watched the spouts carefully through the telescope of his theodolite, and obtained some definite measurements as to the height of the largest spout. According to his calculations the height above the sea of the top of the inverted cone was 5,014 ft. The cones at the top and bottom of the spout were about 100 ft. in diameter, and the length of each cone from its base to the points at which the sides of the spout appeared parallel was about 250 ft. Mr. H. C. Russell, the Government Astronomer of New South Wales, has published an admirable, illustrated account of this remarkable series of waterspouts, together with a record of previous waterspouts, and some observations as to the conditions under which these phenomena occur. (Journ. Roy. Soc., N.S. W., Vol. XXXII., 1898.)

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CHIEF OF THE WEATHER

BUREAU.

THE Annual Report of Professor Willis L. Moore, Chief of the Weather Bureau, emphasizes once again the wide scope of the work of the Bureau and the value of this work to the public at large. The extension of the meteorological service to include observations at various stations in the West Indies, Mexico and Colombia has already been referred to in these Notes. The observations made during the International Cloud Year are under discussion and will soon be published. The total number of forecasts distributed during the year, exclusive of those published in the daily papers, was, approximately, 23,531,500. Sixty-four per cent. of this distribution was by logotype cards, sent through the mail or carried by messengers; 23% by maps and bulletins; 10% through cooperation of railroad, telegraph and telephone lines; 3% by telegraph and telephone lines at the expense of the Bureau. Weather maps to the number of 5,239,800 were distributed. A section of the Climate and Crop Service has been established in Alaska. A meteorological chart of the Great Lakes has been issued monthly during the season of navigation.

METEOROLOGICAL CHART OF THE GREAT LAKES.

THE Meteorological Chart of the Great Lakes, dated January 4th, contains a summary, for the year 1898, of the storms on the Lakes, the

number of disasters and of lives lost, the values of the vessels lost, and the causes of the disasters. Thirty-nine vessels were totally lost, all as the result of gales. Of the partial losses (104), 22 were due to fog and 82 to gales. The number of lives lost was 96. The relative frequency of fog over the Lakes during the season of navigation (April 1st to December 15th) is shown by five different styles of shading.

NOTES.

A NOTABLE work on the physiological effects of high altitudes has recently been issued. It is an English translation-entitled 'Life of Man on the High Alps' (London, 1898)—of a book originally written in Italian by Professor Angelo Mosso, of Turin. According to Nature (January 26th) this is the first attempt that has been made to present the various complex physiological phenomena which man exhibits at high altitudes in such a form as to be easily understood by those who are not trained physiologists."

IN his Presidential address before the Royal Meteorological Society on January 18th, Mr. F. C. Bayard stated that in the British Isles only two shillings and sixpence per square mile is voted by the government for the support of meteorology. This amounts to one-third of a farthing per head. R. DEC. Ward.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY.
MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS.

AT the last meeting of the German Anthropological Society, Professor Virchow delivered a long and elaborate address on the 'megalithic monuments' of Europe. He rejected all theories so far advanced as to their builders, and left it as a question for the future to settle.

Mr. W. C. Borlase, probably the best authority on the subject, is the author of a work in three volumes on 'The Dolmens of Ireland.' His descriptions are excellent, but in his search for their constructors he loses himself in the maze of Irish legendary lore, and falls into the common error of supposing that because the same stories are told and the same superstitious practices obtain concerning these monuments in Ireland, Spain, France and Germany there must have been relations and borrowing.

This

mistake in his reasoning is well pointed out by Mr. Alfred Nutt in a review of the work in the Folklore Journal (March, 1898). Identity of psychology, he justly insists, is the true explanation.

THE MEANING OF PRIMITIVE ORNAMENT.

ON few questions in ethnology is there wider diversity of opinion than about the intention of primitive decoration. Does it arise from a mere love of imitation, without further idea ? Is it mystical and symbolic, in some way an expression of the religious sentiments? Is it due to utilitarian aims, a sort of graphic method? Or is it the expression of the sense of the beautiful, genuinely artistic?

In

Each of these opinions has its defenders. the Internat. Archiv für Ethnographie (1898, Heft II.) Van Panhuys caustically reviews the question, and concludes with the pertinent inquiries: Cannot the same decorative designs arise among peoples who have had no relations with each other? Why must the meaning or origin of these designs be everywhere the same? These are, indeed, pointed and pertinent interrogatories and hint at the true solution of the inquiry.

