December 27, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



901 



Peofessob George Grant MacCurdy, of 

 Tale University, has been elected a corre- 

 sponding member of the Societe des Ameri- 

 canistes de Paris. 



Professor John W. Haeshberger, of the 

 University of Pennsylvania, has been elected 

 president of the Philadelphia Natural History 

 Society, which meets at the Wagner Free In- 

 stitute of Science. He has been made a mem- 

 ber of the council of the Pennsylvania For- 

 estry Association from Philadelphia County. 



Mr. Frank M. Chapman, of the American 

 Museum of Natural History, and Mr. Louis 

 Agassiz Fuertes, of Ithaca, will leave New 

 York in January to explore the Columbian 

 Andes. They will make a survey of Colombia, 

 beginning at the Magdalena River and work- 

 ing eastward to the Bogota plateau, then on up 

 to the high mountains, reaching an altitude of 

 14,000 feet, and down into the Orinoco basin. 

 The work will take about three months. Its 

 purpose is primarily to obtain material for 

 other " habitat groups " for the museum. Mr. 

 Fuertes will sketch the birds, the flora and the 

 landscape features of the country. 



Dr. George E. Hale lectured at the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology on December 

 IV on " The Magnetic Field of the Sun." 



Dr. J. M. Coulter, of the University of 

 Chicago, gave an address on " Problems in 

 Plant Breeding," before the honorary frater- 

 nity. Delta Theta Sigma, at Ames, Iowa, on 

 December 13. Professor N. E. Hansen, of 

 Brookings, South Dakota, gave an address for 

 the same society on " Siberia," on December 

 7, with special reference to the work of plant 

 introduction work in the United States. 



Two lectures on different phases of " Effi- 

 ciency Engineering " have recently been de- 

 livered before the faculty and students of the 

 College of Engineering of the University of 

 Illinois. One lecture was by Mr. Harrington 

 Emerson, of New York City ; it emphasized the 

 need of scientific study and adaptation of the 

 human element in the industries. The second 

 lecture was by Dean C. H. Benjamin, of the 

 School of Engineering of Purdue University; 

 it laid special stress on the necessary limita- 

 tions of any efficiency system. 



" The Rural Problem " was the subject of 

 an address delivered before the students of the 

 University of Wisconsin College of Agricul- 

 ture last week by Dr. F. B. Mumford, dean of 

 the University of Missouri College of Agricul- 

 ture. This was the first of a series of similar 

 lectures to be given during the winter. 



By invitation of the University of Calcutta, 

 Dr. A. R. Forsyth, F.R.S., will give a course 

 of advanced lectures in pure mathematics 

 early next year. His subject is " The Theory 

 of Functions of Two or More Complex Vari- 

 ables." 



The Dutch sculptor, Pier Pander (Rome), 

 has executed a bronze medallion of van't Hoff. 

 Nature states that any one desiring to pur- 

 chase a copy of it should send a postcard to Pro- 

 fessor Ernst Cohen, van't Hoff Laboratorium, 

 University, Utrecht, Holland. The medallion 

 will then be sent by the firm entrusted with 

 the work. If 100 copies are sold the price will 

 be 6.50 Marks. The price will be reduced to 

 5.50 Marks if 200 copies can be sold. The me- 

 dallion has been executed after a portrait re- 

 lief in marble by Pier Pander. 



Dr. WiLLLiM James Vaughn, who has held 

 the chair of mathematics since 1882 and the 

 chair of astronomy since 1895 at Vanderbilt 

 University, died on December 17, aged seventy^ 

 eight years. 



Mr. Samuel Arthur Saunder, who while en- 

 gaged as a schoolmaster, carried on important 

 researches in astronomy, especially concerning 

 the surface of the moon, died on December 8, 

 aged about sixty years. 



Mr. Peter Cameron, author of a work in 

 four volumes, which appeared between the 

 years 1882 and 1893, on " British Phytophag- 

 ous Hymenoptera," died on December 1. 



There will be no meeting of Section C 

 (Chemistry), at the Cleveland meeting of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science. The short time intervening between 

 the decision of the American Chemical So- 

 ciety not to meet in affiliation with Section C 

 this winter and the date of the meeting has 

 made it impossible to prepare a suitable pro- 

 gram. The meeting of Section C will, there- 

 fore, be postponed until the following year. 



