November 1, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



585 



of $10,000 just received from Mrs. Mary 

 Putnam Bull, of Tarrytown, N. Y. This 

 gift, a memorial to Mr. Charles E. Putnam 

 and Mr. J. D. Putnam, has been set aside 

 as a Permanent Publication Fund. An 

 effoi't is now being made to secure an en- 

 dowment of $50,000. All who know the 

 history of the Academy will wish it success 

 in this undertaking. 



GENERAL. 



The Thirteenth Congress of the American 

 Ornithologists' Union will convene in Wash- 

 ington, D. C, on Monday, November 11th, 

 at 8 o'clock P. M. The evening session 

 will be devoted to the election of officers 

 and the tra nsaction of other routine business . 



The meetings open to the public, and de- 

 voted to the reading and discussion of scien- 

 tific papers, will be held in the Lecture 

 Hall of the United States National Museum, 

 beginning Tuesday, November 12th, at 11 

 A. M., and continuing three days. Infor- 

 mation regarding the Congress can be had 

 by addressing the Secretary, Mr. John H. 

 Sage, Portland, Conn. 



The Institute of France celebrated its 

 centenary on the 2.Sd, 24th, 25th and 26th 

 of the present month. On the 23d the 

 members of the five Sections met to receive 

 the associates and the French and foreign 

 correspondents. On the 24th there was a 

 general meeting at the Sorbonne at which 

 M. Poincar^, Minister of Public Instruction 

 and of the Fine Arts, made an address, fol- 

 lowed bj' a banquet in the evening. On 

 the 25th there was a matinee at the Theatre 

 Frangaise and a reception at the house of M. 

 Faure, President of the Republic. On the 

 26th there was a visit to the Castle Chan- 

 tilly and a reception by M. le due d'Aumale. 



M. DucLAUx has been elected director 

 and Dr. Roux subdirector of the Pasteur In- 

 stitute. 



M. Janssen described before the meeting 

 of the Paris Academy of Sciences on October 



7th an ascent to the observatory on Mt. 

 Blanc made On September 28th. The parts 

 of a thirteen -inch telescope have arrived 

 safely on the summit and will be mounted 

 as a polar sidereostat. The self-recording 

 meteorograph had stopped running, and M. 

 Janssen thinks that it will require further 

 experiments before the instrument will give 

 satisfactory records. M. Janssen took ad- 

 vantage of the dry air of the summit to 

 examine the solar light witli a spectroscope 

 and failed to find any rays of aqueous origin, 

 and regards it as certain that there is neither 

 oxygen nor aqueous vapor in the solar 

 envelopes. 



The Hopkins Laboratory of the Stanford 

 University has just issued the first of a 

 series of bulletins, being a report on the 

 Fishes of Siualoa, giving the results of an 

 expedition, under ihe auspices of the labora- 

 tory, by Dr. Jordan and several assistants 

 last winter to the port at Mazatlan. A sim- 

 ilar expedition, under charge of Dr. C. H. 

 Gilbert, head of the department of zoology, 

 with a force of assistants, will be made in 

 December of this year to the coast of Pan- 

 ama. Other expeditions will be sent out 

 from time to time until the Pacific coast is 

 covered. 



At the recent meeting of the Interna- 

 tional Congress of Railway and Marine Hy- 

 giene, at Amsterdam, Dr. Zwaardemaker, 

 of Utrecht, urged that railway employees 

 should have their sense of hearing as well 

 as their eyesight tested and that applicants 

 for railway service should only be accepted 

 when their sense of hearing is normal. At 

 the same congress an interesting discussion 

 was held as to whether men wearing spec- 

 tacles may be employed in the railway 

 service. It seems that in parts of Germany 

 defective eyesight may be corrected by 

 spectacles, whereas in other parts those re- 

 quiring them may not be employed. In 

 Holland men with abnormal vision are not 

 admitted to the railway service, but, if the 