GENEALOGY AS A BRANCH OF ANTHROPOLOGY.

In his opening address before the last meeting of the German Anthropological Society, Professor Johannes Ranke emphasized the value of genealogical investigation as an aid to anthropology. By it we learn the facts of heredity, the influence of kinship, the consequences of intermarriage of relations, the permanence or variation in family traits, psychical and physiological peculiarities and their transmission, the tendency to reversion of types, the effect on the children of marriages at different ages, and many more points of very great in

terest.

For genealogy, however, to be thus promoted to the dignity of a science it is necessary that those who cultivate it should be willing to tell the truth about the family trees in which they are interested; and in America, notably in Philadelphia, they are yet a long way off from taking this position.

D. G. BRINTON.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS.

THE Berlin Academy of Sciences has conferred its Helmholtz medal on Professor Virchow. It was established on Helmholtz's birthday in 1892, and has since been conferred on Du Bois-Reymond, Weierstrass and Lord Kelvin.

DR. ROUX, of the Pasteur Institute, has been elected a member of the Agricultural Section of the Paris Academy of Sciences, in the room of the late M. Aimé Girard. M. Risler, Director of the Agricultural Institute, received fourteen votes, and M. Maquenne, professor of the applications of physics to agriculture in the Paris Museum, received two votes, as compared with forty-one for M. Roux.

AT the last meeting of the British Institution of Electrical Engineers, Lord Kelvin was elected an honorary member. Lord Kelvin is the oldest surviving past President of the Institution, having held the office of President in 1874.

This

THE Hungarian Society of Natural History has elected M. de Freycinet a corresponding member, and has translated into Hungarian his essay, 'Sur la philosophie des sciences.' translation is distributed among the members of the Society, which, we are glad to learn, number 8,000.

INVITATIONS have been issued for the celebration, at Cambridge, of the jubilee of Professor Sir George Gabriel Stokes, to the plans for which we recently called attention. Sir George Stokes was elected Lucasian professor of mathematics on October 23, 1849. The ceremonies will take place on June 1st and 2nd of the present year.

M. PICARD, Commissioner-General of the Paris Exposition of 1900, has been elected an honorary member of the British Institution of Civil Engineers.

PROFESSOR E. B. WILSON, of Columbia University, after visiting the Naples Zoological Station, has gone to Egypt, and is endeavoring to follow up the work of Messrs. Hunt and Harrington in pursuit of the life-history of Polypterus.

THE Berlin Academy of Sciences, with the assistance of the Heckmann-Wentzel foundation, has undertaken to explore Lake Nyassa and the

surrounding regions, with a view to studying the fauna and flora. Dr. Fülleborn will act as zoologist and Dr. Götze as botanist of the expedition.

Nature states that Dr. Don Francisco P. Moreno, Director of the La Plata Museum, and Commissioner of the Argentine Republic in the boundary delimitation with Chile, has arrived in London from Buenos Ayres.

PROFESSOR F. KÜSTNER, Director of the Observatory at Bonn, has been appointed Director of the Hamburg Observatory, Professor G. Rümker having resigned this position on account of ill health.

MR. J. H. HOLLAND has been appointed Director of the Botanical Gardens in Calabar.

THE annual meeting of the Malacological Society, London, was held on February 9th. The Presidential Address was delivered by Lieut.Colonel H. H. Godwin-Austen, F.R.S.

LECTURES on geology will be given at the American Museum of Natural History during March as follows: March 4th, Professor James F. Kemp, on 'The Newer Gold Regions of the West,' with especial reference to the Cripple Creek country of Colorado, Mercur, Utah, and the Yukon basin; March 11th, Mr. Walter H, Weed, of the United States Geological Survey, on 'The Gold and Silver Mines of Montana ;' March 18th, Dr. Hienrich Ries, of Cornell University, on Clay and Its Uses ;' March 25th, Dr. David T. Day, on 'The Geology of Petroleum.'

THE Vienna Medical Club has voted the sum of three hundred gold crowns for the foundation of a prize in memory of Dr. Hermann Franz Müller, whose recent death from the plague will be remembered.

