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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tions relating to animal and to plant life re- 

 spectively ; two prizes of twenty-five dollars 

 each for the second best papers on these 

 subjects ; a prize of thirty dollars for the 

 best six photomicrographs on some subject 

 in animal or vegetable histology ; a prize of 

 thirty dollars for the best collection of six 

 mounted slides illustrating some biological 

 subject; and two prizes of fifteen dollars 

 each for the second best collections of pho- 

 tomicrographs and slides. The papers should 

 be submitted to the committee on or before 

 July 1, 1893 (W. H. Seaman, Secretary, 

 Washington, D. C). All photographs and 

 slides for which prizes are given are to be- 

 come the property of the society. The ob- 

 ject of the prizes is to stimulate and en- 

 courage original investigation in the biology 

 of North America. 



Dr. Alcock, of the Marine Survey of In- 

 dia, has observed in the structure in the nip- 

 pers and arm of the red cycopod crab of the 

 shores a regular fiddling apparatus like the 

 stridulating apparatus of many insects. Its 

 music is heard when the crab's burrow is 

 threatened by an intruder, and gradually rises 

 in loudness and shrillness and frequency if 

 the presence of the intruder is continued, un- 

 til it becomes a tumultuous low-pitched whirr 

 or high-pitched growl, the burrow acting as 

 a resonator. Crabs of the same species will 

 not enter one another's burrows unless they 

 are forced to, whence Dr. Alcock infers that 

 the use of the stridulating apparatus is to 

 warn others against crowding upon its hole. 



Mr. F. W. Doughty, of Brooklyn, claims, 

 in a pamphlet which he has published on 

 the subject, to have discovered in the Glacial 

 drift at different places in Massachusetts, 

 Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 

 and on Staten Island and in the city of 

 Brooklyn, evidences of man's work, testify- 

 ing that the human race was old at the Gla- 

 cial period. The evidences consist of repre- 

 sentations of the human head cut in various 

 kinds of stone or modeled in clay, flat tablets 

 of clay bearing portraits of men and women 

 and of existing and extinct animal forms, to- 

 gether with objects of primitive symbolism, 

 such as occur on the most ancient coins, and 

 clay molds and stone seals. His pamphlet 

 contains a number of illustrations of these 

 objects, which are curious, to say the least. 



The committee of the American Associa- 

 tion to which the subject was referred, ap- 

 prove the resolutions of the Australasian As- 

 sociation concerning an international com- 

 mittee on biological nomenclature, advise 

 that the French and Italian biologists be in- 

 vited to appoint branch committees to act 

 with the others, and make some suggestions 

 respecting the underlying principles that 

 should govern biological terminology. Thus 

 the committee recommend that the names 

 of organs and parts and the terms indicating 

 position and direction should be single, des- 



ignating words, so far as possible, rather 

 than descriptive phrases ; that morphological 

 terms should be etymologically correct and 

 derived from Greek or Latin, and each term 

 should have a Latin form ; that terms relat- 

 ing to position and direction in an organism 

 should be intrinsic and not extrinsic — that 

 is, should refer to the organism itself rather 

 than to the external world ; that in addition 

 to its proper Latin form each of the technical 

 words should have a form that shall make it 

 conform to the genius of the various lan- 

 guages, or that a paronym be made for each 

 technical word. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 



Sir Richard Owen, one of the most fa- 

 mous comparative anatomists of the age, 

 died in London, December 18, 1892, in the 

 eighty-ninth year of his age. A full sketch 

 of his life and work was published, with por- 

 trait, in The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 

 XXIII, No. 1 (May, 1883). 



Mr. W. Mattieu Williams, author of 

 the series of articles on The Chemistry of 

 Cooking, published in the Monthly a few 

 years ago, died suddenly at his home in Neas- 

 den, England, November 28, 1 892. The book 

 by which he was best known is The Fuel of 

 the Sun. Much of his work was contributed 

 to serial publications, and a volume of his 

 popular essays was issued several years ago 

 under the title of Science in Short Chapters. 

 His Through Norway with a Knapsack called 

 attention to the advantages of Norway as a 

 summer resort for tourists. 



Dr. E. W. Siemens, a distinguished Ger- 

 man engineer and electrician, died in Berlin, 

 December 6, 1892. He was born at Leuthe, in 

 Hanover, in 1816, taught in the Lubeck gym- 

 nasium, joined the Prussian artillery in 1837, 

 and withdrew from the service of the Gov- 

 ernment in 1850 and devoted himself to sci- 

 entific studies and private enterprises. He 

 was the inventor of many of the most valu- 

 able practical applications of electricity and 

 of devices in electrical apparatus, instituted 

 the Siemens quicksilver unit, contributed 

 much to the successful establishment of the 

 electric railway, and devised the pneumatic 

 dispatch system and the Siemens alcoholim- 

 eter. 



Prof. John S. Newberry, of Columbia 

 College, died in New Haven, Conn., December 

 7, 1892, after a long illness. He suffered an 

 attack of paralysis in December, 1890, from 

 which he never fully recovered, and which 

 left him with a gradually failing mind. A 

 sketch of his life and scientific work — chief- 

 ly in geology, in which he was one of the 

 most eminent American experts — was given 

 in The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. IX, No. 

 4, August, 1876. He received the Murchi- 

 son medal from the Geological Society of 

 London in 1888. 



