168 
done on public buildings throughout the coun- 
try. 
Ir is reported that the Secretary of Agricul- 
ture will ask Congress at its next session to 
authorize the establishment of an Agricultural 
Experiment Station in Alaska. Suitable scien- 
tific experiments would be of great value in 
showing what agricultural products and do- 
mestic animals could be introduced to advan- 
tage. 
AccoRDING to the New York Evening Post, 
George A. Brill of Poughquog, Dutchess county, 
who was graduated from Cornell University in 
1888, recently received a cable despatch from 
Li Hung Chang offering him a liberal sum to 
organize and manage a model farm in China 
under the government. He will accept the 
offer, and will soon leave for China to enter 
upon his duties. 
PROFESSOR BESSEY writes in the American 
Naturalist that he knows from many years of 
personal experience, and this not in an old and 
wealthy community, that the purchase of good 
compound microscopes (duty free), and the in- 
stallation of small but efficient laboratories in 
secondary schools, is as easily accomplished for 
botany as is the purchase of necessary apparatus 
and the fitting-up of proper laboratories for 
chemistry. In the new State of Nebraska 
nearly every accredited high school is now using 
the compound microscope in the study of plants 
selected as types of all the greater groups of the 
vegetable kingdom. 
Ar the request of Mr. Melvil Dewey, on be- 
half of the American Library Association, the U. 
S. government has agreed to issue postal cards 
of the standard library size for index cards. 
THE second International Library Conference 
was opened on July 13th in London by the 
Lord Mayor. Sir John Lubbock gave the 
presidential address. Papers were subsequently 
presented by Mr. J. T. W. MacAlister, of the 
Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of Lon- 
don; by Mr. Henry Tedder, Mr. Herbert Jones, 
Mr. Alderman Rawson, Mr. Melvil Dewey and 
others. 
At the recent conversatzione at University 
College, London, apparatus to be used in a 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Vou. VI. No. 135. 
course in experimental psychology was ex- 
hibited. The course will be given under the 
direction of Professor James Sully and Dr. W. 
H. R. Rivers. 
LorD KELVIN has written a letter to the 
London Times stating that in his address at the 
Pender memorial meeting (quoted in the last 
issue of this JOURNAL) he inadvertently did seri- 
ous injustice to the late Sir Curtis Lampson when 
he said that it was owing to Mr. Pender alone 
that the Atlantic Telegraph Company was kept 
afloat from 1858 to 1864. In fact, a large part 
of the heavy burden of keeping the original At- 
lantic Telegraph Company alive in the dis- 
heartening circumstances of the failure of the 
1858 cable, after the short time of its successful 
working, was voluntarily undertaken by Mr. 
Lampson when heand Mr. Pender continued 
to act as directors and nearly all the others, in- 
cluing Lord Kelvin himself, resigned. 
THE new underground railway in London, ex- 
tending from Liverpool street to Bayswater, has 
been an engineering feat of considerable scientific 
interest. The tunnels are steel tubes 11 feet 6 
inches in diameter driven through the clay, 
each tunnel containing one track. The electric 
equipment, including the elevators, is supplied 
from America. 
THE Railway and Engineering Review, one of 
the best of the technical journals, publishes in 
its issue of July 3d an editorial article two 
columns in length advocating the use of the 
metric system and maintaining that no great 
inconvenience would be caused in its practical 
application. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 
THE Pennsylvania Legislature appropriated 
$200,000 to Lehigh University, and Governor 
Hastings has signed bills granting $150,000. 
The funds of Lehigh University are chiefly in 
stocks of the Lehigh Valley Railroad left by the 
late Asa Packer and no dividends have been 
paid for three years. 
THE will of the late Alexander Wheelock 
Thayer gives $30,000 (subject to a small an- 
nuity ) to Harvard University as an endowment 
fund to assist poor students. 
