June 5, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



;03 



contracted while performing a post-mortem 

 examination on a patient who had died while 

 in quarantine. 



Dr. Charles James Cullingworti-i, an emi- 

 nent British gynecologist, author, among other 

 works, of a biography of Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes, died on May 11, at the age of sixty- 

 seven years. 



The Eev. Father Eugene Lafont, for many 

 years professor of physical science at St. 

 Xavier's College, in India, has died at the age 

 of seventy-one years. 



The death is also announced of Mr. Caleb 

 Barlow, chief preparator of fossils in the 

 British Museum (Natural History), and of 

 Dr. Gustav Guldberg, professor of anatomy 

 at Christiania. 



The Fifth Pan-American Medical Congress 

 will take place in Guatemala, 0. A., this year 

 from August 5 to 8, inclusive. 



A Brazilian psychiatrical, neurological and 

 medicolegal society has been organized. Meet- 

 ings are held monthly at Eio de Janeiro at the 

 National Hospital for the Insane. Professor 

 J. Moreira is the first president of the society. 



Professor A. E. Veerill, of Tale University, 

 has sold to that university his very valuable 

 collection of marine invertebrates, acquired 

 during his work for the U. S. Fish Commis- 

 sion from 1873 to 1887. The collection is the 

 duplicate of one secured at the same time and 

 since transferred to the National Museum at 

 Washington. 



President Roosevelt has signed the act 

 providing for an area of twenty square miles 

 in Montana for a range to maintain the Am- 

 erican bison. This area the government will 

 buy and fence, while the people are invited 

 to subscribe for the purchase of the animals. 



The act making appropriations for the 

 legislative, executive and judicial expenses of 

 the government for the year ending June 30, 

 1909, which includes the appropriations for 

 the United States Bureau of Education, pro- 

 vides for an increase of only $1,250 over the 

 amount for the current year. The additional 

 amount includes an increase of $1,000 in the 



salary of the Commissioner of Education, 

 making it $4,500 per annum; also an increase 

 of $250 in the appropriation for books for the 

 library, current educational periodicals, other 

 current publications, and completing valuable 

 sets of periodicals, making the amount avail- 

 able for such purposes, $500. No appropria- 

 tion whatsoever was made for the investiga- 

 tion by the Bureau of Education of special 

 educational problems, for which purpose the 

 secretary of the interior strongly requested 

 an appropriation of $40,000. 



President Eoosevelt has suggested to Con- 

 gress the appropriation of $20,000 for the 

 salaries and expenses of three commissioners 

 and a secretary, who shall for this govern- 

 ment inquire into the opium evil. A letter 

 from Secretary Boot, accompanying the presi- 

 dent's note, suggests that each country which 

 has signified to the United States its willing- 

 ness to make such an investigation appoint 

 commissioners who shall make inquiries in 

 their own countries. He further proposes 

 that all these commissioners meet at Shang- 

 hai, China, on January 1, 1909. 



A conference of representatives of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture and 

 of the agricultural experiment stations of 

 several states to consider plans for supplying 

 serum for the prevention and treatment of 

 hog cholera was held at Ames, Iowa, on 

 May 28. The department was represented 

 by Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, 

 Dr. A. D. Melvin, chief of the Bureau of 

 Animal Industry, and Dr. M. Dorset, chief of 

 the biochemie division of that bureau, and 

 invitations have been extended by the depart- 

 ment to the experiment stations of a number 

 of states convenient to the place of meeting 

 to send representatives. The conference took 

 place on a farm which has been used by 

 the Bureau of Animal Industry for experi- 

 mental work with hog cholera for several 

 years. 



A report on a study of an unusual collec- 

 tion of fossil fish from Ceara, a state of north- 

 ern Brazil, by Dr. David Starr Jordan and 

 John Caspar Branner, of Leland Stanford 

 University, has been published by the Smith- 



