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SCIENCE 


NEW SERIES. VOLUME XLVI 


JULY-DECEMBER, 1917 


NEW YORK 
THE SCIENCE PRESS 
1917 


THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY, 
41 NorTH QUEEN STREET, 
LANCASTER, Pa. 


CONTENTS AND INDEX. 


NEW SERIES. 


VOL. XLVI._JULY TO DECEMBER, 1917 


THE NAMES OF CONTRIBUTORS ARE PRINTED IN SMALL CAPITALS 


Baker, W. C., Foecault Pendulum, 489 

Barsour, T. , Papers on Zoology from Michigan, 643 

Bauer, L. Ke Ocean Magnetic Observations, H. A. 
BuMSTEAD, 342 

Bayliss, W. M., Food and Diet, G. Lusx, 18 

Bean Stems, Girdling of, J. H. Munctn, 88 

Brnepict, R. C., Clothes Moth, 464 

Brnzicer, M., M. H. Fiscuer, M. O. Hooker and 
W. D. CorrMan, Polybasie Acids and their Salts, 
189 

Bergen, JosrpH YOUNG, 379 

Berry, E. W., ‘‘Age and Area’’ Hypothesis, 539 

Berry, R. J. A., and A. W. D. Robertson, Aus- 
tralian Aboriginal Crania. A. Hrpiicka, 315 

Biertow, M. A., Names of Plants, 16 

‘*Bio-colloids,’’ The Effect of Acids and Salts on, 
D. T. MacDoueat and H. A. Spornr, 269 

Biological, Station at Beaufort, N. C., 8. F. Himpr- 
BRAND, 175; Societies, L. G. ROWNTREE, 583 

BLEILE, ‘A. M. , Reply to Dr. Erlanger, 111 

Bleile, Dr. | Reply to, J. ERLANGER, 409 

BLopGErr, F. H., Isolation Cultures, 386 

Boas, F., Tsimshian Mythology, J. R. Swanton, 514 

Boutry, H. L., Wheat Cropping, 49 

Boss, B., Catalogue of Stars, E. B. Knobel, 365 

Botanical Soc. of Wash., H. L. SHantz, 72 

Botrytis and Sclerotinia, F. J. Szavrr, 163 

Bowie, W., Use of Mean Sea Level as the Datum 
for Elevations, E. Lester Jones, 164 

Brazil, Medical Work in, 11 

Breep, R. 8., Popular Science, 238 

Brooks, C. F., Aerography, A. MeAdie, 264 

Brown, P. E., Mold Action and Soils, 171 

Brunt, D., Observations, H. L. Rierz, 588 

Bulkley, L. D., Cancer, L. Lors, 266 

BumstTeaD, H. A., Ocean Magnetie Observations, L. 
A. Bauer, 342 

Burcr, W. E., The Catalase Content of Insects, 
295; of Breast Muscle, 440; Chloroform, 618 

Burket, W. C., Bibliography of William Henry 
Welch, F. H. GARRISON, 240 


Cairns, W. D., Math. Assoc. of Amer., 207 

Camp Wheeler, Medical Inspection of, 558 

CaMPBELL, D. H., Extraordinary Rainfall, 511 

CAMPBELL, W. W., A Remarkable Coincidence, 36 

Canadian Stratigraphy and Paleontology, K. F. 
Maruer, 66 

Carnegie Institution and the Public, R. 8. Woop- 
WARD, 573 

Catalase Content of Insects, 295; of Breast Muscle, 
W. E. Burge, 440 

Cereal, Conference, 11; C. W. HuncrErrorp, 316 

CHaPrN, F. 8., The Physical Basis of Society, C. 
Kelsey, 215 

Chemical, Laboratories and National Welfare, W. 
A. Noyes, 1; Soe., Amer., Kansas City Meeting, 
94; Boston Meeting, C. yy Parsons, 108, 119) 
143, 169, 542, 571, 596, 621, 645; Industries, 
Third National Exposition, 157; Industries of 
U.S., 611 


Chemicals and War in England, 427 

Chemistry, and Phytogeography, J. A. Harris, 25; 
Teaching, H. A. Curris, 183; Outlook, J. Srrnc- 
LITZ, 321; Pre-medical Training in, F. 8. Ham- 
METT, 504; Colloid, of Fehling’s Test, L. Rosen- 
BERG, 617 

