iLiKCH 23, 1900.] 



SCIENGE. 



47' 



Professor A. B. Prescott ; Secretary, Alfred H. 

 White ; Councillor, Professor Paul C. Freer — all 

 of the TTniversity of Midugan. The members 

 of the executive committee are : A. F. Shattuct, 

 chemist to the Solvav Process Company, De- 

 troit : Professor F. S. Kedzie of the Agricultural 

 College, and J. T. Wolfe, Jr., chemist to the 

 Detroit Sugar Company at Rochester. 



The Xew York Evening Po-sf reports that a 

 contract to slaughter 20,000 birds of all sorts 

 near Milford, Delaware, for the benefit of a 

 millinery firm in ISTew York, has aroused a storm 

 of indignation. Fully a dozen societies, headed 

 by the Academy of ^Natural Science have taken 

 action to prevent the killing of the birds. A 

 notice denouncing the proposed slaughter has 

 been sent out by ILr. Witmer Stone, Chairman 

 of the American Ornithologists' Commmittee on 

 Bird Protection. The committee will prosecute 

 wherever the law is violated. 



The Scientific American states that the Geo- 

 graphical Society of Philadelphia is to continue 

 its work of setting wooden casks adrift on the 

 ice north of this continent, to demonstrate the 

 currents of Arctic waters north of Behring Strait. 

 Each cask will contain a blank to be filled in by 

 the finder. 



Readers of this Journal have doubtless 

 noticed in the daily papers the announcement 

 of the excommunication of Dr. George St. 

 3Iivart from the Roman Catholic Church, be- 

 cause he would not revoke articles contributed 

 by him to the Fortnightly Review and the Xine- 

 teenth Century. The formula sent by Cardinal 

 Vaughan to Dr. Mivart for his signature has 

 been published in the London Times and is 

 herewith in part reproduced as an explicit 

 statement of what must be believed by com- 

 municants in the Roman Catholic Church : 



I therefore firmly believe and profess that the 

 Blessed Virgin Mary conceived and bronght forth the 

 Son of God in an ineffable manner by the operation 

 of the Holy Ghost, and absolutely withont loss or 

 . detriment to her Virginity, and that she is reallyand 

 in tmth, as the Catholic Church most rightly calls 

 her, the 'Ever Virgin' ; that is to say, Virgin before 

 the birth of Christ, Virgin in that birth, and Virgin 

 after it, her sacred and spotless Virginity being per- 

 petually preserved from the beginning, then, and for 

 ever afterwards. * * * I firmly believe and pro 



fess in accordance with the Holy Council of Trent 

 that the first man Adam, when he transgressed the 

 command of God in Paradise, immediately lost the 

 holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, 

 and that he incurred through that prevarication the 

 wrath and indignation of God, and that this prevari- 

 cation of Adam injured, uot himself alone, but his 

 posterity, and that by it the holiness and justice re- 

 ceived from God were lost by him, not for himself 

 alone, but for us all. * * * I reject as false and 

 heretical the assertion that it is possible at some time, 

 according to the progress of science, to give to doc- 

 trines propounded by the Church a sense different 

 from that which the Chnrch has understood and 

 understands, and consequently that the sense and 

 meaning of her doctrines can ever be in the course of 

 time practically explained away or reversed. 



We learn from Nature that the Reale Institute 

 Lombardo has awarded its prizes as follows : 

 The 'ordinary " prize offered by the Institution 

 for the best catalogue of remarkable meteoro- 

 logical phenomena prior to ISOO was unawarded, 

 but premiums of 400 lire have been awarded to 

 three of the competitors, and the judges con- 

 sider that the publication of the results arrived 

 at conjointly by the three would be of great 

 value. Under the Cagnola foundation five 

 prizes were oflfered, and none awarded, the 

 only award being a premium of 1000 lire to the 

 sole competitor who sent in an essay on illus- 

 trations of Hertz's phenomena. On two of the 

 other subjects no essays were sent in, and on 

 -the other two the essays were not of sufficient 

 merit to justify an award. The Pizzamiglio 

 prize and the Ciani prize, for essays in political 

 science, and the Zanetti prize, for discoveries 

 in pharmaceutical chemistry, are all unawarded. 

 The Fossati prize, for an essaj- illustrative of 

 the macro- and micro-scopic anatomy of the 

 central nervous system, has been conferred on 

 Dr. Emilio Veratti. In striking contrast to the 

 paucity of competitors in subjects of a more or 

 less academical character is the keen competi- 

 tion for the Brambilla prize, given " to one 

 who has invented or introduced into Lombardy 

 some machine or some industrial process from 

 which the population may derive a real and 

 proved benefit." Seventeen competitors en- 

 tered for this prize, the awards including a 

 gold medal and 500 lire each to Bianchi and 

 Dubini, for desiccators of silk-cocoons : to 