WE learn from Nature that at its annual meeting, on January 10th, the Russian Academy of Sciences awarded its Helmersen premium to A. Mickwitz for his work, 'Die Brachiopoden. Gattung Obolus, Eichwald'; the Lomonosoff premium to N. I. Andrusoff for his work, 'The fossil and the living Dreissenidae of Eurasia'; to E. Burinsky, for his improvements in photography; and to P. I. Brounow, for his works in meteorology. The large Tolstoi medal was

awarded to L. Besser and K. Ballod, for their researches into the natality and mortality of the populations of European Russia, the Baltic provinces, and different countries of Europe, including Great Britain; and the small medal to P. G. Matsokin, for a MS. work on the halfbreeds of Transbaikalia.

MR. E. A. MARTEL has been awarded the grand medal of the French 'Société de Topographie.

THE second award of the Weber-Parkes prize and medals of the Royal College of Physicians of London (awarded triennially to the writer of the best essay upon some subject connected with the etiology, prevention, pathology or treatment of tuberculosis, especially with reference to pulmonary consumption in man) will be made in 1900. The value of the prize is 150 guineas and a silver medal. A similar medal, distinguished as the second medal, will be awarded to the essayist who comes next in order of merit.

WE learn, with regret, of the death, from pneumonia, of Professor Wilbur Wilson Thoburn, professor of biomechanics, at Leland Stanford Jr. University.

WE regret also to record the following deaths: Dr. G. Wolff hügel, professor of hygiene in the University at Göttingen; Dr. Rupert Böck, professor of mechanics in the Technical Institute of Vienna, and Dr. Lench, assistant in the Observatory at Zurich.

IN the British House of Commons on February 8th Mr. Akers Douglas (Kent, St. Augustine's) said: "All the new buildings for South Kensington Museum on the east side of the Exhibition-road will be devoted to the art collections. The existing science building on the east side of the road will be the only portion which will continue to be used for science purposes. The new science buildings will be erected on the west side of the road. The plans have been prepared by the architect in communication with the officers of the art and science branches, and meet with the approval of the Lord President and his department. It is proposed to commence the new buildings in front of the South Kensington Museum within the next few weeks."

SOMETIME since we called attention to the appointment of a commission in France to consider the question of colonial botanical gardens and agricultural experiment stations. This commission has now recommended that a station be established in each of the French colonies and a central station for the distribution of seeds and plants. A decree has been issued organizing such a station at Vincennes and M. Jean Dybowski has been appointed its director.

PLANS have been made for the erection of a State Meteorological Station on the summit of Schneekope, one of the Riesengebirge, Silesia, which is 1,605 meters in height. A scientific observer will be stationed in the observatory.

IT is feared that the instruments of the Manila Observatory have been injured by the recent battles. The Observatory is well equipped for meteorological and seismological observations, and its publications have been of much scientific value.

THE Brooklyn Institute will establish in its museum a department in which natural history and technology will be exhibited in a manner that will interest and instruct children. There are such museums in foreign cities, but not, it is said, elsewhere in America.

Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE, in addition to offering $250,000 for a free library in Washington, and $100,000 for a free library at Atlanta, has also offered to provide libraries for Richmond, Va., and Bellefonte, Pa. Mr. Carnegie has already given more than $8,000,000 for the establishment of free libraries.

In

OPEN competitive merit examinations will be held March 1st to 7th, 1899, in various cities throughout New York State for the positions mentioned below. Exact dates will be fixed later for the various cities, and candidates having applications on file will be given ample notice of the time and place of examination most convenient to their place of residence. tending competitors must file applications in the office of the Commission before February 28th. Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture, Third Division.-Applicants must be residents of this division, which includes the counties of Columbia, Delaware, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and part

of Westchester. Salary, $1,500 per annum. The examination will relate entirely to the duties of the position, the experience of the candidate, his knowledge of agriculture and its interests in the division and his familiarity with the laws relating to the Department and its work. Assistant at the Agricultural Experiment Station, Jamaica, N. Y.-Candidates must have a practical knowledge of farm and garden work, and should have some training in the fundamentals of botany and entomology; they must also have the knowledge of the care of a forcing house, spraying and the supervision of other experiments conducted by such a station. Salary, $600 per annum. The examination will relate wholly to the duties of the position and the knowledge and experience required for their Time allowed, seven hours. performance. Library Assistant, State Library.-Salaries, $30 to $50 per month. The examination will cover cataloguing, classification, indexing, library economy, indexing and handwriting.

