NOVKMBKE 23, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



813 



result being equal to that of an ordinary phono- 

 graph. Mr. Higgins, chief engineer to the 

 Exchange Telegraph Company, has tested the 

 apparatus over a line five miles in length. He 

 reports that under favorable circumstances ' ar- 

 ticulation is good, the impressions on the cylin- 

 der being as deep as the impi'essions made 

 when speaking into an ordinary phonograph.' 

 Large battery power was needed and a rein- 

 forcing current is required at the receiving and 

 registering line. 



In regard to the practical utility of the appa- 

 ratus those who had experieuce with the tele- 

 phone and the phonograph will be able to judge 

 from the description here given. It would be 

 most applicable in small offices where a limited 

 staff is employed. Thus if the office is left 

 without an attendant and a call is made the 



phonograph can be so set as to reply, " Mr. 



is out. The instrument is fitted with a tele- 

 phonograph which will automatically take down 



any message you may send and Mr. will 



read it on bis return." The arrangement of the 

 mechanism is such that any number of mes- 

 sages up to an aggregate of 15,000 words may 

 be taken in this way. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Sir William Huggins, the eminent astron- 

 omer, will succeed Lord Lister as the president 

 of the Royal Society. The other officers of 

 the Society will remain as at present with the 

 exception of certain members of the council. 

 They will be as follows : Treasurer, Mr. Al- 

 fred Bray Kempe ; secretaries, Sir Michael 

 Foster, D.C.L., LL.D., Professor Arthur Wil- 

 liam Eiicker, D.So. ; foreign secretary, Dr. 

 Thomas Edward Thorpe, C.B.; other mem- 

 bers of the council. Professor Henry Edward 

 Armstrong, V.P.C.S., Mr. Charles Vernon 

 Boys, Mr. Horace T. Brown, F.C.S., Mr. 

 William Henry Mahoney Christie, C.B., Pro- 

 fessor Edwin Bailey Elliott, Dr. Hans Friedrich 

 Gadow, Professor William Mitchinson Hicks, 

 Lord Lister, F.R.C.S., Professor William Car- 

 michael Mcintosh, F.L.S., Dr. Ludwig Mond, 

 Professor Arnold William Eeinold, Professor J. 

 Emerson Reynolds, D.Sc, Dr. Robert Henry 

 Scott, Professor Charles Scott Sherrington, 



M.D., Mr. J. J. H. Teall, Sir John Wolfe- 

 Barry. 



These officers will be elected at the anniver- 

 sary meeting of the Society on November 30th, 

 when medals will be presented as follows : 

 The Copley Medal to M. Berthelot, For. Mem. 

 R.S., for his services to chemical science ; the 

 Rumford Medal to M. Becquerel, for his dis- 

 coveries in radiation proceeding from uranium ; 

 a Royal medal to Major MacMahon, for his con- 

 tributions to mathematical science ; a Royal 

 medal to Professor Alfred Newton, for his con- 

 tributions to ornithology ; the Davy Medal to 

 Professor Guglielmo Koerner, for his investiga- 

 tions on the aromatic compounds ; and the Dar- 

 win Medal to Professor Ernst Haeckel, for his 

 work in zoology. 



Lord Avebury has given the first Huxley 

 Memorial Lecture which the Anthropological 

 Institute of London has established to com- 

 memorate Huxley's anthropological work. 



F. H. Snow, Chancellor of the University of 

 Kansas and professor of organic evolution and 

 entomology, has been given a year's leave of ab- 

 sence by the Board of Regents, on account of 

 ill health. 



Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of the Division of 

 Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

 has been elected an honorary member of the 

 ' Allgemeinen Entomologischeu Gesellschaft.' 

 The other honorary members are : Fr. Brauer, 

 Vienna ; Charles Janet, Paris ; Sir John Lub- 

 bock, London ; A. S. Packard, Providence, R. 

 I.; J. A. Portchinsky, St. Petersburg; M. 

 Standfuss, Ziirich ; E. Wasman, Luxemburg ; 

 Aug. Weismann, Freiburg. 



Dr. Ramon y Cajal, the eminent histol- 

 ogist, has been awarded a pension by the Span- 

 ish Government, and additional funds have also 

 been provided for the enlargement and main- 

 tenance of his laboratory. 



Yale University has conferred the honor- 

 ary degree of M. A. on Professor H. S. Graves, 

 director of the Yale Forest School. 



Professor Bemis, director of the New York 

 State School of Ceramics at Alfred University, 

 has been awarded a silver medal at the Paris 

 Exposition for a collection of the economic 

 clays of the United States. 



