802 



SCIENCE, 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 125. 



wishing afterwards to attend the meeting of the 

 American Association at Detroit. 



At the annual meeting of the New York 

 Electrical Society, on May 20th, Mr. H. Bar- 

 inger Cox was announced to lecture on the 

 Thermopile, with practical illustrations of cer- 

 tain novel features. 



The valuable ornithological collection owned 

 by the late D. von Homeyere has been pur- 

 chased in part by Dr. W. Blasius for the Mu- 

 seum of Natural History at Brunswick, and in 

 part by Dr. R. Blasius for his private use. 



The Appalachian Mountain Club, of Boston, 

 has arranged for an excursion to Amherst, 

 Mass., on May 21st to June 2d, and to Dublin, 

 N. H., from June 16th to 21st. The Club gave 

 an ' At home ' on May 19th, at which a collec- 

 tion of mountain pictures lent by Mr. Charles 

 Pollock was on view, and other pictures were 

 shown, including photographs of the moun- 

 tains of the moon taken at the Paris Observa- 

 tory, views of the Rockies and of the wonder- 

 ful Muir Glacier. 



We regret to record the death of Mr. Hugh 

 Nevill, of the Ceylon civil service, who had 

 discovered and described many new species in 

 zoology and made valuable collections in 

 ornithology and conchology. 



The Directory of Scientific Societies of Wash- 

 ington, for 1897, prepared and published by the 

 Joint Commission, Mr. J. Stanley-Brown, Acting 

 Secretary, bears witness again to the dominant 

 position of Washington as a scientific center. 

 The number of members of the several societies 

 is as follows : Anthropological, 138 ; Biolog- 

 ical, 156 ; Chemical, 89 ; Entomological, 41 ; 

 Geographic, 1,040 ; Geological, 144 ; Philo- 

 sophical, 120 ; the total membership of the 

 Societies being 1,728 and the total number of 

 persons 1,450. 



D. Appleton & Co. announce, as a new vol- 

 ume in their ' Useful Story Series,' The Story of 

 Germ Life, by Professor H. W. Conn. 



LoED LiSTEE presided at the annual dinner 

 of the Royal Literary Fund on May 6th, and 

 the speeches made by Lord Lister, the Bishop 

 of Stepney, Mr. Traill, Mr. Lockyer and the 

 Earl of Crewe were all concerned with the re- 

 lations of science to literature. 



Professor H. Moissan will lecture at the 

 Royal Institution, London, on May 28th, on the 

 'Isolation of Fluorine.' 



Replying to a question in the British House 

 of Commons, Sir Mathew White Ridley said that 

 the number of persons licensed to practice vivi- 

 section at the present time in England was 145, 

 in Scotland 52, and in Wales 1 ; the number 

 holding the certificate dispensing with anaes- 

 thetics was in England 86, in Scotland 30, and 

 in Wales none. The only figures in his posses- 

 sion as regards Ireland were those for 1895 ; in 

 that year the number of licenses was 6, of 

 whom one held a certificate dispensing with 

 ansBsthetics. In giving the honorable member 

 these figures he might remind him that the cer- 

 tificate in question was never given for opera- 

 tions involving serious pain, but only for such 

 operations as inoculations or hypodermic injec- 

 tions. 



Governor Black has signed the bill author- 

 izing New York City to make an additional 

 bond issue of $2,500,000 for the erection and 

 equipment of four high schools. 



Dr. Kolle, of the Berlin Institute for Infec- 

 tious Diseases, has received a year's leave in 

 order to proceed to Cape Colony, where he has 

 been commissioned by the Cape government to 

 continue the work on rinderpest and leprosy 

 begun by Professor Koch. 



A PORTRAIT of Lord Lister by Mr. Ouless is 

 said to be among the best pictures at the re- 

 cently opened exhibition of the Royal 

 Academy. 



Though an egg of the Great Auk was sold at 

 auction recently for nearly $1,600, it is by no 

 means the rarest of birds, being positively com- 

 mon in comparison with the Labrador Duck and 

 Pallas' Cormorant, and the extraordinary value 

 attached to its remains is somewhat singular. 

 An instance of this was shown at a sale in 

 1895, where an egg of the Great Auk brought 

 180 guineas, while a well preserved egg of 

 ^pyornis sold for 36 guineas. 



Dr. W. F. Morsbll writes that the suites of 

 typical rocks of the Educational Series which 

 the United States Geological Survey has been 

 preparing for several years are ready for distri- 

 bution ; and the higher institutions of learning, 



