by one of his first pupils, W. J. Pope, who is now professor of chemistry at Cambridge.

One of his adventures during the period of his assistantship at the British Museum was an attempt (in 1888) to make a balloon voyage to Vienna in company with Simmons, a wellknown aeronaut, and a gentleman named Field. On approaching the coast of Essex it was thought prudent to descend, as the wind was in a too-northerly direction. The balloon, which was a very large one, was safely anchored to a tree. and the occupants of the car fell about sixty feet. Simmons was killed and Field had both legs broken. Miers, although severely bruised, sustained no permanent injury.

In 1895 a letter which he wrote to Sir William Ramsay, immediately after the meeting of the Royal Society at which Ramsay and Rayleigh announced the discovery of argon, advising him to examine the mineral cleveite for compounds of argon, led to the unexpected discovery of helium.

In the same year Miers gave some lectures for Story-Maskelyne at Oxford, and in 1896 succeeded him, on his retirement as Waynflete professor of mineralogy, becoming thereby a fellow of Magdalen College, where he lived for the next twelve years.

At Oxford he created a department of mineralogy, developed a small school of research, and published a number of papers of which the more important (mostly in conjunction with Miss F. Isaac) related to spontaneous crystallization. Among his other pupils were Dr. Herbert Smith, of the British Museum, Dr. H. L. Bowman, who succeeded him as professor, Mr. T. V. Barker, now university lecturer in crystallography, the Earl of Berkeley and his scientific colleague, Mr. E. G. Hartley. In 1902 he published a text-book on mineralogy which has been much used in the United States.

He took a considerable share in the administration of the university, and was a member of the Hebdomadal Council and a delegate of the University Press. In 1902 he succeded the late Sir E. B. Tylor, the anthropologist, as secretary of the University Museum, be

coming thus responsible for its administration. In 1908 he became principal of the University of London, in succession to the late Sir Arthur Rücker. During the greater part of his period of office the Royal Commission on University Education in London was taking evidence, and its report, recommending a large scheme of reconstitution, was only published in 1913.

Among the many activities of the university he associated himself especially with the tutorial classes for working people, with whom his ready speech and never-failing humor made him exceedingly popular. His lectures at the Working Men's College, which was founded some seventy years ago by Maurice, Tom Hughes (the author of "Tom Brown's Schooldays") Furnivall and Westlake, were events to be remembered. He also tried to gather up the scattered units of the very complicated University of London, such, for example, as the College of Household and Social Science for Women, the Officers Training Corps, and the University Club.

He assisted Mr. Albert Kahn to establish his British Traveling Fellowships, and instituted a board of trustees, of which he became a member and secretary, consisting of the Lord Chancellor, the speaker, the Lord Chief Justice with Lords Curzon and Milner as coopted members. Most of the American Kahn Traveling Fellows visited him in London at the commencement of their journey.

He was mainly instrumental in bringing about the Congress of the Universities of the British Empire, which met in 1912, and was to have met again in five years. This was prevented by the war, but the universities bureau has come into existence as the result of the Congress and will organize the next Congress when the opportunity arises.

In 1915 it was clear that the war would prevent any immediate reoganization of the University of London, and Miers therefore accepted the invitation of the University of Manchester to become its vice-chancellor. In Manchester he is already associated with many educational and civic activities outside the university; he is chairman of the Joint Matric

ulation Board, which determines the admission of students to the five northern universities and examines and inspects secondary schools in their areas of influence; also of the Manchester Royal College of Music, of the Manchester Royal Institution, and of the newly formed northern branch of the National Library for the Blind.

He has been for many years a fellow and governor of Eton College, and fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford; was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1896; has been president of the Mineralogical Society, and of the Geological and Educational Sections of the British Association; is an honorary doctor of the universities of Sheffield and Christiania; was knighted in 1912; was a member of the treasury committee which reported on the reform of the Civil Service Class I examinations; and is a member of the committee appointed by the prime minister to report on adult education.

