358 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 531. 



Dr. George Bitter, docent in botany at 

 ]V[unster, has been appointed directoi- of the 

 Botanical Garden at Bremen. 



Dr. H. Ludwig, of Bonn, has declined a call 

 to the directorshi]! of the zoological museum 

 of the University of Berlin. 



Dr. Michele Cantone, professor of physics 

 in the University of Pavia, has been appointed 

 director of the Physical Institute at Naples. 



Dr. Robert Stein has been transferred 

 from the U. S. Geological Survey to the 

 Bureau of Statistics, Department of Com- 

 merce and Labor. 



Mr. Albert F. Woods, chief pathologist and 

 physiologist of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 

 United States Department of Agriculture, has 

 been designated delegate on the part of the 

 United States to the Second International 

 Botanical Congress to be held at Vienna, June 

 next. This action was taken by the secretary 

 of agriculture through the secretary of state 

 in response to a request from the government 

 of Austria-Hungary to the government of the 

 United States for official representation. 



TuE'Carnegie Institution has continued for 

 two years in the future its annual grant for 

 the payment of salaries to fomputers on the 

 ' New Reduction of Piazzi's Star Observa- 

 tions.' But the work is much retarded by the 

 lack of competent computers and suitable en- 

 vironment for their maintenance. 



Professor Amadeus W. Grabau, of Colum- 

 bia University, has received an extensive col- 

 lection of fossils from the limestone region of 

 Michigan, including many new types. He is 

 to prepare a monograph on them for the State 

 of [Michigan. 



Mr. Walter Maunder, who has conducted 

 the astronomical department of Knowledge 

 since the death of Mr. A. C. Ranyard in 1894, 

 has resigned his connection with that journal. 



It is proposed to erect a monument at 

 Laibach, in Austria, to the memory of Vega, 

 author of the well-known table of logarithms. 



The Paris Mint has struck a medal in honor 

 of Dr. B. Teissier, who died at the age of 23 

 from the consequences of an official medical 

 mission to Egypt. 



Professor Albert B. Prescott, professor of 

 organic and applied chemistry, dean of the 

 school, of pharmacy and director of the chem- 

 ical laboratory of the University of Michigan, 

 died on February 26 in his seventy-third year. 



We regi'et also to record the death of Dr. 

 Hermann Landois, professor of zoology at 

 Miinster, at the age of seventy years; of Dr. 

 Paul Uhlich, professor of geodesy of the Acad- 

 emy of Mines at Freiberg, at the age of forty- 

 five years; and of Guido Hauck, professor of 

 geometry in the Technical Institute of Berlin. 



The next meeting of the Central Branch 

 of the American Society of Naturalists and 

 affiliated societies, the Central Branch of the 

 American Society of Zoologists and the Bot- 

 anists of the Central States, will be held at 

 the University of Chicago on Friday and Sat- 

 urday, March 31 and April 1, 1905. Titles of 

 papers should be sent, together with abstracts 

 of the same, to F. R. Lillie, secretary of Zoolo- 

 gists, or to H. C. Cowles, secretary of Botan- 

 ists. A more extended notice of the program 

 will be published in Science shortly before the 

 meeting. 



The general meeting of the American Phil- 

 osophical Society will be held at Philadel- 

 phia on April 12, 13 and 14. ^lembers intend- 

 ing to present papers are requested to send the 

 titles to the secretaries without delay, so that 

 they may be inserted in the preliminary pro- 

 gram, which will be issued about March 10. 



The January meeting of the Physico-Chem- 

 ical Club of Boston and Cambridge was lield 

 at the Harvard Union, and papers were read 

 by Professor T. W. Richards, Dr. H. A. Tor- 

 rey and Dr. G. P. Baxter, all of Harvard. 

 The subjects were respectively, ' The Atomic 

 Weights of Sodium, Strontium and Chlorine,' 

 ' The Dissociation of Phenoquinone and Quin- 

 hydrone ' and ' The Oxidation of Oxalic Acid 

 by Permanganate in the Presence of Hydro- 

 chloric Acid.' 



The annual general meeting of the Neuro- 

 logical Society of Great Britain was held on 

 February 16, when the presidential address 

 was delivered by Sir John Batty Tuke. The 

 subject of the address was the relation of the 

 lunacy laws to the treatment of insanity. 



