May 19, 1904] 



NA TURE 



59 



NOTES. 



In connection with the assembly of the International 

 Association of Academies next week, the international 

 council of the International Catalogue of Scientific Litera- 

 ture will also meet. The following are the members of 

 this council, and the countries they represent : — Prof. II. E. 

 Armstrong, F.R.S., Great Britain; Prof. H. Poincart!- and 

 Dr. J. Deniker, France; Dr. W. T. Blanford, F.R.S., 

 India; Dr. M. Knudsen, Denmark; Prof. R. Nasini, Italy; 

 Captain H. J. Lyons, R.E., Egypt; Prof. .\. Famintzin, 

 Russia; Prof. Dr. Karl von Than, Hungary; Dr. J. 

 Brunchorst, Norway ; Monsieur D. G. M^taxas, Greece ; 

 Prof. Dr. D. J. Korteweg, Holland; and Prof. A. Liver- 

 sidge, New South Wales. 



The Weights and Measures (Metric System) Bill was 

 read a third time in the House of Lords on Tuesday, and 

 was passed with various amendments proposed by the public 

 departments to the Select Committee to which the Bill was 

 referred. 



Sir William R.^msay has just been elected an honorary 

 member of the " Bunsen Gesellschaft." 



Prof. G. H. Darwin, F.R.S., has been elected a foreign 

 associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. 



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

 G. J. ."Oilman, F.R.S., for more than forty years professor 

 of mathematics in Queen's College, Galway. 



The council of the Geological Society of London has this 

 year awarded the Daniel Pidgeon fund to Mr. Linsdall 

 Richardson, of Cheltenham. 



The Times correspondent at St. John's, Newfoundland, 

 states that Lieut. Peary is chartering the sealer Eagle for 

 a cruise to Littleton Island, from July to September, in 

 preparation for a four years' stay in the Arctic regions, 

 beginning next season. 



A MATHEMATICAL Society of Vienna has been organised, the 

 meetings of which are to be held monthly. The officers are 

 Messrs. G. von Escherich (president), E. Miiller and 

 W. Wirtinger (vice-presidents), A. Lampa (secretary), and 

 A. Gerstel (treasurer). 



A FUND has been started by the Faculty of Sciences and 

 the Engineering School of Rome with the object of raising 

 some kind of memorial to the late Prof. Cremona. The 

 secretary is Signor I. Sonzogno, 5 Piazza San-Pietro in 

 Vincoli, Rome. 



The Royal .Academy of Sciences of Madrid offers for 1905 

 a prize for the best essay written in Spanish or Latin on 

 the following subject : — " A complete study of a special 

 class of singular integrals arising from differential equa- 

 tions for which the values of the derived functions become 

 indeterminate when certain relations exist between the 

 simultaneous values of the principal variables." 



Further particulars have been recently issued regarding 

 the mathematical congress which, as announced last summer 

 in Nature, is to take place at Heidelberg from .August 8 

 to 13. There will be six sections, and in addition five con- 

 ferences presided over by Profs. Wirtinger, Greenhill, 

 Darboux, Segre and Konigsberger. It is proposed to hold 

 exhibitions of mathematical models and of mathematical 

 books. y 



A SERIES of prizes is offered by the mathematical and 

 natural science section of the " Jablonow " Society of 



Leipzig for themes connected with the following subjects : — 

 For 1904, the chemical differentiation of rock magmas ; 

 for 1905, the causes of plasmic currents in vegetable cells ; 

 for 1906, the analogues of Bernouilli's numbers in the study 

 of elliptic functions ; and for 1907, the laws of photoelectric 

 currents. Full particulars are obtainable from the secretary. 

 Prof. Wilhelm Scheibner, S Schletterstrasse, Leipzig. 



A aiuF.F notice of the late Edmund Hess, who died at 

 Heidelberg on December 24, 1903, is given in a note in 

 L'Enseigneiiwnt matliematiqtie, vi., 2. Hess was born at 

 Marburg on February 17, 1843, and studied mathematics 

 there from i860 to 1862. The ne.xt year he went to Heidel- 

 berg, where he studied under Hesse, from whom he acquired 

 his taste for geometry. He subsequently occupied the post 

 of assistant at the Observatory of Gottingen, and in i86b 

 returned to Marburg, where he held office at first as extra- 

 ordinary and later as ordinary professor. His papers deal 

 exclusively with geometry, the subjects including " theory 

 of the division of the sphere" and "contributions to the 

 theory of configurations in space." 



The ninth annual congress of the South-Eastern Union 

 of Scientific Societies will be held at Maidstone on June 

 9-11. Mr. F. ,W. Rudler, the president-elect, will deliver 

 an address on the evening of June 9, and papers will be 

 read on the mornings of June 10 and June 11. There will 

 be several excursions to places of interest to naturalists and 

 archjEologists. The hon. general secretary is Mr. G. .Abbot, 

 33 Upper Grosvenor Road, Tunbridge Wells. 



On Tuesday next, May 24, Mr. H. F. Newall will begin 

 a course of two lectures at the Royal Institution on the 

 solar corona ; on Thursday, May 26, Mr. H. G. Wells will 

 deliver the first of two lectures on literature and the State ; 

 and on Saturday, May 28, Sir Martin Conway will begin a 

 course of two lectures on Spitsbergen in the seventeenth 

 century. The Friday evening discourse on May 27 will be 

 delivered by the Prince of Monaco on the progress of ocean- 

 ography, and on June 3 by Prof. Svante Arrhenius on the 

 development of the theory of electrolytic dissociation. 



A CORRESPONDENT directs our attention to a singula! 

 mistake of dates in Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Auto- 

 biography." Referring to his visit to Montreal in 1882, Mr. 

 Spe^ncer states (vol. ii. p. 392) :— " The meeting of the British 

 Association had ended before our arrival." The meeting 

 of the British Association in Montreal was in 1884, so this 

 was probably a meeting of the American Association for the 

 .Advancement of Science which Spencer refers to. This 

 conjecture appears to be confirmed on p. 384, where in a 

 letter to Prof. Youmans he refers to the possibility of attend- 

 ing the meeting of the association at Montreal and support- 

 ing Prof. A'oumans in his position of chairman of the Com- 

 mittee of Science Teaching. ■ 



During the anniversary meeting of the Royal Geographical 

 Society on Monday, the Royal medals for the encouragement 

 of geographical science and discovery were presented ; the 

 Founder's medal to Sir Harry H. Johnston, for his ex- 

 plorations and investigations in Africa, and the Patron's 

 medal to Commander Robert F. Scott, R.N., for his con- 

 duct of the National Antarctic Expedition, and especially 

 for his sledge journey to 82° 17' S. The following other 

 awards were also made :— the Murchison grant for 1904 to 

 Lieut. Colbeck, for his services to the society while in com- 

 mand of the relief expeditions ; the Cuthbert Peek grant foi 

 1904 to Don Juan Villalta, for important geographical dis- 



NO. T803. VOL 70] 



