300 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 192. 



ing, President Mendenhall and Professor Wood- 

 ward. 



Hbeeafteb the various Secretaries of tlie 

 American Association are to be granted $20 for 

 hotel expenses, provided that during the meet- 

 ing they reside at the headquarters. This 

 seems to be an excellent plan, though it should 

 also be conditional on their being in attendance 

 throughout the meeting beginning on Saturday. 

 The confusion that is likely to occur in the 

 earlier programs is usually due to lack of pre- 

 liminary meetings of the Secretaries. 



The plan of holding no general sessions daily 

 of the whole Association received a fair test at 

 the Boston meeting. It gave more time to the 

 sections and greatly reduced the amount of 

 more or less wearisome debate which in former 

 years wasted much time. 



The remarks of President Eliot, in his ad- 

 mirable address before the American Associa- 

 tion, on the importance of scientific advice to 

 the nation in time of war, was emphasized by 

 the fact that both the Vice-President, Professor 

 Cooley, and the Secretary, Professor Aldrich, 

 of Section D. (Mechanical Science and Engi- 

 neering) were detained from attendance at the 

 meeting owing to active service in the Navy. 



At the recent meeting of the American Asso- 

 ciation, Professor E. W. Morley was appointed 

 to succeed the late Professor W. A. Rogers on 

 the Committee on Standards and Measure- 

 ments. 



The University of Cambridge has conferred 

 the honorary degree of D.Sc. on Professor 

 Henry P. Bowditch, of Harvard University. 



Professor Edward S. Morse has just been 

 decorated by the Emperor of Japan with the 

 Order of the Third Class of the Rising Sun. A 

 letter from the Japanese Minister at Washing- 

 ton translates the diploma accompanying the 

 Order as follows : " His Majesty, the Emperor, 

 has graciously been pleased to confer upon you 

 this Order in recognition of your signal service 

 while you were in the faculty of science in the 

 Imperial University in Tokio, and also in open- 

 ing in our country the way for zoological, ethno- 

 logical and anthropological science and in es- 

 tablishing the institutions for the same." 



Dr. Mark V. Slingerland, of Cornell Uni- 



versity, has been appointed State Etomologist 

 of New York in place of the late Dr. J. A. 

 Lintner. 



The proposed session of the New Mexico 

 Biological Station at Albuquerque in August 

 has been given up on account of the prevalence 

 of smallpox in that vicinity. 



A Science Club has been formed at Mesilla 

 Park, N. M. Mr. C. M. Barber is President. 



The opening of Queen Victoria's Cottage 

 Grounds at Kew Gardens will be delayed until 

 spring, as there are no funds available this year 

 for the cost of fencing and other necessary work 

 which must first be carried out. 



The young male giraffe from Senegal, which 

 was one of the latest additions to the menagerie 

 of the Zoological Gardens at London, and for 

 which the Society paid £900, has just died. 



The Report of the South African Museum at 

 Cape Town states that the total number of vis- 

 itors to the Museum during 1897 was 56,723 ; 

 this, notwithstanding the fact that the Museum 

 was only open for a little more than eight 

 months is 7,313 in excess of the previous year. 

 The monthly average is 6,482, and the daily 

 average 254, the largest number on a single day 

 being 2,993 on June 22d, the lowest, 96, on 

 November 24th. 



Mr. J. Mackay Bernard Kippenross has 

 contributed the sum of £500 in order that the 

 Ben Nevis Observatories may be continued an- 

 other year. In his letter to the Scottish Mete- 

 orological Society, quoted in Nature, Mr. Kip- 

 penross expresses the hope that before the end 

 of that year arrangements may have been made 

 for the permanent carrying-on of the work by 

 State aid, and his very liberal and prompt ac- 

 tion makes the Directors more hopeful than 

 they were that this desirable end may yet be 

 reached. The question of the position of the 

 Ben Nevis Observatories was brought up in the 

 House of Commons on August 5th, in connec- 

 tion with the annual vote of £15,300 to the 

 Meteorological Council for meteorological ob- 

 servations. The Ben Nevis Observatories now 

 receive an annual grant of £350 from this fund. 

 Mr. Hanbury, Financial Secretary to the Treas- 

 ury, has undertaken to ascertain whether a 

 larger amount could not be voted, the sug- 



