Kimberley: 'Diamonds,' Sir William Crookes; 'Bearing of Engineering on Mining,' Professor Porter. Bulawayo: Zimbabwe,' Mr. Randall-MacIver.

Mr.

The president's address to the association will be delivered at Cape Town, on August 15, and at Johannesburg, on August 30. G. W. Lamplugh's report on the geology of the Victoria Falls will take the form of an afternoon address to Section C at Johannesburg.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS.

THE American Medical Association met last week in Portland, Ore., with an attendance of about 1,500 members. Dr. Louis S. McMurtrie, of Louisville, Ky., delivered the presidential address, taking as his subject The

American Medical Association, its Origin,

Progress and Purpose.'

M. CURIE has been elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences.

DR. ADOLF WULLNER, of Aachen, has been made an honorary doctor of engineering by the Technical Institute of Dantzig.

M. COMBES, recently premier of France, has returned to the practise of medicine in his native village.

THE steamship Roosevelt, which will carry Commander R. E. Peary to the Arctic regions, sailed from New York City on July 16.

PROFESSOR W. M. DAVIS, of Harvard University, sailed from New York, July 15, for England, to accompany the British Association to South Africa. The party will leave Southampton on July 29, and return in midOctober.

THE DE MORGAN medal of the London Mathematical Society has been awarded to Dr. H. F. Baker, F.R.S.

THE Bissett-Hawkins gold medal of the Royal College of Physicians has been presented to Sir Patrick Manson for the services he has rendered to science and humanity by his researches on tropical diseases.

THE Senn medal of the American Medical Association for an essay on some surgical topic has been awarded to Dr. John L. Yates, of Chicago.

THE British Meteorological Office, which corresponds to our Weather Bureau, has been reorganized, and placed under the charge of a committee. The appropriations for the service is £15,300, and the salary of the director is £1,000. The committee is as follows: Mr. W. N. Shaw, Sc.D., F.R.S., director; Captain Arthur M. Field, R.N., hydrographer to the navy; Captain A. J. G. Chalmers, professional officer of the Marine Department, Board of Trade; Mr. W. Somerville, Sc.D., assistant secretary of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries; Professor G. H. Darwin, F.R.S., University of Cambridge; Professor Arthur Schuster, F.R.S., University of Manchester; Mr. G. L. Barstow, nominated by the Treasury.

AMONG those who are the recipients of the king's birthday honors Nature notices the following: Lord Rayleigh, O.M., F.R.S., has been made a privy councilor; knighthoods have been conferred upon Professor T. McCall Anderson, of the University of Glasgow; Mr. E. W. Brabrook, C.B., formerly registrar of Friendly Societies; Dr. A. B. W. Kennedy, F.R.S., emeritus professor of engineering and mechanical technology at University College, London, and president of the admiralty committee on machinery designs; Dr. Boverton Redwood; and Dr. W. J. Smyly, president of the Royal College of Physicians, Ireland. Colonel D. Bruce, F.R.S., has been made a Knight Commander of the Bath. Dr. W. T. Prout, principal medical officer, colony of Sierra Leone, and Dr. J. W. Robertson, late commissioner of agriculture and dairying of the Dominion of Canda, have been made C.M.G.'s. The honor of Knight Bachelor has been conferred upon Dr. E. S. Stevenson, member of the medical council of the Cape of Good Hope; and Mr. Philip Watts, F.R.S., director of naval construction, is made an ordinary member of the civil division of the second division, or Knight Commander, of the Order of the Bath.

STUDENTS of Sibley College, Cornell University, have ordered designs made for a bronze tablet, which they will erect in memory of the late Dr. R. H. Thurston, formerly director of the college. The tablet is being designed

by Professor H. S. Gutsall, of the College of Architecture, and will be erected in a stone niche of the new Thurston Hall of Engineering, now in process of construction.

A BUST of the electrical inventor, Charles J. Van Depoele, has been placed in the Lynn Public Library.

MR. ROLLO APPLEYARD has presented to the Royal Institution a portrait of the late Professor J. D. Everett, the physicist.

DR. EDWARD STICKNEY WOOD, since 1876 professor of chemistry in the Harvard Medical School, died on July 11, at the age of fiftynine years.

DR. J. M. CUNNINGHAM, formerly surgeongeneral of India, has died at the age of seventy

one years.

