SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
We record with regret the death of Professor E. J. Marey, the eminent French physiologist; of Dr. Wilhelm Hiss, professor of anatomy at Leipzig; of Mr. Robert McLachlan, the well-known British entomologist; of Dr. George Johnston Allman, professor of mathematics in Queen's College, Galway; of Wilhelm von Siemens, the German electrical engineer, and of Professor William Henry Pettee, professor of mineralogy, economic geology and mining at the Universty of Michigan.
At the jubilee celebrations of the University of Wisconsin the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on a number of delegates, including Henry Prentiss Armsby, director of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station; Thomas C. Chamberlin, professor of geology, Unversity of Chicago; Professor W. G. Farlow, professor of botany, Harvard University; Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Carnegie Institution; the Hon. James Wilson, secretary of agriculture; Robert S. Woodward, dean of the faculty of pure science, Columbia University; F. P. Mall, professor of anatomy, Johns Hopkins University; E. L. Mark, professor of anatomy, Harvard University, and S. L. Penfield, professor of mineralogy, Yale University.
Professor Charles S. Howe was inaugurated as president of Case School of Applied Science, at Cleveland, Ohio, on May 11. President Ira Remsen, of Johns Hopkins University, spoke on behalf of the universities; President H. S. Pritchett, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on behalf of the technical schools; John R. Freeman, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, on behalf of the technical societies; and President Charles Franklin Thwing, of Western Reserve University, on behalf of the colleges of Ohio. President Howe's inaugural address followed. Mr. John D. Rockefeller has given the Case School $200,000 to be used for building and equipping laboratories for physics and mining engineering.
Columbia University has conferred its doctorate of science on Professor Hugo de Vries, the eminent botanist of the University of Amsterdam, whose work on the origin of species is described in the present number of the Monthly.—The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Rumford medal to Professor E. F. Nichols, of Columbia University, for his researches on radiation.—The Chemical Society of London has elected as foreign members Professor E. W. Morley, of the Western Reserve University; and Professor F. W. Clarke, of the U. S. Geological Survey.
The new medical laboratories of the University of Pennsylvania, erected at a cost of $700,000, were dedicated on June 10.—The New York legislature has appropriated $250,000 for the erection of a building for the College of Agriculture at Cornell University.—The main building of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y., was destroyed by fire on June 9.—The corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology voted that the executive committee ascertain whether any arrangement can be made with Harvard University for a combination of effort in technical education such as will substantially preserve the organization, control, traditions and name of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
