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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1129 



marooned men of Sir Ernest Sliackleton's ex- 

 pedition on Elephant Island, sailed from 

 Plymouth Sound on August 10, for Port 

 Stanley, Falkland Islands. Sir Ernest -will 

 embark at that port in another effort to reach 

 Elephant Island. 



II. Henry Nocq has been commissioned to 

 prepare a portrait plaque of the French arcke- 

 ologist and anthropologist, M. Joseph Deche- 

 lette, who has been killed in the war. Sub- 

 scriptions may be sent to M. le Comte O. 

 Costa de Beauregard, Sainte-Foy, par Longue- 

 ville (Seine-Inferieure). Those sending a 

 subscription of 10 francs are entitled to a 

 replica of the plaque in bronze, those giving 

 50 francs to one in silver. 



Dr. John Benjamin Murphy, the distin- 

 guished surgeon, professor of surgery in 

 Northwestern University, died on August 11, 

 aged fifty-nine years. 



Dr. Bushell Anningson, lecturer in mod- 

 ical jurisprudence in the University of Cam- 

 bridge since 1884, has died at the age of sev- 

 enty-eight years. 



Edgar Albert Smith, an authority on con- 

 chology, from 1867 to his retirement in 1913 

 on the scientific staff of the British Museum, 

 died on July 22, aged sixty-nine years. 



The death is announced of Dr. R. C. Del- 

 gado, of Havana, member of the Cuban Board 

 of Health and secretary of the Havana Aca- 

 demy of Sciences. 



The Swedish government has decided to 

 postpone until July 1, 1917, the distribution of 

 the Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, medi- 

 cine and literature. 



The Paris Academy of Medicine, following 

 the precedents of 1914 and 1915, has decided 

 not to suspend its sittings this year. It will 

 continue to meet during the months of Au- 

 gust and September for the discussion of ques- 

 tions relating to public health and national 

 defence. 



Mr. Richard T. Crane, in a telegram to 

 Mayor Mitchel, of New York, announces a 

 gift of $25,000 to the individual who may 



offer the best cure for infantile paralysis, or 

 the best solution to that problem, within a 

 year. 



The Senate Public Health Committee, on 

 July 28, voted to report favorably a proposed 

 appropriation of $2,000,000 to be spent in the 

 care of indigent sufferers from tuberculosis. 

 The object of the appropriation is to relieve 

 the states of the care of invalids who leave 

 their homes in search of health and then be- 

 come charges on other communities. 



The United States Public Health Service 

 has inaugurated a campaign for the relief of 

 sufferers from hay-fever. The service will en- 

 deavor to have state legislatures enact laws to 

 provide means for fighting weeds which are 

 known to provoke the disease. It is said that 

 2 per cent, of the people of the United States 

 are sufferers from hay-fever. 



Nature quotes from the June number of the 

 Bui. Imp. Acad. Sci., Petrograd, the statement 

 of plans to establish a biological station on 

 Lake Baikal. The largest of the fresh-water 

 lakes of Europe and Asia, and said to be the 

 deepest in the world, it possesses a fauna in 

 many respects unique. Some of its fishes are 

 found nowhere else, and some live at a greater 

 depth than any other fresh-water fishes. 

 Among them are very ancient forms, and, ac- 

 cording to some investigators, vestiges of the 

 Upper Tertiary and subtropical fauna of Si- 

 beria and, possibly, of central Asia. Though 

 Lake Baikal has long since attracted the at- 

 tention of Russian zoologists, much remains to 

 be done, and it is felt that private research, 

 valuable as its achievements have been, should 

 be supplemented by a fully equipped biological 

 station, which alone can cope with the prob- 

 lems involved in a thorough and systematic in- 

 vestigation. The subject has been mooted for 

 some time past in Russian scientific circles 

 and is now brought within measurable distance 

 of realization by a donation of £1,600 received 

 from a Siberian gentleman, Mr. A. Vtorov, 

 and the academy has appointed a commission 

 to take immediate steps to give concrete form 

 to a project destined to be of great importance 

 for biological science. 



