Dbcembee 27, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



923 



Messrs. L. J. de 6. de Milhau and J. W. 

 Hastings, who accompanied the South Ameri- 

 can expedition from the Peabody Museum, 

 Harvard University, in 1906-7 as ethnologists, 

 have returned to this country after a success- 

 ful trip to the region of the Madre de Dios. 

 Dr. Farrabee and Dr. Horr will continue the 

 work in the field. 



A MISSION under the command of M. Felix 

 Dubois, the French explorer, which left 

 Southern Oran in November, 1906, is now 

 reported to have reached Gao, on the Eastern 

 Niger. Its object is to study the Algerian 

 and Saharan oases. 



Dr. J. CossAR EwAET, F.RS., is this year 

 giving the Swiney lectures on geology at the 

 British Museum of Natural History. His 

 subject is " Horses in the Past and Present." 



Inaugural lectures were delivered by the 

 Martin White professors of sociology at the 

 London School of Economics, on December lY, 

 by Professor L. T. Hobhouse on " The Eoots 

 of Modern Sociology " and by Professor E. A. 

 Westermarck on " Sociology as a University 

 Study." 



Professor D. W. Johnson is giving a 

 course of fifteen lectures on " The Physical 

 Geography of the Lands," under the direction 

 of the Teachers' School of Science, Boston. 

 The lectures are given on Saturday after- 

 noons, and are followed by laboratory exer- 

 cises on the subjects discussed. The class at 

 present numbers 156, of whom all but twelve 

 are teachers in the schools of Boston and 

 neighboring cities. 



Free illustrated lectures on legal holidays 

 are to be delivered at the American Museum 

 of Natural History, New York City, as fol- 

 lows: 



Christmas Day, " Hiawatha's People," by Har- 

 lan I. Smith. 



New Year's Day, " An Ornithologist's Travels 

 in the West," by Frank M. Chapman. 



Washington's Birthday, " Mines, Quarries and 

 ' Steel Construction,' " by Louis P. Grataeap. 



With the assistance of Tale University, and 

 at the initiative of the Connecticut Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences, the publication is 

 planned of a volume of several hundred pages 



illustrating the collection- of prehistoric relics 

 obtained by the late Professor 0. C. Marsh, 

 and gathered in the province of Chiriqui, 

 Panama. There will be some seven hundred 

 illustrations, on which draughtsmen from 

 New York are already at work, besides a set 

 of chromolithographs made in Germany. 

 George Grant MacCurdy, Curator of the 

 anthropological section of Peabody Museum, 

 will prepare the volume. 



Professor Alfonso Sella, who held the 

 chair of experimental physics in the Uni- 

 versity of Rome, died on November 25, at the 

 age of forty years. He was known for his 

 work on the Eontgen rays and radioactivity 

 and as one of the principal leaders establish- 

 ing the Italian Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, which held its first meeting 

 at Parma last September. A marble bust of 

 Professor Sella will be erected in the Physical 

 Laboratory at Rome. 



The east wing of the Museum of the Brook- 

 lyn Institute was formally opened to the 

 public on Saturday, December 14. This wing 

 completes the north front of the building, 

 which has a length of a little more than 500 

 feet. The first and third floors of the east 

 wing are devoted to art. The ground floor 

 contains work rooms. The basement will con- 

 tain the library, map collections, herbarium 

 and some offices. The second floor will be 

 used for the display of minerals and inverte- 

 brates. Owing to lack of cases this floor is 

 at present only partially filled; its contents 

 include a portion of the Ward collection of 

 sponges and corals, the collections illustrating 

 the difference between the faunas of temperate 

 and tropical seas and a part of the collection 

 of insects. There is sufiicient material now 

 in storage or in the hall to fill the entire 

 second floor as soon as cases are provided. 



It is announced that Mr. Emile Berliner, 

 of Washington, one of the perfectors of the 

 telephone and the inventor of the gramophone, 

 has given $12,500 as endovsrment of a research 

 fellowship for women who have demonstrated 

 their ability to carry on research work in 

 physics, chemistry or biology. The founda- 

 tion, which is in honor of the donor's mother, 