Chemists, War Service for, C. L. Parsons, 451 

China, Agricultural Education and Research, 54 

Church, Professor, Tribute to, 535 

Cilia in the Arthropoda, N. FAsten, 440 

Clark, William Bullock, 104 

Climatic, Pulsations, C. E. Vain, 90; Index, C. 
Keyss, 139 

Ciurr, W. N., Names of Plants, 483 

Coal, Anthracite, 132 

Coast and Geod. Sur. and the War and Navy De- 
parts., 429 

Coss, N. A., Intra-vitam Color Reactions, 167 

CocKERELL, T. D. A., Letters of, H. Miinsterberg, 
40 


CorFMAN, W. D., M. H. Fiscurr, M. BENzicrer and 
on Hooker, Polybasie Acids and their Salts, 
1 

Coincidence, Remarkable, W. W. CAMPBELL, 36 

Cote, F. N., Amer. Math. Soc., 369, 518 

Couiry, R. H., G. B. Posry and G. F. Gravatt, 
Uredinia, 314 

Color Reactions, Intra-vitam, N. A. Coss, 167 

Colors of Letters, D. S. JorpAn, 311 

Columbia University and Professor Cattell, 363, 
411 

Columbian Institute, 507 

Compton, A. H., and O. Roentry, Ultimate Mag- 
netie Particle, 415 

Conn, H. J., Chemical Transformation of Soils, 
252 

Conner, 8. D., Drainage and Soil Acidity, 346 

Cook, O. F., Trans-Pacifie Agriculture, 436 

Cornell Medical School, 380 

Cosmological Theory, W. H. McNatrn, 599 

Cotton Rust in Texas, J. J. TAUBENHAUS, 267 

Courtis, S. A., Section L of the Amer. Assoc. for 
the Adv. of Sci., 479 

Crane, E. J., German-English Dictionary for Chem- 
ists, A. M. Patterson, 414 

Crossing-over in Sex Chromosomes, H. D. GOoDALE, 
213 

Curtis, H. A., Teaching Chemistry, 183 

Curtis, M. M., Man and the Anthropoids, 88 


Darwin, Erasmus and Benjamin Franklin, L. L. 
Wooprvurr, 291; W. C. Peckuam, 459 

Davis, B. M., Amer. Soe. of Naturalists, 453 

D. C., Amer. Assoc. of Variable Star Observers, 620 

Discoveries and Inventions, 17 

Discussion and Correspondence, 15, 36, 60, 88, 111, 
139, 160, 183, 210, 237, 262, 288, 311, 340, 360, 
386, 409, 432, 457, 483, 511, 538, 564, 586, 616, 
638 

Doane, R. W., Mites attacking Crops, 192 
Gases and Insects, 295 


; Smelter 


iV SCIENCE 


Downine, E. R., Enrollment in Science in High 
Schools, 351 

Dox, A. W., and G. P. Puaisancr, Mannite in Si- 
lage, 192 

Duane, W., Radiation and Matter, 347 


Eastman, C. R., Fish Names, Ancient and Modern, 
228 

Ecxruarpt, E. A., When is a Force not a Force? 340 

Eclipse, Total, 404 

Keology, Plant, and Agriculture, W. G. WATERMAN, 
223 

EIGENMANN, C. H., Zoological Research, 302 

Electrical Engineers and U. S. Naval Reserve, 354 

Electromerism, L. W. Jonzs, 493 

Kuuerson, L. J., and I. C. Hatt, The Aerobie Cul- 
ture of Anaerobes, 570 

Elliott, Daniel Giraud, Medal, 85 

Eis, F. W., Apparatus for Physiological and 
Physical Laboratories, 416 

Eiwoop, C. A., The Social Sciences, 469 

Engineering Council, 12 

Equations as Statements, D. L. WrEsstEr, 187 

ERLANGER, J., Reply to Dr. Bleile, 409 

Erlanger, Dr., Reply to, A. M. Burrus, 111 

Huler’s Dynamical Equations, A. T. Jongs, 312 

Experimental Biol., Federation of Amer. Societies 
for, C. W. GREENE, 452 

Explanation, Simple, C. G. Hopkins, 362 


Faux, K. G., and J. M. Netson, The Structure of 
Matter, 551 

Family History Register, C. W. Harerrt, 113 

Fasten, N., Cilia in the Arthropoda, 440 

Faunal Conditions in §S. Ga. Islands, 
Mourpuy, 118 

FrEwkes, J. W., Pueblo Ruin in Colorado, 255 

Filing Pamphlets, M. R. Minurr, 263 

Findlay, A., Chemistry, J. L. Hows, 364 

Fireflies and Synchronism, F. C. Garss, 314 

Firefly, Source of the Light in, E. N. Harvey, 241 

Fish Names, C. R. Eastman, 228 

Food, G. Lusk, 18; Situation and Department of 
Agriculture, 528 ' 


