November 9, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



605 



didate for the Connecticut General Assembly 

 from Norfolk, but was defeated. 



Professor T. C. Beilstein, professor of 

 chemistry in the St. Petersburg Technological 

 Institute, well known for his work in organic 

 chemistry, especially for his work on the 

 aromatic series, died on October 19, at the age 

 of sixty-eight years. 



There will be a civil service examination 

 on November 14 for laboratory assistant, 

 qualified in optics, in the Bureau of Stand- 

 ards at a salary of $1,000, and on November 

 27 and 28 for the position of assistant chemist 

 in the Bureau of Chemistry, Department of 

 Agriculture, at a salary of $1,800. 



A FIRE in the power room of the Carnegie 

 Institute, Pittsburg, on November 4, damaged 

 the building, according to the daily papers, to 

 the extent of $10,000. 



In view of the devastation caused by the 

 sleeping sickness among the natives of certain 

 districts of the Congo Free State, as well as 

 among Europeans residing there, the king of 

 Belgium has offered a prize of 200,000 francs 

 to any person of any nationality who shall 

 discover a cure for the said sickness, and also 

 an additional sum of 300,000 francs for the 

 purpose of making researches and experiments 

 toward exterminating the plague. 



The Boston Transcript states that the 

 Princeton archeological expedition to Syria 

 has presented to the imperial Ottoman mu- 

 seum in Constantinople a mosaic pavement 

 which was discovered by the expedition when 

 it was in Jerusalem two years ago. Professor 

 Howard Crosby Butler, who with Professor 

 W. K, Prentice, Dr. Enno Littman and Fred- 

 erick A. Norris composed the expedition sent 

 out by Princeton, has returned from Constan- 

 tinople, where during the past summer he 

 superintended the laying of the mosaic in a 

 position of honor in the new wing of the im- 

 perial museum. 



According to the Journal of the American 

 Medical Association it is said that the Car- 

 negie Institution is considering the discon- 

 tinuance of the Index Medicus on account of 

 lack of financial support. 



A NUMBER of specimens of U. S. government 

 standard teas, together with illustrations of 

 the plant and descriptions of the process of 

 tea-making, have recently been acquired by 

 the Botanical Museum of Harvard Univer- 

 sity. A collection of prehistoric grains, with 

 several specimens of fruits and bread, which 

 were completely charred in the conflagrations 

 by which the lake dwellings of the stone and 

 bronze ages were destroyed, are also on ex- 

 hibition. Seventy illustrations of a few wild 

 flowers from the eastern United States, painted 

 by Mrs. C. D. Murdoch, and specimens of 

 ' Silver Sword ' collected from the brink of 

 the volcano Holeakala, Mani, Hawaiian Is- 

 lands, have also been acquired. 



The trustees of the British Museum have 

 just issued the fifth edition of the ' List of 

 casts of fossils reproduced chiefly from speci- 

 mens in the department of geology,' and a 

 copy can be obtained on application to the 

 director of the British Museum (Natural His- 

 tory). Compared with the fourth edition this 

 list has nearly double the number of pages 

 and gives particulars of no less than 800 

 plaster easts, which can now be procured by 

 purchase or exchange. Most of these are of 

 fossil vertebrates, among which we notice sev- 

 eral of the highly interesting mammals re- 

 cently discovered in the Eayum by Dr. C. W. 

 Andrews. A model of the skull of Phororhacos 

 longissimus has been added to the birds, while 

 among the reptiles are some of the South 

 African forms described by Seeley. Among 

 invertebrates are casts of many of Sowerby's 

 types of ammonites, and the type-specimens of 

 many echinoderms. The list also offers for 

 £5 a colored model of the Greenland Eight 

 Whale {Balaena mysticetus) , scale one inch to 

 one foot, made under the superintendence of 

 Captain David Gray, S. S. Eclipse, 1885. 



The first meeting of the new session of the 

 Royal Geographical Society takes place on 

 November 12, when a paper on northeastern 

 Rhodesia by Mr. L. A. Wallace will be read. 

 According to the London Times this will be 

 followed on November 19 by a paper on the 

 Seychelles Islands by Mr. Stanley Gardiner, 

 who spent some time in the islands during his 



