Apeh. 5, 1907] 



SCIENCE. 



559 



ings members and their friends only are ad- 

 mitted. 



Professor Ernst von Bergmann, the emi- 

 nent German surgeon, died on March 25, after 

 an operation for appendicitis. The seventieth 

 birthday of Professor von Bergmann was 

 widely celebrated on December 16 of last year. 



The Washington Evening Star states that 

 at a meeting of the Washington Society of 

 Engineers at the Hubbard Memorial Hall on 

 March 26 it was announced that a plan was 

 under way for the erection in Washington of 

 a permanent home for the various scientific 

 societies of the national capital. A letter was 

 read from the Washington Academy of Sci- 

 ences, which, through its building committee, 

 invited the cooperation of the Washington 

 Society of Engineers and like associations. 

 The society by a unanimous vote decided to 

 become a party to the movement, and an- 

 nounced that it would pay a yearly rental of 

 $800 for a portion of the building. It was 

 stated that an endowment fund of $100,000 is 

 necessary for the maintenance of the building, 

 which sum, it is expected, will be subscribed 

 by the various societies interested. 



The Goldsmiths Company has given $50,- 

 000 to be used at the Eothamsted Experiment 

 Station for investigations on soils. 



The library of Oberlin College has recently 

 received a valuable addition through the be- 

 quest of the late Professor Albert Allen 

 Wright of his zoological and geological books. 



The Loubat prizes, awarded every five years 

 by Columbia University, will be given for all 

 works which have appeared between January 

 1, 1903, and January 1, 1908, which treat of 

 the history, geography or numismatics of 

 Worth America prior to 1116. The value of 

 the first prize is not less than $1,000, and that 

 of the second prize not less than $400, and 

 the work of all persons, whether citizens of 

 the United States or of any other country, 

 will be considered. 



The Harvard Officers' Fund Association 

 held its annual meeting on March 15. The 

 objects of the association are indicated by the 

 following extracts from the articles adopted 

 in 1894: "-This association shall be known as 



the Harvard Officers' Eund Association. Its 

 members shall be limited to those persons 

 whose names are entered as officers of govern- 

 ment or instruction in the annual catalogue 

 of the university at the time their first sub- 

 scription is made. The minimum amount of 

 the annual subscription of each member shall 

 be $5. The funds of the association, so far 

 as they may be derived from annual subscrip- 

 tions or from interest thereon, shall be used 

 by the trustees at their discretion in providing 

 relief, ordinarily of a temporary nature, for 

 the families of any deceased officers or for any 

 officers distressed by illness or by other cal- 

 amity." 



The Geographical Journal states that Dr. 

 Rudolf Poch, who, as assistant physician to 

 the Austrian Plague Expedition in 1897 and 

 1902, made a name for himself by his malaria 

 researches in West Africa, has in 1904^6, with 

 the aid of the Imperial Academy of Sciences 

 in Vienna, prosecuted anthropological jour- 

 neys in New Guinea, and has also with like 

 purpose visited New South Wales, the Solo- 

 mon Islands and Bismarck archipelago. In 

 these two years he has traveled along three 

 quarters of the coast of the island of New 

 Guinea. At five spots he stopped for some 

 length of time, and thence wandered into re- 

 gions of the interior, still in part wholly un- 

 known. The material brought home with him 

 includes 300 measurements of living persons, 

 15 skeletons, 80 skulls, many anatomical 

 preparations, 1,500 photographs, more than 

 3,000 feet of cinematograph films (taken by 

 bioscopic camera), representing dances and 

 scenes of village life. Included in the collec- 

 tion are also 90 plates for the phonographic 

 archives of the academy, with a view to the 

 study of the language, songs and music of the 

 natives, and 2,000 ethnological objects. Itin- 

 eraries of the hitherto unknown regions were 

 kept and altitudes noted in them. 



We learn from Nature that Lieutenant 

 Boyd Alexander, who, with his brother 

 Captain Claud Alexander, Captain G. B. 

 Gosling, Mr. P. A. Talbot (surveyor), and a 

 Portuguese collector, left England in the 

 spring of 1904 on an exploring expedition 



