608 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



RETURN" OF MR. GWTN JEFFREYS TO ENGLAND. 



The safe return of Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys from his visit to 

 North America is mentioned in the English papers, with 

 some account of his experiences, which were extremely pleas- 

 ant to him. Every facility was given to him by the natural- 

 ists of this country for the examination of their collections, 

 or those in their charge, and free permission was given him 

 to carry back with him for study any specimens desired for 

 that purpose. Quite fortunately, this has been the means of 

 preserving a number of them to science, since, among the 

 collections belonging to the Smithsonian Institution and the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology of Cambridge, as well as to 

 the Academy of Sciences at Chicago, some of the more valu- 

 able types of the mollusca lent to Mr. Jeffreys had scarcely 

 been removed from the city by him before the remainder of 

 the collections, then in charge of Dr. Stimpson, were destroyed 

 by the Chicago fire. 



CELEBRATION OF THE 400th BIRTHDAY OF COPERNICUS. 



The society of the friends of science in Posen proposes, on 

 the 19th of February, 1873, to celebrate the 400th birthday 

 of the eminent astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, at his birth- 

 place in the village of Thorne. In addition to the festivities 

 of the occasion, they propose to publish an accurate biogra- 

 phy of their countryman, and to prepare a monumental al- 

 bum, as also to strike an appropriate medal. A prize of 500 

 thalers is offered for the best biography that can be prepared 

 before the 1st of January, 1872, to be based only upon au- 

 thentic documents. 7 (7, 1871, 570. 



CROOKES OX PSYCHIC FORCE. 



Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., publishes in the October num- 

 ber of The Quarterly Journal of Science (London) a fresh scries 

 of experiments on the so-called " psychic force," mostly per- 

 formed in the presence of the well-known " spiritualistic me- 

 dium," Mr. D. D. Home. Mr. Crookes states that " these ex- 

 periments confirm beyond doubt the conclusions at which he 

 arrived in his former paper (published in the July number of 

 tliu same journal), namely, the existence of a force associated 

 in some manner not yet explained with the human organiza- 



