626 
tion, and teeming with helpful suggestions and 
plans for the year. 
‘PHILIP F. SCHNEIDER, 
Corresponding Secretary. 
THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 
At the meeting of the Academy of Science 
of March 18, 1901, forty-three persons present, 
Professor E. H. Keiser delivered an address 
showing the progress made in the science of 
chemistry during the nineteenth century. This 
address will be published in a subsequent num- 
ber of SCIENCE. 
Professor F. E. Nipher exhibited pieces of 
pine board a foot square, showing the tracks of 
ball lightning discharges upon them like those 
formerly described by him in No. 6, Volume 
X., of the Transactions of the Academy. The 
discharges formerly described had been formed 
on a photographic film. The balls were very 
small, and wandered over the plate, leaving a 
track of metallic silver in their wake. In the 
present instance the balls were much larger, 
and they burned a deep channel in the wood. 
They are formed at the secondary spark gap of 
a coil. The terminals are pointed and are 
under control, so that the gap may be changed 
in length. To start the balls, the pointed ter- 
minals are put upon the wood surface, so near 
that the spark carbonizes somewhat, after which 
the gap is made longer. These balls travel in 
either direction, when a direct current is used, 
with a Wehnelt interrupter. This differs from 
the results reached on the photographic film 
with the Holtz machine. There the balls came 
from the cathode. Even when they originated 
at isolated points on the film, they traveled 
away from the cathode. 
In the present results, the balls have been 
caused to originate at isolated points, and two 
balls have started in opposite directions. Wood 
which gives little flame shows the phenomenon 
to best advantage, but the balls preserve their 
identity and travel slowly along even when 
completely surrounded by flames of the burn- 
ing wood. 
Three persons were elected to active mem- 
bership in the Academy. 
WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
Recording Secretary. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Vou. XIII. No. 329. 
DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
RESIGNATIONS FROM THE SCHOOL OF PEDAGOGY, 
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. 
Owine to long-continued dissatisfaction with 
the administration of the Department, the fol- 
lowing professors of the faculty of the School 
of Pedagogy of New York University announce 
their resignation from the University : 
SAMUEL WEIR, 
Professor of History of Education and Ethics. 
EDWARD F. BUCHNER, 
Professor of Analytical Psychology, and Secretary of 
the Faculty. 
CHARLES H. JUDD, 
Professor of Experimental Psychology. 
NAME OF THE ALPINE CHOUGH. 
To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: I should like 
to state the reasons why I cannot agree with 
Mr. W. J. Fox’s proposal made in SCIENCE for 
February 8 (N. S., Vol. XIII., p. 2382) to 
adopt the name ‘ Monedula pyrrhocoraz’ for the- 
Alpine chough. In the first place, as Mr. Fox 
allows, Hasselquist’s ‘ Iter Palastium,’ being 
dated 1757, has no claim to recognition, even 
by those who take Linnzeus’s tenth edition (1758) 
as the commencement of zoological nomencla- 
ture. It seems to me, therefore, that the mere 
republication of his names in a German transla- 
tion of that work in 1762 is not sufficient to 
give them validity. But what is still more im-- 
portant is that, as Mr. Fox will find, I think, 
on reading the original description carefully, it 
is by no means certain that Hasselquist’s Mone- 
dula pyrrhocorax was based on a specimen of 
the Alpine chough, though it was referred to. 
that species by Linnzeus in his edition of 1758. 
Hasselquist gives ‘ Lower Egypt’ as the place 
where his Monedula pyrrhocorax was discovered, 
but, according to the best authorities (see 
Schelley’s ‘Birds of Egypt,’ p. 161), no such 
bird as the Alpine chough is known in Egypt, 
and it is indeed a very unlikely species to occur 
there, though it is found in the high rocky 
mountains of Algeria. Under these circum- 
stances I maintain that we should not be justi- 
fied in changing the familiar name Pyrrhocoraz- 
alpinus to Monedula pyrrhocorax. 
P. 8. SCLATER. 
3 HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON, W., 
March 15, 1901. 
THE PROPER 
