Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/388

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384
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

horizontally on either side of the arch in the photograph denotes high water mark. The railings give a scale.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.

We record with regret the death of Dr. John Bell Hatcher, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg; of Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, a voluminous writer on medical subjects and chairman in 1845 of a committee whose report led to the establishment of the American Medical Association; of M. Anatole de Barthélemy, the eminent French archeologist; of M. Léauté Sarrau, professor of mechanics in the Polytechnic School of the University of Paris, and of Dr. Fedor Bredichin, professor of astronomy at St. Petersburg.

Dr. W. H. Maxwell, superintendent of schools in New York City, has been elected president of the National Educational Association.—Dr. Louis S. McMurtry, of Louisville, Ky., has been elected president of the American Medical Association for the meeting to be held next year at Portland, Ore.—Professor George Darwin, of Cambridge, will succeed Mr. Balfour, the British premier, as president of the British Association, and will preside over the meeting to be held in South Africa next year.

Professor Simon Newcomb, U.S.N. (retired), has been elected corresponding member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.—The honor of knighthood has been conferred on Professor James Dewar, the chemist, by King Edward.—The new chemical laboratory of the University of Utrecht, named in honor of Professor J. H. van't Hoff, has been formally opened. On the occasion Professor van't Hoff was given the honorary doctorate by the university.

President E. A. Alderman, of Tulane Univeristy, has been elected president of the University of Virginia. The University of Virginia, in accordance with the democratic ideas of Jefferson, has hitherto been governed by a board of visitors and the faculty without a president.—Dr. Charles Schuchert, of the U. S. National Museum, has been appointed professor of historical geology in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and curator of the geological collections in succession to the late Professor Beecher.—Dr. Roux has been elected director of the Pasteur Institute in the room of the late M. Duclaux. Drs. Chamberland and Metchnikoff have been elected sub-directors of the institute.

At the alumni dinner of the State University of Iowa, the former students of Professor Samuel Calvin, to the number of over two thousand, united in the commemoration of the completion of his thirtieth year in a professorship at that institution. The recognition took the form of a costly silver loving-cup, designed especially for the purpose of symbolizing the scientific achievements of the recipient. The cup is a classic Greek vase, sixteen inches in height, and stands on a base of serpentine five inches high. It is adorned with casts taken directly from fossils, with a drainage-map of Iowa, with crossed geological hammers, a microscope, and the more conventional spray of laurel, owl of wisdom and torch of learning,—all in relief. One side bears an appropriate inscription in raised letters. Professor Calvin was elected to the chair of natural history in Iowa's university thirty years ago. The chair has since been subdivided into four distinct departments. Professor Calvin retaining the department of geology. He has been state geologist of Iowa (luring the last twelve years.