798 NATURAL SCIENCE. dec. 



Sir Charles Wathen, has generously undertaken to pay outstanding liabilities, on 

 condition that the city accepts and agrees to maintain the museum intact ; and 

 there is thus a good prospect of the unique collection at Bristol becoming once more^ 

 as it was in former years, a leading factor in the progress of Natural Science in the 

 West of England. The Council has the services of one of the most accomplished 

 of Museum Curators, Mr. Edward Wilson, and it will be a real gain to Science if he 

 can be placed in a position to carry out adequately the work that he has hitherto 

 had to attempt under circumstances of extreme difficulty. 



The Brif^hton Herald of November 5 contains the first of a series of articles 

 entitled " Half-hours in the Brighton Museum." The Willett collection of Pottery 

 claims first attention, and is treated in several readable instalments by an expert- 

 This collection, one of the largest and most curious belonging to a private owner in 

 England, includes many rare examples of the inscribed pottery in which a former 

 generation of Englishmen found a vent for expressing their patriotic and domestic 

 sentiments or for celebrating national rejoicings and victories. 



We are glad to note that the Museum at Perth, in Western Australia, is not 

 only growing, but is being more appreciated by the inhabitants of this vast colony 

 Special attention is paid by the Curator, Mr. Bernard H. Woodward, to the natural 

 products of the country, and it is anticipated that large additions will be annually 

 made, if a sufficient grant be voted by the Government. Moreover, as the Aborigines 

 are beginning to make use of European manufactures for the construction of their 

 implements, it becomes increasingly desirable to acquire primitive specimens from 

 those districts where they will soon be unobtainable. 



The Academy of Sciences at Philadelphia has commenced the extension of its 

 museum by the addition of a new wing. There will be four stories and a basement, 

 and the area of the building will measure about 130 feet by 50 feet. 



According to the American Naturalist, materials for a Museum of Ethnology at 

 Chicago are now being collected in South America. 



The removal of Professor H. F. Osborn to New York has infused new life into 

 biological movemen's in that city. In addition to his work as Director of the 

 Biological Institute of Columbia College, he has organised a department of 

 Vertebrate Palaeontology in the American Museum of Natural History ; and on 

 October 17 he presided over a new Biological Section of the New York Academy 

 of Sciences, which he has been mainly instrumental in founding, and which will 

 hold monthly meetings. 



The inaugural " Robert Boyle Lecture," delivered last May before the Oxford 

 University Junior Scientific Club, has now been published. Sir Henry W. Acland 

 has fittingly taken for the subject of this lecture the life of Boyle, whose many-sided 

 studies he speaks of in detail. The value of Boyle's work is thus summarised : " It 

 is probable that the greatest service he did to his country and to mankind, was by 

 kindling in the minds of his contemporaries an enthusiasm for science, a desire to 

 explore and know Nature." 



Natural Science is specially honoured this year by the Royal Society of 

 London in the person of Professor Rudolf Virchow, who receives the Copley Medal 

 for his researches in pathology, pathological anatomy, and prehistoric archaeology. 

 A Royal Medal is awarded to Mr. J. N. Langley in acknowledgment of his 

 researches on secreting glands and on the nervous system. The Darwin Medal is 

 appropriately offered to Sir Joseph Hooker, one of the earliest supporters of the 

 author of " The Origin of Species." The Annual Meeting of the Royal Society is 

 held on November 30, and the Biologists and Geologists nominated for the new 



