Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/486

480 connection with the work in irrigation authorized by Congress. Surveying parties are in the field in California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona and Colorado.

of Pasteur was unveiled at his birthplace, Dole, Jura, on August 3.—The centenary of the death of Bichat, the celebrated anatomist and physiologist, was commemorated on July 22, under the auspices of the French Society of the History of Medicine.—The centenary of the birth of the Norwegian mathematician, Niels Henrik Abel, will be celebrated at Christiania in September. Abel was born in 1802 and died at the early age of twenty-seven years, but in this short period attained rank among the foremost mathematicians of the century.—A memorial to John Fitch, who is said to have been the first to apply steam to the running of a boat, has been erected in Warminster, Pa. It bears the inscription: "John Fitch here conceived the idea of the first steamboat. He ran a boat with side-wheels by steam on a pond below Davisville in 1785. Bucks County Historical Society."—A bronze tablet has been unveiled at Lafayette College in memory of the late James H. Coffin. The inscription reads as follows: "In memory of James Henry Coffin, LL.D. Long a main-stay of Lafayette College, professor of mathematics, natural philosophy and astronomy, 1846-1873; vice-president and college treasurer, 1863-1873. A tireless teacher and administrator, an officer of the church, a friend of the slave. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, author of 'Winds of the Globe.' He annexed the atmosphere to the realm of science, and searched the highways of the winds and the paths of vagrant storms. Born in Williamsburg, Mass., September 6, 1806; died in Easton, February 6, 1873. The class of 1866 has erected this tablet."

of the University of California, has secured funds for the erection of a marine laboratory at San Pedro, which will be used as a center for the biological study of the Pacific coast.—Mr. W. H. Evans, of the office of Experiment Stations, U. S. Department of Agriculture, has returned from Porto Rico, where he was in conference with Mr. F. D. Gardner, in charge of the Porto Rico Station, with reference to the selection of a permanent site and the development of the station there.—The French Minister of Agriculture has established an office for agricultural information, the object of which is to act as a bureau of correspondence and a means of popularizing scientific agriculture.—Queensland has given up its weather bureau, and the services of Mr. C. L. Wragge and others have been dispensed with. It is hoped that an arrangement may be made by which the service will be continued by the federal government.—Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan has presented to the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, the collection of precious stones formed by Mr. George F. Kunz for the Buffalo Exhibition.

Berlin Academy of Sciences has announced that its academic prize of 5,000 Marks, will be awarded in 1904 for an investigation of the kathode rays and in 1905 for an investigation of the theory of functions of several variables which admit of linear substitution. The income of the Cothenius legacy—$2,000—for 1904 will be awarded for investigations of new varieties of grain. The papers may be written in English and must be presented without the name of the author to the Bureau of the Academy, Universtät Strasse, 8, Berlin.