NOVEMBER 26, 1897. ] 
drogen and chlorin, and in the reduction of 
silver and mercury salts. The action of 
light on nitric acid seems to be the only 
exception, but this is only an apparent ex- 
ception, as the conductivity of nitric acid 
solution increases up to 32 per cent. when 
the maximum is reached, whilst the decom- 
position by light ceases when the concen- 
tration has fallen to 47 per cent. 
J. L. H. 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. . 
THE anniversary meeting of the Royal Society 
will be held on Tuesday, November 30th, when 
the officers for the ensuing year will be elected. 
Lord Lister will be recommended for re-election 
as President. 
THE new house of the American Society of 
Civil Engineers, 220 West Fifty-seventh street, 
erected at a cost of $200,000, was formally 
opened on November 24th. Addresses were 
made in the new auditorium in-the afternoon 
by the President of the Society, Mr. B. M. 
Harrod, of New Orleans, and there was a re- 
ception in the evening. 
THE Danish Geographical Society has awarded 
its gold medal to Dr. Sven Hedin. 
Dr. GuIpo SCHNEIDER has been appointed 
Director of the Biological Institute recently 
established at Sebastopol. 
THE death is announced of Professor Henry 
Calderwood, since 1868 professor of moral phil- 
osophy in the University of Edinburgh, on No- 
vember 20th, at the age of sixty-seven years. 
He was the author of numerous publications on 
education and philosophy, among the more im- 
portant of which were the ‘Relations of Sci- 
ence and Religion’ (1881) and the ‘Relations of 
Mind and Brain’ (1879), the latter being one of 
the first systematic treatises on physiological 
psychology. 
THE Atheneum, in announcing the death, on 
November ist, of the Rev. Peter Bellinger 
Brodie, of Rowington, in Warwickshire, at the 
age of 82, states that while a student at Cam- 
bridge, Mr. Brodie, like so many others, ac- 
quired an enthusiastic love for geology, under 
SCIENCE. 
805 
the teaching of Professor Sedgwick. His name 
soon came to be identified with the study of 
fossil insects, and in 1845 he published a work 
on this subject. Mr. Brodie was elected a Fel- 
low of. the Geological Society as far back as 
1834; and the Society recognized the value of 
his work by the award, in 1887, of the Murchi- 
son Medal. A selection from Mr. Brodie’s ex- 
tensive geological collections was acquired a 
short time ago by the British Museum. 
WE regret also to record the following deaths 
among foreign men of science: Dr. G. H. Otto 
Vogler, aged seventy-five, a versatile writer on 
natural history; Dr. Johannes Frentzel, Direc- 
tor of the Biological Station on the Muggelsee, 
near Berlin, aged 38 years; Dr. L. A. Buchner, 
professor of pharmacology at Munich, aged 
eighty-four years; Professor Karl Muller, Di- 
rector of the Experiment Station for Agricul- 
tural Chemistry at Hildesheim, and of Dr. Fr. 
Stohman, honorary professor of agricultural 
chemistry at Leipzig, aged sixty-five years. 
THE report of the Commissioner of Patents 
upon the business of the Patent Office for the 
fiscal year ended June 30, 1897, shows that 
there were received within that year 43,524 ap- 
plications for patents, of which 23,994 were 
granted, including reissues and designs. The 
-number of patents which expired was 12,584. 
The number of allowed applications which were 
by operation of law forfeited for non-payment 
of finaljfees was 5,034. The total receipts were 
$1,343,779; the expenditures, approximately, 
were $1,026,644, leaving a surplus of $317,135. 
The moneys covered into the Treasury of the 
United States on account of receipts from fees, 
etc., in patent cases, from July 4, 1836, in ex- 
cess of the%cost of the management of the Patent 
Office, amounted to $5,093,614. 
Nature states that an instructive fisheries ex- 
hibition, arranged to illustrate the fishing in- 
dustries and the application of science to agri- 
culture, has been opened in the Zoological 
Museum of the University College, Liverpool. 
The exhibits are fully described in a guide to 
the exhibition published by the authorities. 
There is a series of the food fishes of this dis- 
trict, with the more important food matters of 
each; also a series of useful and useless fishes 
