646 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 568. 



Mr. J. C. Stevens on October 17. The equa- 

 torial with the 20-inch reflecting telescope and 

 the 7-inch Cooke refractor are now in the pos- 

 session of Mr. James Bower, an amateur as- 

 tronomer of Norwich. 



It had been expected that the Siraplon tun- 

 nel would be opened on January 1, but it is 

 now announced on official authority that the 

 line will not be ready before May 1. Hopes 

 are entertained that this delay will enable 

 electric traction to be employed from the first, 

 a plan which temporarily had been abandoned, 

 but which the Italian government is under- 

 stood to be desirous of seeing realized. 



According to a cablegram from Brussels, 

 the Belgian government has authorized an 

 international lottery to collect $2,000,000 for 

 an expedition to the North Polar regions. 



The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

 announces that it proposes to appoint two 

 qualified medical practitioners to work on 

 trypanosomiasis and spirillosis at the school. 

 The salary to be paid is at the rate of £100 

 per annum. 



Mr. Henry F. Shaw, of Boston, well known 

 in railway circles for his devotion to the prob- 

 lem of balancing the reciprocating parts of 

 locomotives, has presented to Purdue Univer- 

 sity a model locomotive embodying his latest 

 design. The model is constructed on the 

 scale of one inch to the foot, and is an excel- 

 lent piece of work. 



The inaugural meeting of the British Sci- 

 ence Guild was held at the Mansion House, 

 on October 30, under the presidency . of the 

 Lord Mayor of London. Sir Norman Lockyer, 

 in presenting a report on the action of the 

 organizing committee, said, according to the 

 British Medical Journal, that the object of 

 the Guild was to encourage the application of 

 scientific method to practical affairs, and es- 

 pecially to education, which should be based 

 upon things and thinking as well as upon 

 words and memory. On the motion of the 

 Bishop of Pipon, seconded by Lord Strathcona 

 and Mount Royal, and supported by Sir W. 

 Mather, the Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, K.C., 

 M.P., was unanimously elected first president 

 of the British Science Guild. In acknowledg- 



ing his election, Mr. Haldane said that the 

 object of the Guild would be the bringing of 

 method, the bringing of thinking, into the 

 modes of government in public affairs and 

 private industries alike. After referring to 

 the deficiencies in scientific education of the 

 officials of the treasury, the home office and 

 the board of trade, Mr. Haldane said that he 

 believed that things would not be put right 

 until a scientific corps was formed under a 

 permanent committee, just as the defence com- 

 mittee was under the prime minister. Such 

 a corps should consist not merely of officials 

 but of the most eminent scientific men, who 

 would serve in it because they felt that they 

 were honored and put on a proper footing and 

 recognized as a body of men charged with the 

 duty of advising the great department of 

 state on organizing the scientific work of the 

 country. Subsequently a number of vice- 

 presidents and officers of the guild were 

 elected, and a vote of thanks to the Lord 

 Mayor brought the proceedings to an end. 



Reuter's representative has had an inter- 

 view with M. Henryk Arctowski, a member of 

 the scientific staff of the Belgian Antarctic 

 expedition of 1897-1899, which was the first 

 to winter in the south polar regions. M. 

 Arctowski is actively interested in the new 

 scheme of polar exploration as set forth in 

 September at the Congress of Mons, in which 

 King Leopold took such great interest and 

 attended personally. M. Arctowski has just 

 visited London in order to confer with several 

 geographical authorities on the possible out- 

 come of the resolution taken at Mons. He 

 proposes to begin the systematic exploration 

 of the Antarctic regions by a preliminary 

 eircumpolar expedition which, organized in 

 Belgium, would leave Antwerp next autumn 

 with the object of exploring the most unknown 

 sections of the south pole in view of finding 

 new lands and suitable places for the establish- 

 ment of subsequent wintering stations. The 

 most interesting part of M. Arctowski's pro- 

 ject is his idea of utilizing an automobile, of 

 special construction, to penetrate into the in- 

 terior of the Antarctic Continent. He thinks 

 that if this experiment were successful, auto- 

 mobiles could be used on the inland ice to 



