196 



NATURE 



[April 15, 1906 



eould be obtained. He completely solved this problem, 

 and believed that this method was destined to prove 

 an indispensable aid to clinical diagnosis. In this we 

 do not think he was mistaken, though the technical 

 difficulties in carr)'ing out the method are consider- 

 able. 



Dr. Gamgee, as is well known, was a man of 

 the most affectionate disposition, enthusiastic in 

 his work, a good linguist, a fluent speaker, and an 

 excellent classical scholar. The simplicity of his 

 mind and his single-heartedness of purpose endeared 

 him to a wide circle of friends by whom he will be 

 sincerely mourned; for those even nearer and dearer 

 to him, his wife and children, his loss is great and 

 Irreparable. G. A. B. 



Prof, H. G. van de Sande Bakhuyzen has retired 

 from the directorship of the Leyden Observatory. His 

 place as professor of theoretical astronomy in the Uni- 

 versity, is to be taken by Dr. W. de Sitter, of the 

 Groningen Astronomical Laboratory, whilst Mr, E. F. 

 van de Sande Bakhuyzen is to succeed him as professor 

 of general astronomy and director of the observatory. 



Prof J. Bauschinger has been appointed to succeed 

 Prof. E. Becker as professor of astronomy and director 

 of the university observatory at Strassburg, and Prof. 

 Becker asks that all communications for him should now 

 be addressed to Freiburg i. B., Reichsgrafenstrasse, 17. 



With regard to the expedition for the exploration of 

 the Charles Louis Mountains in New Guinea, announced 

 in our issue of March 11, we are asked to state, on behalf 

 of the subscribers, that this expedition is being sent out 

 under the auspices of the British Ornithologists' Union in 

 commemoration of its jubilee, held last December, and 

 described in Nature of December 24 (vol. Ixxix., p. 238). 

 It was then decided that this expedition should be known 

 as " The British Ornithologists' Union Jubilee Explora- 

 tion of the Charles Louis Mountains." 



Arrangements have been made for a visit by Count 

 Zeppelin in his airship to the International Aeronautical 

 Exhibition to be opened at Frankfort in July next. The 

 airship will be accommodated during the exhibition in one 

 •of the large halls now being built in the grounds, and 

 ascents with it will be made. 



We learn from the Times that a wonderfully vivid 

 mirage was witnessed from Grimsby on April 8 in the 

 evening. The Humber is six miles wide there, and beyond 

 is three miles of land. This appeared to be lifted high into 

 the air and reversed, the trees inland having the appear- 

 ance of growing upside down. The Spurn Lighthouse, 

 reversed, was seen four miles from its position, and below 

 the reflection of the land was the North Sea, on which 

 were large steamers, with masts and funnels downwards, 

 passing to and fro. 



The Health Congress, Leeds, 1909, organised by the 

 ■City and the University of Leeds, with the cooperation of 

 the Royal Sanitary Institute and the Royal Institute of 

 Public Health, will be held on July 17-24. The presi- 

 dent is Colonel T. W. Harding, J. P., D.L., and the general 

 secretaries are Dr. Spottiswoode Cameron and Mr. Robert 

 E. Fox, the medical officer of health and town clerk re- 

 spectively of Leeds. A programme of the preliminary 

 arrangements is published in the Journal of the Royal 

 Sanitary Institute for April (xxx., No. 3). 



One of the special features of the great Missionary 

 Exhibition, entitled " Africa and the East," which will be 



NO. 2059, '^"OL. 80] 



held at the Royal Agricultural Hall from June 8 to 

 July 3, under the auspices of the Church Missionary 

 Society, will be a special exhibit of outfit suitable for 

 missionaries and travellers, which will be shown in a 

 special outfit section. One of the special features of this 

 section will be an exhibition of the various methods of 

 protection from mosquitoes and other insects, which play 

 an important part in the spread of many tropical diseases. 

 The organiser of the section is Dr. C. F. Harford, principal 

 of Livingstone College, Leyton, E. 



To encourage enterprise and experiment in British avia- 

 tion, the Daily Mail offers a prize of 1000!. to the aero- 

 planist who, within twelve months of April 7, flies a 

 distance of one mile either in a circuit or from a given 

 point to another and returns to the starting point without 

 touching the ground. The other conditions of the award 

 are : — (i) that the motor, planes, propellers, and all other 

 parts be entirely of British manufacture ; (2) that the in- 

 ventor and the aeroplanist be British subjects, and by 

 British subjects we naturally include those in British 

 colonies; (3) the flight shall take place within the British 

 Isles, and be approved by officials of the recognised avia- 

 tion organisation. Other prizes offered by the Daily Mail 

 are : — io,oooJ. for a flight by a heavier-than-air machine 

 from London to Manchester with not more than two stops 

 to take in petrol. Offered in November, 1906 ; and open 

 to aeronauts of all nations. 1000!. for a flight across the 

 Channel by a heavier-than-air macliine before the end of 

 1909. Open to all nations. 



Dr. Willtam Jones, assistant curator of the Field 

 Columbian Museum of Chicago, has been murdered by 

 tribesmen in the Philippines about fifty miles south of 

 Echague. He had gone to the islands in 1906 on a four 

 years' expedition to study the life of the Ilingots. Dr. 

 Jones had Indian blood in his veins, and was born among 

 the Sauk and Fox Indians of Oklahoma about thirty- 

 four years ago. He was educated at the Indian school 

 at Hampton, at Andover Academy, and at Harvard, where 

 he had a distinguished career. He took a post-graduate 

 course at Columbia University, and was then engaged by 

 the Carnegie Institution at Washington on ethnological 

 investigations. His success in unravelling many mysteries 

 of Indian religions led to his appointment at Chicago. 

 According to his chief. Prof. G. A. Dorsey, he was the 

 most promising student of ethnology in America, and a 

 similar opinion has been expressed by the head of the 

 Federal Bureau of Ethnology. The day before the receipt 

 of the cablegram announcing his death. Prof. Dorsey had 

 heard by letter from Dr. Jones of his intention to leave 

 the friendly tribe with whom he had been living in order 

 to pursue his researches in a remote section of the country, 

 which would necessitate his passing through a hostile 

 territory. 



The geological department of the British Museum 

 (Natural History) has received from the National Museum 

 of Natural History, Paris, a plaster cast of the finest sIcuU 

 and mandible of the long-chinned mastodont, Tetrabelodon 

 angustidens, from the Middle Miocene of Sansan (Gers), 

 France. The specimen has just been mounted for exhibi- 

 tion with Dr. Andrews's well-known models of the skull 

 and mandible of Mceritherium and Palaeomastodon from 

 the Upper Eocene of the Fayum, Egypt. These three 

 specimens are arranged in series with the American 

 Pleistocene Mastodon americanus, so that the principal 

 stages in the evolution of tlie proboscidean head can now 

 be studied in one view. They show very clearly the 

 lengthening of the symphysis of the lower jaw, which 