Many of his European journeys have been made to places which possess public or private collections of antique sculpture, in which he is interested.

DR. JOHN JOLY

John Joly, M.A., B.A., Engineering, D.Sc., has been professor of geology and mineralogy in the University of Dublin for the past twenty years. He was born in Ireland in 1857 and educated at Trinity College, in which he held various subordinate posts before his appointment to the chair which he now occupies.

For more than thirty years he has carried on research in physics, and especially in the application of physics to engineering, but his exceedingly ingenious mind has led him down many by-paths in search of the solution of problems of general interest.

One of his earliest inventions was the steam calorimeter, by means of which he succeeded in determining directly the specific heats of gases

In 1901 he joined Professor Coleman of Toronto in Canada for a journey of exploration in the northern Rockies, but at the invitation of the Canadian Minister of the Interior changed his plans and visited and reported on the gold mines of Klondike, in company with Professor Coleman. He had previously visited Canada and the Pacific coast with the British Association (spending some weeks also in the United States) in 1897; and was there again with the International Geological Congress in 1913.

He visited a great part of South Africa on the invitation of the Rhodes trustees and the Johannesburg Council of Education in 1903, and was personally concerned in the first appointments made in the Transvaal Technical Institute which afterwards became the Transvaal University College. A second visit to South Africa with the British Association took place in 1905.

perimental science which had long baffled physicists. Having invented the calorimeter, Joly turned it to excellent account in the examination of a variety of gases over a wide range of pressure and temperature.

Distinguished as a physicist, he is more widely known as a pioneer in the modern method of photography in colors. He was the first in 1897 to take successful photographs in natural colors by the use of a minutely-subdivided screen carrying the three primary colors. On a plate exposed behind this screen he obtained, in effect, three negatives on the same plate. A transparency made from this plate, when placed in an optical lantern behind a screen similarly ruled in red, green and blue lines, displayed the objects photographed in their natural colors. This experiment led, ten years later, to the development of the wellknown and very efficient Lumière process on which colored starch grains are substituted for Joly's colored lines.

The ascent of sap in trees is another subject which has occupied his attention, in conjunction with Henry H. Dixon, the professor of botany of Trinity College. He offered a simple

explanation of this phenomenon. The theory then put forward attributes the ascent of the sap to transpiration from leaves of the tree and the tensile strength or cohesion of the fluid in its capillary tubes.

Another matter of very great general interest was dealt with by Joly when he determined the age of the ocean by estimating the amount of common salt carried to it by the rivers and calculating the length of time that must have elapsed in order that the salt in sea water should have acquired its present concentration.

Sections of various kinds of rock show remarkable little rainbow-colored circles. Joly was the first to prove that these rainbow-like circles or pleo-chroic haloes occur about particles of salts of the rare metals uranium and thorium; metals which are always undergoing decomposition into elements of lower atomic weight. The haloes are due to the bombardment of the substance of the rock by the radioactive particles discharged from the heavy elements. The rate of transformation of uranium and thorium into these radio-active substances being known, it has been possible to calculate the length of time necessary for the formation of the haloes and therefore the age of the rocks.

Joly has been a pioneer in the applications of radio-activity to geological phenomena, e. g., the origin of mountain ranges.

The late Professor Lowell's book on Mars led Jolly to offer a relatively simple explanation of the canals of Schiaparelli. He attributed them to the gravitational effects of small satellites falling into the planet.

Even biological problems have engaged the versatile professor's attention. In a book entitled "The Abundance of Life" he submits a dynamic basis for evolution.

His interest in radio-activity led him at an early date to suggest the insertion of radium into cancers, and recently-in conjunction with Captain William Stevenson, R.A.M.C.he suggested the use of emanation needles, which he invented, for therapeutic purposes.

Joly has for many years been a keen yachtsman, and recently has devoted much time to problems connected with submarine warfare. He has suggested many applications of modern

science to navigation, and especially those dependent upon the principles of synchronous signalling.

