October 7, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



477 



Bulletin, February, 1903), whicli they are 

 willing to dispose of are requested by Pro- 

 fessor Starbird, Washington University, St. 

 Louis, Mo., to communicate with him. 



An additional appropriation of $75,000 for 

 the continuation of construction work at the 

 New York Botanical Garden, voted by the 

 Board of Estimate and Apportionment on 

 June 24, 1904, became available by the sig- 

 nature of His Honor Mayor McClellan, on 

 August 9, 1904. It is expected that the ex- 

 penditure of this money will complete all the 

 driveway bridges and their approaches, and 

 all, or nearly all, of the driveways laid down 

 in the general plan of the garden, approved by 

 the board of managers and by the department 

 of parks on June 21, 1897. 



The daily papers state that Mr. Archer M. 

 Huntington has had incorporated the His- 

 panic Society of America, and has made to 

 the trustees a gift of $1,000,000. The gift 

 consists of a building to be erected in Au- 

 dubon Park, New York, which will cover about 

 eight city lots, a suitable endowment, and 

 an extremely valuable collection of Spanish 

 books, paintings, manuscripts and objects of 

 archeological interest now in the Huntington 

 library at ' The Pleasance,' Bay Chester. 



The Austrian Meteorological Society has 

 received from the Emperor of Austria the 

 right to use the letters ' K.K.,' equivalent to 

 Eoyal Imperial, before its name, so that its 

 official designation now becomes the ' k.k.Oes- 

 terreichische Gesellschaft fiir Meteorologie.' 



The International Pure Food Congress held 

 its session at St. Louis last week. 



The fifteenth annual general meeting of 

 the British Institution of Mining Engineers 

 was held at Birmingham beginning on Sep- 

 tember 14. There was a good attendance of 

 members from various parts of the kingdom, 

 and in addition there were present between 50 

 and 60 visitors from the Association des Inge- 

 nieurs Sortis de I'Ecole de Liege. The Sec- 

 retary, Mr. M. Walton Brown, submitted the 

 annual report of the council, which stated 

 that since the formation of the institution in 

 1889 the membership had increased from 1,239 

 to 2,704. The secretary announced that Sir 



Lowthian Bell had been elected president for 

 the ensuing year. 



A CORRESPONDENT writes to the London 

 Times that the second International Philo- 

 sophical Congress was held at the University 

 of Geneva from September 4 to 8, and was 

 attended by 500 members, representative of 

 every school of philosophic thought in Europe. 

 The congress was presided over by the vener- 

 able Swiss philosopher, M. Ernest Naville. 

 At the inauguration of the congress Professor 

 Gourd, of the Faculty of Philosophy at the 

 Geneva University, referred to the excellent 

 results of the first congress held in Paris, in 

 1900, from the point of view of the teaching 

 of philosophy, and of obtaining additional in- 

 formation of the nature and value of the 

 divers philosophical works of our age. Pro- 

 fessor Boutroux, of I'Institut Paris, read a 

 paper on ' The Eole of the History of Philos- 

 ophy in the Study of Philosophy.' Professor 

 Stein (of the University of Berne, and Gourd 

 (of the University of Geneva) dealt with ' The 

 Definition of Philosophy ' ; Professor Windel- 

 band (of Heidelberg) with ' The Present Task 

 of Logic and Philosophical Inquiry in Eela- 

 tion to Natural Science and Culture ' ; Pro- 

 fessors Vifredo Pareto (of Lausanne) and De 

 Greef (of Brussels) with ' The Individual and 

 Society ' ; and Professor Reinke (of Kiel) and 

 Giard (of Paris) with ' Neovitalism and 

 Finality in Biology.' At the sectional meet- 

 ings the subjects under discussion were ' The 

 History of Philosophy,' ' General Philosophy 

 and Psychology,' ' Applied Philosophy,' ' Logic 

 and Philosophy of the Sciences ' and ' History 

 of the Sciences.' 



The Ben Nevis Observatories will be closed. 

 Mr. E. T. Ormond, the honorary secretary, 

 explains that two years ago the directors stated 

 that they could not continue to carry on the 

 observatories any longer under existing condi- 

 tions. The meteorological council at the same 

 time resolved to withdraw £250 of the £350 

 given by them. But the appointment of a 

 committee of inquiry into the administration 

 of the parliamentary grant for meteorology 

 led to an effort being made to continue the 

 work at the observatories until the committee 

 had reported. The meteorological council 



