Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/626

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

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in three tiers. These rooms are small and usually dark, the only entrance being often a small doorway which served also for window and chimney.

The kivas, one of which is shown in the illustration, are curious structures, probably survivals of pit-houses of an antecedent people. Two walls enclose the circular room, on the inner of which rest six pedestals which support the roof beams consisting of cedar logs cut with stone axes. The fire-place is in the floor and there is a second depression which is a symbolic opening into the under-world. In addition to the kivas there are two other circular rooms and several rectangular rooms, which were probably used for ceremonial purposes. There is also a mortuary room, in which several skeletons have been found.

The culture was apparently self-centered; the people were farmers, timid, industrious and superstitious; they seem never to have ventured far from home and seldom met strangers; the language they spoke is unknown.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

We regret to record the death of Dr. William Torry Harris, for many years U. S. Commissioner of Education and eminent for his contributions to education and philosophy.

The Copley medal of the Royal Society has been awarded to Dr. G. W. Hill, the eminent American astronomer.—Dr. Theodore W. Richards, professor of chemistry at Harvard University, has been elected a corresponding member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.—Professor J. H. Van Amringe, head of the department of mathematics in Columbia University, and dean of the college, will retire from active service at the end of the present academic year, when he will have completed fifty years of service for the institution and reached his seventy-fifth birthday.

Mr. John D. Rockefeller has given the sum of $1,000,000 to combat the hookworm disease and has selected a commission to administer the fund which includes Dr. William H. Welch, professor of pathology in Johns hopkins University; Dr. Simon Flexner, director of Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and Dr. Ch. Wardell Stiles, chief of the division of zoology, United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, discoverer of the prevalence of the disease in America.

By the will of John Stewart Kennedy, the banker of New York City, who died on October 31, in his eightieth year, bequests are made for public purposes amounting to some $30,000,000. The bequests depend on the size of the estate and the amounts are conservative estimates. They include seven bequests of $2,225,000 each, respectively, for Columbia University, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, and to three of the boards of the Presbyterian Church; of $1,500,000 to Robert College, Constantinople, and to the United Charities of New York; $750,000 to New York University and the Charity Organization Society of New York for its School of Philanthropy; $100,000 to the University of Glasgow, Yale University, Amherst College, Williams College, Dartmouth College, Bowdoin College, Hamilton College, the Protestant College at Beirut, the Tuskegee Institute and Hampden Institute; $50,000 to Lafayette College, Oberlin College, Wellesley College, Barnard College (Columbia University), Teachers College (Columbia University), Elmira College, Northfield Seminary, Berea College, Mt. Hermon Boys' School and Anatolia College, Turkey; $25,000 to Lake Forest University and Center College; $20,000 to Cooper Union. There are also a number of other bequests to hospitals and charities.