No. 374.] SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 143 
Vesuvius is active again, throwing forth ashes and lava from the 
central crater, and much more from the lower crater called Atrio del 
Cavallo. 
The Northumberland Sea Fisheries Committee and the Durham 
College of Science have opened a marine biological laboratory at 
Cullercoats, near Newcastle. Mr. Meek has been placed in charge 
of the scientific work. 
The Berlin Academy of Sciences has granted 3000 marks to Prof. 
B. Hagen, of Frankfurt, for the publication of an anthropological 
atlas, 1500 marks to Professor Kohen, of Griefswald, for mineralogi- 
cal researches, and 800 marks to Prof. R. Bonnet for anatomical 
studies. 
The Johns Hopkins University Circular for November, 1897, con- 
tains sketches of the late Prof. James Ellis Humphrey and Dr. 
Franklin Story Conant. 
The Annual Report of the Australian Museum at Sydney contains 
the statement that the Museum has recently acquired the remains of 
the elephant “ Jumbo.” Be it known to our antipodal friends that 
the great and only Jumbo — the Jumbo of the London “Zoo” — is 
preserved in the United States, his skeleton in the American Museum 
in New York City, his skin in the Barnum Museum of Tufts College. 
The Australian Jumbo is but a pretender. 
In his admirable address as president of the British Malacological 
Society, Prof. G. B. Howes has the following extremely pertinent 
remarks: “One regrettable feature of the year’s work has been the 
tendency toward reversion to the trinomial system and the too rigid 
adherence to rules of priority. When, in an age in which science is 
popular, Aplysia becomes Tethys and vice versa, and, in one of over- 
crowding of literature, it is thought desirable to discriminate between 
‘types,’ ‘paratypes,’ and other sort of types, it were no wonder did 
the wayside naturalist turn from us in despair. For the purists 
Ichthyosaurus ought to go, Troglodytes becomes Anthropopithecus. 
Convenience and fitness of things must be considered. The effects 
of extreme specialization are here but too evident; one man describ- 
ing as the result of a life’s labor ‘characters’ which it requires the 
experience of a life to appreciate. If this course is to continue, let 
us boldly replace Homo sapiens by Mendax simplex and have done 
with it.” 
