May 30, 1872] 



NATURE 



89 



dered to geogiaphy in the publication of his three great works — 

 "A Mission to the Court of Ava," "Cathay, and the Way 

 Thither," and "Marco Polo." The Patron's or Victoria Medal 

 was personally presented to Mr. Robert Berkeley Shaw, for his 

 journeys in Kristern Turkestan, and for his extensive series of 

 astronomical and hypsometrical observations, which have enabled 

 us to fix the longitude of Yarkand, and have given us, for the 

 first time, the basis of a new delineation of the countries between 

 Leh and Kashgar. A gold watch was also awarded to Lieut. 

 G. C. Musters, R.N. (now travelling in America, and repre- 

 sented at the meeting by his brother), for his adventurous journey 

 in Patagonia, through 960 miles of latitude, of which 780 were 

 previously unknown to Europeans ; and the sum of 25/. to Karl 

 Mauch, in acknowledgment of the zeal and ability with which 

 he has devoted himself for a series of years to the exploration 

 of .Soiith-Kaitcrn Afiica. Mr. .Shaw, who was addressed by the 

 gallant president as "the hero of the hour," was loudly cheered 

 Ly the meeting when he briefly acknowledged the honour paid 

 to him. The annual geographical medals offered by the .Society 

 to the chief public schools were presented to the following suc- 

 cessful competitors : — Physical Geography : Gold medal, S. E. 

 .Spring-Kice, E on College ; bron/e medal, A. S. Butler, Liver- 

 pool College. Political Geography : Gold Medal, W. G. 

 Colllngwood, Liverpool College ; bronze medal, W. C. Graham, 

 Eton College. The president. Sir Henry Rawlinson, K. C.B., 

 then delivered his anniversary address, which was chiefly occu- 

 pied by tributes to disunguished members who have died during 

 the year, and to a statement of the most recent information re- 

 specting the Livingstone Starch Expedition. 



The President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers has issued 

 invitations for a conversazioitc, to be held in Lord Lindsay's 

 Laboratory on June 6, at 9 P. M. 



At the meeting of the French Academy of .Sciences on May 

 20, M. Tresci was elected a member of the section of Mechanics 

 in the room of M. Combes, decea ed. 



Tiir: Dutch Society of .Sciences in Haarlem has awarded the 

 great gold Boerhaave Medal to Mr. H. C. Sorby, F. R. S., and 

 elected him a foreign member. This medal, of the gold value of 

 500 gulden (about forty guineas), has been established three 

 years, and is to be given away every two years to those who during 

 the last twenty years have made themselves particularly meri- 

 torious in diflercnt departments of Science, according to a 

 fixed rotation, and this year was given for the branch of 

 minei-alogy and geology. 



At the last meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Prof. 

 Turner was presented with the Neill prize and gold medal for 

 the triennial period ending 1S71, for h's papei-s on the " Great 

 Firmer Whale," and on the "Gravid Uterus and the Arrange- 

 ment of the Fojtal Membrane in the Cetacea." The Keith prize, 

 for the biennial period ending May 1S71, was awarded to Prof. 

 Jas. Clerk Maxwell, F.R.S., for his paper "On Figures, 

 Frames, and Diagrams of Forces." 



Thi-; Medical Times and GazMe states th.at M. Jules Simon, 

 the Minister of Public Instruction in France, has accepted in 

 principle the creation of a Faculty of Medicine at Bordeaux to 

 replace that of Strasburg, and that a commission has been ap- 

 pointed to report upon the project in question. It is also in 

 contemplation to establish a School of Medicine and a School 

 of Pharmacy at Lyons. 



The Rr^'iie Seicntifiquc of Jlay iSth gives an account of the 

 inauguration of the German University of Strasburg, with an 

 interesting sketch of the history of the university under its 

 original German rule, and subsequently to its incorporation into 

 the French En-pire by Napoleon I. 



