A conference was appointed, to be held at Wiesbaden, Germany, October 9th and 10th, to promote the formation of an International Federation of Science—a scheme which was referred to in Sir Michael Foster’s presidential address before the British Association. This idea for the establishment of an international association of great learned societies appears, the London AthenÆum says, to be the outcome of discussions carried on at GÖttingen in 1898. For some time past the Academies of Vienna, Munich, GÖttingen, and Leipsic have been federated into an association or “Castell,” each meeting in turn at their respective headquarters to talk over scientific matters of joint interest. At two or three recent meetings questions were brought up, such as antarctic research and the cataloguing of scientific literature, which, besides being of sufficient interacademic value to come before the “Castell,” were of prime importance to English men of science. English delegates were therefore invited to attend, and did so; and out of this invitation has grown a desire for a wider international basis for the association. The adherence of the principal learned societies of the world, including our National Academy, is said to have been secured to the movement.

The thirteenth season of the Department of Botany at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Holl, Mass., will open July 5th and continue till August 16th. Three laboratory courses are provided, accompanied by lectures, including the subjects of cryptogamic botany, plant physiology, and plant cytology and micro-technique. The principal instructors are Dr. Bradley R. Davis, Mr. George T. Moore, and Dr. Rodney H. True. The department extends a special welcome to investigators, and desires their co-operation in the development of the laboratory. Woods Holl offers great attractions in variety of material and facilities for biological research, and is proposed as an excellent center of resort where the botanists of the country may meet for a few weeks. A six weeks’ course in Nature study, including both animals and plants, and consisting largely of field work, is a new feature offered this year for the first time.

On Friday, March 9th, occurred the death of two of the six surviving founders of the American Association for the Advancement of Science—Dr. Charles E. West, of Brooklyn, and Professor Oliver Payson Hubbard, of Manhattan. Both were distinguished teachers. Dr. West was born in Washington, Mass., in 1809, and after being graduated from Union College, began his career as a teacher in the Albany Female Academy. He was afterward principal of the Rutgers Female Institute, the Buffalo Female Seminary, and the Brooklyn Heights Seminary, where he remained twenty-nine years. He also assisted in preparing the original courses of instruction of Vassar Female College. He was one of the founders of the Long Island Historical Society; was a fellow of the Royal Antiquarian Society of Denmark; and was a member of the American Ethnological, the American Philosophical, and the New York and the Long Island Historical Societies. Professor Hubbard was born at Pomfret, Conn., in 1809, was graduated from Yale College in 1828, and was appointed Professor of Chemistry, Pharmacy, and Mineralogy at Dartmouth College in 1836. He remained there, with an interval, from 1866 till 1871, in which he devoted himself to lecturing, till 1883, when he became professor emeritus. He was made in 1871 overseer of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, and he was a member of the New Hampshire Legislature in 1863 and 1864. Only four of the founders of the American Association are now living—namely, Dr. Martin H. Boye, of Cooperstown, Pa.; Prof. Walcott Gibbs, of Harvard; Dr. Samuel L. Abbot; and Epes Dixwell.

The firm of Burroughs, Wellcome & Co., says the Lancet, are to be congratulated on the generous care which they have taken to promote the material and intellectual welfare of their employees. Their principal works are at Dartford, where they employ more than eight hundred persons of both sexes, including some two hundred scientific workers. For the purpose of establishing a sort of club for these employees, Mr. Wellcome succeeded in purchasing the Manor House known as Acacia Hall, and the extensive and beautiful grounds in which it is situated. The Manor House he has fitted up as a club for the members of his staff. An old mill which stands close by has been converted into what is called the library building. The upper floor is fitted out as a lecture-room, and there is a library which already contains some thousands of volumes. A third building, called the Tower House, contains club accommodations for men. Then there are elaborate bathrooms, and finally a large gymnasium. The grounds are most extensive, being half a mile in length and very tastefully laid out. There is a lake, a river, and many pleasure boats for rowing, a large field for sports of all sorts, a grand stand to witness the same, a rich orchard and a beautiful pleasure garden, several luxurious lawns, and many superb trees.

