Ocroser 4, 1918] 
Dr. C. Cumton, professor of biology at 
Canterbury College, New Zealand, has been 
elected an honorary member of the Royal So- 
ciety of New South Wales. 
Proressor Aaron NicHotas SKrinner, for- 
merly professor of mathematics at the U. S. 
Nayal Academy and assistant astronomer of 
the Naval Observatory, died on August 14, in 
his seventy-fourth year. 
Mr. Ropert Curistian McKinney, for many 
years a member of the topographic branch of 
the U. S. Geological Survey, has died on July 
27, at the age of sixty-two years. 
CoLtoneL Bertram Hopkins, professor of 
mechanism and applied mechanics in Cam- 
bridge University, died on August 26 in an 
aeroplane accident. 
Proressor O. Henrict, F.R.S., emeritus pro- 
fessor of mechanics and mathematics in the 
Central Technical College of the City and 
Guilds of London Institute, died on August 10, 
at the age of seventy-eight years. 
STONEHENGE, the famous Druid monument, 
which has always been in the hands of private 
owners, has been presented to the British na- 
tion by C. H. E. Chubb, who purchased it in 
1915. 
THE statutory meeting of the general com- 
mittee of the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science, was held in London 
in July, and at this meeting much disappoint- 
ment was expressed that for the second year 
in succession it has been found impossible to 
arrange for an ordinary meeting. A resolu- 
tion was passed unanimously asking the coun- 
cil to arrange for a meeting in London next 
year, if it should prove impossible to arrange 
to meet at Bournemouth. The question as to 
the type of meeting which it was desirable to 
hold was left to the council to decide. 
Tue Illuminating Engineering Society will 
hold its annual convention at the Engineering 
Societies Building, New York, on October 10, 
1918. War-time lighting economies, the use 
of better lighting in speeding up war produc- 
tion and manufactures, the lighting of camps, 
effect of lighting curtailment on crime, and 
automobile headlight laws will be discussed. 
SCIENCE 
341 
Tue Association of American Agricultural 
Colleges and Experiment Stations will hold its 
thirty-second annual convention at the South- 
ern Hotel, Baltimore, Md., November 13-15. 
Tue council of the Royal Microscopical So- 
ciety announces that the high cost of printing 
and the growing scarcity of paper have com- 
pelled them to reduce the issue of the Journal 
to four numbers per annum instead of six. 
The revenue account of the society for 1917 
showed an excess of expenditure over income 
of £141. 
THE committee of organization for the 
South American Conference on Hygiene, 
Microbiology and Pathology, to be presided 
over by Professor Couto, has decided on Rio 
de Janeiro for the inaugural session. It will 
convene on October 15. The previous meet- 
ing was held at Buenos Aires in September, 
1916. 
Tue Journal of the American Medical As- 
sociation states that the commission sent by 
the National Public Health Service to study 
epidemic diseases in northern Argentina is 
under the leadership of Professor Kraus, di- 
rector of the Instituto Nacional Bacteriologico. 
The other members of the commission are Drs. 
de la Vega, Battaglia, Barbara, and Fischer, 
with several bacteriologists, guardas sanitarios 
and attendants. The epidemic of pneumonia 
at Jujuy has almost completely died out, but 
the mortality reached 30 per cent. In the 
Galpon and Molinos districts there have been 
cases suspicious of bubonic plague and the 
commission is to investigate these foci. A 
large squadron is equipped for rat destruction 
at these places. The main interest for the ex- 
pedition, however, is the investigation of ty- 
phus, for exanthematous typhus has never been 
reported before in Argentina. The suspicious 
eases which the commission is to study have 
occurred at Iruya, near the frontier of Bolivia, 
in a poor, mountainous zone with little com- 
munication with the outside. 
Nature states that the position of Great 
Britain as regard the supply of optical glass 
at the outbreak of the war is often not clearly 
understood. Optical glass has been manufac- 
