1897] NEWS 67 
Me R. C. L. Perkins, who has been investigating the zoology of the Sandwich 
Islands for a committee of the British Association and Royal Society has returned to 
England. 
Tue following numbers of students at the Imperial College of Science, Tokyo, were 
recently given by Engineering :—Mathematics, 11; Astronomy, 2; Physics, 30; 
Chemistry, 15 ; Zoology and Botany, 12 ; Geology, 14. In all there are 89 students. 
Dr Lovis Grénant, Professor of Physiology at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, 
Paris, has been awarded 4000 francs by the French Government to assist his researches 
on the hygienic applications of physiology. 
Aw important change has just been made at the Spanish universities and other 
educational institutions under State control. Foreigners are now allowed to study there 
and to enter for the examinations, and to take degrees at the universities. 
TuE Shute Scholarship in Animal Morphology, recently founded at Oxford Univer- 
sity, has an annual value of £50, and is attached to no college. The examination takes 
place this July, and is open to all who may be in need of assistance at the university, 
and who have not been members of the university for more than eight terms. 
Tue late Prof. Newberry, having left funds for the encouragement of scientific 
research, it has been decided to apply the grant successively to geology and palaeon- 
tology, zoology, and botany. A sum of 50,000 dollars will be awarded in the first 
subject, on July 15, to competitors from among the Scientific Alliance of New York 
City. 
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY has made a grant of £300 to Prof. A. C. Haddon, to 
enable him to make an expedition to the Torres Straits to continue his researches on 
the anthropology of that region. He will be accompanied by other anthropologists 
from Cambridge, and by an expert in Melanesian languages. 
THE International Congress of Medicine and Surgery meets this year at Moscow 
during August. The Russian Government has not only contributed some £8000 
towards the expenses, but has arranged for a two weeks’ excursion to the Caucasus, in 
the course of which the mineral springs of Kislovodsk will be visited. 
A LABORATORY for the study of cavernicolous animals has been started by Mr 
Armand Viré in some subterranean passages, recently rediscovered beneath the Jardin 
des Plantes and the Boulevard St Marcel, Paris. Water is supplied from springs by 
means of pipes. 
Ir is expected that the Belgica, the ship of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, 
will arrive at Antwerp early in July, and that the expedition will start in August. 
The expedition will stay from October to March on the eastern shore of Graham’s 
Land. The following year, after re-coaling and provisioning at Melbourne, it will visit 
Victoria Land. 
A survVEY of the Pribyloff islands is now being carried out by the U.S. Coast and 
Geodetic Survey. 
The Danes are charting the northern part of the east coast of Greenland, with the 
help of some £1000 contributed from the Carlsberg Fund. 
Tue Rev. Prof. Thomas Wiltshire, of Trinity College, Cambridge, for many years 
treasurer of the Geological Society of London, has presented his library of scientific 
works to the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge. The donation comprises about 600 
volumes and 900 pamphlets. 
TuE Belgian Government has convened a second International Bibliographic Confer- 
ence at Brussels, on August 2-4. Those who do not already subscribe to the Institut 
International de Bibliographie may become members for a subscription of 20 francs, on 
application to the Institut, 1 Place du Musée, Bruxelles. Among other subjects for 
discussion is the state of bibliography of the different sciences. 
THE Geological Department of the British Museum (Natural History) has just 
obtained an interesting series of teeth and jaws of the dwarf elephant discovered a few 
years ago by Dr Hans Pohlig in the cavern of Carini, near Palermo, Sicily. The species 
seems to be Elephas mnaidriensis, the largest form met with in the bone-caves of Malta. 
It may be merely a dwarfed race of the existing African elephant, which was stranded 
and gradually became extinct on the islands of Malta and Sicily when the land barrier, 
which once existed in that region between Africa and Europe, became destroyed. 
A STATEMENT has lately appeared in many scientific journals that there exists on 
the Pamirs a dwarf tribe, with dwarf domestic animals. This appears to have 
