5/6 



NATURE 



[January 23, igr 



NOTES. 



We regret to see the announcement of the death 

 on January lo, in his sixty-first year, of Dr. F. Teller, 

 chief geologist at the K. K. Geologische Reichsanstalt 

 at Vienna, and member of the Vienna Academy of 

 Sciences. 



Prof. A. Keith has been elected president of the 

 Ro)'al Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and 

 Ireland, in succession to Mr. A. P. Maudslay. Mr. 

 T. C. Hodson has been elected secretary of the insti- 

 tute, in succession to Mr. T. A. Joyce, who has be- 

 come a vice-president. 



M. B. Baillaud, director of the Paris Observatory, 

 has been elected president^ and M. H. Deslandres, 

 director of the Meudon Observatory, vice-president, 

 of the Paris Bureau des Longitudes for 1913. 



The death is announced, in his fifty-ninth year, of 

 Dr. G. A. Gibson, of Edinburgh, who was a well- 

 known authority on diseases of the heart. His work 

 on " Diseases of the Heart and Aorta," published in 

 1898, established his reputation as a specialist. 



The Copenhagen correspondent of The Daily 

 Chronicle reports that at a special audience on January 

 20 King Christian decorated Dr. V. Poulsen and 

 Prof. P. O. Pedersen with the Medal of Merit in gold 

 on account of the honour they have brought to Den- 

 mark by their work in connection with wireless tele- 

 graphy and telegraphones. 



Dr. E. M. Kindle, for many years attached to the 

 palaeontological staff of the United States Geological 

 Survev, at Washington, has accepted a similar posi- 

 tion on the Geological Survey of Canada. Mr. Bur- 

 ling, for many years assistant to Dr. Walcott in the 

 palaeontology of the Cambrian rocks of North America, 

 has also joined the technical staff of the Canadian 

 Survey at Ottawa. 



Extensive preparations are being made for the 

 forthcoming meeting of the International Congress 

 of Zoology to be held in the museum of the Oceano- 

 graphic Institute at Monaco, March 25-30. Numerous 

 collections from various e-N.peditions and countries are 

 being exhibited in the spacious halls of the institute. 

 The aquarium at Monaco and the Russian Biological 

 Station, Villefranche, are also expected to furnish 

 interesting material for discussion during the con- 

 gress. 



A SPECIAL general meeting of the Royal Geograph- 

 ical Society was held on January 15 to consider, 

 among other matters, the proposal to admit women 

 as fellows of the society. The president (Lord Curzon 

 of Kedleston) moved the resolution : " That the society 

 approve of the election of women as fellows," and it 

 was carried by 130 votes to 51. In future, therefore, 

 women will be eligible for admission as fellows on the 

 same basis as men. 



On Thursday next, January 30, Prof. B. Hopkin- 

 son will deliver the first of two lectures at the Royal 

 Institution on recent research on the gas engine, and 

 NO. 2256, VOL. 90] 



on Saturday, February 8, Sir J. J. Thomson will begin 

 a course of si.x lectures on the properties and constitu- 

 tion of the atom. The Friday evening discourse on 

 January 31 will be delivered by Mr. George M. 

 Trevelyan, on the poetry and philosophy of George 

 Meredith, and on February 7 by Sir John Murray, on 

 life in the great oceans. 



The will of the late Mr. Rowland Ward, the taxi- 

 dermist, directs that the trustees with respect to his 

 charitable bequests shall expend sooZ. per annum out 

 of the income of his residuary estate, after the legacies 

 and annuities specified have been paid, for a period 

 of ten years in the purchase of specimens to be pre- 

 sented to the Natural History Museum, South Ken- 

 sington. The residue of his estate is left in equal 

 shares to such eight of fourteen selected charitable 

 and other institutions as his widow shall choose. In 

 default of his widow's selection within twelve months 

 of the testator's decease, the whole of the fourteen 

 institutions — which include the Natural History 

 Museum — are to share equally. 



Mr. a. C. Claudet, whose death on January 17 

 will be widely regretted, was born on June g, 1855, 

 and was the eldest son of the late Mr. Frederick 

 Claudet, of London and Cannes, the founder of the 

 well-known firm of assayers and metallurgists. He 

 was educated privately and at the Royal School of 

 Mines, where he took the associateship in metallurgy 

 in 1878. He was one of the best-known and most 

 universally respected members of the mining and 

 metallurgical community, and had been treasurer of 

 the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy from its 

 foundation in 1892 to the day of his death. He was 

 president of the institution in 1906-7, and had also 

 been a trustee for a number of years. At various 

 times he also served on the council of the Institute 

 of Chemistry, the Faraday Society, and on those of 

 other scientific bodies. He took a keen and active 

 interest in various educational movements to which he 

 devoted a great deal of time, and which he generously 

 assisted financially. These movements included the 

 reorganisation, rebuilding, and equipment of the 

 Royal School of Mines, the establishment of the 

 Imperial College of Science and Technology, the 

 Imperial College Union, &c., and he served on several 

 committees connected therewitii. He was an active 

 member of the executive committee of the Bessemer 

 Memorial Fund, from which the Bessemer Laboratory 

 at South Kensington was equipped. He and Mr. 

 Hennen Jennings, of Washington, D.C., established 

 a "post-graduate grants fund," under the auspices of 

 the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy to supple- 

 ment the scholarships given by the institution to assist 

 graduates to take practical courses in mines and 

 works in the chief mining centres of the world, and 

 many young engineers have been assisted in this way 

 to bridge the period between college and their actual 

 professional career with excellent results. His noble 

 qualities of heart and mind are not so common as to 

 make his death anything but a real loss to an un- 

 usually large number of friends, both personal and 

 professional. 



