602 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 352. 



inadequate as base stations for the vast area 

 the survey will cover, similar observatories are 

 in course of construction at Dehra Dun, below 

 the Himalayas, at Kodaikanal, in the Madras 

 Presidency, and at Rangoon. The Dehra Dun , 

 observatory will be under the supervision of 

 Colonel Gore, R.E., the Surveyor General of 

 the Indian Survey (whose headquarters are 

 located there) ; but the other four will be in 

 charge of Mr. John Eliot, the meteorological 

 reporter to the Government. The Survey and 

 Meteorological Departments will, in fact, be 

 jointly responsible for the investigations. The 

 field observations will be carried out by six or 

 seven detachments of the Survey Department, 

 and these will be controlled by Captain Fraser, 

 R.E., who has recently been arranging in Eng- 

 land for the purchase of the necessary instru- 

 ments. Sind and the Punjab will first be taken 

 in hand ; and, as the country is now intersected 

 with railways in all directions, enabling field 

 detachments to quickly cover the distances 

 from one observing station to another, it is an- 

 ticipated that five years will suffice to complete 

 the field work of the preliminary magnetic 

 survey. 



The representatives of the newly-established 

 Australasian confederation have appointed a 

 commission to consider the adoption of the 

 metric system, and it is reported that with the 

 approval of the authorities in Great Britain, 

 the system will be adopted in Australasia. 



A NEW steamship for the U. S. Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey, being constructed by the 

 Townsend and Bowney Shipbuilding Company, 

 was launched in Newark Bay on September 21. 

 The steamship, which has been called TheBache 

 in honor of the former eminent superintendent 

 of the Coast Survey, is 136 feet in length, with 

 a steel frame, and is to be fitted with engines 

 developing 125 horse power. 



A COMMITTEE of the Chemical Section of the 

 British Association has been appointed to urge 

 upon the Government the desirability of re- 

 mitting the duty on alcohol used for chemical 

 research. 



It is oflScially estimated that the deaths from 

 the plague in India during the past five years 



exceed 600,000. Unfortunately there is no 

 abatement. For the last week for which de- 

 tails are at hand there were 2,816 deaths as 

 compared with 2,003 in the preceding week, 

 and only 285 in the corresponding week of last 

 year. The Bombay districts are at present suf- 

 fering the most severely. 



The correspondent of the Lancet in India 

 reports that bacteriological work is being started 

 at several new places. The Port Commission- 

 ers at Rangoon propose building and equipping 

 a laboratory chiefly at first for the examination 

 of suspected plague. The Government of the 

 Malay States has recently established a Re- 

 search Institute open to all workers irrespec- 

 tive of nationality. Pathological work and 

 chemical research, as well as bacteriological in- 

 vestigations, will be open to all. 



The corporation of the City of Hull has 

 made itself responsible for the conduct of the 

 museum of the Literary and Historical So- 

 ciety. 



The executive committee of the National 

 Educational Association will meet early in Oc- 

 tober to determine the place of meeting of the 

 next convention. 



The International Congress of Physiology 

 opened its sessions at Turin on September 17. 



An International Congress of Archeologists 

 will be held in Greece in April, 1903. Meetings 

 will be held at Athens, Olympia, Delphi and 

 other points of interest. 



The International Engineering Congress, the 

 general program of which we have already pub- 

 lished, opened in Glasgow on September 3, 

 with about 3,000 members in attendance. 



The eighty-first meeting of the American 

 Institute of Mining Engineers will be held in 

 Mexico in the first week of November. Sessions 

 will be held in the cities of Mexico, Pachuca 

 and Monterey, and stops will be made at various 

 points of interest. Two special trains have 

 been chartered, one of which will leave New 

 York on November 1, by the Pennsylvania 

 Railroad, and the other will be run as a second 

 section, starting from Chicago at 10 p. m., on 

 November 2, by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa 



