NOVEMBEB 16, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



(73 



MoukdeD, discovered by Russian troops, among 

 them being ancient Greeli and Roman docu- 

 ments, supposedly taken by the Mongolians on 

 their retreat from the Occident. They are be- 

 lieved to be of great historical value. 



The Peabody Museum is sending this week 

 an expedition to continue the work of explora- 

 tion in the ruined and prehistoric city of Copan, 

 in Central America. 



The United States Civil Service Commission 

 invites attention to the fact that in view of the 

 statement of the Department of Agriculture 

 that no appointment is expected to be made at 

 present to the position of assistant biologist, the 

 examination scheduled for November 20, 1900, 

 for the position of assistant biologist in the De- 

 partment of Agriculture, will not be held at 

 that time and not until further notice. 



From a private letter the following paragraph 

 of interest to astronomers is taken : "The 

 latest news concerns the building of a fine 

 new meridian circle by Repsold for the obser- 

 vatory at Kiel. It is to be of eight inches aper- 

 ture with all possible modern improvements ; a 

 full equipment of collimators, wires, etc. Of 

 the latter two are to be at 60 meters distance 

 and a third at 4,000 meters. There is to be a 

 floating mirror suspended over the instrument 

 for observations to supplement the usual nadir 

 observations. The building is to be semi-cylin- 

 drical with double walls about 12 meters square, 

 and if I understand the matter correctly, the 

 entire building is to be in two parts, so that the 

 slit for observations is formed by separating the 

 parts in the east and west direction. Professor 

 Harzer is responsible for the design, I believe. 

 The purpose for which the instrument is de- 

 signed is the observation of faint, close circum- 

 polar stars for latitude variation according to 

 the method which has been used at the Paris 

 Observatory, and the Prussian government is 

 to furnish the money." 



The London Daily Mail states that the postal 

 departmental commission will shortly report, 

 after some months of deliberation, in favor of 

 the earliest possible adoption of Marconi's sys- 

 tem of wireless telegraphy by the postal au- 

 thorities. The commission is also arranging 

 terms for the acquisition of the Marconi pat- 



ents, and negotiating with Prance and Ger- 

 many regarding their attitude toward Marconi's 

 inventions. 



A FUETHEK item of interest in regard to the 

 Marconi system is the statement that when the 

 Ostend-Dover mail packet Princess Clementine 

 was nearing Dover, on November 9th, a mes- 

 sage was received on board from La Panne. 

 It was retransmitted to the Marconi station at 

 Dover Court, in Essex, more than eighty miles 

 distant. 



The Pennsylvania Experiment Station has 

 for some time been engaged in the construction 

 of a respiration calorimeter on the general plan 

 of the Atwater-Rosa respiration calorimeter, 

 but adapted in size and mechanical arrange- 

 ment to use in investigations with the larger 

 domestic animals. In the experiments with 

 man many of the operations are performed by 

 the subject himself, but the problem in experi- 

 ments with animals is much more complicated. 

 Accordingly the adaptation of the apparatus to 

 animals has called for the exercise of much in- 

 genuity in providing devices which will make 

 the apparatus more largely automatic, or al- 

 lowing all the operations connected with an 

 experiment to be managed from without the res- 

 piration chamber. The apparatus is approach- 

 ing completion. After being thoroughly tested 

 it will be used for studying the fundamental 

 problems connected with the nutrition of live 

 stock. Comparatively little work of this char- 

 acter has as yet been done by the American ex- 

 periment stations, and it is hoped that with the 

 aid of this new apparatus the Pennsylvania 

 Station will be able to achieve important re- 

 sults in a field where there is every year more 

 pressing demand for exact information. 



The Association of Agricultural Colleges and 

 Experiment Stations is this week meeting at 

 New Haven under the presidency of Dr. 

 Joseph E. Stubbs, president of the Nevada 

 State University. 



At a recent meeting of the Rontgen Society 

 in London, Dr. J. B. Mackintyre stated that 

 medical men were disappointed at the limited 

 value of the X-rays iu medical work. In the 

 army hospitals in South Africa, however, the 

 X-rays were found most useful. Seventeen 



