422 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 665 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

 Dr. Elwood Mead, chief of irrigation in- 

 vestigation of the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture and professor of institutions and prac- 

 tise of irrigation in the University of Cali- 

 fornia, has accepted the office of chief of 

 irrigation investigations for Australia. The 

 salary of this position as reported is $15,000. 



The Belgian Academy of Sciences has 

 elected as foreign memhers Professor Svante 

 Arrhenius, director of the division of physical 

 chemistry of the Nobel Institute of the 

 Swedish Academy of Sciences at Stockholm; 

 M. E. J. A. Gautier, professor of organic 

 chemistry and mineralogy in the faculty of 

 medicine of the University of Paris, and Dr. 

 Otto Wallach, professor of chemistry at 

 Gottingen. 



Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of 

 BeviewSj is president, and Mr. Ambrose 

 Swasey, of the optical firm of Warner and 

 Swasey, vice-president, of the jury of awards, 

 now in session at the Jamestown exposition. 



Professor J. Arthur Thomson, regius pro- 

 fessor of natural history in the University of 

 Aberdeen, will give seven lectures at Lake 

 Forest College from September 24 to October 

 3. The Bross lectures are as follows : " The 

 "Wonder of the World," "The Order and 

 Progress of Nature," " The Method of Ani- 

 mate Evolution," "Man's Place in Nature," 

 and " The Spirit of Nature." There are two 

 popular lectures, one on " The Biology of the 

 Seasons," and one on " Some Wonders of Bird 

 Life in Great Britain." The Bross fund was 

 given to the trustees of Lake Forest Univer- 

 sity in 1879 by the late William Bross, of 

 Chicago. According to the agreement, the 

 sum of -forty thousand dollars, the income of 

 which was to accumulate in perpetuity for 

 successive periods of ten years, the accumula- 

 tions of one decade to be spent in the follow- 

 ing decade, for the purpose of stimulating the 

 best books or treatises " on the connection, 

 relation and mutual bearing of any practical 

 science, the history of our race, or the facts 

 in any department of knowledge, with and 

 upon the Christian Religion." 



The president of the British local govern- 

 ment board has authorized the following re- 

 searches under the grant voted by parliament 

 in aid of scientific investigation concerning 

 the caiises and processes of disease: (1) 

 Further study of Dr. Sidney Martin, F.E.S., 

 of the chemical products of pathogenic bac- 

 teria. (2) Bacteriological investigation by 

 Dr. F. W. Andrewes of the air of sewers and 

 drains. (3) Observation by Dr. W. G. Savage 

 of the bacteriology of " garget " and maladies 

 of the udder or teats of milch cows, and of 

 possible relation of sore throat in the human 

 subject to pathological conditions of the udder 

 and teats of these animals. Also investiga- 

 tion by him of paratyhoid fever and its 

 microbic cause. (4) Joint investigation by 

 Drs. M. H. Gordon and T. J. Horder of the 

 life processes of the meningococcus, with a 

 view to means of combating cerebro-spinal 

 fever. 



Mr. H. G. Ferguson (Harvard '04) has 

 been appointed assistant geologist in the Bu- 

 reau of Science, Manila. 



Mr. Sapir, recently appointed research as- 

 sistant in the department of anthropology at 

 the University of California, has this week 

 returned from a two-months' trip to Shasta 

 County for study of the Tana Indians and 

 investigation of their language. He has 

 brought back valuable information as to the 

 structure of their language, which he is now 

 about to prepare with a view to publishing. 



Captain Isachen, commander of the Nor- 

 wegian Arctic expedition, who returned to 

 Christiania, on September 19, from Spitz- 

 bergen, says that on September 3 he found a 

 letter, dated August 2, from William Bruce, 

 the arctic explorer, for whose safety fear has 

 been entertained, declaring that Mr. Bruce 

 intended to journey northward instead of re- 

 turning to his headquarters the next day, as 

 he had planned. 



Mr. William Wright, of Dayton, O., and 

 his associate in negotiating the sale of the 

 Wright Brothers' aeroplane to Germany, ar- 

 rived at Berlin on September 16 and has been 

 sympathetically received by the chiefs of the 

 military balloon division of the army. 



