February 4, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



115 



J. E. Ackevt, professor of parasitology of the 

 Kansas State Agricultural College, and by Dr. 

 D. L. Augustine, assistant in medical zoology 

 at the Johns Hopkins University. 



Dr. Ludwig SiLBERSTEiN, of the research 

 laboratory of the Eastman Kodak Company, 

 delivered a series of fifteen lectures before the 

 faculty and students of the University of 

 Toronto on January 10-22. The first six 

 lectures vpere devoted to explaining the gen- 

 eral procedure of fixing events in space and 

 time, and to developing the presence of special 

 relativity with their consequences and applica- 

 tions to optics and to dynamics of a particle. 

 The next six lectures were devoted to the con- 

 ceptual as well as the mathematical aspects 

 of general relativity and gravitation theory. 

 The last three lectures were concerning the 

 quantum theoi-y of spectra. 



At the meeting of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society on Friday evening, February 

 4, Dr. Jolm C. Merriam, president of the Car- 

 negie Institution of "Washington, read a paper 

 entitled " Researches on the antiquity of man 

 in California." 



The Aldred lecture was delivered at the 

 Royal Society of Arts on January 12, by Dr. 

 C. S. Myers, director of the psychological lab- 

 oratory, and lecturer in experimental psychol- 

 ogy. University of Cambridge. The sub.i'ect 

 was " Industrial Fatigue." 



The American Roentgen Ray Society will 

 award $1,000 to the American author of the 

 best original research in the field of the 

 roentgen ray, radium or radio-activity. 



Mauy Watson Wphtney, professor of as- 

 tronomy emeritus and from 1889 to 1910 

 director of the observatory of Vassar College, 

 died on January 20 aged seventy-three years. 



Dr. Lincoln Ware Riddle, assistant pro- 

 fessor of cryptogamic botany and associate 

 curator of the Farlow Herbarium of Crypto- 

 gamic botany, died at his home in Cambridge 

 on January 16 in the forty-first year of his 

 age. 



Prince Peter Alexeievitch Krapotkin, dis- 

 tinguished as a geographer and for his books 

 on science and natural history, has died at 

 Moscow at the age of seventy-eight years. 



M. Painleve, professor of mathematics at 

 Paris and former prime minister has returned 

 from China to which he had been sent on a 

 mission concerning Chinese universities and 

 railways. He has obtained from the Chinese 

 government the promise of an annual sub- 

 vention of 100,000f. for an institute of 

 Chinese higher studies in Paris. The Chinese 

 government has also agreed to the creation, in 

 one of the Chinese universities, of an affiliated 

 branch of the University of Paris, and it will 

 devote to this purpose the sum of 500,000f. 

 annually, on condition that the French gov- 

 ernment gives the same amount. The Chinese 

 president has further promised to have repro- 

 duced the collection of four great classics 

 which contain the essence of Chinese civiliza- 

 tion, and to present three copies to France. 

 These volumes run to not less than 5,000,000 



The British Medical Journal states that the 

 late Dr. A. J. Chalmers, the authority on trop- 

 ical diseases, who died on his way home on 

 leave in April last, left a valuable collection 

 of medical books mainly on tropical diseases, 

 and including some almost priceless incunab- 

 ula. The whole of these, with the exception 

 of about sixty volumes, presented to the Royal 

 College of Physicians of London, have been 

 given by Mrs. Chalmers to the Royal Society 

 of Medicine, which has decided that the col- 

 lection shall be kept together and be known as 

 the " Chalmers Collection." Mrs. Chlamers 

 has presented the society with the sum of £500 

 for the shelving and furnishing of a room in 

 which the books will be kept as a memorial of 

 her husband. It is hoped that the collection 

 of books on tropical medicine will be added to 

 from time to time, and the room chosen for 

 the Chalmers Library is well adapted for the 

 purpose. This coincides with the reconstruc- 

 tion of the new Section of Tropical Medicine 

 and Parasitology. The section was formed in 

 1912, but was suspended during the war, and 

 has only this session been formerly consti- 

 tuted. The new section will start vrith a li- 

 brary of its own — perhaps the finest collection 

 of books on tropical medicine to be found 

 anywhere. 



