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ception on March 29th, at the Bellevue Hotel, 
in honor of Dr. Charles L. Dana. 
Tue freedom of the Leathersellers’ Company 
was conferred, on March 15th, on Sir William 
MacCormace, in recognition of his distinguished 
services to medical science. 
WILLIAM HARPER, who for some years has 
been the chief of the statistical bureau of the 
Philadelphia Commercial Museums, has re- 
signed to undertake similar work in London. 
WE regret to learn that Dr. Horatio C. Wood, 
professor of therapeutics in the University of 
Pennsylvania, and eminent for his contributions 
to therapeutical and botanical subjects, has been 
compelled by ill health to give up temporarily 
his lectures and other work. 
THE decoration. of the Mérite Agricole has 
been conferred by the French Government upon 
the following officers of the Department of Ag- 
riculture for services in connection with the 
Paris Exposition: Dr. H. W. Wiley, chief 
chemist ; Major H. E. Alvord, chief of the dairy 
division ; Col. G. B. Brackett, pomologist; W. 
A. Taylor, assistent pomologist ; M. A. Carle- 
ton, cerealist ; and John I. Schulte, one of the as- 
sociatee ditors of the Experiment Station Record. 
The decoration also has been conferred upon 
James L. Farmer, assistant director of agricul- 
ture for the Paris Exposition. 
THE Smith’s prizes of Cambridge University 
have been adjudged to Godfrey Harold Hardy, 
B.A., 4th Wrangler, 1898, scholar of Trinity 
College, for his essay on ‘ Definite Integrals of 
Discontinuous Functions,’ and to James Hop- 
wood Jeans, B.A., scholar of Trinity College, 
bracketed 2d Wrangler, 1898, for his essay on 
‘The Distribution of Molecular Energy.’ 
A MARBLE tablet in memory of the eminent 
French chemist, J. B. Dumas, who died in 
1884, has been placed in the house in the rue 
St. Dominique, Paris, where he formerly lived. 
A MEMORIAL marble bust of Robert Brown, 
the eminent botanist, formerly a student at 
University of Aberdeen, presented to the Uni- 
versity by Miss Hope Paton, has been unveiled 
in the picture gallery of Marischal College. 
THE death is announced of M. Montard, an 
eminent French mathematician and engineer ; 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Vou. XIII. No. 327. 
of Baron Keiské Ito, professor of botany at the 
University of Tokyo, who died on January 21st, 
at the age of ninety-nine years, and of Dr. Peter 
M. Pokrowski, professor ofmathematics at Kiew, 
on March 3d, at the age of forty-four years. 
THE second Latin-American Scientific Con- 
gress opened its two weeks session at Monte- 
video on March 20th, with over 200 delegates 
in attendance. Dr. Robert Wernicke, professor 
of pathology in the University of Buenos Aires, 
Argentine Republic, was elected president of 
the Congress. 
WE learn from the British Medical Journal that 
Professor Robert Koch is staying at Rovigno, 
on the Adriatic, where he is inspecting the Ma 
rine Zoological German Institute, to which he 
hopes to affiliate a malaria institute for the 
Istrian district. Koch’s late stay in New Guinea 
has been fruitful in good results, the fight 
against malaria having been continued energet- 
ically on the lines laid down by him. Unfortu- 
nately the disease is very prevalent in the Ger- 
man colonies of East Africa. A medical officer 
with assistants and the necessary scientific ap- 
paratus is to be sent out there by the German 
Government, for which purpose 30,000 Marks 
have been voted by the Reichstag. 
THE Coast and Geodetic Survey steamships 
Pathfinder and McArthur, at San Francisco, and 
the Patterson and Gedney, at Seattle, are now fit- 
ting up under orders to proceed to Alaska to 
survey important passages among the islands 
along the Alaskan coast. The existing charts 
are based on old Russian ones, corrected from 
time to time by reconnaissance surveys. 
THE Convocation of Oxford University has 
rejected by a vote of 126 to 125a resolution to 
build a house in the Parks adjacent to the ob- 
servatory as a residence for the professor of 
astronomy. 
SECRETARY WILSON has arranged to carry 
into effect, on July ist, the reorganization of 
certain of the divisions of the Department of 
Agriculture, as provided by the last Congress. 
It will be remembered that, in addition to the 
Weather Bureau and the Bureau of Animal 
Industry, four new bureaus were created—of 
Plant Industry, of Forestry, of Chemistry and 
of Soils. 
