March 27, was transferred to the retired list in accordance with law.—The Turin Academy of Science has conferred the Bressa prize of about $2,000 on Dr. Ernest Rutherford, professor of physics at Victoria University, Manchester.—Dr. W. M. Davis, Sturgis-Hooper professor of geology, has been selected by the German government as Harvard visiting professor at the University of Berlin for the academic year 1908-9.—President Eliot, of Harvard University, delivered in April six lectures at Northwestern University on the Norman W. Harris Foundation. His general subject was "University Administration."
Provision will be made by the Canadian government in the estimates for the coming financial year for a grant of $25,000 by the Dominion parliament towards the expenses of the visit of the British Association to Winnipeg. The city of Winnipeg proposes to make a grant of $5,000. The week of the meeting will probably be from August 25 to September 1, 1909. Dr. J. J. Thomson, Cavendish professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, will preside.
In the bill making appropriations for the Department of Agriculture for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1909, and just introduced into the House, the total sum appropriated is $11,431,346. Of this amount the following sums are appropriated to what may be termed the scientific bureaus and offices of the department: Forest Service, $3,796,200; Weather Bureau, $1,662,260; Bureau of Plant Industry, $1,331,076; Bureau of Animal Industry, $1,330,860; Bureau of Chemistry, $791,720; Bureau of Entomology, $434,960; Office of Experiment Stations, $230,620; Bureau of Statistics, $221,440; Bureau of Soils, $204,700; Office of Public Roads, $87,390; Bureau of Biological Survey, $62,000, making a total of $10,254,226.
The Kentucky legislature, recently adjourned, changed the name of the College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts to the State University and appropriated to it $200,000 in addition to what it has already been receiving; $30,000 of this amount is to be annual. At the same time it appropriated $150,000 each to the two new State Normal Schools.—Plans for two new buildings have been accepted by the board of trustees of the University of Illinois. One is a physics laboratory, to cost $250,000, the other an extension of the natural history building, to cost $150,000.