R. CG. 


Force, Elementary Treatment of, P. E. Kuopstse, 


63 

Forest Service, 306, 632 

Foster, A. C., and F. A. Wour, Bacterial Leaf 
Spot of Tobacco, 361 

Fowl Nematode, Transmitting, J. E. Ackrrt, 394 

Franklin, Benjamin, B. W. KunKerL, 437; and 
Hrasmus Darwin, L. L. Wooprurr, 291 

Fraser, W. P., Apple Seab Fungus, 280 

Free, HE. E., Gelatine and Agar Gels, 142 

Fuel Research, British Experimental Stations, 506 


Gager, C. S., Botany, E. C. Jerrreys, 617 

GarRDNER, J. H., Kentucky as an Oil State, 279 

GarrISON, F. H., Bibliography of William Henry 
Welch, 240 

Gates, F. C., Synchronism in the flashing of Fire- 
flies, 314 

Gels, Gelatine and Agar, BH. E. Fren, 142 

Geological Survey, War Activities of, 633 

Geologists, State, Amer. Assoe. of, W. O. Horcu- 
KISS, 556 

Geology, Military, J. E. Pocur, 8; American, R. 
W. Saves, 162 

Grernert, W. B., Aphis Immunity of Teosinte- 
Corn Hybrids, 390 


CoNnTENTS AND 
INDEX. 


Gisss, W. S., Cost of Living, G. Lusk, 18 

Glaciation, Pennsylvania, G. F. WricHtT, 37 

GoopaLE, H. D., Crossing-over in Sex-Chromosome, 
213 

GoopsPEED, A. W., Amer. Philos. Soe., 219, 244 

Gorpon, C. E., Obtaining Ameba, 212 

GrantHaM, A. E., Tillering of Wheat, 392 

Gravart, G. F., and P. SpauLpine, Inoculations on 
Ribes, 243; G. B. Posry, and R. H. Coury, Ure- 
dinia on Ribes Stems, 314 

Gravitational Repulsion, F. E. NipHmr, 293 

GREENE. C. W., Federation of Amer. Societies for 
Exper. Biol., 452 

GupeER, W. W., N. C. Acad. of Sci., 193 

Guinea-pig, ‘‘Heat Period’’ in, C. R.. Srockarp, 
and G. N. PARPANICOLAU, 42 

Gutssow, H. T., Plant Diseases in Canada, 362 

Guthe, Karl Eugen and John Oren Reed, 207 

GurTuriz, D. V., The Teaching of Optics, 434 


Haas, A. R. C., Anesthesia and Respiration, 462 

Hatt, I. C., and L. J. Etterson, The Aerobie Cul- 
tures of Anaerobes, 570 

Hamuert, F. S., Pre-medical Training in Chem- 
istry, 504; and L. G. MeNeile, Ingested Pla- 
centa and the Growth-promoting Properties of 
Human Milk, 345 

Hareirr, C. W., Family History Register, 113 

Harkins, W. D., The Structure of Atoms and the 
Evolution of the Elements, 419, 443 

Harris, F. I. and H. S. Hoyv, The Toxicity of 
Ultra-Violet Light, 318 

Harris, J. A., Physical Chemistry and Phyto- 
geography, 25 

Harvard University, MeKay Bequest, 559. 

Harvey, E. N., Source of the Light in the Firefly, 
241 

Health, of Munition Workers, 353; Researches, 
512 

Healy, W., Mental Conflicts, R. S. WoopworTu, 
481 

Hepecock, G. G., The Genus Phoradendron, W. 
Trelease, 516 

Heprick, E, R., The Significance of Mathematics, 
395 

Hedrick, U. P., Peaches of New York, F. A. W., 
439 

HENDERSON, L. J., Acidiosis, 73 

Herb Growing in the British Empire, 114 

HILDEBRAND, S. F., U. S. Biol. Sta., 175 

Houianp, W. J., Lacepéde or Lacépéde, 484 

Houmes, H. H., Rhythmic Banding, 442 

Hooker, H. D., Jr., Law of the Minimum, 197 

Hookworm, Progress in combating, 533 

Hopkins, C. G., A Simple Explanation, 362 

Hornapay, W. T:, Animal Collections 
Australia, 133 

Hornet’s Nest, Unique, H. A. ALLARD, 313 

Hospital, American, in London, 406; Memorial, 
Forbes Winslow, M. F. Winstow, 484 

