but by his personal charm. He was social by nature, keenly humorous, warm and faithful in his attachments, full of the zest of life. He was profoundly modest and seemed never to know how high his abilities were estimated by others. He never quarrelled, but was for every good cause he championed a good fighter. Perhaps his most distinguishing trait was his remarkable combination of keen practical sense in the use of means with enthusiasm in the pursuit of ideal aims. With all his buoyant vitality, with all his eager interest in men and affairs, he was essentially an idealist, who won the love and admiration of many friends both in Europe and America."
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the deaths of Dr. Herman Knapp, professor emeritus of ophthalmology in Columbia University; of Dr. Charles Stedman Bull, professor of ophthalmology in the medical department of Cornell University; of Mr. T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., formerly professor of geology at Sandhurst; of Major George Lamb, director of the Pasteur Institute of India, and of Dr. Pehr Olsson-Seffer, botanist of the Mexican government, murdered by brigands in the Mexican insurrection.
At the meeting of the National Academy of Sciences on April 20, the following were elected to membership: Edward Emerson Barnard, astronomer, "Yerkes Observatory, Williams Bay, Wis.; Edward Burr Van Meek, professor of mathematics. University of Wisconsin; John Filmore Hayford, director of the College of Engineering, Northwestern University; Edwin Herbert Hall, professor of physics. Harvard University; Julius Oscar Steiglitz, professor of chemistry. University of Chicago; Bertram Borden Boltwood, professor of radio-chemistry, Yale University; James Furman Kemp, professor of geology, Columbia University; Arthur Louis Day, director of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution; Robert Aimer Harper, professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin. Foreign associates were elected as follows: Professor Ernest Rutherford, University of Manchester, England; Professor Vito Volterra, University of Rome, Italy. At the annual dinner of the academy on April 19 the Draper Gold Medal was presented to Mr. C. G. Abbot, of the Smithsonian Institution, for his researches on the infra-red region of the solar spectrum and his accurate measurements, by improved devices, of the solar "constant" of radiation.
Sir J. J. Thomson, Cavendish professor of experimental physics in the University of Cambridge, and Dr. D. Hilbert, professor of mathematics at Göttingen, have been elected corresponding members of the Paris Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Frederic A. Lucas, curator in chief of the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute, and formerly curator of the U. S. National Museum, has been elected director of the American Museum of Natural History.—Dr. Elmer Ellsworth Brown, U. S. Commissioner of Education, has been elected chancellor of New York University.
