August 1G, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



231 



hygienic science in general. The president is 

 Professor Eadner. 



The eleventh International Navigation Con- 

 gress is to be held at St. Petersburg in May, 

 1908. 



The third International Congress on Pro- 

 vision for the Insane will be held at Vienna 

 from October 1 to 11, 1908, under the presi- 

 dency of Professor Obersteiner. The general 

 secretary of the congress is Dr. Alexander 

 Pilcz, ix Lazaretthasse 14, Vienna. 



It is stated in Nature that the Nimrod, in 

 vehich Mr. E. H. Shackleton's expedition will 

 proceed to the Antarctic regions, sailed from 

 the Thames on July 30 with Lieutenant Eu- 

 pert England in command. Lord Kelvin has 

 presented to the expedition a standard com- 

 pass and sounding instruments. The admi- 

 ralty is lending a compass, chronometers, 

 charts and sounding apparatus, as well as 

 three Lloyd-Oreak Dip instruments for the 

 landing party. Watches are being supplied 

 by the Eoyal Geographical Society, and, in 

 addition, the vessel will be equipped with a 

 liquid steering compass and a special pole 

 compass. The members of the expedition on 

 board of the Nimrod are Mr. James Murray, 

 the biologist of the expedition; Mr. W. A, 

 Michell, surgeon and zoologist; and Mr. A. 

 P. Mackay, the junior surgeon of the landing 

 party, who will also engage in zoological work. 

 At Lyttelton, New Zealand, the remaining 

 members of the expedition wiU join the ship. 

 These include, besides Mr. Shackleton, Mr. 

 E. Marshall, senior surgeon of the shore party 

 and cartogapher of the expedition; Lieutenant 

 Adams, E.N.E., who will be in charge of the 

 meteorological work; and Sir Philip Brockle- 

 hurst, for survey work and field geology. Dr. 

 David, professor of geology in Sydney Uni- 

 versity, has arranged to accompany the expe- 

 dition south to King Edward Vil. Land. 



English journals state that of eight bal- 

 loons sent up by the staff of the Manchester 

 University in connection with the inter- 

 national movement to discover data in regard 

 to the atmospheric phenomena of the clouds, 

 three have been located. The balloons carried 

 a recording apparatus, bearing instructions to 



the finders to return them to Manchester, and 

 the examination of the records, which were 

 picked up at Macclesfield, Lincoln and Leeds, 

 shows that the balloons reached an altitude 

 of about ten miles. A temperature of 20 

 degrees below zero Eahrenheit is recorded. 



Although diamonds have been found in at 

 least thirty places in the United States, the 

 only locality where they occur in place has 

 recently been discovered and has been investi- 

 gated by Mr. George F. Kunz, the gem expert, 

 and Dr. H. S. Washington, petrographer. 

 They occur in an igneous rock, similar to that 

 of the South African mines, which forms a 

 small stock near Murfreesboro, Pike County, 

 Ark. The first two stones were found August 

 1, 1906, and since then many of them have 

 been picked up, the total number found at 

 last report being 130. Many are white and 

 of good water, others are yellow and some 

 are of brown bort. The two largest stones 

 weigh 6J carats, one being exceedingly fine 

 white and the other brown. They are found 

 on the surface as well as within the greenish, 

 friable, decomposed peridotite, a rock some- 

 what like the famous " blue ground " of Kim- 

 berly. The property is being actively pros- 

 pected and developed. 



Nature states that private enterprise has 

 succeeded in founding, with the sanction of 

 the Ministry of Education, confirmed by the 

 Czar, an Institute of Archeology and Arche- 

 ography in Moscow. The institute, which 

 has just obtained its charter, ranks with a 

 university, and is open to aU graduates of 

 Eussian or foreign universities. Its aim is to 

 prepare qualified archeologists and " archeog- 

 raphists." The latter term is applied to per- 

 sons skilled in the preservation and use of 

 historical archives, libraries, museums and 

 other collections, public and private, demand- 

 ing special knowledge. The Moscow Institute 

 of Archeology is the first institution in Eussia 

 founded on autonomous principles; it has the 

 right to elect its own staff of professors, and 

 generally to conduct its own internal affairs, 

 subject only to a possible veto of the minister 

 of education in certain cases. The course is 

 a three years' one, the final year of which 



