Febeuaey 21, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



319 



The death is also announced of M. A. Lan- 

 caster, director of tlie meteorological depart- 

 ment of the Royal Observatory of Belgium at 

 Fccle. 



The Cooper Union recently received a be- 

 quest of $100,000 from the estate of Mr. Willis 

 James, and the City of New York has now 

 transferred to the institute the sixty-ninth 

 Regiment Armory. 



Me. L. S. Tiffany has presented to the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago for the Department of Geol- 

 ogy a valuable collection of invertebrate 

 fossils. This collection was made by Mr. 

 Tiffany's father during a period of some 

 twenty-five or thirty years and at a cost of 

 many thousands of dollars. 



The president of the United States on Feb- 

 ruary 10, sent to the congress the following 



To the Senate and House of Representatives: 



I transmit herewith a report by the Acting Sec- 

 retary of State covering a note from tlie Imperial 

 Grerman Ambassador by which is communicated 

 the acceptance by the International Congress on 

 Hygiene and Demography of the invitation extend- 

 ed to it in pursuance of the joint resolution of 

 Congress approved February 26, 1907, to hold its 

 next session at the city of Washington in 1910. 

 Theodore Roosevelt 



The first regular meeting of the Illinois 

 Academy of Sciences will be held at the James 

 Millikin University, Decatur, 111., on Febru- 

 ary 22. In the morning there will be a ses- 

 sion for the presentation of papers and in the 

 afternoon a symposium on " The Atmosphere," 

 embracing the following among other aspects : 

 Origin and Maintenance; Chemical Constitu- 

 tion and Activity; Physical Phenomena; Re- 

 lations to Animal and Vegetable Life; Re- 

 lations to Human Evolution and to Mental 

 and Physical Efiiciency. In the evening Pro- 

 fessor A. A. Michelson, of the University of 

 Chicago, will give a lecture complimentary 

 to the citizens of Decatur on " Recent Ad- 

 vances in Spectroscopy." 



The mathematical and physical library of 

 the late Professor A. S. Herschel, F.R.S., and 

 also works from the library of the late Mr. 

 F. Moore, author of books on the Lepidoptera 



of India and Ceylon, are offered for sale by 

 Mr. T. Thorp, Guilford, Surrey, England. 



We learn from the Scottish Geographical 

 Magazine of the wreck of the Austral, the 

 vessel which was taking a party and instru- 

 ments to set up a meteorological station on 

 Wandel Island. The wreck took place very 

 soon after the vessel left port, and as all the 

 valuable meteorological instruments were lost, 

 the establishment of the new station will be 

 delayed for at least a year. The Austral was 

 formerly the Frangais, the vessel of Dr. 

 Charcot's Antarctic expedition. 



It is reported that President Roosevelt will 

 appoint a Pure Food Commission of chemists 

 from various universities, to consider eases 

 of dispute against the rulings of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. 



The council of the, National Academy of 

 Sciences has passed resolutions in favor of 

 the setting aside of forest reserves in the Ap- 

 palachian and White Mountains as follows : 



Wheeeas: Under the present drain upon the 

 forest the timber supply of the entire United 

 States will be exhausted within twenty years 

 while in the eastern states where no adequate 

 means have been employed to protect the forest 

 the end of the supply is even nearer. 



Wheeeas: The headwaters of all important 

 navigable streams to the west of the Mississippi 

 River are now protected by national forests while 

 the Appalachian Mountains, which form the water- 

 sheds of many navigable streams of great impor- 

 tance are entirely unprotected and are being dam- 

 aged to a menacing extent by the wasteful cutting 

 of the forest, unrestricted fires and injudicious 

 clearing; 



Resolved, That the council of the National 

 Academy of Sciences heartily favors the Extension 

 of the national forest system to the Appalachian 

 Mountains for their protection and permanent 

 utilization ; 



Resolved, That we urge upon Congress the pas- 

 sage at the present session of a bill to acquire in 

 the Southern Appalachian Mountains and the 

 White Mountains such forest lands as are neces- 

 sary to protect the navigable streams which have 

 their sources therein, and to make permanent the 

 timber supply of the eastern part of the United 

 States. 



