O84 Obituary—W. P. Blake. 
carelessly. In his Mlinéralogie de la France et de ses Colonies, ii, 
p. 842, Mons. A. Lacroix says: ‘‘ Aussi me semble-t-il difficile de 
considérer la bauxite comme un minéral defini; il est bien plus probable 
que les produits désignés sous ce nom sont constitués suivant les cas 
par divers hydroxides d’alumine colloides mélangés a des hydroxides 
correspondants de fer et a diverses impurités, argile, sable quartzeux, 
etc. C'est en réalité une véritable roche.” The last sentence of the 
above quotation makes further defence unnecessary. 
This question of the use of the term ‘laterite’ is one in which there 
is abundant room for quiet discussion. My view may be extreme on 
the one side—indeed, is, I suppose, without question extreme in that 
I would like to see the term left to engineers to treat as they wish. 
Nevertheless, the adoption by the majority of geologists of the 
proposed ‘aluminous’ definition would not lead “to a crisis, and 
{ cannot believe that anyone or anything would suffer harm thereby. 
This seems to me to be an admirable opportunity for dropping the 
term altogether, and for substituting in its stead the term ‘bauxite’ 
when the composition justifies it; when this is not the case I would 
advocate the simple term ‘decomposed gneiss’, or whatever the rock 
may be, it being taken for granted that the production of aluminium 
hydroxides in quantity is a feature of tropical weathering. 
J. B. Scrrvenor. 
Batu Gasau, 
FEDERATED MaAtay S7tarzs. 
June 15, 1910. 
OBA 
WILLIAM PHIPPS BLAKE, D.Sc., F.G.S. 
Born June 1, 1826, Diep — 1910. 
W. P. Brake was born in New York, and educated at Yale Scientific 
School. In 1853 he was appointed geologist and mineralogist on the 
U.S. Pacific Railroad Expedition, later on he was geologist to the 
California State Board of Agriculture, in 1864 he became professor of 
mineralogy and geology in the College of California, and at the time 
of his death he was emeritus professor of metallurgy, geology, and 
mining, and director of the School of Mines in the University of 
Avizona. His more important papers relate to the geology and 
mineralogy of California and Arizona; but he had made observations 
on the glaciers of Alaska, on the geology of the Island of Yesso, 
Japan, and was the author of a volume on Zhe Production of the 
Precious Metals, 1869 (see Grot. Mac. for 1868, p. 284, 1869, 
p- 861, and 1874, p. 464). He was elected a Fellow of the Geological 
Society of London in 1876, 
MISCHILOUAN HOU S.- 
Mr. H. B. Mavre, B.A., F.G.8., of the Geological Survey of , 
Great Britain, has been appointed Director of the Geological Survey 
of Southern Rhodesia lately instituted by the Chartered Company. 
