emulsion having been provided by the manufacturers. The faintness of the comet on the plate of September 17 was due to the poor sky, and not to any change in the comet's brightness. The brightest star shown in the pictures, near the left-hand edge, slightly above the center, is of magnitude 8.7, or about ten times fainter than the limit of naked-eye visibility. Stars at least as faint as the seventeenth magnitude, or twenty-five thousand times fainter than naked-eye visibility, are shown on the original negatives, and the comet's brightness must have been considerably less than this, more accurate determinations being now in progress at the hands of Mr. Parkhurst. The comet was first observed visually by Professor Burnham, with the forty inch telescope, on September 15. It was also observed visually by Professor Barnard on September 17 and several subsequent nights. Professor Barnard's visual estimate of the comet's brightness at his last observation before the moonlight interfered, on the early morning of September 27, was that it was of magnitude 14 or 14.5. His measures indicated a diameter of about 10", but the object was without definite boundary.
The comet will be visible to the naked eye early next year and will attain its greatest brightness in the month of May.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the death of Dr. Washington Irving Stringham, professor of mathematics in the University of California; of Dr. Leonard Pearson, dean of the Veterinary School the University of Pennsylvania, and of professor Anton Dohrn, the eminent zoologist, founder and director of the Naples Zoological Station.
Dr. A. Lawrence Lowell was installed as president of Harvard University on October 6 and Dr Ernest Fox Nichols was installed as president of Dartmouth College on October 14. The inaugural addresses, which are devoted to the condition of the American college are printed in Science for October 15.
Dr. Edmund C. Sanford, A.B. (California, '83), Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins, '88), professor of experimental psychology in Clark University, has been elected president of Clark College to succeed the late Carroll D. Wright.—Dr. J. F. Anderson has been appointed
