Laccadive Islands, to study the formation of coral reefs, with special reference to to the depth at which the reef-building coral organisms live, the food of the coral polyps, the influence of currents upon coral formations and upon the distribution of life near them, and the interrelationship existing between the various organisms which occur on a coral reef. It is also proposed to survey the Maldive Islands, with a view to obtaining information as to their mode of formation. Mr. C. F. Cooper will join the expedition during the summer.

PROFESSOR T. E. THORPE has been elected to succeed Professor Dewar as President of the Chemical Society, London, while Professor W. A. Tilden succeeds Professor Thorpe as treasurer. Dr. A. Scott has been elected one of the secretaries.

THE Seventh Dutch Scientific and Medical Congress opened its sessions at Harlem on April 7th. Professor Ramsay made an address before the Section of Chemistry on 'The New Elements.'

THE first conversazione of the Royal Society will be held at Burlington House on Wednesday, May 3d, at 9 p. m.

It is proposed to erect a memorial statue of Sir Thomas Browne in Norwich, where the author of the Religio Medici practised as a physician for forty-six years. It is estimated that the statue will cost about £2,000, towards which the sum of £200 has been subscribed.

A PLAN has been proposed for erecting a monument to Dr. Jean Hemeau, of La Test, who is said to have discovered and applied the principles of microbic disease forty years before Pasteur.

THE death is announced of Dr. Franz von Hauer, formerly head of the Austrian Geological Survey, at Vienna, aged seventy-three years; of Dr. Max Durand-Fardel, President of the French Society of Hydrology, and of the Hon. F. F. Thompson, of New York, who gave Williams College scientific laboratories costing $180,000, and generous gifts to other educational institutions.

WE regret also to record the death of Dr. George Henry Rohé, of Maryland, at New

Albany, La., while in attendance at the recent National Prison Congress. Dr. Rohé was at the time of his death President of the American Public Health Association.

THE death, at the age of 81 years, occurred on April 7th, of Mr. Joseph Stevens, the wellknown geologist and antiquarian. Though a practising physician, he found time to make discoveries of neolithic and paleolithic implements and fossils, many of which are deposited in the Reading Museum, of which he was long honorary curator. He was the author of numerous publications on anthropological and archæological subjects.

MISS E. BROWN, to whose death we recently referred, has bequeathed one of her observatories with all the contents, and, in addition, £1,000, to the British Astronomical Association. Miss Brown was Director of the Solar Section of the Association.

THE Barnard Botanical Club will give an exhibit of the work of the department of botany on the afternoon of April 28th. It is hoped that at that time the bronze tablet, given by the Club in memory of the late Dr. Gregory, will be in place. It bears the following inscription : "This laboratory, for the study of physiological botany, is dedicated to the memory of Emily L. Gregory, Ph.D., first professor of botany in Barnard College, from its opening, in 1889, until her death, in 1897."

MR. W. S. LEAN has bequeathed £50,000 to the British Museum for the extension of the library and reading room.

By the will of the late Sir William Jenner, £10,000 is bequeathed to the Royal College of Physicians of London.

THE Hon. Stevens Salisbury has presented to the Worcester Natural History Society the collection of minerals and fossils made by Mr. John Gilman.

ARRANGEMENTS have been made for the establishment of an anthropological museum at the University of Aberdeen. Several collections have already been presented to the University.

A SUBSCRIPTION has been opened in Scotland for erecting a stone over the tomb of Professor

Macgillivray, the ornithologist, in the New Calton cemetery, Edinburgh, and for founding a Macgillivray gold medal in Aberdeen University as a prize to the best student in zoology, botany or geology.

IT is stated in Nature that some recognition will shortly be made of the services rendered to geological science by the Rev. Thomas Wiltshire, professor emeritus of geology in King's College, London. Of late years Mr. Wiltshire's labors have not been of a nature to bring his name prominently before the public, but he has been toiling quietly as the honorary Secretary and Editor of the Paleontographical Society. That Society has now published fifty-two quarto annual volumes, and some thirty of these have been edited by Mr. Wiltshire. These volumes each contain forty or fifty plates of fossils, and two hundred or more pages of letter press, dealing with organic remains of all classes. Great credit is due to Mr. Wiltshire, and the members of the Paleontographical Society (of which Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., is President, and Mr. R. Etheridge, F.R.S., Treasurer) have decided to present him with a testimonial, towards which subscriptions (not limited to members of the Society) are now being received.

