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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 790 



are a committee of the board to select the 

 state geologist and arrange other matters 

 requisite for the inauguration of the survey. 

 The annual appropriation is $15,000. 



At a meeting of the board of managers of 

 the National Geographic Society the following 

 resolutions were adopted: 



The National Geographic Society believes that 

 it is of importance to science that tidal, magnetic 

 and meteorological observations shall be obtained 

 at or in the vicinity of Coats Land during the 

 same period that the British expedition under 

 Captain Robert F. Scott, E,. N., is making similar 

 observations on the other side of the Antarctic 

 area, 1,800 miles distant, and at the same time 

 that this recently discovered land shall be explored. 



That the society is ready to accept Mr. Peary's 

 proposition that it shall undertake jointly with 

 the Peary Arctic Club an expedition to the Ant- 

 arctic regions as outlined above, provided that the 

 board of managers, after consultation with the 

 members of the society, finds that the project will 

 receive siiffioient financial assistance to warrant 

 the undertaking. 



According to the daily papers, a delegation 

 which included Dr. Ira Eemsen, president of 

 Johns Hopkins University; Brigadier General 

 George H. Torney, surgeon general of the 

 army; Dr. William H. Welch, president of the 

 American Medical Association, and several 

 others, have called on President Taft and 

 urged the necessity for the cities of the coun- 

 try to adopt more scientific methods of sewage 

 disposal. They asked the president to appoint 

 a temporary commission to inquire into the 

 matter. Mr. Taft said he was interested in 

 the subject, but that he was without authority 

 to appoint a commission. 



During the summer of 1910 the University 

 of Michigan Museum will be connected with 

 three expeditions. As the depository of the 

 state collections it will receive the specimens 

 of the botanical investigations of a portion of 

 the " peach belt " of Michigan, carried on by 

 H. C. KaufPman and L. H. Pennington for 

 the State Geological and Natural History 

 Survey. Under a gift from Mr. Bryant 

 Walker and an appropriation from the uni- 

 versity the curator. Dr. Alexander G. Euth- 

 ven and Mr. H. B. Baker will make collec- 



tions in southern Vera Cruz, Mexico, with 

 the principal aim of enlarging the synoptic 

 collection of molluscs and vertebrates. A 

 third expedition financed by W. B. Mershon, 

 Saginaw, Michigan, and to be known as the 

 Mershon expedition will be sent to the Char- 

 ity Islands, Saginaw Bay, Michigan, to con- 

 tinue the biological survey of the state that 

 has been going forward for a number of 

 years on appropriations from the state, uni- 

 versity and private individuals. 



VNIVERSITT AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 

 Mr. Andrew Carnegie has promised to give 

 to Cornell University the $50,000 required to 

 enlarge Morse Hall, housing the department 

 of chemistry. 



The new biology building of the University 

 of Wisconsin is to be placed on the upper cam- 

 pus, at the south end of the court of honor, 

 between University and South Halls, facing 

 the Lincoln statue. Originally plans were 

 drawn to suit the site formerly chosen in the 

 ravine between University and Observatory 

 Hills. New plans appropriate to the new site 

 will be prepared at once by the architects. 



The New York Evening Post states that 

 Mr. S. G. Iverson, state auditor, who recently 

 made a thorough inspection of the school lands 

 granted to Minnesota by congress in 1851, 

 many years before the state government was 

 organized, has compiled figures which show 

 that the fund now amounts to more than $21,- 

 500,000, and that the state still holds approxi- 

 mately 3,000,000 acres of unsold land. These 

 remaining lands have great wealth, fertile soil, 

 abundance of growing timber, and the value of 

 the iron ore deposits is almost beyond com- 

 prehension. " We have already 1,000 forty- 

 acre tracts of land under mineral contracts in 

 the iron-bearing districts," Mr. Iverson re- 

 ports, " from which I believe we shall receive 

 an average of 1,000,000 tons per forty, or a 

 grand total of 1,000,000,000 tons, which, at a 

 royalty of twenty-five cents a ton, the contract 

 price, will produce the sum of $250,000,000. 

 This endowment will be realized within fifty 

 years, or before the state is a hundred years 

 old. Of this sum I estimate that the school 



