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639 
the Bibliogeteny of limnograpien published in the | 
Scottish Lake Survey Reports, about four pages 
are taken up by references to his work, and his 
output is more than double that of any other 
writer. His work was always marked with a 
clearness of thought and insight, while a love 
of his subject glowed in every page. 
Forel’s monograph on “le Léman,” which 
appeared in three volumes from 1892 to 1904, is 
a model for all limnologists to follow in whatever 
branch of their science they are concerned, be it 
as physicist, chemist, zoologist, botanist, archzo- 
logist, historian, or economist, while his small 
“Handbuch der Seenkunde” (1900), which is an 
admirable introduction to the study of lakes, shows 
that, in spite of the minuteness of his study of 
Lake Geneva, he maintained a clear idea of the 
fundamental points of his subject. 
The late Prof. Chrystal called Forel “the 
Faraday of seiches,” and while he ranged over 
so many sciences, his chief claim to be remem- 
bered is that he was the first to explain the nature 
of seiches or the oscillatory movements which 
occur in all lakes. He first of all established, by 
means of portable limnographs, the fact that when 
the water was rising in level at one end of the 
lake, it was usually falling at the other, and 
only two years later, in 1875, he published his 
theory that the seiches were really standing waves. 
Considering the data at his disposal, the formula- 
tion of his theory was a brilliant piece of work. 
He himself was content that his reputation should 
rest on this. He narrates how, in 1875, as he sat 
for hours motionless at the side of the lake at 
Romanshorn, watching one of his instruments, he 
was accosted by a schoolmaster, to whom he 
endeavoured to explain his theories, but only at 
the end to be met with the question, so often 
asked, “Zu was niitzt das?” Forel adds with 
pride :— 
Il est vrai que j’ai consacré a ces recherches bien 
des heures, bien des journées, bien des années de ma | 2 , : 
| ments on the disinfection of ships, and these reports 
vie. Mais j’avoue que, dans mon for intérieur, je ne 
me suis jamais senti humilié d’avoir dépensé autant 
de cette denrée précieuse entre toutes, le temps qui 
s’écoule et ne revient pas, 4 un théme sans utilité 
immédiate et pratique. Quand nous aurons 
trouvé une confirmation de quelques données de la 
théorie pure par l’observation directe d’oscillations 
qui mettent en mouvement de balancement aussi bien 
la masse énorme des 89 milliards de métres du Léman, 
que les quelques litres d’eau de nos auges d’expéri- 
mentation, n’aurons-nous pas 1a une _ vérification 
précieuse. . . . Mon cher inconnu de Romanshorn, a 
ta question: ‘‘Wozu niitzt es?” je réponds: ‘Es 
niitzt doch etwas.” 
When the investigations of the Scottish Lake 
Survey extended his theory to temperature seiches, 
no one was more interested in the results than 
Forel, and he endeavoured to make observations 
himself to corroborate the Scottish work, but the 
attempt brought back some trouble in his hands 
which had caused him to give up actual observa- 
tional work twenty years earlier. 
In 1910 Forel was elected an honorary fellow 
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and when | 
attending 
NO. 2234, VOL. 89] 
| 
gress at Manchester last year, he delivered an 
address at Edinburgh on refractions at the surface 
of a lake, mirages, and Fata morgana. He was 
unable, owing to ill-health, to accept a former 
_ invitation to this country, and it is a satisfaction 
| 
| heavens, 
the International Seismological Con- | included in 206 plates. 
to his friends here, who were attracted as much 
by his charming amiable manner and his great 
courtesy as by his work, that he should have made 
that visit before the end came. 
NOTES. 
WE regret to announce the death, on August 15, of 
Dr. John Wade from injuries received in a motor- 
cycling accident on July 28. Dr. Wade, who was only 
forty-eight years of age, was lecturer on chemistry at 
the Guy’s Hospital Medical School, and in that post 
he was very successful, both in his teaching and 
organising capacities. He had only recently occupied 
the new chemical laboratories in that school, the design 
of which had given him much pleasure. Dr. Wade 
possessed an original and energetic personality, which 
found expression in his lectures, his text-book on 
organic chemistry, and his contributions to the 
Transactions of the Chemical Society. As a graduate 
and member of Senate of the University of London 
Dr. Wade held strong views on the necessity for an 
external side to the university, and maintained his 
convictions with great ability and energy. In the 
field of pure chemistry his most important work was 
| on the constitution of the metallic cyanides, the forma- 
and studies in fractional distillation 
under varying pressures. In connection with the 
latter, he showed, in 1905, that the physiological 
differences known to exist between chloroform prepared 
from acetone and from ethyl alcohol were accompanied 
by chemical differences, ethyl chloride being absent in 
the former and present in the latter. In applied 
chemistry he carried out, at the request of the Local 
Government Board (partly in collaboration with Dr. 
Haldane and partly alone), a lengthy series of experi- 
tion of esters, 
form the basis of the current practice of port authori- 
ties in Great Britain and elsewhere. He was engaged 
at the time of his death upon another investigation 
for the Local Government Board upon the products 
of combustion of coal gas in rooms. 
Mr. JOHN FRANKLIN-ADamMsS, whose death on August 
13 Wwe greatly regret to record, was an enthusiastic 
worker for astronomical science. He began photo- 
graphic delineation of the Milky Way about 1898, at 
Machrihanish, Argyllshire, and this developed into the 
more ambitious scheme of charting the whole 
heavens, northern and southern. His celebrated 
Photographic Chart of the Heavens was commenced 
(with a 1o-in. Cooke lens) at the Cape of Good Hope 
in 1903, for the southern stars; and completed, for 
the northern stars, at Mervel Hill, Surrey, between 
1904 and 1909. It was found necessary to give an 
exposure of 2h. 20m. in this climate, to equal 2h. in 
the clear skies of South Africa. Each plate was 
in. square, and covered 15°x15°, the entire 
down to stars of 15th magnitude, being 
Owing to great improvements 
15 
