902 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 493. 



Philadelphia to McCall's Ferry and return. .$3.36 

 New York to McCall's Ferry and return .... 6.96 

 Washington to McCall's Ferry and return . . . 4.06 

 Hotel charges at McCall's Ferry are $1.25 per day. 

 Guides : Messrs. Stewardson Brown and Jos. Craw- 

 ford. 



An International Maritime Congress was 

 held at Lisbon in tte hall of the Geographical 

 Society from the twenty-second to the twenty- 

 eighth of May. The program of subjects was 

 as follows : 



I. Oceanography and Bydrography. — Bathy- 

 nietrie charts. Last cruise of the Princess Alice 

 yacht. Lithobiologic charts. Unification of the 

 scale of marine charts. 



II. Meteorology. — The north Atlantic and fore- 

 casts of the weather in Western Europe. 



III. Territorial Waters. 



IV. Congresses and Conferences. — Summary of 

 the work relative to maritime questions. 



V. Institutions for assistance to seam,en. 



VI. International maritime statistics. 



VII. Panama interoceanic canal. 



VIII. International Maritime Union Conven- 

 tion. — Concordant measurement. Load line. 

 Quay dues on the net or the gross tonnage. 

 Lanes for ship routes. Signals in fogs at sea. 

 Navigation rules. The prevention of collisions. 

 Organization for life saving on board. Lighting 

 and buoying of coasts. Condemnation of ships 

 by experts. General average. Non liability 

 clauses in Bills of Lading. 



IX. Yachting. — International uniiieation of 

 measurement and rules for racing. Decimalization 

 applied to navigation. 



X. 8ea Fishing. — Steam trawlers. The sardine 

 question. 



XI. Wireless telegraphs and telephones. 



XII. Port improvements and manutention. 



The International Maritime Association, un- 

 der whose auspices this congress was held has 

 a permanent office at 3 rue des Mathurins, 

 Paris. 



The captain of the ship Godthaab, which 

 arrived from Greenland, at Copenhagen, on 

 May 24, reports that the Danish Polar Ex- 

 pedition, led by the author Mylius Erichsen, 

 left Saunders Island, where the explorers had 

 lived for a long time among the Eskimo in 

 the native fashion, on January 20, and, 

 traveling by sledges, safely reached Upernivik, 

 in West Greenland. Afterwards they pro- 

 ceeded to Umanak. The expedition will prob- 

 ably come home in the autumn. 



Nature states that a series of prizes is of- 

 fered by the mathematical and natural science 

 section of the Jablonow Society of Leipzig 

 for themes connected with the following sub- 

 jects : For 1904, the chemical differentiation of 

 rock magmas; for 1905, the causes of plasmic 

 currents in vegetable cells; for 1906, the 

 analogues of Bernouilli's numbers in the study 

 of elliptic functions; and for 1907, the laws 

 of photoelectric currents. Eull particulars 

 are obtainable from the secretary. Professor 

 Wilhelm Scheibner, 8 Schletterstrasse, Leip- 

 zig. The Eoyal Academy of Sciences of 

 Madrid offers for 1905 a prize for the best 

 essay written in Spanish or Latin on the fol- 

 lowing subject : ' A complete study of a 

 special class of singular integrals arising from 

 differential equations for which the values 

 of the derived functions become indeterminate 

 when certain relations exist between the simul- 

 taneous values of the principal variables.' 



The Monthly Weather Review reports that 

 by the joint efforts of the Italian Alpenverein, 

 the Duke of Abruzzi, the Minister of Agri- 

 culture for Italy, and Queen Margarhita, a 

 geophysical observatory on the summit of 

 Monta Eosa, at an altitude of 4,560 meters, 

 has been erected. It is the highest in Europe, 

 except that of Vallot, on Mont Blanc, and 

 higher than the station on Pike's Peak form- 

 erly occupied by the "Weather Bureau. The 

 regular observational activity will begin this 

 summer. It will be occupied in the winter 

 time as well as in the summer if the severity 

 of the weather does not prevent. Both the 

 observatory and the hut of refuge for moun- 

 taineers will be accessible, not only to Italian 

 but to foreign students who wish to carry 

 on geophysical investigations. The meteoro- 

 logical observations are expected to be of 

 especial importance in connection with the 

 simultaneous international balloon ascensions. 

 Italy now possesses three mountain observa- 

 tories, namely, Monta Eosa, 4,560 meters; 

 iEtna, 2,942 meters; Cimone, 2,162 meters. 



Nature says of the late Professor His: 

 " Professor Wilhelm His, whose death was 

 announced from Leipzig on May 1, at the age 

 of seventy-three, altered and extended our 

 knowledge of human anatomy more than any 



