March 13, 1913] 



NATURE 



37 



carried into law. We have not embarked on the 

 consideration of the question without counting' the 

 cost or without realising that it will be necessary to 

 provide more than is provided at present out of 

 national funds towards the cost of education." 



Dr. Dugald Clerk, F.R.S., has been elected a 

 member of the Athenaeum Club under the provisions 

 of the rule which empowers the annual election by 

 the committee of a certain number of persons " o'f 

 distinguished eminence in science, literature, the arts, 

 or for public services." 



The Trustees of the Indian Museum have appointed 

 Dr. N. Annandale as their representative at the Inter- 

 national Congress of Zoology, to be held at Monaco 

 this month. 



The ninth International Physiological Congress will 

 be held at Groningen on September 2-6 next, under 

 the presidency of Prof. H. J. Hamburger, professor 

 of physiology in the University of Groningen. 



Mr. David S. Prentice, superintending inspector, 

 has been promoted to the post of chief inspector of 

 the veterinary branch of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture and Technical Instruction for Ireland. 



The death is announced at Paris, at sixty-nine years 

 of age, of M. A. M. Picard, vice-president of the 

 Council of State and an honorary member of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers. M. Picard was the 

 author of several works on engineering subjects, and 

 many comprehensive reports upon the achievements of 

 arts and industry at the close of the nineteenth century 

 and after. 



At a meeting of the council of the British Asso- 

 ciation, held on March 7, a vote of condolence with 

 Lady White on the death of Sir William White, presi- 

 dent-elect of the association, was passed. The presi- 

 dency for the forthcoming meeting in Birmingham 

 was considered, and subject, under the rules, to 

 ratification at an extraordinary meeting of the council, 

 to be held on April 4, Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., will 

 be nominated as president. There will be a meeting 

 of the general committee on the same day to make 

 the election. 



America has lost a bacteriologist of great promise 

 by the death, in his forty-fifth year, of Dr. P. H. 

 Hiss, jun. After graduating in arts at Johns Hop- 

 kins and in medicine at Columbia, he was appointed 

 in 1895 assistant in bacteriology at the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. 

 From that post he was promoted successively to an 

 instructorship, adjunct professorship, and, in 1906, to 

 the full professorship in that subject. Dr. Hiss was 

 joint author of a widely used text-book of bacteriology, 

 and had also published a series of technical studies. He 

 was best known by his methods of detecting typhoid 

 bacilli, and by his use of the leucocyte as a cure for 

 pneumonia and erysipelas. 



A marble bust of the late Mr. Brian Houghton 



Hodgson, executed by Thornycroft in 1844, has been 



. presented by his widow to the British Museum 



(Natural History). The bust, of which a photograph 



NO. 2263, VOL. 91] 



is given in Sir W. W. Hunter's " Life of Hodgson," 

 represents Hodgson, who died in 1894, at the age of 

 forty-four. By the gift of his natural history and 

 anthropological collections made while British Resi- 

 dent at Khatmandu, in the first half of last century, 

 and subsequently while living privately at Darjiling, 

 Hodgson greatly enriched the museum, and it is there- 

 fore appropriate that his bust should find a home in 

 the building, where it is to be placed, we believe, 

 alongside that of Dr. Gray, at the entrance to the 

 L'pper Mammal Gallery. 



The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, acting 

 through its committee on science and the arts, re- 

 cently made the following awards of the Elliott 

 Cresson sold medal, the highest in the gift of the 

 institute : — Dr. C. P. Steinmetz, of Schenectadv, New 

 York, in recognition of successful application of 

 analytical method to the solution of numerous 

 problems of first practical importance in the field of 

 electrical engineering; Emile Berliner, of Washing- 

 ton, D.C., in recognition of important contributions 

 to telephony and to the science and art of sound- 

 reproduction; Dr. I. Randolph, of Chicago, 111., in 

 recognition of distinguished achievement in the field 

 of civil engineering; Lord Rayleigh, O.M., in recog- 

 nition of extended researches of signal importance in 

 physical science; Sir William Ramsay, K.C.B., in 

 recognition of numerous discoveries of far-reaching 

 importance in the science of chemistry; Prof. Emil 

 Fischer, of Berlin, in recognition of numerous con- 

 tributions of fundamental importance to the science 

 of organic and biological chemistrv. 



One of the largest of the great scientific and indus- 

 trial congresses is to be held in London in the early- 

 part of June, 1915. This is the sixth International 

 Congress of Mining, Metallurgy, Applied Mechanics, 

 and Practical Geology. These congresses take place 

 at intervals of five years, and the last, which was 

 brilliantly successful, was held at Diisseldorf in 1910, 

 previous congresses having been held in Paris and 

 Liege. The attendance at the Diisseldorf Congress 

 was more than 2000, and it is anticipated that the 

 attendance in London in 19 15 will be equally large. 

 An influential committee has been formed to make 

 the necessary arrangements, and the movement is 

 being actively supported by the University of London, 

 I Imperial College of Science and Technology, Geo- 

 logical Society of London, Institution of Mechanical 

 Engineers, Iron and Steel Institute, Society of Chem- 

 ical Industry, Institution of Mining Engineers, Insti- 

 tution of Mining and Metallurgy, Institute of Metals, 

 South Wales Institute of Engineers, Cleveland Insti- 

 tution of Mining Engineers, West of Scotland Iron 

 and Steel Institute, Staffordshire Iron and Steel In- 

 stitute, Sheffield Society of Engineers and Metall- 

 urgists, and by numerous firms interested in the 

 various industries represented. 



The winter, as comprised in the period for the 

 thirteen weeks ended March 1, is shown by the 

 Meteorological Office to have been mild, wet, and 

 somewhat sunless over the entire area of the United 

 Kingdom. The excess of temperature was greatest in 



