bridge from Owens College and was second wrangler in the mathematical tripos of 1880. Thereafter he began in the Cavendish Laboratory his experimental and mathematical researches, publishing on the electric and magnetic effects produced by the radiation of electrified bodies in 1881 and on the theory of electric discharge in gases in 1883. Thomson was prepared to assimilate the discoveries of Lenard, Röntgen and Becquerel, and has made the Cavendish Laboratory under his direction the great center for the newer physics and the discoveries of the nature of radiation, electricity and the constitution of matter.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the deaths of Dr. Henry Pickering Bowditch, professor of physiology at the Harvard Medical School for thirty-five years; of Dr. Samuel Franklin Emmons, of the U. S. Geological Survey, eminent for his contributions to the scientific study of ore deposits, and of Mrs. Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards, instructor in sanitary engineering in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Theobald Smith, professor of comparative pathology in Harvard University, has been appointed visiting professor at the University of Berlin,