678 
accomplished director, M. Léopold Delisle, and 
a special representation at the Comédie Fran- 
On Thursday, the 18th, the Institute of 
France would give a dinner in honor of the 
assembly, and on Saturday the delegates were 
to be entertained at a banquet by the Paris 
Municipal Council. Regarding the scientific 
work of the Association, we find less informa- 
tion, but it is said that the Royal Society has 
on the agenda a proposal relating to the desir- 
ability of connecting the measurements of 
Struve upon the are of meridian 30° E., with 
those of Gill on the same meridian in South 
Africa, and the Paris Academy raises the ques- 
tion of the standardization of the recording in- 
struments used in physiology and increased 
uniformity in the methods of that science. 
gaise. 
THE American Metrological Society held its 
annual meeting at Washington on April 19th 
with the President, Dr. T. C. Mendenhall, in 
the chair. Dr. Mendenhall made an address 
on the recent progress of the metric system 
here and abroad. Among the other papers was 
one by .Dr. S. W. Stratton, director of the 
newly established Bureau of Standards, on the 
plans for the Bureau. 
THE annual meeting of the Society for the 
Promotion of Engineering Education will be 
held at Buffalo, June 29, July 1 and 2, 1901. 
The sessions will be held in 933 Ellicott Square. 
THE Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences has 
announced a series of lectures to be given by 
Mr. Frederick Houghton of the Buffalo schools 
beginning April 25th. They are on physical ge- 
ography and are designed specially for teachers. 
Each lecture will be followed by an excursion 
to study the local physical conditions described. 
THE subject for the Adams Prize at Cam- 
bridge University for 1903 is ‘The bearing on 
mathematical physics of recent progress in the 
theory of the representation of discontinuous 
quantity by series, with special consideration 
of the logical limitations of the processes in- 
volved,’ the value of the prize is about $1,100, 
and it is open to those who have taken a degree 
at Cambridge. The subject for the Sedgwick 
prize, 1903, is ‘The Petrology of some Group of 
British Sedimentary Rocks.’ 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. XIII. No. 330. 
THE Fossati Prize of the Lombard Academy 
of Sciences and Letters will be awarded in 1902 
for an essay on the ‘ Minute or gross, anatomy 
of the brain.’ In 1903 the subject is ‘The ter- 
mination of the cranial nerves in the brain.’ 
The prize is of the value of about $400 and is 
open only to Italians. 
THE American Mathematical Journal an- 
nounces that the Naples Academy of Mathe- 
matical and Physical Science has awarded its 
mathematical prize of 100 lire for 1899 to Dr. 
G. Torrelli at Palermo for his work on the to- 
tality of prime numbers. The subject for the 
next award is the theory of invariants of the 
ternary biquadratic, considered preferably in 
relation to the condition for splitting into lower 
forms. The essays, which may be written in 
Italian, French or Latin, must be sent in before 
March 31, 1902. The next annual prize of the 
Madrid Academy of Sciences will be awarded 
for a historical memoir on the Spanish mathe- 
maticians of the 16th century. 
THE Peruvian Government has offered to 
give Harvard University additional land for its 
observatory at Arequipa. 
Mayor VAN Wyck has approved the bill 
passed by the Legislature enabling the city of 
New York to accept Mr. Andrew Carnegie’s 
gift of $5,200,000 to erect sixty-five branch 
libraries. 
REUTER’s AGENCY is informed that the whaler 
America which has been bought by Mr. Evelyn 
B. Baldwin, the American explorer, for. his 
forthcoming journey to the North Pole, will 
sail from Dundee on June 18th, by which date 
Mr. Baldwin expects to arrive from the United 
States. The America will proceed direct to 
Norway, where she will join the two other 
ships which are to form part of the expedition, 
and, after taking on board stores and equip- 
ment, will proceed North. Mr. Baldwin 
will, it is said, take with him 500 dogs and 
a number of mules. Work is now in progress 
for preparing the America for her voyage, the 
ship haying been fitted with new masts and 
a new forecastle, and having been practically 
redecked. The vessel, formerly known as the 
Esquimaux, is an auxiliary steam whaler, and 
has been employed in the whaling industry for 
