and discusses in detail in two papers* and in an elaborate memoirt the structure and relationships of these animals. He advocates their extremely early origin, holding that even the oldest Creodonta do not give us a sufficiently generalized ancestor, and that we must revert to the Jurassic triconodont animals

generally considered as primitive marsupials. The memoir is the most important and exhaustive one which has appeared upon the skull of this aberrant form.

Proboscidea.-Dr. C. W. Andrews continues his important papers on the evolution of the Proboscidea, tracing this line back to Palæomastodon, Upper Eocene, and Maritherium, Middle Eocene, a small ungulate with quadritubercular molar teeth, which this author regards as in the direct line leading to the Proboscidea; it shows most interesting relationships to the Sirenia, which tend to connect the two groups.

In this connection may be mentioned a paper by Mr. W. K. Gregory on the 'Adaptive Significance of the Shortening of the Elephant's Skull,'g in which the mechanical effect of trunk and tusks on the evolution of the skull is worked out in detail.

Other Mammals.-Other African fossils described by Dr. C. W. Andrews || include the

6

* Einiges über Bau und Stellung der Zeuglo. donten, Sonder-Abdr. a. d. Mai-Protokoll,' Zeitschr. d. Deutsch, geol. Gesellschaft, Jahrg., 1903.

'Bericht über eine von den Privatdozenten Dr. Max Blanckenhorn und Dr. Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach ausgeführte Reise nach Aegypten. Einleitung und ein Schädel und Unterkiefer von Zeuglodon Osiris Dames,' Sep.-Abdr. a. d. Sitzungsberichten d. mathem.-phys. Classe d. kgl. bayer. Akademie d. Wissenschaften, Bd. XXXII., 1902, Heft III.

'Zeuglodon-Reste aus dem Oberen Mitteleochän des Fajûm,' Sep.-Abdr. aus Beiträge zur Paläontologie und Geologie Osterreich-Ungarns und des Orients, Band xv., Heft ii. u. iii., Vienna and Leipzig, 1903.

On the Evolution of the Proboscidea,' Proc. Roy. Soc., Vol. 71, p. 443.

Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. XIX., July 8, 1903, Art. IX., pp. 387-394.

Notes on an Expedition to the Fayûm, Egypt, with Descriptions of Some New Mammals,' Geol. Mag., Dec. iv., Vol. X., No. 470, August, 1903.

Arsinoitherium, a large ungulate with a pair of enormous horns on the front part of the skull, and a new hyracoid, Saghatherium. In this connection it is noted that the presence of five Hyraces in these beds indicates that these animals must at that time have been an important factor in the fauna, and that the comparatively small members of the group now existing are the degenerate descendants of a once important stock.' It is shown that the specialization of the molar teeth in the Hyracoidea was already well marked in the Upper Eocene beds. Of great interest also is the discovery of a large creodont referred to Pterodon africanus, of Oligocene age, and of an animal related to Hyopotamus. Altogether, the discoveries of Messrs. Beadnell, of the Egyptian Survey, and Andrews, of the British Museum, are the most important features of recent progress in mammalian paleontology.

Of an entirely different nature is the superb memoir entitled 'La Faune Momifiée de l'Ancienne Égypte,' by Messrs. Lortet and Gaillard, recently issued from Lyons. It covers the mummified mammals, birds and fishes of Egypt and includes an exhaustive systematic revision of these types, which have been known over a century but have never hitherto received adequate systematic description.

RECENT DISCOVERIES IN FRANCE.

Lophiodonts.-Professor Ch. Depéret, of Lyons,* has made the welcome discovery of the hitherto unknown skull of Lophiodon in the Middle Eocene, Bartonien age. He points out that it presents an astonishing resemblance to the skull of the primitive rhinoceroses, while it is remote from the skull of the tapirs. This resemblance agrees with the lophiodont form of the molar teeth, which is substantially intermediate between the tapir and the rhinoceros type.

Creodonts.-Equally welcome is the de

therium, they are more specialized than any recent armadillos.

MARSUPIALS AND MONOTREMES. PROFESSOR C. F. W. MCCLURE* contributes an exhaustive paper on the venous system of Didelphys, based on the examination of very extensive material which shows wide individual variation, partly reversional. In general, the venous system runs back through the monotreme to the sauropsidan or reptilian type, and exhibits profound differences from the venous system of the Placentalia.

Dr. B. Arthur Bensleyt contributes a valuable paper in which he demonstrates that the groove on the inner side of the jaw of the Jurassic mammalia erroneously described by Owen and Osborn as a 'mylohyoid groove' is actually a 'meckelian groove,' lodging the Meckelian cartilage. After very extensive comparison of this groove in various types of mammals, he finds it frequently present in the Marsupialia, Edentata and certain Insectivora and Cetacea. It is, however, absent in the Multituberculata; the groove is also wanting in the Echidna, owing perhaps to the degeneration or reduction of the jaw. The paper is fully illustrated.

