i6 



NA TURE 



I July r, 1909 



to speak too highly. Of his fine, manly figure; his 

 frank, open countt-nance ; his clear, honest, kindly 

 eves; his disposition, genial but firm; his humour, 

 devoid of cynicism; his loyalty to his friends; his 

 gentleness even to opponents, all who had the 

 privilege of knowing him will for ever retain a bright 

 remembrance. As a writer in the Scotsman truly 

 says: — "To the University and to science his death 

 is nothing short of a calamity, while to his friends it 

 has brought a sense of desolation." 



He was interred on Saturday afternoon at Edin- 

 burgh. His remains were escorted from the Church 

 of St. Cuthbert by a long line of students, colleagues, 

 representatives of learned societies, and personal 

 friends, the melancholy procession offering a strong 

 contrast to the gaiety of the city, the traffic of which 

 was arrestsd by its passage. He lies in the beautiful 

 Dean Cemetery, than which few places contain more 

 distinguished dust. Reqiiiescat in pace. 



DR. G. F. DEACON. 



THE death of Mr. G. F. Deacon, a member of the 

 council of tlie Institution of Civil Engineers, and 

 eminent for his scientific work in engineering, was 

 announced in last week's N.ature. JNIr. Deacon, 

 during his comparatively short life — he died at the 

 age of sixty-six — obtained a considerable reputation as 

 a water-works engineer, and is best known by his 

 connection with the Vyrnwy Reservoir for the supply 

 .of Liverpool. In 1876 the need had arisen for an 

 additional supply of water, and Mr. Deacon, who was 

 then acting as municipal and water engineer, was 

 ihstructed by the corporation to make an investigation 

 as to the locality from which an additional supplv 

 ■could be obtained. After a survey of several sources 

 .he finally advised that this could be best obtained 

 from the River Vyrnwy, a tributary of the Severn, 

 situated in North Wales. Mr. Deacon's recommenda- 

 .tion was submitted to Mr. Thomas Hawksley and Mr. 

 Bateman, who approved this choice. The Bill ]jro- 

 moted by the corporation having received the sanction 

 of Parliament, Mr. Deacon was appointed joint en- 

 gineer with Mr. Hawksley to prepare the plans and 

 carry out the work. When the works were about half 

 finished, Mr. Hawksley retired, and Mr. Deacon was 

 left in sole charge. 



The Vyrnwy works are remarkable as having the 

 largest reservoir in England, and the first to have a 

 high water-tight masonry dam. This dam was formed 

 with blocks of clay slate from the Caradoc beds of 

 the lower Silurian formation, some of which weighed 

 10 tons. These were set in mortar composed of Port- 

 land cement and slate stone crushed fine enough to 

 pass through meshes of one-eighth of an inch. The 

 dam is 1350 feet long, 136 feet high, and impounds the 

 water in a reservoir 5 miles long and covering 1121 

 .acres. The cost of these works was 25 million pounds, 

 and they were carried out under Mr. Deacon's super- 

 vision without the aid of a contractor. A full account 

 of the Vyrnwy works is given in a paper read by Mr. 

 Deacon at the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1896, 

 and contained in vol. cxxvi. of the Minutes of Pro- 

 ceedings. 



Mr. Deacon was educated at the Glasgow Uni- 

 versity, which subsequently conferred upon him the 

 honorary degree of LL.D. He served his time in 

 Napier's shipyard, which led to his becoming one of 

 Lord Kelvin's assistants on the Great Eastern when 

 an attempt was made to lay an Atlantic cable. At 

 the age of twenty-two he commenced practice as an 

 engineer at Liverpool, and six years afterwards was 

 •appointed municipal and water engineer of that 

 Iborough. One of the most important services he ren- 

 NO. 2070, VOL. 81] 



dered during this time was the invention of the waste- 

 water meter, by means of which it became possible 

 to locate the place where leakage and waste were going 

 on in the mains or from the service pipes, and thus 

 a very great saving was effected in the quantity of 

 water required. He also devised considerable im- 

 provements in the instruments used for measuring the 

 velocity of the flow of water in rivers, and applied the 

 use of electrical mechanism to current meters. He 

 took keen interest in devising and improving the means 

 of making the meteorological observations necessary 

 for determining the yield of rain water. 



In 1870 Mr. Deacon resigned his appointment as 

 municipal engineer in order to devote his whole time 

 to the Vvrnwv works. On the completion of these he 

 commenced to practise at Westminster as a consulting 

 engineer, and was connected with many important 

 schemes of water supply, and frequently was engaged 

 in giving evidence ibefore parliamentary committees. 

 In addition to his work as a water-works engineer, Mr. 

 Deacon applied a considerable amount of attention 

 to the application of scientific principles to the solution 

 of problems arising out of the practical work of the 

 engineer. 



Mr. Deacon was president of the engineering section 

 of the British .^Association at the meeting held at 

 Toronto in 1897, also of the Municipal and County En- 

 gineers at their meeting in 1878. He was a Fellow 

 of the Meteorological Society, and a member of the 

 Institution of Mechanical Engineers. 



II 



NOTES. 



The list of honours announced on the occasion of the 

 celebration of the King's birthday on Friday last includes 

 the narnes of five Fellows of the Royal Society. Mr. 

 Fi'ancis Galton, F.R.S., Prof. J. Larmor, F.R.S., Mr.' 

 R. H. I. Palgrave, F.R.S., and Prof. T. E. Thorpe, 

 F.R.S., have received the honour of knighthood, and Dr. 

 \V. Schlich, F.R.S., has been appointed a Knight Com- 

 mander of the Order of the Indian Empire (K.C.I.E.). 

 Other men of distinction in the scientific world included 

 in the list are : — Mr. Edgar Thurston, superintendent of 

 the Government Central Museum, Madras, appointed a 

 Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CLE.) ; 

 Prof. W. J. R. Simpson, a Companion of the Order of 

 St. Michael and St. George (C.M.G.) ; Sir Dyce Duck- 

 worth and Mr. Henry Morris, president of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, have had baronetcies of the United 

 Kingdom conferred upon them ; and Mr. James Stuart, 

 who founded the system of university extension and the 

 mechanical workshops at Cambridge, has been made a 

 privy councillor. 



On Monday evening Mr. E. H. Shackleton delivered his 

 first lecture since his return home on the results of his 

 South Polar expedition at a special meeting of the Royal 

 Geographical Society in the Royal Albert Hall. The main 

 facts of the expedition have already been recorded in our 

 own columns and elsewhere, but a large and brilliant 

 audience assembled to hear from the explorer's own lips 

 an account of the experiences of his companions and him- 

 self during their fourteen months' sojourn within the 

 Antarctic circle. It is not always easy to realise the 

 meaning of distances between places the position of which 

 is only known in terms of latitude and longitude, and 

 Major Leonard Darwin, who presided over the meeting, 

 performed a useful service for his audience by indicating 

 the extent of ground which would have to be covered by 

 a party starting from London northwards on a journey 

 of the same length as that which took Mr. Shackleton 



