862 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 938 



Joseph H. James, professor of chemical 

 engineering in the Carnegie Institute of 

 Technology, Pittsburgh, delivered the address 

 at the annual meeting of the Columbus Sec- 

 tion of the American Chemical Society on 

 the subject, " Acetylene Gas, its manufacture, 

 transportation and storage." 



Professor William T. Sedgwick, of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lec- 

 tured on December 11 in the Barnum Mu- 

 seum, Tufts College, on " Sanitary Biology." 



Dr. John M. Macfaelane, professor of bot- 

 any in the University of Pennsylvania, deliv- 

 ered a lecture on December 9, before the Nat- 

 ural History Society of Wilmington, Del., on 

 " Evident and Hidden Plowers and Plants." 



Professor Lightnee Witmer, of the psy- 

 chological department of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, addressed the Brooklyn Train- 

 ing School for Teachers on December 2, on 

 the treatment of gifted children in the schools 

 and the Montessori system. 



On November 25 Professor Hugo de Vries, 

 of Amsterdam, lectured at Eutgers College on 

 " A New Conception of the Evolution The- 

 ory." On the same day Dr. Charles P. Berkey 

 spoke before the New Jersey State Microscop- 

 ical Society on " Geology and Engineering in 

 the Catskill Aqueduct." 



The Royal Society of Edinburgh proposes 

 to commemorate in 1914 the tercentenary of 

 the announcement of the discovery of loga- 

 rithms by John Napier. 



SiE Geoege Howaed Daewin, Plumian pro- 

 fessor of astronomy and experimental philos- 

 ophy at Cambridge University, distinguished 

 for his contributions to our knowledge of the 

 tides and kindred phenomena, has died at the 

 age of sixty-seven years. 



The death is announced, in his seventy- 

 ninth year, of Sir Charles Whitehead, a 

 British authority on agriculture. 



Peofessor Wilhelm Eiedlee died in Ziirich 

 on November 19 at the age of eighty-one 

 years. Professor Eiedler is known by his 

 investigations in descriptive geometry in con- 

 nection with the geometry of position. He 



also published German translations of a num- 

 ber of Salmon's works on higher geometry. 



Mr. L. S. Camicia, of Valdez, Alaska, a 

 jeweler and optician, died in May, 1912. He 

 was a Swiss, largely self-educated and inten- 

 sely interested in nature. From 1898 to 1912 

 he visited the Valdez glacier once a year in 

 the same month and accurately measured its 

 retreat. He is the only resident of Alaska who 

 is known to have maintained annual observa- 

 tions of the behavior of a glacier. He also 

 kept a continuous daily weather record for the 

 fourteen years at his residence in Alaska, and 

 a series of manuscript notes on times and 

 durations of earthquakes at Valdez that checks 

 well with the accurate seismograph records. 



The legislative council of Mauritius has 

 voted £200 as a contribution towards the fund 

 which is being raised for the London School 

 of Tropical Medicine. The fund has now 

 reached £50,000. 



The alumni of the University of Minnesota 

 living in Washington have been planning for 

 the past two years to present the university 

 with ground for a marine biological laboratory 

 and station in the state of Washington and 

 have now made a formal oifer to the regents 

 of ten acres on Cypress Island, one of the San 

 Juan group, about fifty-five miles directly 

 north of Seattle. The island is about four 

 and a half miles long and nearly two miles 

 wide. There is a freshwater lake and a fine 

 spring. This particular tract of ground was 

 chosen, after a very thorough survey of the 

 country, in order to seciire the very best pos- 

 sible location for such a station. The alumni 

 propose to present this ten-acre tract to the 

 university, and to erect a building or build- 

 ings suitable for the use of the station. They 

 also offer to provide any minor additions that 

 the university may require and will support 

 two or three, or possibly more, scholarships. 



In the Proceedings of the American Acad- 

 emy of Arts and Sciences, Volume 48, Num- 

 ber 11, pp. 389-507, November, 1912, Professors 

 Edwin B. Wilson and Gilbert N. Lewis have 

 published a long and systematic account of 

 the theory of relativity under the title, " The 



