Febeuabt 25, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



297 



Gertrude B. Knipp is executive secretary of 

 the association. 



The question of the authenticity of the 

 Kensington rune, which recently has aroused 

 discussion among antiquarians seems to have 

 entered uiTon a new phase by the announce- 

 ment that the Minnesota Historical Society 

 has, after a lengthy investigation, given its 

 verdict in favor of the genuineness of the 

 stone, which is dated 1362. The announcement 

 is concurred in by the Scandinavian depart- 

 ment of the University of Minnesota and by 

 scientific men at the university who have car- 

 ried on independently an examination of the 

 stone with reference to language, historical 

 conditions and the evidence of weathering of 

 the stone and the runic lines. The Chicago 

 Historical Society recently had the stone on 

 exhibition, a lecture being delivered in favor 

 of the genuineness of the stone by its owner, 

 Mr. H. E. Holand, which was afterwards dis- 

 cussed by Professor George T. Mom, pro- 

 fessor of Scandinavian languages and litera- 

 ture in the University of Illinois, who had 

 been invited by the society to present the re- 

 sults of a philological examination of the 

 inscription of the stone. Professor Plom 

 maintained that the linguistic forms of the 

 inscription are in this case the only scientific 

 test and these are in themselves absolute and 

 conclusive, and he showed by an analysis of 

 the word forms, inflexions, phonology and 

 meanings of certain words, and a presenta- 

 tion of the characteristics of the old Swedish 

 language of the time, that the so-called rune- 

 stone must be adjudged a fake. Its language 

 is a mixture of nineteenth century Norwegian 

 and Swedish, with a few antiquated words 

 modified further by an evident antiquarian 

 eSort in orthography, which, however, the 

 modern rune-master, not possessing a knowl- 

 edge of old Swedish, fails to harmonize with 

 the orthography and the pronunciation of the 

 time. Professor Starr W. Cutting and Dr. C. 

 ]Sr. Gould, of Chicago University, subscribe 

 unreservedly to Professor Plom's views of the 

 language of the stone. An interesting phase 

 of the situation is presented by the fact of the 

 verdict of the Minnesota Historical Society, 

 which has recently bought the stone from the 



owner for $1,000 and given Mr. Holand a 

 stipend of $2,000 for study in Scandinavian. 

 PoR some time there has been in contempla- 

 tion the establishment of an imperial chemical 

 institute at Berlin similar to the Beichsan- 

 stalt. The Journal of the American Medical 

 Association states that the wholesale chemical 

 industry has established an imperial society 

 which decided at its last meeting to appropri- 

 ate $225,000 for the founding of an imperial 

 chemical institute. As a preliminary the as- 

 sociation formulated the demand that the 

 federal government should furnish the ground 

 and that the Prussian department of education 

 should supply a professor from the University 

 of Berlin as president of the institute, and an 

 associate professor as director of one depart- 

 ment. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 



A GIFT of $150,000 for the erection of an 

 administration building and library at the 

 Eensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N. 

 T., by the Pittsburgh Alumni Association has 

 been announced. 



Professor W. J. Hussey, director of the 

 observatory of the University of Michigan, 

 announces that the university is about to re- 

 receive gifts aggregating $20,000 from Mr. E. 

 P. Lamont, of Chicago, a member of the class 

 of '91. One gift, representing $1Y,000, is a 

 deed of land directly east of the observatory, 

 bordering upon the arboretum. This should 

 always insure a sky line free from smoke and 

 dust. Mr. Lamont has also furnished funds 

 to start the construction of a 24-inch refract- 

 ing telescope. 



Governor "W. E. Stubbs has given the Uni- 

 versity of Kansas $1,000 for a fellowship to 

 investigate the extraction of medicinal sub- 

 stances from the glands of deep-sea mammals. 

 The fellowship has been awarded to Eoy Wied- 

 lein, who will spend part of the time in Alaska. 



At the ninth annual dinner of the alumni 

 of Stevens Institute, which took place at the 

 Hotel Astor, New York, on February 12, 

 nearly three hundred men cheered President 

 Humphreys when he presented his program 

 for the development of the institute. The 

 other speakers included Dr. H. S. Pritchett, 



