. Aubrey Strahan will 
commence a course of two lectures on London geology. 
The Friday evening discourse on March 1g will be 
delivered by Prof. G. H. Bryan, on the modern piano- 
player—scientific aspects, and on March 26 by Sir J. J. 
Thomson on experiments in slow kathode rays. 
WE regret to announce the death on March 6, in 
his eighty-seventh year, of Lieut.-General J. F. Ten- 
nant, F.R.S., past-president of the Royal Astronomical 
Society. When a young man, Lieut.-General Tennant 
was assistant to the Trigonometrical Survey of India. 
He served as Government Astronomer of Madras in 
1859, and was afterwards transferred to the Public 
Works Department as an executive engineer, first, in 
Burma, then in the Punjab, and later in Bengal. He 
made observations of the solar eclipses of 1867-68 and 
1871, and was in charge of those of the transit of 
Venus at Rurki and Lahore in 1876, 

Tue death is announced of Mr. Flaxman: C. J. 
Spurrell, aged seventy-two. For many years he was 
interested in the geology of the Thames valley and 
co-operated with his father, the late Dr. Flaxman 
Spurrell, in collecting Pleistocene mammalia from 
the river-deposits at Crayford, Kent. In 1880 he 
described to the Geological Society his discovery at 
Crayford of a Palolithic Jand-surface showing 
evidence of flint-implements in process of manufac- 
ture. The whole of the collection, both of mammalian 
remains and of flints, was presented to the British 
Museum (Natural History) in 1893 and 1895. 
THE death is announced, at fifty-eight years of age, 
of Mr. William Willett, the promoter of the Daylight 
Saving Bill. The Bill proposed that clocks and other 
timepieces in Great Britain and Ireland should be put 

on an hour on the third Sunday in April of every year 
and put back again on the third Sunday in September. 
Mr. Willett was able to obtain support for this 
measure from many city corporations and town and 
district councils, in spite of the serious objections to 
it, but though the Bill was introduced into the House 
of Commons on two separate occasions it never 
reached the final stages. Mr. Willett was a fellow of 
the Royal Astronomical Society. 
NO. 2367, VOL. 95] 
[Marcu II, 1915 

Tue council of the British Association, in consulta- 
tion with the local executive committee at Manchester, 
has decided that the annual meeting of the association « 
shall be held in that city as arranged, in September 
next. Both the committee and the council have felt 
that it would be inexpedient under present conditions 
to offer an elaborate local hospitality in the form of 
social and other arrangements, which has been ex- 
tended to the association on former occasions. The 
committee, however, expressed its desire that the long 
continuity of the yearly meetings should not be broken, 
and stated that it would “prefer that the meeting 
should be held although restricted to its more purely 
scientific functions.” 
Tue War Office has just published the following 
table showing the distribution of the cases of typhoid 
which have occurred in the British Forces in the Field, 
between the categories of uninoculated, the fully in- 
oculated, and the partially protected :— 

Cases Deaths 
Uninoculated ob s 359 48 
Fully inoculated within 2 years 
(two doses) a0 at ack) ALIETE I 
Partially protected (one dose)... 136 I 
Totals 606 50 
Lorp KircHEeNer, Secretary of State for War; Dr. 
A. Strahan, F.R.S., director of the Geological Survey 
of Great Britain; and Prof. P. Vinogradoff, Corpus 
, professor of jurisprudence at Oxford, have been elected 
members of the Atheneum Club under the provisions 
of the rule which empowers the annual election by the 
committee of three persons “‘of distinguished eminence 
in science, literature, the arts, or for public services.” 
WE learn that no fewer than thirty-seven members 
of the established staff of the Natural History 
Museum are at present serving with the naval or 
military forces, about half of them having joined 
their units at the front. Among these are Capt. 
E. E. Austen, who has for many years had charge of 
the Diptera in the museum; Lieut. C. Court Treatt, 
assistant in the bird-room, Mr. A. K. Totton, who 
was recently appointed to the invertebrate. section of 
the department of zoology; Mr. H. F. Wernham, 
assistant in the department of botany; and Mr. W. N. 
Edwards, the newly appointed assistant for the study 
of fossil plants. In addition to the members of the 
established staff ten temporary assistants and forty- 
seven sons of the former class have joined the colours, 
while the museum has also furnished an efficient 
Red Cross Section and a platoon for the Volunteer 
Training Corps for Home Defence. 
Some few years ago the buildings of the Aquarium 
at Rothesay, which was for a time one of the well- 
known ‘‘sights” of the Clyde, were taken over by 
the Marquis of Bute. The buildings have, through 
the generosity of the Marquis, provided a local habi- 
tation for the Buteshire Natural History Society, of 
which Dr. J. N. Marshall is president, while they 
have also served to house a valuable and developing 
museum collection illustrative of the local fauna and 
flora. Lord Bute has now installed a small labora- 
tory for biological research and provided the most 