A peculiar kind of glassy bodies, known as moldavite or bouteillenstein, is attracting the attention of Austrian and Bohemian geologists. These glasses are ovals from an inch to an inch and a half long, and are characterized by various markings, some of which suggest finger impressions, while others form a network of furrows, which may have in part a rough radial arrangement. They have been regarded by some authors as relics of prehistoric glass manufacture, but this view does not appear to have been sustained. Dr. F.E. Suess, the famous Austrian geologist, finds resemblances between them and meteorites, and the most general disposition of students of the subject is now to consider them of extra-terrestrial origin. Resemblances have further been pointed out between them and some peculiar obsidian bombs found in Australia. The moldavites in Bohemia occur in sandy deposits which are assigned to the late Tertiary or early Diluvial period.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, besides studies bearing directly on science and the arts, courses are given in modern languages, as an important means of access to foreign works in the student’s professional department: English, for the purpose of training pupils to express themselves readily, accurately, and adequately, and of aiding them in the understanding and appreciation of good literature; history and political and social science, the instruction in which is arranged to connect with that in biology, so that the two departments shall present “an unbroken sequence of related studies extending through three successive years, and resting upon the fundamental knowledge of living forms and of prehistoric man that is presented in general biology, zoÖlogy, and anthropology,” followed by comparative politics and international law; and economics.

A witness recently admitted to the British Government’s Committee now making inquiry into the use of coloring matters and preservatives in food, that yellow coloring substances were largely purchased without any discrimination for the purpose of giving a rich appearance to milk and milk products. As a rule, no question was asked as to the injurious or non-injurious character of the dye so used. One of the best coloring matters was known as Martius’s yellow, naphthol yellow, naphthalene yellow, Manchester yellow, saffron yellow, or golden yellow, and is chemically the same as the dinitro-alpha-naphthol prepared from the naphthalene that crystallizes in gas mains, which is an important constituent in the making of lyddite. It is slightly explosive when heated, is injurious when it comes in contact with an abrasion of the skin, and has been shown by physiological experiments to be a highly improper substance to mix with food.

A goose market is held regularly in October at Warsaw, Poland, to which about three million geese are brought, most of them to be exported to Germany. Often coming from remote provinces, many of these geese have to travel over long distances, upon roads which would wear out their feet if they were not “shod.” For this purpose they are driven first through tar poured upon the ground, and then through sand. After the operation has been repeated several times the feet of the geese become covered with a hard crust that effectively protects them.

NOTES.

The first summer session of Columbia University, 1900, will open July 2d, instruction beginning July 5th, and will continue till August 10th. The work will be under the general direction of Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler, and will be conducted by a large corps of instructors, in eleven courses, of thirty lectures or other exercises or their equivalent in laboratory or field work, each. The concluding examinations will be held August 9th and 10th. Credits will be given for courses pursued at the school in the requirements for a degree at the university, and for a Teachers’ College diploma, and in the examinations for teachers’ licenses in New York city.

An International Congress of Medical Electrology and Radiology has been connected with the International Congress system of the Paris Exposition, 1900, and will be held July 27th to August 1st. The commission is composed of representative men from various universities, institutions, and hospitals of France, with Prof. E. Doumer, 57 Rue Nicolas Leblanc, Lille, as secretary.

A curious fall of “black snow,” which was observed at Molding, Austria, at the beginning of the year, was found to consist largely of the insects known as “glacier fleas,” which were supposed to have come along with a violent snowstorm from some of the Alpine glaciers.

How to write 1900 in Roman numerals is a question of the day that will have to be settled. Three ways are suggested by Mr. J. Fletcher Little in the London Times, either of which is correct according to the Roman system. They are MDCCCC, MDCD, and MCM. But when we reach the year 1988, if we use the first of these methods we shall have to write the formidable-looking formula MDCCCCLXXXVIII, whereas if we use the third and shortest method, it will only be MCMLXXXVIII—and that is long enough. The third method, therefore, which may be interpreted as meaning one thousand plus another thousand lacking a hundred, seems to be the simplest.

