April 24, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



603 



Acting President Henry Landes, of the Univer- 

 sity of Washington, and three papers of a gen- 

 eral scientific interest will be given by three 

 members of the constituent societies. 



The railroads have granted the usual conven- 

 tion rates for the convention covering the 

 states of California, Oregon, Washington, 

 Idaho and British Columbia. 



The proposal for the transfer of the Pacific 

 Association to the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science as its " Pacific Di- 

 vision " made at the Berkeley meeting in 1913 

 resulted in the appointment of committees to 

 consider the plan. During the year the two 

 committees have been at work ; the general pol- 

 icies and plans of merging have been agreed 

 upon, and at present a smaller cojnmittee is 

 drafting a constitution. It is hoped that the 

 transfer can be made at the Seattle meeting. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



Dr. W. W. Keen", of Philadelphia, has been 

 elected president of the Fifth International 

 Congress of Surgeons to be held in Paris in 

 191Y. 



The Bruce Medal of the Astronomical So- 

 ciety of the Pacific has been awarded to Dr. 

 O. Backlund, of Poulkova. 



The septennial award under the Acton En- 

 dowment has this year been made by the 

 Royal Institution to Professor C. S. Sherring- 

 ton, Wayneflete professor of physiology in the 

 University of Oxford, for his work on " The 

 Integrative Action of the Nervous System." 



After twenty-one years of connection with 

 the Terkes Observatory, Sherburne Wesley 

 Burnham, professor of practical astronomy, 

 will retire from active service on July 1. 



The seventieth birthday, on March 25, of 

 Professor Adolf Engler, the director of the 

 Eoyal Botanic Garden and Museum at Dah- 

 lem, near Berlin, was celebrated in the pres- 

 ence of many eminent German and foreign 

 botanists, by several functions. According to 

 the account in Nature, on the day itself, Pro- 

 fessor Pax, rector of the University of Breslau, 

 with Professors Diels and Gilg, as its editors, 

 presented to Professor Engler a copy of the 



Fest-Band of Engler's " Botanische Jahr- 

 biicher." The volume forms a supplement to 

 the fiftieth volume of this publication, and 

 consists of more than forty illustrated con- 

 tributions, largely from his pupils. Professor 

 Haberlandt presented Professor Engler, on 

 behalf of hundreds of subscribers, with his 

 life-size marble bust, the work of the sculptor, 

 A. Manthe. On March 26 there was a ban- 

 quet at which the ofiicial world was repre- 

 sented ; and on March 27 the monthly meeting 

 of the Deutsche Botanische Gesellschaft was 

 converted into an " Engler " meeting, and 

 Professor von Wettstein gave, by special invi- 

 tation, a lecture on the phylogenetic evolution 

 of the Angiosperm flower. 



Dr. Julius Kollmann, professor of anatomy 

 at Basle, has celebrated his eightieth birth- 

 day. 



Dr. G. T. Beilby, Professor A. Keith, F.R.S. 

 and Mr. J. Swinburne, F.E.S., have been 

 elected members of the Athenaeum Club for 

 eminence in science. 



S. Alfred Mitchell, Ph.D., director of the 

 McCormick Observatory at the University of 

 Virginia, has been appointed Ernest Kempton 

 Adams Research Fellow of Columbia Uni- 

 versity for 1914^15. Professor Mitchell is 

 can-ying on work in the measurement of 

 stellar parallaxes by the photographic method. 



Passed Assistant Surgeon Marshall 

 Guthrie, U. S. Public Health Service, has 

 been appointed chief quarantine ofiicer for the 

 Panama Canal Zone. 



Sir Howard Grubb, F.R.S., has been ap- 

 pointed scientific adviser to the Commissioners 

 of Irish Lights, in succession to the late Sir 

 Robert Ball, who held the position for the past 

 twenty years. 



Surgeon Joseph H. White, of the U. S. 

 Public Health Service, now stationed in New 

 Orleans, has been given a leave of absence for 

 one year to take up for the Rockefeller Com- 

 mission, the work of the eradication of hook- 

 worm disease in Central and South America. 



The Jacksonian Prize of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons for 1913 was awarded to Mr. J. 



