224 
NATURE 
[May 2, 1912 
to talse effect at the end of the present academic year. 
He succeeded the late Dr. Daniel Coit Gilman, the 
first president of the University, in 1g02. Dr. 
Remsen will retain the chair of chemistry, which 
he has held since 1876, and hopes to find time to 
return to research work. In his letter to the board 
of trustees, he points out that the University is con- 
fronted by new problems, and urges that the policies 
to deal with them should be entrusted to someone 
who has ‘ta reasonable expectation of a long term 
of service.”’ 
Tue death is reported, at Beguio, in the Philip- 
pines, of Dr. Paul Caspar Freer, at the age of fifty. 
He was a graduate in medicine of the Rush Medical 
College, Chicago, and took the Ph.D. of Munich in 
1887. After spending a short time as assistant to 
Dr. Perkin, at Owens College, Manchester, he 
joined the staff of Tufts College, Massachusetts. 
From 1889 to 1903 he was professor of general chem- 
istry at the University of Michigan. He then went 
to Manila as superintendent of the Government 
laboratories there, and in 1905 was appointed director | 
of the Bureau of Science for the Philippine Islands. 
He was the editor of The Philippine Journal of 
Science, and the author of various chemical text- | 
books and monographs. He had been mentioned 
recently as a possible successor to Dr. Wiley as chief | 
of the Bureau of Chemistry at Washington. 
THE council of the Association des Ingénieurs | 
électriciens sortis de l’Institut électrotechnique Monte- 
fiore has circulated the conditions of award of the 
prize known as the Fondation George Montefiore. 
The prize represents the accumulated interest at 3 per 
cent. on a capital of 6o000l., and is awarded every | 
three years for the best original work on the scien- | 
tific advancement and progress in the technical appli- 
cations of electricity in all its branches. The prize 
was awarded for the first time in 1911, and will be 
offered again in 1914. The last date for receiving 
competing works is March 31, 1914, and they should 
be addressed to M. le Secrétaire-archiviste de la 
Fondation George Montefiore, l’hétel de 1’Associa- 
tion, rue St-Gilles, 31, Liége, Belgium. 
A vERY promising career has been ended prema- 
turely by the accidental death of Mr. George Borup, 
who was drowned in Long Island Sound a few days | 
ago through the upsetting of acanoe. As announced | 
in last week’s Nature, Mr. Borup was to be one of | 
the leaders of the expedition which will shortly set 
out to reach and map Crocker Land, in the north 
polar seas. He was assistant curator of geology in 
the American Museum of Natural History, and was 
well known by his work with Admiral Peary in the 
expedition to the north pole, and his book “A 
Tenderfoot with Peary.’’ During the past two and a 
half years he had been devoting his whole attention 
to studies in the field and at Yale to fit him 
thoroughly for scientific geological and geographical 
exploration. He took up geographical work seriously 
and from a scientific point of view; and it is with 
regret that we have to announce the loss of a life 
from which many years of valuable work were | 
anticipated. | 
NO. 2218, VOL. 89| 
| 0-09 in. 
| museums 
APRIL was almost rainless over the south-east of 
England, and without doubt in a few isolated posi- 
tions there was absolutely no rain throughout the 
month. At Greenwich the only rain measured is 
0-02 in. on April 9, and with the exception of 0-07 in. 
on March 31, this is the only rain since March 23. 
The monthly records of rain at Greenwich from 1815 
fail to show any month with so small an amount of 
rain. The previous smallest amounts are in July, 
1821, 0-04 in., and in February, 1891, 0-05 in. The 
total rainfall in April has only twice fallen below 
OI in., these being in 1817, 0-06 in., and in 18655,. 
In the memorable spring drought of 1893 
the rainfall for April was o-12 in. The duration of 
bright sunshine at Greenwich for April was 225 
hours, which is 85 hours more than the average of 
the past thirty years, but it is 25 hours less than 
the duration of sunshine in April, 1909. The mean 
temperature for April was 49-7°, which is 1-6° in 
excess of the average; and on three days, from April 
19 to 21, the sheltered thermometer rose to 70° or 
above. The temperature was generally lower 
_ towards the end of the month, due to the setting in 
of a northerly and north-easterly wind. The aggre- 
¥ 
gate rainfall for April was only o-o2 in. at Oxford, - 
o14 in. at both Dover and Shields, o-19 in. at 
Clacton-on-Sea, 0-20 in. at Nottingham, and 0-25 in. 
at Bath. The most recent summary of the weather 
_ issued by the Meteorological Office shows that for 
the eight weeks of spring ending April 27 the aggre- 
| gate rainfall is in excess of the average in all dis- 
tricts, except in the east of Scotland and in the east 
and north-east of England, whilst the rainfall since 
the commencement of the year is everywhere in 
excess of the average, except in the north and east 
of Scotland. 
A CONFERENCE of members of the Museums 
Association and others interested in the work of 
museums was held at Stockport on Thursday, 
April 25. Besides members of the committee of the 
Stockport Municipal Museum and local visitors, re- 
presentatives attended from some twenty public 
in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire, 
including those at Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, 
Hull, Salford, Ralton, Bootle, Rochdale, and 
Warrington. The conference assembled at the 
Vernon Park Museum, which was duly inspected. 
After tea, to which the members were invited by the 
museum committee, a meeting was held in the 
Town Hall, under the presidency of Alderman 
Briggs, Mayor of Stockport, and chairman of the 
Education Committee, who welcomed the conference 
on behalf of the Corporation, adding a few words on 
the value of museums as factors in the education 
problem of which insufficient use was made. Mr. 
T. Sheppard (Hull) in a humorous paper gave an 
interesting account of the development of the 
Museum of Fisheries and Shipping which was 
recently opened as a department of the Hull 
Municipal Museum. The paper contained many 
practical suggestions and a moral for other curators. 
' Mr. R. Butterfield (Keighley) read a short paper 
advocating the use of three-ply board as a backing 
