506 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 824 



Mb. Hormuzd Rassam, known for his As- 

 syrian explorations, died on September 16, at 

 the age of eighty-four years. 



The deaths are also announced of Dr. 

 Zdenko Ritter von Skraup, professor of chem- 

 istry at Vienna ; of M. Maurice Levy, professor 

 of mechanics in the College de France and 

 inspector general under the government of 

 roads and bridges, and of Dr. Fulgence Ray- 

 mond, Charcot's successor in the chair of 

 nervous diseases at the Saltpetriere and emi- 

 nent for his contributions to pathological an- 

 atomy and psychology. 



Members of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science who contemplate 

 'Contributing to the program of Section D are 

 .-requested to send early notice of their inten- 

 sions and if possible the titles of their papers 

 >to the secretary of the section, G. W. Bissell, 

 East Lansing, Mich. The vice-presidential 

 address by Dean J. F. Hayford will discuss 

 " The Relation of Isostasy to Geodesy, Geol- 

 ogy and Geophysics." It is proposed to de- 

 vote at least one session of the meeting to 

 aeronautics and related subjects and papers 

 along this line are especially desired. 



The fourth Liternational Congress for the 

 Care of the Insane will be held at Berlin from 

 the third to the seventh of October. 



The fifth International Dairy Congress, 

 which will be held in Stockholm in 1911, of- 

 fers a prize of £20 for the best essay on the 

 nutritive value of raw milk as compared with 

 that of pasteurized, sterilized or evaporated 

 millv, determined, at least in part, by experi- 

 ments made upon infants. 



The results of a series of tests on the 

 strength of pure iron alloyed with nickel and 

 copper made during the last five years in the 

 applied electrochemistry laboratory of the 

 University of Wisconsin are presented in a 

 new bulletin in the engineering series by Pro- 

 fessor Charles F. Burgess and James Aston. 

 Professor Burgess discovered a simple method 

 for producing chemically pure iron elec- 

 trolytically, and received a grant of sev- 

 eral thousand dollars from the Carnegie Insti- 



tution at Washington with which to carry on 

 the investigations. The value of alloys of 

 nickel with iron, copper with iron, and of 

 nickel and copper with iron is considered in de- 

 tail in a series of tables, and the methods used 

 in making and testing these combinations are 

 fully discussed in the bulletin. 



Dr. E. C. Pickering, director of the Har- 

 vard College Observatory, announces that a 

 new star, whose approximate position is R. A. 

 17" 52'" 15% Dec. — 27°32'.3 (1875), was dis- 

 covered by Mrs. Fleming in the Constellation 

 Sagittarius, on October 1, 1910. It appears 

 on 16 photographs taken at Arequipa with the 

 eight-inch Bache and one-inch Cooke tele- 

 scopes, between March 21, 1910, and June 10, 

 1910. The magnitude has been estimated as 

 varying from 7.8 to 8.6, between these dates. 

 The spectrum is quite faint but shows the 

 bright hydrogen lines H^, Hy, HS, He, H^ 

 and Hfj, with a trace of Hy as dark on the 

 edge of greater wave-length of the bright line 

 Hy. The star does not appear on seventeen 

 photographs, taken between July 23, 1889, and 

 October 7, 1909, although most of them show 

 stars fainter than the twelfth magnitude and 

 one plate shows stars of the fifteenth magni- 

 tude, or fainter. An observation by Leon 

 Campbell on October 3, 1910, with the 24- 

 inch reflector of this observatory confirms the 

 presence of this object and gives its magnitude 

 as obout 10.5. Of the fifteen new stars known 

 to have appeared during the last twenty-five 

 years, eleven have been found at this observa- 

 tory, nine by Mrs. Fleming from the photo- 

 graphs of the Henry Draper memorial. 



The ordinary meetings of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society for the session 1910-11 be- 

 gin, as we learn from the London Times, on 

 November 7, when Major Molesworth Sykes 

 will give an account of his further journeys 

 in Persia. Major Sykes will deal, among 

 other subject, with a tour in ancient Parthia. 

 At the second meeting of the society, on No- 

 vember 21, Dr. H. A. Lorentz will give an 

 account of his recent explorations in Dutch 

 New Guinea. The subject deals to a large 

 extent with a region in which an English ex- 



