638 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 694 



New York without change of cars. The regu- 

 lar fare is about $5.85, the distance 265 

 miles. 



The summer meeting of the American 

 Chemical Society will be held in New Haven 

 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, June 

 30, July 1 and 2. 



The celebration of the hundredth anni- 

 versary of the birth of Charles Darwin and 

 the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of 

 " The Origin of Species," planned by Cam- 

 bridge University, will be held on June 22, 

 23 and 24, 1909. Arrangements are being 

 made by the New York Academy of Sciences 

 and by Columbia University to celebrate the 

 hundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth on 

 February 12, 1909. This is the birthday of 

 Lincoln as well as of Darwin and, being a 

 public holiday in New York State, will give 

 a suitable opportunity for the celebration. 



Nature states that Lord Eayleigh will prob- 

 ably be elected to the vacant chancellorship 

 of the University of Cambridge in succession 

 to the late Duke of Devonshire. Lord Eay- 

 leigh was professor of experimental physics 

 at Cambridge from 1879 to 1884. 



On the nomination of the Prussian Min- 

 istry of Education Dr. Mas Verworn, pro- 

 fessor of physiology at Gottingen, has been 

 appointed to be Kaiser Wilhelm professor at 

 Columbia University for the year 1908-9. 



Dr. Egbert Koch arrived at New York 

 from Bremen on the Eronprinzessen Cecilie 

 on April 7. The German Medical Society 

 gave a banquet in his honor on April 11. 



Professor A. Crum Brown, F.R.S., pro- 

 fessor, of chemistry in the University of Edin- 

 burgh, proposes to retire from the chair which 

 he has occupied since 1869. 



The British Society of Dyers and Colorists 

 met on April 3, at Bradford, when the presi- 

 dent. Professor R. Meldola, F.E.S., delivered 

 his presidential address on " The Founding 

 of the Coal-tar Color Industry." The first 

 awards of the Perkin medal were made to 

 Professors C. Graebe and C. Liebermann for 

 their synthesis of alizarin. 



In commemoration of the twenty-first anni- 

 versary of Sir William Ramsay's election to 



the chair of chemistry in University College, 

 London, the professors of the college enter- 

 tained him at dinner on March 18. The pro- 

 vost, Dr. T. Gregory Foster, was in the chair, 

 and covers were laid for eighty guests. 



April 9 marked the twenty-fifth year of 

 service in the United States Department of 

 Agriculture on the part of Dr. Harvey Wash- 

 ington Wiley. An appreciation of his work 

 was evidenced in a dinner given him on the 

 anniversary at Hotel Astor, New York City. 

 About two hundred prominent members of the 

 chemical profession attended. The officials of 

 the committee in charge of the dinner were. 

 Professor Charles BaskerviUe, chairman; Dr. 

 Walker Bowman, secretary, and Mr. Maximil- 

 lian Toch, treasurer. Dr. William J. Sehief- 

 felin acted as toastmaster. Many prominent 

 chemists spoke, congratulating Dr. Wiley on 

 completing a quarter of a century's work for 

 the government in behalf of its people. An 

 embossed album with the signatures of those 

 attending the dinner was presented to him. 



According to foreign journals the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences has appointed a com- 

 mittee, composed of MM. Becquerel, Bouquet 

 de la Grye and Poincare, to consider a sug- 

 gestion by M. Bouquet de la Grye concerning 

 the application of wireless telegraphy to the 

 problem of the determination of longitude at 

 sea. The idea is to utilize the wireless tele- 

 graph station of the Eiffel Tower in order to 

 send, for instance, every night at midnight a 

 Hertzian signal giving the time of the merid- 

 ian of Paris. M. Bouquet de la Grye thinks 

 that if a station were established at the Peak 

 of Teneriffe signals could be detected com- 

 pletely around the earth. 



The ninth lecture in the Harvey Society 

 course will be given at the New York 

 Academy of Medicine building on Saturday 

 evening, April 18, at 8:30 p.m., by Professor 

 Alonzo E. Taylor, University of California. 

 Subject : " The Role of Reversed Ferment Re- 

 actions in Metabolism." 



A BILL has been passed by the Virginia 

 legislature establishing a Virginia State Geo- 

 logical Survey. The bureau is to have its 

 headquarters at the University of Virginia, 



