tain appropriateness. The German biographies are of course much better, though by no means free from errors, and there are many omissions. Thus Professor Lenard who has just now received a Nobel prize is not included. The book will doubtless be improved in subsequent editions; but even now it is decidedly useful to those who have relations with the public men and scholars of Germany.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
We regret to record the deaths of Professor Albert von Köllicker, the eminent anatomist and zoologist; of Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, formerly Wayneflete professor of physiology and regius professor of medicine at Oxford; of Dr. Gustave Dewalque, formerly professor of geology at Liege, and of Dr. E. Oustalet, professor of zoology in the Natural History Museum of Paris.
Dr. Henry S. Pritchett has resigned the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become president of the Carnegie Foundation for pensioning college professors.—Dr. Friedjof Nansen will shortly go to London as minister from Norway.—Dr. George H. Darwin, F.R.S., Plumian professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy at Cambridge, has been knighted by King Edward.—Lord Rayleigh has been elected president of the Royal Society in succsssion to Sir William Huggins.
The statue of Benjamin Silliman has been removed from its site on the old campus of Yale University, near the library, to a place between the Sloan and Kent laboratories.—A bust of the late Professor M. Nencki has been unveiled in the chemical department of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, St. Petersburg.—A memorial to Theodore Schwamm, regarded as the originator of the cell theory, is to be erected in his native birthplace, Reuss.
The Hayden memorial gold medal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, has been voted to Dr. Charles D. Walcott, director of the United States Geological Survey.—Medals were awarded by the recent Congress of Tuberculosis to Drs. Koch, of Berlin; Brouardel, of Paris; Bang, of Copenhagen; Biggs, of New York; Broadbent, of London; and von Schroetter, of Vienna.—The French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences has decided to award the Francois-Joseph Audiffred prize, of the value of $3,000, which is given in recompense of the most beautiful and greatest acts of self-devotion of whatever kind they may be, to Professor Calmette, director of the Pasteur Institute at Lille.
The following is a list of those to whom the Royal Society has this year awarded medals: The Copley medal to Professor Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendeléef, of St. Petersburg, for his contributions to chemical and physical science; A Royal medal to Professor John Henry Poynting, F.R.S., for his researches in physical science, especially in connection with the constant of gravitation and the theories of electrodynamics and radiation; A Royal medal to Professor Charles Scott Sherrington, F.R.S., for his researches on the central nervous system, especially in relation to reflex action; the Davy medal to Professor Albert Ladenburg, of Breslau, for his researches in organic chemistry, especially in connection with the synthesis of natural alkaloids; the Hughes medal to Professor Augusto Righi, of Bologna, on the ground of his experimental researches in electrical science.
