NOTES.
The first summer session of Columbia University, 1900, will open July 2d, instruction beginning July 5th, and will continue till August 10th. The work will be under the general direction of Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler, and will be conducted by a large corps of instructors, in eleven courses, of thirty lectures or other exercises or their equivalent in laboratory or field work, each. The concluding examinations will be held August 9th and 10th. Credits will be given for courses pursued at the school in the requirements for a degree at the university, and for a Teachers’ College diploma, and in the examinations for teachers’ licenses in New York city.
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An International Congress of Medical Electrology and Radiology has been connected with the International Congress system of the Paris Exposition, 1900, and will be held July 27th to August 1st. The commission is composed of representative men from various universities, institutions, and hospitals of France, with Prof. E. Doumer, 57 Rue Nicolas Leblanc, Lille, as secretary.
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A curious fall of “black snow,” which was observed at Molding, Austria, at the beginning of the year, was found to consist largely of the insects known as “glacier fleas,” which were supposed to have come along with a violent snowstorm from some of the Alpine glaciers.
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How to write 1900 in Roman numerals is a question of the day that will have to be settled. Three ways are suggested by Mr. J. Fletcher Little in the London Times, either of which is correct according to the Roman system. They are MDCCCC, MDCD, and MCM. But when we reach the year 1988, if we use the first of these methods we shall have to write the formidable-looking formula MDCCCCLXXXVIII, whereas if we use the third and shortest method, it will only be MCMLXXXVIII—and that is long enough. The third method, therefore, which may be interpreted as meaning one thousand plus another thousand lacking a hundred, seems to be the simplest.
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Dr. St. George Mivart, Professor of Biology in University College, Kensington, died suddenly in London, April 1st, aged seventy-two years. He was author of numerous scientific works, of treatises critical of Darwinism and the theory of evolution, and of demonstrations of the harmony of Roman Catholic dogma with proved scientific facts. His name has been made prominent of late by his recantation of his previously expressed views of the consistency of dogma with science, and the correspondence with Cardinal Vaughan which grew out of it.