462 



SCIENCE. 



[ N. S. Vol. VII. No. 170. 



for undergraduates are announced, viz., the 

 Charlotte Louisa Williams Scholarship, founded 

 by Mrs. Peter M. Bryson and Miss Grace H. 

 Dodge, which is tenable for one year, yields 

 $150 a year, and is for women, and the Earle 

 Scholarship for men, also awarded annually, and 

 worth $150 a year. 



Me. William Houldswoeth has given the 

 University of Glasgow property yielding an in- 

 come of £150 a year for a fellowship in physics. 

 Nature states that Mr. Houldsworth has taken 

 this method of showing his interest in the wel- 

 fare of the University and the advancement of 

 science, and his recognition of the distinguished 

 services rendered to scientific research by Lord 

 Kelvin during a professorship of fifty years. 



Magdalen College, Oxford, will award, in 

 October, a fellowship in medical science. 



The seventh summer session of Cornell Uni- 

 versity will be held from July 5 to August 13, 

 1898. An announcement of the courses of in- 

 struction, just issued, shows that fourteen de- 

 partments of study will be represented, includ- 

 ing mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany and 

 experimental engineering. 



AccoEDiNG to the daily papers Mr. James M. 

 Davis, of St. Louis, has ' bought ' Garfield Uni- 

 versity at Wichita, Kan., and will present it to 

 the Society of Friends. 



The London University Commission Bill has 

 been read for the second time in the House of 

 Lords. 



Professor William W. Biedsall, now 

 Principal of Friends' Central School of Philadel- 

 phia, has been elected President of Swarthmore 

 College, to fill the vacancy made by the resigna- 

 tion of President Charles De Garmo, lately ap- 

 pointed to the position of head of the pedagogical 

 department of Cornell University. 



Chancellor C. M. Ellinwood, of the Wes- 

 leyan University, Lincoln, Neb., has resigned, 

 and Dr. D. W. C. Huntington has been made 

 Chancellor temporarily. 



Dr. W. J. Simpson, late health oificer of Cal- 

 cutta, has been appointed professor of hygiene 

 in King's College, London. 



King's College, Cambridge, has elected to 

 professional fellowships Mr. James Alfred Ew- 



ing, M.A., F.R.S., professor of mechanism and 

 applied mechanics, and Mr. A. A. Kanthack, 

 M.A., professor of pathology. 



The professorship of surgery at Cambridge 

 University has been suspended for the present 

 and a reader will be appointed. The lecture- 

 ship in geography will be made a readership, the 

 Council of the Royal Geographical Society hav- 

 ing continued the annual grant of £150 for a 

 term of five years. To this grant the Univer- 

 sity adds £50. 



Professor Bastian has retired from the 

 chair of clinical medicine in University College, 

 London, after a service of twenty years. 



Mme. Madeleine Lemaire, the flower 

 painter, has been appointed professor of botan- 

 ical drawing at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. 



Dr. K. Groos, of Giessen, has been appointed 

 professor of philosophy at Basel. 



Dr. Ph. Lenard, assistant professor of phys- 

 ics in the University of Heidelberg, has been 

 called to the chair of physics at Kiel. 



Dr. a. Sauer, decent in mineralogy, and Dr. 

 Bela Haller, docent in zoology, have been pro- 

 moted to assistant professorships in the Univer- 

 sity of Heidelberg. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE. 



THE longevity OF SCIENTIFIC MEN. 



In the Cosmopolitan Magazine for March, I 

 quoted from the Popular Science Monthly of May, 

 1884, certain statistics with regard to the lon- 

 gevity of astronomers from Dr. A. B. Lancaster, 

 who derived his data from the records of 1741 

 astronomers as given in Houzeau and Lancas- 

 ter's ' Bibliographic generale de I'astronomies.' 

 Lancaster's figures agree, in a general way, 

 with those given by Quetelet in his 'Anthropo- 

 metric,' and with those given by Riccardi in his 

 ' Bibliotecamathematicaltaliana.' In Science 

 for March 18th the editor objects to Dr. Lancas- 

 ter's conclusions and points out what he supposes 

 to be an error of method on Lancaster's part. In 

 fact, his ownmethod isidentical withLancaster's. 

 Their data are quite different, however. The 

 difference in results depends entirely upon the 

 difference of data. Dr. Lancaster assumes that 

 an astronomer ' begins his career,' and deserves 



