518 
signed the Palisades Park bill and the Appro- 
priation bill which carries an item of $50,000 to 
aid in the purpose of preserving the Palisades 
and in establishing an inter-State park along 
the top of the bluff on the high rocks. 
SECRETARY WILSON has authorized Professor 
Willis L. Moore, chief of the Weather Bureau, 
to create three new forecasting divisions, under 
the general authority of the last appropriation 
act. These divisions have been selected as 
follows: New England, headquarters at Bos- 
ton; Western Gulf States, headquarters at Gal- 
veston, and Central Rocky Mountain plateau, 
headquarters at Denver. This will make a 
total of seven forecasting divisions in the 
weather service. 
THE steamship Discovery, built for the British 
Antarctic Expedition, was launched on March 
21st, from the yards of the Dundee Shipbuilders’ 
Company. We gave last week some account of 
the ship and the scientific staff of the expedi- 
tion. 
THE following item is from the New York 
Evening Post of March 20th: ‘‘ Peculiar cir- 
cumstances surround the case of William Wal- 
lace, ex-Superintendent of Buildings at the 
Museum of Natural History, who resigned by 
request on January 10th. A lawsuit is under 
way before Judge Marean in the Kings County 
Supreme Court, special term, to-day, in which 
Mr. Wallace is alleged to have borrowed money 
as an agent of the Museum and appropriated it 
to his own uses. This money, it is further al- 
leged, was borrowed from the contractors who 
are at work on the new buildings of the Museum. 
Work has been stopped because Mr. Wallace is 
alleged to have made contracts which he had no 
powertomake. In reply to those who associate 
the facts that Mr. Wallace had borrowed money 
of the contractors and had then arranged con- 
tracts with them, Comptroller Coler, William 
E. Dodge, and others who are acquainted 
with the affairs of the Museum maintain 
a serious silence. The matter has been put in 
the hands of Edward M. Shepard, and to him 
each person referred inquirers. Mr. Shepard 
explained to-day that an investigation into Mr. 
Wallace’s affairs was being made by the Mu- 
seum authorities. ‘‘ What you want to know, 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Von. XIII. No. 326. 
I suppose, is Mr. Wallace’s exact offence,’”’ said 
Mr. Shepard. ‘‘On that subject I cannot talk. 
The investigation, which will probably take 
three weeks, will establish that question. If 
Mr. Wallace has had any wrong doing with the 
contractors, it is so far a matter between them- 
selves. This I will say, however, that if any 
contractor has lent money to Mr. Wallace, and 
then received contracts from Mr. Wallace’s 
hands without the approval of the trustees, I 
do not think the contractor is in an enviable 
position, and I do not believe the contract would 
be legally valid.’’ 
WE learn from Nature that a small zoological 
expedition has started for the Malay Peninsula. 
It consists of Mr. N. Annandale, who was a 
member of the ‘Skeat’ expedition to the Sia- 
mese Malay States in 1899, and Mr. H. C. 
Robinson, hon. research assistant in the 
Zoological Department of University College, 
Liverpool. They intend to settle for a year in 
the native State of Jalor, near the east coast of 
Lower Siam, and to explore the neighborhood 
of Patani and Biseret. Collections will be 
made in all branches of natural history, while 
one of the special objects of the expedition is 
the study of the pre-Malayan tribes of Negrito 
stock who inhabit the center of the peninsula. 
A thorough investigation will also be made of 
the fauna—both living and extinct—of certain 
very large limestone caves which are found ia 
the district, and are said to extend for great 
distances underground. The birds of the dis- 
trict will also be studied, and observations 
made on mimicry and allied phenomena. The 
ethnographical work ought to be interesting, 
since Jalor is on the borderland in which the 
Siamese and Malay races meet. Mr. Robinson 
is supplied with dredges and townets for the 
investigation of the marine fauna, and he pro- 
poses, by the method of pumping sea-water 
through fine silk nets, to make a collection of 
the surface plankton of the Red Sea and Indian 
Ocean on the voyage out. : 
ACCORDING to the New York Evening Post, 
Dr. W. A. Kuflewski, chairman of the Special 
Committee appointed by the Chicago Public 
Library Board to consider the advisability of 
sterilizing the books in the library for the pur- 
pose of preventing the spread of disease, re- 
