Jahtjaet 22, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



143 



It is announced by President Jolui Thomas, 

 of Middlebury College, that $91,685.50 has 

 been contributed toward the $100,000 needed 

 to secure the D. K. Pearson building and en- 

 dowment fund of $100,000. 



By the will of Dr. James G. Wheeler, 

 Broughton, the James Millikin University, 

 Decatur, will come into possession of his es- 

 tate, estimated to be worth from $75,000 to 

 $125,000. 



The Ohio State University has received a 

 gift of $10,000 from Mr. Eobert T. Scott, 

 Cadiz, the income to be used for the aid of 

 poor students. 



The medical department of the Univer- 

 sity of Pennsylvania, has concluded arrange- 

 ments for holding the first annual " Home 

 Coming, or Progressive Medicine Week," to 

 be given for the benefit of the alumni of the 

 school, and to occupy the Easter vacation 

 period. Plans are being considered to have 

 each head of a department arrange, with the 

 cooperation of his assistants, a program 

 which will note deviations from the old 

 standards, as well as lay stress upon principles 

 which by constant practise have become crys- 

 tallized. The alumni of the medical school 

 who have distinguished themselves in their 

 profession will be invited to cooperate. 



Abbott Lawrence Lowell, since 1900 pro- 

 fessor of the science of government in Har- 

 vard University and previously since his 

 graduation from Harvard College and the 

 Law School a lawyer practising in Boston, 

 will succeed Mr. Eliot as president of Har- 

 vard University. 



Dr. Charles H. Haskins^ professor of his- 

 tory in Harvard University, has been ap- 

 pointed dean of the Graduate School of Arts 

 and Sciences, to succeed the late Professor 

 John Henry Wright. 



DISCUSSION AND GORBESPONDENOE 



. PECULIAR ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA 



In an article by Professor J. E. Church, Jr., 

 in Science, November 6, 1908, page 651, en- 

 titled " Electric Disturbances and Perils on 

 Mountain Tops," Professor Church describes 



the peculiar brush discharges that emanated 

 from the weather vane, the anemometer cups 

 and other objects in an electric storm on 

 Mount Eose, on October 20, 1907, between 

 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. He states also: "When- 

 ever our hands arose in the air, every finger 

 sent forth a vigorous flame." 



It may be interesting to note that we find 

 descriptions of similar phenomena in the 

 Elizabethan era, and even in the days of 

 Julius Csesar. In the "Itinerary of Eynes 

 Moryson" (Macmillan, 1908), Vol. 3, pp. 74- 

 76, there is given an account of an electric 

 storm on the night of December 23, 1601, at 

 Kinsale, near Cork, Ireland. This storm, 

 which took place in midwinter, and in a 

 locality that was practically on the sea level, 

 was preceded by " great lightning and terrible 

 thunder" on the night of December 20, and 

 by " continual flashes of lightning " on the 

 night of December 21. 



The following is Moryson's account: 

 All the night was eleare [i. e., brilliant?] with 

 lightning (as in the former nights were great 

 lightning with thunder) to the astonishment of 

 many in respect of the season of the yeare. And I 

 have heard by many horsemen of good credit, and 

 namely by Captaine Pikeman, Comet to the Lord 

 Deputies troope, a Gentleman of good estimation 

 in the Army, that this night our horsemen [who 

 were] set to watch, to their seeming did see 

 Lampes burne at the points of their staves or 

 speares in the middest of these lightning flashes. 



Again in North's "Plutarch," "Life of 

 Julius Csesar" as quoted in Porter and 

 Clarke's edition of Julius Csesar, p. 119 : 



Strabo the Philosopher writeth that divers men 

 were seene going up and down in iire ; and further- 

 more, that there was a slave of the soldiers that 

 did cast a marvellous burning flame out of his 

 hand; insomuch as they that saw it thought he 

 had been burnt, but when the flre was out it wag 

 found he had no hurt. 



Shakespeare has embodied this account of 

 Plutarch's in his tragedy of Julius C»sar, Act 

 I., Scene 3, lines 15-25. See also Burritt's 

 " Geography of the Heavens," revised edition. 

 New York, 1859, p. 155, for a reference to a 

 soniewhat similar phenomenon as observed by 

 Baccaria. Henry Pemberton, Jr. 