DR. HERMANN VON WISSMANN, the African explorer, has died at the age of fifty-one years. PROFESSOR HERMANN NOTHNAGEL, professor of clinical medicine in Berlin, and an eminent authority on the subject, died on July 7, at the age of sixty-four years.

PROFESSOR VON MILULICZ, professor of surgery at Breslau, and surgeon-general of the Prussian army, died on June 14.

PROFESSOR JACQUES ELISÉE RECLUS, professor of geography at the new University of Brussels, has died at the age of eighty-five

years.

THE U. S. National Museum is about to receive a large collection of South American moths, the gift of Mr. Wm. Schaus, of Twickenham, England, and New York. This is one of the finest collections from this region extant, containing some 60,000 specimens and hundreds of types, mostly the result of Mr. Schaus's personal collecting.

THE west pavilion of the stone building, known during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition as the Palace of Fine Arts, was formally opened on July 1 to the public as the St. Louis Museum, embracing in the thirtysix rooms, collections of exhibits from forty different countries, valued collectively at $500,000.

WE learn from the Electrical World that the United Engineering Building Committee

voted a contract last week for $795,000 to the Wells Brothers Company, of New York City, for the construction of the new building under the Carnegie gift, on West Thirty-ninth Street, New York. This contract does not include anything for electrical plant, wiring, steam heating, etc., but deals solely with the construction of the edifice. The lots have already been excavated, and work will begin. without delay. October, 1906, is spoken of as the time of completion and readiness.

DEARBORN OBSERVATORY at Northwestern University was damaged by fire on July 15 to the extent of $1,000. None of the instruments was harmed.

THE Bureau of Forestry, to which the control of the national forest reserves have been transferred, will hereafter be known as the forest service.

IT is stated in the Electrical World that a conference has been called by the Reichsanstalt as a preliminary to the meeting of the International Commission on Electrical Units and Standards. To this conference the Reichsanstalt has invited the heads of bureaus in America, England, Belgium, Austria-Hungary, also Lord Rayleigh, Professors Kohlrausch, M. Mascart and Carhart, of the University of Michigan. The conference will be held in Berlin, probably the latter part of October, the exact date not having as yet been fixed. It seems probable that the commission will be called together within the next two years.

Ar a meeting of a number of members of Parliament on July 4, the following resolution was unanimously passed: "That this meeting, being satisfied of the necessity of further state aid to the National Physical Laboratory, at Teddington, as regards both equipment and. maintenance, requests the chairman and conveners of this meeting to prepare and present a memorial to the chancellor of the Exchequer asking for such additional aid, and that the memorial be signed by members here present or who, being absent, may be in sympathy with its objects."

THE University of Colorado, at Boulder, has been able to acquire, through the gener

osity of Hon. Simon Guggenheim, of Denver, a large collection of birds' eggs and nests gathered by the late Dennis Gale, of Boulder. The collection embraces eggs of nearly all the species known in the vicinity of the university, and in many cases there are specimens taken from nests at six or more different altitudes. The collection also contains many nests from the sub-alpine and alpine districts which are seldom found in museums.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS.

THE temporary building occupied by the veterinary department of the University of Pennsylvania was destroyed by fire on July 6, entailing a loss of upward of $10,000. The university authorities are about to construct a building for the veterinary department at a cost of $200,000.

THE University of Illinois has organized a School of Education, the purpose of which is to provide for special preparation of three classes of workers in the public school system, namely, first, the high school teacher, including the high school principal; second, the supervisor of special subjects, such as manual training, domestic science, music, drawing and physical training, and third, the school superintendent. The director of the school is Dr. Edwin Grant Dexter, and the faculty includes thirty-one instructors of various academic ranks. Besides this, the five normal school presidents of the state, together with Hon. Alfred Bayliss, state superintendent of public instruction, constitute a board of special lecturers, who, during the year, will discuss at the university topics of educational interest.

THE University of Southern California, at Los Angeles, has begun the erection of a twostory north wing and a similar south wing to the building used by the College of Liberal Arts. The improvements will cost about $50,000. The north wing will be devoted mainly to the biological sciences. It will add 110 feet of north light to the present laboratories and comprises a zoological laboratory, 45 x 34 ft.; a laboratory for physiology and bacteriology, 46 x 26 ft., and a botanical labo

ratory, 45 x 30 ft. Besides these there will be a special laboratory 16 x 13 ft., an office, and a lecture room with a seating capacity of 200. Apparatus costing about $2,000 will be added to the present equipment. The south wing will be equipped in a similar manner for the departments of chemistry and physics.

