NOVEMBER 10, 1899.] 
the members of the Boston Society of Natural 
History, held on November 1st, a paper was 
read by Professor W. M. Davis on ‘ Geograph- 
ical Notes of a Year in Europe.’ 
PROFESSOR LEITH, on taking the new chair 
of pathology and bacteriology at Mason Uni- 
versity College, Birmingham, on October 9th, 
delivered an address on the advance of bacteri- 
ological science in the diagnosis and prevention 
of disease. 
THE library of Harvard University has sent 
out circulars to various cattle: breeders’ associa- 
tions throughout the country, requesting them 
to contribute complete files of their published 
pedigrees of cattle, horses, sheep and swine. 
The collection is to aid students in research 
into the heredity of domesticated animals, and 
will be placed in the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology. 
A SOMEWHAT acrimonious attack has been 
made by ‘a correspondent’ in the Aberdeen 
Free Press upon the trawling work of the Scot- 
tish Fisheries Commission. The article has 
been reprinted and is said to have been widely 
distributed. The author concludes ‘‘ that their 
so-called scientific experiments on trawling 
have been carried on with no regard whatever 
to uniformity and in such a slip-shod manner 
that the public money might, considering the 
results accruing, have been more profitably 
thrown into the sea.’’ The author does not 
explain how the greater profit from the sea is 
to be secured. He demands an investigation 
of the work. 
ACCORDING to Nature, a scientific and com- 
mercial mission, under the directon of M. 
Ernest Milliau, Director of the Laboratory of 
Technical Experiments in connection with the 
Ministry of Agriculture, Paris, has been sent to 
Russia and Roumania with the object of taking 
measures for facilitating and extending busi- 
ness relations with those countries, especially 
with regard to the exportation of olive oils. 
THE New York Evening Post states that Dr. 
Robert T. Hill of the United States Geological 
Survey and four companions have arrived 
at Langtry, Texas, from a voyage through 
the cafions of the Rio Grande, their trip 
being the second successful one down that 
SCIENCE. 
703 
river ever attempted. The party left Presidio, 
Texas, and completed the five hundred miles 
of the tortuous course of the river without 
seeing a human habitation. Veins of gold 
and silver-bearing rock were seen at sev- 
eral points, and there were indications in the 
almost inaccessible cafions that they had at one 
time been occupied by cliff dwellers, but it was 
found impossible to explore the ruins from 
below. 
Mr. JosEPpH B. BANcrorr, of Hopedale, 
Mass., has built a public library building for 
that town, at a cost of $50,000, which will be 
dedicated during the present month. 
THE School Board of the City of Chicago has 
decided to appoint fifty medical inspectors with 
special reference to preventing the spread of 
contagious diseases among children. The in- 
spectors will examine pupils who have been ab- 
sent from school four days or more and all those 
who show symptoms of fever or sore throat. 
The plan, which is modeled on that already 
adopted in New York and Boston, will be tried 
for two months as an experiment. 
THE Committee of the British Association 
Table at the Naples Zoological Station an- 
nounces, says Nature, that the Table is fully 
occupied until the middle of April next, but 
that applications for its occupancy from then 
until the end of August, 1900, should be sent at 
once to the Hon. Secretary of the Committee, 
Professor Howes, F.R.S., at the Royal College 
of Science, South Kensington. Mr. Kyle will 
occupy the table from now until Christmas, 
when he will be succeeded by Mr. M. D. Hill, 
who will continue investigations on the repro- 
duction processes of Crustacea, and in March 
Professor Herdman will go out and devote a 
month to the study of the Tunicata of the Bay. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 
Mason Henry LEE Hicernson, of Boston, 
has given $150,000 to Harvard University for 
the establishment of a university club, and the 
corporation offers as a site the property at the 
corner of Harvard and Quincy streets. 
In the Supreme Court of the United States, 
on October 30th, the petition for a writ of cer- 
