Maech 28, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



479 



mittee has now decided to recommend tbe 

 raising of a fund of from £20,000 to £25,000, 

 for the purpose of endowing a second pro- 

 fessorship of natural philosophy in the uni- 

 versity. The proposed chair would he con- 

 nected with the department of Professor 

 Tait's work in which he achieved especially 

 conspicuous success, namely, the application 

 of mathematics to the solution of physical 

 problems, including those which bear upon 

 engineering and other departments of applied 

 science; and the committee feel sure such a 

 chair would not only form an appropriate and 

 worthy memorial, but would also be in itself 

 of the highest utility. The committee are ma- 

 king every effort to bring the project to the 

 attention of all old students, both at home and 

 abroad, and they are confident of getting into 

 communication with over 6,000 of them. They 

 feel justified, however, in appealing not to old 

 students merely, but also to men who were as- 

 sociated with the professor in any department 

 of his work; to natural philosophers, mathe- 

 maticians and scientific men generally, who 

 through their study of his publications have 

 become indebted to him as a teacher; to those 

 who are interested in the progress of the 

 Scottish universities, and recognize the great 

 value of his services to education ; and to such 

 of his fellow citizens as take pride in his sci- 

 entific eminence and recall with interest his 

 picturesque personality. The hon. secretary. 

 Professor J. G. MacGregor, the University, 

 Edinburgh, will be glad to furnish any infor- 

 mation that may be desired, either by letter or, 

 in cases in which it may be possible, by per- 

 sonal interview. Subscriptions should be sent 

 to the honorary treasurer. Sir George M. Paul, 

 16 St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh. 



A MEMORIAL to the late Sir J. D. Hooker, 

 which has been placed in the parish church at 

 Kew, near the similar memorial to his father, 

 Sir W. J. Hooker, was unveiled by Lady 

 Hooker on February 22. It consists of a 

 mural tablet of colored marble bearing an in- 

 scription, below which is a Wedgwood me- 

 dallion portrait of Sir Joseph, flanked and 

 supported by five panels containing Wedgwood 

 figures of plants with which there had grown 

 up some especial association. 



The death is announced, at the age of 

 ninety-one, of Major-General Henry Clerk, 

 who was elected a fellow of the Eoyal Society 

 so long ago as 1848. He was the author of 

 papers on the strength of timber, and the flow 

 of liquids through small orifices and other 

 subjects. 



Dr. Eudolph Frank, professor of surgery 

 at Vienna, has died at the age of fifty years. 



It is stated in Nature that Mr. E. J. Bal- 

 ston, of Maidstone, has presented to the Brit- 

 ish Museum (Natural History) his well- 

 known collection of humming-birds. The 

 birds are mounted and arranged in forty-nine 

 cases, each of which contains a group of two 

 or more species. The total number of speci- 

 mens in the collection is stated in Mr. Bal- 

 ston's manuscript to be 3,316, representing 

 162 genera and 480 species. Of these, 2,674 

 are skins, and 199 nests, some of the latter 

 containing eggs. As soon as arrangements are 

 made for its reception the series will be placed 

 on exhibition in one of the corridors on the 

 first floor of the zoological department. This 

 collection and the Gould collection will render 

 the exhibited series of humming-birds one of 

 the finest, if not actually the finest, in the 

 world. 



The Peabody Museum of American Arche- 

 ology and Ethnology of Harvard University, 

 has recently received two important acquisi- 

 tions. The first is a valuable collection of 

 prehistoric pottery from the mounds of the 

 Eed Eiver region, Arkansas. This pottery, 

 which is the gift of Mr. Clarence B. Moore, 

 '73, of Philadelphia, Pa., came to the museum 

 in several hundred fragments. They have now 

 been cemented together and added to the reg- 

 ular exhibit. The other acquisition is a large 

 collection of stone implements from the Is- 

 land of Grenado, W. I., the gift of Dr. Thomas 

 Barbour, '06. 



A weekly journal entitled Die Geisteswis- 

 senschaften has been established under the 

 editorship of Dr. Otto Buck, of Berlin, and of 

 Professor Paul Herre, of Leipzig, published 

 at Leipzig by Veit and Co. The scope of the 

 journal includes philosophy, psychology, 

 mathematics, religion, history, philology, art, 



