two lower floors there are extensions of the museum to receive special collections, and the rest of the space is devoted to the senior class-room, senior and honors students' laboratories, the departmental library, and rather large laboratory and storeroom accommodation for the sea-fisheries department, the work of the economic entomologist, of the marine biological committee and other practical applications of zoology.
The department of zoology is under the direction of Dr. W. A. Herdman, who was appointed to the Derby chair of natural history at the opening of the college. He is well known for his zoological researches, especially in marine biology. Readers of this journal will remember with interest two articles contributed by him—one on the Naples Zoological Station, the other on the pearl fisheries of Ceylon. Dr. Herdman has not only made the University of Liverpool a center for zoological research, but has developed in connection with it a marine biological laboratory on the Isle of Man.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester, superintendent of the U. S. Naval Observatory, was placed on the retired list on February 28. He will be retained in temporary active duty in the Bureau of Navigation. Rear Admiral Chester will be succeeded in charge of the Naval Observatory by Rear Admiral Asa Walker.
Professor A. A. Michelson, of the University of Chicago, and Professor F. Kohlrausch, of Berlin, have been elected honorary fellows of the Physical Societv of London.—Sir William Crookes has been elected a corresponding member of the physical section of the Paris Academy of Sciences in succession to the late M. Bichat.—Professor J. J. Thomson, of Cambridge; Mr. Oliver Heaviside. of London; M. Henri Becquerel, of Paris, and Professor P. Zeeman, of Amsterdam, were made honorary doctors of the University of Göttingen, on the occasion of the dedication of the new physical laboratory.
The fiftieth anniversary of the connection of Professor Frederic Ward Putnam with Harvard University has been celebrated by the presentation of a volume, containing autograph greetings from forty of his former students. Dr. H. C. Bumpus, director of the American Museum of Natural History, has been authorized by President Jesup to offer Professor Putnam ethnological material sufficient to illustrate fully the life of the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, leaving him to make such disposition of the collection as he may think best.—At a meeting held at the Mansion House, London, on February 27, to celebrate the fiftieth year of the foundation of the coal-tar color industry, and to take steps to do honor to Dr. W. H. Perkin, the founder, it was decided that an appeal be made for subscriptions for the purpose of carrying out the following objects: (1) The presentation to Dr. Perkin for his life time of an oil portrait of himself, the portrait to become the property of the nation at his death. (2) The execution of a marble bust of Dr. Perkin to be placed in the rooms of the Chemical Society. (3) The establishment of a 'Perkin Research Fund' for the promotion of chemical research to be administered through the Chemical Society.
