DR. GEORGE BITTER, docent in botany at Münster, has been appointed director of the Botanical Garden at Bremen.

DR. H. LUDWIG, of Bonn, has declined a call to the directorship 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 Commerce 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.

THE Carnegie Institution has continued for two years in the future its annual grant for the payment of salaries to computers on the 'New Reduction of Piazzi's Star Observations.' But the work is much retarded by the lack of competent computers and suitable environment for their maintenance.

PROFESSOR AMADEUS W. GRABAU, of Columbia University, has received an extensive collection 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 chemical laboratory of the University of Michigan, died on February 26 in his seventy-third year.

WE regret also to record the death of Dr. Hermann Landois, professor of zoology at Münster, at the age of seventy years; of Dr. Paul Uhlich, professor of geodesy of the Academy of Mines at Freiberg, at the age of fortyfive 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 Botanists of the Central States, will be held at the University of Chicago on Friday and Saturday, March 31 and April 1, 1905. Titles of papers should be sent, together with abstracts of the same, to F. R. Lillie, secretary of Zoologists, or to H. C. Cowles, secretary of Botanists. A more extended notice of the program will be published in SCIENCE shortly before the meeting.

THE general meeting of the American Philosophical Society will be he'd at Philadelphia on April 12, 13 and 14. Members intending to present papers are requested to send the titles to the secretaries without delay, so that they may be inserted in the preliminary program, which will be issued about March 10.

THE January meeting of the Physico-Chemical Club of Boston and Cambridge was held at the Harvard Union, and papers were read by Professor T. W. Richards, Dr. H. A. Torrey 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 Quinhydrone' and 'The Oxidation of Oxalic Acid by Permanganate in the Presence of Hydrochloric Acid.'

THE annual general meeting of the Neurological Society of Great Britain was held on February 16, when the presidential address was delivered by Sir John Batty Tuke. subject of the address was the relation of the lunacy laws to the treatment of insanity.

The

THE proceedings of the American Forest Congress, held at Washington, D. C., January 2-6, under the auspices of the American Forestry Association, will be issued in book form on March 15. The volume will contain about 400 pages, and will be bound in cloth. It will contain the complete addresses by President Roosevelt, Secretary Wilson and fifty other speakers who were on the program, including not only those prominent in state and national forest work, but the leaders in the railroad, lumbering, mining, grazing and irrigation industries. It will be published for the American Forestry Association by the H. M. Suter Publishing Company, Washington, D. C.

THE seventh Australasian Medical Congress will be held in Adelaide, South Australia, from September 4 to 9, 1905, under the presidency of Dr. E. C. Stirling.

THE Massachusetts Zoological Society acknowledges gifts amounting to $12,900 towards the establishment of a zoological garden.

A TELEGRAM has been received at the office of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition in Edinburgh announcing the safe arrival at Buenos Ayres of Mr. R. C. Mossman, who was left in charge of the meteorological station at Scotia Bay, South Orkneys, last February. Mr. Mossman has spent two continuous years in the Antarctic regions.

THE Adams prize for 1904 has not been awarded by Cambridge University. The subject for the prize for 1906, which is open to the competition of all persons who have at any time been admitted to a degree in the university, is The inequalities in the moon's motion due to the direct action of the planets.' The essays must be sent to the vice-chancellor on or before December 16, 1906. The value of the prize is about £225.

THE British Ornithologists' Club has started an inquiry into the migration of birds. Information will be gathered from the keepers of lighthouses and lightships on the southern and eastern coasts of England, and information from observers in each county of England and Wales.

THE New York State Commissioner of Agricluture Weiting has submitted to the senate a

report on the operation of the pure food law. With the appropriation of $10,000, voted in 1904, the department has examined 780 samples of food and discovered 134 violations of the statute, sixty-four of which have been referred to the attorney general for prosecution.

