December 19, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



879 



at Columbia, January 26 to 31 at Johns Hop- 

 kins; February 2 to 7 at the University of 

 Chicago. 



The Huxley lecture at Birmingham Univer- 

 sity for this year is to be delivered by Sir Ar- 

 thur Evans, F.E.S., who has chosen as his 

 subject " The Ages of Minos." 



The Swiney lectures on geology in connec- 

 tion with the British Museum (Natural His- 

 tory) are being given this year by Dr. T. J. 

 Jehu, his subject being " The Natural History 

 of Minerals and Ores." 



Professor Alfred G. Compton, former head 

 of the physics department at the College of 

 the City of New York, who retired in Decem- 

 ber, 1911, after serving on the faculty of the 

 college for fifty-eight years, died on Decem- 

 ber 12, aged seventy-eight years. 



Dr. James MacAlister, for twenty-two 

 years president of the Drexel Institute at 

 Philadelphia, and previously superintendent 

 of public schools, died on December 11, at the 

 age of seventy-three years. 



Professor Dr. Anton Fric, one of the most 

 distinguished of the paleontologists of Europe, 

 died in Prague on the fifteenth of November, 

 in the eighty-first year of his age. Professor 

 Erie's greatest contributions were to the Per- 

 mian fauna of Bohemia, especially the Am- 

 phibia and fishes, and also the insects. He has 

 also left a permanent record in his direction 

 of the beautiful natural history museum at 

 Prague which is in many respects the most 

 perfect of its kind in Europe. He was a man 

 of very great energy and a voluminous writer. 

 His published works include many large vol- 

 umes which will become classics in paleonto- 

 logical literature. 



Professor Igino Cocchi, of Florence, known 

 for his work in stratigraphieal geology, the 

 first president of the committee directing the 

 Geological Survey of Italy, has died at the 

 age of seventy-five years. 



The foundation-stone was laid on November 

 23 at Frankfurt-on-Maine of the new zoolog- 

 ical institute of the Senckenberg Natural His- 

 tory Museum which the Senckenberg Society 



will ultimately place at the disposal of the fu- 

 ture University of Frankfurt. 



The thirty-first German Congress of Inter- 

 nal Medicine will be held at "Wiesbaden, 

 April 20-23, under the presidency of Pro- 

 fessor von Eomberg, of Munich. The chief 

 subject proposed for discussion is the nature 

 and treatment of insomnia. The reporters are 

 Drs. Gaupp, of Tiibingen; Goldscheider, of 

 Berlin, and Faust, of Wiirzburg. 



The committee charged with the local ar- 

 rangements for the recent visit to Birming- 

 ham of the British Association has held its 

 final meeting. It was reported that the num- 

 ber of persons taking tickets for the meeting 

 was 2,635, compared with 2,504 at the Dundee 

 meeting last year and 2,453 at the Birming- 

 ham meeting in 1886. The extent to whicli 

 the artisan classes availed themselves of the; 

 popular science lectures made them a notable 

 feature of the meeting. The Finance Com- 

 mittee recommended that an unexpended bal- 

 ance of £2,313 be returned to the contributors 

 proportionately. 



A prize of one hundred dollars is offered for 

 the best paper on " The Availability of Pear- 

 son's Formulse for Psychophysics." The rules 

 for the solution of this problem have been 

 formulated in general terms by William 

 Brown. It is now required (1) to make their 

 formulation specific, and (2) to show how they 

 work out in actual practise. Papers in com- 

 petition for this prize will be received not 

 later than December 31, 1914, by Professor E. 

 B. Titchener, Cornell Heights, Ithaca, N. Y. 

 Such papers are to be marked only with a 

 motto, and are to be accompanied by a sealed 

 envelope, marked with the same motto, and 

 containing the name and address of the writer. 

 The prize will be awarded by a committee con- 

 sisting of Professors William Brown, E. B. 

 Titchener and F. M. Urban. The committee 

 will make known the name of the successful 

 competitor on July 1, 1915. 



Particulars of the Pierre J. and Edouard: 

 Van Beneden prize of 2,800 francs are quoted 

 in Nature. The prize is to be awarded every 

 three years to the Belgian or foreign author 



