350 
WE learn that the University of St. Andrews has conferred 
the degree of LL.D. on Mr. E. B. Tylor, author of “ Primitive 
Culture.” 
THE Royal Commission for Scientific Education and the Ad- 
vancement of Science still continue their sittings. 
At the general monthly meeting of the Royal Institution this 
week at which Prof. Tyndall was present for the first time since 
his return from America, a resolution was unanimously adopted 
congratulating the Professor upon his safe arrival in England, 
expressing satisfaction that the people of the United States had 
shared in the advantages of his teaching, cordially welcoming 
him on his return to his own scientific home, and wishing him 
continued health and prosperity. Prof. Tyndall was also thanked 
for his generous gift to the Institution of the splendid and 
extensive apparatus employed by him in his lect ures in America, 
and congratulated on the liberal spirit, and the love of science, 
which has led him to appropriate the profits of his lectures in 
the United States to the establishment of a fund to assist the 
scientific studies of young Americans in Europe. 
Dr. PETERMANN has received news from Africa that Mikluchs 
Maclay, the Russian Traveller who was believed to be dead, is 
alive and well in New Guinea. 
PHYSICAL science in America has experienced a great loss in 
the death, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, of Prof James 
Henry Coffin, of Lafayette College, this sad event taking place 
on the 6th of February. Prof. Coffin was a native of Massa- 
chusetts, and for a time a professor in Williams College, where 
he planned the construction of Greylock Observatory on Saddle 
Mountain. He became a member of the faculty of Lafayette 
College in 1846, where he has since filled the chair of mathe- 
matics and astronomy. Prof. Coffin is best known from his 
treatise on the ‘‘ Winds of the Northern Hemisphere,” published 
by the Smithsonian Institution in 1851. At the time of his death 
he was engaged in a second edition of this work, brought down 
to the present day, and extended so as to embrace the entire 
globe. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. 
It is quite a curious coincidence that Captain Maury and Prof. 
Coffin, who have given so much attention to the subjects of 
atmospheric currents, should have died within a week of each 
other, and at the same age. 
WHEN is the foundation-stone of our grand new Natural 
History Museum to be laid? Js Government waiting for the 
advent of fine weather in order that the ceremony may be as 
auspicious ‘and imposing as possible? We can hardly believe 
the current gossip that the fiscal authorities of the country have 
quietly retired the thousands said to. have been voted for the 
purpose, in order that a saving might be effected in their ex- 
penditure, and a handsome surplus be vaunted of in the forth- 
coming budget. Meanwhile see what our young, energetic, long- 
headed cousins on theother side are doing. Anew Natural History 
Museum is about to be erected in New York 800 feet 
long by 600 wide, which will be the largest building in 
America. 100,000/, was voted last winter by the legislature to 
commence it, and 200 men are already blasting for its founda- 
tions. It is eventually to cost 2,000,000/. sterling, and fifteen 
years will be occupied in its construction. This great building 
is to cover fifteen acres of ground, and is to be situated on 
Montallan Square, facing Eighth Avenue and Central Park. 
The front portion is to be finished directly, and the back portion 
is to be finished from time to time as needed, and as appropria- 
tions are made for it. The material is to be granite, The 
building is to be four stories high, with students’ rooms in the 
upper story, and rooms and shelves for specimens illustrating | 
natural history, zoology, botany, and mineralogy, on the ground 
on’ 
NATURE 
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floors. The architecture of the building is to be a kind of 
French Renaissance, similar to the Luxembourg or the buildings 
around Fontainebleau. : 
A MAGNIFICENT present of Peruvian skulls has lately been 
received by the Anthropological Institute from Consul Hutchin- 
son of Callao. This highly instructiwe series consists of 150 
specimens dug out--not gathered from the surface—of the old 
aboriginal burying grounds of Pasamayo and of Ancon, 20 and 
30 miles north, and from Cerso del Oro about 100 miles south 
of Callao. Twenty-four of these were taken by the Consul 
himself from the Huacas of Ancon, and are probably those of 
Chinchas or perhaps Aymaras. We recommend all anthropo- 
logists to take the opportunity now afforded for a few days, of 
visiting the collection which may be seen daily from 12 to 4at 
the rooms of the Institute. It is expected that the President 
(Prof. Busk) and Dr. Barnard Davis will each contribute notes 
on the more remarkable of the skulls at the meeting to be held 
on the 18th inst. 
Pror. VAN DER SUNDE BAKHUYZEN has been appointed to 
the directorship of the Leyden Observatory, the head-quarters of 
Dutch astronomy, as successor to the late Prof. Kaiser, whose 
death we noticed in NATURE, vol. vi. p. 354. Prof. Bakhuyzen 
was a pupil of Kaiser’s. 
WE hope shortly to give a brief notice of some recent works 
on the Echinoderms, but in the meanwhile it may be well to 
mention that the following important contributions to our 
knowledge of this group have within the last few weeks been 
published. (1) Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Com- 
parative Zoology at Harvard College. No. vii.—Revision of 
the Echini; parts 1 arid 2 with forty-nine plates. Part 1 
contains Introduction, Bibliography, Nomenclature, Chrono- 
logical List, Synonymy, Geographical Distribution; Part 2 
contains Echini of the eastern coast of the United States. 
(2) ‘* Ophiuridarum novarum vel minus cognitarum descriptiones 
non nullz,” by Dr. C. Liitken. In this there is a most inter- 
esting chapter on spontaneous division in star-fishes. (3) On 
the Ophiuroids collected by Dr. Goés in the Josephine Expe- 
dition, with a Conspectus generum Ophiodermatidarum, by 
A. Ljungman. (4) A modest catalogue of the Echinodermata of 
New Zealand, with diagnoses of the species, by Captai™ F yw. 
Hutton. The first memoir in this list will mark an ea 
study of the Echini. 
Pror. Hyatt, of Cambridge, Mass., by means of sections of 
the central spirals of Ammonites and Goniatites, has been able 
to obtain some valuable results on the subject of the Embry- 
ology of Fossil Cephalopods. He finds that the shell in its first 
stage is represented by a globular sac, which is not retained in 
Nautilus. Into this sac opens the first whorl of the shell, and 
the others are coiled round it. Prof, Hyatt has endeavoured to 
prove that the series of forms, so well known as depending on 
the amount of coiling or uncoiling of an elongated cone, is 
epitomised in the life of the individual Nautilus or Ammonite, 
the young being at first uncoiled, and the different degrees of 
coiling up finding a permanent expression in the genera of 
Ammonitide. 
ORNITHOLOGISTs will be glad to hear that a new Indian 
ornithological journal entitled Svray Feathers, has just been 
started by Mr. Allen Hume, and published at Calcutta. The 
introductory number contains the first of a series of articles by 
the Editor, on the birds of Sindh, which will be welcomed by 
many. It also includes the first draught of a ‘‘ Conspectus of 
the Avifauna of India and its dependencies,” now in course of 
publication. 
THE discovery of the African money cowrie (Cypreamoneta) 
in the barrow graves of Pomerania, in 1868, has had the effect of 
exciting much speculation among archzologists, as to the mode 
(Mar. 6, 1873 bs 
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