78 
the president in the American Museum of Nat- 
ural History, New York City. The office of 
assistant to the president, Mr. Morris K. Jesup, 
is an important executive position, as the Mu- 
seum has no scientifie director. It was created 
last year and was filled by Professor H. F. Os- 
born, who has resigned in order to devote him- 
self more exclusively to research in vertebrate 
paleontology. 
A FURTHER reorganization of the staff of the 
American Museum of Natural History has been 
made. A department of mineralogy has been 
formed, with Dr. L. P. Gratacap as curator, 
‘while R. P. Whitfield remains curator of geol- 
ogy, with Dr. E. O. Hovey as associate curator. 
Professor Franz Boas and Dr. Marshall H. Sa- 
ville have been made curators, the former of 
ethnology and the latter of Mexican and Cen- 
tral American archeology, though Professor F. 
W. Putnam retains the head curatorship in the 
department of anthropology. In the depart- 
ment of mammalogy and ornithology, Mr. 
Frank M. Chapman has been made associate 
curator. 
AT a meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences 
on December 17th, announcement was made of 
the great number of prizes annually awarded. 
The Janssen gold medal was conferred on Pro- 
fessor E. E. Barnard for his discovery of the 
fifth satellite of Jupiter, and the Cuvier prize 
was awarded to Professor Anton von Fritsch, 
of the University of Prague. 
M. PAINLEVE has been elected a member of 
the section of geometry of the Paris Academy 
of Sciences. 
THE Elisha Kent Kane medal of the Geo- 
graphical Society of Philadelphia, has been pre- 
sented to Dr. A. Donaldson Smith, the African 
explorer. 
Dr. Anita Newcoms McGee has resigned 
her position as acting assistant-surgeon, U. S. 
A., after having organized ‘The Army Nurse 
Corps.’ In accepting the resignation Surgeon- 
General Sternberg writes: 
“*T desire to express to you my high appreciation of 
the valuable services you have rendered during the 
past two and one-half years in selecting trained fe- 
male nurses for duty at our field and general hospi- 
tals wherever their assistance has been necessary, and 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. XIII. No. 315. 
in organizing the ‘Army Nurse Corps’ upon a satis- 
factory basis. You have shown excellent judgment 
and executive ability and have labored zealously 
both in the interest of the nurses and of the Govern- 
ment.”’ 
It is proposed to erect a monument in mem- 
ory of the late Professor Camara Pestana, who 
fell a victim to his devotion to scientific re- 
search in the recent epidemic of plague at 
Oporto. : 
Money is being collected for a heroic bust of 
the late Professor Thomas Hgleston, ‘Founder 
of the School of Mines’ of Columbia Univer- 
sity, in 1864. The work of modeling has been 
intrusted to the sculptor, William Couper. 
THROUGH the courtesy of Mrs. Joseph Leidy, 
Jr., of Philadelphia, a life-size oil painting of 
the late Dr. Joseph Leidy, fellow of the College 
of Physicians, president of the Academy of 
Natural Sciences and professor of comparative 
anatomy and biology at the University of Penn- 
sylvania, has been presented to the College of 
Physicians. 
THE death is announced, on December 25th, 
at Vineland, N. J., of Professor N. B. Webster, 
founder and for many years head of the Military 
Institute at Norfolk, Va. He was also a lec- 
turer on scientificand educational topics. Pro- 
fessor Webster was a fellow of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, 
having been elected a member in 1853 and a 
fellow in 1874. 
Lord WILLIAM GEORGE ARMSTRONG, in- 
ventor of the gun that bears hig name and of 
hydraulic machinery, and the author of numer- 
ous scientific articles, died on December 27th. 
He was born in 1810, was elected a fellow of‘ 
the Royal Society in 1843 and was president of 
the British Association in 1868. Lord Arm- 
strong was knighted in 1858 and raised to the 
peerage in 1887. 
THE death is announced of Dr. William King, 
for thirteen years connected with the Geolog- 
ical Survey of India, and for seven years its 
director. 
MiIcHEL-EDMOND BARON DE SELys-LoNnG- 
CHAMPS, an eminent entomologist and a high 
authority on Odonata, died at Liége on Decem- 
ber 11th, in his eighty-seventh year. 
