256 



NA TURE 



{Jan. i 5) 1885 



according to the plans, will contain rooms for chemical, biological, 

 andjbotanical laboratories, a library and reading room, a handsome 

 assembly room, and recitation rooms. It will be 130 feet long, 

 three stories in height, and constructed of Port Deposit granite 

 stone. Work on it was begun in August, 1879. 



The second building, Merion Hall, contains the dormitories. 

 It is built of Fairmount stone, three stories high, and will be 

 160 feet long, affording accommodation for fifty students and 

 caretakers. The study rooms are to be so arranged that two of 

 the pupils will use one in common, each pupil having a bedroom 

 on either side of the study room. The latter apartments will 

 each have an open fireplace, but the building will be warmed by 

 air heated by steam, and carried through the house under slight 

 pressure from a fan. All rooms occupied by the students are to 

 be ventilated by a main shaft which acts as a chimney for the 

 boiler house, so that a constant current of warm air reaches the 

 rooms, while at the same time the vitiated air is withdrawn. All 

 the bathing and plumbing arrangements have been placed in one 

 wing, constructed with great care, and are ventilated by force 

 ventilation. The dining-room entrance, hall and parlour, are to 

 be appropriately fitted up. 



For the gymnasium the plans provide a brick building, So by 

 74 feet. It will contain a main hall, supplied with the most 

 perfect appliances in use by Dr. Sargent at Harvard College, 

 offices, dressing-room, baths, and an examination room, in which 

 a record of the exercises will be kept. A track, raised nine feet 

 from the floor, and extending around the building on the inside, 

 will also be provided, in order to permit the students to run or 

 walk when inclement weither prevents out-door exercise. The 

 gymnasium will be under the charge of a lady trained by Dr. 

 Sargent, who will be the instructress in light gymnastics. Under 

 her direction all exercises will be carefully regulated to the 

 strength of the students, to insure normal development and avoid 

 all danger of over-exertion. 



The laundry will contain the boilers which will furnish heat 

 and hot water to the other buildings, in addition to the necessary 

 appliances of a laundry. A house is being built on the adjoining 

 lot for the President, and three coinages which are already on the 

 premises are to be used for the Faculty or to accommodate any 

 overflow of students from Merion Hall until other permanent 

 structures like it are built. The plan adopted contemplates four 

 such structures, to hold 160 students. The total cost of the 

 buildings, including construction and furnishing of laboratories, 

 providing for heating and wa'er supply, the purchase, grading, 

 and ornamenting the grounds, a complete system of drainage 

 on the Waring system, and furniture, will probably exceed 

 200,000 dols. 



It is understood that a large number of applications have 

 already been received by the trustees, and many students whose 

 names have not yet been recorded are known to be preparing. The 

 college will be one of strictly high grade, and will have no pre- 

 paratory department. The " group system " of arranging studies 

 in the college course, which is adopted, to some extent, in 

 England, but most perfectly represented in the Johns Hopkins 

 University at Baltimore, is to be used. It secures to the students, 

 it is claimed, a thorough training in the two chief ancient and 

 the modern languages, in mathematics, and in some branches of 

 science, besides instruction in metaphysics, drawing, hygiene, 

 and art. 



Each department will be under the instruction of specialists, 

 and all students will be required to pursue certain prescribed 

 studies. There will be five fellowships to college graduates 

 who have already distinguished themselves in particular branches 

 of study, namely : Greek, English, mathematics, history, and 

 biology. A scholarship of 500 dols. will be offered yearly to a 

 graduate of Bryn Mawr College to enable her to pursue studies 

 in some European university. 



The Trustees, knowing the large expense necessary to procure 

 the best professors, a good library, and a supply of all laboratory 

 appliances required for a college of the best class, have hus- 

 Tjanded the funds placed in their hands for the future use of the 

 institution, and it is said but little of the endowment will have 

 been encroached upon before the college opens. Although some 

 of the Trustees are also managers of Haverford College, " Bryn 

 Mawr" will be an independent institution, and practically a 

 Philadelphia one. 



