660 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 227. 



ment of the Expositiou and will comprise every- 

 thing which is, can or might be exported, from 

 locomotives and heavy machinery to the small- 

 est novelties. 



There will also be a department of foreign 

 manufactured goods, but it will not contain a 

 single exhibit shown by a foreign manufacturer. 

 This department will consist of collections of 

 samples of goods made in the commercial coun- 

 tries of Europe and successfully sold in all for- 

 eign markets in competition with American 

 goods and in foreign markets in which Amer- 

 ican trade has not yet been developed. These 

 samples will be exhibited side by side with 

 American products of the same class, and will 

 show our manufacturers just what competition 

 they must meet abroad, as well as the pecul- 

 iarities in the demands of every foreign mar- 

 ket. 



A third department of the Exposition will 

 show how American goods must be packed, 

 labeled and shipped in order to meet the re- 

 quirements of foreign trade, which vary accord- 

 ing to the degree of development or civilization 

 in each country of the world. 



In October a Commercial Congress will be 

 held in Philadelphia in connection with the 

 meeting of the International Advisory Board of 

 the Philadelphia Commercial Museums. There 

 is every reason to believe that at least 800 repre- 

 sentatives of foreign firms will be present at the 

 sessions of the Commercial Congress and in at- 

 tendance on the Expositiou, in addition to the 

 official delegates and those representing com- 

 mercial organizations. 



The Exposition will be under the joint 

 auspices of the Philadelphia Commercial Mu- 

 seums and the Franklin Institute. Sanction and 

 support has been given to the Exposition by the 

 National Government, Congress appropriating 

 $350,000 to aid it. The City of Philadelphia 

 has given $200,000, and the State of Penn- 

 sylvania $50,000, and $100,000 is being 

 raised in Philadelphia by individual subscrip- 

 tions. 



The main buildings, which are now under 

 construction, cover eight acres of ground, and 

 the available exhibition space will be at least 

 200,000 square feet Outside of the space occu- 

 pied by the main buildings there will be within 



the Exposition grounds, which comprise a tract 

 of fifty-six acres of land on the bank of the 

 Schuylkill River, within fifteen minutes' rid& 

 of the City Hall, ample space for the erec- 

 tion of detached structures for special ex- ' 

 hibits. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Vice-President Branner, of Stanford Uni- 

 versity, will conduct an expedition to Brazil dur- 

 ing the summer to work upon the geology of the 

 stone and coral reefs of the coast. These reefs, 

 more or less broken, extend from Ceard to the 

 Abrolhos, a distance of more than a thousand 

 miles. Dr. Branner did much work upon these 

 reefs while he was connected with the Geolog- 

 ical Survey of Brazil, but the field observations 

 were never finished and the results of the work 

 were not published. He hopes to complete 

 his work during the summer vacation. The 

 expenses of the expedition will be paid chiefly 

 by Professor Alexander Agassiz, and the results 

 will be published by the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology at Harvard. 



Princeton proposes to send a small party to- 

 observe the total eclipse of the sun which is to 

 occur on May 27, 1900. A friend of the Uni- 

 versity has provided the necessary funds, and 

 the special apparatus that will be needed is 

 already being constructed. The station to be 

 occupied is not yet finally selected, but will 

 probably be near the boundary between North 

 and South Carolina, where it is crossed by the- 

 track of the moon's shadow, running northeast- 

 ward from New Orleans to Norfolk, Va. 



The Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain 

 has conferred the Bessemer Gold Medal for 

 1899 on Queen Victoria in commemoration of 

 the great progress made in the iron and steel 

 industries during her Majesty's reign. 



The Academy of Sciences at Halle has elected 

 Dr. Hans Lenck, professor of mineralogy at 

 Erlangen, to membership. 



Sir James Weight, C.B. , late Engineer-in- 

 Chief of the British Navy, to whom many of 

 the improvements in British warships are due, 

 died on April 16th in his 86th year. 



The death is also announced of Sir William 

 Roberts, F.R.S., the eminent London physician, 



