1898] NEWS 355 
of five weeks each. Courses were offered in elementary geology, embryology, 
bacteriology, and botany. According to Science, thirteen instructors and assist- 
ants attended to the wants of the students. 
THE Thompson-Yates laboratories of physiology and pathology at University 
College, Liverpool, were opened on October 8 by Lord Lister. 
THE $500,000 given to the Medical College of Cornell caine from Colonel 
Oliver H. Payne. This is for a building, his total gift being $1,500,000. Work 
on the structure has already commenced and it is expected that the building will 
be finished in 1899. Brown University benefits under the will of Rowland 
Hazard of Peacedale, Rhode Island, to the amount of $100,000. Mr George A, 
Gardner has given $20,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to be 
added to the general endowment fund. Science also states that Dr D. K. Pearsons 
of Chicago offers $50,000 to Fair Mount College, Wichita, Kans., provided 
$150,000 can be raised. 
Science states that the Library and Natural History Museum of New West- 
minster, British Columbia, were totally destroyed by fire‘on September 11, 
THE National Museum of Buenos Aires, which has for many years issued sub- 
stantial contributions to Natural Science in its Anales, has just commenced a 
smaller publication termed the Comunicaciones of the Museum, intended for the 
prompt issue of small and preliminary communications. Except a short note on 
anew plant (Prosopanche bonacinac) by C. Spegazzini, all the papers in the first 
number are from the pen of the Director, Dr Carlos Berg. 
Mr A. S. Woopwarb, of the British Museum, has this autumn visited some 
of the Swiss Museums for the purpose of examining fossil fishes. He informs us 
that, among others, he had the privilege of seeing the original collection left by 
Agassiz in Neuchatel. Most of these are British specimens communicated to the 
author of the ‘‘ Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles” by Murchison, Buckland, 
Lady Gordon Cumming, and other coadjutors in his work. Among them are 
several type specimens which are commonly supposed to have been lost. Among 
Stonesfield fossils from Oxford there is the original and almost unique tooth of 
Ceratodus phillipsi, named but not described by Agassiz. The original scute of 
Phyllolepis concentricus, Ag., from the Upper Old Red Sandstone of Perthshire, 
communicated by Murchison, is also there. Lady Gordon Cumming’s contribu- 
tion from Tynet Burn includes several figured and described specimens, The 
original supposed jaws named Plectrodus mirabilis, from the Ludlow Bone-bed, 
figured in Murchison’s “ Siluria,” are also in this collection. It is unfortunate 
that these valuable fossils cannot be transferred to some more appropriate resting- 
place where they would be properly labelled and appreciated. 
THE grants for scientific purposes at the British Association of interest to our 
readers were as follows :—Geology Erratic Blocks, £15 ; Geological Photographs, 
£10 ; British Carboniferous life-zones, £10 ; Irish Elk in the Isle of Man, £15 ; 
Prehistoric Flora and Fauna in Canada, £30 ; Drift section at Moel Tryfan, £5 ; 
Ty Newydd Caves, £40 ; Caves at Uphill, £30 ; Zoological Station, Naples, £100 ; 
Biological Laboratory, Plymouth, £20 ; Index generum et specierum animalium, 
£100 ; Migration of Birds, £15 ; Apparatus for keeping aquatic organisms under 
definite physical conditions, £15 ; Plankton and physical conditions of English 
Channel, £100; Exploration of Socotra, £35 ; Lake Village at Glastonbury, 
£50 ; Ethnological Survey of Canada, £35 ; ‘ Anthropological Notes and Queries,’ 
new edition, £40 ; Age of Stone Circles, £20; Physiological Effects of Peptone, £30 ; 
Electrical Changes accompanying Discharge of Respiratory Centres, £20; Influ- 
ence of Drugs upon the Vascular Nervous System, £10 ; Histological Changes in 
Nerve Cells, £20 ; Micro-Chemistry of Cells, £40 ; Histology of Suprarenal Cap- 