The Faculty has not yet been perfected, but the Trustees have 

 made the following selections : — Dean of the Faculty and Pro- 

 fessor of English, M. Carey Thomas, Ph.D., University of 

 Zurich; Associate in Botany, Emily L. Gregory, L.B., late in 



charge of the laboratory work of Harvard Annex, and Teacher 

 of Botany in Siuith College ; Associate Professor of Biology, 

 Edmund B. Wilson, Ph.D., Fellow in Biology of Johns Hop- 

 kins University, and late Lecturer on Biology in Williams Col- 

 lege, and Associate Professor of Mathematics ; Charlotte Angus 

 Scott, A.B., Sc.B., University of London, and late Lecturer on 

 Mathematics in Girton and Newnham Colleges. It is expected 

 that all the chief appointments will have been made before the 

 appearance of the college catalogue. 



Dr James E. Rhoades, the President of the college, in 

 speaking of women's colleges a few days since, said: "New 

 England has fro'n an early date given great attention to collegiate 

 education, and has at the present time three colleges for women, 

 beside the Harvard Annex. The States south of New England 

 and west of Pennsylvania need a college to give the desired 

 facilities for higher education to the graduates of girls' schools 

 and high schools. A large part of the teaching in the United 

 States is done by women, who, not having the advantages of 

 men, are obliged to take lower and less remunerative positions." 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 

 The American Journal of Science. December 1S84. — The 

 distribution and origin of Drumlins, by W. M. Davis. The 

 term drumlin is here taken in a generic sense to include any 

 kind of more or less smoothly-rounded hills formed by local 

 accumulatian of glacial drift on a foundation of different geo- 

 logical formation. The subject is treated under five heads : — (1) 

 the place of drumlins in a geographical classification ; (2) ter- 

 minology : (3) general description ; (4) distribution ; (5) origin. 

 — The geological relations and gene-is of the specular iron ores 

 occurring in the Sierra Maestra (Coast Range) of the district of 

 Santiago de Cuba, by James P. Kimball. — A new tantalite 

 locality, by Charles A. Schaeffer. The author describes a 

 mineral from the Etta tin mine, Dakotah, hitherto supposed to 

 be casiterite, but which is shown to be tantalite. The 

 analysis gave the following results : — 



Tantalic oxide 79'°' 



Stannic oxide °'39 



Ferrous oxide &'33 



Manganous oxide I2'I3 



99-86 



— Note on Palaeozoic rocks of Central Texas, by Charles D. 

 Walcott. The results are given of a recent survey of a portion 

 of the Paleozoic area in this region, undertaken chiefly for the 

 purpose of studying the Cambrian section and collecting fossiU 

 from the Texas Potsdam horizon. Besides procuring fresh data 

 on the Potsdam and Silurian sections and faunas, the author 

 determined the true relations of an area hitherto known as 

 Archaean, but which is now referred to the Cambrian. The age 

 of the granite of Barnet County was also determined. — On the 

 sufficiency of terrestrial rotation for the defection of streams, by 

 A. C. Baines. — Chemical affinity; part iii., the existing pro- 

 blem, by John W. Langley. — Peculiar modes of occurrence of 

 gold in Brazil, by Orville A. Derby. A specimen in the Na- 

 tional Museum, Rio de Janeiro, from Ponte Grande, Minas 

 Geraes, shows films of gold on limonite, which the author thinks 

 can scarcely be accounted for except on the hypothesis ot natu- 

 ral deposition from solution. The districts of Campanha and 

 S. Goncalo in the same province afford examples of large 

 auriferous deposits in decomposed gneiss with an almost com- 

 plete absence of veins and of the other usual concomitants of 

 gold. — On colemanite, a new borate of lime, by A. Wendell 

 Jackson. This substance has recently been determined by J. T. 

 Evans, whose analysis gives the formula : 

 2CaO . 3B.Pi. . 5 aq. 

 It differs from pandermite in containing five instead of three 

 molecules of water, but its chief interest lies in its morphological 

 relations. — On the decay of quartzite and the formation of sand, 

 kaolin, and crystallised quartz, by James D. Dana. 



Revue d' Anthropologie, tome viii. fasc. 4, 1884. Paris. 

 — A continuation of M. Mathias Duval's lectures on " Trans- 

 formism," dealing chiefly with the questions of natural selection 

 and survival of the fittest. — Notes on the anatomy of two 

 negroes, by Dr. T. Chudzinski, head of the anatomical depart- 

 ment of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris. — On the " Beni- 

 M'Zab," by Dr. Amat. The writer here gives the results of 



