The first summer session of Columbia University, 1900, will open
July 2d, instruction beginning July 5th, and will continue till
August 10th. The work will be under the general direction of Prof.
Nicholas Murray Butler, and will be conducted by a large corps of
instructors, in eleven courses, of thirty lectures or other exercises
or their equivalent in laboratory or field work, each. The concluding
examinations will be held August 9th and 10th. Credits will be given
for courses pursued at the school in the requirements for a degree
at the university, and for a Teachers’ College diploma, and in the
examinations for teachers’ licenses in New York city.
* * * * *
An International Congress of Medical Electrology and Radiology has
been connected with the International Congress system of the Paris
Exposition, 1900, and will be held July 27th to August 1st. The
commission is composed of representative men from various universities,
institutions, and hospitals of France, with Prof. E. Doumer, 57 Rue
Nicolas Leblanc, Lille, as secretary.
* * * * *
A curious fall of “black snow,” which was observed at Molding, Austria,
at the beginning of the year, was found to consist largely of the
insects known as “glacier fleas,” which were supposed to have come
along with a violent snowstorm from some of the Alpine glaciers.
* * * * *
How to write 1900 in Roman numerals is a question of the day that
will have to be settled. Three ways are suggested by Mr. J. Fletcher
Little in the London Times, either of which is correct according to the
Roman system. They are MDCCCC, MDCD, and MCM. But when we reach the
year 1988, if we use the first of these methods we shall have to write
the formidable-looking formula MDCCCCLXXXVIII, whereas if we use the
third and shortest method, it will only be MCMLXXXVIII--and that is
long enough. The third method, therefore, which may be interpreted as
meaning one thousand plus another thousand lacking a hundred, seems to
be the simplest.
* * * * *
Dr. St. George Mivart, Professor of Biology in University College,
Kensington, died suddenly in London, April 1st, aged seventy-two years.
He was author of numerous scientific works, of treatises critical of
Darwinism and the theory of evolution, and of demonstrations of the
harmony of Roman Catholic dogma with proved scientific facts. His name
has been made prominent of late by his recantation of his previously
expressed views of the consistency of dogma with science, and the
correspondence with Cardinal Vaughan which grew out of it.
* * * * *
An International Congress of Ethnographical societies has been arranged
for by the Ethnographic Society of Paris, to be held in Paris, August
26th to September 1st.
* * * * *
The Wollaston medal of the Royal Geological Society, London, for the
most important geological discoveries, has this year been awarded to
Mr. Grove K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey. This is
the third time the medal has been awarded to a citizen of this country.
* * * * *
Among the recently announced publications of John Wiley and Sons
we notice a third edition, revised and enlarged, of Allen Hazen’s
Filtration of Public Water Supplies; a new and revised edition of
Olof’s Text-book of Physiological Chemistry; The Cost of Living as
Modified by Sanitary Science, by Ellen H. Richards; Examination of
Water (Chemical and Biological), by William P. Mason; and the fifth
edition of H. Van F. Furman’s Manual of Practical Assaying.
* * * * *
In a method of sterilization of water by means of ozone, described by
Dr. Weyl, of Berlin, at the German Scientific Conference, 1899, water
is pumped to the top of a tower and allowed to flow freely over stones,
meeting as it falls a current of air charged with ozone. The process
appears to be likewise effectual in purifying peat and bog water, the
solution of the iron salts of humic acid being decomposed and oxidized,
and the brown color disappearing in consequence. The method, it is
said, can be advantageously used in connection with filter beds.
* * * * *
Our death list this month of men known in science is large. It
includes the names of M. Philippe Salmon, archæologist, subdirector of
l’École d’Anthropologie of Paris, President of the Ministry of Public
Instruction’s Commission on Megalithic Monuments and author of numerous
monographs on subjects of his studies, in Paris, aged seventy-six
years; Dr. C. T. R. Luther, director of the Observatory at Bilk, near
Dusseldorf, aged seventy-eight years. He discovered twenty-one of the
minor planets and calculated the orbits of them all, as well as those
of several other bodies; Dr. C. Piazzi Smith, formerly Astronomer Royal
of Scotland, author of studies of the amount of heat given by the moon
to the earth, and of some famous speculations upon the construction
and purposes of the Great Pyramid as an exponent of the standard of
measurement, February 21st, aged eighty-one years; M. Émile Blanchard,
dean of the section of Anatomy and Physiology of the French Academy
of Sciences; Captain Bernadières, member of the French Bureau des
Longitudes and Director of the Observatory School of Montsouri for
Officers of the Marine, who had fulfilled several astronomical and
geodesic commissions; Dr. Hermann Schaeffer, honorary professor of
Mathematics and Physics at Jena, aged seventy-six years; Leander J.
McCormick, founder of the McCormick Observatory at the University of
Virginia; President James H. Smart, of Purdue University, Lafayette,
Ind.; General A. A. Tillo, Vice-President of the Russian Geographical
Society, founder of an exact physical geography of Russia, based on
scientific data, and of many contributions on the science, at St.
Petersburg, January 11th, aged sixty years; Prof. E. Beltrami, of the
University of Rome (Mathematical Physics), President of the Accademia
dei Lincei, and correspondent of the Paris Academy of Sciences; M.
Emmanuel Liais, Mayor of Cherbourg, France, also distinguished for
useful and very meritorious work in Astronomy and Physics, aged
seventy-four years; Dr. Hans Bruno, Professor of Mineralogy and
Geology in the University of Dresden, Saxony, distinguished for his
investigations of the Paleozoic, Cretaceous, and Permian rocks of
Saxony, at Dresden, January 28th, aged eighty-five years; and William
Thorpe, one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society of Chemical Industry.