140 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 83. 



nounced that Mr. John D. Rockefeller would 

 give the city for a park 276 acres of land valued 

 at more than $600,000. 



The Hauer Medaille, of the Vienna Geographi- 

 cal Society, and the gold Kirchenpauer Medaille, 

 of the Geographical Society of Hanover, have 

 been awarded to Prof. Neumayer, of Hamburg. 



The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was struck 

 by lightning on July 7th. The fire was extin- 

 guished before damage was done to the valuable 

 contents of the museum. There are four light- 

 ning conductors on the building, but the elec- 

 tric current struck a gable on which there was 

 no conductor and traveled along a lead gutter 

 and down a standpipe to the earth. 



The completed building of the Indian Insti- 

 tute at Oxford was declared open on July 1st by 

 Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State 

 for India. The building contains an oriental 

 library and museum. 



Mr. Percival Lowell, of Boston, has left 

 for Flagstaff, Arizona, to continue observations 

 on the planet Mars. He is accompanied by 

 Mr. Alvan G. Clark, who will mount the new 

 24-inch telescope. Dr. T. J. J. See, of the 

 University of Chicago, also accompanies the 

 expedition in order to continue his observations 

 on double stars. 



Prof. G. D, Harris, of Cornell University, 

 is spending the summer in Alabama, making 

 paleontological collections for the University. 



The death is announced of Prof. A. G. Stole- 

 tow, professor of physics in the University of 

 Moscow. 



A LIFE of Fridtjof Nansen by W. C. Brogger 

 and Nordhal Rolfsen has been published in 

 Scandinavia. 



Prof. Hugh C. McLaughlin died on July 

 20th at the age of 85. He had recently been a 

 professor of classical languages and had for- 

 merly been Superintendent of the Bureau of 

 Statistics. 



The daily papers state that Mr. William R. 

 Brooks, dii'ector of Smith Observatory, while 

 observing the moon recently with the large 

 telescope, made a most interesting and unique 

 discovery. A dark round object was seen to 

 pass rather slowly across the moon in a hori- 



zontal direction. Mr. Brooks believes that it 

 was the passage of a dark meteor between the 

 earth and the moon, far beyond the earth's 

 atmosphere, so that it remained non-luminous. 



A NEW entomological journal, Illustrierte 

 Wochenschrift fur Entomologie, will hereafter be 

 published by Neumann in ISTeudamm. It pro- 

 poses to treat rather the biological relations of 

 insects than systematic entomology. 



The Scientific African, a journal founded at 

 the beginning of the present year in South 

 Africa, has been compelled to suspend publica- 

 tion. 



The discontinuance of the publication Climate 

 and Health is announced to take effect with the 

 end of the present fiscal year, June 30, 1896. 

 Vol. II.,. No. 3 (four weeks ended March 28, 

 1896), will be the last issue. It has been 

 deemed necessary to take this action in view of 

 a doubt having arisen as to whether the publi- 

 cation of Climate and Health was authorized by 

 the act making appropriation for the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture for the fiscal year ending 

 June 30, 1897. It is the intention of the Chief 

 of the Bureau to have prosecuted during the 

 coming fiscal year a number of special clima- 

 tologic studies, and it is expected that the 

 statistics collected during the present fiscal 

 year will be of much value in this connection. 

 The results of these special researches will, 

 if their importance justifies it, be published 

 in the form of special bulletins, at such times 

 and in such shapes as the circumstances may 

 warrant. 



We have received the first number of The 

 Laryngoscope, a new monthly journal devoted 

 to diseases of the nose, throat and ear, edited 

 by Drs. F. M. Rumbold and M. A. Goldstein. 

 The number opens with an article by Dr. S. 

 Montbleyer on the Photo-Fluoroscope, describ- 

 ing applications of the X-Rays in laryngology. 



Psychical research has assumed such dimen- 

 sions that Mr, W. H. Myers finds it desirable 

 to compile a glossary in the June number of 

 the Proceedings of the Society. Many of the 

 terms given are those commonly used in psy- 

 chology and medicine, but we owe to Mr. Myers 

 the invention, or at least wide application, of the 

 words 'telepathy' and 'subliminal,' and we 



