THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



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In these Photographs Halley's Comet is indicated by the Arrows. 



emulsion having been provided by the 

 manufacturers. The faintness of the 

 comet on the plate of September 17 

 was due to the poor sky, and not to 

 any change in the comet's brightness. 

 The brightest star shown in the pic- 

 tures, near the left-hand edge, slightly 

 above the center, is of magnitude 8.7, 

 or about ten times fainter than the 

 limit of naked-eye visibility. Stars at 

 least as faint as the seventeenth mag- 

 nitude, or twenty-five thousand times 

 fainter than naked-eye visibility, are 

 shown on the original negatives, and 

 the comet's brightness must have been 

 considerably less than this, more accu- 

 rate determinations being now in prog- 

 ress at the hands of Mr. Parkhurst. 



The comet was first observed visually 

 by Professor Burnham, with the forty- 

 inch telescope, on September 15. It 

 was also observed visually by Professor 

 Barnard on September 17 and several 

 subsequent nights. Professor Bar- 

 nard's visual estimate of the comet's 

 brightness at his last observation be- 

 fore the moonlight interfered, on the 

 early morning of September 27, was 

 that it was of magnitude 14 or 14.5. 

 His measures indicated a diameter of 

 about 10", but the object was without 

 definite boundary. 



The comet will be visible to the 



naked eye early next year and will 



attain its greatest brightness in the 



month of May. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 

 We record with regret the death of 

 Dr. Washington Irving Stringham, 

 professor of mathematics in the Uni- 

 versity of California; of Dr. Leonard 

 Pearson, dean of the Veterinary School 

 of the University of Pennsylvania, and 

 I of Professor Anton Dohrn, the eminent 

 zoologist, founder and director of the 

 Naples Zoological Station. 



Dk. A. Lawrence Lowell was in- 

 stalled as president of Harvard Uni- 

 versity on October 6, and Dr. Ernest 

 Fox Nichols was installed as president 

 of Dartmouth College on October 14. 

 The inaugural addresses, which are 

 devoted to the condition of the Amer- 

 ican college, are printed in Science 

 for October 15. 



Dk. Edmund C. Sanford, A.B. (Cali- 

 fornia, '83), Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins, 

 '88), professor of experimental psy- 

 chology in Clark University, has been 

 elected president of Clark College to 

 succeed the late Carroll D. Wright. — 

 Dr. J. F. Anderson has been appointed 



