372 



NATURE 



[August i8, 1898 



importance of the matter ; but it was not until the British 

 Association appointed a Committee consisting of Prof. E. E. 

 Prince (Ottawa), Chairman ; Prof. Penhallow (Montreal), Secre- 

 tary ; and Prof. A. B. MacuUum (Toronto), Prof. John 

 Macoun (Ottawa), Prof. Wesley Mills (Montreal), Prof. E. 

 W. MacBride (Montreal), and Dr. W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 

 that active steps were taken to carry cut the scheme. An 

 influential deputation waited upon the Hon. Sir Louis Davies, 

 Minister of Marine and Fisheries, in April last, and during the 

 recent session of the Canadian Parliament a vote of 3000/. 

 was practically sanctioned, \^ool. being granted for the year 

 1898-99. A Board of Management has been chosen as follows : 

 Prof. E. E. Prince (nominated by Sir Louis Davies to represent 

 the Department of Marine and Fisheries) to act as Director, 

 Profs. Penhallow, MacBride (McGill University), Ramsey 

 Wright (Toronto University), L. H. Bailey (New Brunswick 

 University), Rev. F. A. Huart (Laval University, Quebec), 

 and members from Queen's University, Kingston and Dalhousie 

 University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. 



In the death, on August 7, of Prof James Hall, of Albany, 

 the United States loses its most distinguished geologist at the 

 ripe age of eighty-seven. Born at Hingham, Massachusetts, on 

 September 12, 181 1, James Hall became attached to the study 

 of natural history in early life, and gained much instruction 

 at the Polytechnic Institute at Troy. In 1836 he was appointed 

 one of the geologists on the Cadastral Survey of the State of 

 New York, and was charged later on with the palseontological 

 work. Eventually he became State Geologist and Director of the 

 Museum of Natural History at Albany. His published papers 

 date from 1836, and he is the author of numerous reports on 

 •the geology and palaeontology of various portions of the United 

 States and Canada. His chief work has been the description 

 of the invertebrate fossils of New York, a work comprising 

 ■eight quarto volumes published 1847-94. Forty years ago he 

 was awarded the WoUaston Medal by the Council of the Geo- 

 iogical Society of London, and it was then pointed out how he 

 had shown that the organic remains of the earliest rocks in 

 America bore strong resemblance to those of this country. Ten 

 years previously (1848), he had been elected a Foreign Member 

 of the same Society. Prof. Hall was a man of great energy and 

 ■untiring industry, and only last year he journeyed as far as St. 

 Petersburg to take part in the meeting of the International 

 Geological Congress. 



An appeal which should be given the active and generous 

 support of the scientific world has been made by Dr. F. T. 

 Bond, of Gloucester, Secretary of the Jenner Society. The 

 Vaccination Bill, which received the Royal Assent on Friday 

 last, makes it incumbent upon those who believe in vaccination 

 to establish an organisation which will systematically defend it 

 against the assaults of anti-vaccinatists. " It was to carry on 

 this work" (explains Dr. Bond) "that the Jenner Society was 

 ■established more than two years ago, in the year of the Jenner 

 centenary, both as a memorial of that great investigator and as 

 a means of meeting the agitation against vaccination which the 

 Anti-Vaccination League had for so many years been, without 

 opposition, carrying on. During that time the Society has dis- 

 tributed a large amount of literature ; it has procured the 

 insertion in newspapers in all parts of the country of some 

 liundreds of articles and letters in reply to the correspondents 

 whom the Anti- Vaccination League maintains to disseminate 

 its views ; it has organised two important manifestoes on the 

 subject of vaccination, one from the medical officers of health of 

 the country, and the other from the county of Gloucester, and 

 it has done its best to promote the emendation of the Vaccina- 

 tion Bill. Want of funds alone restricts its efforts. It has a 

 NO. 1503, VOL. 58] 



large amount of instructive material ready for publication and 

 circulation, which it cannot bring forward for want of means, 

 and if it had not been for the liberality of the representatives of 

 the medical profession it could not have carried on its work at 

 all. If that work is to be maintained and extended, as it ought 

 to be, the non-medical public must support it with at least as 

 much liberality as the opponents of vaccination have hitherto 

 subsidised the Anti- Vaccination League." It is to be hoped 

 that this appeal will meet with every encouragement, so that 

 the Society shall be able to make its operations felt over an 

 extensive field. 



The fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science will be held next 

 week at Boston. The meeting promises to be a very successful 

 one, and a large number of papers have been received for read- 

 ing in the various sections. The general programme has already 

 been described in Nature (July 7), but a few new items may be 

 referred to here. In the Section of Chemistry the papers will 

 be taken in groups as follows : — Analytical Chemistry, led by 

 Dr. P. De P. Rickctts, Columbia University ; Teaching of 

 Chemistry, Dr. F. P. Venable, University of North Carolina ; 

 Inorganic Chemistry, led by Dr. H. L. Wells, Yale University ; 

 Organic Chemistry, Dr. Ira Remsen, Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity ; Physical Chemistry, Dr. T. W. Richards, Harvard 

 University ; Physiological Chemistry, led by Dr. E. E. Smith, 

 New York ; Agricultural Chemistry, led by Dr. H. A. Weber, 

 Ohio University ; Technical Chemistry, Dr. N. W. Lord, 

 Ohio State University. The Section of Mathematics and 

 Astronomy is to be favoured with the following reports on recent 

 progress (accompanied with statements of some of the " stand- 

 ing problems"), prepared on the special invitation of the officers 

 and committee, " with a view to obtaining at this anniversary 

 meeting such a survey of the field as may lead to a possible co- 

 operation of eff"ort " : Report on the recent progress in the 

 dynamics of solids and fluids, by Dr. Ernest W. Brown ; 

 report on theory of invariants — the chief contributions of a 

 decade, by Prof. Henry S. White ; Report on the recent 

 progress in the mathematical theory of electricity and mag- 

 netism, by Prof. Arthur G. Webster; Report on the modern 

 group-theory, by Dr. G. A. Miller ; meteorology from a 

 mathematical and physical point of view, by Prof Cleveland 

 Abbe. There will be several joint meetings of .sections for the 

 discussion of subjects of mutual interest, and every effort is 

 being made to make the meeting worthily commemorate the 

 Association's jubilee, and at the same time advance the interests 

 of science in the United States. 



The retirement of Prof. J. R. Eastman, of the United States 

 Naval Observatory, is announced in Science. Prof. Eastman 

 has been continuously connected with the observatory since 

 1862. 



The death is announced of M. J. M. Moniz, known by his 

 investigations of the natural history of Madeira, where he died 

 on July II at the age of sixty-six. 



Dr. William Pepper, of Philadelphia, the author of many 

 works on medical and other scientific subjects, died a few days 

 ago. Dr. Pepper was prominent in many of the public institu- 

 tions in Philadelphia, and did much to assist scientific, educational 

 and medical progress in that city. 



We regret to see the announcement of the death of Mr. 

 J. A. R. Newlands, to whom belongs the credit of the discovery 

 of the periodic relations between the atomic weights of the 

 elements. In the year 1887 Mr. Newlands was awarded the 

 Davy Medal of the Royal Society in recognition of his work. 



