CIE 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, PUBLISHING THE 



OFFICIAL NOTICES AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 



FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 



Friday, January 3, 1908 



CONTENTS 

 L.rd Kelvin: Professor Arthur Gordon 

 Webster 1 



Medicine and the TJ niversiUj : Professor 

 William H. Welch 8 



Scientific Books: — 



Hcrrick on Denatured or Industrial Alco- 

 hol: Professor S. Lawrence Bigelow. 

 Genera Avium : Harrt C. Obeeholser ... 20 



Scientific Journals and Articles 23 



Societies and Academies: — 



The Indiana Academy of Sciences: James 

 H. Ransom. The Philosophical Society of 

 Washington: E. L. Faris. The Torrey 

 Botanical Club: Dr. C. Stuart Gager. 

 The New York Section of the American 

 Chemical Society: C. M. JoTCE 23 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



Two New Meteorites: Edwin E. Howell. 

 Dr. Armsby's New Unit for Energy: A. T. 

 Jones 27 



Special Articles : — 



Megharhinus Septentrionalis: Professor 

 H. A. Morgan and E. C. Cotton. Dissoro- 

 phus : Dr. Rot L. Moodie 28 



Current Notes on Land Forms: — 



The Peneplain of Northoentral Wisconsin: 

 W. M. D. Deflection of Rivers by the 

 Earth's Rotation; Deflected Rivers in Aus- 

 tralia .• W. M. D 31 



The Work of Our Larger Museums as shown 

 by their Annual Reports: F. A. Lucas ... 33 



The American Philosophical Society 36 



Scientific Notes and Neios 37 



University and Educational News 40 



MSS. iutended for publication and books, etc., intended for 

 review should be sent to the Editor of Sciencb, Garrison-on- 

 Hudsou. K. Y. 



LORD KELVIN 



With the death of Lord Kelvin on De- 

 cember 17 there passes away the grandest 

 figure of contemporary science, and with 

 it closes an epoch in the history of physics. 

 When William Thomson was born, in 1824, 

 Ohm's law of the flow of electric currents 

 had not been discovered, Oersted's dis- 

 covery of the magnetic action of the cur- 

 rent was but four years old, while Fara- 

 day's capital discovery of the induction of 

 currents was not to come for seven years. 

 The wave-theory of light had been but re- 

 cently set on its feet by Young and Fres- 

 nel, and Avas not yet thoroughly believed, 

 while the two laws of thermodynamics, 

 perhaps the most important contribution 

 of the nineteenth century, were unknown. 

 All these things Lord Kelvin saw, and a 

 great part of them he was. Probably no 

 one, with the single exception of Helm- 

 holtz, born three years earlier, exercised 

 a greater influence on the science of the 

 nineteenth century, while to compare the 

 influence of these two great physicists with 

 that of Darwin is as bootless as to question 

 whether the grass is greener than the sky is 

 blue. 



Whether William Thomson, born at Bel- 

 fast, is to be elassifled as an Irishman, 

 along with the great Sir William Rowan 

 Hamilton, or by virtue of descent and al- 

 most lifelong residence in Glasgow, as a 

 Scotchman, like that other genius Clerk 

 Maxwell, we need not discuss, but that 

 country in which, perhaps in all the world, 

 intellect is most prized, may fairly claim 