IT is stated that the French authorities are so gratified with the success of the wireless telegraphy demonstrations between Boulogne and the South Foreland that an attempt to telegraph from Paris is proposed, and that the Eiffel Tower will be the French terminal. The English terminal will remain at the South Foreland. The direct distance between the two points is about 230 miles.

WE have received the first part of the first volume of the Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences issued on April 14, 1899. It consists of the first annual report of the Secretary, Mr. G. K. Gilbert. This is an interesting account of the foundation of the Academy, including the events antecedent to its formation, most of which have been recorded in this JOURNAL. It is said that the Proceedings will be continued with the publication of scientific papers. THE Geological Society of Washington has issued the address of the retiring President, Mr. Arnold Hague, on Early Tertiary Vol

canoes of the Absaroka Range,' originally published in this JOURNAL, together with an abstract of the minutes of the Society for the years 1897 and 1898. In 1898 forty-one papers were presented, the average attendance at the meetings being thirty-five. The present officers of the Society are: President, Whitman Cross; Vice-Presidents, J. S. Diller, C. W. Hayes; Treasurer, M. R. Campbell; Secretaries, T. W. Stanton, David White; Members-atLarge of the Council, S. F. Emmons, Geo. P. Merrill, Bailey Willis, N. H. Darton, A. H. Brooks.

LORD KELVIN has just prepared a report on some interesting investigations made by Professor Archibald Barr and himself in Edinburgh, Bradford and Oldham on the subject of the destruction of town refuse. According to the London Times the report is not only of great interest to local authorities, but to the general public. In one instance he experimented on damp ashpit refuse containing a large proportion of night soil and vegetable matter from markets and shops. This was consumed without the slightest trace of smoke. In addition to this solution of the smoke difficulty the residual products proved to be of great commercial value. In another case the steam produced by the process of destruction was utilized for the driving of electric lighting machinery and other power purposes. No coal or coke whatever was employed, and in this instance also there was an entire absence of smoke. Lord Kelvin's report demonstrates that public bodies have no longer any excuse. for referring to waste products,' but have within their reach the means of turning the most unpromising kinds of refuse to a highly profitable account.

THE Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association will be held at Minneapolis, Minn., beginning October 31st, and continuing until November 4, 1899. The Executive Committee has selected the following topics for consideration: (1) The Pollution of Water Supplies; (2) The Disposal of Garbage and Refuse; (3) Animal Diseases and Animal Food; (4) Car Sanitation; (5) Steamship and Steamboat Sanitation; (6) The Eti

ology of Yellow Fever; (7) The Relation of Forestry to the Public Health; (8) Demography and Statistics in their Sanitary Relations; (9) The Causes and Prevention of Infectious Diseases; (10) Public Health Legislation; (11) The Cause and Prevention of Infant Mortality; (12) The Period during which Each Contagious Disease is Transmissible and the Length of Time for which each Patient is Dangerous to the Community; (13) Sanitation, with special reference to Drainage, Plumbing and Ventilation of Public and Private Buildings; (14) Method of International Arrangement for Protection against the Transmission of Infectious Diseases; (15) Disinfectants; (16) To Examine into the existing Sanitary Municipal Organizations of the Countries belonging to the Association with a view to Report upon those most successful in Practical Results; (17) Laboratories; (18) To define What Constitutes an Epidemic; (19) National Leper Home; (20) Revision of Classification of Diseases; (21) Dangers to the Public Health from Illuminating Gas Leakage.

A CORRESPONDENT of the London Times calls attention to a passage in The Spectator (No. 241, 1711) which is interesting in connection with wireless telegraphy and telegraphy in general. The passage read thus: "Strada in one of his Prolusions gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by the help of a certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it that if it touched two several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the other, though at never so great a distance, moved at the same time and in the same manner. He tells us that the two friends, being each of them possessed of one of these needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing it with the four and-twenty letters in the same manner as the hours of the day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the needles on each of these plates in such manner that it could move round without impediment so as to touch any of the four-and-twenty letters. Upon their separating from one another into distant countries they agreed to withdraw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain hour of the day and to converse with one another by means of this their invention. Accordingly when they were

some hundred miles asunder each of them shut himself up in his closet at the time appointed, and immediately cast his eye upon his dialplate. If he had a mind to write anything to his friend he directed his needle to every letter that formed the words which he had occasion for, making a little pause at the end of every word or sentence to avoid confusion. The friend, in the meanwhile, saw his own sympathetic needle moving of itself to every letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. By this means they talked together across a whole continent, and conveyed their thoughts to one another in an instant over cities or mountains, seas or deserts."

