SEPTEMBER 29, 1899. ] 
seems small in comparison with those of 
our own large museums ; there is a special 
fund, Matice Ceska, for the publication of 
scientific works in the Bohemian language, 
and another for the continuation of Bar- 
rande’s great memoirs on the Silurian of 
Bohemia. There were 91,000 visitors and 
itis stated that of the Museum Guide Book, 
555 copies in German were sold and 1,008 
in Bohemian. 
The report of the West Prussian Provin- 
cial Museum which, as its name indicates, 
is actively concerned with the history of 
that region including archeology, ethnol- 
ogy, and natural history, is mainly devoted 
to detailed accounts of the numerous acces- 
sions received by the different departments. 
These notices contain much information 
regarding the various objects, for example, 
noting the past and present range of the 
bear and wild boar, and describing and 
figuring various archeological specimens 
and the conditions under which they were 
found. 
The Glasgow, Edinburgh and Norwich 
Castle Museums all include art galleries, 
and the report of the former relates to four 
distinct institutions. In all of these, science 
is necessarily more or less subordinated, 
playing the most important part perhaps in 
the Norwich Museum, and all are exhibition 
museums, none of them issuing any publi- 
cations save guides to the collections. That 
of Norwich is particularly good and con- 
tains much information, especially in re- 
gard to the valuable local collection of 
birds. The attendance for these institu- 
tions was respectively 1,210,648 ; 770,807 of 
this being at ‘The People’s Palace,’ 338,287 
and 128,969. 
The Manchester Museum is, if Mr. Hoyle 
will pardon the phrase, a very live Museum, 
and the report opens with a brief notice of 
the installation of the electric light. This 
was described at some length in the Report of 
the Museums Association of Great Britain, 
- SCIENCE. 
447 
and comprises 162 incandescent and 44 arc 
lights, the latter of the inverted type and 
with the light reflected not downwards, but 
by means of a conical reflector upwards to 
the white ceiling. The most important 
acquisition has been the Dresser collection 
of birds, noticed in Science, and the most 
important publication, Mr. C. D. Sherborne’s 
‘Index to the Systema Naturee of Linnzus,’ 
showing the place of every species name in 
the tenth and twelfth editions both as to 
genus and page. Mr. Sherborne is a believer 
in the ‘law of priority’ as applied to no- 
menclature and indicates his preference for 
making the tenth edition its starting point. 
The number of gifts to these various 
museums, governmental or local, is note- 
worthy, since this is largely a test of the 
interest taken by the community in the 
welfare of the institution, but it is to be re- 
marked that ethnological material is less 
freely given than any other. Finally three 
of the museums present us with figures 
bearing on the question of Sunday opening, 
and in each case the number of visitors on 
Sunday is much in excess of that on other 
days; thus in the Australian Museum, the 
average week day attendance was 341, that 
of Sunday 634, while in the Norwich Mu- 
seum, the figures were respectively 396 and 
706. At the Manchester Museum the at- 
tendance on week days ranged from 30 to 
372 and on Sunday from 146 to 550. 
; F. A. L. 
ROBERT WILHELM BUNSEN. 
Wits the death of Bunsen there has 
passed away the last of those great German 
chemists of the middle of the present cen- 
tury, chemists who bore the greatest part of 
the work of laying the foundations of the 
modern science, and through whose efforts 
their fatherland has taken the first place in 
chemistry among the nations of the earth. 
The century began with Wohler and Lie- 
big; in the next decade came first Bunsen 
