September 19, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



273 



That the gift of ten thousand dollars presented 

 by Mrs. Mary Clark Thompson, the income thereof 

 to be applied to a gold medal of appropriate design 

 to be awarded annually by the National Academy 

 of Sciences for high recognition of exceptional 

 service to geology and paleontology, and the medal 

 to be known as the Mary Clark Thompson Gold 

 Medal, be accepted and that the academy ex- 

 press to Mrs. Thompson its appreciation of her 

 desire to reward those interested in researches in 

 geology and paleontology. (Adopted June 24, 

 1919.) 



The committee is considering' a design for 

 the medal. 



THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL 

 RESEARCH AND THE WAR 



The Eockefeller Institute has received the 

 following letter from Merrite W. Ireland, 

 Surgeon-General of the United States Army, 

 commending its war-time activities : 



During the war which is now happily past, your 

 institute proved to be one of America's strong- 

 holds. I am informed that from the beginning to 

 the end of hostilities the entire institution was 

 placed by you at the disposal of the War Depart- 

 ment and that you did work of the greatest value, 

 not alone for the Medical Department but for the 

 Chemical Warfare and Air Service; that your hos» 

 pital as well as your laboratories became in effect 

 as much a part of the army as the hospitals and 

 laboratories established by the War Department 

 in our cantonments. 



I have also been informed that this great work, 

 extending over the whole period of our participa- 

 tion in the war, was paid for entirely out of your 

 own funds, and was without further support from 

 the government than the routine payment of sal- 

 aries of such members and assistants of the in- 

 stitute as became part of the Medical and Sanitary 

 Corps. 



I thank you for your work of patriotism and 

 your generosity in placing so fully at the disposal 

 of the Medical Department your great and pro- 

 ductive facilities for research, for teaching, and 

 for the care of the sick. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



Professor Vito Volterra, who holds the 

 chair of mathematical physics in the Univer- 

 sity of Rome and is a member of the Italian 

 ■Senate, will deliver a series of Hitchcock lec- 



tures at the University of California from Oc- 

 tober 6 to 17. This will be the second series of 

 Hitchcock lectures this semester, Professor W. 

 J. V. Osterhout, of Harvard University, having 

 just completed the first series on the general 

 subject, " Fundamental life processes." Pro- 

 fessor Volterra will lecture on " The propa- 

 gation of electricity " and " Functional equa- 

 tions." 



Professor James H. Breasted, of the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago, has sailed for Europe in 

 order to lead an archeologieal expedition to 

 Egypt and western Asia, for which permission 

 has been granted by the British government. 

 Before leaving Professor Breasted arranged 

 for publication in The Scientific Monthly the 

 lectures on the "William Ellery Hale foun- 

 dation entitled " The origins of civilization," 

 which he delivered before the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences last April. 



Major-General William C. Gorgas, for- 

 merly Surgeon-General, U. S. Army, who has 

 been investigating the sanitary matters in Cen- 

 tral and South America, has, it is reported, 

 oifered to assume technical directorship of the 

 sanitation of Guayaquil, Ecuador, provided 

 the money for the work is supplied by the mu- 

 nicipality or the republic. At the request of 

 the Peruvian authorities, General Gorgas is 

 about to proceed to Piura, which is infected 

 with yellow fever. He and his party left 

 Guayaquil for Callao on September 1. 



The Duke of Abruzzi has planned an ex- 

 pedition to the upper reaches of the Wady 

 Scebel, a river which, rising in north Italian 

 Somaliland in the outlying spurs of the Abys- 

 sinian mountain ranges, joins the Fafan River. 

 He will be accompanied by his aide de camp. 

 Marquis Radicati; a doctor, a photographer, 

 and four naval under-o£B.cers who have taken 

 part in his former expeditions. 



Mr. E. Heller has charge of an expedition 

 sent by the Smithsonian Institution to South 

 Africa to make collections for the National 

 Museum. 



Professor A. S. Hitchcock, systematic 

 agrostologist in the Bureau of Plant Industry, 

 will leave New York for British Guiana, on 



