June 2, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



791 



will be begun at once. The sum of £300,000 

 has been appropriated for these buildings, which 

 will occupy a position directly facing the Im- 

 perial Institute. 



The new building erected in the Dublin Zo- 

 ological Gardens in memory of the late Profes- 

 sor Samuel Haughton was formally opened on 

 May 19th by the Lord-Lieutenant, in the pres- 

 ence of a large gathering. Field-Marshal Lord 

 Roberts, President of the Royal Zoological So- 

 ciety, described the purpose of the meeting and 

 said that the new building was intended as a 

 tribute to the memory of Dr. Haughton, whose 

 name was intimately connected with many of 

 the leading institutions in Dublin, but with 

 none more closely than with the Royal Zoolog- 

 ical Society, of which he had been five years 

 President and 21 years Honorary Secretary. 



The City of Philadelphia has appointed a 

 committee of expert engineers consisting of 

 Rudolph Hering, of New York, Samuel Gray, 

 of Providence, R. I., and Joseph L. Wilson, of 

 Philadelphia, to make an investigation of the 

 water supply of Philadelphia. 



An institute for the study of tropical medicine 

 will be established at Berlin, with Dr. Koch as 

 Director. 



The Electrical World abstracts from English 

 journals an account of the early work of Pro- 

 fessor Huges (inventor of the microphone), in 

 wireless telegraphy by means of etheric waves.; 

 it appears to be the first published account of 

 his experiments, which were made in 1879. He 

 was experimenting with his microphone and in- 

 duction balance, and found that the microphone 

 produced a sound in the receiver even when it 

 was placed several feet distant from the coils 

 through which an intermittent current was pass- 

 ing and not in any other way connected. He 

 found that the whole atmosphere, even in sev- 

 eral rooms distant from there, would be invisibly 

 changed and that this could be noticed with a 

 microphone and telephone receiver. He ex- 

 perimented on the best form of receiver for 

 these invisible electric rays, which he found 

 would pass over great distances through walls, 

 etc. He found that carbon contacts or a piece 

 of coke resting on bright steel were very sensi- 

 tive and self restoring receivers. A loose eon- 



tact between metals, while equally sensitive, 

 required restoring. He also used the micro- 

 phone as a relay in detecting such rays. He 

 endeavored to discover the best receiver so as 

 to utilize such waves for the transmission of 

 messages. He showed his experiments to a 

 number of well-known physicists at that time. 

 The distance was 60 feet in the building, but he 

 also took the instrument on the street, and 

 walked away from the transmitter, obtaining 

 signals up to 500 yards. He claimed the exist- 

 ence of the waves at that time, but was unable 

 to convince others of their presence. He also 

 calls attention to still earlier experiments of 

 Professor Henry, of Princeton (U. S.), which, 

 were published by the Smithsonian Institution, 

 Vol. I., p. 203, the date being probably about 

 1850 ; he magnetized a needle in a coil 30 feet 

 distant ; also by a discharge of lightning eight 

 miles distant. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 



The election of Professor Arthur T. Hadley 

 to the presidency of Yale University by the Cor- 

 poration on Maj^ 25th marks the beginning of 

 a new era in the development of a great univer- 

 sity. Yale has adhered more closely than most 

 of our larger institutions to the clerical and 

 classical traditions of the American college, and 

 President Hadley, while conserving what is 

 good, will undoubtedly use his influence to 

 make Yale, as a university, the equal of Harvard. 

 Like the Presidents of Harvard, Johns Hopkins 

 and Stanford Universities, President Hadley 

 may be claimed as a man of science, his work 

 on railway transportation and other subjects 

 being strictly scientific in character. 



Clakk University proposes to celebrate its 

 decennial by special exercises beginning on 

 July 5th. These will include lectures by emi- 

 nent foreign men of science. Invitations to 

 speak having been accepted by M. Emile Picard, 

 professor of mathematics at the University of 

 Paris and a member of the Institute ; Dr. An- 

 gelo Mosso, professor of physiology at the Uni- 

 versity of Turin ; and Dr. Santiago Ramon y 

 Cajal, professor of histology and pathological 

 anatomy at the University in Madrid. 



A SPECIAL course in the fundamental problems 

 of geology intended particularly for college: 



