June 3, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



771 



ical Seminar of the University of Nebraska 

 was given by Dr. Charles R. Barnes, of the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin, on Saturday evening, May 

 21, 1898. The Conjugataj and higher Bryo- 

 phyta vi'ere cited as illustrations of ' Evolution- 

 ary Failures,' the subject of the address. The 

 Seminar will publish the address in the near 

 future. 



The department of botany of the University 

 of Nebraska has prepared two ' Laboratory 

 Units ' for high school botanical laboratories, 

 for exhibition in the Trans-Mississippi Exposi- 

 tion. Each includes those pieces of apparatus 

 which are absolutely necessary for the student 

 in the high school who is preparing to enter the 

 University. The first of the ' units ' is supplied 

 by an American maker for $23.00, and the sec- 

 ond is imported duty free by another dealer for 

 $20.00. School officers can thus readily de- 

 termine what to purchase and what the expense 

 will be. 



Dr. Hermann Schapira, professor of mathe- 

 matics at the University of Heidelberg, died at 

 Cologne on May 9th, at the age of fifty-seven 

 years. The death is also reported of Mr. Mau- 

 rice Hovelacque, Secretary of the Geological So- 

 ciety of Paris. 



Mr. Arthur E. Kennelly has been elected 

 President, and Mr. Ralph W. Pope has been 

 re-elected Secretary, of the American Institute 

 of Electrical Engineers. 



Professor Kalkowsky has been appointed 

 Director of the Mineralogical, Geological and 

 Ethnological Museum in Dresden. 



Professor Max von Pettenkofer, of the 

 medical faculty of the University of Munich, 

 has been elected a corresponding member of the 

 Berlin Academy of Sciences. 



Professor W. Roux, who holds the chair 

 of anatomy at Halle, has been elected a cor- 

 responding member of the Turin Academy of 

 Sciences. 



Dr. Edward Strasburger, professor of 

 botany at Bonn, has been elected a foreign 

 member of the Danish Academy of Sciences. 



An address and some valuable plate were 

 presented to Sir William Stokes on May 7lh, 

 on the occasion of the completion of the twenty- 



fifth year of his professorship at the College of 

 Surgeons, Dublin. In the evening Sir William 

 Stokes was entertained at dinner. 



The Philosophical Faculty of the University 

 of Gottingen has awarded the Otto Vahlbruch 

 prize for the greatest advance in science dur- 

 ing the past two years to Professor Rontgen, of 

 Wiirzburg. This prize was founded in 1896 

 and is of the value of 9,200 Marks. 



Die Senckenbergische Naturforschende Ge- 

 sellschaft, of Frankfort, has awarded its 

 Stroebel prize to Dr. Camerer, of Urach, for a 

 book on the Metabolism of the Child. 



The Berlin Society for the Advancement of 

 Industry offers several prizes for work to be 

 submitted prior to November, 1898. One of 

 these is a silver medal and six thousand Marks, 

 for electrolysis applied to mining, and one a 

 first prize of 4,000 Marks and a second prize of 

 3,000 Marks for a method of measuring the 

 amount of steam passing through a pipe. The 

 Society further offers in 1899 the Tornow prizes 

 (5,000, 3,000 and 2,000 Marks) for a history of 

 the metals, which must not exceed 200 pages in 

 length. 



William Wesley & Son, London, have 

 issued a catalogue offering for sale a large 

 number of works on astronomy from the li- 

 braries of Rev. A. Freeman, M.A., F.R.A.S. ; 

 A. Marth, F.R.A.S., and J. R. Hind, F.R.A.S., 

 late Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac 

 Ofiice, London. 



We are glad to note that at the annual meet- 

 ing of the London Anti- vivisection Society the 

 Chairman said that many felt disheartened at 

 the slow progress of the movement ; that the 

 society had to struggle against want of sym- 

 pathy ; that they deplored the apathy of the 

 public in the matter, and a resolution was 

 passed expressing unqualified dissatisfaction 

 with the existing act regulating vivisection, 

 and with its administration by the Home OflBce. 



The loiva Health Bulletin publishes letters 

 given by ' doctors of medicine ' in support of ap- 

 plications for pensions, of which the following 

 are examples : 

 , June 8, 1896. Dear Sir, 



Yours received I treted Wm. Akens after he cum 

 Hoam from the serfis for polypup in his nosee and 



