630 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 201. 



and H. V. Champion (Victoria) ; the James 

 Forrest medal — W. L. Brown, M.Sc. (London); 

 Miller prizes— C. E. Wolff, B.Sc. (Derby), A. 

 D. Keigwin (Asbford), Harold Williams (Kings- 

 ton), J. T. Morris (London), H. C. Adams 

 (Birmingham), H. O. Burich (Bradford), B. K. 

 Adams (Colombo), A. B. E. Blackburn (Wed- 

 nesbury), Thomas Carter (Newcastle), P. F. 

 Story (Manchester), D. E. Lloyd-Davies (Bewd- 

 ley) and Wilfred Hall, B.A. (Corbridge-ou- 

 Tyne). 



At the meeting of the Eotomological Society, 

 London, on October 5th, Mr. R. Trimen, the 

 President, announced that the late Mrs. Stain- 

 ton had bequeathed to the Society such entomo- 

 logical works from her husband's library as 

 were not already in its possession. This bequest 

 was of great importance, and would add to the 

 library a large number of works, many of 

 which, formerly in the library of J. F. Stephens, 

 were old and now scarce. 



According to the American Naturalist the 

 University of California has been presented by 

 the Alaskan Commercial Company, of San Fran- 

 cisco, with the large and valuable collections 

 which the Company has been accumulating for 

 many years. The ethnological portion of the 

 collection is especially rich and doubtless one 

 of the best in existence. The collection also 

 embraces fossil remains of mammoths and many 

 skins and mounted specimens of birds, mam- 

 mals and invertebrates of the Alaskan region. 



The Anatomical Museum of Cambridge Uni- 

 versity has received from Professor Flinders 

 Petrie a donation of 19 cases of skulls and 

 bones from his excavations at Hierakonpolis, 

 Egypt. This is the second donation of the kind 

 received from him, and as these include the re- 

 mains of the pre-historic and earliest dynastic 

 races they are of great value. AVith this addi- 

 tion the collection of specimens of Egyptian an- 

 thropology is thoroughly representative, as it 

 now consists of specimens which represent all 

 the periods of Egyptian history from pre-his- 

 toric times down to the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir. 



The certified circulation of the libraries of 

 New York City applying for public aid was last 

 year 2,625,142 volumes; the libraries, with- 

 out exception, showing an increase over the 



preceding year. The Astor and Lenox Li- 

 braries received, during the year ending June 

 30th, 27,800 new books, surpassing the acces- 

 sions of the British Museum. The number of 

 readers was 130,000, as compared with 180,000 

 in the British Museum. 



Mr. John Corbett, formerly M.P. for Mid- 

 Worcestershire, has offered to give £50,000 for 

 founding and endowing a school of agriculture 

 for sons of tenant farmers of the county of 

 Worcestershire. 



Mr. R. p. Cobbold, the English traveller, 

 who was arrested in Bokhara by order of the 

 Khan a short time ago, has returned, says the 

 New York Euening Post, to Kashmir, having ac- 

 complished his journey to the Oxus. Unfortu- 

 nately, he was obliged to throw away all his 

 luggage, and has thus lost most of the scientific 

 collection which was the primary object of his 

 journey. 



Captain Novitsky, of the Russian general 

 staff, has returned from a journey through Brit- 

 ish India. Though the expedition was for po- 

 litical purposes, he brought back rich botanical 

 aud entomological collections, and made valu- 

 able meteorological observations. 



The Vienna Academy of Sciences has, ac- 

 cording to the Athenaeum., chartered the Swe- 

 dish steamer Gottfried for its projected scientific 

 expedition to south Arabia. The ship is ex- 

 pected to arrive in a few days at Trieste, where 

 the members of the expedition will go on board. 

 The leader of the party is Count Carl Landberg, 

 the Bavarian Orientalist, who has already spent 

 several winters in the district. Dr. H. Miiller 

 proposes to devote his researches to the Sabtean 

 inscriptions and the pre-Arabic archteology. 



Three deaths have now resulted from infec- 

 tion with bubonic plague, contracted in the first 

 instance in Professor Nothnagel's laboratory, 

 where work was being done with cultures of the 

 bacillus brought there from Bombay a year ago 

 by the Austrian Commission. Men of science 

 are fully aware of the danger from such experi- 

 ments, but do not hesitate to risk their lives for 

 the advancement of knowledge that may prove 

 of inestimable value. The most serious aspect 

 of the case is the evidence given of the suscep- 

 tibility of Europeans to the plague. The dis- 



