Febeuaky 23, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



319 



throughout as to show perfectly the microscopic 

 structure of the wood. Another specimen is 

 of a group of Rubelite crystals embedded in 

 Lepidolite, and a third is a section of trans- 

 parent green serpentine five by two and a-hal* 

 inches in size. A petrotome has lately been se- 

 cured by the Geological Commission of Brazil 

 and one by Yale University for their scientific 

 work. 



In spite of the prevalence of typhoid fever in 

 Philadelphia the death rate is lower than usual. 

 The Bureau of Health has given out the follow- 

 ing figures for the past twelve years : 



Deaths. Eate per 1000. 



1888 20,372 20.04 



1889 20,536 19.74 



1890 21,730 20.76 



1891 23,367 21.85 



1892 24,305 22.25 



1893 23,655 21.20 



1894 22,680 19.90 



1895 23,796 20.44 



1896 23,892 20.17 



1897 22,735 18.72 



1898 .23,790 19.18 



1899 23,796 18.78 



By a recent decree of the Russian Minister of 

 Education the admission of first-year students 

 by the several medical faculties throughout the 

 empire is restricted to a fixed number. The 

 University of Moscow is limited to 250, Kieflf 

 to 200, Charkow to 175, Dorpat to 150, Warsaw 

 to 100, Tomsk to 120, and Kasan to 100. The 

 total number of first-year medical students in 

 Russia must therefore not exceed 1095. This 

 number does not include the students of the 

 St. Petersberg Medico-Military Academy, which 

 may admit 250 first-year students. 



According to the Publishers' Weekly, there 

 were last year published in the United States 

 176 books in the sciences as compared with 143 

 in 1898. These numbers do not, however, in- 

 clude educational or medical books, or books in 

 the ' useful arts. ' 



At a special meeting of the London Chemical 

 Society of London, Professor T. E. Thorp, 

 F.R.S. , gave a memorial lecture in honor of 

 Victor Meyer. He said, according to the re- 

 port in the London Times, that as a friend 

 of nearly 30 years' standing, and as one who 



studied with him under Bunsen, he had ac- 

 ceded to the request of the council to record its 

 appreciation of the remarkable services rendered 

 by Meyer to the science he cultivated with such 

 assiduity and success. After an account of 

 Meyer in his student days at Heidelberg and 

 of his work as one of Bunsen's assistants, the 

 lecturer told how in 1868 he entered Baeyer's 

 laboratory in Berlin, where his success as a 

 private teacher procured him the position of 

 assistant to Fehling at the Stuttgart Polytech- 

 nic. There he made one or two important dis- 

 coveries, but in less than a year he was called, 

 when barely 24 years of age, to succeed Wis- 

 licenus at Ziirich. His 13 years' stay there 

 constituted the most fruitful and brilliant 

 period of his career, and before its close he 

 had brought himself within the foremost rank 

 of contemporary investigators. Some idea of 

 his power of work and of the stimulus he gave 

 to others might be gleaned from the fact that 

 during that period the Zurich Laboratory gave 

 close on 130 papers and memoirs to chemical 

 literature. It was at Ziirich, too, that he de- 

 vised his various methods of determining vapor 

 densities and carried out some of his work on 

 the dissociation of the halogens. Pyrochemical 

 problems always interested him, and he ex- 

 pressed the belief that a new chemistry with new 

 and undreamt-of discoveries would disclose itself 

 when vessels were obtained capable of bearing 

 temperatures at which meter could no longer 

 exist and oxyhydrogen gag became an unin- 

 flammable mixture. In 1882, when continuing 

 a series of University lectures on benzene deri- 

 vations which had been interrupted by his 

 friend Weith's death, he made what was, per- 

 haps, his most brilliant discovery, that of thio- 

 phen, and within about six months of his first 

 observation he was in a position to show by 

 actual preparations that its chemistry was 

 hardly less extensive than that of benzene 

 itself. On the death of Hiibner he was called 

 to Gottingen, and in 1888 to Heidelberg, as 

 successor to Bunsen, with the coveted title of 

 Geheimrath and the promise of a new and en- 

 larged laboratory. In conjunction with a num- 

 ber of his pupils he there began the investiga- 

 tion of the conditions determining both the 

 gradual and explosive combustion of gaseous 



