NEWS 69 



The University of Lyons is, says La FeuiUe des Jennes ISaturalistes, devoting 

 a sum of 42,000 fr. to the completion of the biological laboratory of Tamaris, 

 near Toulon. 



The general jslans of the Zoological Gardens in Bronx Park, New York, 

 were approved without opposition by the New York Park Board at the public 

 hearing on November 22. 



Per Dus^n, the Swedish engineer and bryologist, has returned from Tierra 

 del Fuego and Patagonia, where he has been engaged in scientific research since 

 September 1895. 



The John Lucas Walker Studentship for Research in Pathology at Cambridge 

 has been awarded to Mr J. W. Stephens, B.A., of Caius College, and Dr Hamilton 

 Wright of Montreal gains the Exhibition of £50. 



The chair of psychiatry will shortly be vacant in the University of Ziirich, 

 owing to the resignation of Dr August Forel, who is also well known as a 

 student of the habits of insects, especially of ants. 



Mr AV. p. Pycraft has left Oxford, and has been appointed temporary 

 assistant in ornithology in the British Museum (Natural History). He will 

 devote his attention specially to the arrangement of the collection of skeletons of 

 birds. 



The Danish Government is organising for 1898 a geographical and ethno- 

 graphical expedition to the Pamirs, where two years will be spent in research 

 under the direction of Lieut. Olofsen. Two sj)ecialists will accompany the 

 expedition. 



Mr J. B. Hatcher, we learn from Science, has returned to Patagonia to make 

 further investigations in geology and palaeontology. He hopes to add natural 

 history and ethnological collections to the palaeontological collections already 

 made in his recent successful expedition to that country. 



By the wUl of the late Sir William Alexander Mackinnon the University of 

 Edinburgh receives £2000 upon trust to found prizes or scholarships to be named 

 the " Mackinnon Scholarships," for proficiency in geology, natural history, and 

 modern languages. Bequests are also made to the Royal Society of London. 



On July 29th a Museum of Natural History and Anthropology was opened at 

 Wernigerode, in Brunswick. The museum, says Science, comprises the follo\ving 

 collections : — Mineralogical, of Count Heinrich Ernst, Dr Doring and Councillor 

 Jasche ; zoological, of Dr Miiller ; anthropological, of Dr Augustin and Dr 

 Friedrich ; and the Herbarium of Dr Sporleder. 



Dr Joseph Gedge, who died in 1870 while with Sir Samuel Baker at 

 Khartoum, left a sum of £1000 to the University of Cambridge for the establish- 

 ment of a biennial prize for original physiological research, open only to graduates 

 of more than five and less than seven years' standing. Owing to a long delay 

 this bequest has only lately been received by the University. 



The Boston Transcript, as quoted by Science, states that owing to the disastrous 

 efiects of the yellow fever epidemic in the South, the American Public Health 

 Association appointed a committee of seven to urge on President M'Kinley the 

 absolute necessity of a special commission of experts, to be appointed by Congress, 

 to make a thorough study in Havana of the cause and prevention of the disease. 



At the Annual Meeting of the Scarborough Field Naturalists' Society last 

 month, a most gratifying report of the past year's local scientific work was 

 read. The Society is fortunate in possessing at least one member to undertake 

 systematic observations in nearly every gi'oup of the local fauna and flora, and 

 records are carefully kept. 



