NATURE 
301 
May 23, 1912] 
laws of nature, new means of combating these 
enemies. Medical science has revealed by experi- 
ment and trained observation new securities for life 
and health during recent years, and none can doubt | 
that the improved public health is mainly due to 
the discoveries made by the medical profession in 
this and other countries,’ to the guidance given by 
that profession to civil authorities, and to the sanitary | 
precautions against the spread of disease which they | 
have enforced.” 
Str Davin Bruce, C.B., F.R.S., has been approved 
by the King for special promotion to the rank of 
Surgeon-General, in consideration of his eminent 
services to science by his work on Malta fever, 
malaria, sleeping sickness, and other diseases. 
Dr. D. H. Scorr, F.R.S., president of the Linnean 
Society, has been elected a foreign member of the 
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (class 
of sciences), and foreign member of the Royal Society 
of Sciences, Upsala. 
Tue Berlin correspondent of The Times reports 
that on May 20 the Reichstag passed the first and 
second readings of the supplementary estimates for 
the promotion of aéronautics by means of the financial 
support of the recently founded ‘“‘German_ Experi- 
mental Institute for Aéronautics.’”” The estimates 
provide for a vote of 10,o00l. as a contribution towards 
the founding of the institute and a vote of 2500l. 
towards the cost of maintenance for the financial 
year I9gI2. 
Tue President of the Board of Trade has appointed 
a technical committee to advise him, in the interests 
of safety of life at sea, with regard to the internal 
subdivision of vessels of all classes by watertight 
bulkheads and other means. The committee is con- 
stituted as follows:—Dr. Archibald Denny (chair- 
man), Mr. James Bain, Mr. H. R. Champness, 
M.V.O., Dr. G. B. Hunter, Mr. Summers Hunter, 
Mr. J. Foster King, Mr. Andrew Laing, Mr. W. J. 
Luke, Dr. S. J. P. Thearle, and Prof. J. J. Welch. 
The secretary to the committee is Mr. Walter Carter, 
of the Board of Trade, 7 Whitehall Gardens, London, 
S.W., to whom communications relating to the work 
of the committee should be addressed. 
On Tuesday next, May 28, Prof. W. M. Flinders 
Petrie will give the first of two lectures at the Royal 
Institution on ‘‘The Formation of the Alphabet ”’; 
on Thursday, May 30, Prof. C. G. Barkla will begin 
a course of two lectures on ‘‘ X-rays and Matter”’; 
and on Saturday, June 1, Mr. Willis L. Moore, chief 
of the United States Weather Bureau, will deliver 
the first of two lectures on ‘‘The Development and 
Utilities of Meteorological Science.” The Friday 
evening discourse on May 31 will be delivered by 
Prof. Howard T. Barnes on “Icebergs and _ their 
Location in Navigation,” and on June 7 by Sir 
William Macowen on ‘Lord Lister.’ An extra 
Friday evening discourse will be given on June 14 by 
Mr. A. Henry Savage Landor on ‘‘ Unknown Parts 
of South America.” 
We learn from The Times of May 20 that under 
the will of the late Lord Wandsworth a sum of 
Aleutian Islands, 
| Russian banker, M. F. P. Riobanschinsky. 
applied by him at his discretion for the promotion of 
medical research. Sir William Bennett has decided 
to entrust the administration of the legacy to the 
London School of Tropical Medicine, under con- 
| ditions which include the establishment of a research 
scholarship, tenable for two or three years, and to be 
given preferably to a British subject. The committee 
of management of the Seamen’s Hospital has been 
appointed by Sir William Bennett to be the trustee 
of the fund, and the research scholar will be 
appointed by that body on the recommendation of the 
committee of the London School of Tropical Medicine. 
It is probable that the first Wandsworth scholar will 
make human blood parasites the first objects of his 
study, and that he will proceed to the West Coast of 
Africa for this purpose. 
AmonG the many interesting papers to be pre- 
sented to the eighteenth International Congress of 
Americanists, which will be held in London next 
weelx, the account of the expedition of the Imperial 
Russian Geographical Society to Kamchatka and the 
by Dr. Waldemar Jochelson, is 
specially worthy of note. The expedition, of which 
Dr. Jochelson was in charge of the ethnological 
section, was fitted out in 1908 at the expense of a 
The ex- 
pedition excavated thirteen ancient village sites and 
three burial caves, and explored shell-heaps and other 
Ikitchen-midden deposits of the Aleutian Islands. 
The collections brought back by the expedition in- 
cluded skeletons and skulls, and many prehistoric 
objects of stone and bone. In addition, much in- 
formation as to the Aleutian language, folklore, and 
religion was secured. In 1910 the party crossed to 
Kamchatka, where old underground dwellings and 
fortifications were explored, and ancient pottery, the 
existence of which has been denied by former 
travellers, was found. The discoveries throw much 
light on the early relations of Kamchatka and Japan. 
Dr. Jochelson will also discuss the morphological 
relations of the language of Kamchatka and: of the 
American Indians, and the identities which he has 
discovered in their mythology and that of the Indians 
of the north-west. The paper will be illustrated by a 
number of lantern-slides and kinematograph films. 
WE regret to see the announcement of the death, 
on Tuesday, May 21, at sixty-two years of age, of 
Sir Julius Wernher, Bart., whose benefactions to 
education and science are gratefully remembered. 
He was greatly interested in education, and in many 
ways promoted the extension of knowledge, as will 
be seen in the following extract from an_ obituary 
notice in The Times :—He was a member of Lord 
Haldane’s Committee on the Royal College of Science 
and Royal School of Mines, which reported in 1905, 
and the report of which led to the establishment by 
Royal Charter of the Imperial College of Science 
and Technology. In February of last year he was 
awarded the gold medal of the Institution of Mining 
and Metallurgy in recognition of his ‘t great personal 
services to the advancement of technological educa- 
tion.” A short time before he had given 10,0001. to 
10,000l. was bequeathed to Sir William Bennett, to be j the National Physical Laboratory for the extension of 
NO. 2221, VOL. 89] 
