November 16, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



637 



On the evening of November 3 the 

 Geographic Society of Chicago tendered a 

 reception and banquet to Captain Roald 

 Amundsen on the occasion of his return from 

 three and one half years of successful ex- 

 ploration in the region of the magnetic north 

 pole. Addresses were made by the guest of 

 honor, and by his first officer. Lieutenant 

 Hansen; by the Norwegian consul, Fredrik 

 Herman Gade; by the president of the so- 

 ciety, Professor Henry J. Cox, and by Pro- 

 fessors R. D. Salisbury and T. C. Chamberlin, 

 of the University of Chicago. 



Professor Eoland Thaxter, of Harvard 

 University, has returned from a year's leave 

 of absence, a portion of which was spent in 

 South America, and has brought back con- 

 siderable collections of various cryptogams, 

 most of which were obtained on the Straits 

 of Magellan. 



Professor Walther Nernst, of the Univer- 

 sity of Berlin, has returned to Germany after 

 delivering the Silliman lectures at Yale Uni- 

 versity. 



Dr. Sven Hedin, who by order of the gov- 

 ernment was denied access to Tibet from the 

 side of India, is making good his entry into 

 western Tibet from Chinese Turkestan. 



Mr. Walter Wellman and Major Hersey 

 have sailed for New York on the Prench 

 steamer La Savoie. The former will return 

 to Paris in six weeks to continue his super- 

 vision of the changes in his airship. Major 

 Hersey will accompany the Chicago Record- 

 Herald expedition in its attempt to reach the 

 Pole next summer. 



Eichard M. Shaw, a student in the medical 

 department of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, has joined an expedition organized by 

 Dr. W. G. Miller, of Philadelphia, for the 

 purpose of making explorations in Alabama 

 and Florida. About two months will be spent 

 in Alabama, during which a number of Indian 

 burial mounds will be excavated, and four 

 months will be spent in making similar in- 

 vestigations in Florida. 



Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, of the Carnegie 

 Foundation, will be the principal speaker at 



the thirty-fifth anniversary exercises at the 

 Johns Hopkins University on February 22. 



Mr. H. Yule Oldham, reader in geography 

 at Cambridge University, is giving a course 

 of public lectures this term on ' The History 

 of Geographical Discovery,' dealing princi- 

 pally with the discovery of America. 



At the annual general meeting of the Brit- 

 ish Astronomical Association Mr. F. W. Lav- 

 ender was elected president to succeed Mr. A. 

 C. D. Crommelin. Other officers were elected 

 as follows : A. C. D. Crommelin, E. W. Maun- 

 der, S. A. Saunder and W. H. Wesley as vice- 

 presidents, Mr. W. H. Maw as treasurer and 

 Messrs. J. G. Petrie and J. A. Hardcastle as 

 secretaries. 



Dr. E. Hertwig, professor of zoology and 

 comparative anatomy at Munich, has cele- 

 brated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his pro- 

 fessorship. 



Dr. Franz Mertens, professor of mathe- 

 matics at Vienna, has received a prize of the 

 value of 5,000 Marks, given every third year 

 by the Berlin Academy of Sciences for the 

 most important mathematical work. 



Dr. von Elsner has been appointed asso- 

 ciate in the Meteorological Observatory at 

 Berlin. 



Mr. N. E. Graham, of the chemical depart- 

 ment of the College of the City of New York, 

 has secured a patent on a typewriter attach- 

 ment which facilitates the writing of chemical 

 formulas. 



The government of India has granted Mr. 

 A. E. Brown, Anthony Wilkin student in eth- 

 nology and archeology at Cambridge Univer- 

 sity, a sum of £300 to assist him in carrying 

 on his researches amongst the natives of the 

 Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 



As the result of correspondence between 

 Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, president of the 

 Eobert Fulton Monument Association, and 

 the four surviving direct descendants of the 

 inventor of the steamboat, these descendants 

 have consented to the removal of the remains 

 ' of Fulton from Trinity churchyard to the 

 tomb and monument that the association is 

 planning to erect. 



