protection from the fierce gales that sweep across the bay in the typhoon season, and it is now being developed as a park. It is to be hoped, however, that a botanical garden and experiment station will be established at a higher elevation. Since the organization of the Bureaus of Agriculture and Forestry last year, considerable progress has been made in the study of the botany of the islands, herbaria containing about 5,000 specimens having been made. The New York Botanical Garden has sent a special agent to the islands, and it is probable that more knowledge will be secured of the botany of the Philippines during the next ten years than during the preceding four hundred years of Spanish rule.
HENRY BARKER HILL.
We reproduce above a portrait of Henry Baker Hill, whose death was a serious loss to Harvard University and the science of chemistry and who died at the comparatively early age of fifty-four years. Hill inherited his intellectual and academic interests, his father being president of Harvard University, and he early selected chemistry as his special field, his commencement oration being entitled 'The New Philosophy of Chemistry.' He was a student under and assistant to Professor Josiah P. Cooke, who first introduced laboratory methods of instruction, and when he himself became professor and director of the laboratory, he maintained its high traditions. Hill's research work was very special in character, being almost exclusively confined to the group of substances derived, from furfurol; but the thoroughness and exactness of these investigations take high place as contributions to the development of organic chemistry.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
We regret to record the deaths, during the past month of Dr. H. Carrington Bolton, of Washington, well-known as a chemist and bibliographer; of Dr. Frank Russell, of Harvard University, a student of anthropology; of Dr. Cloudsley Rutter, of the Bureau of Fisheries; of Mr. Marcus Baker, of the U. S. Geological Survey and assistant secretary of the Carnegie Institution; of Professor Arthur Allin, head of the Department of Psychology and Education at the University of Colorado, and of Dr. George J. Engelmann, the eminent physician and gynecologist. The Popular Science Monthly has very recently published contributions from Dr. Bolton, Dr. Engelmann and Dr. Rutter.
The following is a list of those to whom the Royal Society has this year awarded medals-The Copley medal to Professor Eduard Suess for his eminent geological services, and especially for the original researches and conclusions published in his great work 'Das Antlitz der Erde.' A royal medal to Sir David Gill for his researches in solar and stellar parallax, and his energetic direction of the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. A royal medal to Mr. Horace T. Brown for his work on the chemistry of the carbohydrates and on the assimilation of carbonic acid by green plants. The Davy medal to M. Pierre and Madame Curie for their researches on radium. The Hughes medal to Professor Wilhelm Hittorf for his long continued experimental researches on the electric discharge in liquids and gases.
