586 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 44. 



eyesight becomes defective later, spectacles 

 are supplied by the company. It was sug- 

 gested that engineers and firemen who re- 

 quired glasses should not be employed owing 

 to the difficulty of keeping them clean. 



Peofessor Hale, of the University of 

 Chicago, and Professor Keeler, of the Alle- 

 gheny Observatory, are now in Boston en- 

 gaged in testing the lenses which Mr. Alvan 

 Clark has now nearly completed for the 

 Yerkes Telescope and which he will perfect 

 under their direction. 



Heer Ludwig DtJRR, a German civil 

 engineer, has recently exhibited before the 

 military authorities in London a lamp in- 

 vented and patented by him. The light is 

 originated by automatic evaporation and 

 overheating of the vapors of ordinary pe- 

 troleum, and is said to yield a light ranging 

 from 3,500 to 14,000 candle power. With 

 it small print could be easily read at a dis- 

 tance of 120 yards. It is stated that the 

 Diirr light has already been extensively 

 adopted by the Russian and German gov- 

 ernments. 



The Paris Academy of Sciences listened 

 to a curious address by M. Emile Blanchard 

 on October 7th. M. Blanchard stated that 

 Lord Salisbury's presidential address before 

 the Oxford meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion confirmed the views he had always 

 held regarding the permanence of species. 

 He said that he had been unable to alter the 

 hereditary color of the wings of butterflies, 

 though he had kept them under colored 

 lights of all the shades of the spectrum, and 

 that he himself had often offered in vain 

 to bring before the Academy the results of 

 any investigator who had produced a new 

 species in the animal kingdom! 



Professor Mach, of Vienna, and Profes- 

 sor Wislicenus, of Leipzig, have been 

 elected members of the Kaiserl. Leop- 

 Carol. Akademie deutscher Naturforscher. 



Die Accademia dei Lincei, of Rome, has 



elected H. Wild as foreign member and 

 Ernesto Csesaro, the mathematician, and 

 Annibale Ricco, the astronomer, as corre- 

 sponding members. 



Mr. Holbrook Cushman, instructor in 

 physics in Columbia College, died on the 

 evening of October 25th from heart disease, 

 at the age of 38. 



Dr Thomas Keith, a distinguished Lon- 

 don physician, known for his original in- 

 vestigations in ovariotomy and in fibroid 

 growths, died on October 9th in his sixty- 

 ninth year. 



We learn from the Naturwissenschajtliche 

 Rundschau that Professor Dimitri Brandza, 

 director of the Botanical Gardens in Bn- 

 karest, died at Stanicul, Moldau, on August 

 15th. Dr. Riva, the botanist and African 

 explorer, died in Rome on August 24th. 

 On September 4th Professor Dr. Hellriegel, 

 director of the agricultural experiment sta- 

 tion, died at Bernberg, at the age of 64 

 years. On October 1st died Dr. Gustav Wil- 

 helm, professor of agriculture in the tech- 

 nical high school of Gratz, at the age of 

 61 years, and Dr. Ernst von Rebeur-Pasch- 

 witz, astronomer and Privatdocent at Halle, 

 at the age of 34 years. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

 ANNUAL REPORT OF PRESIDENT LOW OF CO- 

 LUMBIA COLLEGE. 



President Low's report was presented to 

 the Trustees of the College on October 7th, 

 and will shortly be published. From it we 

 take the following facts concerning the 

 progress of the University. 



Undoubtedly the most important events 

 in the history of the University are those 

 relating to its removal to the new site. Of 

 these events President Low's own gift of a 

 million dollars for the Library Building as 

 a memorial of his father, though only inci- 

 dentally mentioned in the report, is the most 

 noteworthy. A building for the Depart- 



