gorgonian. The photograph was taken while the fish was in rapid movement. The expanded polyps may be seen on the gorgonian just above the fish and elsewhere. The lower picture shows a group of parrot fishes, of at least three species, and several surgeons against a background of branching gorgonians on a ledge of rock. Near the center is a blue and yellow-striped grunt, Hæmulon flavolineatum. At the left of this is a blue parrot-fish, Callyodon cœruleus. At the right of the grunt is a green parrot-fish, Callyodon vetula, about eighteen inches long. Beneath the green parrot is a mottled parrot-fish (Sparisoma?). Above the grunt is a second mottled parrot and to the left of this a third. At the extreme left are two surgeons, Hepatus hepatus; a third is seen below the green parrot. Above the green parrot, in the background, is a purple sea fan, Rhipidoglossa. In most of the fish the details of the markings and the outlines of the scales are clearly shown in the original photographs.
Subaquatic photographs such as these show a lack of distinctness which appears to be due to the turbidity of even the clearest water and to reflected light. But, as Professor Reighard points out, the lack of distance and flatness of the objects are truthful representations of the conditions that actually obtain. From the artistic point of view, they can not be regarded, therefore, as defects, though from the scientific point of view they place limitations on subaquatic photography.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the death of M. Antoine Henri Becquerel, the eminent French physicist, and of Dr. Friedrich Paulsen, professor of philosophy at Berlin.
Professor C. O. Whitman, head of the department of zoology in the University of Chicago, has resigned the directorship of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass., which he has held for the past twenty years. Professor Frank R. Lillie, of the University of Chicago, the assistant director, has been elected to the directorship.—Mr. F. J. Seaver, assistant botanist of the North Dakota Agricultural College, has been appointed director of laboratories in the New York Botanical Garden.—Professor Rufus I. Cole, of the Johns Hopkins University, has accepted the directorship of the Research Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute of New York City.
By the will of the late Senator William F. Villas the University of Wisconsin will ultimately receive his entire estate, valued at between two and three million dollars. By the provisions of the will, Mrs. Villas receives the income during her lifetime, and after her death her daughter receives $30,000 a year. After the property is given to the university, part of the income will be reserved until the principal becomes $30,000,000. The will provides for the erection of a Henry Villas Theater, and for the establishment of ten professorships, each with a salary of not less than $8,000, nor more than $10,000 a year.—By the will of Frederick Cooper Hewitt, Yale University receives $500,000; the New York Post-graduate School and Hospital $2,000,000, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art $1,500,000 and the residue of the estate.—An anonymous gift of $100,000 has been made to the Vienna Academy of Sciences for the establishment of a "Radium Institute" in connection with the new physical laboratories of the University of Vienna.
