The Tomb of James Smithson in the Smithsonian Institution.
States accepted the bequest, which amounted to $550,000, and after long discussion within and without congress the institution was established, which has so completely carried out the wishes of its founder.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
We regret to record the death of Nathanial Southgate Shaler, professor of geology at Harvard University; of James Mills Peirce, Perkins professor of astronomy and mathematics at Harvard University, and of Robert Ogden Doremus, emeritus professor of chemistry at the College of the City of Xew York.
Professor E. C. Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory, has been elected a corresponding member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.—Dr. Henry F. Osborn, professor of zoology at Columbia University, and curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, has been elected a foreign member of the Linnean Society of London.—Dr. William Osier, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, has been elected a member of the Athenæum Club, under the provisions which empower the annual election of nine persons 'of distinguished eminence in science, literature, the arts, or for public services.'
Father J. G. Hagen, S.J., professor of astronomy in Georgetown University, and director of the observatory, has been offered the directorship of the Vatican Observatory.—Mr. Arthur Eddington, B.A., B.Sc. (Manchester), of Trinity College, Cambridge, senior wrangler in 1904, has been appointed chief assistant in the Royal Observatory. Greenwich.
The American Philosophical Society is holding as we go to press a meeting in memory of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, its founder. In addition to the scientific program, which includes papers by Sir George Darwin and Professor Hugo de Vries, there are a number of special addresses. Professor Edward L. Nichols, of Cornell Univer-
