1895.] Scientific News. 1043 
While busily engaged in thus establishing the foundations for the 
pisciculture of the future, he was ever alert to secure methods of 
immediate practical utility, and searched the scientific literature for 
facts and suggestions, and it was thus often through him that import- 
ant biological work, which had else been barren of practical results, 
became the basis of inventions of much economic importance. His 
mechanical ingenuity was remarkable, as his numerous inventions of 
apparatus will testify; nor until ill-health forced him to relax his 
efforts did he neglect the minutest details of construction. 
It is, of course, impossible, in such a short sketch, to give any ade- 
quate idea of the scope and importance of Col. McDonald’s work, com- 
pleted or contemplated, but I am sure that all who have a scientific 
grasp of the questions involved in the labors of the U. S. Fish Com- 
mission toward the maintainance and betterment of our extensive 
fisheries will feel the immense loss which these interests have sustained 
in the death of Col. McDonald, especially following so shortly upon 
that of his lamented co-worker and frequent scientific adviser, Dr. John 
A. Ryder. eG 
Col. McDonald was born in Romney, Hamshire Co., W. Va., Oct? 
18, 1836. His early education was had at a local academy. He 
entered the Virginia Military Institute in 1855 and graduated in 1860, 
having interrupted his course to attend the University of Virginia 
during the college year of 1858-59. After graduation he was appointed 
assistant at the Institute to Prof. “Stonewall” Jackson, serving until 
the outbreak of the war, when he was appointed Inspector-General on 
that General’s staff. He saw much active service, particularly while 
serving as an officer of the Engineer Corps. From 1866 to 1879 he 
was a professor at his alma mater, occupying the chair of chemistry, 
geology and mineralogy, and later that of geology and mining engineer- 
ing. He served as Commissioner of Fisheries of Virginia from 1875 
to 1888, when he was appointed U. S. Commissioner by President 
Cleveland, to succeed Dr. G. Brown Goode, who had temporarily filled 
the position left vacant by the death of Prof. Baird. Col. MeDonald 
had previously held responsible positions in the U.S. Fish Commission 
under Prof. Baird, first, in 1879, as special agent on the fisheries statis- 
tics for the Tenth Census, then as superintendent of the shad hatcheries 
of the Potomac River, and subsequently as chief of the Division of 
Distribution of Food-fishes. He died Sept. 1, 1895. 
7 —J. Percy Moore. 
Luigi Ferri, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Rome, 
Italy, died in Rome, March 17,1895. He was born in Bologna in 1826, 
