AvucusT 29, 1912] 
NATURE 
667 
works upon photography. Mr. Brothers was the 
inventor of the use of magnesium ribbon for flash- 
light photography, and he obtained some of the earliest 
photographs of the solar corona. Several hundred 
photographs were taken during the American eclipse 
of August 7, 1869, and one of them was reproduced 
in the first number of Nature, but it shows only the 
chromosphere and prominences. During the eclipse 
on December 12 of the following year excellent photo- 
graphs of the solar corona were taken by Mr. Brothers 
at Syracuse, and also by American observers in Spain. 
A woodcut reproduction of one of Mr. Brothers’s pic- 
tures appeared in Nature of February 23, 1871, and 
some points of interest were indicated by him in an 
article in that number and in the issue of March 9, 
1871. The photographs were of great scientific value 
in connection with the then much-discussed question 
as to the nature of the corona. 
Dr. T. B. MecCuintic, of the American Public Hos- 
pital and Marine Hospital service, has died at the 
early age of thirty-seven, the victim of his own devo- 
tion to the cause of public health. For the last two 
years he had been investigating ‘‘ Rocky Mountain 
spotted fever’? in Montana, a disease most prevalent 
in the Bitter Root Valley. Dr. McClintic’s campaign 
against the epidemic had prevented the development 
of any case in the valley this year until he was him- 
self stricken. He had done much notable work in his 
previous career. He served on the relief ship after 
the San Francisco earthquake, assisted in administer- 
ing the plague quarantine in the Philippines, and, in 
conjunction with Dr. Anderson, of the hygienic labora- 
tory, set the standard for antiseptics in the United 
States. The New York Evening Post, in a leading 
article, says that Dr. McClintic’s name ‘‘ will be added 
to the illustrious roll of men who have cheerfully faced 
dangers more appalling than those of battle, and have 
yielded up their lives in the effort to save the lives cf 
others.” 
WE regret to have to record the death of the Rev. 
Robert Ashington Bullen, who passed away suddenly 
on August 16, aged sixty-two. He was an enthusiastic 
naturalist, a Fellow of the Linnean, Geological, and 
Zoological Societies, and an active member of council 
of the Palaontographical and Malacological Societies. 
He was a generous supporter of scientific research, 
especially in geology, and either inspired or himself 
made numerous contributions to knowledge. He was 
closely associated with the late Sir Joseph Prestwich 
at the time when he was preparing his classic paper 
on the supposed worked flints from the plateau gravels 
of Kent; and Mr. Bullen himself subsequently pub- 
lished many descriptions and illustrations of “‘ eoliths ”’ 
both from Kent and other districts. He explored a 
prehistoric cemetery at Harlyn Bay, Cornwall, and 
described his results in a small work, of which the 
first edition appeared in 1901, the third edition quite 
lately. He visited the Bermuda Islands, of which he 
contributed a useful geological description to The 
Geological Magazine in 1911; and at the time of his 
death he was occupied with the study of material 
which he had collected from superficial deposits in the 
Canary Islands. 
NO. 2235, VOL. 89] 
We also note with regret the death of Captain 
Arthur William Stiffe, who had been for many years 
a familiar figure at the meetings of the Geological 
and Royal Geographical Societies. Capt. Stiffe was 
born in 1831, and during service in the Indian navy 
from 1849 to 1862 was chiefly occupied with hydro- 
graphic surveys of the Persian Gulf and the Mekran 
coast. In 1873 he read to the Geological Society an 
account of the mud craters and geological structure 
of the Mekran coast, from which he was one of the 
first to collect the now well-known fossiliferous 
nodules of Upper Tertiary age. 
As already announced, the autumn meeting of the 
Iron and Steel Institute will be held at Leeds on 
September 30—October 4. The provisional list of 
papers expected to be submitted includes the following 
subjects :—The solubility of cementite in hardenite 
and the solubility or diffusion of hardenite in ferrite ; 
gases evolved on heating steel to its melting point in 
a vacuum; allotropy in general and that of iron in 
particular; the thermal-magnetic transformation of 
25 per cent. nickel steel; a mew method of revealing 
segregation in steel ingots; magnetic properties of 
manganese and nickel steels; the manufacture of 
open-hearth steel; the growth of cast irons after 
repeated heatings; and the iron ores and mineral 
resources of Chile. 
In the August number of Man, Mr. D. Wright 
describes the ceremonies at the burial of a chief in 
Rhodesia. When he dies during the winter months, 
the body will not be buried until after the first rains 
fall, and meanwhile it remains in the hut in which the 
chief died, where it is laid on a platform in charge 
of the friends, who sweep the floor and keep the walls 
of the hut smeared with clay to prevent the escape 
of the spirit. A fire is kept burning in the hut, and 
when decomposition sets in there is a feast, and offer- 
ings are made to the spirit. When the first rains fall 
an ox is slain, and the skin is removed with the hoofs 
and head complete. The corpse is then sewed up in 
the hide, a grave is dug in an ant-hill, and the body 
is placed in it with the pots which were in the hut. 
The grave is covered and plastered over, a hole being 
left for the exit of the spirit. This spirit is then 
believed to take the form of a lion cub, which re- 
mains near the grave, and is fed by other lions which 
are the depositaries of the souls of former paramount 
chiefs. 
Tue Journal of the Royal Statistical Society for July 
contains an interesting paper by Mr. A. L. Bowley 
on the measurement of employment. Mr. Bowley 
points out the limitations of the present Board of 
Trade index-number for unemployment, and gives the 
result of an experiment in forming a fresh index- 
number which takes into account all the information 
of every kind bearing on the volume of employment 
published by the Board. In the same issue there 
is a note by Sir J. A. Baines summarising the 
census returns, either provisional or final, which have 
now been received from nearly all the units of the 
British Empire. The total population is rather more 
than 419,000,000. 