Hospitals, Reconstruction, and Orthopedic Sur- 
gery, 305 

HorcuxKiss, W. O., Amer. Assoc. of State Geol- 
ogists, 556 

Housr, H. D:, Peck Testimonial Exhibit, 204 

Howarp, L. O., Konchugaku Hanron Jokwan, T. 
Miyakem, 113; Amer. Assoc. for Ady. Sci., 560 

Howe, J. L., Chemistry, A. Findlay, 364; Sul- 
phuric Acid, G. Lunge, 438 


from 


Now Sxrins. 
Vor. XLIV. 


Hoyt, H. S., and F. I. Harris, Origin of the Ultra- 
Violet Light, 318 

Hrpuicka, A., The Vanishing Indian, 266; 
Australian Aboriginal Crania, R. J. A Berry 
and A, W, D. Robertson, 315 

Humidifiers, Radiator, E. P. Lyon, 262 

Humpureys, W. J., The Magnetic Field of an 
Atom, 273 

THUNGERFORD, C. W., Cereal Pathologists, 316 

Immunity, Aphis, of Teosinte-corn Hybrids, W. 
B. GERNERT, 390 

Indian, The Vanishing, A. Hrpiicka, 266 

Industrial Research in America, 163 

TInoculations on Ribes, P. SPAULDING and C. F. 
Gravarr, 243 

Tons, Gaseous, and their Recombination, P. B. 
(PERKINS, 589 

Iowa Acad, of Sei, J. H. Legs, 44 

Iron, Industry, 83; Ore and Pig Iron, 179 


Jackson, D. E., Pharmacology, D. I. Macut, 388 

JEFFREY, E. Cc. Botany, C. 8. Gager, 617 

JONES, A. T., "Buler’s Dynamical Equations, 312 

Jones, E. Lester, Use of Mean Sea Level, W. 
Bown, 164 

Jonrs, L. W., Electromerism, 493 

JORDAN, D. 8; The Colors of Letters, 311 

JOSEPHSON, AG S., Institute for the History of 
Science, 15 


K., A. E., Telephone Apparatus, G. D. Shepard- 
son, 462 

Karpinskl, L. C., Recreations in Mathematics, H. 
E. Licks, 215 

Kren, W. W., A Predecessor of Priestley, 214 

Kelsey, C.; The Physical Basis of Society, F. 8. 
CHAPIN, "215 

Kentucky as an Oil State, J. H. GarDNER, 279 

Keyes, C., Bonneville Lake Beds, 139 

Keyser, C. J., The Human Worth of Rigorous 
Thinking, G. A. MILLER, 186 

Kikuchi, Baron Dairoku, 282 

Kuopstec, P. E., Force, 63 

Kuorz, O., The New Moon, 290; Symbols, 360 

Knobel, E. B., Catalogue of Stars, B. Boss, 365 

Korow, C. A., Alge, G. S. West, 413 

KunkeL, B. W., Benjamin Franklin, 437 

Kunz, G. F., Sociedad Cientifica Antonio Alzate, 
586 


Lacepéde or Lacépéde, W. J. Houuann, 484 

Lairp, E, R., The Third Law of Motion, 341 

LANE, A. C., Economie Geology, H. Ries, 488 

Lane Medical Lectures, 333 

LANGFELD, H. S., Amer. Psychol. Assoc., 478 

Larvae, Starvation of, J. E. WoDSEDALEK, 366 

Legs, J. H., Iowa Acad. of Sci., 44 

Lewis, G. N., The Static Atom, 297 

Lewis, J. V., The Phonograph, 587 

Licks, H. E., Mathematics, L. C. Karprnsxi, 215 

Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, H. D. Hooxker, 
JR., 197 

Light, Ultra-Violet, F. I. Harris and H. 8. Hoy, 
318 

Lighting, Laboratory, W. M. Arwoop, 641 

Lituir, R. S., Chemistry, J. F. McClendon, 565 

LieMAN, C. B., The ‘‘Rawness’’ of Subsoils, 288 


SCIENCE Vv 


Lizard, Horned, Urine of, A. O. WrESE, 517 

Lors, J., The Chemical Basis of Regeneration and 
Geotropism, 115; of Axial Polarity in Regen- 
eration, 547 

Logs, L., Cancer, L. D. Bulkley, 266 

Luminous and Non-luminous Insects, 
BurGE, 295 

Lunge, G., Sulphuric Acid, J. L. Howe, 438 

Lusk, G., Books on Food, 18 

Lusk, G., Nutrition, L. B. MrnpEn, 641 

Lyon, E, P., Radiator Humidifiers, 262 


WwW. E. 