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS.

IN its session just closed the Legislature of Nebraska made provision for the University of Nebraska for the biennium ending March 31, 1901, as follows: University salaries, $230,000; University expenses (including U. S. funds for agricultural and mechanic arts), $172,500; buildings and other improvements, $93,500.

THE Queen has appointed the Earl of Kimberley, K.G., to be Chancellor of the University of London, in lieu of the late Lord Herschell.

THE University of Chicago has awarded eighty-one fellowships, of which the following are given in the sciences: mathematics, G. A. Bliss, H. Lloyd, W. Findlay, D. N. Lehmer, J. H. MacDonald; astronomy, C. E. Rood, W. S. Adams, A. C. Lunn; physics, H. O. Murfee, R. F. Earhart, C. W. Chamberlain, F. Reichmann; chemistry, H. E. Goldberg, W. McCracken, M. D. Slimmer, S. F. Acree; geology, W. W. Atwood, W. N. Logan, R. George, W. T. Lee, W. G. Tight; zoology, H. E. Davies, R. S. Lillie, F. M. Guyer, H. H. Newman; botany, A. C. Moore, B. E. Livingston, S. M. Coulter, F. M. Lyon; physiology, R. R. Rogers, W. E. Garrey, R. W. Webster; neurology, D. M. Shoemaker; sociology, R. G. Kimble, A. T. Freeman, A. D. Sorenson; anthropology, A. W. Dunn; pedagogy, W. A. Clark; philosophy and psychology, H. W. Stuart, H. B. Thompson, R. L. Kelly, H. H. Bawdin.

indicate, in a rough way, the actual relations of the atoms in space; yet, with all this, a most important part of the problem has been almost neglected. To use a biological expression, chemistry has been enormously developed on the morphological, and but little on the physiological side. Chemists have concerned themselves greatly with the products of chemical reactions, and but little with the nature of the reactions themselves. The molecule has been treated as a dead, rigid body is treated by the anatomist, but its study as a living, moving mass, filled with energy and capable of reacting by virtue of this energy, has been largely left to the future. Even as late as 1882 the German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond used the words which have since been in the mouth of every physical chemist:

"In contradistinction to modern chemistry, we may call physical chemistry the chemistry of the future."

Since 1882, thanks to the labors and inspiring influence of Ostwald, van't Hoff, Arrhenius, Nernst and others, physical chemistry is no longer the chemistry of the future merely, but of the present, and apart from the quickening influence which it is exerting in nearly all branches of chemistry proper, both pure and applied, we are beginning to perceive that we are entering a period in which chemistry will be of greater service to the allied sciences. Geological chemistry is showing signs of reviving under the stimulus of physico-chemical conceptions, and we are finding, too, that as physiological chemistry is not merely the chemistry of sugar, or urea, or albumin, but preeminently a science of moving and changing molecules, it can only progress by the aid of a knowledge of the laws of chemical energy.

The achievements of physical chemistry form, perhaps, the most interesting phase of the recent history of our science, but its

followers have spoken for themselves so often of late years, and have presented the subject so much better than I could do it, that I feel compelled to consider a perhaps humbler, but yet not unimportant, field of research, which, in a sense, may also be called a part of the chemistry of the future, the field of Inorganic Chemistry. The relations of physical and inorganic chemistry have recently been discussed by van't Hoff in his admirable address delivered last summer before the Society of German Scientists and Physicians, and I shall, therefore, limit myself to the consideration of a few points of a more strictly chemical nature, touching the relations of physical and inorganic chemistry only incidentally.

Not

The aim of physical chemistry will have been accomplished when it has established a mathematical equation which, by proper substitution, will enable us to predict the nature of every possible chemical system or reaction, and the properties, physical and chemical, of every possible element or compound. Until he has reached this chemical millennium, unless he will risk falling into the pit which has received so many philosophers in the past, the chemist must continue to advance by the route by which our understanding of every other branch of physical science has been reached. withstanding all that physical chemistry can do with this material at present in hand, the experimenter must long continue to take the short cut to knowledge and find out what his elements and compounds will do by first actually getting them in hand, by precipitation, filtration, distillation, crystallization and the like. It may be questioned whether our present knowledge of facts would ever suffice to enable us to predict, for example, a single atomic weight with accuracy, or to explain that wonderful relation between properties and atomic weights known as the Periodic Law. few enthusiastic physical chemists have

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