May 24, 1901.] 
-THE Royal Society of Canada held its spring 
meeting at Ottawa, beginning with the meeting 
of the council on May 26th. We hope to pub- 
lish some account of the proceedings in a sub- 
sequent issue. 
THE second meeting of the Russian Surgical 
Congress will be held at Moscow in January, 
1902 (9th, 10th and 11th), under the presidency 
of Professor A. Bobroff. 
THE Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 
will send to West Africa, during the present 
month, an expedition against the Anopheles 
mosquito under Major Ronald Ross. A leading 
Glasgow citizen has placed at the disposal of 
the school and Major Ross a sum of money 
sufficient to defray the expenses of one year’s 
trialinsome malarious city. A staff.of workers 
with all necessary appliances will therefore be 
maintained at a selected West African city, at- 
tacking mosquitoes in the city and environs. 
A SMALL collection of pictures, illustrative of 
the people of the Senegal and French Soudan 
and their customs, painted by M. Joseph de la 
Néziére, is on exhibit at the rooms of the Royal 
Geographical Society, London. 
A CORRESPONDENT to the London Times 
writes that the meeting of the Royal Society on 
May 9th was strictly private, the usual admis- 
sion of a certain number of the general public 
being suspended. The Society was engaged in 
discussing the report of a committee appointed 
to consider some means of establishing a British 
academy of larger scope than the existing 
Royal Society, which should represent philo- 
sophico-historical branches of study, as well as 
the more exact sciences to which the Royal 
Society has in the main, if not altogether, con- 
fined itself. The idea sprang out of the fact 
that the Royal Society has taken an active part 
in the formation of an international association 
of the principal scientific and literary acad- 
emiesof the world. This association is divided 
into two sections—scientific and literary. 
While the Royal Society can represent Great 
Britain in the scientific section, it seems that 
it has no organization eligible to represent 
Great Britain in the other section, which in- 
cludes history, antiquities, philosophy, eco- 
nomics and so forth—subjects which may 
SCIENCE. 
859 
be studied in a scientific spirit, but do not 
lend themselves to experiment and exact 
verification. The discussion, like the report 
upon which it was based, was inconclusive. 
The Royal Society shrinks from taking an ac- 
tive part in the formation of another academy 
dealing with the subjects in question, which 
might in various ways, and especially in its de- 
mands upon the public purse, become a serious 
rival to the Royal Society itself. The only al- 
ternative is that the Royal Society should en- 
large itself in one way or another so as to in- 
clude the studies classed on the Continent as 
literary. But, though more than one way of 
doing this has been suggested, the difficulties in 
every case are obvious and great. So far as 
can be gathered, the weight of opinion in the 
Royal Society is against any attempt to meet 
what, after all, is a rather visionary demand. 
If the disadvantages flowing from the want of 
an academy are as serious as they are repre- 
sented, it is obviously the students of the sub- 
jects in question who ought to supply the need 
they feel. The Royal Society has a vast field 
for its energies in connection with its own 
proper work. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 
PRESIDENT J. H. BARRows has announced 
that of the $300,000 necessary to secure the 
conditional gift of $200,000, offered by Mr. 
John D. Rockefeller to Oberlin College, the 
sum of $150,000 has already been promised. 
A GIFT of $25,000 to the Yale Bicentennial 
Fund has been made by William C. Whitney, 
of New York City. 
Mrs. S. H. Camp, of Hartford, Conn., has 
given $10,000 to the Philosophical Department 
of Yale University for a departmental library. 
In 1897 Governor Roswell P. Flower pre- 
sented to Cornell University $5,000 to found a 
library for the use of the New York State 
Veterinary College; and Mrs. Flower has now 
given $10,000 to endow this library. With the 
books and periodicals obtained with the original 
gift, and those which can be obtained from 
year to year by the income of the endowment 
fund, it is believed that the Flower Library 
will become one of the best equipped libraries 
of comparative medicine in the world, and be 
