276 



NATURE 



[May 15, 1913 



NOTES. 

 The Bakerian lecture of the Royal Society will In- 

 delivered by Sir J. J. Thomson, O.M., F.R.S., on 

 Mav 22, upon the subject of "Rays of Positive Elec- 

 tricity." 



Dr. Gisbert Kapp, professor of electrical engineer- 

 ing in the University of Birmingham, has been 

 appointed president of Section G (Engineering) of the 

 British Association for the meeting to be held in 

 Birmingham in September next. 



The Georg Neumaver gold medal was bestowed 

 upon Prof. L. A. Bauer, director of the department 

 of terrestrial magnetism, Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington, for his various researches in terrestrial 

 magnetism, at the celebration of the eighty-fifth anni- 

 versary of the Berlin Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde, on 

 May 3. 



The Newcastle City Council has decided to invite 

 the British Association to meet in Newcastle in 1916. 

 A deputation consisting of the Lord Mayor (Alderman 

 J. F. Weidner), the Sheriff (Mr. G. T. de Loriol), and 

 Sir W. H. Stephenson was appointed at the meeting 

 of the council on May 7 to present the invitation at 

 the meeting of the association in Birmingham next 

 September. 



The first Wilbur Wright memorial lecture will be 

 delivered by Mr. Horace Darwin, F.R.S., at the Roval 

 United Service Institution, Whitehall, on Wednesday, 

 May 21, at 8.30 p.m., under the auspices of the Aero- 

 nautical Society, which has raised, a fund for the 

 annual delivery of a premium lecture in order to com- 

 memorate the work of Wilbur Wrijjht, who, with his 

 brother Orville Wright, evolved the first successful 

 power-driven aeroplane which carried its pilot. 



The Walker prize, which is awarded by the Boston 

 Society of Natural History once in five years, has been 

 awarded this year to Mr. Robert Ridgway, of the 

 United States National Museum, in recognition of his 

 investigations in ornithology, and particularly for his 

 work on the birds of North and Middle America. This 

 prize, the amount of which is 200L, was, says Science, 

 founded by the late Mr. W. J. Walker, a benefactor 

 of the society, and is given in recognition of impor- 

 tant investigation in natural history published and 

 made known in the United States of America. 



The death is reported, in his seventy-eighth year, of 

 Mr. W. M. Fontaine, a leading American authority 

 in fossil botany. A Virginian by birth, tracing his 

 descent from a Huguenot family, he fought on the 

 Confederate side in the Civil War. He was after- 

 wards professor of chemistry and geology at the 

 West Virginia University, and later held the chair 

 of geology and natural history at the University of 

 Virginia for thirty-three years, retiring in 191 1 with 

 a Carnegi< pension. Prof. Fontaine took part in the 

 second Pennsylvania Geological Survey, and at various 

 times contributed reports to the U.S. Geological 

 Survey. 



The latest ice reports contained in the meteorological 

 chart of the North Atlantic Ocean for May, issued by 

 the Deutsche Seewarte, state that in the vicinity of 

 NO. 2272, VOL. 91] 



the Newfoundland Bank the drift ice, consisting of 

 bergs and field ice, had greatly increased, and up to 

 the third week in April had advanced southwards to 

 nearly latitude 43 N., and eastwards to 41J W. 

 longitude. According to a report from St. John's 

 (Newfoundland), at the end of March such a large 

 amount of ice is seldom seen so early in the season. 

 On the east coast of Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia) 

 much difficulty was caused to navigation. The condi- 

 tions near Quebec had, however, much improved. 



The fifth general meeting of the Alchemical 

 Society was held on Friday last, May 9, at the Inter- 

 national Club, Regent Street, S.W. The chair was 

 occupied bv the honorary president. Prof. J. Fer- 

 guson, professor of chemistry in the 'University of 

 Glasgow, and a paper by the Ven. Dr. J. B. Craven, 

 Archdeacon of Orkney, was read, entitled "A Scottish 

 Alchemist of the Seventeenth Century : David, Lord 

 Balcarres." The author has been permitted to 

 examine what remains of Balcarres's library, and has 

 found therein a MS. translation of the famous " Fama 

 Fraternitas," antedating the earliest published trans- 

 lations. The paper also contained particulars of other 

 interesting MSS. in this library, and concluded with 

 an old Fifeshire legend showing the fantastic views 

 which were once held concerning the Rosicrucians. 



On Tuesday next, May 20, Prof. T. B. Wood will 

 deliver the first of a course of three lectures at the 

 Royal Institution on recent advances in the production 

 and utilisation of wheat in England; on Thursday, 

 May 22, Prof. \Y. J. Pope will begin a course of three 

 lectures on recent chemical advances : (1) molecular 

 architecture, (2) chemistry in space, (3) the structure of 

 crystals ; and on Saturday, May 24, Prof. Rutherford 

 will commence a course of three lectures on radio- 

 activity : (1) the a. rays, (2) the origin of the J3 and y 

 rays, (3) the radio-active state of the earth and atmo- 

 sphere. The Friday evening discourse on May 23 will 

 be delivered by Prof. S. P. Thompson on the secret 

 of the permanent magnet ; on May 30 by Dr. Owen 

 Seaman on parody ; and on June 6 by Dr. Francis 

 Ward on reflection and refraction of light as con- 

 cealing and revealing factors in subaqu itic life. 



It is proposed to celebrate the centenary of the 

 foundation of the Indian Museum in Calcutta next 

 February. Originally founded as a branch of the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal at the suggestion of Wallich, 

 the botanist, on February 2, 1814, the Indian Museum 

 became a Government institution in 1867, after pro- 

 longed negotiations with the Government of India, 

 which accepted the society's collections to form the 

 nucleus of an imperial museum in Calcutta. A strong 

 centenary committee has been formed with his Excel- 

 lency, Lord Carmichael, the Governor of Bengal, as 

 chairman, and Sir Asutosh Mookerjee, Vice-Chancellor 

 of the Calcutta University, as vice-chairman. The 

 committee has decided to publish an official history of 

 the museum, to raise a special fund for the improve- 

 ment of the public galleries, and to hold a reception in 

 the museum on the anniversary of its foundation. 



In connection with the Panama-Pacific International 

 Exhibition to be held in San Francisco in 1915, a 



