OCTOBEB 25, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



653 



men only, for a specialist in a^onomy in the 

 Office of Experiment Stations, Department of 

 Agriculture, at a salary of $1,800 per annum, 

 and for associate physicist in the Bureau of 

 Standards, Washington, D. C, at a salary 

 ranging from $1,800 to $2,000. 



Members of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science expecting to con- 

 tribute to the program of Section D are 

 requested to so inform G. W. Bissell, secre- 

 tary. East Lansing, Mich., as soon as possible. 

 This section receives no support from affili- 

 ated societies, but the programs in the past 

 few years have been good and the sessions 

 well attended. The Cleveland meeting should 

 be no exception. 



The geographers who took part in the trans- 

 continental excursion returned to New York 

 last week and held scientific sessions in the 

 hall of the American Geographical Society. 

 On Friday evening there was a banquet at the 

 Waldorf-Astoria. Most of the foreign geog- 

 raphers sailed for their homes on the nine- 

 teenth instant. 



The 220 German physicians who have been 

 visiting places of scientific interest in this 

 country after the International Congress on 

 Hygiene and Demography sailed on the morn- 

 ing of October 9 on the liner Victoria Louise. 



The next International Physiological Con- 

 gress will be held at Groningen from Sep- 

 tember 2 to 6, 1913. 



A SECOND exposition of inventions will be 

 held at the coliseum, St. Louis, from No- 

 vember 11 to 17. 



Mrs. Russell Sage has bought Marsh 

 Island, Louisiana, at a cost of $150,000, for 

 a bird refuge. The island is on the gulf 

 coast, southwest of New Orleans, and is about 

 eighteen miles long and nine miles wide, and 

 contains about Y5,000 acres. It has long been 

 a famous winter feeding ground for ducks 

 and geese and various other migratory birds, 

 and has been for many years one of the most 

 popular resorts in the south for market hun- 

 ters. Mrs. Sage will place control of the 

 island in whatever hands will best accomplish 

 her purpose, either the federal government. 



the state of Louisiana or some association 

 organized for bird protection. The matter 

 was brought to Mrs. Sage's attention by 

 Edward A. McHhenny, of Avery Island, La., 

 who, in conjunction with Charles Willis 

 Ward, of Michigan, recently gave a 13,000- 

 acre bird refuge on Vermilion Bay to the 

 state of Louisiana. 



The Somerset County Council has set aside 

 Brean Down, a little promontory stretching 

 into the British Channel as a sanctuary for 

 birds, and the Society for the Protection of 

 Wild Birds has provided a guardian. 



A CABLE message has been received at the 

 Harvard College Observatory from Professor 

 Perrine, director of the Cordoba Observa- 

 tory, from Christiana, Minas Geraes. Brazil, 

 " Rain." This appears to indicate that ob- 

 servations of the eclipse of the sun on October 

 9-10 were prevented by bad weather. 



The return of marriages, births and deaths 

 registered in England and Wales, states that 

 the number of persons married during the 

 first quarter of the present year corresponds 

 to an annual rate of 9.8 per 1,000 of the popu- 

 lation; this is 1.5 per 1,000 below the mean 

 marriage rate in the ten preceding first quar- 

 ters and is the lowest marriage-rate recorded 

 in any quarter since the establishment of 

 civil registration. The births in the second 

 quarter of the present year correspond to a 

 rate of 23.9 annually per 1,000 of the pop- 

 ulation; this is 3.7 per 1,000 below the 

 mean birth-rate in the ten preceding second 

 quarters, and is the lowest birth-rate recorded 

 in any second quarter since the establishment 

 of civil registration. The deaths last quarter 

 correspond to an annual rate of 12.7 per 1,000 

 persons living; this rate is 1.7 per 1,000 below 

 the mean rate in the ten preceding second 

 quarters, and is the lowest death-rate recorded 

 in any second quarter since the establishment 

 of civil registration. 



On August 30 last, the Philosophical Insti- 

 tute of Canterbury, New Zealand, celebrated 

 its jubilee by holding a conversazione in 

 Christchurch, the capital of the province. 

 There was a large gathering, local bodies, 