THROUGH the courtesy of the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department, and more particularly of Captain II. M. Hodges, hydrographer, and Mr. George W. Littlehales, the National Geographic Magazine, of Washington, D. C., publishes as a supplement to the February number a chart of the world on Mercator's projection, showing the submarine cable lines and their connections and ocean routes. Cable and telegraph lines are printed in red and ocean routes in blue. The latest cable lines are shown-as, for instance, the Alaskan cables of the U. S. Signal Corps and the wireless connection across Norton Sound. The tables of distances printed on the bottom of the chart will be found convenient. One table tells at a glance the comparative distances of New York and Shanghai, or Yokohama by the Panama, Suez and Cape of Good Hope routes. Another table gives the distances of our Gulf ports from the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal (Colon), and also from each other. The chart can be detached from the magazine and hung on the wall for more convenient use.

The British Medical Journal states that Professors Czerny, Erb, Hegar, Baumler and other distinguished representatives of medical science have lately with sanction of the government of the Grand Duchy of Baden, formed a committee at Karlsruhe with the object of discovering means of effectively combating the increase of cancer. On the proposal of Professor Czerny, who is the chairman of the committee, it has been decided to issue a circular to medical practitioners for the purpose of collecting complete statistics as to cancer cases occurring within the duchy. The cases will then be fully investigated. Special attention will be given to the question of the possible connection of cancer with local causes, its regional distribution, and the relative frequency of its occurrence among persons of various occupations. On the basis of informa

tion thus obtained it is hoped that it may be possible to devise measures which may check the spread of the disease.

THE report of progress of stream measurements for the calendar year 1903 has been published by the U. S. Geological Survey in four parts, all of which are now available. During 1903 the number of regular stations for stream measurements was steadily increased, so that at the close of the year systematic measurements were being taken at 521 stations. These are so distributed as to cover the needs of the various states and territories. New York stands at the head of the list, with 70 stations, Colorado comes next with 34, California follows with 32, Michigan has 25, Montana 20, Georgia 18, Texas and Wyoming each 17, Washington 16, Kansas 15, and all the other states less. Oklahoma has only 2 stations, the least number in any state or territory, and Indiana, Mississippi and New Hampshire claim only 3 apiece. This expansion of the work is the result of the constantly increasing demand from the general and the engineering public for the stream data collected by the

survey.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. IT is said that the late James C. Carter, the eminent New York lawyer, has bequeathed $200,000 to Harvard University.

It is reported that Mr. Andrew Carnegie has offered to give $500,000 to the University of Virginia on the condition that the authorities of the institution raise a similar amount from other sources.

THE Board of Trustees of Princeton University has appointed a committee of fifty to raise an endowment fund of $2,500,000. The purpose is to establish a tutorial system which President Woodrow Wilson has advocated for some time past. Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge, '79, of New York, is chairman of the committee. COMPTROLLER GROUT has announced that a bill will be introduced at Albany incorporating a University of Brooklyn. It is proposed to give the university land owned by the city and to make an appropriation for building and equipment. The plan is to unite in the uni

versity the Brooklyn Institute, the Public Library, the Polytechnic Institute, Adelphi College, the Packer Institute and the Long Island Medical College.

PLANS are being drawn for the erection of five new buildings for the School of Education, the University High School and the Chicago Manual Training School at the University of Chicago. The buildings will contain a workshop, an assembly hall, a museum, gymnasium and a hall for recitation purposes. Ground has been reserved for them in the School of Education group. It is expected that the total cost will reach $1,000,000.

Ar the first of the winter convocations of the George Washington University cn Washington's Birthday, a gift of property, estimated to be worth $100,000, was announced for the establishment of a chair and course of graduate study on the history of civilization. The name of the donor is withheld for the present. Various sums of money raised by the trustees and alumni association, aggregating $275,000, were also announced.

THE Mercers Company has voted a sum of £1,000 for the promotion of the study of physiology at University College, London.

A BLUE-BOOK has been issued containing reports from the fourteen colleges which participated during the year ended March 31, 1904, in the annual grant, amounting to £27,000, made by the British Parliament for University Colleges in Great Britain,' and from the three colleges in Wales, which receive a grant of £4,000 each.

THE senate of Durham University has decided that German may be offered as an alternative subject for Greek in the preliminary examination for the degrees of doctor in medicine and master in surgery.

DR. BRACHET, of Liège, has been appointed professor of anatomy in the University of Brussels.

PROFESSOR N. J. ANDRUSSON, of the University of Dorpat, has been appointed professor of paleontology and geology at the University of Kiew.

DR. R. CREDNER, of Greifswald, has been called to Breslau as professor of geography.