576 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



relief maps and globes, models for use in 

 structural geography, pictures, photo- 

 graphs, etc., of geographical features, 

 aids in teaching, geographical texts, 

 manuals and treatises, books of travel, 

 and an exhibit of geographical work 

 done in the elementary schools of Spring- 

 field and vicinity. The association has 

 also published a brief Bibliography of 

 Geographical Instruction, which was 

 prepared by W. S. Monroe, of the State 

 Normal School at Westfield, Mass. 



Dr. Daniel G. Brinton has pre- 

 sented to the University of Pennsylvania, 

 where he is Professor of American Ar- 

 chaeology and Linguistics, his entire col- 

 lection of books and manuscripts relat- 

 ing to the aboriginal languages of North 

 and South America. The collection rep- 

 resents the work of twenty-five years, 

 and embraces about two thousand titles. 



Mr. Andrew Carnegie has offered 

 to complete, with a contribution of £ .50,- 

 000, a fund which Mr. Joseph Chamber- 

 lain is trying to raise in order to make 

 the scientific school the principal depart- 

 ment of the University of Birmingham, 

 England. 



A NOTEWORTHY experiment in bird 

 protection has been made in a boys' 

 school at Coupvraj^, France, by form- 

 ing a society of the pupils for that pur- 

 pose. The president, vice-president, and 

 secretary of the society are selected 

 from among the pupils of the first di- 

 vision, and all the other pupils are 

 members. Meetings are held every Sat- 

 urday afternoon in March, April, May, 

 June, and July, under the presidency of 

 the teacher, to hear the reports of mem- 

 bers and record the nests protected and 

 noxious animals destroyed in a note- 

 book kept for the purpose. In 1898, 

 570 nests were protected by the school, 

 and more than 400 mice, rats, weasels, 

 and dormice were destroyed. Such so- 

 cieties cost nothing, and are capable of 

 rendering great service. 



Ernest D. Bell, whose formula for 

 determining animal longevity by the 

 length of the period of maturity was 

 published in a recent Monthly, has sent 

 a later communication to Nature, chang- 

 ing his constant from 10.5 to lO.I, the 

 latter figure giving much better results. 



The report of Mr. J. C. Hopkins on 

 the Clays and Clay Industries of Western 

 I'ennsylvania is the second one of a series 

 of economic reports on the natural re- 

 sources of the State in course of publica- 

 tion by the Pennsylvania State College. 

 The first report, published in 1897, was 

 on the Brown Stones of Pennsylvania, 



The report represents that a capital of 

 nearly $7,000,000 is invested in the clay 

 industries al)out Pittsburg, of which 

 more than $.3,000,000 are in the fire-clay 

 industry. The value of the annual out- 

 put of material is nearly $4,000,000, more 

 than fifty per cent of the capital invested. 

 The 139 companies employ 4,403 men. 



Herr Hansemann, of the Univer- 

 sity of Berlin, who examined the skull 

 of Helmholtz, reports in the Zeitschrift 

 fiir Fsijchologie that he found the head 

 about the size of Bismarck's, and a little 

 smaller than Wagner's. By metrical 

 standards the brain weighed about 1,700 

 grammes with the coagulated blood, and 

 about 1,440 grammes without it — about 

 100 grammes more than the average. 

 The circumvolutions, which are now 

 thought to have more relation to mental 

 capacity than mere weight, were par- 

 ticularly deep and well marked. The 

 skull was 55 centimetres in circumfer- 

 ence, 15.5 centimetres broad, and 18.3 

 centimetres long, and the cephalic index 

 was 85.25. 



Our obituary list for this month in- 

 cludes the names, among persons known 

 in connection with science, of Miss Eliza- 

 beth M. Bardwell, Professor of Astron- 

 omy in Mount Holyoke College, who 

 died May 28th, aged sixty-seven years; 

 G. F. Lyster, long Engineer-in-Chief of 

 the Mersey Docks and Harbor Board, 

 and author of valuable improvements 

 in the Liverpool docks, member of the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the 

 Institute of Civil Engineers, aged sev- 

 enty-six years; Prof. Lars Fredrik Nil- 

 son, Director of the Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station at Stockholm, Sweden, 

 May 14th, aged fifty-nine years; M. 

 Adolphe Lageal, a French geologist, 

 killed by natives while making explora- 

 tions in the French Soudan ; Sir Freder- 

 ick McCoy, Professor of Natural Science 

 in the University of Melbourne, died in 

 May, aged seventy-six years; he was a 

 member of the Geological Survey of Vic- 

 toria, founder of the Melbourne National 

 Museum, and author of numerous pa- 

 pers on Victorian geology; before going 

 to Australia he was Professor of Geol- 

 ogy in Queen's College, Belfast, and had 

 already attained a high reputation as a 

 geologist by the work he had done as 

 assistant to Sedgwick and by the pul)li- 

 cation of important memoirs in geology 

 and paleontology; and Lawson Tait, an 

 eminent English surgeon, author of nu- 

 merous books of a high order relative to 

 his profession, and an active worker in 

 practical sanitary matters; he died at 

 Llandudno, Wales, June 13th, aged fifty- 

 four years. 



