480 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of science. The salaries paid to chiefs 

 of divisions are about $3,000 a year, 

 with almost no opportunity for ad- 

 vancement. The government finds it 

 difficult to retain its ablest men of 

 science, they being willing in most 

 cases to accept university appoint- 

 ments. This added to civil service 

 methods, desirable as they are in some 

 regards, is in danger of giving rise to 

 the survival of the unfit in the gov- 

 ernment service. There is some room 

 for the complaint that men of science 

 in the government service do not do 

 work of as great distinction and orig- 

 inality as should be the case. Pre- 

 sumably this is due to too much super- 

 vision and red tape, rather than to too 

 great freedom. The general spirit in 

 the Department of Agriculture is very 

 good, due largely to the wdse adminis- 

 tration of Secretary Wilson, and it is 

 to be hoped that it may not be injured 

 by an attempt to apply stricter dis 

 cipline. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS. 

 Professor Alexander Melville 

 Bell, known for his contributions to 

 phonetics, died on August 7, at the age 

 of eighty-six years. 



Dr. E. Ray Laxkester, director of 

 the British Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, has been elected president of the 

 British Association for the meeting to 

 be held next year at York. — Dr. Will- 

 iam H. Nichols, of New York, gave the 

 presidential address before the Society 



of Chemical Industry at its general 

 meeting in London on July 10. Dr. 

 Edward Divers, F.R.S., was elected 

 president of the society for the ensuing 

 year. — Dr. Samuel G. Dixon, president 

 of the Academy of Natural Science of 

 Philadelphia, has been appointed com- 

 missioner of health for the state of 

 Pennsylvania. — Professor W. W. Mills 

 has been appointed state geologist of 

 Michigan. 



A STATUE of Benjamin Franklin is 

 to be erected at Paris at the end of the 

 street that bears his name. Plans 

 have been made for the celebration of 

 the two hundredth anniversary of 

 Franklin's birth, in Boston and New 

 York as well as in Philadelphia. — A 

 tablet was unveiled on July 14, by 

 Signor G. Marconi, on the house in 

 which Sir Humphry Davy once lived 

 at Clifton, Bristol. — The American 

 Medical Association has taken steps 

 tor the erection of a suitable memorial 

 to Dr. N. S. Davis, who is regarded as 

 the founder of the association. 



The official party of the British 

 Association, including Professor G. H. 

 Darwin, the president and the other 

 officers, left Southampton by the mail 

 steamer Saxon on July 29 for Cape 

 Town, where they arrived on the six- 

 teenth inst. The party included Pro- 

 fessor Ernest W. Brown, of Haverford 

 College; Professor Henry S. Carhart, 

 of the University of Michigan ; Pro- 

 fessor W. M. Davis, of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, and Professor William B. Scott, 

 of Princeton University. 



