May 13, 1909] 



NA TURE 



;i5 



which is not appreciably slower than the latent period 

 of the current of action. Other papers published 

 with Fcrrier in 1881, on the functional association 

 of motor fibres in the anterior roots of the brachial 

 and sacral plexuses of the monkey, and in 

 1884, on cerebral localisation in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, formed early and important contribu- 

 tions to those investigations on the functions of the 

 central nervous system which have since been so 

 extensively carried out by English physiologists. One 

 of Veo's researches, that on the gaseous metabolism 

 of cardiac muscle, was of partjcular interest. He de- 

 termined, by spectroscopic examination of the living 

 heart and its fluid contents, the rate at which resting 

 and active muscle utilised the oxygen of oxy- 

 haemoglobin. 



.\t the time of the resignation of his professorship 

 Veo jjractically severed his connection with physiology, 

 and his interest in this was largely replaced by tlie 

 occupations of a country life. He was therefore but 

 little known to younger men, who may not remember 

 that much of the organised attack on the experimental 

 methods of physiologists and pathologists was directed 

 against work carried out by Yeo and others in his 

 laboratorv. Apart from his actual scientific work, he 

 will be remembered by all who have the best interests 

 of medicine at heart for his uncoinpromising attitude 

 towards those who, either from ignorance or mistaken 

 views of the ethics of the subject, strove to hinder, 

 if not actuallv to prevent, physiological research in 

 this countrv. G. A. B. 



DR. BINDON BLOOD STONEY, F.R.S. 



WITHIN a few weeks of his eighty-first year, 

 Dr. Bindon Blood Stoney, F.R.S., died at 

 Duljlin on May 5. Dr. Stoney was born at Oakley 

 Park, Birr, in 1828, and educated at Trinity College, 

 Dublin, where he had a distinguished engineering 

 course, graduating in 1850. His abilities were early 

 perceived bv the then Earl of Rosse, whom he assisted 

 in the astronomical researches of the early 'fifties of 

 last centurv. In 1852 he went to Spain, and was 

 engaged on railway work in that country. On his 

 rciurn horns he was engaged in the important work 

 of the Bovne Viaduct, which was regarded as a re- 

 markable engineering achievement at that time. It 

 is, however, bv reason of his work as engineer to the 

 Dublin Port and Docks Board that Dr. .Stoney will 

 be most remembered. He was appointed assistant 

 engineer to the board in 1856, and three years later 

 chief engineer to the port, a position which he held 

 until i8t)8. During his tenure of office, Dublin was 

 converted from a purely tidal port into one in which 

 some of the largest vessels may be moored alongside 

 the quavs and lie constantly afloat, and the river so 

 deepened that the cross-channel steamers may enter 

 and leave at all states of the tide. In this work Dr. 

 S'onev used the method of laying down the harbour 

 walls by means of large blocks of masonry, weighing 

 as much as 350 tons, and sunk bv means of shears 

 on a prepared foundation, the quav walls of the .Mex- 

 andra Basin, the North Quay extension, and other 

 work being laid in this manner. 



During the period of his association with the Port 

 and Docks Board, Dr. Stoney was also engineer for 

 the construction of the O'Connell Bridge and the 

 building of the Butt Bridge, and the reconstruction 

 ot the Grattan Bridge over the River Liffev. Dr. 

 Stoney was a Master of Arts and Master of Engineer- 

 ing of the Dublin University, and in 1881 the honorary 

 degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on him in 

 recognition of his eminent position in the world of 

 engineering. He was the author of " The Theory of 



NO. 2063, VOL. 80] 



Stresses and Strains," a standard book in its day, and 

 of various papers in the transactions of scientific and 

 engineering societies. He was president of the Insti- 

 tution of Civil Engineers of Ireland in 1871, and for 

 many years a most active member of that body. He 

 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1881, and 

 in 1874 was awarded the Telford medaland premium 

 of the Institution of Civil Engineers ; he was also the 

 recipient of many other honours. In addition jo being 

 a great engineer. Dr. Stoney was a man of wide and 

 varied reading, and his judgment in letters and in art 

 was of the soundest. His sterling worth and the 

 value of his services to the City of Dublin will be long 

 remembered. 



NOTES. 



The secretary of the Royal Society made the following 

 announcement at the meeting of the society on May 6 : — 

 Sir David Bruce, who is in charge of the Sleeping- Sick- 

 ness Commission at present in Uganda, cabled to the 

 society on April 3 that the commission had confirmed 

 Kleine's observations on the period during which the tsetse- 

 fly was capable of transmitting a trypanosome infection. 

 A letter was received on April 30 from Sir David Bruce, 

 dated Mpumu Chagvve, Uganda, April 3, confirming the 

 telegram, and stating, that the commission had "repeated 

 Dr. Kleine's experiments with Trypanosoma gambiense 

 aiid Glossina palpaUs, also with a trypanosome of the 

 dimorphon type and the same tsetse-flies, and found the 

 flies infective after sixteen, nineteen, and twenty-two 

 days." 



It is well known that Lord Walsingham has long been 

 an unwearied collector and student of the smaller moths, 

 and that his collection of the Micro-lepidoptera is the best 

 in the world, as he has not only added to it largely by his 

 own efforts, having collected assiduously during his travels 

 in various parts of Europe and North Africa, California, 

 Jamaica, &c., but has taken the opportunity to purchase the 

 most celebrated foreign collections, among others those 

 formed by Zeller, Prey, Christoph, and Hofmann, as they 

 successively came into the market. He has also contributed 

 numerous papers on the subject to the Transactions of 

 the Entomological Society, the Entomologist's Monthly 

 i[aga::ine, &c., and has also published several independent 

 works, especially on the Tortrices and Pterophorida; of 

 North America. In 1891 this valuable collection was 

 formally made over to the British Museum by deed of 

 gift, Lord Walsingham arranging to retain it in his 

 own hands as long as he desired to do so ; but we now 

 understand that it is his intention to transfer the collec- 

 tion to the care of the trustees of the British Museum 

 (an office which he himself shares with others) in the 

 course of next year. 



Dr. R. P. Verxeau has been appointed to the professor- 

 ship of anthropology in the Paris Museum of Natural 

 History in succession to the late Prof. Hamy. 



The fifth Congr^s pr^historique de France will be held 

 at Beauvais on July 26-31. The general secretary of the 

 congress is Dr. Baudouin, 21 rue Linn^, Paris. 



The Times announces the death of Dr. John Thomson, 

 of Brisbane, at the age of sixtj'-one. Dr. Thomson was 

 a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and settled 

 in Brisbane more than thirty-three years ago, where he 

 became recognised as an authority upon matters relating 

 to sanitary science. He served as president of the Royal 

 Society of Queensland, and was president of the Inter- 

 colonial Medical Congress in 1899, 



