-96 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 942 



geology. Professor William North Rice, of 

 Wesleyan University, read a paper on " Dana 

 the Man"; Dr. E. Otis Hovey, secretary of 

 the Geological Society and curator of geology 

 at the American Museum of Natural History 

 in New York City, spoke on " D'ana the 

 Teacher " ; Dr. George P. Merrill, head curator 

 ■of geology of the United States National Mu- 

 seum at Washington, spoke on " Dana the 

 Geologist," and President Pairchild, of the 

 Yale Alumni Association, read the paper on 

 " Dana as a Zoologist," written for the cen- 

 tenary by John Mason Clarke, director of the 

 ■Science Division of the Department of Educa- 

 tion of New York State. Books, pamphlets, 

 :m.onographs, greetings from learned societies 

 ■and personal memorabilia were exhibited in 

 Chittenden Library during the week. 



Mr. Thomas Howell, the well-known Ore- 

 gon botanist, died on December 3, 1912. He 

 was born in Missouri on October 9, 1842, and 

 was a pioneer of Oregon, moving there in 

 1850. Although he had very scanty schooling, 

 Mr. Howell was far from being an uneducated 

 snan. He devoted many years of his life to the 

 •study of the flora of Oregon, tramping over 

 nearly every portion of the state. His knowl- 

 edge of the northwestern flora is embodied in 

 the work entitled " The Flora of Northwest- 

 -ern America." Perhaps the most noteworthy 

 ■discovery of Mr. Howell was the finding of 

 ■Picea Breweriana, a very local tree and the 

 last of the Pacific Coast conifers to be dis- 

 covered. 



Dr. Peter Redfern, formerly regius pro- 

 fessor of anatomy and physiology in Queen's 

 College, Belfast, died on December 22, at the 

 age of ninety-one years. 



De. A. Pfarr, professor of hydraulics in the 

 Technical School at Darmstadt, has died at 

 the age of sixty-one years. 



The papers on the program for the Cleve- 

 land convocation week meeting were distri- 

 buted among the sciences as follows : 



Mathematics 49 



Astronomy 35 



Physics 52 



Engineering 40 



Geology 27 



Zoology 84 



Entomology 73 



Botany SO 



Phytopathology 49 



Horticulture 53 



Anthropology 27 



Psychology 56 



Biological chemistry and pharmacology 63 



Anatomy 63 



Physiology 67 



Education 11 



Economics and Sociology 13 



822 

 The department of snperindence of the Na- 

 tional Educational Association will meet at 

 Philadelphia from February 24 to March 1. 

 With it meets the National Council of Educa- 

 tion, the Department of Normal Schools, the 

 National Society for the Study of Education 

 and a number of other educational societies. 



President Taft in a special message to con- 

 gress, on January 8, recommended the repeal 

 of the act of congress which prohibited for five 

 years the killing of fur seals on the Pribilof 

 Islands, passed a year ago. Investigation, the 

 president said, showed a remarkable increase 

 in the size of the herd in one season and 

 proved conclusively that only the female seals 

 and the bull male seals need protection, and 

 that thousands of " bachelor " seals can be 

 killed each year without reducing the herd. 

 The act which should be repealed was 

 adopted to give effect to the first seal treaty of 

 1911 between Great Britain, Japan, Russia 

 and the United States. Although a clause in 

 that treaty, the president points out, seems to 

 give the United States authority to suspend 

 land killing to protect and preserve the herd, 

 if no actual necessity were found for such sus- 

 pension it was not justified under the conven- 

 tion and the act should be amended. 



The board of managers of the Marine Bio- 

 logical Association's laboratory at Plymouth, 

 England, has recently decided upon a policy 

 of emphasizing the purely scientific and inter- 

 national character of the institution, thus ren- 

 dering it more readily accessible to American 

 students than it has been in the past. In its 

 equipment it is second only to Naples, being 

 well supplied with apparatus and cheniicals 

 required for advanced research, and provided 

 with a steamer of 69 tons burden. An effi- 



