his publications have covered a wide field. His book on 'Sight' is the best English treatise on this subject; he published standard works on geology and recently a work on zoology. His special papers on these subjects and on education and philosophy are numerous and valuable. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of the Geological Society of America. He died in the Yosemite Valley on July 6; it seems fitting that death should have come suddenly in the midst of the mountains that he studied and loved. A biographical sketch of Joseph Le Conte, with a portrait, was published in The Popular Science Monthly for January, 1878.
SCIENTIFIC NEWS.
Dr. John Fiske, eminent for his contributions to the theory of evolution and to American history and widely known for his popular writings and lectures, died on July 4. We regret also to record the death of Professor Peter Guthrie Tait, who, for forty years, held the chair of natural philosophy at Edinburgh and made important contributions to physical science.
A committee, Consisting of Professors Ira Remsen, J. S. Ames and W. H. Welch, has been appointed at the Johns Hopkins University to arrange a memorial to the late Professor Henry A. Rowland.
M. Laveran, who discovered the malaria parasite, has been elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences in the section of medicine, and M. Zeiller a member in the section of botany.—The following fifteen candidates have been elected members of the Royal Society: Professor Alfred William Alcock, Mr. Frank Watson Dyson, Mr. Arthur John Evans, Professor John Walter Gregory, Captain Henry Bradwardine Jackson, Mr. Hector Munro Macdonald, Mr. James Mansergh, Professor Charles James Martin, Major Roland Ross, Professor William Schlich, Professor Arthur Smithells, Mr. Michael Rodgers, Mr. Oldfield Thomas, Mr. William Watson, Mr. William Cecil Dampier Whetham, and Mr. Arthur Smith Woodward.
Professor James Dewar, the eminent chemist, has been elected president of the British Association to follow Professor A. W. Rücker, and will preside at the Belfast meeting in 1902. Professor A. S. Packard, who has held since 1878 the chair of zoology and geology at Brown University, has been elected a foreign member of the Linnean Society of London.
Professor William James, of Harvard University, gave his course of Gilford Lectures on the psychology of religion at Edinburgh during May.—Professor J. H. van't Hoff, of the University of. Berlin, gave in June limited number of lectures on physical chemistry at the University of Chicago.—Dr. William Z. Ripley, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been invited to deliver the second Huxley Memorial Lecture before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. The first lecture was given last year by Lord Avebury, and was published in this Journal.
