Maech 24, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



461 



March 16th, ou ' The Electric Concomitants of 

 Motion in Animals and Plants. ' 



Professor Jebb, of Cambridge, will deliver 

 the Romanes lecture at Oxford, June 7th, his 

 subject being 'Humanism and Education.' 



The following Friday evening discourses are 

 being given before the Royal Institution, Lon- 

 don ; March 10th, 'Measuring Extreme Tem- 

 peratures,' by Professor H. L. Callendar, F.R.S.; 

 March 17th, ' The Electric Fish of the Nile,' by 

 Professor Francis Gotch, F.R.S.; and on March 

 24th, 'Transparency and Opacity,' by Lord 

 Rayleigh, F.R.S. 



Peofessor C. C. Georgeson, of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, has left Washington for 

 Sitka to superintend investigations in experi- 

 mental agriculture. A building will be erected 

 at Sitka this year which will contain oflSces for 

 the expei'iment station and for meteorological 

 observations. 



The Lord Mayor of Liverpool entertained, on 

 March 4th, Professor Oliver J. Lodge, in recog- 

 nition of his having received the Rumford 

 medal, which is awarded biennially by the 

 Royal Society for the most important discov- 

 eries in heat or light. Speeches were made by 

 the Lord Mayor ; Professor Fitzgerald, of Dub- 

 lin ; Sir John Brunner ; Professor Myers, of 

 Cambridge ; Professor Riicker and Sir W. 

 Crookes. It was announced at the dinner that 

 Sir John Brunner had offered £5,000 towards a 

 new building for the physical laboratory for 

 -University College, Liverpool, which is under 

 Professor Lodge's direction. 



A STATUE in bronze of the late Dr. William 

 Pepper, of Philadelphia, will be erected in the 

 plaza before the City Hall. 



Professor John Collett, for many years 

 State Geologist of Indiana, died at Indian- 

 apolis, on March 15th, aged 71 years. 



Dr. W. Hankel, professor of physics in the 

 University of Leipzig, died on February 18th, 

 at the age of 84 years. 



De. Francis M. Macnamara died on March 

 5th, at the age of 57. He was formerly pro- 

 fessor of chemistry at the Calcutta Bledical Col- 

 lege and chemical examiner to the Governor of 

 India, where he made important investigations 



on the spread of cholera by water and on the 

 distribution of disease. 



Congress, in its closing hours, passed a bill 

 containing the stipulation, "That before Jan- 

 uary 1, 1903, the fence around the Botanical 

 Garden shall be removed, provided that at the 

 first session of the Fifty-sixth Congress the Joint 

 Committee on Library is directed to report a bill 

 embodying a plan for removing the Botanical 

 Garden to another location." The Botanical 

 Garden in Washington has done little for sci- 

 ence, being administered by a .Joint Committee 

 on the Library of Congress. It is proposed to 

 remove the Garden to a place where a larger 

 area 'can be secured, and establish there a Na- 

 tional Botanical Garden, which will probably 

 be placed under the charge of the Department 

 of Agriculture. 



The New York City Board of Estimate and 

 Apportionment authorized, on March 17th, an 

 issue of bonds to the amount of $500,000, the 

 proceeds to be used in defraying the cost of re- 

 moving the Forty-second street reservoir and 

 in laying the foundations for the building for 

 the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and 

 Tilden foundations. Mayor Van Wyck is re- 

 ported to have said : " The original request was 

 for $150,000. We looked the matter over care- 

 fully and concluded that such a sum would 

 suffice only for the demolition of the reservoir. 

 It was suggested that the first requisition for 

 bonds under the act authorizing the construc- 

 tion of the library be large enough to cover the 

 cost of the foundations for the structure. The 

 trustees of the library agreed to this, and the 

 plans were accordingly amended. With $500,- 

 000 it will be possible within nine or ten months 

 to raze the reservoir and lay the foundations. 

 Then we shall be ready to order another issue 

 of bonds and to prosecute the work to an early 

 completion." The New York City Board of 

 Estimate and Apportionment has also set aside 

 $63,000 for work on the Zoological Garden in 

 Bronx Park. 



Mayor Van Wyck has given a public hear- 

 ing on the bill passed by the Legislature author- 

 izing the Board of Estimate and Apportionment 

 to increase the annual appropriation for the 

 American Museum of Natural History from 



