Doctor of Science on Professor J. Willard Gibbs, of Yale University.—The Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, and Dr. B. F. Galloway, chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, have received the degree of LL.D. from the Missouri State University.—Dr. Carlos Finlay, of Havana, eminent for his work on yellow fever, has been given the degree of Doctor of Science by Jefferson Medical College, from which he graduated in 1855.
The Senate has passed a bill authorizing the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries to establish a biological station on the Great Lakes.—Plans have been prepared for the erection of a bacteriological laboratory in Washington, under the control of the Marine Hospital service.—Yale University has received for the Sheffield Scientific School a new building for mineralogy, geology and physiography.—A new building, chiefly for surgery, is to be erected for the Johns Hopkins Medical School at a cost of $100,000.—Friends of Columbia University have purchased from the New York Hospital for $1,900,000 the two blocks of land facing the University. It is hoped that this land may be ultimately acquired for the use of the University.—The final appraisement of the estate of the late Jacob S. Rogers shows a value of $6,063,173. After deducting the costs of administration and the legacies it is estimated that the residuary estate which will go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art under the will is $5,547,922.60.—According to an official statement recently issued the endowment of the Nobel Foundation is about $7,500,000, and the value of each of the five prizes to be awarded at the close of the present year will be nearly $40,000.
At the annual meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, held on May 14, it was voted to award the 'Rumford Premium' to Professor George Ellery Hale, of the Yerkes Observatory, 'for his investigations in solar and stellar physics, and in particular for the invention and perfection of the spectro-heliograph.' It was also voted to appropriate the sum of $750 from the income of the Rumford Fund to be expended for the construction of a mercurial compression pump designed by Professor Theodore W. Richards and to be used in his research on the Thomson-Joule effect. An appropriation from the Rumford Fund was also made to Professor Arthur A. Noyes in aid of his research upon the effect of high temperatures upon the electrical conductivity of aqueous solutions.
In connection with the proposal to enlarge the Royal Society so as to include representatives of the historical, philological and moral sciences, or to establish a new academy for these sciences, Mr. Charles Waldstein, of King's College, Cambridge, has proposed the establishment of an Imperial British Academy of Arts and Sciences, which would include four sections as follows: The Royal Society for the natural and mathematical sciences, a new Royal Society of Humanites for the historical, philological and moral sciences, the present Royal Academy for painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts, and a new Royal Academy of literature and music.
