Nov. 13, 1 8 73 J 



NATURE 



such signal success by the chemists. If it does not do so, 

 but allows itself to be left behind, it must soon see many 

 of the most important papers sent to the Chemical or to 

 such of the ether societies as may choose to provide the 

 means of properly illustrating them. 



It may be urged that if papers are to be experimentally 

 illustrated, all cannot possibly be read. We can only say 

 so much the better. Why should not a society's council 

 exercise a wise discretion, and relegate some classes of 

 papers at once to the "Journal," the proper place for 

 many a mass of numerical data now perforce read, but of 

 which discussion is impossible ? 



F. C. S. 



NOTES 



We regret to announce the death, on the loth inst., of Mr. 

 B. F. Uuppa, F.R.S., well kno«Ti for his numerous and impor- 

 tant researches in organic chemistry. He was educated at Cam- 

 bridge, and wa5 afterwards, in the year 1S57, a pupil in the 

 Royal College of Cliemistry. AVithin a period of eleven years 

 he published, partly alone and partly in conjunctton with Mr. 

 W. H. Perkin and Dr. Frankland, no less than twenty papers, 

 most of which appeared in the Transactions and Proceedings of 

 the Royal Society. The most important of these researches re- 

 lated to the action of bromine and iodine on acetic acid, the 

 artificial production of tartaric acid, the formation of organic 

 compounds containing mercury, and the synthetical production of 

 numerous acids of the fatty and acrylic series. Mr. Duppa was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1S67. Being a man of 

 independent means, he never applied for, nor held, any scientific 

 appointment, but formed one of that small band of enthusiastic 

 and disinterested amateiu: workers of whom England may justly 

 feel proud, and to whom she is so much indebted for a very 

 large proportion of the contributions which she has made to the 

 progress of science. 



Mr. Mitchell, of Old Bond Street, is, we believe, about to 

 publish a portrait of the late Dr. Bence Jones, engraved by HoU 

 from the beautiful drawing by Mr. George Richmond, R.A. 



The following awards have been made by the French Geo- 

 graphical Society : — 2,000 francs to M. Doumaux-Dupere, who 

 has just set out for Timbuctoo ; this gentleman has also re- 

 ceived a similar sum from the Minister of Public Instruction ; 

 2,000 fr. to M. Francis Garnier, to aid him in his explorations 

 along the Blue River in China, and which have Yun-nan and 

 Tibet for their objects; 1,500 fr. to MM. Marche and Com- 

 piegne, who have already proceeded a considerable distance 

 along the course of the Ogowe with the design of penetrating as 

 far as the great African lakes, and joining Livingstone. 



The subject for the Le Bas Prize (Cambridge) for the present 

 year is "The Respective Functions of .Science and Literature in 

 Education." Candidates must be graduates of the University 

 of not more than three years' standing from their first degree 

 when the essays are sent in, which date is fixed before the end 

 of the Easter Term, 1S74. The essays must each bear some 

 motto, and be accompanied by a sealed paper bearing the 

 same motto, and enclosing the name of the candidate and that 

 of his college. The successful candidate is required to publish 

 the essay at his own expense. 



Messrs. TRiiBXER and Co. will publish, in about ten days, 

 Mr. George Henry Lewes' new work, entitled " Problems of 

 Life and Mini" 



With reference to the paragraph in last week's Nattjre on 

 the discover)' of the conversion of spherical into plane motion, 

 Prof Sylvester writes : " I feel it an act of simple justice to 

 another to say that I should never have hit upon the instru- 

 ment which effects this, had it not been for the previous, 



wholly original and unexpected, discovery made nine years 

 ago, by M. Peaucillier, of the conversion of cu-cular into recti- 

 linear motion, with which I was recently made acquainted by 

 M. Tchebicheff, and which seems to have been little noticed in 

 the discoverer's own country, and to have remained wholly un- 

 known in this. M. Peaucillier has succeeded by the most simple 

 means in solving a kinematical problem which had bafiled the 

 attempts of all mechanicians, from our James Watts downwards, 

 to accomplish, and a simple Captain of Engineers in the 

 French army has actually accomplished by a stroke of inspiration 

 the mathematical solution of a question which many of the 

 most profound and sagacious mathematicians of the age have 

 been long labouring, but necessarily (as it is now obvious) in 

 vain, to prove to admit of none. The conversion of circular into 

 rectilinear motion before M. Peaucillier's discovery was gradually 

 growing to be classed in the same category of questions as the 

 quadrature of the circle, and by a great number of mathema- 

 ticians was actually deemed to be equally impossible in the 

 nature of things. A working model of Peaucillier's machine 

 constructed by my friend M. Garcia, the brother of Malebran 

 and the inventor of the laryngoscope, is in my possession at the 

 Athenteum Club, and several copies of it have been already made 

 by its admirers, which term comprises all who have seen 

 it. The wonderfully fertile kinematic and mathematical results 

 which I have succeeded in educing fi-om the simple conception 

 involved in this machine may form the subject of another com- 

 munication to Nature." 



Prof. Jelinek, of Vienna, writes us that the death 

 of Prof. Donati is the only unhappy event connected 

 with the Meteorological Congress of Vienna, which in all 

 other respects has prove d successful. The fact of all countries 

 of Europe (France exce pted) and the United States of North 

 America being represented at the Congres s, and the conciliatory 

 spirit in which all the proceedings were held, the general desire 

 to arrive at an uniform system of observation and publication 

 make us hope, he thinks, that further decisive steps in this direction 

 will be taken. The Congress has expressed the wish, that an- 

 other Congress of Meteorologists shall meet in three years, and 

 it has appointed a permanent Comaiittee under Prof Ruys 

 Ballot of Utrecht, as President, and with Prof Bruhns of Leipzig, 

 Cantoni of Pavi.a, Jelinek of Vienna, Mohn of Christiana, Direc- 

 tor Scott of London, and Director Wild of St. Petersburg, as 

 members to prepare the solution of certain questions especially 

 relative to the best form of publishing meteorological observa- 

 tions and to the extension of the existing system of mete- 

 orological observations. The permanent Committee has been 

 also charged with the preparatory steps towards the con- 

 vocation of a second Maritime Conference (the first having been 

 held at Brussels in 1853). There will be three editions of the 

 proceedings of the Congress. The one German, the other 

 French, the third under the care of Mr. Robert Scott, in English. 



Rather an unusual incident has recently occurred in the 

 Belgian Academy of Sciences, about which, according to the 

 two gentlemen most concerned, erroneous statements have been 

 made in the Belgian papers and La Rcz'iie Scicitlifique. The 

 common statement is that at the stance of June 7 last M. E. 

 van Beneden, son of the well-known Professor of Zoology at the 

 Catholic University of Louvain, and himself Professor of Zoology 

 at Liege, by appointment of the present Cathohc Ministr)-, read 

 a paper on the results of a voyage which he had recently made 

 to Brazil and La Plata. Speaking of the difficulty of obtaining a 

 dolphin on account of the superstitions of the Brazilian fisher- 

 men, he is reported to have referred to the ancient belief in 

 Europe that dolphins were in the habit of bringing dead bodies 

 on shore, and to have said, " The fabh of Jonah is an embodi- 

 ment of this belief" Thereupon, it is said, M. Gilbert, Professor 



