July 8, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



53 



Professor Thomas A. Jaggar, Jr., of the 

 department of geology of the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology, and Professor Charles 

 Spofford, of the department of civil engineer- 

 ing, are now in Costa Rica making a study 

 into the cause and nature of earthquakes and 

 the type of structures and architecture best 

 suited to resist earthquakes. 



Dr. H. H. Edsby will spend the summer in 

 Mexico in connection with his investigations 

 of the new rubber-producing tree, Euphorhio- 

 dendron fulvum. Advantage will be taken of 

 this opportunity for making collections for the 

 New York Botanical Garden, especially of 

 economic material, and for the investigation 

 of Mexican drugs and medicinal plants in the 

 interest of the United States Pharmacopoeia. 



Mr. W. W. EGGLESTOisr has been appointed 

 assistant botanist of the Forest Service and 

 he has been detailed to study poisonous forage 

 plants in Colorado in cooperation with the 

 Bureau of Plant Industry. 



Professor Frederick Starr, of the depart- 

 ment of sociology and anthropology of the 

 University of Chicago, has returned from an 

 eight-months' stay in Japan, where he con- 

 ducted anthropological researches. 



Mr. J. "W. EoBERTSON, late principal of the 

 MacDonald Agricultural College, has been ap- 

 pointed chairman of a commission to investi- 

 gate the need for technical education in Can- 

 ada. 



Dr. Eaphael Meldola, professor of chemis- 

 try in Finsbury Technical College, will give 

 the next Herbert Spencer lecture at Oxford 

 University. 



The ninety-third annual meeting of the 

 Swiss Society of Natural Sciences is to be 

 held at Bale on September 4r-7. Lectures will 

 be delivered by Professor W. Ostwald, of 

 Leipzig, and Professor E. von Drygalski, of 

 Munich. The Swiss Societies of Botany, 

 Chemistry, Geology, Physics, Zoology and 

 Mathematics will meet in affiliation with the 

 general society. 



The Berlin correspondent of the Journal of 

 the American Medical Association states that 

 the ashes of Robert Koch, cremated in Baden- 



Baden, have been brought to the Institute for 

 Infectious Diseases, in Berlin, which was the 

 place of his labors for the last decade, and they 

 will be permanently installed in a room which, 

 with the permission of the national authori- 

 ties, is to be converted into a mausoleum for 

 Koch. In this room also there will be placed 

 the bust, contributed by his pupils on his six- 

 tieth birthday, his works and other memorials. 

 A memorial room will be produced, similar to 

 the one which has been provided for Pasteur 

 in his Paris institute. In order to avoid a 

 large number of single memorial services in 

 the various societies of which Koch was an 

 honorary member, a committee has been 

 formed which is preparing a single memorial 

 service for all these bodies in common. The 

 date for this celebration has been postponed 

 to December 11 of this year, which will be the 

 sixty-seventh birthday of Robert Koch; this 

 resolution has been taken because, as is gen- 

 erally understood, in the next few weeks many 

 of the persons who would be interested in this 

 memorial will be away from home, and, more- 

 over, because representatives from foreign 

 countries are expected at the celebration, and 

 finally because Koch himself wished a quiet 

 interment. The memorial address at the pro- 

 posed service will be delivered by Dr. Gaffky, 

 the oldest pupil of Koch and his successor in 

 the directorship of the Institute for Infectious 

 Diseases. 



In the National Institute for Bacteriology 

 in the City of Mexico, there was, on June 24, 

 unveiled a memorial tablet to Dr. Howard T. 

 Ricketts, of the University of Chicago, who 

 lost his life in the course of his research on 

 Mexican typhus. 



Dr. Charles A. White, formerly state geol- 

 ogist of Iowa, member of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey and of the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences, died on June 29, at Washington, D. C, 

 in his eighty-fifth year, after an illness of 

 some months. 



Dr. Cyrus Thomas, archeologist in the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology since 1882, 

 well known for his contributions to anthro- 

 pology, died on June 27, in Washington, at the 

 age of eighty-five years. 