Mr. F1.0WEH, the Professor of Anatomy at the Royal College 



of Sur-geons, London, is anxious to collect and exhibit in the 

 Museum of the Collegea complete set of skulls of all the varieties 

 of the dog. The collection will be of great value as bearing on 

 the question of the variability of the skeleton in domesticated 

 varieties of the same species. 



The following excursions h.ave been arranged by the Geologists' 

 Association to t.ike place in June : — Excursion to Guildford, 

 Saturday, June i. Directors:, Prof. T. Rupert Jones, and Mr. C. 

 J. A. Meyer. Upon arrival at Guildford the members will pro- 

 ceed to inspect the very instructive exposure of the Chalk and 

 Lower Greensand in the neighbourhood of Guildford. The 

 physiography of the district is also extremely interesting, and is 

 well seen from several elevations which will be visited. Excur- 

 sion to Bromley and Chiselhurst, Saturday, June 15, Director, 

 Mr. J. W. Ilott. Leave Charing Cross for Shortlands Station. 

 Visit the waterworks at Shortlands, and inspect section of well. 

 Walk along railway to Bromley, and examine five sections of the 

 Woolwich and Reading .Series in the Palace Park and at the 

 Brick Works. Walk through Sundridge Park, and inspect 

 Sections of .Shell Beds. Subsequently visit the Chalk Caves of 

 Camden Park, and return from Chislehur'st Station. Excursion 

 to Hendon and Finchley, Saturday, June 22, Director, Dr. Ilemy 

 Hicks. On arrival at Hendon Station proceed, under the 

 guidance of Dr. Hicks, to inspect the Sections of the Glicial 

 Drift in the neighbourhood of Hendon and Finchley. Return 

 from Finchley Station. The long excursion of the session will 

 be to Ludlow and the Longmynds in July. 



Dr. Stimpson, the eminent director of the Chicago Academy 

 of Sciences, has been engaged during the p.ast winter in prose- 

 cuting deep-sea explorations in Florida. He first accompanied 

 the United States Coast Survey steamer Bibh, when making 

 soundings between Cuba and Yucatan for a submarine cable, but 

 found the sea bottom very poor in animal life. We have pre- 

 viously mentioned that the bottom temperature in the deepest 

 water was about 39"5° F., which may possibly account for the 

 scanty fauna. The bottom consisted of sand and Globigerinx- 

 mixed, in which scarcely anything occurred but shells, mostly 

 dead. Some of the species were identical with those obtained by 

 Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys at a similar depth off the European coast. On 

 their way back from the cable work, the expedition made one 

 haul of the dredge off the Cuban coast, near Havana, in 250 

 fathoms water, and obtained a superb specimen of the very rare 

 renlacyinus Caput MednsiT, the first ever obtained so near the 

 American coast, and perhaps hardly represented as yet in any of the 

 museums. Alter returning to Key West the doctor took charge 

 of the dredging on board the Coast Survey steamer Bac/u; but 

 ill-health prevented his prosecuting this to any extent. 



Harper's Weekly states that Prof. J. D. Whitney, the accom- 

 plished State Geologist of California, has undertaken to collect 

 the facts in regard to the late earthquake, and has proceeded, 

 with this object to Inyo County, the centre of its most active 

 manifestation. As. Prof. Whitney has made a specialty of the 

 study of earthquakes and the accompanying and resultant phe- 

 nomena, we have no doubt that much light will be thrown upon 

 this interesting topic. 



With reference to the connection between electricity and 

 earthquakes, the Pall Mall Gazette quotes from a Californian 

 paper, the Inyo Independent, the following curious statements 

 respecting the prevalence of electrical phenomena at the time of 

 the recent earthquake in that State : — "A few days after the big 

 shock, so called, at Cerro Gardo, very loud thunder was heard 

 during a violent snowstorm. With the exception of the snow, 

 the same thing occurred here, and perhaps at other places in 

 the valley. This is remarkable, because almost unprecedented. 

 Immediately following the great shock, men whose judgment and 



