412 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 508. 



Admirality, the Eoyal and Royal Geographical 

 Societies and other public bodies. On the 

 following day the Royal Geographical So- 

 ciety will give a dinner to the officers and 

 scientific staff. According to present arrange- 

 ments, officers and men will then be allowed 

 to rest in peace, so far as public functions of 

 an official character are concerned, until the 

 beginning of November, when it is hoped that 

 Commander Scott will open the new session of 

 the Royal Geographical Society with a sum- 

 mary account of the whole expedition. This 

 will be a special meeting, and possibly will be 

 held in the Albert-hall. 



THE CROCKER ECLIPSE EXPEDITION OF 

 TEE LICK OBSERVATORY. 



Mr. William H. Crocker has offered to 

 meet the expenses of observations on the total 

 solar eclipse of August 30, 1905. Three ex- 

 peditions will be sent out from the Lick Ob- 

 servatory to Labrador, Spain and Egypt. The 

 provisional program for the three stations is 

 as follows : 



Labrador: A photographic search for intra- 

 mercurial planets in a region of the sky 8J° 

 wide, extending in the direction of the solar 

 equator from 4° below the siui to 15° above 

 it. The photography of the corona by means 

 of a camera of five inches aperture and forty 

 feet focus, of the form first used by Professor 

 Schaeberle at the eclipse of 1893. 



Spain: A photographic intramercurial 

 search covering a region 9J° wide, extending 

 in the direction of the solar equator from 14° 

 below to 14° above the sun. The photography 

 of the solar corona with a camera of five inches 

 aperture and forty feet focus. A study of the 

 polarized light in the corona. The use of 

 spectrographs provided with moving plate- 

 holders to obtain a continuous record of 

 changes in the spectrum of the sun's edge at 

 the time of second and third contacts; of 

 spectrographs for determining the wave-length 

 of the green coronal bright line, and, if pos- 

 sible, the wave-lengths of the bright and dark 

 lines in the isolated spectrum of the sun's 

 edge, as nearly as possible at the time when 

 the dark lines give way to bright ones, and 



vice versa; and of a spectrograph for record- 

 ing the general spectrum of the corona. 



Egypt: A photographic intramercurial 

 search 8J°, extending in the direction of the 

 solar equator from 4° below to 15° above the 

 sun. The photography of the solar corona 

 with a camera of five inches aperture and 

 forty feet focus. The photography of the gen- 

 eral spectrum of the corona. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Dr. G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, has been elected a foreign member of 

 the Accademia dei Lineei, Rome. 



Commander R. E. Peary was presented with 

 the gold medal of the French Geographical 

 Society by its president, M. Cordier, at the 

 banquet of the International Geographical 

 Congress given in New York on September 

 14. In accepting the medal Commander 

 Peary announced his plans for Arctic explora- 

 tion next year. 



Dr. Philipp Lenard, professor of physics 

 at Kiel, and Dr. Adolf de Koenen, professor 

 of geology at Gottingen, have been elected 

 foreign members of the Belgian Academy of 

 Sciences. 



Captain R. S. Scott, of the Discovery, has 

 been promoted to the rank of a captain in the 

 Royal Navy. 



The council of the British Institution of 

 Civil Engineers has, in addition to the medals 

 and prizes given for communications dis- 

 cussed at the meetings of the institution in 

 the last session, made the following awards 

 in respect of other papers dealt with in 1903- 

 1904: Telford premiums to Arthur Hill, 

 CLE. (Bombay), F. A. Hurley (Cairo), E. 

 M. De Burgh (Greystones), H. H. Dare, M.E. 

 (Sydney, N. S. W.), William Man-iott (Mel- 

 ton Constable), T. G. Gribble (London), W. 

 H. Haigh (Cardiff). Eor students' papers the 

 awards are: A Miller scholarship, tenable for 

 three years, and the James Forrest medal to 

 C. W. L. Alexander, B.E. (Birmingham) ; 

 Miller prizes to J. M. Clark, M.A., B.Sc. 

 (Glasgow), L. G. Crawford (Barrow-in-Fur- 

 ness), W. H. Dickenson, B.Sc. (Jesmond-on- 

 Tyne), William Lawson (Newcastle-on-Tyne), 

 C. G. Du Cane, B.A. (Middlesbrough), C. 



