192 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dr. Alexander Agassiz has been ap- 

 pointed director of the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology, and Dr. A. E. 

 Kennelly, of Philadelphia, has been ap- 

 pointed professor of electrical engineer- 

 ing at Harvard University. — The Hon. 

 Carroll D. Wright, commissioner of 

 labor, has been appointed president of 

 tne collegiate department of Clark Uni- 

 versity. It is understood that Mr. 

 Wright will not, for the present at 

 least, resign his position under the gov- 

 ernment or his work at Columbian or 

 Catholic University. — The Secretary of 

 War has sent to the House a recom- 

 mendation that Surgeon-General Stern- 

 berg be granted the rank of major-gen- 

 eral before his retirement on reaching 

 the age limit June next. — The Univer- 

 sity of Edinburgh has conferred its 

 LL.D. on Professor William James, the 

 eminent psychologist of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, and on Dr. J. G. Schurman, 

 president and formerly professor of 

 philosophy at Cornell University. 



Dr. Daniel Coit G-^man, president 

 of the Carnegie Institution, sailed for 

 Europe on April 17, with a view to 

 studying foreign scientific institutions. 

 — Professor Solon I. Bailey, of the Har- 

 vard Astronomical Observatory, is 

 about to leave for the observatory's 

 branch at Arequipa, Peru, where he 

 will especially study the planet Eros. 

 Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, of Cambridge Uni- 

 versity, will shortly start on an expedi- 

 tion for the psychological study of the 

 Todas of southern India on the lines of 

 his work in Torres Straits. — Professors 

 Victor C. Vaughan and Frederick G. 

 Novy of the medical department of the 

 University of Michigan will leave for 

 Asia about the middle of June to in- 

 vestigate tropical dysentery. — Dr. J. L. 



Wortman, of the Peabody Museum of 

 Yale University, will be in the West 

 until September, exploring the fields in 

 Dakota, Wyoming and the Bad Lands, 

 where the late Professor Marsh made 

 his important paleontological dis- 

 coveries. — Ernst A. Bessey, in charge 

 of the Section of Seed and Plant Intro- 

 duction in the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, has been detailed 

 to proceed to Russia, the Caucasus, and 

 Turkestan for the purpose of securing 

 certain seeds of forage and cereal 

 plants. He is to sail on July 2. — An 

 expedition to northern Brazil will be 

 sent out by the Austrian Government 

 in the autumn under the direction of 

 Dr. M. Steindachner, curator in the 

 Vienna Museum of Natural History. 



In accordance with our plan of re- 

 printing in each number of The Popu- 

 lar Sclence Monthly an article which 

 appears to be of special interest and 

 which is inaccessible to most of our 

 readers, we published last month part 

 of a paper on the physiological effect of 

 electrically charged molecules by Pro- 

 fessor Jacques Loeb, of the University 

 of Chicago, originally contributed to The 

 American Journal of Physiology. The 

 consent of the editor of the journal and 

 of Professor Loeb was asked, but Pro- 

 fessor Loeb wrote that he would pre- 

 fer not to have the article republished, 

 as owing to the misrepresentation that 

 his work had suffered in the daily 

 papers and in the magazines, he pre- 

 ferred to have his researches published 

 only in technical journals. Unfortu- 

 nately Professor Loeb's letter was not 

 received until after the form had been 

 printed, and we can only express our 

 regret that the extracts were reprinted 

 without his approval. 



