August 2, 1906] 



NA TURE 



335 



country made only a few years ago. Lord Iveagh has 

 endowed the Lister Institute, for researches in connection 

 with the prevention of disease, with no less a sum than 

 a quarter of a million pounds sterling. This is the largest 

 gift ever made to science in this country, and will be pro- 

 ductive of great benefit to humanity. The Lister Institute 

 took its origin in the surplus of a fund raised by Sir James 

 Whitehead when Lord Mayor, some sixteen years ago, for 

 the purpose of making a gift to the Pasteur Institute in 

 Paris, where many English patients had been treated, 

 without charge, after being bitten by rabid dogs. Three 

 thousand pounds was sent to M. Pasteur, and the surplus 

 of a few hundred pounds was made the starting-point of 

 a fund which grew, by one generous gift and another, until 

 the Lister Institute on the Thames Embankment at Chelsea 

 was set up on a site presented by that good and high- 

 minded man, the late Duke of Westminster. 



Many other noble gifts to scientific research have been 

 made in this country during the period on which we are 

 looking back. Let us be thankful for them, and admire 

 the wise munificence of the donors. But none the less we 

 must refuse to rely entirely on such liberality for the 

 development of the army of science, which has to do battle 

 for mankind against the obvious disabilities and suffer- 

 ings which afflict us and can be removed by knowledge. 

 The organisation and finance of this army should be the 

 care of the State. 



It is a fact which many of us who have observed it 

 regret very keenly, that there is to-day a less widespread 

 interest than formerly in natural history and general 

 science, outside the strictly professional arena of the school 

 and university. The field naturalists among the squires 

 and the country parsons seem nowadays not to be so 

 numerous and active in their delightful pursuits as formerly, 

 and the Mechanics' Institutes and Lecture Societies of the 

 days of Lord Brougham have given place, to a very large 

 extent, to musical performances, bioscopes, and other 

 entertainments, more diverting, but not really more 

 capable of giving pleasure than those in which science was 

 popularised. No doubt the organisation and professional 

 character of scientific work are to a large extent the cause 

 of this falling-off in its attraction for amateurs. But 

 perhaps that decadence is also due in some measure to the 

 increased general demand for a kind of manufactured 

 gaiety, readily sent out in these days of easy transport 

 from the great centres of fashionable amusement to the 

 provinces and rural districts. 



In conclusion, I would say a word in reference to the 

 associations of our place of meeting, the birthplace of our 

 Society. It seems to me not inappropriate that a Society 

 for the .Advancement of Science should have taken its 

 origin under the walls of York Minster, and that the 

 clergy of the great cathedral should have stood by its 

 cradle. It is not true that there is an essential antagonism 

 between the scientific spirit and what is called the religious 

 sentiment. "Religion," said Bishop Creighton. "means 

 the knowledge of our destiny and of the means of fulfilling 

 it." We can say no more and no less of Science. Men 

 of Science seek, in all reverence, to discover the Almighty, 

 the Everlasting. They claim sympathy and friendship with 

 those who, like themselves, have turned away from the 

 more material struggles of human life, and have set their 

 hearts and minds on the knowledge of the Eternal. 



Sir William Crookes, Prof. Eduard Suess, Prof. Luigi 

 Palazzo, and Prof. Orazio Marucchi were elected honorary 

 members of the Royal Academy of .Acireale (Sicilv) at a 

 meeting on July 24. 



The Highways Committee of the I^ondon County Council 

 has taken the necessary steps in connection with the 

 appointment of the committee suggested by the Admiraltv 

 to inquire whether the working of the Greenwich electricity 

 generating station will have any injurious effect upon the 

 Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Sir Benjamin Baker will 

 act as the Council's representative on the committee, and 

 NO. I918, VOL. 74] 



Prof. C. v. Boys will act in an advisory capacity from 

 the astronomical and scientific point of view. The repre- 

 sentatives appointed by the Admiralty on the committee are 

 Prof. J. A. Ewing and Lord Rossc. 



The seventy-fourth annual meeting of the British Medical 

 .Association will be held at Toronto, Canada, on August 21. 

 rhe president-elect is Dr. Richard .\. Reeve, of the 

 University of Toronto. Addresses will be delivered in 

 medicine by Sir James Barr, in surgery by Sir Victor 

 Ilorsley, F.R.S., and in obstetrics by Dr. Walter S. A. 

 (iriffith. The business of the meeting will be carried op 

 in thirteen sections, dealing respectively with anatomy, 

 dermatology, laryngology, medicine, obstetrics and gynjE- 

 lology, ophthalmology, paediatrics, pathology and bacteri- 

 ology, physiology, psychology, State medicine, surgery, and 

 therapeutics. Several receptions and soirees have been 

 arranged, and the last day of the meeting is to be devoted 

 to outings. 



On Tuesday the Natural History Museum received, from 

 .Mr. Rowland Ward's establishment, a mounted specimen 

 of a wild male African elephant, standing 11 feet 4 inches 

 at the shoulder. The animal was shot in Rhodesia. The 

 specimen could only be brought into the museum by taking 

 down the doors, and, after considerable difficulty, was duly 

 installed in the central hall, facing the entrance. This is 

 the first wild .African elephant's skin that has ever been 

 mounted. The architect should be congratulated upon his 

 clever achievement in one of the largest buildings in London 

 with really one of the largest doors until he had artistically 

 obliterated it. 



The contents of Nos. 7 and 8 of Nalitren include articles 

 on the habits of humble-bees, Chilian nitre, squirrels' nests, 

 and " animalcules." 



In a paper on the development of the cusps on 

 mammalian cheek-teeth, published in the Proceedings of the 

 Washington .Academy (vol. vii., pp. 91-110), Mr. J. W. 

 Gidley points out that, in his opinion, the tritubercular 

 theory cannot be maintained in its original form. It 

 appears that the three main cusps of the upper tritubercular 

 molar are by no means always homologous. Despite the 

 want of homology in the cusps, the author deprecates any 

 change in Prof. Osborn's nomenclature for tritubercular 

 molars, which is found to be exceedingly convenient in 

 practice. 



A COLLECTION of skulls of Californian Indians forms the 

 subject of an elaborate paper by Mr. .A. Hrdlicka consti- 

 tuting No. 2 of vol. iv. of the Arch^ological and Ethno- 

 logical Publications of the University of California. These 

 ancient Californian Indians, like those of Santa Barbara 

 Island, show no affinity to the aborigines of Arizona and 

 Sonora, but appear akin to the Otomi of the States of 

 Hidalgo and Mexico. " .A large group of peoples in the 

 .States of Puebla, Michoacan, and further south, even 

 including the Aztecs, and finally the Tarahumare, in 

 Chihuahua, are all physically related to the Otomi as well 

 as to the Californians." 



Corals from California and Brazil form the subject of 

 No. 1477 of the Proceedings of the L5.S. National Museum, 

 a Californian Ccenocyathus being described by Mr. T. W. 

 Vaughan, the author of the paper, as new. In No. 147S 

 of the same serial Messrs. Evermann and Clark describe 

 certain new fishes from a small river in the centre of 

 Santo Domingo. Six specimens were obtained, referable 

 10 four species, three of which are regarded as new, two 

 being assigned to the genus Platypoecilus and the third to 

 Sicvdium. 



