persons. A group of buildings in keeping with the dignity and importance of agriculture in our national economy and significant of the service of the Department of Agriculture to the country at large, is greatly to be desired. A year from now congress will probably be asked to provide further funds, so that the administration building (estimated to cost $1,000,000) and possibly other laboratory buildings may be erected.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
We regret to announce the deaths of Dr. Charles Emerson Beecher, professor of historical geology at Yale University and a member of the governing board of the Sheffield Scientific School; of Dr. Emil Alexander de Schweinitz, chief of the Biochemic Division, U. S. Department of Agriculture; of Arthur William Palmer, D.Sc. (Harvard), head of the Department of Chemistry of the University of Illinois, and of Miss Anna Winlock, computer and assistant in the Harvard College Observatory.
Dr. David Duncan, having been entrusted by the late Mr. Herbert Spencer with the writing of his biography, will be obliged to persons who may possess letters from him of value if they will kindly lend them for the purpose of such biograpny. All letters addressed to Dr. D. Duncan, care of H. R. Tedder, Esq., secretary, the Athenaeum, Pall-mall, London, S. W., will be carefully preserved and returned in due course to their owners. Mr. Spencer's autobiography will be published by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., on March 25.
The steamship Princess Irene, bringing the remains of James Smithson, arrived in New York on January 20. These were transferred to the Dolphin of the U. S. Navy and taken to Washington. They have been deposited in the Smithsonian Institution until arrangements can be made for suitable burial in the grounds of the institution and the erection of a monument. The remains were brought to this country by Dr. A. Graham Bell, at whose instance the regents arranged for the removal, owing to the fact that the English cemetery at Genoa in which Smithson was buried was to be abandoned.
At the annual meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society on February 12, Ambassador Choate received the society's gold medal on behalf of Professor George E. Hale, of the Yerkes Observatory.—The Lalande prize in astronomy has been conferred upon Director W. W. Campbell, of the Lick Observatory, by the Paris Academy of Sciences.—The French minister of public instruction and fine arts has conferred the degree of officer of public instruction upon Dr. Lester F. Ward for his scientific and sociological works.
