228 



NATURE 



[October 24, 19 12 



A? a member of the International Council for the 

 Study of the Sea and of the Prince of Monaco's com- 

 mittee for the preparation of a chart of the depths of 

 the ocean, Prof. Kriimmel took a large share in 

 promoting the recent advances in our knowledge of 

 the ocean by international cooperation. 



The death is announcfd of Mr. James Parker, of 

 Oxford, at seventy-nine years of age. Although best 

 known as an antiquarian, Mr. Parker was an indus- 

 trious student of geolo,c;y, and made a remarkable 

 collection of fossils from the neighbourhood of Oxford, 

 including Teleosaurian skulls and a Megalosaurian 

 skeleton described by Phillips in his "Geology of 

 Oxford." For fifty years he was an active member of 

 the Geologists' Association, and in 1876 he contri- 

 buted to their Proceedings a paper on the valley of the 

 Somme, France. In 1880, for the use of one of their 

 excursions, he also published a map and sections of 

 the strata south of Oxford. Earlier in life he was 

 associated with Prof. Boyd Dawkins and the late Mr. 

 Ayshford Sanford in the exploration of caves in 

 Somersetshire, and he devised a raft for the navigation 

 of underground waters. 



On Wednesday, October 16, a new gallery, which 

 is to be entirely devoted to the illustration of local 

 mammals, was opened at the Municipal Museum, 

 Hull. The specimens include several historical 

 examples from the collection of the late Sir 

 Henry Boynton and other sources, and a number of 

 them are the last records of the kind for the district. 

 The collection is arranged in specially made cases, in 

 which the animals are shown in their natural sur- 

 roundings, in addition to which there are several 

 large groups showing male, female, and their young, 

 &c. The groups consist of otters, badgers, hedgehogs, 

 deer, foxes, &c. On the occasion the curator, Mr.' T. 

 Sheppard, gave an address on the mammals of the 

 East Riding of Yorkshire. 



We are informed that a new society, which has 

 assumed the title of the South African Association of 

 Analytical Chemists, has recently been formed, with 

 headquarters in Johannesburg. The main objects 

 of the association are to uphold the status and the 

 interests of the profession of technical chemistry and 

 to secure a high standard of professional conduct 

 amongst analysts in South Africa. In its constitu- 

 tion the new association has made provision for under- 

 taking any procedure which will encourage the study 

 or extend the knowledge of analytical and technical 

 chemistry. The first council of the association is : — 

 President, Dr. J. McCrae ; Vice-President, G. H. 

 -Stanley ; Honorary Treasurer, A. Whitby ; Members, 

 Dr. R. B. Denison, J. Sprunt Jamieson, Dr. C. F. 

 Juritz, Dr. R. Marloth, Dr. J. Moir ; Honorary 

 Secretary, Jas. Gray, P.O. Bo.x 5254, Johannesburg. 



There has recently been added to the exhibits in 

 the Shell Gallery of the Natural History Museum a 

 working model illustrating the phenomenon of 

 ■' torsion " in Gastropod Mollusca. The model can 

 be easily operated by the public, and exhibits the 

 process of " torsion " in two stages. Two diagram- 

 matic models of shells in skeleton outline, containing 

 NO. 2243, VOL. 90] 



intestine and visceral commissure of the nervous 

 system, are rotated successively by handles. The first 

 model thus operated illustrates the production of the 

 U-shaped flexure of the intestine by the approxima- 

 tion of the mouth and anus. The second shows the 

 actual "torsion" of the intestine and visceral com- 

 missure. The model is diagrammatic and generalised, 

 and does not attempt to suggest a cause for this 

 phenomenon. 



At the annual meeting of the Royal Society of South 

 -Africa, held at Cape Town on September 18, the presi- 

 dent, Dr. L- Peringuey, announced that the council 

 had awarded the following grants-in-aid of research : — 

 To Mr. E. J. Hamlin, of Cape Town, gol., to carry 

 on research on commutation in electrical machinery ; 

 to Mr. -A. Young, of Cape Town, 20/., to continue 

 investigations on a fluctuating well in the Karoo ; to 

 Mr. P. -\. Methuen, of Pretoria, 50I., for a journey 

 to the Great Karasberg Range for the study of the 

 taxonomy and distribution of the lower vertebrates 

 and several groups of the invertebrates of Great 

 Namaqualand ; to Mr. G. Rattray, of East London, 

 50?., for travelling expenses in connection with 

 the continuation of the investigation of the taxonomy 

 and distribution of South African Cycads ; to Miss 

 E. L. Stephens, of Cape Town, 15Z., for (a) deter- 

 mination of South African fresh-water Algae, (6) 

 periodic change in fauna and flora of certain South 

 African vleis ; to Miss A. W. Tucker, of Johannes- 

 burg, 50L, for an ethnological survey of the Topnaar 

 tribe of Hottentots. 



American naturalists are delighted by the announce- 

 ment that Mrs. Russell Sage, widow of the late well- 

 known Wall Street financier, has purchased Marsh 

 Island, off the coast of Louisiana, in order to make it 

 a perpetual bird sanctuary. "With one penful of 

 ink," says Mr. W- T. Hornaday, in an enthusiastic 

 letter to the .American Press, " Mrs. Russell Sage 

 has taken the greatest bird-slaughtering ground of the 

 Gulf Coast away from the market gunners of 

 Louisiana and dedicated it for ever to the opposite 

 cause — the preservation of the birds of North America." 

 The island in question is about 75,000 acres in extent. 

 It is a sylvan labyrinth affording shelter and food to 

 hundreds of thousands of wild birds which resort to 

 it in winter when the northern lakes and streams are 

 locked fast under ice. For this reason it has been the 

 great killing- ground for the markets of New Orleans, St. 

 Louis, Cincinnati, and Chicago, no fewer than seventy 

 market gunners being regularly employed there every 

 winter. The price paid by Mrs. Sage for the island 

 is 30,000/. This is said to be the second largest gift 

 ever made for the protection of wild life in .America, 

 the largest being the bequest of 62,400/. by Mr. David 

 Wilcox to the National Association of Audubon 

 Societies. 



The Ilarveian Oration before the Royal College ot 

 Physicians was delivered on October 18 by Sir James 

 Goodhart, who took for his subject "The Passing of 

 Morbid -Anatomy." Are physicians, he asked, suffi- 

 ciently alive to the fact that pathology is no series of 

 stationary phenomena, but constantly on the move, like 



