536 
soul tasted satisfying joys, but at the same time 
Henri Poincaré served his country faithfully and 
well.” 
M. Jules Claretie then saluted for the last time 
the mortal remains of his colleague of the French 
Academy :— 
“In the name of the French Academy, I have 
the honour of saluting Henri Poincaré on behalf 
of a company of which he was justly one of the 
most illustrious members. When his colleagues 
called him, not yet thirty-two years of age, to 
take his place amongst us, it was a poet that this 
mathematician, this geometer, this philosopher, 
this poet of the universe succeeded. And, from 
the first day, we were conquered by the simple 
and limpid eloquence of this master writer, who, 
knowing everything, verifying everything, illumi- 
nated with his definitions, animated with his 
observations, and guided with his counsels our 
researches, the study of our language. 
“Tt is not to-day, nor is it here, that one must 
study the work of this great man, who, scarcely 
full-grown, had already at one bound mounted to 
the summits. One might say, in many and elo- 
quent tones, how much the country owes to this 
NATURE 
[JuLy 25, 1912 
son of the borders of Lorraine, to this child of | 
Nancy, who has shed lustre upon the whole of 
Irance. 
can only express its sorrow, and deplore the loss 
of a great seeker after truth, that stopped all too 
soon in the midst of his work. He would be a 
bold man who would assess the worth of a scholar. 
In celebrating his fame, we can only do homage 
to a philosopher whose thoughts will have so 
fertile, so profound an action on the new genera- 
tions. 
“Passion for scientific truth did not suffice for 
him, he loved literary beauty, and this incom- 
parable mathematician was a strong supporter of 
good writing, of those humanities which for so 
long have guided the French genius along a right 
and a safe road. One might hear him, when the 
dictionary was under discussion, ask about the 
origin, and, as it were, the titles of nobility of 
words. This modern, who stimulated contem- 
porary life by his discoveries and his calculations, 
defended with boldness the heritage of our ances- 
tors. He knew that the French language is itself 
a country, and, against every perilous invasion, 
Before his grave the French Academy- 
daughters.” The hero of thought who has just 
passed away, he too has left in the world of 
ideas an immortal posterity, which will guide. in 
the future the researches of mankind. His life 
will remain as an example equally harmonious in 
the faultlessness of its line with the orbits of those 
stars of which he sought to know the eternal 
future and the eternal past. But the blow which 
snatched him away is too cruel, the wound is too 
open for such thoughts yet to comfort us. In the 
name of the sorrow-stricken Academy of Sciences, 
in the name of his bereaved colleagues, I offer to 
the sublime thinker upon whose face we shall 
never gaze again a supreme homage and a supreme 
adieu.” 
Finally, after some words from General Cornille, 
Commandant of the Ecole Polytechnique, who 
spoke a last farewell to the late professor of 
Astronomy, the interment was completed in the 
family vault. 
NOTES. 
Tue presidents of the Royal Society and the Royal 
College of Surgeons recently took the neces- 
sary steps for the formation of a large and 
representative committee for the purpose of estab- 
lishing a memorial to the late Lord Lister, and such a 
| committee was appointed, and met on Monday after- 
| noon last, at the rooms of the Royal Society under the 
| chairmanship of Sir Archibald Geikie, P.R.S., when 
| the following and others were appointed an executive 
committee to recommend to a future meeting of the 
general committee a scheme for the memorial to Lord 
Lister, and to organise an appeal for subscriptions :— 
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, 
the Viscount Iveagh, K.P., the Lord Rayleigh, O.M., 
F.R.S., the Lord Rothschild, G.C.V.O., the Lord 
Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice, the Right Rev. Bis- 
| hop Ryle, Dean of Westminster, the Right Hon. the 
this soldier of sound speech stood firmly at the | 
” 
frontier. 
MM. Appel and Bigourdan then spoke in the 
name of the Faculty of Science and of the Bureau 
of Longitudes. They recalled the excellent quali- 
ties of the professor, and the gap which would 
be left in the University by his premature death. 
It fell to M. Paul Painlevé to display, in the name 
of the Academy of Sciences, the colossal work 
of the mathematician, who had acquired a_ uni- 
versal fame, and whose life had been only “an 
intense and uninterrupted meditation.” 
concluded :— 
““The Lacedemonian hero said, when dying after 
two victories, that he left behind ‘two immortal 
NO. 2230, VOL. 89| 
He con- | 
Lord Mayor of London, the Right Hon. the Lord 
Provost of Edinburgh (Sir W. Brown), the Hon. the 
Lord Provost of Glasgow (Mr. D. M. Steven- 
son). Lord Rothschild and Sir W. + Watson 
Cheyne were appointed treasurers, and Sir John 
Rose Bradford was appointed secretary of the 
committee. Proposals for a memorial of an 
international character were considered at a meeting 
of the executive committee, held also on Monday, and 
arrangements were made for a public meeting in 
furtherance of the objects of the memorial to be held 
at the Mansion House in October, at which details 
of the scheme will be announced. Communications 
for the treasurers or the secretary may be addressed 
to the Royal Society, Burlington House, London, W. 
A DEPARTMENTAL committee, consisting of Sir H. 
Freer-Smith, C.S.I., R.N. (chairman), Prof. J. E. 
Petavel, F.R.S., Prof. J. Lorrain Smith, F.R.S., Mr. 
G. H. Ewart, and Mr. H. Cummins, with Mr. D. R. 
Wilson, H.M. Inspector of Factories, as secretary, 
| has been appointed by the Home Secretary to inquire 
and report what amendment (if any) of the regula- 
tions for the spinning and weaving of flax or tow, 
