Personal and Scientific Nezvs. i\j7 
and Loith, of the I'nivcrsity of Wisconsin, and professor U. 
S. Grant, of Northwestern University. 
Under the new law of organization of pubHc educa- 
tion in New York state the Department of Science ha;: been 
created by the regents of the University. This deiiartnient 
embraces, with other things, the directorship of the state mu- 
seum at All)any and the resultant scientific research. Dr. 
John J\I . Clarke has been made director of the department, and 
also state geologi^^t and paleontologist, thus uniting again in 
one person the functions that were discharged bv Dr. James ' 
Hall. Dr. Clarkt. however, as director of the Department of 
Science, will have a wider field of activity. 
According to Dr. E. O. Hovey, who exhibited various 
lantern slides at a late meeting of the New York Academy of 
Sciences, the field evidence indicates that the present active 
cone of the Grand Soufriere is closely analogous to the new 
cone and spine of IMont Pele, ^lartinique, that is to say, that it 
had been pushed up bodilv into its present position, or had 
welled up through the conduit in such a viscous condition that 
contact with the atmosphere rendered it too rigid to flow. .-\t 
the base of the cone on the north, there is a gently rising flat 
area, apparently the segment of a circle indicating the position 
of a part of the rim of a crater in existence before the con- 
struction of the present cone. 
At the meeting of the i6th of May of the Section 
OF Geology and Mineralogy of the New York Academy of 
Science, Dr. W. D. Matthew exhibited a series of foot bones 
illustrating the evolution of the camel, recently installed in the 
hall of vertebrate paleontology of the American Museum of 
Natural History. This series corresponds to that illustrating 
the evolution of the horse, and is almost equally complete. 
It shows the derivation of the camel from small primitive 
four-toed ancestors which were exclusively North American 
in habitat. The earliest known ancestors are tiny animals no 
larger than a rabb"t. The camels reached their maximum size 
and abundance in the Pliocene epoch, when they were much 
larger than the modern camels. Then thev spread to the other 
continents, disappeared entirely from North America and be- 
came smaller in size and far less numerous in species elsewhere. 
Dr. George P. Merrill of the Dep.vrtment of Geol- 
ogy in the U. S. National Museum, was in western Mexico 
during February of this year supervising the work of making 
a model of the gr^at iron meteorite at Ranchito, some eleven 
miles south of P>a. tibarito. in the state of Sinaloa. 
The cast from this model will lie exhibited by the National 
Museum, together with one of Lieut. Peary's ^^elville P»ay 
irons, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 
The public will thus be given an opportunity of viewing 
facsimiles of the two larsfest meteoric masses now known . A 
