
“APRIL 22, 1915] 
NATURE 
211 


gist, who visited the northern Yenisei to con- 
tinue the researches of Seebohn and Popham on 
the nesting habits of the birds which breed there. 
She tells the story of her expedition in a brightly- 
written volume, illustrated by excellent photo- 
graphs, but lacking a map. The party consisted 
of four, of whom two, Miss Czaplicka and Mr. 
Hall, are wintering in the country of the Ostiaks, 
and may thus throw further light upon the affini- 
ties of these people. The declaration early in the 
book that “the journey across Asia by the Trans- 
Siberian Railway can never be anything but un- 
speakably tedious” is not an encouraging start; 
for though the author only saw the line in its 
most uniform section, the statement shakes faith 
in her geographical insight. But as soon as she 
reaches the Tundra she shows a truer apprecia- 
tion of the country, and in many a graphic sen- 
tence expresses the charm of the northern nights, 
“when darkness was never deeper than a soft 
twilight glow, and the mysterious shining spears 


Fic. 2.—Manga escarpment, seen from the south-west, 
district of Kitutu at the foot of the cliffs. 
of the Aurora Borealis mingled with the glamour 
of a night-long dawn.”’ She is very sympathetic 
to the people, though she gives a lurid picture of 
the prevalent drunkenness, for her visit was 
before the famous Ukaz of the Tsar which stopped 
the sale of spirits. She aptly summarises some 
of the most striking features in Russian condi- 
tions and culture. Russia she describes as “a 
country of enormous possibilities, of the crudest 
paradoxes. With the most autocratic govern- 
ment, hers is the most democratic society in the 
world; with a Church whose function has dwindled 
into the effete repetition of ritual, religion is the 
very fibre of her people.” 
In illustration of the severity of the climate 
Miss Haviland repeats the widespread saying 
that the population would die out at the third 
generation if not renewed by immigration; the 
statement is probably as trustworthy for Siberia 
as it is when asserted to prove the unhealthiness 
NO, 2373, VOL..95]| 

| future of several Siberian industries. 
of city life and the impossibility of European 
settlement in the Tropics. 
Miss Haviland spent most of her time photo- 
graphing the nesting birds around Golchika on 
the estuary of the Yenisei; her chief prize was a 
curlew-sand-piper’s nest, which was first taken 
by Popham in 1897. From that district she re- 
turned on the timber ships by which Mr. Jonas 
Lied is endeavouring to maintain annual com- 
munication between the Yenisei and western 
Europe, an enterprise on which depends the 
Her account 
of the Kara Sea in September will be a useful 
supplement to Nansen’s account of his outward 
voyage with Mr. Lied at the beginning of the 
season. JEVWiRiG: 

PROF. W. GRYLLS ADAMS, F.R.S. 
ORN at Laneast, Cornwall, on February 16, 
1836, William Grylls Adams, Emeritus Pro- 
fessor of Natural Philosophy in King’s College, 
London, died at Broadstone, Dorset, 
Note the numerous huts of the fertile 
From ‘‘ Alone in the Sleeping-sickness Country.” 
on April 10, 1915, aged seventy-nine 
years. He was educated in a private 
school in Birkenhead, and entered 
St. John’s College, Cambridge, of 
which afterwards he became a fel- 
low. In 1865 he was elected pro- 
fessor of natural philosophy and 
astronomy at King’s College, Lon- 
don, in succession to Clerk Maxwell, 
who had been appointed to the 
Cavendish professorship at Cam- 
bridge. In the same year he contri- 
buted to the Philosophical Magazine 
an article on the application of the 
principle of the screw to the floats 
of paddle-wheels, his sole contribu- 
tion to applied mechanics. He took 
part in the eclipse expedition of 1871 
to Sicily. In that year he investi- 
gated the action of a bundle of 
parallel glass plates on the polarisa- 
tion of light, the results being pub- 
lished in vol. xli. of the Philosophical 
Magazine. 
The next few years of Adams’s life were very 
active. In 1872 his scientific merits were recog- 
nised by his election to the fellowship of the 
Royal Society. In 1875 he delivered the Bakerian 
lecture, on the forms of equipotential curves and 
surfaces, and lines of flow. The lecture was an 
exposition of an almost entirely experimental in- 
vestigation of the curves which result when 
electric currents are passed through sheets of tin- 
foil between electrodes placed at different points ; 
but some attempt was made to realise also some 
cases of three-dimensional flow. This paper has 
proved to be one of classical interest. In the 
'same year he communicated to the Proceedings 
of the Royal Society a paper on the change of 
resistance produced by magnetisation in iron and 
steel, He observed a difference between the 
effects of longitudinal and transverse magnetisa- 
tion. When the magnetisation was longitudinal, 
the electric resistance of hard steel was dimin- 