THE daily papers state that Attorney-General Mayer has decided to bring an action to deprive Cornell University of 30,000 acres of timber land between Tupper and Upper Saranac Lakes, in the Adirondacks. He will endeavor also to break a contract whereby Cornell has permitted the Brooklyn Cooperage Company to cut timber on the tract. This tract was purchased by Cornell with $165,000 out of an appropriation of $500,000 made by the legislature of 1898 for a forestry experiment, to last thirty years. Governor Odell in 1903 declined to permit any more money to go out for the experiment, and that came to an end.

DR. NICHOLAS SENN has been elected professor of surgery in the University of Chicago.

PROFESSOR H. B. DATES, dean of the engineering school of the University of Colorado, has accepted a professorship of electrical engineering at the Case School of Applied Sci

ences.

MR. CHARLES BROOKS, assistant in botany in the University of Missouri, has been appointed instructor in botany in the College of Agriculture of New Hampshire.

DR. WILLIAM I. CHAMBERLAIN, president of the Arcot Mission College in India, has accepted the chair of logic and mental philosophy in Rugers College.

MISS ANN REBECCA TORRENCE, for the past two years assistant in botany in Wellesley College, has been appointed supervisor of the fifth and sixth grades and teacher of nature study in the State Normal School, New Paltz, New York.

DR. EUGEN GRANDMOUGIN has been appointed professor of chemistry in the Polytechnic Institute of Zurich in the room of Professor E. Bamberger, who has retired, owing to ill-health.

́sources, and for the diffusion of medical knowledge. Closely related to these ennobling purposes is that social instinct of our profession, which would elevate and be elevated by interchange of views resulting from common experiences, and by mingling together in pleasant friendly intercourse. Happily our present meeting is held under ideal conditions for the exercise of all the functions of such an organization. Perfect harmony prevails. The differences

which at times have divided us have all been satisfactorily adjusted; and we are today as one man in our united effort to advance the science of medicine, to enlarge the scope of its beneficence and to promote the welfare of our profession.

Since our meeting at Atlantic City one year ago, many of our members have ceased their labors and passed to the great beyond. The list is a long one. Among the number is that of Nathan Smith Davis. He was one of the founders of this association, an ex-president; a member of the board of trustees, the first editor of the Journal, and for years a power for good in its affairs. He lived beyond the time allotted by the psalmist, and all his years were filled with labor and with honor. will not undertake at this time to estimate adequately his great services, or appropriately to pay tribute to his memory. This will be done later in the session by one better prepared than I to eulogize our departed leader.

I.

At our last session, Dr. B. C. Pennington, of Atlantic City, was chairman of the committee of arrangements. He was honored He was honored with the fourth vice-presidency in recognition of his ability, his high professional standing, and his devoted services to this association. His name, too, is now found among the year's honored dead. A cultured gentleman, a learned and accomplished physician, his memory will ever re

main as an inspiration for high ideals and noble endeavor.

EARLY YEARS.

When the American Medical Association was organized in 1846 it is doubtful if there were more than 25,000 physicians in the entire United States of America. It was organized as a representative body, composed of delegates from affiliated societies, colleges and hospitals throughout the states. It was a body of delegates from all state, district, county and other medical societies which adopted the code of ethics of the national association. The apportionment of delegates was on a basis of one for every ten members of the societies represented. For a number of years the delegate body thus constituted was not too large for the discussion of important subjects and the ready transaction of business.

With the rapid increase in population, the admission of new states to the union, and the settlement of new territories, came a vast increase of physicians, with a corresponding multiplication of state and county societies. Without change in the apportionment of delegates, the national association developed into a body too large and unwieldy for the transaction of business. Indeed, during the latter years under the original system of organization, practically every member in attendance on the annual sessions was a delegate. While the work of the sections was carried on with increasing excellence, the important functions relating to legislative and other matters, belonging to a great national organization of the medical profession, were neglected. The general sessions brought together hundreds of delegates, forming a convention so large that thorough discussion of important questions and judicious action on the same became practically impossible. Moreover, the delegates attending the annual sessions