February 9, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



239 



of the Johu Crerar Library, Chicago, which it 

 will be remembered is devoted to scientific 

 works. The Library at present occupies the 

 sixth floor of the Marshall Field building, and 

 a part of the fifth floor is now to be added. A 

 room will be provided for society meetings. 

 The number of accessions to the library during 

 the past year is 12,360, and the total number 

 of books and pamphlets in the library is now 

 80,000. 



Mme. Medvednieova, who died recently 

 near Moscow, has left $3,000,000 to charities, 

 chiefly to hospitals and asylums. 



The department of superintendence of the 

 National Educational Association will meet in 

 Chicago on February 27th and 28th, and March 

 1st. Professor Nicholas Murray Butler will 

 make an address at the first sesson on the 'Status 

 of Education at the Close of the Century. ' Other 

 addresses will be made by President Benjamin 

 Ide Wheeler of the University of California, Mr. 

 Walter H. Page, and others. Professor W. O. 

 Atwater, of Wesleyan pniversity, will present a 

 paper on alcoholic physiology and superinten- 

 dence. 



At a meeting of the Royal Geographical So- 

 ciety held on .January 23d, in the theatre of the 

 University of London, Mr. H. J. Mackinder, 

 reader in geography at the University of Ox- 

 ford, read a paper describing his recent journey 

 to the summit of Mount Kenya, British East 

 Africa. The results of the expedition were a 

 plane-table sketch of the upper part of Kenya, 

 together with rock specimens, two route sur- 

 veys along lines not previously traversed, a 

 series of meteorological and hypsometrical ob- 

 servations, photographs by the ordinary and 

 by the Ives color processes, collections of 

 mammals, birds and plants, and a small collec- 

 tion of insects. 



The new German Society for Volkshygiene 

 held its first public meeting during January in 

 Berlin. Dr. Boediker took the chair, and 

 there were delegates present from the German 

 Ministry of the Interior, from the municipalities 

 of Berlin and Charlottenburg, and from the 

 government of the Province. Professor Fuchs, 

 rector of the University, and Professor Ried- 

 ler, rector of the technical high school, were 



also present, and many medical men of distinc- 

 tion, among them Professors v. Leyden, Jolly, 

 Ewald, Rubner, and Lassar. In his introduc- 

 tory address, the president described the ob- 

 jects of the new Society. 



The New York Medical Record gives the fol- 

 lowing summary of the invasion of the Islands 

 of the Pacific by the plague : In Honolulu, up 

 to January 17th, there had been thirty-nine 

 deaths, one of a white woman and the others 

 among natives and Asiatics. The board of 

 health has burned ten blocks of houses in the 

 plague-infected section. A Red Cross society, 

 formed by some of the ladies of Honolulu, has 

 done most effective work, and the local physi- 

 cians and clergymen have continually gone 

 among the sick and dying, submitting to volun- 

 tary isolation in order to minister to the needs 

 of the sick. In Noumea, New Caledonia, the 

 disease has prevailed since early in December. 

 There were sixteen deaths during the first ten 

 days following the development of the malady. 

 Up to December 23d there had been no deaths 

 among the whites, eight of whom had been 

 infected, but nine Kanakas, two Japan- 

 ese, and five Tonkinese had died of 

 the disease. The part of the town where 

 the infection first developed has been sur- 

 rounded with a high galvanized iron fence seven 

 hundred yards long. The principal business 

 houses, ofiBcial buildings, and the banking and 

 shipping ofiices are guarded by posses of sol- 

 diers. Twenty buildings in the infected quar- 

 ter of the town were demolished by the health 

 authorities, but, despite all the precautions, the 

 plague has continued to spread, the number of 

 new cases averaging three daily. At Sydney, 

 New South Wales, general alarm is felt in 

 consequence of the arrival of eleven passengers 

 from Noumea, who landed before news of the 

 plague's presence was received. Extraordinary 

 precautions have been taken throughout Aus- 

 tralia and strict quarantine is established. In 

 the case of a wharf laborer in Sydney, who 

 was attacked on January 24th, the inoculation 

 was apparently traced to a flea bite. In Ar- 

 gentine Republic the plague is ofiicially an- 

 nounced to exist at Buenos Ayres and Rosario, 

 both of which ports have in consequence been 

 closed. 