THE Department of State has received from the German embassy at Washington, under date of January 21, 1899, notice of the international veterinary congress to be held at Baden on August 9-14, 1899. The subjects to be discussed include prophylactic measures to prevent the spread of cattle diseases by the export of animals, treatment of tuberculosis in domestic animals, use of flesh and milk of animals affected by tuberculosis and requirements for inspection of meat, cure of foot and mouth disease and diseases of swine, dissemination of veterinary instruction, preparation of a uniform anatomical nomenclature in veterinary medicine and cure of rabies. The members of the congress shall consist of delegates from foreign countries and the German Empire, representatives of veterinary schools who are designated to the committee, delegates of veterinary and agricultural societies, representatives of state and communal offices of public health and public hygienic institutes, and veterinarians who record their names and pay 12 Marks.

AT a meeting held January 20th by the Belgian Society of Electricians (M. Emile Closset, President) it was decided to open an exposition of electrical appliances applicable to domestic

uses. The exposition will be held next May, in the new post and telegraph office, Place de la Monnaie, Brussels.

THE Twenty-eighth Congress of the German Surgical Society will be held in the Langenbeckhaus, Berlin, from April 5th to 8th, under the presidency of Professor Eugen Hahn.

A SUIT is being brought by the Treasurer of the New England Anti-vivisection Society to prevent the former President from disposing of the funds of the Society. A lawsuit is, perhaps, the most innocent disposition that could be made of these funds.

FURTHER information has been sent concerning the Seventh International Geographical Congress, which will meet in Berlin at the end of September. Among the subjects to be brought up are: Proposal to introduce international uniformity in the methodical treatment of various subjects, such as the problem of the tides, the conventional signs on maps, the nomenclature and delimitation of oceans and seas, the attachment of the scale to every map, the mode of arranging meteorological tables, etc. There are also suggestions for joint international work: (1) in collecting materials of every kind referring to floating ice, to earthquakes, to the utilization of arid lands, etc.; (2) in the exploration of the Antarctic regions; (3) in the systematic exploration of the oceans; (4) a suggestion, dating from former congresses, and which is again to be discussed at Berlin, refers to the execution of an international geographical bibliography. It appears that this will be finally disposed of at Berlin. (5) Another important subject, dating from the meeting of Berne, is Professor Penck's well-known project for the construction of a map of the world on the scale of 1 to 1,000,000. It is intended also to make arrangements, if possible, for the more efficient work of the committees appointed by the Congress, as, for example, by paying for the traveling expenses of members in order that meetings may be held.

THE British Medical Journal reports that the first meeting of the Association des Anatomistes,' which is intended to form the nucleus of a Latin Anatomical Association,' was held

were

recently in Paris, under the presidency of the distinguished embryologist, Professor Balbiani, of the Collège de France. The Vice-Presidents Professors Mathias Duval, of Paris; Renaut, of Lyons, and Romiti, of Pisa. Professor Nicolas, of Nancy, was appointed Secretary, Professor Ranvier, of Paris, and Professor Van Bambeke, of Ghent, were elected Honorary Presidents, in addition to a considerable number of French teachers and investigators. eral foreign anatomists were present, including Professors Van der Stricht, of Ghent; Van Gehuchten, of Louvain, and Mitrophanoff, of Warsaw. The next meeting of the new Association will be held in connection with that of the Anatomical Section of the International Medical Congress to be held in Paris in 1900.

Sev

WE learn from the British Medical Journal that on February 2d a new Bacteriological Institute was formally opened in the University of Louvain. The Institute is on a large scale, and the installation and equipment are in accordance with the most advanced ideas. Every facility for research is provided. The stables, kennels and other quarters for animals are built around a vast garden, and all the arrangements show careful regard for the health and comfort of the animals. Professor Denys began his work fifteen years ago in two small rooms, which later expanded into a respectable laboratory, and now have developed into a scientific palace. Giving an account of the work that had been done, he stated that more than 80 original researches had come from it, besides 25 presented for travelling scholarships, 23 of which had gained a prize of £160. A special department in the new Institute will be devoted to the preparation of therapeutic serums of different kinds, tuberculin, etc. At the Congress on Tuberculosis held in Paris last summer Professor Denys gave an account of a new tuberculin which he had used with considerable success; he proposes to continue his work in this field, and is hopeful of success. A feature in the Institute which is likely to be particularly useful is an out-patient department for sufferers from tuberculosis and other microbic diseases who receive serum-therapeutic treatment adapted to their complaints, only substances which have been tested by experimentation on