Personal and Scientific News. 131 
and Prof. R. T. Hill, Secretary. Mr. Walcott'fl vice-presiden- 
tial address, to be given on Thursday afternoon, August 17th. 
is entitled "Geologic Time as indicated by the Sedimentary 
Rocks of North America." In the evening of the same day 
the address of the retiring President of the Association, Prof. 
Joseph LeConte, will be given in the Assembly Chamber of 
the State Capitol. Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 
will be devoted to meetings of the sections for the reading 
and discussion of papers. On Saturday free excursions are 
planned to visit Devil's Lake, the Dells of the Wisconsin, the 
Driftless Area, and one of the State Fish Hatcheries. 
The World's Congress of Geologists, auxiliary to the 
Columbian Fair, will convene in Chicago on Thursday, August 
24th. Themes and questions of world-wide and international 
interest are expected to be presented and discussed, rather 
than papers giving only details of local observations. Prof. 
T. C. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago, is Chairman 
of the Committee. 
Mr. A. P. Low, of the Canadian Geological Survey, left 
(Quebec in June with a party equipped for an absence of two 
summers and the intervening winter in the interior of the 
Labrador peninsula, expecting to extend their exploration 
northward to Ungava bay. 
Among the recent losses to science, not altogether geo- 
logical, must be enumerated Karl Semper, late professor of 
zoology in the University of AYurtzburg, at the age of 61. In 
1877 Prof. Semper was invited to give a course of Lowell lec- 
tures, and on the material of these was based his work "On 
the Natural Conditions of Existence as they affect Animal 
Life." The name of Edwin Vivian, of Torquay is also on the 
list. Mr. Vivian was one of the prominent associates of W. 
Pengelly in stimulating the examination of Kent's Cave at 
Torquay, in Devonshire, the results of which have afforded 
sure ground for the belief in the antiquity of the human race. 
The past month also records the death of the veteran profes- 
sor of geology, Ferdinand Senft. 
The University of Dobpat, now Juk.ieff, is beginning to 
issue its publications, according to the imperial decree, in the 
Russian language. "We have just received what appears to be 
an importnnt thesis on the development of the carpus and 
tarsus in mammals illustrated by three beautiful plates, but 
the work is not accompanied even by an abstract in French or 
German audit will thus be of little service to the majority of 
anatomists interested in the subject. — From Natural Science. 
The so-called primaeval fossil Eozoon Canadensi has been 
subjected to so much destructive criticism that there are now 
few believers in its organic nature, but until this month no 
analogous structure had been recorded as found under eondi- 
