Apbii, 16, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



609 



The John Fritz medal for 1909 has been 

 awarded by the committee of the national 

 engineering societies to Mr. Charles T. Porter, 

 of Montclair, N. J., for his work in advancing 

 the knowledge of steam engineering and in 

 improvements in engine construction, especi- 

 ally in high speed engineering. The first 

 medal was awarded in 1903 by the board of 

 award organized by the admirers of Mr. John 

 Fritz, the eminent engineer, on the occasion 

 of his eightieth birthday. The other recip- 

 ients thus far have been Lord Kelvin, Thomas 

 A. Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and George 

 Westinghouse. 



The Mikado of Japan has bestowed on 

 President Eliot the decoration of the Order 

 of the Rising Sun, first class. 



Manchester University has conferred its 

 doctorate of laws on Professor Walter Bald- 

 win Spencer, professor of biology in the Uni- 

 versity of Melbourne and known for his an- 

 thropological researches on the native tribes 

 of central Aiistralia, 



Professor Ferdinand Zirkel, for nearly 

 forty years professor of mineralogy and petrog- 

 raphy at Leipzig, has retired from active 

 service. 



Dr. Julius Hann, professor of cosmical 

 physics at Vienna, has celebrated his seven- 

 tieth birthday. 



At the meeting of the American Association 

 of Pathologists and Bacteriologists, held last 

 week at the Harvard Medical School, Dr. 

 Frank D. MaUory, assistant professor of 

 pathology of the Harvard Medical School, was 

 elected president for the meeting to be held 

 next year at Washington. 



Professor F. D. Fuller, chief chemist, 

 Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, 

 Harrisburg, Pa., has been appointed chief of 

 the cattle food and grain investigation labora- 

 tory, Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, and as- 

 sumed the duties of his position on April 1. 



University College, Oxford, has awarded 

 the Eadclifite prize for 1909 to Mr. Arthur 

 Frederick Hertz, Magdalen College, for his 

 dissertation on the physiology and pathology 

 of the movement of the intestines. 



Dr. Hermon C. Bumpus, director of the 

 American Museum of Natural History, has 

 received letters from Dr. E. M. Anderson and 

 Dr. V. Stefansson, explorers for the museum 

 on the extreme north coast of Alaska. The 

 letters were dated October 15. 



Two assistant curators of the Field Museum 

 of Natural History, Messrs. S. C. Simms and 

 F. C. Cole, are to take up the ethnological 

 investigation in the Philippines interrupted 

 by the recent murder of Dr. William Jones. 



The Phi Beta Kappa address at Columbia 

 University will be given by Dr. A. Lawrence 

 Lowell, president-elect of Harvard University, 



Senor Joaquim Nabuco, ambassador from 

 Brazil to the United States, will deliver the 

 baccalaureate address at the University of 

 Wisconsin. 



Dr. George H. Parker, professor of zoology 

 at Harvard University, gave a series of six 

 lectures at the University of Hlinois, March 

 29 to April 3, on the subjects of coral islands, 

 the functiors of the ear in fishes, and the 

 origin of the nervous system. 



The third meeting of Research Workers in 

 Experimental Biology, of Washington, D. C, 

 was held at the Medical Department of George 

 Washington University, on April 3, when Dr. 

 Leo Loeb, assistant professor of experimental 

 pathology in the University of Pennsylvania, 

 read a paper on " The Experimental Produc- 

 tion of Maternal Placenta." 



Sigma Xi Honorary Fraternity at the 

 University of Pennsylvania initiated its 

 new members in the Randal Morgan Labora- 

 tory on April 7. Previous to the exercises 

 old members and new assembled in the audi- 

 torium, where Mr. H. Clyde Snook, of New 

 York, delivered a lecture on " The Mechanical 

 Rectification of One Million Volts." 



The Woman's College, Baltimore, in con- 

 junction with a conunittee of the alumnae as- 

 sociation, has arranged a course of lectures on 

 "Nutrition." The first were given last week 

 by Dr. William J. Gies, of the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons of New York. Other 

 lecturers are to be: Dr. Henry 0. Sherman, 

 New York; Dr. William H. Howell, Johns 