HORSES AND MAN.

A MOST interesting recent contribution to the Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences is by Emile Rivièret on the prehistoric figures of horses in the cave de La Mouthe found with figures of the reindeer, antelope, bison, buffalo, mammoth. Although for the most part crude outlines, they all possess a certain artistic value.§ H. F. O.

* A Contribution to the Anatomy and Development of the Venous System of Didelphys marsupialis (L.),' Part I., Anatomy, Amer. Jour. Anat., Vol. II., No. 3, July 1, 1903, pp. 371-404.

'On the Identification of Meckelian and Mylohyoid Grooves in the Jaws of Mesozoic and Recent Mammalia,' University of Toronto Studies, No. 3.

Les figurations préhistoriques de la grotte de La Mouthe (Dordogne),' Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences, 28 July, 1902.

§ Les Parois gravées et peintes de la Grotte de La Mouthe (Dordogne),' Extr. de l'Homme préhistorique,' t. I., fasc. 3, 1903.

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THE ENDOWMENT OF APPLIED SCIENCE AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

By the will of the late Gordon McKay, of Newport, R. I., inventor of the sewing machine that bears his name, Harvard University receives a very large bequest for applied science, estimated by the daily papers to be ' about $4,000,000 and eventually many millions more. According to the terms of the will, Harvard University is to receive $1,000,000 when this amount has accumulated from the income, and is thereafter to receive 80 per cent. of the balance of the income after annuities have been paid, and is to receive the entire residue of the estate after the death of the last surviving annuitant.

The portion of the will defining the object of the bequest is as follows:

The net income of said endowment shall be used to promote applied science.

First, by maintaining professorships, workshops, laboratories and collections for any or all of those scientific subjects which have, or may hereafter have, applications useful to man; and

Second, by aiding meritorious and needy students in pursuing those subjects.

Inasmuch as a large part of my life has been devoted to the study and invention of machinery, I instruct the president and fellows to take special care that the great subject of mechanical engineering, in all its branches and in the most comprehensive sense, be thoroughly provided for from my endow ment.

I direct that the president and fellows be free to provide from the endowment all grades of instruction in applied science, from the lowest to the highest, and that the instruction provided be kept accessible to pupils who have had no other opportunities of previous education than those which the free public schools afford.

I direct that the salaries attached to the professorships maintained from the endowment be kept liberal, generation after generation, according to the standards of each successive generation, to the end that these professorships may always be attractive to able men and that their effect may be to raise, in

some judicious measure, the general scale of compensation for the teachers of the university.

I direct that the professors supported from this endowment be provided with suitable assistance in their several departments, by the appointment of instructors of lower grades, and of draughtsmen, foremen, mechanics, clerks or assistants, as occasion may require, my desire being that the professors be free to devote themselves to whatever part of the teaching requires the greatest skill and largest experience, and to the advancement of their several subjects.

I direct that the president and fellows be free to erect buildings for the purposes of this endowment, and to purchase sites for the same, but only from the income of the endow

ment.

I direct that all the equipment required to illustrate teaching or to give students opportunity to practice, whether instruments, diagrams, tools, machines or apparatus, be always kept of the best design and quality, so that no antiquated, superseded, or unserviceable implement or machinery shall ever be retained in the lecture-rooms, workshops or laboratories maintained from the endowment.

Finally, I request that the name Gordon McKay be permanently attached to the professorships, buildings and scholarships or other aids for needy students, which may be established, erected or maintained from the income of this endowment.

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND AFFILIATED SOCIETIES.

THE American Association for the Advancement of Science will meet at St. Louis during convocation week, beginning on December 28, 1903, under the presidency of the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, U. S. commissioner of labor and president of Clark College. We hope to publish shortly full details in regard to the meeting and the local arrangements.

THE American Society of Naturalists will meet at St. Louis during convocation week. The exercises will consist as usual of a lecture followed by a smoker, a business meeting

and a discussion on Wednesday afternoon, and a dinner in the evening followed by the address of the president, professor William Trelease, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

THE sixteenth winter meeting of the Geological Society of America will be held at St. Louis, Mo., probably in a parlor of the Planters Hotel. The meeting will be called to order by President S. F. Emmons at 10 o'clock A.M., on Wednesday, December 30. The meeting of the Cordilleran Section will be held January 1 and 2, 1904, in the Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.

