April 25. 1895] 



NATURE 



613 



the world. M. Bertrand, the Perpetual Secretary of the 

 Academy, is an old student of the school, and among other 

 eminent names included in the list of its alumni are MM. Dar- 

 boux, Joubert, Serret, Hermite, Puiseux, Briol, Bouquet, 

 Giard, Baillaud, Chaive, Floquet, Pellet, Tisserand, Appell, 

 Picard, &c. ; while the teaching staff now contains such men as 

 Goursat, Tannery, Gernez, Dufet, Iloussay, Constantin, Raffy, 

 Violle, Joly, and Wallerant. 



An influential committee has been formed for the erection of 

 a monument to the late Prof. Hermann von Helmholtz, the 

 German Emperor having promised lo.ooo marks and a free site 

 for the purpose. The committee is international and thoroughly 

 representative, as shown by (he names of Berthelot, Blaserna, 

 Boltzmann, Geikie, Holmgren, Kekule, Kelvin, Lippmann, 

 Lubbock, Pictet, Rayleigh, Roscoe, Sidgwick, Siemens, Tail, 

 Thalen, Virchow, Weber, and others among the i8o dis- 

 tinguished men of science forming the committee. Funds will 

 be collected in Germany and in other countries, and may be 

 sent to any member of the committee, or to Messrs. Mendelssohn 

 and Co., Berlin W., Jaegerstrasse 49 and 50. Letters may 

 be sent to Prof. Dr. A. Konig, Berlin N.W. , Flemmingstrasse I. 

 The appeal issued by the committee concludes as follows : 

 "Friends and admirers of Hermann von Helmholt? far and 

 near, unite with us ! Bear witness to the homage paid by science, 

 which knows no frontiers, to one of its heroes ; show your 

 gratitude for the benefits which life has received from his 

 scientific labours, and give expression to the love which his 

 harmonious spirit won wherever he appeared." 



Prof. Huxley's condition during the past week has caused 

 his friends considerable anxiety, but we are glad to learn that a 

 change for the better set in on Monday. 



Dr. John H. Redfield, one of the founders of the American 

 Association for the .A.dvancement of Science, died recently at 

 Philadelphia. 



The Prince of Wales his signified his intention to be present 

 at the celebration of the jubilee of the Royal Agricultural 

 College, Cirencester, on July 25. 



The sixty-seventh meeting of the Society of German 

 Naturalists and Physicians will be held this year at Liibeck, 

 September 16 to 21. The secretaries of the zoological section 

 are already making preparations for this event, and will issue a 

 preliminary programme of communications^and demonstrations 

 early in July. 



The London Geological Field Class will commence their 

 sSries of Saturday afternoon excursions, under the direclion of 

 Prof. H. G. Seeley, F. U.S., ne.'it Saturday, when they will 

 visit Otford and,Eynsford. F>urther particulars can be obtained 

 from the General Secretary, R. Herbert Hentley, 31, Adolphus 

 Road, Brownswood Park, N. 



Mr. Edward Crossley has signified his intention of 

 presenting to the Lick Observatory the 3-foot reflecting 

 telescope, with its dome, which now form part of his private 

 observatory at Halifax. This information comes to us directly 

 from the Lick Observatory, together with an expression of high 

 appreciation of Mr. Crossley 's most generous gift. 



Application.s for appointment to the Medical Research 

 Scholarships of the Grocers' Company must be sent in before 

 the end of this month. The Scholarships are three in number, 

 each of the value of ;£^250, and are open only to British sub- 

 jects; they were instituted by the Company as an encourage- 

 ment to exact research into the nature and prevention of 

 important diseases. 



NO. 1330, VOL. 51] 



At Stevens's sale room on Tuesday, a fine and well-preserved 

 specimen of the Great Auk, from the collection of the late Sir 

 William Milner, was put up to auction. About eighty skins 

 of the bird are known to be in existence, of which twenty-foar 

 are in Great Britain, ten of these being in museums, and 

 fourteen in private hands. The bidding for the specimen 

 offered for sale by Mr. Stevens started at 100 guineas, and 

 went up slowly to 350 guineas ; but as this was lower than the 

 reserve price, the bird did not change owners. A Great Auk's 

 egg, offered at the same sale, reached the price of i8o guineas, 

 while an egg of ^pyornis maximus was sold for 36 guineas. 



A PARTY, consisting of Dr. Geo. Becker, Prof. W. H. Dall.and 

 Mr. Parington, of the U.S. Geological Survey, will leave Wash- 

 ington on May 16 for Alaska, and will be away until September. 

 Congress recently directed an examination of the gold and coal 

 deposits of the territory to be made, and this will be the work 

 of the party ; directed more especially towards an estimate of ' 

 the economic value of the known deposits, rather than toward 

 a search for new ones. 



The new system — the " Systeme fran9ais" — proposed by 

 the French Socitfte d'Encouragement to regulate the pitch of 

 screws, and the metric wire gauge — the " Jauge decimate 

 metrique " — in which the number of a wire is the same as the 

 diameter expressed in tenths of millimetres, have been adopted 

 in the French Navy by the Minister of Marine. The approva 

 thus officially shown to the new scales will greatly assist the 

 Society in its efforts to establish uniform gauges for wires and 

 screw-threads. 



The news that the office of Superintendent of Agriculture, 

 held by Mr. C. A. Barber in the Leeward Islands, has been 

 abolished, and that the Department of Agriculture, as such, no 

 longer exist?, is altogether surprising. The Department was 

 only opened towards the end of 1S91, but, under Mr. Barber's 

 direction, the four botanical stations in connection with it, at 

 Antigua, Dominica, St. Kitts, and Montserrat, have done a large 

 amount of work, which is daily becoming more and more ■ known 

 ?nd appreciated. No agricultural community can afford to be 

 without scientific advice in these days of competition and plant 

 disease. Why the local Legislature should dispense with this ad- 

 vice just when the Superintendent of their Department of Agri- 

 culture had, by incessant stndy of the climatal and economic 

 conditions of the islands, attained the position to give it 

 authoritatively, is quite beyond our comprehension. 



The "Exposition annuelle" of the French Physical 

 Society was held last week. Many new and ingenious pieces 

 of apparatus, for use in all branches of physical investigation 

 and instruction, were on view. Electrical instruments 

 occupied a large share of ihe exhibits, but there were also to 

 be seen new forms of barometers, thermometers, calorimeters, 

 spectroscopes, dynamometers, balances, ani other engines of 

 research. M. Violle exhibited photographs of the electric 

 arc, and MM. Loewy and Puiseux showed their lunar photo- 

 graphs obtained at the Paris Observatory. Useful accessories 

 to micrometers for astronomical telescopes were shown by M. 

 Maurice Hamy. There were also on view, among numerous 

 other things, metals of new compounds prepared by M. 

 Moissan in his electric furn.ice ; a radiometer which turned 

 in the opposite direclion to that of the ordinary form of the 

 instrument ; M. Janssen's long-period meteorograph, designed 

 for the Mont Bl.anc Observatory ; M. Raoul Pictet's 

 apparatus for the experimental study of the critical points of 

 liquids ; and the spectrum of argon. Visitors to the Exhibition 

 must have derived considerable benefit from an inspection of 

 the many physical instruments and devices which were to be 

 seen. 



