January 30, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



197 



Townley, of Berkeley, Cal., $100 for the con- 

 struction of a stellar photometer of a type 

 devised by Professor E. C. Pickering and 

 already in use in the study of the light of 

 variable stars; to Professor Edwin B. Frost, 

 $200 for the construction of a special lens 

 for use in connection with the stellar spectro- 

 graph of the Yerkes Observatory to aid in 

 the study of the radial velocities of faint 

 stars; to Professors E. F. Nichols and G. F. 

 Hull, of Dartmouth College, $250 for their 

 research on the relative motion of the earth 

 and the ether; to Professor George E. Hale, 

 of the Yerkes Observatory, $300 for the pur- 

 chase of a Rowland concave grating to be 

 used in the photographic study of the spectra 

 of the brightest stars. 



Dr. Nicholas Sexn, of Eush Medical Col- 

 lege, University of Chicago, is making an ex- 

 tended trip through the West Indies and South 

 America. 



Dr. Wherry, of the department of bacteri- 

 ology of the University of Chicago, has been 

 appointed pathologist in the Government 

 Municipal Health Laboratory in the Philip- 

 pine Islands. 



From the first of January, Mr. James Gur- 

 ney, for nearly forty years head gardener at the 

 Missouri Botanical Garden, retires from active 

 service with the title of gardener emeritus, 

 in which capacity he will continue the experi- 

 mental breeding of decorative plants, in which 

 field he has attained considerable success. 



Dr. Marcellin Boule has been named to 

 succeed M. Albert Gaudry as professor of 

 paleontology in the Paris Museum of Natural 

 History. 



The appointment by the council of Mr. W. 

 L. Sclater as secretary of the Zoological So- 

 ciety of London appears to have caused a good 

 deal of discussion and may not be confirmed 

 by the fellows. In addition to this appoint- 

 ment it is understood that Mr. W. E. de Win- 

 ton has been appointed to the new and tem- 

 porary office of acting superintendent of the 

 gardens with a view to considering questions 

 afFeeting their reorganization. 



The Pathological Society of Philadelphia 

 held a symposium on snake venom at the meet- 



ing on January 22. The speakers announced 

 were Drs. Weir Mitchell, Flexner, Naguchi, 

 Kinyoun and MacFarland. Dr. Welch, of 

 Johns Hopkins University, opened the dis- 

 cussion. 



Dr. H. M. Smith, of the U. S. Commission 

 of Fish and Fisheries, delivered an illustrated 

 lecture before the Geographical Society of 

 Baltimore on the evening of January 20, the 

 subject being ' How the Government main- 

 tains the Fish Supply.' 



Mr. Egbert T. Hill, of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, who visited Martinique as representa- 

 tive of the National Geographic Society, and 

 whose preliminary reports upon the St. Pierre 

 disaster have been ijublished in the National 

 Geographic Magazine, The Century, Collier's 

 Weelcly and the daily press, is engaged upon a 

 careful study of the scientific aspects of the 

 eruptions and he hopes to present his views on 

 the subject during the coming year. He is 

 also completing a monograph on the Wind- 

 ward Islands for Professor A. Agassiz to be 

 published by the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology of Harvard College. This work will 

 be the result of several years of careful study 

 of the islands and will thoroughly discuss the 

 details of their geological structure and their 

 bearing upon the alleged Windward Bridge 

 and the myths of Atlantis. Mr. Hill is also 

 busily engaged upon an extensive monograph 

 on the Trans Pecos province of the Rocky 

 Mountain region, which he hopes to have com- 

 pleted during the coming year. He has also 

 in hand a large comprehensive geographical 

 work upon the Eepublic of Mexico. From 

 this country, where he has been gathering 

 notes for the past fifteen years, he has just 

 returned, after a most interesting mule-back 

 trip across the southern end of the Sierra 

 Madre between Mexico City and Acapulco. 

 During the coming spring, he proposes to make 

 a section of the Eastern Sierra Madre of 

 Mexico, to revisit Martinique, and to spend 

 the late summer in Europe for the purpose of 

 continuing his comparative studies of the 

 European and American Cretaceous faunas. 



The Entomological Society of Washington 

 has passed resolutions as follows: 



