MarcH 1, 1912] 
Proressor René Zem.er, the eminent paleo- 
botanist of the Paris School of Mines and in- 
spector general of mines, has been appointed 
president of the council general of mines, a 
public board under the Ministry of Public 
Works. 
Dr. W. Wiuim, of the St. Petersburg Acad- 
emy of Science, has been appointed director 
of the newly-established seismographic ob- 
servatory at Pulkova. 
Mr. Grorce H. Craprs has been appointed 
to represent the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia on the occasion of the cele- 
bration of the one hundredth and twenty- 
fifth anniversary of the founding of the Uni- 
versity of Pittsburgh. The council of the 
Société Géologique de France has appointed 
one of the foreign members of the society, 
Dr. C. R. Eastman, of the Carnegie Museum, 
to act as official representative of that body at 
the celebration. 
A SMITHSONIAN expedition, under the direc- 
tion of Mr. H. C. Raven, will start in a few 
days for eastern Dutch Borneo, where a col- 
lection of vertebrates and ethnological ma- 
terial will be made for the United States Na- 
tional Museum. 
Mr. Waupemar T. ScHALLER, chemist and 
mineralogist of the United States Geological 
Survey, is soon to leave Washington for a six- 
months’ trip to Europe where he will visit 
the principal mineral collections and con- 
tinue his studies at the universities of Heid- 
elberg and Munich. 
Dr. Warren D. Sairn, chief of the division 
of mines, Bureau of Science, Manila, will be 
on leave in the spring and summer of 1912 in 
the United States, making visits to the vari- 
ous laboratories in Washington and Pitts- 
burgh. Later he will spend a month in one 
of the California oil fields investigating the 
geology and operations there. 
Prorrssor Grorce D. Hupparp, head of the 
department of geology in Oberlin College, is 
engaged in special research under the Ohio 
State Geological Survey, in the attempt to 
formulate some definite conclusions regard- 
SCIENCE 
331 
ing the problems of pre-glacial drainage in 
the Ohio Valley. 
Proressor WILHELM PaszkowskI, the di- 
rector of the Scientific Information Bureau 
of the University of Berlin, will leave for the 
United States on March 9, to deliver a series 
of lectures on German culture on the invita- 
tion of the Germanic Society of New York. 
He is to lecture at Columbia, Harvard, Yale 
and other universities. 
Proressor Oasper René Grecory, of the 
University of Leipzig, is giving a series of 
lectures at the University of Illinois on “ The 
Development of Science in Germany.” Dr. 
Gregory is the first American-born professor 
to receive appointment in a German univer- 
sity. He holds the chair of theology at Leip- 
zig. 
Dr. Haven Mertcarr, of the U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, delivered on February 
17 the John Lewis Russell lecture before the 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society. His 
subject was “ Fungous Diseases of the Chest- 
nut and Other Trees.” 
Lectures have been given before the grad- 
uate students in highway engineering at Co- 
lumbia University by Mr. Clifford Richardson, 
consulting engineer, New York City, on 
“Trinidad and Bermudez Asphalts and Their 
Use in Highway Construction”; by Mr. Nel- 
son P. Lewis, chief engineer, Board of Esti- 
mate and Apportionment, New York City, on 
“Design of Highways and Systems of High- 
ways,” and by Mr. A. W. Dow, chemical and 
consulting paving engineer, New York City, 
on “The Inspection of Sheet Asphalt Pave- 
ments.” 
Proressor ArtTHurR Keir, curator of the 
museum, began on February 26 a course of 
six lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons 
of England, on phases in the evolution of man. 
On February 24 Sir J. J. Thomson began a 
course of six lectures at the Royal Institution 
on “ Molecular Physics.” 
Cuartes Ropert Sancer, Ph.D., professor of 
chemistry and director of the chemical labora- 
tory at Harvard University, died on February 
95, at the age of fifty-two years. 
