424 
John Ramsay, one of the survivors of the ex- 
pedition sent out to search for Sir John Frank- 
lin. He joined the Navy in 1849, and formed 
one of the crew of the Resolute, which sailed 
from Woolwich in 1852. 
ON the 20th of August last an International 
Conference met at Berne to study the glaciers 
of the Rhone and Aar, to which extended ex- 
cursions were made. Among those present 
were Professors Penck of Vienna, Reid of the 
Johns Hopkins University, von Drygalski of 
Berlin, Fursterwalder of Munich, Baron von 
Toll of St. Petersburg, and other students of 
glaciers. 
Tue Intercolonial Medical Congress of Aus- 
tralasia will hold its fifth session in Brisbane 
from September 18th to 23d. 
THE tenth congress of Italian Alienists will 
be held in Naples from the 10th to the 14th of 
October, under the presidency of Professor 
Tamburini. We learn from the British Medical 
Journal that the following are the subjects pro- 
posed for discussion: Practical methods of 
individual psychological investigation in asy- 
lums and clinics; the light which has been, 
and may be, thrown by anatomical data on 
normal and pathological psychology; psychi- 
atry and the study of the individual and his 
activity in social relations; intoxications and 
infections in the pathogenesis of mental diseases 
and neuropathies. 
Tue German Government has sent Professor 
Kossel, of the Board of Health, to Lisbon and 
Oporto to study the plague and the methods 
adopted to combat it. He is accompanied by 
Professor Frosch, of the Berlin Institute for the 
Study of Infectious Diseases, who is being de- 
spatched on the same mission by the Prussian 
Government. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 
THE Rose Polytechnic Institute will shortly 
receive $50,000 from a bequest of the late 
Joseph Collett, the payment of which has been 
delayed through litigation. 
Ir is reported that the German technical 
schools will be authorized to confer the degree 
Doctor rerum technicarum, and that the degree 
will be conferred for the first time on the oc- 
SCIENCE. 
LN. S. Vou. X. No. 247. 
casion of the celebration of the centenary of the 
Charlottenburg Technical School. 
THE Regents of the University of Texas have 
provided a psychological laboratory which has 
been placed under the charge of Professor 
Caswell Ellis, of the department of pedagogy. 
AT the University of West Virginia the fol- 
lowing appointments have beenmade: Edward 
D. Copeland, A.B. (Stanford), Ph.D. (Halle), 
lately assistant professor of botany at Indiana 
University, to be assistant professor of botany ; 
J. B. Johnston, Ph.D. (Michigan), to be assistant 
professor of zoology ; Otto Folin, B.S. (Minne- 
sota), Ph. D. (Chicago), to be assistant professor 
of chemistry, and J. D. Thompson, M.A. (Cam- 
bridge) of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Uni- 
versity College, Sheffield, to be assistant profes- 
sor of mathematics. 
AT the Ohio State University, W. E. Hender- 
son has been appointed assistant professor of 
analytical chemistry and C. B. Morrey, assist- 
ant professor of anatomy and physiology. 
A. KIRSCHMANN, Ph.D., lecturer in phil- 
osophy at the University of Toronto since 1894, 
has been appointed professor of philosophy and 
director of the psychological laboratory. 
PROFESSOR RICHARD PFEIFFER has been 
called from the Berlin Institute for infectious 
diseases to the University of Konigsberg as 
successor to Professor von Esmarch. 
Ir is reported that Dr. Arons, Privat-Docent 
for physics in the University of Berlin, has 
been called to a chair of physics at Wurzburg. 
It will be remembered that Dr. Arons has been 
prosecuted by the Government for being a so- 
cialist, but that the philosophical faculty of the 
University of Berlin refused to take any action 
disciplining him. 
Roto KENT BEATTIE, B.Sc., 1896 and A.M., 
1898, of the University of Nebraska, has been 
elected to the instructorship in botany in the 
Agricultural College at Pullman, Washington, 
and John Lewis Sheldon, B.Sc. (Nebraska), 
recently appointed assistant in botany in the 
same university, has accepted the instructor- 
ship in biology in the Nebraska State Normal 
School. 
