May iS, 1905] 



NA TURE 



students had passed through it. They had to thank Sir 

 John Craggs for founding a scholarship and prize, and 

 TMr. Bomanji Petit, a Parsee gentleman, for a contribution 

 of 7000/. The committee now aslced for the sum of 

 ]nii,ono/. for endowment, which amount was a mere drop 

 in the budget in comparison with the Liverpool subscrip- 

 tions. The other speakers were Sir P. Manson, Mr. Alfred 

 L\ttelton, M.P.; Lord Strathcona, and the Duke of Marl- 

 borough, and ainong the 400 guests were Lord Rothschild, 

 Sir Douglas Powell, Sir T. Barlow, the Hon. Sj'dney 

 Holland, Sir Alfred Jones, Prof. Blanchard, Prof. Dunstan, 

 Ihe Hon. John Cockburn, Major Ronald Ross, Sir .\. \V. 

 Riicker. Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, Sir W. S. Church, 

 • ind Mr. Watson Cheyne. Subscriptions and donations to 

 the amount of more than 10,000/. were received. 



Tut-: visit of the French doctors to London last summer 

 Avas so successful that a return visit of their British 

 ■confreres to Paris was arranged, and the party arrived 

 on Ma\ 10. The proceedings commenced with an evening 

 reception at the Sorbonne. ^L Ziard, president of the 

 university council, and Dr. Bouchard, Sir William Broad- 

 lient, chairman of the London executive cominittee, Prof. 

 Clifford .\llbult, of Cambridge, and Dr. George Ogilvie, 

 senior physician to the French Hospital, London, ex- 

 changed mutually congratulatory speeches. The extensive 

 and beautiful university buildings were thrown open, and 

 were much admired. On Saturday the visitors attended 

 a reception at the Pasteur Institute. Dr. Roux, the 

 director of the establishment, welcomed the visitors in a 

 short speech, in which he recalled the great services 

 ri-ndered to Pasteur by Lister. In the crypt of the insti- 

 tute, the dean of the medical faculty of the University 

 of London, Dr. J. K. Fowler, laid a wreath upon 

 Pasteur's tomb bearing the following inscription : — 

 " .V ce grand Pasteur, le bienfaiteur de la race humaine. " 

 In the course of his address Dr. Fowler is reported by the 

 Paris correspondent of the Times to have said : — " We 

 desire to offer a tribute of our profound admiration for 

 the great Frenchman whose noble life and example will 

 ever be an inspiration to those who, like him, are devoted 

 to the cause of science. The discoveries of Pasteur alone 

 would suffice to give the nineteenth century a preeminent 

 place in the annals of science. .Science knows no frontiers ; 

 il unites in a common brotherhood all who devote their 

 lives to its service. Those' who humbly follow, no matter 

 at how great a distance, in the footsteps of Pasteur help 

 to unite the peoples of the world. We are convinced that 

 the friendship between France and Great Britain will ever 

 continue to increase in cordiality, and that the two nations 

 will work in accord for the advancement of science and 

 will only strive for the attainment of one noble aim, the 

 peace of the world." On Saturday evening a banquet was 

 held under the presidency of Prof. Bouchard, who, after 

 reading a congratulatory telegram from M. Loubet, 

 announced that he had received from the President of the 

 Republic the mission to bestow upon Sir William Broad- 

 bent the insignia of the rank of Commander of the Legion 

 of Honour. 



A Reuter telegram from Berlin reports that in the 

 course of excavations in the neighbourhood of Brcslau 

 400 graves and 150 prehistoric dwelling places were 

 brought to light. The oldest of the graves contained 

 bones dating from a period previous to the Bronze age, 

 and in another grave near by were found urns showing 

 ■that they had contained bodies interred five centuries later. 

 The excavators have been able to trace the site of a village 

 NO. 1855, VOL. 72] 



of the Bronze age. About a dozen huts are clearly recog- 

 nisable. A whole collection of spinning and weaving 

 appliances has also been dug up. 



Prof. F. A. Forel, writing from Merges, directs our 

 attention to an earthquake which occurred on April 29 

 last. The centre of the seismic disturbance appears to 

 have been in the neighbourhood of Martigny, Argentiere, 

 and Chamonix, and its intensity at the centre was viii. on 

 the Rossi-Forel scale. The time of the principal shock 

 was April 29, ih. 45m. Greenwich time. The seismic area 

 was of 250 kilometres radius, and included 200,000 square 

 kilometres, comprising Valais, western, central, and eastern 

 Switzerland, upper Italy, and western France. Further 

 shocks were experienced at Martigny and Chamonix on 

 May I at igh. 22m. and zih. 53m. ; on May 2 the move- 

 ments were very slight, and on May 6 a shock occurred 

 at 4h. 45m. 



Reuter's Agency is informed that Mr. W. Champ, the 

 leader of the expedition which is being dispatched to Franz 

 Josef Land to rescue the twenty-six American explorers 

 who have been in the Arctic for the past two winters with 

 their ship, the America, left England on Saturday for 

 Bergen. He was accompanied to Norway by Dr. Oliver 

 L. Fassig, who has been dispatched by the United States 

 Weather Bureau and the National Geographic Society of 

 Washington to be their representative on the second relief 

 ship, which will be dispatched from Norway to the east 

 coast of Greenland. The main relief expedition, of which 

 Mr. Champ is in command, will leave Tromso in about a 

 fortnight on board the Terra Nova, and will make straight 

 for Cape Flora, Franz Josef Land, where it is expected 

 that records will be found, and probably also some of the 

 explorers who, under Mr. Fiala, the leader of the expedi- 

 tion, have been cut off from all communication with the 

 outside world since July, 1903. 



Messrs. Friedlander and Son, of Berlin, have sent us 

 a copv of a catalogue of books and pamphlets dealing with 

 the anatomv and physiology of invertebrates. 



To the .\pril issue of our Scandinavian namesake, 

 Naturcn, Dr. H. Magnus contributes the final instalment 

 of his account of South Polar expeditions. 



The birds of the Isle of Pines (about 60 miles south of 

 Cuba), by Messrs. Bangs and Zappey, and the fifth instal- 

 ment of Dr. B. M. Davis's studies on the plant-cell, con- 

 stitute the contents of the .\pril number of the American 

 Naturalist. 



No. 3 of the "Cold Spring Harbour Monographs," by 

 Miss Smallwood, is devoted to the Salt-Marsh amphipod 

 Orchestia palusiris, a species showing more decidedly 

 terrestrial habits than its immediate relatives, and there- 

 fore, presumably, a more specialised type. 



The two plates issued in No. 3 of vol. x.xv. of Notes 

 from the Leyden Museum illustrate papers on molluscs. 

 In the first of these Mr. M. M. Schepman describes a new 

 species of Trochus from the Indian Ocean, and the adult 

 condition of Bathybcmbix acola, a Japanese form originally 

 described from an immature specimen collected during the 

 voyage of the Challenger. In the second Dr. H. F. 

 Nierstrasz reviews the collection of chitons in the Leyden 

 Museum, describing new species. 



The hereditary relations of plants to the diurnal and 

 seasonal periods of their environment form the subject of 

 an instructive article by Dr. R. Semon in Biologisches 

 Ceiitralblatt of April 15. In the same issue Dr. Wasmann 



