472 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 116. 



of middle class Toryism, but the questions were 

 discussed in a manner that appealed to an in- 

 telligent interest on the part of the readers. 

 When the British Association meets, the address 

 of the President is given in full, not only in the 

 London dailies, but also in the provincial press, 

 and pages are devoted to the sectional meetings. 

 The New York papers contained one short note 

 on the Bufl'alo meeting of the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, and the 

 local press confined its attention to our enfant 

 terrible, Section I. The Boston Transcript 

 probably gives more space to science than any 

 other American daily and is one of the most re- 

 spectable of our newspapers, yet it describes to 

 its readers how the soul has been photographed 

 by ' a member of the Paris Academy of Medi- 

 cine ' and how ' Sir ' Francis Galton has estab- 

 lished communication with the inhabitants of 

 the planet Mars. There are often in the daily 

 papers items of scientific news that should be of 

 interest, but their ' probable error ' is about oo . 

 While some of our newspapers are reverting to 

 the pictograph stage of culture, will not one or 

 two of them omit a few items of local and tran- 

 sient gossip and give a little space to subjects of 

 permanent and universal importance ? 



The Berlin Academy of Sciences has made 

 an appropriation of 2,400 Marks to Professor 

 Harnack for the expenses of the preparation of 

 a history of the Academy to be published on 

 the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary 

 of its foundation. 



At its last meeting, March 10th, the Ameri- 

 can Academy of Arts and Sciences elected as 

 foreign honorary members Ludwig Boltzmann, 

 of Vienna ; Wilhelm PfefFer, of Leipzig, and 

 Wilhelm Dorpfeld, of Athens. 



Mh. Gaston Daeboux, professor of geometry 

 at the University of Paris, has been elected a 

 corresponding member of the Berlin Academy 

 of Sciences. 



The Zoological Society of New York has re- 

 ceived official notification from the Board of Park 

 Commissioners consenting to allot for a Zoologi- 

 cal Park the portion of Bronx Park which the 

 Society desired. The land designated is the 



southern portion of the park lying between 

 Kingsbridge road and Pelham avenue and ex- 

 tending eastward from the southern boule- 

 vard so as to include the Bronx Lake and en- 

 close two hundred and sixty-one acres of land. 

 The largest Zoological Garden of Europe, that 

 of Berlin, is only one-fourth this size. 



The Royal Botanic Society of London is 

 considering the establishment of a Botanical 

 Institute for the study and teaching of botany 

 in its gardens. The subject was brought be- 

 fore the Society by Mr. William Martindale at 

 a meeting of the fellows on February 27th, and 

 the plan was favored by all who took part in 

 the discussion. 



SiE J. Blundell Maple has given University 

 College, London, £100,000 for the rebuilding 

 of the hospital. Lady Wallace has bequeathed 

 to the British nation the finest private collec- 

 tion of paintings and objects of art in the 

 world, valued at between $5,000,000 and $10,- 

 000,000. 



M. ViOLLE, of the Ecole normale Superieure, 

 has been elected in the room of Fizeau, member 

 of the section of physics of the Paris Academy. 



Joseph James Sylvester, the great mathe- 

 matician, Savilian professor of geometry at Ox- 

 ford, formerly professor at Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, and in 1841 at the University of Vir- 

 ginia, died at London on March 15th, aged 

 eighty-three years. 



The eminent mathematician. Dr. Karl Weier- 

 strass, died at Berlin on Februry 19th, aged 

 eighty-one years. 



Peofessoe Hbney Deummond, of the Free 

 Church College, Glasgow, died on March 11th, 

 at the age of forty -six years. He had published 

 interesting accounts of his travels in tropical 

 Africa and elsewhere, but was best known for 

 his ' Natural Law in the Spiritual World,' which 

 has been published in many editions and in 

 several languages. Professor Drummond gave 

 the Lowell Lectures in Boston in 1893 which 

 were published under the title ' The Ascent of 

 Man.' 



We regret also to record the deaths of M. 

 Georges Ville, the chemist, professor in the 

 Paris Museum of Natural History; of Dr. 

 Timoth6e Rothen, known for his contributions 



