678 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 382. 



May 31, ' Cactuses and Cactus-like Plants ': Dr. 

 N. L. Bbitton. 



June 7, ' Favorite Flowers of Nations and 

 Poets': Professor E. S. Burgess. 



June 14, ' The Vegetation of American Deserts ' : 

 Dr. D. T. Macdougal. 



The lectures will be illustrated by lantern 

 slides and otherwise. They will close in time 

 for auditors to take the 5:38 train from the 

 Bronx Park railway station, arriving at Grand 

 Central Station at 6:04. 



The Rome Correspondent of the London 

 Times reports that Signor Boni, director of 

 Excavations in the Roman Forum, has made 

 another discovery of unusual interest. It has 

 long been his conviction that the subsoil of a 

 part of the Forum contains the necropolis of 

 the founders of Rome and that, given the 

 Aryan origin of those founders, the character 

 of the tombs must be in accordance with the 

 Aryan custom of cremation. Critics have dis- 

 played much scepticism concerning this theory, 

 as also concerning the traces of Aryan develop- 

 ment which Signor Boni has detected in the 

 Forum; but he has once more silenced their 

 objections by producing the object whose exist- 

 ence they had doubted or denied. He has 

 discovered a prehistoric tomb, believed to 

 date approximately from the eighth century 

 B.C., containing a large urn, or dolium, of 

 black ware full of calcined bones, and several 

 reticulated egg-shaped vases, besides a bowl 

 and a cup with horned handles like those found 

 in the terremare of the bronze age. The tomb 

 is situated in the bed-clay some twelve feet 

 below the level of the Sacred Way, opposite the 

 Regia, and close by the Temple of Antoninus 

 and Faustina. In some respects this discovery 

 is the most important yet made in the Forum. 

 One tomb is not a necropolis, but it is pre- 

 sumptive evidence of the existence of others. 

 Unless the Italian Government should, to its 

 shame, restrict the funds necessary for the 

 exploration of the lower strata of the Forum, 

 the point will soon be settled. Meanwhile, it 

 is to be noted that the reticulated vases of the 

 tomb bear a striking resemblance to netted 

 gourds, and that the covering of the funeral 

 urn is a faithful reproduction of a conical hut 

 roof — signs that they date from a primitive 



period. The tomb may be regarded as the 

 extreme link in the further end of the chain 

 of Roman history, as reflected in the Forum 

 and illustrated by Signor Boni in the dis- 

 coveries of the cippus under the Black Stone, 

 the Rostra, the ritual pits, the massive Repub- 

 lican drains (beside which the Cloaca Maxima 

 seems insignificant), the extraordinary under- 

 ground gallery for scene-shifting, the Lacus 

 and the Fons Juturnse, the Sacred Way, the 

 Hereon of Cassar, the Regia, the house of the 

 Vestals, the Basilica iEmilia, and the Church 

 of Santa Maria Antiqua — to enumerate only 

 the more important of his astonishing results. 

 The London Times states that the Lightning 

 Research Committee, which was organized in 

 January, 1901, by the Royal Institute of 

 British Architects and the Surveyors' Institu- 

 tion for the purpose of obtaining accurate 

 records of the action of lightning strokes on 

 buildings, with a view to improving if possible 

 the means of protection, has enlisted the ser- 

 vices of over 200 competent observers in the 

 United Kingdom, besides a considerable num- 

 ber in the colonies and India and in foreign 

 countries. The War Office, the Home Office, 

 the Post Office, the Trinity House Corporation 

 and the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture have signified their willingness to fur- 

 nish the committee with the required par- 

 ticulars of damage to buildings under their 

 control resulting from lightning stroke. The 

 heavy thunderstorms of last year aiforded 

 numerous opportunities of investigating and 

 recording, upon lines laid dovpn by the com- 

 mittee, the damage caused by lightning to 

 buildings within their area of observation. 

 The net result so far is a series of some YO or 

 more trustworthy records, which furnish 

 promising material for the committee to work 

 upon when sufficient data have been collected 

 to enable them to formulate their conclusions. 

 The committee make a point of getting photo- 

 graphs immediately after the occurrence of a 

 disaster in cases of importance. Out of 60 

 cases tabulated by the committee up to the 

 end of December, 1901, no fewer than 12 relate 

 to buildings fitted with some form of lightning 

 conductor. As regards the system recom- 

 mended by the Lightning Rod Conference of 



