APRIL 22, 1915] 

NATURE 
2113 

AN International Engineering Congress will be held 
during the week September 20-25 next, at San Fran- 
cisco, under the presidency of Colonel G. W. Goethals, 
chairman and chief engineer of the Isthmian Canal 
Commission, and under the auspices of the leading 
American technical and scientific societies. Applica- 
tions for further information should be addressed to 
Mr. W. A. Cattell, secretary-treasurer, Foxcroft Build- 
ing, San Francisco, U.S.A., from whom circulars and 
reply forms may be obtained. 
Tue Christiania correspondent of the Morning Post 
announces the death of Prof. G. Gustafson, professor 
of Norwegian archeology in the University of Chris- 
tiania. Prof. Gustafson was born at Gotland, Sweden, 
in 1853, and went to Norway in 1889 as keeper of the 
antiquarian section of the Museum at Bergen. He 
_was appointed in 1900 professor of archeology at the 
University of Christiania, where he reorganised the 
archeological and prehistoric museum and conducted 
numerous excavations. 
Ar a special meeting of the Conchological. Society 
held at the University of Manchester in lieu of the 
ordinary February meeting, an illuminated.address was 
presented to Mr. J. W. Taylor on attaining his seven- 
tieth birthday. The address” directs attention to the 
fact that it is forty-one years ago since Mr. Taylor 
undertook the publication of the Quarterly Journal of 
Conchology, which later led to the inauguration of 
the Conchological Society. Mr. Taylor’s great work 
has been the ‘‘Monograph of the Land and Fresh- 
water Mollusca of the British Isles,’ of which three 
volumes are now completed. 
We learn from the British Medical Journal that Dr. 
S. von: Prowazek, director of the department of proto- 
zoology in the Institute of Marine and Tropical 
-Diseases at Hamburg, has died at Lima of typhus 
fever contracted in the course of a research on the 
pathology of that disease. He was thirty-nine years 
of age, a native of Austria, and studied under Ehrlich, 
Hertwig, and Schaudinn. We notice also the 
announcement of the death of another worker in the 
field of tropical diseases, namely, Lieut.-Col. W. S. 
Harrison, formerly assistant-professor of pathology at 
the Royal Army Medical College. Lieut.-Col. Harri- 
son was only forty-three years of age; and he appears 
to have contracted the disease from which he died on 
April 12 during research work in connection with 
tropical diseases in India and Jamaica. 
Tue annual meeting of the Iron and Steel Insti- 
tute will be held at the Institution of Civil Engineers 
on May 13 and 14. The Bessemer gold medal for 
1915, which has been awarded to Mr. Pierre Martin, 
formerly of Sireuil, near Paris, will be received on 
his behalf by M. Paul Cambon, the French Ambassa- 
dor, during the first meeting, and in the afternoon 
of the same day Prof. Hubert, of Liege University, 
will lecture on large gas engines. During the morn- 
ing of the second day the Andrew Carnegie gold 
medal for 1914 will be presented to Mr. E. Nus- 
baumer, of Paris, and the award of research scholar- 
ships for the current year will be announced. Papers 
will be read and discussed on both days. The council 
NO. 2373, VOL. 95| 


of the institute has decided on account of the war 
that it will be inadvisable to hold the annual dinner 
this year. It has been decided provisionally that the 
autumn meeting of the institute shall be held in Lon- 
don during the week ending September 25. 
Ir is proposed to place a bust of Sir “Archibald 
Geikie in. the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn 
Street, where there are already busts of all previous 
occupants of the post of Director-General of the Geo- 
logical Survey and of the museum, as~ well as of 
several other distinguished geologists. Sir Archibald 
Geikie was connected with the Geological Survey for 
nearly forty-six years, during nineteen of which he 
was Director-General. A committee representative of 
the universities and the principal scientific institutions 
and societies of the United Kingdom has been formed 
to carry out the proposal. It is estimated that the 
cost of a bust and of a replica to be presented to Sir 
Archibald Geikie will be between 4gool. and sool.; 
and the committee invites subscriptions towards this 
sum. There should be no difficulty in securing the 
amount required for this modest form of memorial 
of a geologist of world-wide distinction, who was con- 
nected for so many years with the institution in 
which the bust is to be placed. Contributions for the 
fund should be made to the honorary treasurer, Mr. 
J. A. Howe, curator of the Museum of Practical 
Geology, Jermyn Street, S.W. 
THE South African Institute for Medical Research 
has issued a valuable monograph, “ Anthropological 
Notes on Bantu Natives from Portuguese East 
Africa,” prepared by Mr. C. D. Maynard, statistician 
and clinician to the institute, and Dr. G. A. Turner, 
medical officer to the Witwatersrand Native Labour 
Association, who have had excellent opportunities for 
studying these people. The paper supplies an elaborate 
series of measurements of this very mixed race— 
stature, brain weight, skull thickness, cephalic and 
cranial indices, spleen, liver, and kidney weights. The 
correlation of stature and brain weight is found to 
be only partially established, and the Bantu cerebrum 
appears to be rather lighter in relation to stature than 
that of the European. The current impression that 
the native’s skull is thicker than that of the European 
is found to be incorrect. The article is provided with 
a useful bibliography of the subject. 
THe Smithsonian Institution has just issued an 
account, by Dr. J. W. Fewkes, of a collection of 
beautiful pottery from the Mimbres Valley of New 
Mexico, dating back to prehistotic times. This is the 
first collection received by the museum from _ this 
valley, and this type of pottery is unrepresented in 
other collections. Its importance lies in the fact that 
a comparatively large number of specimens have human 
or other figures painted upon them, and that they 
resemble those from Casas Grandes in Mexico. An 
‘interesting and significant custom of these péople is 
that they buried their dead in urns, under the floors 
of their houses in a sitting posture, with a bowl 
inverted: over the head like a cap, or, when, the. body 
is extended, over the face. Such. bowls have always 
