798 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 594. 



the upper house of the Austrian parliament. 

 At the annual general meeting of the Insti- 

 tution of Civil Engineers, held on April 24, 

 Sir Alexander B. W. Kennedy, F.E.S., was 

 elected president of the institution. 



The Iron and Steel Institute of Great 

 Britain awarded last week its Bessemer gold 

 medal to M. Floris Osmond, of Paris. One of 

 its Andrew Carnegie research scholarships was 

 awarded to Mr. F. Hess, of Columbia Univer- 

 sity, but he was unable to accept. 



At the University of Colorado the annual 

 Sigma Xi address was given by Professor 

 Thomas H. MacBride, of the State University 

 of Iowa. The subject was ' The American 

 Deserts.' 



Professoe W. Neenst, of Berlin, whose ap- 

 pointment as Silliman lecturer at Yale Uni- 

 versity we have announced, will lecture in 

 October on applications of thermodynamics in 

 chemistry. 



George H. Chadwick, of Eochester, has 

 been appointed zoologist of the New York 

 State Museum, to fill the vacancy left by the 

 death of Dr. F. C. Pauhnier. 



Henry H. Goddaed, Ph.D. (Clark), of the 

 department of psychology and pedagogy at 

 the State Normal School, Chester, Pa., has 

 been given charge of a department of research 

 which has been established in the New Jersey 

 Training School for Feeble-minded Girls and 

 Boys at Vineland. This, we understand, is 

 the first department of the kind that has been 

 established in connection with a school for 

 feeble-minded children. 



A beonze bust of the late Dr. Alexander J. 

 C. Skene was unveiled near Prospect Park, 

 Brooklyn, on May 5, when an address was 

 made by Dr. A. Jacobi. 



Dr. Geoeges Brelaz, professor of chemistry 

 in the University of Lausanne, died on March 

 15, at the age of seventy-five years. The death 

 is also announced of Dr. Gustav Bauer, pro- 

 fessor of mathematics at Munich. 



There will be U. S. Civil Service examina- 

 tions on June 1 to fill the position of agricul- 

 turist in dry-land agriculture in the Bureau 

 of Animal Industry, at a salary of $2,750, and 



of assistant agriculturist in the same bureau, 

 at a salary of $1,000. 



Me. Egbert Y. Cummings has given $20,000 

 to the Field Museum of Natural History to 

 defray the expenses of an ethnological study 

 of the native tribes of the Philippine Islands. 



The cornerstone of the United Engineering 

 Building on West Thirty-ninth Street, New 

 York, was laid on May 8 by Mr. Andrew Car- 

 negie, who gave one and a haH million dollars 

 for its erection to the American Society of 

 Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute 

 of Electrical Engineers and the American In- 

 stitute of Mining Engineers. The building is 

 already in course of erection, being about half 

 finished. 



The sixth International Congress of Ap- 

 plied Chemistry was opened at Eome on April 

 26 by the king and queen of Italy in the 

 presence of the diplomatic body, the members 

 of the cabinet, high officials of the state and 

 about two thousand delegates. 



The first of the annual conversaziones at 

 the Eoyal Society was held on May 9. 



The German government has issued invita- 

 tions for an International Conference on 

 Wireless Telegraphy to meet on June 28. 



A local section of the American Chemical 

 Society has been organized at the University 

 of Illinois, Urbana, HI. It embraces the ter- 

 ritory within a radius of fifty miles from the 

 university. The following officers have been 

 elected : 



Presiding Officer — Professor S. W. Parr. 

 Vice-chairman and Councilor — Dr. H. S. Grind- 

 ley. 



Treasurer — Dr. A. T. Lincoln. 

 Secretary — Dr. R. S. Curtiss. 



The above officers were also chosen members 

 of a general committee. The charter members 

 number twenty-six, of whom all but three are 

 resident at the University of Illinois. 



We learn from Nature that the Interna- 

 tional Association for Testing Materials, 

 which holds its congresses about every three 

 years in industrial centers in various coun- 

 tries, will this year meet in the Academy of 

 Science at Brussels on September 3-8. The 