McAdie, A., Aerography, R. C. Brooks, 264 

McAnpiz, A., Aerography, 360 

McClendon, J. F., Chemsitry, R. S. Linutr, 565 

MacDovueat, D. T., and H. A. Sporur, Effects of 
Acids and Salts on ‘‘Bio-colloids,’’ 269 

Macut, D. I., Pharmacology, D. E. Jackson, 388 

McM., J. P., Growth and Form, D. W. Thompson, 
513 

McNairn, W. H., The Story of Cosmological 
Theory, 599 

McNerez, L. G., and F. S. Hammerr, Ingested 
Placenta, 345 

MacNwz, W. vEB., Age and Acid Case Equi- 
librium, 643 

MacNutt, J. S., Milk Problem, L. F. Rerrcrr, 292 

Mageatu, T. B., Northern Lights, 290 

Magnetic Particle, A. H. Compron and O. Roen- 
LEY, 415 

Magnetism and Molecular Structure, A, P. WILLS, 
349 

Malphigian Tubules, J. A. NELson, 343 

Mannite in Silage, A. W. Dox and G. P. Puat- 
SANCE, 192 

Manson, Marspen, Antarctic Research, 639 

Mason, W. P., Chemistry, E. H. S. Bamry, 540 

Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Faculty Changes, 
428 

Mast, S. O., Vitality of the Cysts of the Pro- 
tozoon, 70 

Mathematical, Assoc. of Amer., W. D. Catrns, 
207; Soc. Amer., F-. N. ‘Cou, 369, 518 

Mathematics, E. R. Hepricr, 395 

Maruer, K. F., Canadian Stratigraphy and Pale- 
ontology, 66 

Matter, The Structure of, G. K. Faux and J. M. 
NELSON, 551 

Marrnew, W. D., Man and the Anthropoid, 239 

MaxweEtu, S. S., Nerve Holder, 517 

Mayo Foundation and the University of Minne- 
sota, 284, 452 

Mrap, C. A., The Aurora Borealis, 367 

Mechanics, P. E. Knopsrec, 63; E. A. ECKHARDT, 
340; E. R. Latrp, 341 

Medals, John Scott Legacy and Edward Long- 
streth, 508 

Medical, Students and Conscription, 156, 232; 
Service for Army, 429; Officers, Rank and 
Authority, 485; Public Lectures, 632 

Medicine, The Graduate Degree in, L. B. WILSON, 
127 

Mess, C. E. K., The Publication of Scientifie Re- 
search, 237; The Production of Scientifie Knowl- 
edge, 519 

MENDEL, L. B., Nutrition, G. Lusk, 641 

Meteor, A Texas, J. A. UDDEN, 616 

Meteorite, New, H. L. Warp, 262 


vi SCIENCE 


Meteorology and Aeronautical Engineering, 84; 
British Committee on, 55 

Metric Assoc., Amer., 612 

Meyer, A., Mental Adjustments, F. L. Wells, 587 

Minirr, G. A., The Human Worth of Rigorous 
Thinking, C. J. Keyser, 186 

Minurr, M. R., Filing Pamphlets, 263 

Mitchell, Maria, Memorial Fellowship, 405 

Mites attacking Crops, R. W. Doane, 192 

Miyake, T., Konchugaku Hanron Hokwan, L. O. 
Howarp, 113 

Mold Action and Soils, P. E. Brown, 171 

Moorrs, C. A., Experiments with Phosphates, 210 

Moon, New, O. Kiorz, 290 

Moors, E. 8., Oolitic and Pisolithie Barite, 342 

Moth, Clothes, R. C. Benrpicr, 464 

Munoz, J. G., Girdling of Bean Stems, 88 

Miinsterberg, H., Letters, T. D. A. CocKERELL, 40 

Mourpuy, R. C., Faunal Conditions in 8. Ga., 112 


National, Research Council, 99; Financial Sup- 
port, 264, 335, 475; Service, Rewards for, X., 
113; and Scientific Men, 233; Acad., Proceed- 
ings, E. B. Wiuson, 141, 166, 567; Philadelphia 
Meeting, 492; Welfare and Organized Knowl- 
edge, P. G. Nurrine, 247 

