170 Scientific Intelligence. 



the administration of the accepted plan of the Carnegie Foundation 

 for providing pensions for college teachers has revealed certain 

 serious defects in the system. Briefly stated, these include the 

 fad that no provision is made, either in the case of disability or 

 death, until the individual is well advanced in life ; or, in other 

 words, teachers under perhaps sixty or sixty-five years can 

 receive no benefit from it. Again although the original endow- 

 ment was large and lias been added to, its income is nevertheless 

 limited, the demands upon it are increasing and, therefore, at 

 best but a part of the country's institutions and their teachers can 

 come under its provisions. 



The realization of these and other shortcomings in the present 

 plan has led to the development of a new system of insurance 

 and annuities to be available for " all college teachers of sound 

 qualification " in the United States, Canada and Newfoundland. 

 The essential feature of this system is that it shall be contribu- 

 tory, the individual and his college sharing the pecuniary respon- 

 sibility from the beginning of his career as a teacher. Further, 

 The Carnegie Foundation, with its large capital, would administer 

 the system, guarantee a good rate of interest on the accumulated 

 funds, and assume other responsibilities involved. For the 

 details of the plan reference must be made to the present bulletin; 

 it is, perhaps, enough to say that, while its basis is "socially wise, 

 economically sound and permanently secure," the contributions 

 called for from the individual would be small compared to the 

 benefits to be received. 



The Foundation is now committed to the existing pension 

 system as applied to some seventy-three institutions in the United 

 States and Canada. Obviously the older teachers must remain 

 under it, but for men of some definite age, to be settled upon, it 

 will be profitable to pass from the existing system to that now 

 proposed. This point, with the details of the whole scheme, will 

 come up for consideration by the trustees toward the end of the 

 present year. 



Obituary. 



Sir William Ramsay, the distinguished English chemist, died 

 at his home in Hazlemere, Bucks, England, on July 23 in his 

 sixty-fifth year. His career was remarkable alike for the extent 

 and the brilliancy of his original scientific work. His discovery 

 and investigation of the atmospheric gases argon, krypton and 

 neon alone would have established his reputation ; while his 

 identification of helium both in the atmosphere and in many 

 minerals, his investigation of radium, and his discovery, as he 

 believed, of the transmutation of the elements, rank with the most 

 brilliant contributions to chemical science. 



Professor Elik Metciinikoff of the Pasteur Institute, famous 

 the world over for his investigations and discoveries in bacteri- 

 ology and for their application to the prevention and cure of 

 human diseases, died in Paris on July 15, at the age of seventy- 

 one years. 



