The following note is from Nature of May 11th: "At the last meeting of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Dr. Elliot Smith settled a point in the comparative morphology of the brain which at one time was the subject of a heated controversy between Huxley and Owen. In 1861, it may be remembered, Owen maintained that the _calcar avis_ and the calcarine fissure which causes it were characters peculiar to the brain of man, a statement which Huxley showed to be untrue, the formation being well marked in all primate brains. Dr. Elliot Smith has reached the further generalization that the _calcar avis_ is a character shown by all mammalian brains, with the possible exception of the prototherian. He identifies--and the reasons for this identification do not seem capable of refutation--the calcarine fissure of the primate brain with the splenial fissure of the brain of other mammals. This generalization will materially assist in homologizing the primate and unguiculate _pallium_." The influence of wind on the speed of steamers is of considerably more importance than is generally believed. In the _Annalen der Hydrographie_ for January, 1899, L. E. Dinklage describes some observations recently made on two of the North German Lloyd steamers of about five thousand tons and fifteen or sixteen knots. The results show that when the wind was favorable no difference whatever could be detected in the speed of the vessels during a light breeze or a heavy gale. But with a beam (cross-wind) or head wind a reduction of from three to five knots and a half was produced. The obvious conclusion is that the wind when favorable never helps a fast steamer, but always hinders it when unfavorable. Probably with vessels steaming ten knots or less a favoring gale might increase the speed. NOTES. The burden of the president's address of J. B. Johnson before the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education is the necessity for our future material prosperity for a specific scientific training for the directors of each and every kind of manufacturing and commercial activity. Germany "has worked out this problem to a most fruitful issue," but its imperial and paternal method can not be imitated here, or probably anywhere else. The problem is a very difficult one with us, and it will be of no use to look to municipalities or Legislatures for its solution. There exist a few special high-grade industrial, commercial, mechanical, electrical, and mining schools, but they are entirely inadequate to answer the demands of the occasion. The author looks to organized commercial bodies like the one he is addressing as furnishing the best means for establishing the schools desired.