118 
NATURE 
[APRIL 4, 1912 
Tue council of the Manchester Literary and Philo- 
sophical Society has nominated the president, Prof. 
F. E. Weiss, to represent the society at the celebration 
of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the 
Royal Society. 
Pror. H. F. Newatt, F.R.S., has been elected a 
member of the Athenzum Club under the provisions 
of the rule which empowers the annual election by 
the committee of a certain number of persons ‘of 
distinguished eminence in science, literature, the arts, 
or for public services.”’ 
Siri, DAVID Gilt, KeCub.s ERIS: 
Lord Cromer as president of the Research Defence 
Society; and Lord Cromer, Mr. Balfour, Sir Edward 
Elgar, O.M., Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Lord Ray- 
leigh, O.M., have consented to be vice-presidents of 
the society. 
Tue death is announced, at the early age of thirty- 
nine, of Dr. T. H. Montgomery, jun., professor of 
zoology in the University of Pennsylvania. He had 
been assistant professor at the same University from 
1898 to 1903, and professor at the University of 
Texas from 1903 to 1908. He was the author of an 
“Analysis of Racial Descent in Animals,” and of 
numerous monographs on biological subjects. 
Pror. Ratpu S. Tarr, of Cornell University, has 
died suddenly of cerebral haemorrhage. He was born 
at Gloucester, Mass., in 1864, and graduated at Har- 
vard. He served for a while at the Smithsonian 
Institution, and in connection with the United States 
Geological Survey. He went to Cornell in 1892 as 
assistant professor of geology, and had since held 
successively the chairs of dynamical geology and 
physical geography. He had. written a ‘ Physical 
Geography of New York State,” in addition to several 
valuable text-books of geology and physical geography. 
His special work was done in the study of earth- 
quakes and glaciers, upon which he wrote a number 
of important papers. 
Tue death is announced of Mr. Charles Edward 
Leeds, who made the first part of the remarkable 
collection of fossil reptiles from the Oxford Clay of 
Peterborough which now occupies a large portion of 
a gallery in the British Museum (Natural History). 
Mr. Leeds attended the lectures of the late Prof. John 
Phillips, and some of his earliest discoveries were 
described in the professor’s ‘‘Geology of Oxford.” 
He left England in 1887 to spend the remainder of 
his life in New Zealand, and since his departure the 
collection has been extended by his brother, Mr. 
Alfred N. Leeds, who still resides at his birthplace, 
Eyebury, Peterborough. 
WE regret to see the announcement of the death 
of Prof. P. N. Lebedew, professor of physics in the 
University of Moscow, who first succeeded in 1901 in 
demonstrating the pressure of light experimentally. 
Maxwell pointed out that the concentrated rays of an 
electric lamp falling on a thin metallic disc, delicately 
suspended in a vacuum, might perhaps produce an 
observable mechanical effect. This effect was thought 
to have been obtained in the Crookes’s radiometer, 
but the magnitude proved many thousand times too 
NO. 2214, VOL. 89] 
has succeeded | 
| Society was held at Burlington House, W., on Thurs- 
| day, March 28, Prof. Percy F 
t 
great. Prof. Lebedew eliminated the radiometer 
action by using a large bulb with high exhaustion, 
and by excluding rays capable of heating the tube 
walls. His investigations proved that light exerts a 
true pressure on a surface on which it is incident, 
and the absolute magnitude of the pressure was found 
to be equal to that predicted by Maxwell. Prof. 
Lebedew’s work led other investigators to take up 
the subject of the mechanical pressure of light, and 
the results obtained have been most valuable and 
suggestive. 
Tue annual general meeting of the Chemical 
= Velie ay 1 
Fr- 
the president, occupying the chair. 
F.P.S. 
The adoption of 
| the report of the council on the progress of the society 
| during 191r was carried, and the president presented 
the Longstaff medal for 1912 to Dr. H. Brereton 
Baker, F.R.S. The president then delivered his 
address, entitled ‘‘Some Stereochemical Problems.” 
Prof. Percy F. Frankland was re-elected president; 
Prof. E: J. Mills, F.R.S.; and Prof.’G. T. Morgan 
were elected vice-presidents; Dr. S. Smiles as hon.’ 
secretary, and Dr. H. G. Colman, Dr. A. Harden, 
F.R.S., Dr. T. M. Lowry, and Dr. E. J. Russell as 
new ordinary members of council. 
Tne sixty-fifth annual general meeting of the 
Palzontographical Society was held in the Geological 
Society’s rooms at Burlington House on March 22, 
Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., president, in the chair. 
The annual report referred to the completion of the 
monograph of English Chalk fishes, and of the second 
volume of that of Pleistocene mammalia. It also acknow- 
ledged the help of the Carnegie Trust for the univer- 
sities of Scotland in providing the plates for another 
instalment of Dr. Traquair’s monograph of Carbon- 
iferous palzoniscid fishes. A special effort had been 
made to complete works in progress before beginning 
new undertakings. Miss Margaret C. Crosfield, Mr. 
George Barrow, Mr. H. R. Knipe, and Prof. W. W. 
Watts were elected new members of council. Dr. 
Henry Woodward, Dr. George J. Hinde, and Dr. A. 
Smith Woodward were re-elected president, treasurer, 
and secretary respectively. 
Tue Easter Vacation Classes and the number of 
workers at the Port Erin Biological Station promise 
| this year to be considerably larger than on any 
previous occasion. Seventy-six senior students or 
post-graduate’ researchers in zoology, botany, or 
physiology (representing six universities) have now 
engaged work-places at the laboratory during April, 
and all the accommodation in the institution seems 
likely to be taxed to its utmost capacity. Plank- 
tologists elsewhere may be interested to know that 
the vernal phytoplankton has made its appearance in 
the Irish Sea this year at an earlier date than usual. 
Diatoms were present in great force in the plankton 
of Port Erin bay on March 18 for the first time this 
spring. On the other hand, this season’s prospects 
in the hatchery are unfavourable. The spawning of 
the plaice in the ponds is later than usual, and the 
number of eggs produced is comparatively small. 