Naturalists, Amer. Soc., B. M. Davis, 453 

NeEtson, J. A., Malphigian Tubules of the Honey- 
bee Larva, 343; Orientation of objects in paraf- 
fin, 387 

Newson, J. M., and G. K. Faux, The Structure 
of Matter, 551 

Nerve Holder, S. S. MAxweEtu, 517 

Newman, H. H., Biology of Twins, H. H. W., 486 

NrpHer, F. E., Gravitational Repulsion, 293 

Nitrates, Production by the Government, 256 

North Carolina Acad. of Sci., E. W. GupcEr, 193 

Northern Lights, T. B. Magar, 290 

Noyes, W. A., Chemical Laboratories and Na- 
tional Welfare, 1 

Noyes, Professor W. A. and the Amer. Chem. Soc., 
582 

Nucleus, The Réle of the in Oxidation, W. J. V. 
OSTERHOUT, 367 

Nourtine, P. G., Organized Knowledge and Na- 
tional Welfare, 247; Manufacture of Optical 
Glass, 538 


Occupational Census of the Army, 307 

Oil, under the Great Central Plains, 155; Field, 
Saratoga, Texas, EH. 8. Moore, 342 

Oxucort, W. T., Amer. Assoc. of Variable Star Ob- 
servers, 380 

Optical Glass, P. G. Nurrine, 538 

Opties, Teaching of, D. V. GuTurtin, 434 

Ordnance Department of the Army, 258 

Orientation of Objects in Paraffin, J. A. NELSON, 
387 

Ornithologists, Deaths among, 450; Union, 559 

OsBorn, H. F., Algonkian Bacteria, 432 

Osborn, Henry Fairfield, Celebration, 477 

OsterHouT, W. J. V., The Nucleus and Oxida- 
tion, 367 


PauMer, A. DEF., Measurements, L. Tuttle, 89 
PAPANICOLAU, G. N., and C. R. Stockarp, ‘‘ Heat 
Period’’ in the Guinea-pig, 42 


ConTENTS AND - 
INDEX. 


Parsons, C. L., Amer. Chem. Soe., 108; War 
Service for Chemists, 451 

Patent Reform, B. RussrLu and J. Jewrrt, 629 

Patents, Utilization for the Promotion of Re- 
search, T. B. Roprertson, 371 

Patterson, A. M., German-English Dictionary for 
Chemists, E. J. Cran, 414 

Peck Testimonial Exhibit, H. D. Housn, 204 

PrEcKHAM, W. C., Erasmus Darwin and Benjamin 
Franklin, 459 

Pendulum, Focault, W. C. Baxrr, 489 

Perkins, P. B., The Stansiphon, 216; Gaseous 
Ions, 589 

Petroleum, California, 231 

Pharmaceutical Experiment Station, 56 

Philosophical Soc., Amer., A. W. GoopsPEED, 219, 
244 

Phosphates, Field Experiments, C. A. Moogrs, 
210 

Physiological and Physical Laboratories, F. W. 
ELLIS, 416 

Physiologists and Biochemists, 307 

Physiology and the War, C. S. SHERRINGTON, 502 

Pig, Roast, H. P. Armssy, 160 

Placenta, Ingested, F. S. Hammer? and L. G. 
McNEILE, 345 

PLAISANCE, G. P., and A. W. Dox, Mannite in 
Silage Explosives, 192 

Plant, Diseases in Canada, H. T. Giissow, 363 

Plants, Common Names, M. A. BigeLow, 16; M. 
ARMSTRONG, 362; W. N. Ciuts, 483 

Pogur, J. E., Military Geology, 8 

PoPENoE, P., Philippe de Vilmorin, 178 

Posey, G. B., G. F. Gravatt, and R. H. Couiery, 
Uredinia on Ribes Stems, 314 

Potash Production, 282 

PricE, W. A., Uffington Shales of W. Va., 540 

Priestley, Memorial, 154; A Predecessor of, W. 
W. Keen, 214 

Psychological, Examination of Recruits, 308, 355; 
Assoc., Amer., H. S. LANGFELD, 478 

