Septembeb 20, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



391 



will be catalogued and classified in a tabulated 

 form, and a report, which wiU also contain 

 comments on the various statistical methods 

 employed, will be ready for the use of the per- 

 manent committee, whose first duty will be to 

 discover the amount and reliable character of 

 the statistics already available and to suggest 

 new means of obtaining information where 

 necessary. A great mass of material bearing 

 on this subject has already been received by 

 the ConsuUa from the countries interested. 

 The Royal Commission has also entrusted 

 Professor Bodio, of the General Bureau of 

 Statistics, with a mission to Germany and 

 Austria in order to study on the spot the sys- 

 tems pursued by those countries for the col- 

 lection of agricultural reports, and has taken 

 other steps as well in order to extend and im- 

 prove the statistics furnished in Italy. 



At a meeting of the Association of German 

 Architects and Engineers at Kiel, on August 

 25, Herr Scholer, an ofiicial of the Imperial 

 Canal Office, made some statements with re- 

 gard to the projected extension of the Kiel 

 Canal, which are reproduced in foreign jour- 

 nals. The widening of the canal has been 

 rendered necessary by the fact that even the 

 battleships of 13,200-ton Braunschweig class, 

 with a beam of 22.2 meters, are nearly a 

 quarter of a meter broader than the sill of the 

 canal, which would thus be totally impracti- 

 cable for the new 18,000-ton battleships now 

 under construction. As already announced, 

 the depth of the canal is to be increased from 

 9 meters to 11 meters and the width of the 

 sill from 22 meters to 44 meters, which would 

 give a sectional water area of 825 square 

 meters, instead of the present area of about 

 half that extent. The course of the canal 

 will remain essentially the same, and the 

 widening is, as far as possible, to be confined 

 to one bank in order that traffic may not be 

 interrupted. In view of the not altogether 

 satisfactory channel in the neighborhood of 

 the Upper Eider Lakes, east of Eendsburg, a 

 new cut two kilometers in length is to be dug 

 between Lake Audorf and Lake Schirnau. 

 The channel between Levensau and Holtenau 

 is also to be modified. The sill is to be hori- 



zontal, and eleven bays are to be constructed, 

 some of which will be carried sufficiently far 

 back to allow the largest steamers to turn in 

 the canal. At various points, like the low- 

 lying district near the Kuden Lake, consid- 

 erable difficulties will have to be surmounted, 

 owing to the marshy nature of the soil. No 

 less than 500 cubic meters of material will be 

 built into the new locks at Brunsbiittel. The 

 foundations of the new bridges will be sunk to 

 a considerable depth, so as to permit of their 

 being utilized if still further extensions of the 

 canal should be found necessary in the future. 

 The village of Westerronfeld, near Eendsburg, 

 will be completely bridged over. At Bruns- 

 biittel 42 houses, some of which are of quite 

 recent construction, will have to be pulled 

 down in order to make way for the canal. The 

 total amount of earth to be excavated is esti- 

 mated at 100 million cubic meters (3,531,700,- 

 000 cubic feet). The entire work will be 

 carried out by the Imperial Canal Office with 

 a reinforced staff. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 

 Two important gifts, made to Yale Uni- 

 versity during the past week, are announced. 

 Archibald Henry Blount, of Herefordshire, 

 England, has left the university nearly his 

 entire estate, the value of the bequest being 

 estimated at $400,000. The reasons that led 

 Mr. Blount to make this bequest to Yale Uni- 

 versity are not known. Mrs. James B. Oliver, 

 of Pittsburg, Pa., has given the Sheffield Sci- 

 entific School $150,000 for a new lecture hall 

 for work in English economics and history. 

 This hall is a memorial to her son, Daniel 

 Leet Oliver, formerly a student in the Shef- 

 field Scientific School, who was killed in an 

 automobile accident last June. 



By the affiliation of the Indiana University 

 and the State College of Physicians and Sur- 

 geons, Indianapolis, the name of the medical 

 school is dropped and that of the " Indiana 

 University School of Medicine " substituted. 

 It is specified that the board of trustees of 

 the state university shall have full control of 

 the medical college, but there will be no 

 change in the course of instruction nor in the 



