90 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1361 



laurin, formerly president. Reginald H. 

 Smithwick, of Boston, president of the senior 

 ■class and chairman of the Institute Commit- 

 tee, placed a wreath on the memorial which 

 hais been erected in memory of Dr. Maclaurin 

 in the lobby of the Walker Memorial building. 



We learn from the Journal of the Washing- 

 ton Academy of Sciences that Mr. Ealph W. 

 Howell, geologist with the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, was killed by native raiders in Belu- 

 chistan in the latter part of N'ovember, 1920. 

 He was engaged at the time in oil exploratory 

 work for Pearson & Son, of London, and was 

 working near the Beluchistan-Punjab border 

 in an area that had been considered safe from 

 bandits. Mr. Howell was born in 1886, and 

 had been a member of the Survey staff since 

 1913. He was granted leave of absence from 

 the survey in October, 1919, to engage in pri- 

 vate work. 



On December 21, at a conference between 

 representatives of the Department of Com- 

 merce and the Department of Agriculture held 

 in the office of the secretary of commerce, the 

 Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of 

 Agriculture made known its willingness to 

 withdraw from future investigations of fishery 

 products, and at the same time agreed to ask 

 Congress to transfer to the Bureau of Fish- 

 eries the item for fish investigations included 

 in the pending estimates for the Department 

 of Agriculture for the fiscal year beginning 

 July 1, 1921. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NEWS 



The faculty of Mount Holyoke College has 

 |Voted to raise a fund of $100,000 to endow 

 the president's chair in recognition of Miss 

 Mary E. Woolley's twenty years' service as 

 president of Mount Holyoke. 



The first Congress of the Universities of 

 the British Empire was held in London in 

 1912 when all, to the number of fifty-three, 

 were represented. It was decided to hold the 

 congresses every five years, but the war made 

 it impossible to do so in 191Y. The second 

 congress will accordingly be held in the sum- 

 mer of 1921. The number of British univer- 



sities has in the meantime increased to fifty- 

 eight. 



Professor Eugene Taylor, of the Univer- 

 sity of Wisconsin, has been appointed head of 

 the department of mathematics at the Uni- 

 versity of Idaho. 



DoAK B. Carrick has been elected professor 

 of pomology, and Amo H. Nehrling assistant 

 professor of floriculture in the college of agri- 

 culture, Cornell University. 



Professor Edwin T. Hodge, head of the 

 department of mining geology in the Univer- 

 sity of British Colimabia, has joined the de- 

 partment of geology of the University of 

 Oregon. 



The Bulletin of the American Mathematical 

 Society states that in the faculty of sciences 

 of the University of Paris, the following 

 changes have been made: Dr. Emile Borel, 

 professor of the theory of functions, has been 

 appointed professor of the calculus of prob- 

 abilities and mathematical physics, as suc- 

 cessor to Professor B. J. Boussinesq, who has 

 retired; Dr. Paul Painleve, professor of 

 rational mechanics, has been appointed pro- 

 fessor of analytical and celestial mechanics, 

 as successor to Professor Paul Appell; Pro- 

 fessor Elie Cartan succeeds Professor Pain- 

 leve in the chair of rational mechanics, and 

 Professor Ernest Vessiot, recently appointed 

 assistant director of the Ecole normale superi- 

 eure, succeeds Professor Cartan in the chair of 

 the differential calculus; Dr. J. Drach has 

 been appointed professor of general mathe- 

 matics, and Dr. Paul Montel maitre de con- 

 ferences in mathematics. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



A METEOR FALL IN THE ATLANTIC 



It may be of interest to put on record the 

 subjoined account of a fall of meteorites, that 

 was reported in the New York Times, of 

 November 5, 1906, a clipping from which 

 paper I have just come across. The fall was 

 observed from the Phoenix Line steamship 

 " St. Andrew," en toute from Antwerp to 

 New York, on October 30, 1906, "about 600 

 miles northeast of Cape Eace." The more 



