NOVJEMBEB 30, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



711 



by Acting-President Davis. There will be no 

 session on Thursday, the opening day of the 

 American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, unless the council decides other- 

 wise. The sessions of Friday and Saturday 

 will be held at the American Museum of Nat- 

 ural History, 7Yth Street and Central Park, 

 West. The customary dinner will probably 

 occur on Friday evening, December 28. Under 

 the rule securing rotation of subjects the order 

 of papers at this meeting will be as follows: 

 physiographic, cartographic, economic, phys- 

 ical and structural, glacial, stratigraphic, 

 areal, paleontologic, petrographic. The meet- 

 ing of the Cordilleran Section will be held 

 on December 28 and 29, at Stanford Uni- 

 versity, California. 



The American Breeders' Association will 

 hold its regular winter meeting at Columbus, 

 Ohio, January 15-18, 1907. The sessions will 

 be held at the university and board of trade 

 buildings. 



The annual public meeting of the Academic 

 Chambers composing the Institute of France 

 was held on October 25, under the presidency 

 of M. Gedhardt, who, after an allusion to the 

 members of the institute who had died since 

 the last meeting, announced that the linguistic 

 prize had been won by Professor Jespersen, of 

 the University of Copenhagen, for a treatise 

 on comparative philology. 



The foundation-stone of the new German 

 National Museum at Munich was laid by the 

 German Emperor on November 13, in the 

 presence of a distinguished and representative 

 company. 



The collection of shells of British Mollusca, 

 comprising about 5,600 specimens, belonging 

 to the late Mr. Richard Rimmer, has been 

 presented to the natural history department 

 of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. 



The Carnegie Museum has acquired by 

 purchase a fine skull, with the horn-cores and 

 horns ensheathing them, of Bison crassicornis 

 Richardson. It was found in gold-bearing 

 gravel at the bottom of a mine on Sulphur 

 Creek forty miles east of Dawson. Associated 

 with it were the remains of a mammoth. It 

 is probably the most perfect specimen repre- 



senting this huge creature which has thus far 

 been discovered. 



The fire which recently occurred at the 

 Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg was confined 

 to the new engine-room, and the only damage 

 done was to the great switchboard which runs 

 along the north wall of the room. The splen- 

 did collections of the institute were never for 

 one moment in any danger, as the building is 

 practically fireproof. Tke damage consisted 

 in the charring and burning of the insulation 

 of the wires on the switchboard, which had 

 not yet been taken over from the firm which 

 had contracted for the installation. The 

 origin of the fire is a mystery, as there was 

 no current on any of the wires and there 

 could have been no crossed wires. The loss 

 will amount to a heavy sum, but the delay in 

 completing the electrical equipment of the 

 building which must result is a still more 

 serious matter. 



The paleontological expedition of the Car- 

 negie Museum to northwestern "Wyoming, 

 undertaken during the past summer under the 

 direction of Mr. Roy L. Moodie, fellow in 

 paleontology of the University of Chicago, as- 

 sisted by Mr. E. B. Bartholow of the Univer- 

 sity of Kansas, has secured what is perhaps 

 the best collection of plesiosauriari and am- 

 phiccelian crocodile remains ever brought 

 together in any American museum. The beds 

 explored were the Hailey shales of the upper 

 Benton Cretaceous, described by Professor 

 Williston in Science for October 20, 1905, and 

 the explorations were made under his advice. 

 The material collected, weighing more than 

 five tons, includes two nearly complete skele- 

 tons, with excellent skulls, of plesiosaurs, one 

 of the Trinacromerum type, the other of a 

 broad-headed, short-necked form; about 

 twenty-five other specimens of plesiosaurs, 

 representing most parts of the skeleton; sev- 

 eral specimens of hollow-boned amphicoelian 

 crocodiles, probably either Teleorhinus or 

 Hyposaurus, one of them a nearly complete 

 skeleton with skull; a number of excellent 

 turtles having well ossified carapaces and 

 plastrons, perhaps allied to Toxochelys, and 

 doubtless new to science; a small reptilian 

 skull a few inches in length, of undetermined 



