702 
been injured by the explosion of chemicals in 
the Kent Laboratory of the University of Chi- 
‘cago. 
Dr. MArcus BAKER, who was one of the 
experts assisting the United States members of 
the Venezuela arbitration commission at Paris, 
has returned to Washington. 
Dr. LuTHER DANA WOODBRIDGE, since 1884 
professor of anatomy and physiology in Williams 
College, died suddenly of heart disease at his 
home in Williamstown on November 3d. He 
was born in 1850 and was a graduate of Wil- 
liams College and of the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, Columbia University. 
THE death is announced of the African ex- 
plorer, Dr. Oscar Baumann, born in Vienna in 
1864. In 1885 he acted as geographer to the 
Austrian Congo Expedition, subsequently visit- 
ing the island of Fernando Po, the Cameroons 
and part of East Africa. He made several 
further trips to Africa on one of which he ex- 
plored Usambara and made studies for the pro- 
jected railway from Tanga to Karog. 
Dr. J. W. Hicks, fellow of Sidney-Sussex 
College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Bloemfontein, 
Orange Free State, has died at the age of fifty- 
nine. He was at one time demonstrator in 
chemistry in the University, and was the 
author of a text-book of inorganic chemistry ; 
he was also doctor of medicine. 
WE also regret to record the deaths of Dr. F. 
Kuhla in Manaos, Brazil, where he was engaged 
in botanical explorations; of Percy S. Pilcher on 
October 2d, as the result of an accident while 
experimenting with flying machines on Septem- 
ber 30th, and of Professor Hayduck, privat do- 
cent for chemistry at Berlin. 
THE National Museum has recently come 
into possession of a large portion of a stony 
meteorite which fell at Allegan, Michigan, on 
July 12th last. A preliminary examination 
shows the stone to be of the chondritic type, 
composed essentially of olivine and enstatite 
with the usual sprinkling of particles of metal- 
lic iron and undetermined sulphides. The stone 
will be known as the Allegan meteorite, and as 
soon as described will be in part broken up and 
made available for exchanges with other institu- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Von. X. No. 254. 
tions. The Museum has also received, through 
Mr. O. C. Charlton, of Waco, Texas, permis- — 
sion to study and describe an iron meteorite 
found near Mart, McLennan County, in the 
same state. This mass weighed, entire, 192 
pounds and will be known as the Mart iron. 
THE report of the Australian Museum for 
1898 again notes that the appropriation for its 
maintenance is entirely inadequate and that the 
Museum is forced to depend entirely on its 
friends for any increase of the collections. 
Fortunately the friends are numerous as is 
shown by the many accessions. There is, how- 
ever, a Special appropriation for the construc- 
tion of the superstructure of the new wing, the 
basement, which is devoted to workrooms, hav- 
ing already been built. It is noted that a new 
and satisfactory crematory has been erected so 
that as regards facilities for the work of prepa- 
ration, the Australian Museum is probably far in 
advance of any institution in the United States, 
save possibly the Wistar Institute. Part 6 of 
the Memoir on Funafuti has been published, 
and two parts of a revised catalogue of Aus- 
tralian birds, and it is announced that the re- 
port on Funafuti will be finished this year and 
that on the Thetis trawling expedition com- 
menced. The Australian Museum is to be con- 
gratulated on the amount of work itis able to do 
with its small appropriation. 
Nature reports that at a meeting of the 
Council of the London Mathematical Society, it 
was resolved that the president (Lord Kelvin,) 
the three vice-presidents, the treasurer, and 
the two secretaries should be nominated for the 
same offices at the annual meeting on Novem- 
ber 9th next. Of the other members, Messrs. 
W. H. H. Hudson, D. B. Mair and W. D. 
Niven, C.B., retire from office, and Messrs. W. 
Burnside, H. M. Macdonald and E. T. Whit- 
taker were nominated to fill the vacancies. The 
Council also empowered the secretaries to pub- 
lish an ‘Index’ to the first thirty volumes of 
the Proceedings, on the lines of the similar in- 
dex to the first fifty volumes of the Mathemat- 
ische Annalen. Mr. Tucker was further au- 
thorized to draw up a complete list of members 
from the foundation of the society in 1865. 
AT the first general meeting this season of 
