180 
NATURE 
[APRIL 15, 1915 

exhibited in no less degree in his frequent con- 
tributions to Prometheus, with which he was 
associated as editor for many years, a periodical 
which played much the same part in Germany as 
Narure does among English-speaking communi- 
ties. 
Witt was a singularly gifted man, of great 
attainments, artistic and literary, of large sym- 
pathies and wide interests, far removed indeed 
in mental habit and outlook from what is usually 
regarded as the typical German professor. He 
had an extensive knowledge of what is best in 
the literature of nearly every European nation, to 
which his remarkable linguistic attainments gave 
him ready access. In early life he was attracted 
to biological problems, was an excellent micro- 
scopist, and rivalled Cleve in studying and de- 
lineating the lower forms of organic life. In his 
later years he was devoted to the culture of 
orchids, and was an occasional visitor to the 
Temple show of our Royal Horticultural Society, 
and a frequent purchaser at the plant auctions in 
London. Of his power of initiative and capacity 
for organisation and direction, and of his merits 
as a host, those who attended the International 
Congress of Applied Chemistry at its meeting in 
Berlin, of which he was president, have a pleasur- 
able and grateful recollection. T. E. THORPE. 

NOTES. 
WE regret to announce the death, on April ro, in 
his eightieth year, of Dr. W. Grylls Adams, F.R.S., 
Emeritus Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astro- 
nomy in King’s College, London. 
Tue death is announced, at nearly sixty-two years 
of age, of Dr. Louis Waldstein, author of ‘The Sub- 
conscious Self,’ and of many articles on pathological 
subjects. 
On Monday, April 12, at a meeting of the Council 
of the Royal Society of. Arts, the society’s Albert 
Medal was presented to Senator Guglielmo Marconi 
“for his services in the development and practical 
application of wireless telegraphy.’’ The medal, which 
was instituted in 1863 to commemorate the Prince 
Consort’s presidency of the society, is awarded 
annually as a reward for ‘distinguished merit in 
promoting arts, manufactures, and commerce.” 
ACCORDING to a message to the Morning Post 
from its Stockholm correspondent, the projected 
Anglo-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, under the 
leadership of Prof. Otto Nordenskjéld, has been 
postponed until the war has been brought to a con- 
clusion. It will be remembered that the expedition 
was to sail in August next. 
Tue death is announced of M. Edmond Rigaux, of 
Boulogne, in his seventy-seventh year. M. Rigaux 
was a well-known authority on the geology of the 
Boulonnais, and contributed especially to our know- 
ledge of the Jurassic rocks and fossils of that region 
of France. He was a foreign correspondent of the 
Geological Society of London, and in 1883 received 
NO. 2372. VOL. 95] 


the Lyell Fund of the Society in recognition of the 
value of his researches. 
Tue Jacksonian prize of the Royal College of 
Surgeons for 1914 has been awarded to Mr. Jonathan 
Hutchinson for his essay on the pathology, diagnosis, 
and treatment of trigeminal neuralgia, and the John 
Tomes prize to Mr. J. F. Colyer for his work on 
comparative dental anatomy and pathology. The sub- 
ject of the Jacksonian prize for 1916 will be ‘t Methods 
and Results of Transplantation of Bone in the Repair 
of Defects caused by Injury and Disease.” 
ProrozooLocists and marine biologists will be in- 
terested to learn that the whole of the collections and 
library of the late Fortescue W. Millett, of Marazion 
and Brixham, have been acquired by Mr. Heron-Allen, 
and will be incorporated as a special section of the 
Heron-Allen and Earland collection, to which the col- 
lection of the late J. D. Siddall, of Chester, was also 
added recently. It is hoped that this entire collection, 
numbering some 10,000 slides, and the library which 
accompanies them, will ultimately be incorporated with 
the Museum of Oceanography and Marine Biology, 
which it was the ambition of the late Sir John Murray 
to found. Broadly, his object was to form his col- 
lections of material and soundings into a department 
of the Natural History Museum in conjunction with 
the H. B. Brady and W. B. Carpenter collections, 
which are already there. The co-ordination of the 
Brady, Carpenter, Murray, Millett, Siddall, and 
Heron-Allen and Earland collections would form a 
reference museum of oceanic deposits and type speci- 
mens without an equal in the world. 
Tue death is announced at the age of sixty-three 
of the well-known bacteriologist, Friedrich Loeffler, 
director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases, 
Berlin, and formerly Professor of Hygiene and 
Director of the Hygienic Institute, University of 
Greifswald. Loeffler’s mame is best known as 
the co-discoverer with Klebs of the diphtheria 
bacillus; this was in 1884. A year or two 
previously the presence of peculiar bacilli in the 
diphtheritic membrane was noted by Klebs, but it 
was Loeffler who afterwards isolated and cultivated 
this organism. With Koch and Gaffky, Loeffler car- 
ried out investigations on disinfection with steam 
at the Imperial Institute of Hygiene, Berlin, and he 
showed the keenest interest in the comparative study 
of the infectious diseases of animals, such as the 
diphtheria of calves and of pigeons. He was with 
Schiitz the discoverer of the nature of the causative 
organism of foot-and-mouth disease, which he proved 
to belong to the group of micro-organisms known as 
“ filter-passers,’’ which owing to their minuteness are 
invisible with the highest powers of the microscope, 
and are capable of passing through the pores of a 
porcelain filter. To Loeffler also belongs the credit of 
achieving some of the early work associated with 
the application of aniline dyes to the staining of bac- 
teria, ‘‘ Loeffler’s Methylene Blue” being used to this 
day as a routine laboratory stain. Loeffler’s name 
will ever rank with those of Pasteur, Koch, and 
Ehrlich as a pioneer in the domain of bacteriological 
research. 
