May 31, 1901.] 
by a large majority (16 to 6) of the Joint Antarctic 
Committee, including the officers of both societies and 
almost every expert on their joint lists. 
The compromise provided, in the words submitted 
on February 12th to the joint committee, ‘that a land- 
ing party, if possible, be placed on shore, under the 
charge of the director of the civilian scientific staff.’ 
Professor Gregory was informed of this, accepted it, 
and the next day sailed for Melbourne. 
The Royal Geographical Society’s council refused 
to accept the compromise, and deputed three of their 
number to suggest to the officers of the Royal Society 
that the matter should be settled by a new committee 
of six, three to be appointed by each council. The 
Royal Society consented ; the committee, chiefly com- 
posed of non-experts, met, and proposed modifica- 
tions which Professor Gregory has been unable to 
accept. 
We shall await with some interest to see whether 
the majority of Fellows of the Royal Society, and of 
other scientific men in this country, will approve the 
manner in which the Royal Society has acted as the 
guardian of scientific interests. 
A CALL has been issued for the formation of 
an international botanical association, the first 
meeting of which will be held at Geneva on 
August 7th. One object of the association is 
the establishment of a bibliographic periodical, 
giving abstracts in English, German and French. 
An option for the purchase of the Botanisches 
Centralblatt has been secured. The Americans 
signing the call aré Professor W. G. Farlow 
and Dr. David D. Fairchild, and the secretary 
is Dr. J. P. Lotsy, Wageningen, Holland. 
THE eighty-fourth annual meeting of the 
Swiss Scientific Society will be held at Zofingen 
on the 4th, 5th and 6thof August. In conjunc- 
tion with it, meetings are held cf the Geological, 
Zoological, and Botanical Societies of Switzer- 
land. 
THE German Association for the Promotion 
of the Teaching of Mathematics and the Natural 
Sciences held its general meeting at Giessen 
from May 27th to 30th. The program included 
lectures on the teaching of physics and of ge- 
ometry and on the use of text-books in the bio- 
logical sciences. 
THE second session of the New York State 
Entomological Field Station will be held at 
Ithaca during the summer months. Professor 
J. G. Needham, of Lake Forest University, 
will continue in charge of the work. The re- 
SCIENCE. 
879 
port of the first session, held at Saranac Inn 
last summer, is expected to be issued shortly. 
THE Peary Arctic Club has chartered for this 
summer the steamer Hrik, lately purchased 
from the Hudson Bay Company by Captain 
James A. Farquhar, of Halifax. It will sail 
from Sydney, C. B., about the middle of July, 
and will return, it. is expected, about two 
months later, with full details of what has oc- 
curred during the two years since Mr. Peary 
has been heard from ; also with information of 
the voyage of the Windward, in which Mrs. 
Peary and Miss Peary sailed from Sydney last 
year for the North. 
Ir is reported in the English papers that an 
American citizen has presented to the Pope a 
large telescope for the observatory in the 
Vatican. This observatory, under Father 
Denza, has carried on active researches since 
its reorganization in 1888. 
A CABLEGRAM to the daily papers from Berlin 
states that during the past month experiments 
have been made between Berlin and Hamburg 
with the system of rapid telegraphy invented 
by the late Professor H. A. Rowland, of Bal- 
timore, and it is said that the results are 
most satisfactory—the new system easily doing 
double the work done by the Baudot appa- 
ratus—and that the German Postal Department 
intends to introduce the Rowland system be- 
tween Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipsic, and 
Frankfort. The system makes possible the 
transmission of eight messages simultaneously 
over a single wire, four in each direction, at the 
rate of forty words a minute. 
WE learn from Nature that this year’s Deut- 
scher Geographentag opened at Breslau on 
Monday, May 27th. On the morning of May 
28th Professor Neumayer proposed to present 
the report of a committeee upon Antarctic ex- 
ploration and to speak upon magnetic investi- 
gations in polarregions ; Dr. E. Philippi on the 
‘Geological Problems of the German Antarctic 
Expedition,’ and Professor A. Supan on the 
‘Antarctic Climate.’ At the second sitting the 
subject to be discussed was the organization of 
geographical instruction, the speakers being 
Professor H. Wagner, Dr. Auler and Herr H. 
Fischer. On Wednesday morning, May 29th, 
