62 



NA TURE 



[May 1 8, 1905 



country if such a committee had existed years ago. The 

 idea underlying the formation of the committee is that for 

 the handling of great national problems the Government 

 must have expert assistance on a scale departmental 

 inquiry cannot supply. Mr. Haldane suggested that it 

 would be to the advantage of the nation if the principle 

 of consultative committees were applied to the scientific 

 ■organisation of <he whole of our executive Government. 

 ■" We shall never get the best service for the State until 

 we cease to assign it merely to departments, until we can 

 find some body to which it can be assigned that will be 

 working under the head of the State himself. The work 

 of the Committee of Defence illustrates the application of 

 a new principle which will be a very familiar one before 

 the country is much older." 



The Jacksonian prize of the Royal College of Surgeons 

 of England has been presented to Mr. Herbert J. Paterson. 



The Elisha Kent Kane medal of the Geographical Society 

 of Philadelphia has been awarded to Prof. William B. 

 Scott, of Princeton University. 



The seventy-seventh annual meeting of the Society of 

 German Naturalists and Physicians will be hold this ye.-u- 

 at Meran on September 24-30. 



The Prince of Wales, as honorary president of the Royal 

 Statistical Society, has consented to attend the opening 

 meeting of the tenth session of the International Statistical 

 Institute, which is to be held this summer in London. 



The Hanbury gold medal of the Pharmaceutical Society 

 has this year been awarded to Prof. Ernst Schmidt, pro- 

 fessor of pharmaceutical chemistry to the University of 

 Marburg. This medal is awarded biennially for high excel- 

 lence in the prosecution or promotion of original research 

 in the chemistry and natural history of drugs, and Prof. 

 Schmidt is the thirteenth man of science to whom the 

 medal has been awarded. He is the first to receive, with 

 the medal, the sum of 50?., which is presented to the 

 medallist by Sir Thomas Hanbury. K.C.V.O. 



We have been requested by the council of the Society 

 of Arts to give publicity to the following resolution passed 

 at a meeting held on May 8 : — " In view of the feeling 

 which appears to have been aroused amongst some of the 

 proprietors of the London Institution with regard to the 

 proposed amalgamation with the Society of ."^rts, and the 

 consequent probable difficulties of effecting a harmonious 

 fusion of the two corporations into a single institution, 

 the council of the Society of Arts have decided not to take 

 any further action in the matter, and hereby discharge the 

 committee which, at the instance of the board of 

 managers of the London Institution, they appointed to con- 

 sider the scheme for amalgamation." 



The programme has been issued of the optical conven- 

 tion to be held at the Northampton Institute, Clerkenwell, 

 E.C., from May 30 to June 3, under the presidency of 

 Dr. R. T. Glazebrook, F.R.S., director of the National 

 Physical Laboratory. The list of papers to be read and 

 discussed includes many of great scientific interest and 

 practical value. Among the subjects and authors we 

 notice : — the spectroscope in astronomy, Mr. H. F. Newall, 

 F.R.S. ; spectroscopic optics, Prof. Schuster ; polishing of 

 glass surfaces. Lord Rayleigh ; parallel plate micrometer. 

 Prof. Poynting ; early history of telephotography, Major- 

 General Waterhousc ; tri-colour photography, Mr. A. J. 

 Bull ; and some directions of progress in optical glass, Mr. 

 W. Rosenhain. The opening ceremony, presidential 

 NO. 1855, VOL. 72] 



address, and conversazione will be held on Tuesday. 

 May 50. A special lecture will be given by Prof. S. P. 

 Thompson on " The Polarisation of Light by Nicol Prisms 

 and their .Modern Equivalents " on Thursday, June i. 



Ox May 20 Dr. J. G. Frazer will deliver at the Royal 

 Institution the first of two lectures on " The Evolution 

 of the Kingship in Early Society," and on Thursday, 

 May 25, Prof. J. A. Fleming will deliver the first of three 

 lectures on " Electromagnetic Waves." These are the 

 Tyndall lectures. On Saturday, June 3, Mr. A. H. Savage 

 Landor will begin a course of two lectures on " Explor- 

 ation in the Philippines." The Friday evening discourse 

 on May 26 will be delivered by Prof. J. W. Bruhl on " The 

 Development of Spectrochemistry," on June 2 by Mr. 

 George Henschel on " Personal Recollections of Johannes 

 Brahms," and on June 9 by Sir William H. White on 

 " Submarine' Navigation." 



riii: Times announces the death of Lieut. -Colonel 

 L. H. L. Irbv at sixty-nine years of age. Throughout his 

 life Colonel Irby took an intense interest in all branches 

 of natural history, ornithology being his favourite subject. 

 In 1875 he published a work on the " Ornithology of the 

 Straits of Gibraltar " (south-west .\ndalucia and northern 

 .Morocco), a second edition of w-hich appeared in i8q4 : 

 and in 1887 appeared his "Key List of British Birds," 

 which has proved to be of great utility to all lovers of 

 birds. He w-as for many years a member of the council 

 of the Zoological Society. He assisted in the formation 

 of the life groups at the British Museum (Natural History), 

 and some of the most remarkable of the cases of British 

 birds there bear his name. 



The deaths are announced of -M. Fernet, general 

 honorary inspector of public instruction, and Prof. \'ictor 

 Rene .Muller, of Le Puy, both physicists. 



Of the many valuable instruments bequeathed to the 

 French Physical Society by the late M. F(51ix Worms de 

 Romilly, the most interesting is the telescope bearing 

 .on the glass of its mirror the signature of M. Foucault. An 

 account of this historic instrument is given by M. Cotton 

 in the Bulletin of the French Physical Society (No. 226). 

 The mirror has a diameter of 15-2 cm. and a focal length 

 of 68 cm., giving a numerical aperture of about / 4-5. 

 The resolving power is 200,000, giving an angular separ- 

 ation of i". This is the only instrument constructed by 

 Foucault with such a large aperture, and it is to be placed 

 in the Paris Observatory after being re-silvered and 

 adjusted by M. Cotton. 



A B.^xouET in aid of the funds of the London School of 

 Tropical Medicine took place at the Hotel Cecil on May 10. 

 Mr. Chamberlain, who presided, in proposing " The 

 London School of Tropical Medicine," said he could not 

 conceive of any subject of scientific research and philan- 

 thropic enterprise which was more interesting than tropical 

 diseases, and it was a duty which we owed to the Empire, 

 a duty which had increased in recent years with the con- 

 tinual extension of our territory. He thought we owed first 

 to Sir Patrick Manson the idea of a tropical school. 

 Almost abreast of him, if not before, came the promoters 

 of the Liverpool School. There was room for all in this 

 work, and they congratulated the Liverpool School on the 

 success it had achieved. There was only one thing he 

 envied them, and that was the liberality and energy of 

 their citizens. He wished that in every other institution 

 they could have a man as energetic, as devoted as Sir 

 .Mfred Jones. The London School now had accommodation 

 for 40 students, and since its foundation six years ago 503 



