768 



SCIENCE. 



[K. S. Vol. V. No. 124. 



UNIVEBSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 



Mrs. E. B. Coxe has given Lehigh Univer- 

 sity $20,000 as a fund in memory of her husband, 

 Eckley B. Coxe, tlie income of which is to be 

 used for the support of poor and deserving stu- 

 dents. 



Colorado College has been given $10,000 

 by an anonymous donor to be used for a build- 

 ing for women students. 



The Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

 receives, by the will of the late William Tappen, 

 Jr., Milton, Mass., $10,000 to be used for de- 

 serving students, and is further made the resid- 

 uary legatee of the estate. 



The will of the late Rev. Caleb Bradley, of 

 Dedham, Mass., gives $2,000 to Tufts College 

 and $2,000 to Gales College. 



Dr. E. Fischer has been promoted to a full 

 professorship of botany in the University at 

 Berne, and has been made Director of the 

 Botanical Gardens. Dr. Gustav Jiiger, docent 

 in the University of Vienna, has been appointed 

 to an assistant professorship of theoretical 

 physics, and Dr. Friedrich Grafe, docent in the 

 Polytechnic Institute at Darmstadt, to an as- 

 sistant professorship of mathematics. 



Me. a. Francis Dixon has been appointed 

 professor of anatomy in the University College 

 of South Wales. It appears that the method 

 of election was for three selected candidates to 

 appear before the Council, one to be chosen by 

 that body. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



ON SUPPOSED EFFECTS OF STRAIN IN TELE- 

 SCOPIC OBJECTIVES. 



To THE Editor of Science : In your issue 

 of April 23d (page 656) I notice a criticism by 

 Professor E. S. Holden, Director of the Lick Ob- 

 servatory, which seems to me to call for a word 

 of comment. Professor Holden is inclined to 

 discredit the observations of Mercury and 

 Venus made by Mr. Percival Lowell and his 

 assistants at Flagstaff, principally for the reason 

 that they have not as yet been ' fully confirmed 

 by other observers with other telescopes.' The 

 markings seen by Mr. Lowell he attributes to 



a supposed strain on the glass, induced by an 

 overtight condition of the adjusting screws or 

 of the objective in the cell. 



Now it happens that I personally superin- 

 tended the adjustment of the Lowell objective 

 in the cell at Flagstaff before the observations 

 in question were made, and I am satisfied that 

 the screws holding the glass in place were 

 barely turned home with the fint/ers. I desire to 

 express it as my belief, founded on long experi- 

 ence as a practical optician, that strain in the 

 glass is incapable of producing the effect of 

 markings on a planetary disc. It is obvious 

 that the same class of strain which exists in the 

 Lowell must be present also in the Lick objec- 

 tive, since both are mounted precisely alike in 

 their cells on triangular bearings ; and if such 

 effects were produced in the 24-inch glass as 

 Professor Holden imagines they would be 

 much more apparent in the 36-inch. 



Having worked both of these objectives my- 

 self, and expended as much artistic ability on 

 the one as on the other, there can be no impro- 

 priety in my saying that the performance of the 

 Lowell glass is equal to that of the Lick or any 

 of our large telescopes. 



Alvan G. Clark. 



Cambridgeport, Mass., 

 May 1, 1897. 



THE LOESS FORMATIOlSr OF THE MISSISSIPPI 

 REGION. 



To THE Editor of Science : In reply to 

 Professor J. E. Todd's letter in your issue of 

 April 30th I wish to offer the following remarks: 



A complete and satisfactory answer of the 

 questions presented by Professor Todd would 

 require a thorough discussion of the Loess for- 

 mation; but the necessarily limited nature of 

 this communication, and my own imperfect 

 knowledge of the formation in its entirety, will 

 admit only of my touching briefly upon a few 

 points. 



There is, in portions of the upper Mississippi 

 region, particularly in that part of it with 

 which I am best acquainted — northwestern 

 Illinois, a silt deposit which is spread out over 

 the very uneven uplands as an originally nearly 

 uniform sheet, and whose relation to belts of 

 comparatively thick typical loess along the 