Psychology and National Service, R. M, YERKEs, 
101 

Psychopathological Examination of Recruits, 156 

Puebla Ruin, in Colorado, J. W. FEWKES, 255 


Quotations, 17, 39, 65, 89, 163, 185, 264, 363, 411, 
460, 485, 512 


Radiation and Matter, W. DuANE, 347 

Rainfall, Extraordinary, D. H. CamMpBeti, 511 

Ramsay, Sir William, 30 

‘‘Rawness’’ of Subsoils, C. B. LIPMAN, 288 

Read, M. L., Mothercraft Manual, G. Lusx, 19 

Recruits, Physiological Examination of, 308; The 
(Physique of, 460 

Red Cross in France, 205, 381 

Reed, John Oren and Karl Eugen Guthe, 207 

Regeneration, and Geotropism, J. Lors, 115; The 
Basis of Axial Polarity in, J. Lors, 547 

Research Corporation, 131 

Rerterr, L. F., Milk Problem, J. 8S. MacNutt, 292 

Rerynotps, E. S., Internal Telia of Rusts, 140; 
““ Academie Freedom,’’ 184 

Rhythmic Banding, H. H. HoumeEs, 442 

RicHarps, J. W., Pittsburgh Meeting of American 
Association, 638 


New oar | 
Vou. XLV. 


RiwvieE, O., Theory of Sex, 19 

River, P. R., Frontal and Lateral Vision, 213 

Ries, H., Economie Geology, A. C. Lanz, 488 

Rierz, H. L., Observations, 588 

Robertson, A. W. D., and R. J. A. Berry, Austra- 
lian Aboriginal Crania, A. Hrpiicka, 315 

Roperrson, T. B., Patents and the Promotion of 
Research, 371 

Robertson’s, Professor, Gift to University of Cali- 
fornia, 352 

Rockefeller Institute, War Demonstration Hos- 
pital, 206 

Roenugy, A., and A. H. Compron, Ultimate Mag- 
netic Particle, 415 

RosEnBerG, L., Colloid Chemistry of Fehling’s 
Test, 617 

Rowntrer, L. G., Meetings of Biological Socie- 
ties, 583 

Royal Society Fellowships, 65 

RussEtL, B., and H. J. Jrewrrr, Patent Reform, 
629 

Russell, Dean H. L., The work of, 152 

Rusts, Internal Telia of, HE. S. ReyNoups, 140 

Salt-dome Oil and Gas Pools, E. W. SHaAw, 553 


Sarton, G., An Institute for the History of Sci- 
ence and Civilization, 399 

Sayues, R. W., American Geology, 162 

Science, Institute for the History of, A. G. S. 
JOSEPHSON, 15; G. Sarron, 399; and Industry, 
89; Popular, R. S. Breep, 238; Enrollment in 
the High Schools, E. R. Downine, 351 

Scientific, Events, 10, 30, 54, 83, 106, 131, 155, 
179, 205, 231, 256, 282, 305, 333, 352, 379, 404, 
427, 451, 477, 506, 532, 557, 581, 610, 632; 
Notes and News, 13, 33, 56, 86, 109, 133, 158, 
180, 208, 2338, 259, 284, 308, 335, 356, 381, 407, 
430, 454, 479, 509, 536, 561, 584, 612, 634; 
Books, 18, 40, 89, 113, 164, 186, 215, 240, 264, 
292, 315, 342, 364, 388, 413, 438, 461, 486, 513, 
540, 565, 587, 617, 641; Research, The Publi- 
cation of, C. E. K. Megs, 237; Knowledge, The 
Production of, C. E. K. Mess, 519; British 
Committee on Research, 534; Studies, Conjoint 
Board of, 581 

Seaver, F. J., Botrytis and Sclerotinia, 163 

Sex, Theory of, O. Rippir, 19; and Chromosome 
Differences in Spherocarpos, C. E. ALLEN, 466 

