242 Scientific Intelligence. 



remembering the necessarily slower growth at the initiation of a 

 reef and as it approaches close to the surface, it yet seems to me 

 to be probable that an oceanic shoal at a depth of 25 fathoms 

 might well in 1000 years, or even less, be covered with a perfect 

 surface reef, built up by nullipores and reef corals. Should these 

 deductions be, as I believe, fairly accurate, a natural explanation 

 is at once afforded of the rarity of submerged banks of all sorts 

 in coral-reef areas as compared with surface atolls and reefs." 



III. Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 



1. Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 

 for the Year ending June SO, 1902. — In his annual report Pro- 

 fessor Langley gives a summary of the work done by the 

 Smithsonian Institution in its several fields of activity. The 

 appendixes contain detailed descriptions regarding the National 

 Museum, the Bureau of Ethnology, the National Zoological 

 Park, the Astrophysical Observatory, etc. The National Museum 

 now contains five and a half million specimens and a new 

 building is urgently needed. The Bureau of Ethnology is 

 preparing a dictionary of Indian tribes as a preliminary step 

 toward the publication of a complete encyclopedia on that sub- 

 ject. In the field work special attention was devoted to the 

 study of aboriginal building irrigation and food sources. The 

 number of libraries and individuals who are participants in the 

 Exchange Service is now 38,200 in 154 countries. During the 

 past year the researches carried on by the Astrophysical Observa- 

 tory have mainly been concerned with determining the amount 

 and nature of the absorption of solar radiation in the earth's 

 atmosphere and in the solar envelope. These researches are 

 preliminary to and form an essential part of the measurement of 

 the total radiation of the sun. The bolometer has been perfected 

 to measure less than one-hundred-millionths of a degree and 

 "this almost infinitesimal amount is distinguished with readiness 

 and precision." A successful method of overcoming the effects 

 of " boiling" in a telescopic image is announced. (See this Jour- 

 nal, xv, 89.) 



Obituary. 



Professor Estevan Antonio Fuertes, head of the College 

 of Civil Engineering at Cornell University, died January 23 at 

 the age of sixty-four. 



Dr. Charles J. Bell, professor of chemistry in the Uni- 

 versity of Minnesota, died on January 4, aged forty-eight years. 



Dr. Antonio d'Achiardi, professor of mineralogy and geology 

 at the University of Pisa, has died recently at the age of sixty- 

 three. 



Sir George Gabriel Stokes, the eminent mathematician, 

 died on February 1, in his eighty-fourth year. 



