Marcu 22, 1901.] 
now on exhibition in the library reading- 
room. 
THE University College of South Wales and 
Monmouthshire has received £800 towards the 
£1,000 required for the Museum of Anatomy 
proposed as a memorial to Professor A. W. 
Hughes. 
AT a recent meeting of the Canadian Mining 
Institute a committee was appointed to urge 
upon the Government an increase of the sal- 
aries of those engaged in the Geological Sur- 
vey, and the need of providing a suitable 
building at Ottawa for the geological collec- 
tions. 
THE Peary Arctic Club has reelected Presi- 
dent Morris K. Jesup, Treasurer Henry W. 
Cannon and Secretary Herbert L. Bridgman. 
It likely that a steamer, the fifth, will be char- 
tered and dispatched to find the Windward, 
from which, since the departure from God- 
haven, North Greenland, August 20, 1900, 
with Mrs. Peary and Miss Peary, nothing has 
been heard. 
LIEUTENANT R. F. Scott, R.N., the leader 
of the British Antarctic Expedition, has made 
to a representative of Reuter’s Agency a state- 
ment in the course of which he says that the 
preparations forthe British Antarctic Expedition 
are now practically complete. The Discovery, 
the expedition’s ship, will be launched on the 
23rd inst., and, after she has been handed over 
by the contractors, will come round to London, 
where her equipment and provisions will be put 
aboard. The Discovery has been built on whaler 
lines, only with greatly increased strength to 
withstand ice pressure. She is 171 ft. long and 
343 ft. beam, and has 1,500 tons displacement. 
She will have auxiliary steam, and is fitted 
with engines of the latest type. In her con- 
struction the lines of the Fram, though care- 
fully studied, have not been adopted, as Nan- 
sen’s ship would have been ill-adapted for the 
heavy seas the Discovery will have to encounter. 
The expedition will leave London in July or 
August, and will proceed to Melbourne, reach- 
ing therein November. The actual work of the 
expedition will then begin. The naval staff, in 
addition to Lieutenant Scott, consists of Lieu- 
tenant A. R. Armitage (second in command), 
SCIENCE. 
477 
Lieutenant Charles Royds, and two other offi- 
cers yet to be appointed. The civilian staff will 
consist of Professor Gregory, of Melbourne Uni- 
versity (director of the civilian scientific staff), 
Mr. Hodgson (biologist), and Mr. Shackleton 
(physicist). The medical staff will consist of 
Dr. Koettlitz and Mr. Wilson. 
THE department committee appointed by the 
British Board of Agriculture to inquire into the 
conditions under which agricultural seeds are 
at present sold has completed its report. The 
committee has come to the conclusion that the 
seed trade in England is on the whole well con- 
ducted and has of late years improved with the 
advance of science. Nevertheless the majority 
of the committee recommends that one central 
station should be provided in the United King- 
dom for the purpose of testing the purity and 
- germinating power of seeds sent to it for official 
examination. 
THE British Museum (Natural History) has 
purchased for £350, an elephant’s tusk, which 
is said to be the largest ever known. ‘The fol- 
lowing are its weight and dimensions: Weight, 
226% lbs. Length—outside curve, 10 ft. 23 in.; 
inside curve, 9 ft. ; base to point in straight line, 
8 ft. 2 in. Circumference—at hollow end, 24 
in. ; at solid 244in. Diameter—at hollow end, 
83 in. ; at solid, 7% in. 
THE following bill was recommended for 
passage by the committee on coinage, weights 
and measures, Mr. Southern, chairman, in the 
closing days of the last Congress. 
A Bill, To adopt the weights and measures of the 
metric system as the standard weights and measures 
in the United States. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives of the United States of America in Congress 
Assembled : That on and after the first day of Jan- 
uary, nineteen hundred and three, all the Departments 
of the Government of the United States, in the trans- 
action of all business requiring the use of weight and 
measurement, except in completing the survey of 
public lands, shall employ and use only the weights 
and measures of the metric system ; and on and after 
the first day of January, nineteen hundred and three, 
the weights and measures of the metric system shall 
be the legal standard weights and measures of and in 
the United States. : 
GOVERNOR ODELL, of New York, has signed 
