April 28, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



617 



to the United States by way of the Philippine 

 Islands. 



Professor Willis L. Jepsox, of the botan- 

 ical department of the University of Cali- 

 fornia, will spend next year in Europe and in 

 the tropics, gathering material for the botan- 

 ical museum at Berkeley. 



Dr. Harry Perkins, of the University of 

 Vermont, has received an appointment for the 

 summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory 

 of the Carnegie Institution at Dry Tortugas, 

 near Key West. 



M. Ed. Caspari has been elected president 

 of the French Astronomical Society. 



Professor M. Traub has been appointed 

 director of the newly established department 

 of agriculture of Java. 



Nature states that the Irish branch of the 

 Geological Survey has been transferred from 

 the Board of Education to the Department of 

 Agriculture and Technical Instruction for 

 Ireland. The work will be carried on under 

 the immediate direction of Professor G. A. 

 J. Cole. 



Mr. C. a. Seley, mechanical engineer of 

 the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Rail- 

 road, delivered an address before the students 

 and professors of Purdue University on April 

 11. His subject was ' Framing of Passenger 

 and Freight Cars.' 



Prince Pedro of Orleans and Braganza, 

 son of the Comte d'Eu, who has already 

 visited that part of Central Asia, contemplates 

 making a fresh tour in Chinese Turkestan. 



At a meeting of the Royal Geographical 

 Society on April 10 Lieutenant-Colonel C. C. 

 Manifold read a paper on the ' Problem of the 

 Upper Tang-tsze Provinces and their Commu- 

 nications.' 



On March 28, Dr. Fridjof Nansen presented 

 a paper before the Royal Geographical So- 

 ciety on ' Oscillations of Shore-lines ' ; discus- 

 sion followed, which was taken part in by Sir 

 Archibald Geikie, Sir John Murray, Admiral 

 Sir W. J. L. Wharton, Mr. Peach, Mr. A. 

 Strahan, Mr. Huddleston, Dr. Mill, Dr. Hull 

 and others. 



Nature states that portraits recently added 

 to the National Portrait Gallery include those 

 of Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin and Pro- 

 fessor W. Whewell. 



Plans are being made to erect a. memorial 

 to the late president, Thomas M. Drown, of 

 Lehigh University. It will take the form of 

 a club house for the faculty and students, and 

 will be erected at a cost of $80,000. 



Colonel Nicholas Pike, known for his con- 

 tributions to the natural history of birds, 

 reptiles and amphibia, died at his home in 

 Brooklyn, on April 11, in his eighty-eighth 

 year. A naturalist of the old school, he was the 

 author of interesting notices on the life-history 

 and habits of a number of rare forms, espe- 

 cially among the amphibia. For several years 

 he held the post of American consul in the 

 island of Mauritius, and during this time he 

 collected extensively the local fauna and pre- 

 pared from the living specimens many colored 

 drawings. Especially noteworthy were the 

 albums of the fishes of the Indian Ocean, 

 some of which illustrated species which were 

 later described by Louis Agassiz. His most ex- 

 tended work was his ' Sub-Tropical Rambles 

 in the Land of the Aphanopteryx.' 



Professor Leben Warren, for twenty-seven 

 years professor of mathematics at Colby Col- 

 lege, died on April 21, at the age of sixty- 

 nine years. 



Mr. H. B. Medlicott, F.R.S., director of 

 the Geological Survey of India from 1876 to 

 1887, died on April 6, at seventy-six years of 

 age. 



We learn from The Experimental Station 

 Record that Professor Emerich Meissl, of the 

 Austrian ministry of agriculture, died on 

 February 15 at the age of fifty years. Pro- 

 fessor Meissl was for more than twenty years 

 connected with the agricultural experiment 

 station at Vienna, being director from 1886 

 to 1898. At that time he was called to the 

 ministry of agriculture as an agricultural- 

 technological expert, and was promoted to the 

 charge of a section in the ministry in 1902, 

 which position he occupied at the time of his 

 death. He was widely known among agricul- 



