748 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 178. 



of ConvocatioB, authorizing the expenditure of 

 $7,500 in removing and reconstructing the iron 

 laboratory at the University Museum, at present 

 occupied by the Linacre professor of compara- 

 tive anatomy, and in erecting, on or near to 

 the site of that laboratory, a new laboratory and 

 lecture-room for the joint use of the Sherardian 

 professor of botany and the Linacre professor 

 of comparative anatomy. 



By the will of the late Dr. Elizabeth H. Bates, 

 of Port Chester, N. Y., the University of Mich- 

 igan will receive $125,000, the income from 

 which is to be used in establishing a chair for 

 the diseases of women and children, to be known 

 as the Bates professorship. 



The will of the late Mrs. Annie S. Baton, of 

 New York, leaves $100,000 to Princeton Uni- 

 versity, subject to an interest for life of her two 

 sons. The bequest is to found a fund for an 

 endowment for Baton lectureships in ancient 

 and modern literature. 



The Troy Times, in its supplement of April 

 2d, devotes its whole space of 24 large pages to 

 a description of Cornell University by ex-Gov- 

 ernor Cornell, President Schurman and mem- 

 bers of the Faculty, with many illustrations of 

 the campus, the adjacent country and grounds 

 and buildings, and with excellent portraits of 

 prominent founders, heads of leading depart- 

 ments and lecturers. The issue constitutes the 

 best and most complete popular account of a 

 great educational institution that, perhaps, has 

 ever come from the press of even our leading 

 newspapers. It is a most admirable tribute to 

 higher learning, as well as to the university 

 which is its subject. 



There are this year four hundred and thirty- 

 eight candidates for degrees at Cornell Univer- 

 sity, of which twelve are for the A.M. and 

 twenty-six for the Ph.D. degree. 



The American fellowship of the Association 

 of Collegiate Alumnse has been awarded to 

 Miss Caroline Ellen Furness, a graduate of 

 Vassar College and now assistant in the Vassar 

 College observatory. Miss Furness has also 

 won the scholarship in astronomy and mathe- 

 matics offered by Barnard College. She will 

 study at Columbia University. 

 The following fellowships have been awarded 



at Bryn Mawr College : Mathematics — Louise 

 D. Cummings, of Canada, A.B., University of 

 Toronto ; Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, 

 1896-97, now graduate student University of 

 Chicago. Chemistry — Margaret B. MacDonald, 

 of Virginia; Graduate in Science, Mt. Holyoke, 

 where she was for two years assistant in the 

 laboratory before coming to Bryn Mawr, has 

 been studying at Bryn Mawr during this year 

 as graduate scholar. Biology — Annah Putnam 

 Hazen, of Vermont, B.L., Smith College, 1895 ; 

 M.S., Dartmouth College, 1897 ; graduate stu- 

 dent, Bryn Mawr College, this year and grad- 

 uate scholar. 



Professor Edwin Brant Frost, of Dart- 

 mouth College, has been elected professor of 

 astrophysics at Yerkes Observatory. The Chi- 

 cago University Becord states that after gradua- 

 ting from Dartmouth in 1886 Professor Frost 

 took Professor Young's course in practical as- 

 tronomy at Princeton, and returned to Dart- 

 mouth as instructor in physics and astronomy. 

 In 1890 he went to Germany and spent one 

 semester at Strassburg, where he intended to 

 continue his studies. But the opportunity of 

 becoming voluntary assistant at the Imperial 

 Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam, which 

 is but rarely accorded, took him to that cele- 

 brated institution, where he assisted Professors 

 Vogel and Scheiner in their important spectro- 

 scopic researches on the motion of stars in the 

 line of sight. A year later he was appointed 

 assistant on the regular staff, and undertook 

 his well-known investigations on the thermal 

 radiation of sun-spots and the solar surface. 

 The results of this work have cast grave doubts 

 on the validity of the long accepted idea that 

 sun-spots are cavities in the photosphere. In 

 1892 Mr. Frost was elected assistant professor 

 of astronomy in Dartmouth College and Di- 

 rector of the Shattuck Observatory. Three 

 years later he was advanced to a full professor- 

 ship. His best known work since his return 

 from Germany is his translation and revision of 

 Scheiner's 'Astronomical Spectroscopy,' which 

 everywhere takes precedence over the original 

 as the standard treatise on the subject. At the 

 Yerkes Observatory Professor Frost will devote 

 special attention to a photographic study of 

 stellar spectra with the large telescope. 



