June 24, 1909] 



NA TURE 



499 



The council of the Royal Society of Arts, with the 

 approval of the Prince of Wales, president, has awarded 

 the Albert medal of the society for the current year to 

 Sir Andrew Noble, K.C.B., F.R.S., '* in recognition of 

 his long-continued and valuable researches into the nature 

 and action of explosives, which have resulted in the great 

 development and improvement of modern ordnance." 



The council of the Royal Society has awarded the 

 Mackinnon studentships for the year 1909 as follows : — 

 one in physics to Mr. R. D. Kleenian, of Emmanuel 

 College, Cambridge, for the continuation of his researches 

 en radio-activity, which he proposes to conduct at the 

 universities of Cambridge, Leeds, and Manchester ; the 

 other, in biology, has been renewed for a second year to 

 Mr. D. Thoday, of Trinity College, Cambridge, for 

 research into the physiological conditions of starvation in 

 plants an'd its relation to the responsiveness of protoplasm 

 to stimulation, especially to stimuli affecting respiration. 



We regret to see the announcement of the death of 

 Dr. G. F. Deacon, member of the council of the Institu- 

 tion of Civil Engineers, and president of the engineering 

 section of the British Association in 1897. 



Dr. W. Stirling, professor of physiology in the Uni- 

 versity of Manchester, has been elected a foreign corre- 

 sponding member of the Turin Royal Academy of Medicine. 



It is announced that Mr. E. H. Shackleton has been 

 elected a Younger Brother of Trinity House, with the 

 approval of the Prince of Wales, who is the master of 

 this corporation. This is the second time only in the 

 history of Trinity House that this honour has been con- 

 ferred by the master. 



M. J. Vallot has been elected by the Soci^t^ des 

 Observatoires du Mont Blanc director of the observatory 

 founded by the late M. Janssen, so that he is now director 

 of two observatories on Mont Blanc. He has decided to 

 present to the society the observatory founded by himself. 

 Men of science anxious to carry out researches in the 

 Mont Blanc meteorological observatories are requested to 

 communicate either with the general secretary of the 

 society in Paris, or with M. Vallot at Chamonix during 

 the summer, and at 5 rue Francois Aune, Nice, or in 

 Paris, during the winter. Publications are invited towards 

 the library in connection with the observatories, and may 

 be sent to M. Vallot at Nice. 



The Institute of France has awarded the Osiris prize, of 

 the value of 4000/., to M. Louis Bl^riot and M. Gabriel 

 Voisin, for their experiments and achievements in aerial 

 navigation. The prize is awarded every three years for 

 the most remarkable contribution to the cause of human 

 progress during that period. 



The first annual dinner of the Society of Tropical 

 Medicine and Hygiene was held on June 18. Colonel 

 Seeley, in proposing the toast " Success to the Society," 

 said that from information he had obtained at the Colonial 

 Office it appeared that half a million people have died of 

 sleeping sickness alone in Uganda, but, owing to the dis- 

 covery of the method by which it is propagated, the 

 ravages of that disease have been at least reduced to one- 

 tenth of what they were formerly. Sir -Alfred Jones, in 

 supporting the toast, remarked that in Liverpool 100,000!. 

 has been spent on the work and 28,000!. in sending out 

 expeditions. Sir Rubcrt Boyce, who followed, pointed out 

 that yellow fever is practically a disease of the past in 

 the West Indian group. In the Isthmian Canal zone, in 



NO. 2069, VOL. 80] 



the time of M. de Lesseps, 48,000 men employed on the 

 canal works died, but during the last three years there has 

 not been a single case of yellow fever in that zone. Prof. 

 Ronald Ross, C.B., F.R.S., who occupied the chair, re- 

 sponded, and said that the members of the society now 

 number nearly 350, most of whom are doing their duty 

 in the tropics. This country has, he continued, led the 

 way in research in tropical medicine, and he expressed 

 the hope that it will now lead the way in the practical 

 application of the researches. 



The May number of the National Geographic Magazine 

 contains an article by Mr. G. Shiras, illustrated with a 

 large number of reproductions from the photographs of 

 bird-life by Mr. F. M. Chapman which originally 

 appeared in his " Camps and Cruises of an Ornithologist." 

 Among the most striking photographs are those of the 

 great colonies of flamingoes in the Bahamas. Specially 

 interesting are Mr. Chapman's observations on the manner 

 in which young flamingoes feed. For the first three 

 weeks, during which the beak is straight, they pick up 

 their food in the normal manner. .After this the beak 

 begins to bend, and feeding is effected by turning the end 

 upside down and scooping up the nutriment. Unlike most 

 birds, flamingoes have the upper half of the beak movable, 

 and by moving this rapidly the mud and water taken into 

 the mouth are strained off, leaving the small bivalves on 

 which these birds feed. 



Subjects connected with evolution continue to occupy 

 a prominent place in the American Naturalist, the contents 

 of the June number including an article on heredity and 

 variation in the simplest organisms, by Prof. H. S. 

 Jennings, and a second, by Dr. J. A. Harris, on varia- 

 tion in the number of seeds in the pods of the broom 

 (Cytistis scopariiis). In the former of these the author 

 points out that low unicellular organisms, such as 

 Paramecium, are divisible into races differing by minute 

 but constant features. In each of these races great 

 individual variation in the matter of size is noticeable, 

 but such differences are not inherited. The fundamental 

 constitution of each is almost unaffected by external in- 

 fluences, observations extending over hundreds of genera- 

 tions of thousands of individuals of Paramecium revealing 

 scarcely a single instance of such a change. Systematic 

 and continued selection is without effect in a pure race, 

 and in a mixture of races its effect consists in isolating 

 the existing races, and not in producing anything new. 



In continuation and amplification of the study by Mr. 

 W. C. Hossack of the rats of Calcutta, Captain R. E. 

 Lloyd has undertaken an elaborate investigation into the 

 racial and specific characters of those of India generally, 

 the results of which are published in vol. iii., part i., of 

 the Records of the Indian Museum. The investigation 

 includes, not only the brown and the black rat and their 

 local forms, but likewise Mus f^iettada and its allies, 

 together with the various species formerly included in the 

 genus Nesocia, but now split up into three generic groups. 

 The great feature of the investigation is the enormously 

 large series of specimens of the various forms which have 

 passed through the author's hands, and have furnished 

 materials for elaborate tables of measurements. One result 

 of these extensive comparisons has been to raise in the 

 author's mind grave doubts as to the validity of certain 

 so-called species which have been described of late years. 

 Captain Lloyd is also doubtful as to the advisability of the 

 above-mentioned splitting of the old genus Nesocia, the 

 members of which, by the way, he designates as " mole- 



