240 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 816 



drowned on July 30, in Kimbasket Lake, Brit- 

 ish Columbia. Dr. Shaw for a number of 

 years has conducted botanical excursions into 

 unknown regions of the Selkirk and Canadian 

 Eocky Mountains, and this year had attempted 

 in company with half a dozen students and 

 local guides to go around the Big Bend of the 

 Columbia Eiver. Mrs. Shaw was awaiting 

 the party at Eevelstoke, B. C. 



It is reported that the government of the 

 republic of Ecuador has proposed to present to 

 France the observatory at Quito, together with 

 its apparatus and dependencies, and that the 

 Academy of Sciences has decided provisionally 

 to accept the gift. 



In connection with the German Museum 

 at Munich, there will be erected a small ob- 

 servatory with a dome. 



The Electrical World states that Professor 

 J. A. Fleming, at the University College, and 

 Professor E. Wilson, at King's College, Lon- 

 don, have established wireless telegraph sta- 

 tions for communication between these insti- 

 tutions. Instruction is given at each place in 

 the principles and practise of radio-telegraphy. 



At a meeting of the trustees of the A. K. 

 Traveling Fellowships, Mr. Sidney Ball, fel- 

 low of St. John's College, Oxford, and Pro- 

 fessor I. GoUancz, professor of English at 

 King's College, London, were appointed as the 

 first fellows of the English foundation. These 

 fellowships, each of the value of £660, were 

 recently founded by Mr. Albert Kahn, of 

 Paris, to enable the fellows to travel round the 

 world. 



The biological station of the U. S. Bureau 

 of Fisheries at Fairport, Iowa, is now suffi- 

 ciently equipped for carrying on investiga- 

 tions and for actual propagation work in 

 mussel culture. The permanent scientific 

 personnel of the station consists of the follow- 

 ing: Dr. Robert E. Coker, director; Mr. H. 

 Walton Clark and Mr. Thaddeus Surber, sci- 

 entific assistants, and Mr. J. F. Boepple, shell 

 expert. 



The Journal of Oeography, which hereto- 

 fore has been edited by Professor E. E. Dodge, 



and published by the Teachers College of New 

 York City, will in the future be edited by Ray 

 Hughes Whitbeck, of the University of Wis- 

 consin, and will be published in Madison. 



Professor T. D. A. Cockerell, of the Uni- 

 versity of Colorado, in Boulder, has recently 

 published as paper No. 1745 in the " Proceed- 

 ings of the U. S. National Museum " a paper 

 entitled " The North American Bees of the 

 Genus Nomia." It appears that in the col- 

 lections of the National Museum there were a 

 number of undescribed species of the genus 

 Nomia to which the late Dr. Ashmead had 

 given manuscript names, but which he had 

 never described. These Professor Cockerell 

 has examined and in the present paper de- 

 scribes for the first time five species, the types 

 of which are in the national collections. 



Announcement is made of the forthcoming 

 publication of Dr. Johann David Schoepf's 

 " Eeise durch einige der mittlern und 

 siidlichen nordamerikanischen vereinigten 

 Staaten, etc., 178.3-1784." Erlangen. 1788. 

 2 volumes. Dr. Schoepf was a surgeon in the 

 German division of the British army, who im- 

 mediately after the establishment of peace 

 set out from New York and traveled through 

 the coast states as far as St. Augustine. He 

 visited also the Bahama Islands. He was a 

 university man [Erlangen, 1776], interested 

 especially in geology and natural history. 

 His Travels give perhaps the best account of 

 this country (from the standpoint of a for- 

 eigner), as it was during the Confederation 

 period. There is naturally much geological 

 comment in these volumes, which may be com- 

 pared with Lyell's, sixty years later. Schoepf 

 gave particular attention to mining operations 

 and examined many mines in New Jersey and 

 Pennsylvania, the two great mining regions 

 of that day. He went as far west as Pitts- 

 burgh. The translation is the work of Alfred 

 J. Morrison, editor of the " Travels of Four 

 Years and a HaK, in the United States, 

 1798-1802," by John Davis. 



The condition of various crops in the 

 United States on August 1 — 100 representing 

 for each crop, its average condition on August 

 1 of recent years (10-year average for most 



