October 9, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



All 



Dr. Louis P.vukes has boeii appointed con- 

 sulting sanitary adviser to the British De- 

 partment of Public Works and Buildings to 

 succeed the late Professor Corfield. 



Mr. Charles Louis Pollard, assistant cura- 

 tor in the Botanical Department of the United 

 States National Herbarium, has been granted 

 a furlough for the period of two and one half 

 years. He will spend this time in Springfield, 

 Mass., being occupied in literary work on the 

 staff of the G. and C. Merriam Company. 



Dr. Gervase Green, formerly instructor in 

 psychology in Yale University, has returned 

 from a year spent abroad, and will enter a law 

 office in Omaha. 



Professor Garman, professor of philosophy 

 at Amherst, has been given leave of absence 

 during the year. His courses will be given by 

 Professor A. H. Pierce, of Smith College. 

 Professor F. J. E. Woodbridge, of Columbia 

 University, will give a course of lectures dur- 

 ing the winter on ' Representative Philos- 

 ophers.' 



Charles E. Casperi, Ph.D., has resigned his 

 position as director of the Research Labora- 

 tory of the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, of 

 St. Louis, to accept the chair of chemistrj- in 

 the St. Louis College of Pharmacy. 



The Associated Press has received a des- 

 patch stating that Dr. F. A. Cooke and his 

 party failed to reach the summit of Mount 

 McKinley, but have made various geographical 

 observations in the vicinity. 



The Swiney lectures on geology in connec- 

 tion with the British Museum of Xatural His- 

 tory, will be given by Dr. John S. Flett during 

 November. The lectures, twelve in number, 

 are on the volcanoes of the world. 



We leam from Nature that a movement is 

 in progress for erecting a memorial of James 

 Watt, and at a meeting recently held it was 

 decided that the form the memorial should 

 take should be an institution for scientific re- 

 search, and an appeal is now being made for 

 funds to carry out the project. Mr. Andrew 

 Carnegie, who is the secretarj' for America, 

 has promised a subscription of £10,000 towards 

 the object. 



Mr. C. J. Cornish has prepared a life of the 

 late Sir William Flower, which will be pub- 

 lished by the Macraillans. 



Professor Benjamin G. Brown, for thirty- 

 five years professor of mathematics at Tufts 

 College, died on September 29 at the age of 

 sixty-six years. 



Professor Hudson A. Wood died at Vernon, 

 N, Y., on October 28, aged sixty-two years. 

 He had been a teacher of mathematics and was 

 the author of several text-books. 



Dr. Oskar Schneider of Dresden, the 

 geofrrapher, died on September 8, at the age 

 of sixty-two years. 



The Canadian Minister of Marine and 

 Fisheries, Mr. Profontaine, has stated in the 

 House that he is in favor of the government 

 appropriating $80,000 to build a boat for 

 Captain Bernier's polar expedition. 



The National Statistical Institute met at 

 Berlin beginning on September 21. Profess- 

 or von Iname-Sternegg was elected president. 



According to Nature Professor Graham 

 Kerr has received a letter from Mr. J. S. 

 Budgett in which the latter auHounces that 

 he has solved the important problem of the 

 development of Polypterus. The letter is writ- 

 ten from Southern Nigeria and dated August 

 28. " It appears that Mr. Budgett has been 

 able to fertilize a large quantity of eggs of 

 Polypterus senegahis, and that the early devel- 

 opment is ' astoundingly frog-like ' — segmen- 

 tation being complete and fairly equal, and 

 the process of invagination resembling that of 

 the frog's egg. Prominent neural folds are 

 formed which arch over in the normal fashion. 

 Mr. Budgett had already made three expedi- 

 tions to various parts of tropical Africa in 

 his endeavor to obtain material for stud.ving 

 the development of Polypterus, and zoologists 

 will rejoice that his efforts have been at last 

 attended with success. The Crossopterygians 

 have been for some time the most important 

 vertebrate group awaiting the investigation 

 of the embryologist, and the results gained by 

 Mr. Budgett in the working out of his material 

 in the laboratory will be looked forward to 



