SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
Tue University of St. Andrews, Scotland, is to establish professor- 
ships of physiology, anthropology, and anatomy. 
The Botanical Club of Barnard College has transferred $500 to 
the college as the nucleus of a fund for the equipment of a botanical 
laboratory to be named in memory of the late Prof. Emily L. 
Gregory. 
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia announces the first 
Hatfield prize competition. The subject is “A pathological and 
clinical study of the thymus gland and its relations.” Competing 
essays must be in the hands of the committee on or before Jan. 1, 
1900. 
The Journal of the Marine Biological Association, England, contains 
in its April number a description of an apparatus for keeping medu- 
sæ alive in the aquarium. It was found that medusæ, to live, must 
float at the surface, and in ordinary aquaria they can only do this by 
constant pulsations of the umbrella. This severe and constant 
strain resulted in physical exhaustion and death. The apparatus 
consists of an automatic plunger which creates currents in the water, 
and by its aid specimens were kept alive for six weeks. 
Mr. N. B. Harrington and Mr. Reid Hunt, of Columbia Univer- 
sity, have gone to the west coast of Africa in the hope of obtaining 
material upon the embryology of Polypterus, one of the two existing 
corsopterygian ganoids, and one of the most interesting of verte- 
brates, since by many — Pollard, Cope, Kingsley, Dollo, and others 
—they are regarded as being the nearest to the ancestors of 
Amphibia and hence of the aminotes. The expedition has received 
$1800 from Mr. Charles F. Senf. 
Prof. C. L. Bristol, of New York University, goes with a party of 
students to the Bermudas, where he spent last year. It is proposed 
to erect a permanent station there, but probably not this year. 
An important step is probably to be taken in London in the re- 
moval of the collections of the geological survey from their crowded 
quarters in Jermyn Street to South Kensington. 
