October 24, 1912] 



NATURE 



of the many problems involved in the rig-id deter- 

 mination of stellar positions. Generous friends 

 showed their appreciation of Prof. Boss's labours 

 by providing him with a new observatory in 1893, 

 and later the Carnegie Institution of Washington 

 showed practical sympathy with his work, also 

 making him director of the Meridian Astrometry 

 Department of the Institution. 



Prof. Boss's publications are too many to refer 

 to in detail here, but they dealt with many subjects 

 such as the instrumental and magnitude errors in 

 meridian work, the observation of comets, for 

 which he published many ephemerides, and the 

 determination of the sun's motion. In 1903 he 

 published a standard catalogue of 627 stars distri- 

 buted over both hemispheres, and in 1910 a 

 preliminary general catalogue, in which he gave 

 positions and proper motions of 6188 stars, of 

 which about 4000 are brighter than the sixth 

 magnitude. 



The value of these researches is inestimable, but 

 already many important results have accrued, such 

 as the discovery of the Taurus stream of stars, and 

 the value will rapidly advance as time passes. In 

 1905 the Royal Astronomical Society recognised 

 Prof. Boss's work by presenting him with its gold 

 medal, and in England, as elsewhere, the loss of a 

 great and original investigator, and a personal 

 friend, will be sorely felt. Prof. Boss was born 

 at Providence, R.I., in 1846. 



l^OTES. 

 The Huxley lecture at the University of Birming- 

 ham is to be delivered on October 30 by Prof. John 

 Joly, F.R.S., who has chosen as his subject " Pleo- 

 chroic Hales." 



The annual Huxley memorial lecture of the Royal 

 Anthropological Institute will be held on Tuesday, 

 November 19, at 8.30 p.m., at the theatre of the Civil 

 Service Commission, Burlington Gardens, London, 

 W., when Prof. W. Gowland, F.R.S., will deliver an 

 address on "The Metals in Antiquity." Dr. Alfred P. 

 Maudsley, president, will take the chair. 



The Institute of Chemistry announces that Mr. 

 E. White will deliver a lecture on thorium and its 

 compounds on Friday, November i, at 8 p.m., in the 

 Chemical Lecture Theatre of Finsbury Technical Col- 

 lege, London, E.C. Prof. R. Meldola, F.R.S., presi- 

 dent of the Institute, will occupy the chair. 



PuoF. E. Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute, 

 Paris, will deliver a lecture on "The Warfare against 

 Tubercle " in London on Friday, November 29, at 

 4.30, at the Royal Society of Medicine, Wimpole 

 Street, Cavendish Square. The lecture is the Lady 

 Priestley memorial lecture for 1912. 



Much interest was aroused last March by the dis- 

 covery of typical Upper Old Red Sandstone with fish 

 remains beneath the neighbourhood of London. Mr. 

 E. Procter, of the Imperial College of Science, e.x- 

 hibited to the Geological Society characteristic frag- 

 ments of Holoptychius and Bothriolepis, which he had 

 obtained from a depth of between iioo and 1200 feet 

 NO. 2243, VOL. 90] 



in a boring at Southall. He has lately presented these 

 specimens to the British Museum (Natural History), 

 where they are now to be seen among the fossil fishes. 



Peabody Museum, Yale University, has received 

 from the assistant professor of archaeology, Dr. G. G. 

 MacCurdy, the anthropological collections made by 

 him during his summer visit to Europe. It has also 

 acquired 2000 geological specimens gathered by Prof. 

 C. Schuchert in Nova Scotia and the Lake Huron 

 region, a collection made at ."Vbydos in connection with 

 the Egyptian exploration fund, and remains of a fossil 

 three-toed horse found in Texas by Prof. R. S. Lull. 



The death is reported, within a few days of his 

 seventieth birthday, of Mr. Bradford Torrey, well 

 known in America as a naturalist. He was a fre- 

 quent contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, and was 

 for several years one of the editors of The Youth's 

 Companion. He had edited Thoreau's Journal, and 

 was himself the author of "Birds in the Bush," "A 

 Rambler's Lease," "The Foot-path Way," "A Florida 

 Sketch-book," "Spring Notes from Tennessee," "A 

 World of Green Hills," "Footing it in Franconia," 

 "The Clerk of the Woods," "Nature's Invitation," 

 and " Friends on the Shelf." 



Dr. Morris Loeb^ for several years professor of 

 chemistry at New York University, died recently in his 

 fiftieth year. He was a member of the executive 

 committee of the International Congress of .Applied 

 Chemistry, which met a few weeks ago in .-America. 

 His own research work was done chiefly in complex 

 inorganic salts. Last year Dr. Loeb presented 

 io,oooi. to the Walcott Gibbs Chemical Library at 

 Harvard, of which universitjf he was a graduate, and 

 he was a generous benefactor of various scientific 

 societies and Hebrew charities. He had been president 

 of the Hebrew Technical Institute and of the Chemists' 

 Club, and was a member of the New York Board of 

 Education. 



The death is announced, at sixty-eight years of age, 

 of Mr. Robert Brown, fellow of the Society of Anti- 

 quaries, and distinguished by his works on compara- 

 tive mytholog}'. He was (says The Times) a student 

 of Chaldaean myths, agreeing with Prof. Max Miiller 

 in tracing their origin to the movements of sun, moon, 

 and stars, and the ebb and flow of natural phenomena, 

 and opposing strongly the rival theory of totemism. 

 His chief work, "The Great Dionysiak Myth" (two 

 vols.), aooeared in 1877-8, and he also published "The 

 Myth of Kirke," "Aratus," "Researches into the 

 Origin of the Primitive Constellations of Greeks, 

 Phoenicians, and Babylonians," (two vols.), and 

 "Semitic Influence in Hellenic Mythology." 



We regret to learn from The Times that Prof. Otto 

 Kriimmel, who held the professorship of geography 

 for many years at Kiel, and latterly at Marburg, and 

 was recognised as the leading German oceanographer, 

 died suddenly on October 12, at fiftv-eight years of 

 age. In 191 1 he completed the publication of a 

 standard treatise on oceanography, and he was joint 

 author of the article, "Ocean and Oceanography," 

 in the nth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." 



