950 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 129. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Efforts are being made to collect $50,000 to 

 purchase for the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Natural Science the paleontological collections 

 of the late Professor Cope. The sum of about 

 $5,000 has been already received. It would be 

 especially appropriate that these collections 

 should be secured by the Academy, where the 

 proceeds of the sale will be used for the founda- 

 tion of a chair of paleontology. 



A BRONZE bust of Maria Mitchell has been 

 unveiled in the Observatory at Vassar College. 

 It was cast by the Gorham Silver Company 

 from a plaster bust made in 1877 by Miss Mary 

 Brigham. 



Dr. James Hall, the Geologist of the State 

 of New York, is to sail for Europe on June 24th, 

 to attend the coming meeting of the Interna- 

 tional Geological Congress at St. Petersburg as 

 a representative of the State. 



Lord Lister and Professor Max Muller have 

 been elected members of the Imperial Academy 

 of Sciences of Vienna. 



Dr. Bduardo Wild, formerly Minister of 

 Justice and Minister of the Interior of the Argen- 

 tine government and now professor in the 

 Buenos Ayres University, is in the United States 

 as part of an extended tour with the object of 

 investigating educational institutions. 



Mr. Frederick L. Ransome has been ap- 

 pointed Assistant Geologist in the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey. 



A memorial to Joseph Thomson, the African 

 explorer, was unveiled at his birth place. Thorn- 

 hill, near Dumfries, Scotland, on June 8th. 

 The memorial consists of a pedestal with bas- 

 reliefs and a bust in bronze of Thomson exe- 

 cuted by Mr. Charles McBride. It Is proposed 

 further to present a repliqua of the bust in 

 marble to the Royal Geographical Society. 



A commemorative tablet to the eminent 

 French botanist Duchartre was, on May 23d, 

 placed on the house at Portiragnes, where he 

 was born in 1806. 



The Epidemiological Society of London has 

 collected funds for a Jenner medal, the design 

 for which has been entrusted to Mr. Allen 

 Wyon. 



Karl Remigius Fresenius, the eminent 

 chemist, died at Wiesbaden on June 10th, He 

 was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1818, and 

 had been, since 1845, professor of chemistry in 

 the Agricultural Institute at Baden. 



Mr. Alvan G. Clark died at Cambridge on 

 June 9th, aged sixty-four years. Astronomy is- 

 deeply indebted to the senior Alvan Clark, who 

 died in 1887, and to his two sons. In 1859 Mr. 

 Clark began the making of an object glass- 

 eighteen and one-half inches in aperture, the 

 largest that had up to that time been attempted. 

 In 1873 the firm made the twenty-six-inch objec- 

 tive for the observatory at Washington, and irt 

 1880 the thirty-inch refractor for the Imperial 

 Observatory at St. Petersburg. These were fol- 

 lowed by the thirty-six-inch lens of the Lick Ob- 

 servatory and the recently completed forty-inch 

 lens for the Yerkes Observatory. The making of 

 such lenses was a scientific work of the utmost 

 value, and Mr. Clark had also made direct con- 

 tributions to astronomy, including the discovery 

 of the companion of Sirius in 1862, for which he 

 was awarded the Lalande Medal of the Pari& 

 Academy. 



We also regret the following deaths : Dr. 

 William Thompson Lusk, President and profes- 

 sor of gynsecology in the Bellevue Hospital Medi- 

 cal College, New York, and the author of many 

 important contributions on gynsecology, died on 

 June 12th. Mr. Richard Christopher Rapier, an 

 eminent British engineer, died on May 28th, 

 aged 61 years. Mr. Ney Elias, who made im- 

 portant geographical explorations in Asia, died' 

 on May 21st. Privy Councillor von Falke, form- 

 erly Director of the Austrian Museum of Art and 

 Industry, died on June 13th, aged 72 years. 



GiNN & Co. make the important announce- 

 ment that they will publish in the course of the 

 present month the first number of The Zoolog- 

 ical Bulletin, a companion serial to the Journal 

 of Morphology, designated for shorter contri- 

 butions in animal morphology and general 

 biology, with no illustrations beyond text- 

 figures. It is to be expected that there will be 

 sufficient material for at least six numbers a 

 year of about fifty pages each, form and style 

 to be the same as the Journal of Morphology, sa 

 that articles in whole or in part can be easily 



