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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 112. 



talent who have distinguished themselves in 

 any of the branches of science, art and litera- 

 ture, who may be in want of pecuniary support, 

 either through accident, illness or infirmity 

 consequent upon old age. 



The will of the late Professor William H. 

 Pancoast leaves his anatomical and surgical 

 collections and $600 per annum to the Medico- 

 Chirurgical College of Philadelphia. 



A BILL has been introduced in the Pennsyl- 

 vania Legislature appropriating $25,000 to fur- 

 nish test standards for the inspectors of weights, 

 measures and scales in Philadelphia. 



The botanical department of Cornell Uni- 

 versity is in receipt of a collection of 750 speci- 

 mens of the flora of the North Carolina moun- 

 tain region, presented by the Biltmore Herba- 

 rium in return for a collection of Arctic plants 

 presented by the department. 



The Royal Geographical Society gave a re- 

 ception on February 8th, in Albert Hall, Lon- 

 don, in honor of Dr. Nansen. Sir Clements 

 Markham, the President of the Society, presided 

 and the special gold medal of the Society was 

 presented to Dr. Nansen. Dr. Nansen delivered 

 a lecture describing the voyage of the Fram and 

 his adventures, but it appears from the cable dis- 

 patches that the scientific results of the expedi- 

 tion were not enlarged upon. A Renter despatch 

 of January 29th says that during his visit to 

 Great Britain Dr. Nansen will deliver forty- 

 seven lectures. The explorer will then go to 

 Germany, and at the end of March will be present 

 at a great demonstration of the Geographical So- 

 ciety in Berlin, organized in his honor. It is 

 stated that Dr. Nansen declined an olTer of 

 100,000 marks for 100 lectures in Germany. 

 On leaving Berlin Dr. Nansen will go to St. 

 Petersburg, where he will have an official re- 

 ception. Subsequently he will visit Paris in re- 

 sponse to an invitation conveyed to him by the 

 French Consul-General in Christiania, and will 

 again be the object of an official reception. 

 During the summer months Dr. Nansen will 

 rest in Norway, and will superintend the erec- 

 tion of his new villa on the higher lands of 

 Lysaker, Christiania Fiord, on ground origi- 

 nally belonging to his grandfather. Early in 

 October, accompanied by his wife. Dr. Nansen 



will leave for New York in order to deliver a 

 course of fifty lectures in various cities of the 

 United States. Dr. Nansen has contracted with, 

 a Boston and Chicago lecturing agency for fifty 

 lectures, but it is probable that the explorer's 

 tour in the United States will be considerably 

 extended. 



In addition to the methods of color photog- 

 raphy devised by Lippmann, Ives and Joly, a 

 new invention is claimed by MM. Chassagne 

 and Dansac. For the present the method must 

 be regarded as pseudo-scientific, as the process 

 is kept secret. It has, however, been exhibited 

 before men of science in London, and is re- 

 ported in the Society of Arts Journal and the 

 Times. The process is said to be simple and 

 inexpensive. A negative is taken on a gelatine 

 plate, which has been treated with a solution of 

 certain salts (the nature of the solutions used is 

 for the present kept). The negative is developed 

 and fixed in the ordinary way, and when fin- 

 ished looks like any other negative. From it 

 a positive is printed on sensitized paper or on a 

 gelatine film (if a transparency is desired), 

 plate or paper having previously been treated 

 with the unknown solution. The positive looks 

 exactly like an ordinary photographic print or 

 transparency, and shows no trace of color. It 

 is then washed over with three colored solu- 

 tions, blue, green and red, and it takes up in 

 succession the appropriate color in the appro- 

 priate parts, the combinations of the colors giv- 

 ing all varieties of tint. Thus, in a landscape 

 the trees take on various hues of green, the sky 

 becomes blue, the flowers show their proper 

 colors, the bricks and tiles of the houses are 

 red, and so on. In a portrait the flesh tints 

 come out well, and the different colors of the 

 costumes are accurately given. The general 

 appearance of the picture is that of a colored 

 photograph. Looked at from a distance it 

 would be taken for one. Inspected under a 

 high magnifying power it is seen that the colors 

 follow the details in a manner hardly possible 

 for hand work. 



The State Geological Survey of New Jersey 

 has proposed a plan for draining the meadows 

 adjacent to Jersey City. According to the report 

 in the Scientific American, State Geologist Smock 

 recently visited Holland and investigated the 



