360 
is contemplated. We wish to draw the attention of 
the Secretary of State to this unsatisfactory state of 
affairs, which must militate against the success of the 
college as an educational center. 
The sudden dismissal is action of a kind which we 
were not prepared to expect in any institution under 
the control of the British Government, and we think 
that the seven members of the staff who are required 
to retire at three months’ notice are justified in ask- 
ing for the inquiry into the working of the college 
for which they have petitioned in their memorial of 
December 27, 1900. 
We therefore desire to express our hope that the 
Secretary of State for India will see his way to grant 
their request, and to suspend proceedings until an 
adequate inquiry by competent persons shall have 
been held. 
In support of this memorial a deputation 
waited on Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of 
State for India, and addresses were made by 
Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister, Lord Raleigh, Sir 
Henry Roscoe, Professor H. EH. Armstrong and 
Dr. G. J. Stoney. Lord George Hamilton made 
a reply defending the action of Colonel Ott- 
ley and the Board of Visitors. He stated that 
the Board of Visitors recommended the action 
unanimously after careful examination and that 
it included Sir J. Wolfe-Barry, Sir William 
Preece and other competent scientific men. 
Pensions had been granted to members of the 
staff. Thus Professor McLeod, whose salary 
was £600, received a pension of £466 and a 
gratuity of £185. Sir George Hamilton depre- 
cated the agitation through the newspapers and 
refused a further inquiry. The following let- 
ter from Lord Kelvin is published in the Times 
for February 13th. 
Sir :—Lord George Hamilton’s answer to the depu- 
tation regarding Coopers Hill, yesterday, was cer- 
tainly far from satisfactory in respect to the dismissal 
of members of the scientific staff. It gave no 
reason to believe that any one of those threatened 
with dismissal had been found in any respect incom- 
petent or negligent in the performance of duty. Evi- 
dence brought forward by myself showed that mem- 
bers of the Board of Visitors were astonished to hear 
of seven of the scientific teachers being threatened 
with dismissal by Sir Horace Walpole’s letter of date 
December 14th, and believed that the recommenda- 
tions referred to in the first paragraph of that letter did 
not imply the supersession of more than two of the 
teaching staff. 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Von. XIII. No. 322. 
Nothing in Lord George Hamilton’s statement was 
directed to show that the recommendations for amend- 
ment in the college teaching by the Board of Visitors 
could not have been carried out in a thoroughly sat- 
isfactory way by the president and his present teach- 
ing staff ; with perhaps some moderate change in the 
allocation of their duties. I had suggested in my 
own statement of the objects of the deputation that 
the official prospectus issued on January 1, 1901, 
which promised to the public the present staff and 
the present allocation of subjects, should be allowed 
to hold good until the end of the present session. I 
have ventured respectfully to repeat the suggestion 
to-day to Lord George Hamilton, to whom I send a 
copy of the present letter. 
Yours faithfully, 
KELVIN. 
15, EATON-PLACE, S. W., Feb. 13. 
PRESIDENT McKINLEY has appointed Capt. 
William Crosier, of the Ordinance Department, 
to succeed the late Col. Michie at West Point 
as professor of natural and experimental phi- 
losophy. 
A CHAIR of irrigation has just been estab- 
lished in the University of California, and Pro- 
fessor Elwood Mead, of the United States De- 
partment of Agriculture, has been called to it. 
Professor Mead will not resign charge of the 
irvigation investigation of the United States, 
kut wiil take his class into the field with him 
during the proper months, giving up two 
months to lectures at Berkeley. 
ELMA CHANDLER, who has been an assistant 
in the botanical laboratory of the University of 
Michigan for the past four months, has accepted 
a position in the schools of Elgin, III. 
Mr. E. J. GARwoop has been appointed to 
the Yates Goldsmid chair of geology and min- 
eralogy at University College, London, in suc- 
cession to Professor T. G. Bonney. 
At Christ’s College, Cambridge University, 
Dr. Alfred Cort Haddon, formerly scholar of 
the college, university lecturer in ethnology 
and professor of zoology at the Royal College 
of Science, Dublin, has been elected to a junior 
fellowship. 
THE Isaac Newton Studentship in physical 
astronomy, of Cambridge University, has been 
awarded to Mr. S. B. McLaren, of Trinity, third 
wrangler, 1900. 
