520 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 482. 



interests favoring a national university, to 

 form the nucleus of a great national uni- 

 versity at the capital. The trustees of the 

 American University, vpith its endowment of 

 $2,000,000 and its tract of ground in the 

 northwestern suburbs, have discussed the pro- 

 ject. Bishop McCabe, the head of the uni- 

 versity, has spoken favorably of the idea. 

 President Needham, of the Columbian Uni- 

 versity, and a number of the other officers of 

 that institution have expressed a willingness 

 to meet the officers of the American Univer- 

 sity to consider the project. It is probable 

 that within the next few months a meeting 

 of the different interests will be had. It is 

 suggested by friends of the plan that such a 

 merger would retain at least one of the strong 

 features of each of the chief institutions and 

 would give much greater financial strength. 

 The plan, however, is chiefly for the establish- 

 ment of university post-graduate work. 



At the meeting of the Association of Amer- 

 ican Universities held in New Haven on Feb- 

 ruary 18-20, the University of Virginia was 

 elected to membership in that association. 



The administrative council of the French 

 Association for the Advancement of Science 

 has offered to defray the cost of a course on 

 physical astronomy at the University of Paris, 

 which will be given by M. Pierre Puiseux, 

 astronomer of the observatory at Paris. 



Mr. Edwaed M. Shepaed has been elected 

 chairman of the board of trustees of the Col- 

 lege of the City of New York, in place of 

 Mr. Edward Lauterbach, who resigned to ac- 

 cept the position of regent of the University 

 of the State of New York. 



Associate Professoe Charles B. Daven- 

 POET, of the department of zoology of the 

 University of Chicago, has resigned to accept 

 the appointment, to which we have already 

 called attention, from the Carnegie Institution 

 as head of the department of experimental 

 biology, which, for the present, is to include 

 a marine station on the Tortugas and a 

 Laboratory for Experimental Evolution at 

 Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Professor 

 Davenport is to be in immediate charge of the 

 latter. The buildings in connection with the 



laboratory are now in process of erection 

 under the direction of Dr. Davenport, who is 

 absent on a vacation during the winter quar- 

 ter. He will spend the spring quarter at the 

 university and will then leave to take perma- 

 nent charge of the new laboratory. 



Professor L. V. Piesson, of the chair of 

 physical geology, has been chosen to fill tem- 

 porarily the curatorship of the geological col- 

 lection of the Peabody Museum, Yale Uni- 

 versity, made vacant by the death of Pro- 

 fessor C. E. Beecher. 



Peofessoe L. H. Bailey, of Cornell Univer- 

 sity, will superintend the nature study courses 

 in the summer session at the University of 

 Tennessee. 



E. V. Huntington, Ph.D., and J. H. Woods, 

 Ph.D., have been appointed instructors at Har- 

 vard University in mathematics and philos- 

 ophy respectively. 



The Smith's prizes at Cambridge Univer- 

 sity have been adjudged as follows: E. Cun- 

 ningham, B.A., St. John's College, for his 

 essay ' On the Normal Series satisfying Linear 

 Differential Equations ' ; J. C. M. Garnett, 

 B.A., Trinity College, for his essay ' On the 

 Cause of Color in Metal Glasses and Metallic 

 Films'; H. A. Webb, B.A., Trinity College, 

 for his essay ' On the Expansion of an Arbi- 

 trary Function in a Series of Functions ' ; P. 

 W. Wood, B.A., Emmanuel College, for his 

 essay ' On Covariant Types.' 



At University College, London, Dr. G. 

 Dawes Hicks has been appointed to the chair 

 of moral philosophy; Dr. E. E. Edwards, lec- 

 turer in phonetics for a term of three years ; 

 Dr. H. Batty Shaw, lecturer in therapeutics, 

 and Mr. Percy Fleming, professor of ophthal- 

 mic medicine and surgery, in succession to 

 Professor Tweedy, resigned. 



Mr. J. J. E. DuRACK, B.A. (Sydney), B.A. 

 (Research, Cambridge), has been appointed 

 demonstrator in natural philosophy at King's 

 College, London. 



M. Fernbach has been placed temporarily 

 in charge of a course in biological chemistry 

 at the Sorbonne, Paris, in place of M. Du- 

 claux, who has been given leave of absence on 

 account of his health. 



