NOTES. 203 



The widespread interest in this phase of education, as indicated in the large attend- 

 ance at this session, led to the appointment of the following committee on school 

 grounds charged with the preparation of a report and program for the meeting in 

 Buffalo next year: Dick J. Crosby, Washington, D. C, chairman; Mrs. Mary IMorton 

 Kehew, Boston, Mass.; H. D. Hemenway, Hartford, Conn.; J. W. Spencer, Ithaca, 

 N. Y. The officers of the association for the current year are: President — Clinton 

 Rogers "Woodruff, Philadelphia, Pa. ; vice-presidents — John C. Olmsted, Brookline, 

 Mass.; Mrs. Herman J. Hall, Chicago, 111.; Chas. W. (jrarfield, Grand Rapids, Mich.; 

 Warren II. ^Manning, Brookline, ]\Iass. ; Dick J. Crosby, Washington, D. C. ; W. Orm- 

 iston Roy Montreal, Canada; secretary — Chas. Mulford Robinson, Rochester, X. Y.; 

 treasurer — Ossian C. Simonds, Chicago, 111. 



Personal Mention-. — Major John Wesley Powell, director of the U. S. Bureau of 

 Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, and formerly director of the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey, died at Haven, Me., September 23, 1902. ]Major Powell was born at 

 IMount Morris, N. Y., March 24, 183-i. He rendered distinguished service in the 

 civil war, in which he was severely wounded, losing an arm. After the war he was 

 made professor of geology, first at Wesleyan University, Bloomington, 111., and 

 afterwards at Northern University, Illinois. In 1868 he explored the Colorado 

 canyon, traversing its whole length in boats. As a result of this and subsequent 

 explorations the U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky ]Mountain 

 Region was established in 1870, which in 1879 was combined with the Hayden, 

 King, and Wheeler surveys to form the present U. S. Geological Survey. INIajor 

 Powell was director of this from 1880 to 1894, when he resigned. While director he 

 evolved a plan for the irrigation of the arid lands of the United States, which 

 resulted in the organization of an Irrigation Survey under authority of Congress in 

 1888, and the subsequent investigations of the U. S. Geological Survey on the water 

 supply and the extent to which the arid lands can be reclaimed by irrigation. 



In the course of the inaugural address of Prof. James Dewar, president of the 

 British Association, at the Belfast meeting, the speaker referred to the services to 

 agricultural science of the late Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert in the following terms: "He 

 strove with conspicuous success to place the oldest of industries on a scientific basis, 

 and to submit the complex conditions of agriculture to a systematic analysis. He 

 studied the physiology of j^lant life in the open air, not with the object of penetrat- 

 ing the secrets of structure, but with the more directly utilitarian aim of establish- 

 ing the conditions of successful and profitable cultivation. By a long series of 

 experiments, alike well conceived and laboriouslj' carried out, he determined the 

 effects of variation in soil, and its chemical treatment — in short, in all the unknown 

 factors with which the farmer previously had to deal according to empirical and 

 local rules, roughly deduced from undigested experience by uncritical and rudi- 

 mentary processes of inference. Gilbert had the faith, the insight, and the courage to 

 devote his life to an investigation so difficult, so unpromising, and so unlikely to 

 bring the rich rewards attainal)le by equal diligence in other directions, as to offer 

 110 attraction to the majority of men. The taljulated results of the Rothamsted 

 experiments remain as a benefaction to mankind and a monument of indomitable 

 and disinterested perseverance." 



We note from Nature the death of Dr. H. von Wild at Zurich, September 5, in 

 his sixty-ninth year. He was director of the Central Meteorological Station at Bern, 

 Switzerland, from 1863 to 1865; director of the Russian Meteorological Service from 

 1S68 to 1895, and president of the International Meteorological Committee from 1882 

 to 1892. He was the author of numerous works on meteorology and terrestrial mag- 

 netism, and was the editor of the Russian liepertorium der Meteorologie. His greatest 

 work was Temperatur-Yerhaltnisse des russischen Reiches, a volume of 349 pages 

 and 271 plates. 



Dr. Frank Pierrepont Graves, formerly president of the University of Wyoming, 

 has resigned the presidency of the University of Washington. 



