May 26, 1899. ] 



SCIENCE, 



759' 



£25,979, which was au increase of £649 over 

 that for 1897. A sum of £3,718 had also been 

 paid to extraordinary expenditure, having been 

 devoted mainly to the construction of new 

 buildings in the gardens and to the acquisition 

 of a young male giraffe, which, although it ar- 

 rived in apparently good health, did not, un- 

 fortunately, live long in the gardens. After 

 payment of the ordinary and extraordinary ex- 

 penditure a balance of £1,584 had been carried 

 forward. The number of visitors to the gar- 

 dens in 1898 had been 710,848, being 6,707 less 

 than the corresponding number in 1897. The 

 number of animals living in the gardens on 

 December 31st last was 2,656, of which 818 

 were mammals, 1,363 birds and 475 reptiles and 

 batrachians. 



Consul-general Holloway, of St. Peters- 

 burg, sends to the Department of State, under 

 date of March 28, 1899, translation of an article 

 from the ' Novoe Vremia' of the 17th instant, 

 referring to tlie first trip of the new 10,000-ton 

 ice boat recently built in England for the pur- 

 pose of keeping the ports of St. Petersburg and 

 Riga open during the winter months, as follows : 

 The ice boat Ermak arrived at Cronstadt March 

 5th-17th. This boat was made after plans pre- 

 pared by Admiral Makaroff" and built in Eng- 

 land. Owing to the fogs, it had to remain two 

 days in Belt. Near Reval it met with very 

 thick ice, but still continued moving at 7 knots 

 per hour. Near Seskei it met with large fields 

 of ice, from 9 to 10 feet above the water 

 line. Here the Ermak could not move on ; 

 but, with the aid of its machinery, it ac- 

 quired a swinging motion, and the water 

 running out of a special apparatus in the boat 

 melted the ice under the vessel, which moved 

 on, dispersing the ice mountains. The ice boat 

 presses on the ice with its prow; the screw that 

 is under it lets out water, which softens the ice, 

 and the movement of the screw makes the ice 

 go under it and breaks it into rather small 

 pieces. This ice boat has no keel and should, 

 therefore, be subject to great rolling, but, in 

 order to avoid this, there is a receptacle in the 

 hull of the vessel, filled with water, which is 

 arranged in such a way that the water does not 

 allow the vessel to sway too much one side or 

 the other, and keeps it in equilibrium. The 



boat was met at Cronstadt with great triumph 

 and music. Hundreds of people went out to 

 meet it, running alongside of it on the ice. 

 The ice boat belongs as yet to the Ministry 

 of Finance. It is at the same time a 

 passenger boat, a freight boat and a tug 

 boat. It can accommodate nineteen first- 

 class passengers, for which it has a fine cabin, 

 decorated with imperial portraits, with double 

 windows, double illuminators, and a special 

 ventilator, which lets warm air into the cabin. 

 The walls are of oak. The boat is lighted by 

 electricity. On March 31st the Consul-General 

 adds: "The new iceboat Ermak left Cronstadt 

 on the 25th of March and opened the port of 

 Reval, plowing through from 16 to 18 feet of 

 ice, releasing three commercial steamers that 

 were frozen fast some distance from the shore^ 

 On the morning of March 27th the Ermak left 

 Reval, clearing the way to the sea for four 

 vessels. During the finst four days of the Er- 

 mak' s arrival at Russian ports she released 

 sixteen vessels from the ice and opened thfr 

 way for them to proceed to sea." 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 



Me. Samuel Cupples has increased his gift 

 of $150,000 for a building for Washington Uni- 

 versity, St. Louis, to $250,000 for two buildings. 



Me. Maxwell Sommeeville has presented 

 to the University of Pennsylvania his collection 

 of engraved gems and ethnological collections, 

 said to be of the value of $600,000. 



The Jewish Chronicle publishes full details of 

 the bequests of Baroness de Hirech. They 

 amount in all to about $9,000,000, which is 

 distributed chiefly among Hebrew charities 

 throughout the world. The bequests include 

 7,000,000 fr. to the Teachers' Training School 

 of the Hebrew Alliance at Paris and 3,000,000 

 fr. for elementary education in Galicia. 



Necessary alterations are, being made in the 

 physical laboratory of Western Reserve Univer- 

 sity in order to erect an observatory ujDon it. 

 The University has recently received a gift of a 

 ten-inch refractor made by Messrs. Warner and 

 Swasey. Mr. Samuel Mather, the donor of the 

 laboratory, has offered to bear the expense of 

 mounting the instrument. 



