240 
‘The German Deep Sea Expedition,’ ‘The Polar 
Oceans and their Discovery,’ ‘Astronomy and 
Navigation,’ ‘The History and Use of War- 
ships,’ ‘Oceanology and Navigation,’ ‘The In- 
fluence of Sea Power in History,’ etc. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 
By the provisions of the will of the late 
Benjamin D. Silliman, $110,000 will ultimately 
revert to Yale University and $10,000 to Co- 
lumbia University. Yale University has also 
received from an anonymous donor $100,000 
for a new building for the medical school and 
$6,000 from the family of the late Robert 
Callender, class of 1898, to found a scholar- 
ship. 
JoHN D. ROCKEFELLER has agreed to give 
$15,000 each to Mercer College, at Macon, Ga., 
Carson Newman College, at Mossy Creek, 
Tenn. and Des Moines College, at Des Moines, 
Ta., on the condition that each will raise sub- 
scriptions of $60,750, to be paid in four annual 
payments. 
Tue Assembly of the State of California on 
January 29th passed the bill conferring full 
corporate powers and privileges on the trustees 
of Stanford University. 
A SPECIAL committee of the Alumni of Stan- 
ford University, appointed last November, re- 
ported on January 26th, to a meeting of the 
alumni at San Francisco on the case of Profes- 
sor Ross. The Committee calls attention to 
Professor Ross’s pamphlet entitled ‘An Honest 
Dollar’ illustrated by political cartoons, pub- 
lished during the campaign of 1896, and states 
that Mrs. Stanford regarded this as undignified. 
The report continues : 
The justice of the criticism expressed at the time 
the pamphlet was published must be deemed to be 
conceded by Dr. Ross, since it has been admitted by 
him to your committee that he would not again pur- 
sue the same course under similar circumstances, 
Your committee has been unable to find any evi- 
dence that Mrs. Stanford ever took exception to Dr. 
Ross’s economic teachings. 
That her ultimate demand for his resignation was 
not due to opinions expressed in his speeches on 
‘Coolie Immigration’ and the ‘Twentieth Century 
City,’ but was because she deemed that her original 
estimate had proved correct and that he was re-dis- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Von, XIII. No. 319. 
playing, after three years of trial, those qualities 
found objectionable in the instance of her original ac- 
tion. 
The admission of Dr. Ross to your committee that 
he would not regard a university rule against the par- 
ticipation in politics by a university professor of eco- 
nomics during the progress of a political campaign, as 
impairing the proper right of academic freedom, dis- 
poses of his contention that the criticism of his con- 
duct in 1896 is capable of that construction. 
From the foregoing facts and upon the testimony as 
a whole your committee concludes that the action of 
Mrs. Stanford in asking the dismissal of Dr. Ross in- 
volved no infringement of the right of free speech. 
The London Times devotes to the troubles at 
Coopers Hill College an editorial which begins 
as follows: ‘‘ The Secretary of State for India 
will be guilty of a grave and lamentable error 
if he is induced by the promptings of official 
pedants to refuse the demand for inquiry into 
the recent dismissals at Coopers Hill College, 
so vigorously pressed in Lord Kelvin’s succinct 
and forcible letter published in our columns on 
Saturday last. It is well to remember that 
one of the causes which contributed to the 
downfall of Mr. Gladstone’s powerful adminis- 
tration in 1874 was Mr. Aryton’s insolent treat: — 
ment of men of science. His contemptuous 
reference to his intellectual superiors, Sir 
Joseph Hooker and staff at Kew, as ‘ gardeners’ 
placed a black mark against the name of the 
First Commissioner of Works of that day which 
was never obliterated and which drove him 
out of political life. The man in the street 
may not understand much about science, but 
he has a feeling of respect for scientific men 
who work for small rewards in the interests of 
truth and knowledge. The public is quick to 
resent injustice inflicted on a class who have 
little power of defending themselves and whose 
services are of enormous and increasing value 
to national progress.’’ 
Ir is reported in the papers that serious riots 
have occurred at Kieff University. Conflicts 
have taken place between the students and 
Cossacks, in which many of the former were 
killed or wounded. 
Dr. RICHARD EWALD has been promoted to 
a full professorship of physiology in the Uni- 
versity at Strasburg. 