Dr. St. George Mivart, Professor of Biology in University College, Kensington, died suddenly in London, April 1st, aged seventy-two years. He was author of numerous scientific works, of treatises critical of Darwinism and the theory of evolution, and of demonstrations of the harmony of Roman Catholic dogma with proved scientific facts. His name has been made prominent of late by his recantation of his previously expressed views of the consistency of dogma with science, and the correspondence with Cardinal Vaughan which grew out of it.

An International Congress of Ethnographical societies has been arranged for by the Ethnographic Society of Paris, to be held in Paris, August 26th to September 1st.

The Wollaston medal of the Royal Geological Society, London, for the most important geological discoveries, has this year been awarded to Mr. Grove K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey. This is the third time the medal has been awarded to a citizen of this country.

Among the recently announced publications of John Wiley and Sons we notice a third edition, revised and enlarged, of Allen Hazen’s Filtration of Public Water Supplies; a new and revised edition of Olof’s Text-book of Physiological Chemistry; The Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science, by Ellen H. Richards; Examination of Water (Chemical and Biological), by William P. Mason; and the fifth edition of H. Van F. Furman’s Manual of Practical Assaying.

In a method of sterilization of water by means of ozone, described by Dr. Weyl, of Berlin, at the German Scientific Conference, 1899, water is pumped to the top of a tower and allowed to flow freely over stones, meeting as it falls a current of air charged with ozone. The process appears to be likewise effectual in purifying peat and bog water, the solution of the iron salts of humic acid being decomposed and oxidized, and the brown color disappearing in consequence. The method, it is said, can be advantageously used in connection with filter beds.

Our death list this month of men known in science is large. It includes the names of M. Philippe Salmon, archÆologist, subdirector of l’École d’Anthropologie of Paris, President of the Ministry of Public Instruction’s Commission on Megalithic Monuments and author of numerous monographs on subjects of his studies, in Paris, aged seventy-six years; Dr. C.T.R. Luther, director of the Observatory at Bilk, near Dusseldorf, aged seventy-eight years. He discovered twenty-one of the minor planets and calculated the orbits of them all, as well as those of several other bodies; Dr. C. Piazzi Smith, formerly Astronomer Royal of Scotland, author of studies of the amount of heat given by the moon to the earth, and of some famous speculations upon the construction and purposes of the Great Pyramid as an exponent of the standard of measurement, February 21st, aged eighty-one years; M. Émile Blanchard, dean of the section of Anatomy and Physiology of the French Academy of Sciences; Captain BernadiÈres, member of the French Bureau des Longitudes and Director of the Observatory School of Montsouri for Officers of the Marine, who had fulfilled several astronomical and geodesic commissions; Dr. Hermann Schaeffer, honorary professor of Mathematics and Physics at Jena, aged seventy-six years; Leander J. McCormick, founder of the McCormick Observatory at the University of Virginia; President James H. Smart, of Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind.; General A.A. Tillo, Vice-President of the Russian Geographical Society, founder of an exact physical geography of Russia, based on scientific data, and of many contributions on the science, at St. Petersburg, January 11th, aged sixty years; Prof. E. Beltrami, of the University of Rome (Mathematical Physics), President of the Accademia dei Lincei, and correspondent of the Paris Academy of Sciences; M. Emmanuel Liais, Mayor of Cherbourg, France, also distinguished for useful and very meritorious work in Astronomy and Physics, aged seventy-four years; Dr. Hans Bruno, Professor of Mineralogy and Geology in the University of Dresden, Saxony, distinguished for his investigations of the Paleozoic, Cretaceous, and Permian rocks of Saxony, at Dresden, January 28th, aged eighty-five years; and William Thorpe, one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society of Chemical Industry.

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