In his own university Professor Joly is known as a reformer, being largely responsible for various recent changes. He became secretary to the Academic Council on the death of Professor Edward Dowden, the Shakespearean scholar.

During the rebellion in 1915 he took an active part in the defense of the college. An account from his pen of this episode appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. He is a commissioner of Irish Lights. He is warden of the Alexandra College for Women. For many years he has been secretary of the Royal Dublin Society. He is a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1910 he received from the society a royal medal. In 1911 he received a royal medal from the Royal Dublin Society.

Among his many publications are to be noted -"Radio-activity and Geology," "Synchronous Signalling in Navigation," "The Birthtime of the World," and a vast number of contributions to various scientific journals, notably to the Philosophical Magazine, of which he has been one of the editors for many years.

WILLIAM JOHN KEEP

WILLIAM JOHN KEEP, consulting engineer for the Michigan Stove Company, manufacturer of testing machines and writer on foundry topics, died on September 30. He was born in 1842, at Oberlin, Ohio, and studied at Oberlin and at Union College, where he was graduated in 1865 with the degree of civil engineer. For several years during his residence in Troy he gave a course of lectures on the steam engine to the senior class of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

During all his life Mr. Keep was very much interested in experimental tests with cast iron and other metals. In 1885 he discovered the relation between the shrinkage and chemical composition of cast iron and devised the systems of "Keep's Test," which he later named "Mechanical Analysis." This is used largely in the United States and other countries instead of chemical analysis. His

method was devised as the result of many thousands of tests described in numerous papers on the influence of silicon, phosphorus, sulphur and manganese on cast iron, on shrinkage, strength and impact of cast iron, "Keep's Cooling Curves," aluminum, etc.

His most important publication is his book "Cast Iron" (John Wiley and Sons, 1902). He was also author of a large number of scientific papers, most of which are printed in the transactions of the different organizations to which he belonged. At the time of his death he had just finished a paper "Static and Dynamic Tests with Transverse Test Bars," which gives a description of his later experiments and which will be published. Mr. Keep patented many of his devices, one of the most important of which is a system of matchplates for foundry use. His testing machines are well known, also his apparatus for "Mechanical Analysis." He was a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, (vice-pres. 1903-5), American Institute of Mining Engineers, Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain, International Association for Testing Materials, American Foundrymens Association, Franklin Institute, Detroit Engineering Society (past pres.), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, honorary member of the Rensselaer Society of Engineers and of the Foundrymen's Association of Philadelphia.

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY IN TASMANIA

MR. W. H. TWELVETREES, government geologist in Tasmania, reports to the British Science Guild that the Tasmanian State Committee of Science and Industry has started the discussion of several subjects which can be usefully considered at the present juncture. Small working committees have been formed to deal with the questions of fuel, alcohol, improvement of seeds, tuberculosis in stock, utilization of kelp and Irish blight.

The committee has drawn up a scheme in regard to the study of problems connected with the realization of forest products. The scien

tific subjects for investigation are particularized as:

1. The production of wood pulp, cellulose, etc., by the disintegration of the main body of the timber.

2. The production of volatile and essential oils by the distillation of the leaves and twigs.

3. The production of a potash fertilizer from the ash obtained from the burning of the leaves and twigs.

4. The production of dyes, tannins, etc., from the various parts of the wood and possibly from the leaves.

5. The production of various distillation products from the waste timber and the conversion of same into higher priced materials for which markets could be found in different parts of the world.

6. The production of building materials from the sawdust and wood after breaking down into pulp; probably after chemical treatment for the removal of various soluble organic materials in the wood, such as lignin, hemicellulose, etc.

