The obstacles which had baffled his predecessors were surmounted by him
with ease. He was in this respect a truly great man.

Personally, Wöhler was modest and retiring. His life was simple and
unostentatious. He had a kindly disposition, which endeared him to his
students, to which fact many American chemists who were students at
Göttingen during the time of Wöhler's activity can cordially testify. In
short, it may be said deliberately that Wöhler, as a chemist and as a
man, was a fit model for all of us and for those who will come after us.
Though he has gone, his methods live in every laboratory. His spirit
reigns in many; could it reign in all, the chemical world would be the
better for it.

I.R.

* * * * *




LOUIS FAVRE, CONSTRUCTOR OF THE ST. GOTHARD TUNNEL.


It is now already a year that the locomotive has been rolling over the
St. Gothard road, crossing at a flash the distance separating Basle from
Milan, and passing rapidly from the dark and damp defiles of German
Switzerland into the sun lit plains of Lombardy. Our neighbors
uproariously fêted the opening of this great international artery, which
they consider as their personal and exclusive work, as well from a
technical point of view as from that of the economic result that they