OcTOBER 20, 1899.] 
study of these great collections. The geology 
will be treated of by Mr. Hatcher, the Tertiary 
invertebrates by Dr. Ortmann, the fossil verte- 
brates by Messrs. W. B. Scott and Hatcher, 
and the recent birds by Mr. W. E. D. Scott. 
It is difficult to exaggerate the value of Mr. 
Hatcher’s and Mr. Peterson’s long and arduous 
labors. Materials have now been gathered that 
will make possible the solution of many vexa- 
tious and much discussed problems, and for the 
first time a full and representative collection of 
the wonderful fossil mammals of Patagonia has 
been brought toa Northern museum. We can, 
at last, directly compare the Tertiary mammals 
of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, 
and may hope to reach some definite conclu- 
sions concerning the mutual relations of these 
two faunal assemblages. 
A LONG PHOTOGRAPHIC TELESCOPE. 
LAST spring a plan was proposed at the Har- 
vard College Observatory for the construction 
of a telescope of unusual length for photograph- 
ing the stars and planets. Anonymous donors 
have now furnished the means by which this 
experiment may be tried. The plan will, 
therefore, take definite shape, and itis expected 
that a telescope, having an aperture of 12 inches 
and a length of a hundred feet or more, will be 
ready for trial at Cambridge in a few weeks. 
EDWARD C. PICKERING. 
HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY, 
October 12, 1899. 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
WE announce with great regret the death on 
October 16th, of Dr. Edward Orton, the eminent 
geologist, professor in the Ohio State University, 
president of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science. 
Dr. J. T. RorHRocK has been reappointed 
for a term of four years, State Commissioner of 
Forestry for the State of Pennsylvania. 
PROFESSOR GEORG STEINDORFF, the director 
of the Aigyptologische Sammlung at Leipzig, 
has, says Nature, obtained leave of absence for 
six months to enable him to undertake a scien- 
tific journey to Africa. 
| SCIENCE. 
581 
Ir is stated in Natural Science that Dr. Robert 
Logan Jack, late Government Geologist for 
Queensland, and special commissioner in charge 
of the exhibits at the Greater Britain Exhibi- 
tion, has accepted an appointment from Mr, 
Pritchard Morgan to run some mining conces- 
sions in Szechuan, Korea, and North China. 
Dr. Jack sailed in September. 
AT a sitting of the International Geographical 
Congress on October 2d, it was announced that 
Dr. Scott Keltie had received a telegram from 
Mr. H. J. Mackinder, the reader in geography 
at Oxford, who has just succeeded in reaching 
the summit of the hitherto unscaled Mount 
Kenia (about 18,000 feet), in British East Africa. 
Mr. Mackinder left England in June last’ in 
command of an expedition subsidized by the 
Royal Geographical Society. The telegram, 
which was sent via Mombasa, states that some 
15 glaciers were found upon the mountain. 
Dr. G. W. Hit will givea course of lectures 
on celestial mechanics at Columbia University 
on Saturday mornings beginning October 21st. 
The subjects treated will be: 
I. Delaunay’s Method in the Lunar Theory gen- 
eralized and applied to the Planets. 
II. Gyldén’s Method of Perturbations. 
III. Gauss’ Method with Secular Perturbations. 
IV. General Expressions for the Secular Inequali- 
ties of the Solar System. 
V. Poisson’s Theorem on the Invariability of the 
Mean Distances. 
VI. Periodic Solutions in the Planetary Problem. 
VII. The Restricted Problem of Three Bodies. 
VIII. General Considerations on the Stability of 
Motion of Planetary Systems. 
PROFESSOR R. W. Woop, of the University of 
Wisconsin, having received several inquiries as 
to whether he could furnish lantern slides of the 
plates illustrating his article on the photography 
of sound-waves, which appeared in the Philosoph- 
‘ical Magazine for August, has placed the original 
negatives in the hands of Miss Blanchard Har- 
per (Madison, Wis.), who is prepared to supply 
slides from any or all of the plates at a nominal 
cost. The slides will be found useful in teach- 
ing, showing as they do the wave fronts by re- 
flection from all sorts of surfaces, refraction, 
diffraction, Huyghens’ principle, ete. 
