414 



NA TURE 



[August 23, 1906 



Colorado Museum, Colorado Springs, U.S.A., which is in 

 connection with a large college recently established there. 

 Before leaving Cape Town, Mr. Sclater completed the 

 " Birds " of his series of the " Fauna of South Africa " 

 by the issue of the fourth volume. It is to be hoped that 

 his successor will be induced to carry on this important 

 work to a conclusion. 



Mr. Michael John Nicoll, who recently returned 

 from accompanying the Earl of Crawford as naturalist 

 during his winter voyage in the Valhalla, R.Y.S., round 

 Africa, has accepted the post of assistant-director of the 

 Zoological Gardens at Giza, near Cairo, and has left 

 England to take up the duties of his appointment. 



The Royal Economic Society is about to inaugurate an 

 annual economic congress to be held in London in the 

 January of each year. The first congress will take place 

 on January 9 and 10, 1907, when it is hoped that many 

 prominent economists, including visitors from foreign 

 countries, will be present. It may be mentioned that 

 \'iscount Goschen, who has been president of the society 

 from its inception in i8go, now resigns that position. 

 The new president is the Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, M.P. 



A COMMITTEE for the furtherance of cancer research has 

 been formed by the Swedish Medical Society under the 

 chairmanship of Prof. Berg. 



We record with much regret the death of Mr. James 

 Dredge, C.M.G. (joint editor with Mr. W. H. Maw of 

 Engineering), which occurred on Wednesday, August 15, 

 at the age of sixty-six years. Mr. Dredge took great 

 interest in the various international exhibitions held both 

 in this country and abroad. He was created a Companion 

 of the Order of St. Michael and St. George for his services 

 as Commissioner-General for Great Britain at the Brussels 

 Exhibition of 1897. 



The death is announced of Prof. S. Tomaselli, of the 

 University of Catania ; of Dr. Alexander Bogdanov, 

 professor of pathology at Odessa ; also of Prof. L^on 

 .\drien Prunier, director of the Pharmacie centrale des 

 Hopitaux, and a member of the Paris Academic de 

 Medecine. 



At the seventy-eighth annual meeting of the Associ- 

 ation of German Men of Science and Physicians, which is 

 to take place at Stuttgart from September 16-22 next, the 

 following addresses will be delivered : — transplantation in 

 surgery, bv Prof. Garr^, of Breslau ; embryonal transplant- 

 ation, bv Dr. Speman ; regeneration and transplantation 

 in the animal kingdom, by Prof. Korschelt, of Marburg. 

 In the medical section a report by Profs. Starling, of 

 London, and Krehl, of Strassburg, will be presented on 

 chemical correlations in the animal organism. 



In addition to the courses of lectures on " Hygiene in 

 its bearing on School Life " and " Food and Meat Inspec- 

 tion," to whicff attention was directed in our issue of 

 .'\ugust 9, the Royal Sanitary Institute has arranged for 

 the following courses : — the forty-second course of lectures 

 for sanitary officers, commencing on September 10 ; the 

 tenth course of practical training for meat inspectors, 

 beginning on September 21 ; and " Sanitary Science as 

 applied to Buildings and Public Works," from 

 September 28. 



The following lectures are announced for delivery at the 

 meeting of the Verband selbstandiger offentlicher 

 Chemiker to be held in Dessau from September 23-25 

 NO. 192 I, VOL. 74] 



next : — the founding of a chemical Reichsanstalt, Dr. 

 Treumann ; the need of reform in the wine laws. Dr. 

 Kayser ; on the radio-activity of the waters of health 

 resorts, Dr. Aschoff ; on the analysis of certain coals, 

 Prof. Dr. Heyer ; on the conditions imposed on industrial 

 chemists when appointed. Dr. Treumann ; modern milk 

 hygiene. Dr. Lenze ; demonstration of an apparatus for 

 photomicrography. Dr. Wilhelm Lenz ; modern methods of 

 lighting. Dr. Thiele ; on the preservation of secrecy of 

 analytical methods. Dr. Vaube! ; investigations of the 

 phosphorus and sulphur compounds used in the manufac- 

 ture of matches, Dr. Becker ; the occurrence of manganese 

 in well water and the determination of the same. Dr. 

 Woy. 



A TUBERCULOSIS museum, to which the public is to be 

 admitted free, will, it is stated in the British Medical 

 Journal, be opened at Darmstadt on August 29. The 

 museum, which is the first of the kind in Germany, is in- 

 tended for the instruction of the people in the nature of 

 the disease and the means of its prevention. After two 

 months the museum will be transferred to some other town, 

 and so on through the whole of the Grand Duchy of Hesse. 



According to Engineering, some interesting experiments 

 have recently been carried out on the military Berlin-Zossen 

 railway line the object of which was to ascertain the 

 value of a new invention to prevent trains from leaving 

 the metals on account of faulty rails, breakages of wheels 

 or axles, or other causes. In order to make the experi- 

 ments as realistic as possible, 2 kilometres of line were 

 given up to the purpose, and on this distance intentional 

 derailments were effected, the experiments naturally being 

 of interest to both the civil and military authorities. The 

 German State Railways suffer, it is said, an annual ex- 

 penditure of 250,000!. through damage done by derail- 

 ments. 



Although the hydrographic appropriation by Congress 

 has been reduced, the investigation of underground waters 

 in the eastern United States is still being conducted by the 

 U.S. Geological Survey, and the work is to be extended 

 later in the season. 



An economic investigation of iron-ore deposits in Utah, 

 Colorado, and the Lake Superior region will, it is stated 

 in Science, be conducted next year by Mr. C. R. Van Hise, 

 of the U.S. Geological Survey. The mapping of the iron 

 ores of the Iron Springs Special quadrangle of southern 

 Utah was completed on July i. A special topographic map 

 on a scale of i : 45,000, with 50-feet contour intervals, has 

 been made of an area of 225 square miles. The ore de- 

 posits themselves were mapped on a still larger scale of 

 250 feet to the inch. The maps and the report on the 

 district will be published during the coming winter. 



The department of vertebrate palseontology of the 

 American Museum of Natural History has, according to 

 Science, no fewer than three expeditions at work this 

 season. Mr. B. Brown is continuing the search for dino- 

 saurs in the Cretaceous beds of Montana, Mr. W. Granger 

 is searching for fossil mammals in the Eocene formations 

 of Wyoming, and Mr. A. Thomson is exploring the later 

 Tertiary formations of South Dakota. 



According to the British Medical Journal, an ingenious 

 apparatus, invented by M. Chaulin, for the destruction of 

 mosquitoes was recently presented to the Paris Academy. 

 It is a simple kind of metallic cage formed of fine chains 

 almost touching, and held rigid by two metallic rings above 



