406 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 63. 



The will of the late Charles L. Colby, of 

 New York, bequeaths $20,000 to Brown Uni- 

 versity. 



MoEKis M. White and Francis T. White 

 have given Earlham College, a Quaker institu- 

 tion in Eichmond, Ind., $2.5,000, to be added 

 to the endowment fund and to be known as the 

 John T. White memorial fund, in honor of 

 their father. 



Mrs. Josiah Fiske, of New York city, has 

 given $5,000 to Radcliffe College in memory of 

 her late husband. The College has also received 

 $6,568, the balance of a bequest by the late 

 Caroline B. Perkins. 



Mr. T. E. Bondurant, of De Land, 111., has 

 offered to give $20,000 to the endowment fund 

 of Eureka College, Illinois, provided the Board 

 of Trustees will secure $100,000 additional by 

 the first of March, 1897. Mr. T. J. Under- 

 wood, of Sangamon County, 111., has donated 

 $10,000 towards the fund. 



Prof. G. F. Atkinson has been made full 

 professor and head of the department of botany 

 at Cornell University, succeeding Prof. Pren- 

 tiss, who has held this position since the organ- 

 ization of the University. 



Dr. E. B. Delabarre, professor of psychol- 

 ogy at Brown University, has been appointed 

 director of the psychological laboratory at Har- 

 vard University during the absence of Prof. 

 Miinsterberg. Dr. Mark Wenley, recently Ex- 

 aminer in Philosophy to the University of Glas- 

 gow, and Lecturer at the Queen Margaret Col- 

 lege, has been appointed Professor of Philoso- 

 phy in the University of Michigan. 



The committee of fifty-one, in charge of the 

 project for the removal of Union College to 

 Albany, at a meeting in that city on February 

 26th, decided to present to the Legislature a 

 bill calling for the bonding of the city for 

 $1,000,000 for the purpose. 



A PUBLIC meeting on behalf of the University 

 College of Wales was held in Cardiff, on Febru- 

 ary 5th, under the presidency of Lord Windsor, 

 with a view to raise £20,000 required to meet 

 conditional grants from the Treasury and the 

 Drapers' Company in aid of the building fund 

 of the college. Subscriptions amounting to 



£13,400 were promised, including one of 

 £2,500 from Lord Windsor. 



At a meeting of the Senate of the University 

 of London, on February 19th, Sir Henry Ros- 

 coe was elected Vice-Chancellor of the Univer- 

 sity, in the room on the late Sir Julian Gold- 

 smid. 



At a meeting of the Convocation of Oxford 

 University the proposal to allow women to 

 take degrees was rejected by a vote of 215 to 

 140. A similar proposal will soon be voted on 

 at Cambridge, where the movement to admit 

 women to degrees is probably stronger than at 

 Oxford. 



DISCUSSION AND COIiBESPONDENCE. 



CHUAR, HEGEL AND SPENCER. 



It is with much hesitation that one under- 

 takes to criticise or even comment upon a paper 

 written in the style of that by Major Powell 

 which appeared in Science on February 21st. 

 The author speaks with such authority regard- 

 ing the nature of matter and mind, and rebukes 

 so firmly the philosopher and the metaphysician, 

 that one shrinks from indicating even by a 

 question that one may be numbered with such, 

 or, at least, found in the class of their admirers. 

 No one likes to confess that he is the subject 

 of ' feverish dreams;' or write himself down as 

 a ' wrapt dreamer ' who ' imagines that he 

 dwells in a realm above science — in a world 

 which, as he thinks, absorbs truth as the ocean 

 the shower, and transforms it into a flood of 

 philosophy ' (p. 271). It must be to any con- 

 scientious man a matter of sincere regret that 

 he has cast over some unoffending physicist 

 ' the spell of metaphysics, ' and made him turn 

 from that useful tool the spectroscope with the 

 despairing exclamation that ' all his researches 

 may be dealing with phantasms!' I cannot, of 

 course, speak for Chuar, who, as a savage, has 

 a right to be shameless, but I cannot but think 

 that both the shade of Hegel and the living 

 Spencer would be loth to confess themselves 

 'immersed in thaumaturgy,' and lovers of the 

 wonderful, who, ' in the revelry developed by 

 the hashish of mystery ' find ' the pure water 

 of truth' insipid (p. 269). 



Nevertheless, as one who has spent several 