The state committee, without neglecting other subjects, has decided to specialize for the present on the forest industry generally. Its investigations are expected to indicate where and how the large timber areas in Tasmania can be improved, and profitable industries initiated. The committee has urged the Commonwealth Advisory Council to call delegates of the various state committees together so as to coordinate the work of carrying out a general scheme, but the council being only a provisional institution is of opinion that general research on forest products had better wait till a forest products laboratory is established under the permanent institute. In the meantime, specific research will be supported by grants-in-aid.

The production of electrolytic zinc by means of current supplied by the state hydro-electric installation is proceeding satisfactorily at Risdon, near Hobart. The chairman of the company announces that the establishment of this industry in Tasmania has been owing to a desire to prove the application of the electrolytic process to Australian ores and concentrates for the production of munition zinc,

hitherto produced within the empire in only small quantities, thus helping to make the empire self-contained as regards most important items for defence and commerce. The small plant which has been started has been putting out regularly 600 pounds of zinc per day for the last eight or nine months: and now a new 10-ton plant has been installed, permitting a production of 15 tons daily. The ultimate size of the plant at Risdon for the production of zinc is expected to have ten times the capacity of the present unit. It is also hoped to turn attention by and by to other industries made possible by the government hydro-electric undertaking. The success of the enterprise at Risdon will, it is confidently anticipated, favorably affect the zinc industry of the empire.

MANGANIFEROUS ORE IN OREGON

DEPOSITS of manganese and manganiferous ores in many parts of the United States have been examined during the last two years by geologists of the United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. This is essential work, because the limitation of shipping facilities has reduced the imports of manganese ore from other sources than the West Indies and Central America in 1918 nearly one third below those of 1917 and there is a prospect that they will be still further reduced in 1919. The importation of the ironmanganese alloy ferromanganese has decreased in much greater proportion and probably will soon be stopped altogether. To offset these decreases in the supply of manganese the Geological Survey has assisted in stimulating the domestic and the near-by foreign production by examining the manganese deposits in this country and in the West Indies with the view of determining the availability of the ore. The producers of domestic manganese ore have responded actively to the call made on them and have increased their production from 27,000 tons in 1916 to 116,000 tons in 1917. It now appears that the production of ore in 1918 will be 185,000 tons.

Manganese is used in various ways. Metallic manganese in the form of ferromanganese is alloyed with steel to make manganese steel

and manganese dioxide is used in the manufacture of dry batteries, in glassmaking and in the chemical industries. Manganese, however, is used principally in making all Bessemer and open-hearth steels, in which it is incorporated in the form of iron-manganese alloys, which will serve as deoxidizers and purifiers of the molten metal. More than 95 per cent. of all the manganese consumed in this country is used for this purpose.

An examination of several manganiferous deposits in Oregon, including a reconnaissance of 150 square miles near Lake Creek, Oregon, was made in July, 1918, by J. T. Pardee, a geologist of the United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, in company with Henry M. Parks, Director of the Oregon Bureau of Mines and Geology. Mr. Parks has kindly placed at the disposal of Mr. Pardee the results of his previous work in this area, and Messrs. Parks and Pardee are jointly responsible for the estimates and conclusions here given.

So far as known the manganiferous deposits of the Lake Creek district are confined within an area of about 150 square miles in the east-central part of Jackson county, Oregon. The area is rather sparsely settled, and farming is the principal industry. The nearest large town is Medford, which is 15 miles directly southwest of the deposits but nearly twice that distance by the available roads. Eagle Point, a town on the Pacific & Eastern Railway, is the most convenient shipping point. The surface of the region is hilly and in places mountainous, but only moderately rugged. The local relief ranges from a few hundred feet to 2,000 feet or more, and the general elevation is between 2,000 and 2,500 feet. Streams are numerous, though most of the smaller ones become dry in summer. The climate is mild and the year is made up of a wet and dry season, corresponding to winter and summer. Most of the rather heavy winter precipitation falls as rain. The greater part of the surface that lies below 2,500 feet is covered with a mixed growth of madrona, manzanilla, and chapparal bushes and rather