Apeil 7, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



527 



twelve years; he recommeDded, further, the 

 special study of preventive medicine, to ensure 

 for Great Britain a safer footing in foreign 

 climates. Lord Lister responded to the toast, 

 and urged City Companies to support pure sci- 

 ence ; he referred also to the help they had 

 rendered the Jenner Institute. Sir William 

 MacCormac then proposed the health of the 

 Prime Warden. 



The Baihvay and Engineering Journal reports 

 that the War Department is arranging to make 

 a test of the Marconi system of wireless teleg- 

 raphy. The two experimental stations se- 

 lected are the roof of the State, War and Navy 

 Building and Fort Myer, across the Potomac, 

 the distance being six miles. The government 

 has purchased the necessary instruments and 

 experiments will be conducted by Col. James 

 Allen and Lieut. George D. Squire. 



At a recent meeting of the Royal Geograph- 

 ical Society a paper on ' Exploration in the 

 Canadian Rockies : A Search for Mount Hooker 

 and Mount Brown ' was read by Professor Nor- 

 man Collie, F.R.S. According to the London 

 Times Professor Collie's paper dealt with two 

 journeys taken during 1897 and 1898 through 

 that part of the Canadian Rockies that lies be- 

 tween the Kicking Horse Pass on the south and 

 the source of the Athabasca River on the north. 

 The most interesting problem connected with 

 the first journey which presented itself to Pro- 

 fessor Collie and his party was whether a lofty 

 mountain— probably 14,000 ft. to 15,000 ft.— 

 seen from the slopes of Mount Freshfield, from 

 which it lay distant about 30 miles in a north- 

 westerly direction, might be Mount Brown or 

 Mount Hooker, which were supposed to be 

 16,000 ft. and 15,000 ft. high respectively. Pro- 

 fessor Coleman, in 1893, starting from Morley, 

 had arrived at the true Athabasca Pass, found 

 the historic Committee's Punch-bowl, and his 

 brother had climbed the highest peak on the 

 north, presumably Mount Brown. This peak 

 he found to be only 9,000 ft. The question pre- 

 sented itself : Could he have been mistaken or 

 was it possible that there existed two Athabasca 

 Passes? Professor Collie and his companion re- 

 turned to their camp on the Saskatchewan Pass 

 without having solved the question of either 



Mounts Brown or Hooker, or the Committee's 

 Punch-bowl. It was finally settled on the re- 

 turn to England by reference to the journal 

 of David Douglas, the naturalist, dealing with 

 his journey over the Athabasca Pass. From 

 the authentic account of the two mountains 

 there given it was seen that the credit of hav- 

 ing settled with accuracy the real height of the 

 peaks belonged to Professor Coleman. For 

 nearly 70 years they had been masquerading in 

 every map as the highest peaks in the Rocky 

 Mountains. No doubt now remained as to 

 where Brown and Hooker and the Punch- 

 bowl were. That Douglas climbed a peak 

 17,000 ft. high in an afternoon (as narrated 

 in his account) was impossible ; the Mount 

 Brown of Professor Coleman, 9,000 ft. high, 

 was much more likely. There was only one 

 Athabasca Pass, and on each side of its sum- 

 mit might be found a peak — Mount Brown, 

 1,000 ft. high, on the north — the higher of the 

 two — and Mount Hooker on the south. Be- 

 tween them lay a small tarn, 20 ft. in diameter 

 — the Committee's Punch-bowl. The peaks to 

 the south, amongst which the party wandered 

 last August, were, therefore, new, and they 

 probably constituted the highest point of the 

 Canadian Rocky Mountain system. 



The British Medical Journal states that the 

 tenth meeting of the International Congress of 

 Hygiene will be held in Paris in August, 1900. 

 The division of hygiene will comprise seven 

 sections as follows : 1. Microbiology and Para- 

 sitology applied to hygiene. M. Laveran is 

 President and M. Netter Secretary of this Sec- 

 tion, in which the questions to be discussed are 

 the measurement of the activity of serums ; the 

 prophylaxis and preventive treatment of diph- 

 theria ; meat poisoning, its causes and the 

 means of its prevention ; pathogenic microbes 

 in soil and water (cholera, typhoid fever and 

 other diseases) ; the part played by water and 

 by vegetables in the etiology of intestinal hel- 

 minthiasis. 2. Chemicaland veterinary sciences 

 applied to hygiene ; alimentary hygiene, in 

 which the questions to be discussed are tinned 

 provisions and the means of preventing acci- 

 dents ; unification of international control ; the 

 establishment of a general and uniform system 

 of inspection of slaughter houses, etc. 3. En- 



