i86 



NATURE 



[December 20, 1900 



King Oscar of Sweden and Norway has given a sum of 

 OjOOokr. towards the archaeological researches of Dr. L. Kjell- 

 berg in Asia Minor and the island of Lesbos. 



Dr. E. von Drygalski, leader of the German Antarctic 

 Expedition, has been elected an honorary corresponding member 

 of the Royal Geographical Society. 



Prof. Arthur Thomson, professor of human anatomy in the 

 University of Oxford, has been elected professor of anatomy in 

 the Royal Academy. 



M. Painleve has been elected a member of the section of 

 geometry of the Paris Academy of Sciences in succession to 

 M. Darboux, who has been appointed permanent secretary for 

 the sections of mathematical sciences. 



A School of Forestry has been established in connection with 

 Yale University, under the direction of Prof. Tourney. Its home 

 will be the residence and grounds of the late Prof. Marsh, which 

 he bequeathed to the University for a botanical garden. 



The Botanical Department of the British Museum has recently 

 acquired M. Bescherelle's herbarium of exotic Musci and 

 Hepaticse, consisting of 14,800 specimens of the former and 

 3500 of the latter family. It contains a very large number of 

 type- specimens. 



Prof. B. D. Halsted has been elected president of the 

 Botanical Society of America for the coming year. The Botani- 

 cal Gazette states that an important step has been taken by the 

 Society in appointing a committee to consider the best means of 

 realising the purposes of the Society in the advancement of 

 botanical knowledge. Among other matters the committee will 

 consider the uses to which the accumulating funds of the Society 

 may be put. 



A kinswoman of Faraday has made over to the Browning 

 Settlement a ten-roomed house at East Dulwich, to be used as a 

 home of rest and change for the poor, and to be called the 

 Michael Faraday Home. To fit the Home for permanent use, 

 the sum of 150/. will have to be spent on alterations and repairs. 

 The annual cost of maintenance and hospitality will be at least 

 100/. To meet this outlay an appeal has been made for funds, 

 and it is hoped that men of science will give their support to an 

 object which would have had the sympathy of Faraday, and 

 which will stand as a memorial to him in his native parish. 

 Subscriptions should be forwarded to the Warden, Robert 

 Browning Settlement, Walworth, London, S.E. 



We see in the Athenaeum the announcement of the death of 

 Dr. William King. In 1857, after graduating at Gal way. Dr. 

 King went to Calcutta to join the Geological Survey Depart- 

 ment of India, where he spent thirty-seven years, during the 

 latter six of which period he was Director of the Geological 

 Survey Department of India, having succeeded Dr. Medlicott. 

 During the seven years of his directorship considerable progress 

 was made by the Survey in the prospecting and development of 

 the coal, oil and tin areas of the Punjab, the North-West Pro- 

 vinces and Burma, and in the elucidation of the complicated 

 geological structure of the North-West Himalayan salt range 

 and the Baluchistan formations. 



A Danish expedition, composed of Lieutenant La Corn, 

 leader, MM. Middilbo and Kofoed, physicists, and the artist 

 Count Harald Moltke, left Copenhagen recently for Finland 

 via Christiania, Trondhjem and Vadso with the object of 

 studying the Aurora Borealis. The chief station will be estab- 

 lished at Utsjoki, in North Finland, where the expedition will 

 remain three months. Spectrum and magnetic researches will 

 also be carried out. The expedition is the second of its kind 

 dispatched under the auspices of Dr. Adam Paulsen, director of 

 the Copenhagen Meteorological Ins titute. 

 NO. 1625. VOL. 63] 



Sir John Conroy, Bart., F.R.S., whose death at Rome 

 occurred on December 15, will be missed in the University 

 and city of Oxford. He was educated at Eton and Christ 

 Church, and obtained a First Class in Natural Science in 

 1868. When he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 

 in 1891, he was lecturer in physics and chemistry in Keble 

 College, and an assiduous student of experimental science. 

 Among the subjects of his contributions to science are the 

 dioxides of calcium and strontium, the polarisation of light 

 by crystals of iodine, the light reflected by potassium per- 

 manganate, the distribution of heat in the visible spectrum, 

 and experiments on metallic reflection. 



News has just reached us that Prof. John Gardiner, who 

 directed the department ofnbiology in the University of Colorado 

 at Boulder, Colorado, from 1889 to 1898, died from consump- 

 tion on November 26. Prof. Gardiner was thirty-eight years of 

 age and a graduate of the University of London, and in 1887 he 

 occupied the British Association's table at the Naples Biological 

 Station. He was an enthusiastic student of biology, a man of 

 rare culture in other lines, a fine lecturer, and was prevented 

 from original work only by bodily weakness and the necessities 

 of the large department over which he presided. 



When observations are being made by members of the 

 Antarctic expeditions next year, it is important that as many 

 similar and simultaneous observations shall be recorded iti 

 North Polar regions. Several Arctic expeditions will probably 

 be in the field, and the leader of one of them, Mr. E. B< 

 Baldwin, who has recently arrived in England, is making 

 arrangements to carry on as much scientific work as is practicable 

 for a private expedition. In an interview with Reuter's repre- 

 sentative he stated that as Lieut. Peary and Captain Sverdrup ,> 

 are both in Greenland, his Polar route will probably be by way 

 of Franz Josef Land. The expedition will number at least 

 twenty to twenty-five men, mostly Americans. Two ships will 

 be employed in the expedition, one to return home after the 

 Arctic regions have been entered, and the other to proceed as far 

 north as possible. Both will start at practically jthe same time. 

 These vessels will be of the whaler type,' such as are usually 

 employed in Arctic work. The exact date and point of depar- 

 ture of the expedition will depend upon the developments of the 

 coming spring with regard to Peary and Sverdrup. 



Replying to questions asked by Mr. Seton-Karr in the 

 House of Commons on Thursday last, Viscount Cranborne 

 said that regulations for the preservation of wild animals have 

 been in force for some time in the several African Protectorates 

 administered by the Foreign Office as well as in the Sudan. 

 The obligations imposed by the recent London Convention upon 

 the signatory Powers will not become operative until after the 

 exchange of ratifications, which has not yet taken place. In 

 anticipation, however, steps have been taken to revise the exist- 

 ing regulations in the British Protectorates so as to bring them 

 into strict harmony with the terms of the convention. The 

 game reserves now existing in the several Protectorates are : — 

 In (a) British Central Africa, the elephant marsh reserve and 

 the Shirwa reserve ; in {b) the East Africa Protectorate, the 

 Kenia District ; in (c) Uganda, the Sugota game reserve in the 

 north-east of the Protectorate ; in {d) Somaliland, a large dis- 

 trict defined by an elaborate boundary line described in the 

 regulations. The regulations have the force of law in the Pro- 

 tectorates, and off'enders are dealt with in the Protectorate 

 Courts. It is in contemplation to charge special officers of the 

 Administrations with the duty of watching over the proper 

 observance of the regulations. Under the East African game 

 regulations only the officers permanently stationed at or near 

 the Kenia reserve may be specially authorised to kill game in 

 the reserve. 



