Personal and Scientijic News. 365 
luxury tliat a State may well do without. This? action is in 
marked contrast with that of some legislatures that have been 
in session this winter. 
The Academy of Science of St. Louis. Meeting on March 
15, 1897. President Gray in the chair, present also thirty-five 
members and guests. A portrait of Dr. Enno Sander, who for 
the past thirty-five years lias served uninterruptedly as 
its treasurer, was presented to the Academy. Dr. Hambach 
spoke entertainingly and instructively on what a geologist 
may find of interest about St. Louis, exhibiting specimens of 
the principal fossils and minerals characteristic of the local 
deposits, and indicating the best localities for the collection 
of certain specimens. William Trelease. Secretary. 
At the meeting held on the 19th of April, Dr. C. Barck de- 
livered an address on Helmholtz — h<s life and work: and Dr. 
C R. Keyes. the State Geologist of Missouri, presented papers 
on the relations of the Devonian and Carboniferous systems 
of the upper Mississippi basin, and the distribution of the Mis- 
souri coals. 
The California Academy of Sciences has adopted a new 
method of publication. Heretofore three publications, — Pro- 
ceedings, Memoirs and Occasional Papers, — have been issued, 
but hereafter the Memoirs will be discontinued and the Occa- 
sional Papers will be retained for the publication of extensive 
monographs at such times as they may be presented and the 
funds of the Academy will permit. The Proceedings will 
be retainc^d and the new series (the third) will be issued in 
wholly independent divisions, each devoted to a single science 
or to a group of very closely related sciences. The divisions 
already established are for geolog}', for botany and for zoolo- 
gy, and it is probable that a matheraatico-physical division 
will be added shortly and others as required. No. 1 of the ge- 
ological division ("The geology of Santa Catalina island" by 
W. S. T. Smith) has already been issued. The divisions of 
tlie Proceedings will be formed into volumes of generally 400 
to 500 royal octavo pages. The subscription to the geologi- 
cal volume is $4.00, which should be sent to J. O'B. Gunn, 
Corresponding Sec'y, Cal. Acad. Sci., San Francisco. 
Reception to Sir Archibald Geikie. A meeting of the N. 
Y. Academy of Sciences, section of geology was devoted to a 
reception of the whole Academy to Sir Archibald Geikie, 
director-general of H. M. geological survey of Great Britain, 
who has just returned to this country for a brief visit after 
an absence of eighteen years. After an informal reception 
the meeting was called to order and addressed briefly by the 
president of the Academy, Prof. J. J. Stevenson, who extended 
a most hearty welcome from the scientists of New York to the 
guest of the evening. Prof. Stevenson was followed bj'- Prof. 