THE American Chemical Society will meet in St. Louis on December 28 and 29. The headquarters will be the Southern Hotel, and the meeting place will be the Central High School Building. The retiring address of the President, Dr. John H. Long, will be given, probably, on Wednesday evening at 7:30. Subject: Some Problems in Fermentation.'

THE American Psychological Association will meet at St. Louis on Tuesday and Wednesday of convocation week under the presidency of Dr. W. L. Bryan, president of the University of Indiana.

THE next meeting of the American Philosophical Association will be held at Princeton, N. J., on December 29 and following days. The hospitalities of the meeting and program are also extended to those members of the American Psychological Association who do not meet with their own association in St. Louis.

WE hope to publish next week official notices in regard to the other scientific societies meeting during convocation week.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. THE medical faculty of the University of Buffalo has invited Dr. Samuel J. Meltzer, of New York, to deliver the Harrington lectures for 1903. The subject selected by Dr. Meltzer is Edema, a consideration of the physiological and pathological factors concerned in its formation.' The lectures will be delivered in the Medical College, November 30, and December 1, 2 and 3, at 5 P.M.

MR. HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL, the architect of the library given by Mr. Ralph Voorhees to Rutgers College, and well known for his contributions to psychology, was given the degree of Doctor of Literature on the occasion of the dedication of the library.

PROFESSOR HUGO DE VRIES celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his professorship in the University of Amsterdam on October 25, 1903. On this occasion he was presented with the sum of 4,250 Gulden by his colleagues and admirers in Holland, with the request that this sum be used in prosecuting further researches on mutation in plants. Cooperative experiments in this subject are being carried on in the New York Botanical Garden by Dr. D. T. MacDougal.

ARRANGEMENTS have been made for a Sigma Xi dinner and address during convocation week at St. Louis. President D. S. Jordan will deliver the address before the society. The society now numbers more than two thousand members in the United States, and a large attendance is expected. Professor A. S. Langsdorf, of Washington University, is secretary of the committee on arrangements.

THE Royal Scottish Geographical Society has bestowed honorary membership and its Livingstone gold medal on Commander Robert E. Peary, U.S.N.

It is reported, though perhaps on inadequate authority, that the Nobel prize in physics will be awarded to Mr. G. Marconi; in chemistry to Professor Arrhenius, and in medicine to Professor Finsen.

PROFESSOR VON ZITTEL, of Munich, who met with a serious accident recently, is rapidly recovering and hopes to begin his winter semester lectures soon.

DR. GEORGE T. MOORE, of the United States Department of Agriculture, is spending a month in Dr. Winogradsky's laboratory at the Imperial Institute for Experimental Medicine, St. Petersburg. He is studying the various soil bacteria, especially those that fix atmospheric nitrogen, and the nitrite and nitrate organisms. Dr. Moore is conducting the investigations of soil bacteria being carried on in the Division of Pathology and Physiology

of the Bureau of Plant Industry, and has already accomplished some important work in this field. He will probably not return to Washington before the middle of January.

DR. E. B. COPELAND, A.B. (Stanford, '95), who has been instructor in bionomics at Stanford University for the past two years, will sail this week for Manila to take up his work as chief botanist of the U. S. Philippine commission. Miss Mary Isabel McCracken, A.B. (Stanford, '03), will have charge of Dr. Copeland's work in bionomics.

PROFESSOR JOHN W. TOUMEY, of the faculty of the Yale University Forest School, has been elected director of the Yale botanical garden.

DR. G. P. MERRILL, curator of geology at the U. S. National Museum, has returned from a visit to the petrified forests of Mon

tana.

THE daily papers state that Dr. W. G. Tight, president of the University of New Mexico, and Miss Annie S. Peck have returned after explorations in Peru. They failed to reach the summit of Mount Sorata, the highest summit in the Andes.

PROFESSOR C. F. CHANDLER, of Columbia University, gave a lecture before the American Philosophical Society on November 6, his subject being 'The Electro-chemical Industries of Niagara Falls.'

PROFESSOR R. E. DODGE, Teachers College, Columbia University, began on the twelfth instant a course of lectures on climate and mankind given at the American Museum of Natural History under the auspices of the Board of Education.

ON October 2, the winter course of lectures before the American colony in Munich was opened by Professor Hartzell, his subject being Volcanic Phenomena.' He was followed by Professor Fullerton on the sixteenth and thirtieth, his subject being 'Psychic Phenomena.' It is proposed to have lectures on the first and third Fridays of each month during the winter.

SIR WILLIAM WHITE gave the presidential address before the British Institute of Civil Engineers on November 3.

COMMANDER ROBERT E. PEARY, U.S.N., lec

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