SHantz, H. L., Bot. Soc. of Wash., 72 

SHaw, E. W., Salt-dome Oil and Gas Pools, 553 

SHEPARDSON, G. D., Telephone Apparatus, A. E. 
K., 462 

SHERRINGTON, C. S., Physiology and the War, 502 

Sigma, Xi, The Future of, S. W. WinuistTon, 147 

Snynot, E. W., ‘‘Age and Area’’ Hypothesis, 457 

Smelter Gases, R. W. Doane, 295 

Surry, H. I., Prehistoric Canadian Art and Com- 
mercial Design, 60 

Smithsonian, Botanical Expeditions, 31; Excava- 
tions in N. M., 532 

Social Sciences, C. A. ExLwoop, 469 

Sociedad Cientifica Antonio Alzate, G. F. Kunz, 
586 

Societies and Academies, 72, 369, 518 

Soil Acidity and Drainage, S. D. Conner, 346 

Soils, Chemical Transformation of, H. J. Conn, 
252 

Soldiers, Wounded, The Care of, 448 


SCIENCE 


Vii 


SPAULDING, P., and G. F. Gravatt, Inoculations 
on Ribes with Cromartium ribicola, Fischer, 243 

Special Articles, 19, 70, 90, 115, 142, 167, 189, 
216, 241, 269, 293, 318, 345, 367, 392, 415, 440, 
462, 489, 517, 540, 568, 589, 618, 643 

Spitz, G. T., and F. Stern, Food for the Worker, 
G. Lusk, 18 

Srorur, H. A., and D. T. MacDoucau, The Effect 
of Acids and Salts on ‘‘ Bio-colloids,’’ 269 

Stansiphon, The, P. B. PrrKins, 218 

Star, Variable, Observers, W. T. Oucorr, 380, 620 

States Relations Service and Agricultural Instruc- 
tion, 232 

Sreppins, J., Amer. Astron. Soc., 467 

Stern, F., and G. T. Spitz, Food for the Worker, 
G. Lusk, 18 

Srewarr, J. @., Atomic Weights and Atomic 
Numbers and Structure of Atomie Nuclei, 568 

Sriecuirz, J., Chemistry in the U. S., 321 

Srockarp, C. R., and G. N. Papaniconav, ‘‘ Heat 
Period’’ in the Guinea-pig, 42 

Srrone, R. M., Wall Charts, 61; preparing Ani- 
mal Material to be dissected, 564 

Surgeons, Museum of the Royal College of, 283 

Surgery, Oral and Plastic, 380 

Swanton, J. R., Tsimshian Mythology, F. Boas, 
514; A. McApig, 360 

Symbols, O. Kiorz, 360 

Systematist, The Modern, L. H. Barney, 623 


Talking Machine and the Phonograph, J. V. 
LEwIs, 587 

TAUBENHAUS, J. J., Cotton Rust in Texas, 267 

Taubenhaus, J. J., The Sweet Pea, F. A. WoLrF, 
316 

Taytor, W. P., The Vertebrate Zoologist and 
National Efficiency, 123 

Technical, College Graduates in War Time, 17; 
Education, Effect of the War on, 334 

Thompson, D. W., Growth and Form, J. P. McM., 
513 

Thyroid Removal, B. M. ALLEN, 216 

Tobacco, Bacterial Leaf Spot of, F. A. WoLr 
and A. C. Foster, 361 

Toronto, Univ. of, Connaught Laboratories, 452 

Trelease, W., The Genus Phoradendron, G. G. 
Hepecock, 516 

Tuberculosis and the French Army, 10 

Tuberculous Soldiers, Farm Colonies for, 205 

Tuttle, L., Measurements, A. DEF. PALMER, 89 


Uppen, J. A., A Texas Meteor, 616 

Uffington Shale, of W. Va., W. A. Price, 540 

U.S. Fisheries Biological Station at Woods Hole, 
477 

University and Educational News, 15, 36, 60, 87, 
111, 139, 160, 182, 210, 237, 287, 311, 339, 359, 
385, 408, 456, 492, 510, 538, 585, 615, 638 

Uredinia of Cromartium ribicola, G. B. Posry, 
G. F. Gravatt, and R. H. Contry, 314 


Vai, C. E., Climatic Pulsations, 90 

Vilmorin, Philippe de, P. Poprnor, 178 

Vision, Frontal and Lateral, P. R. Rimmer, 213 
Vitality of Cysts of the Protozoon, S. O. Mast, 70 
W., F. A., Peaches of New York, U. P. Hedrick, 439 
W., H. H., Biology of Twins, H. H. Newman, 486 
Wall Charts, R. M. Strone, 61 


vili 


War, Service for Chemists, 32, 107; and Scientific 
Investigation, 39; Bread, 185; Service and the 
Medical School of the Univ. of Pa., 402 

Warp, H. L., A New Meteorite, 262 

Washington, Bot. Soc. of, H. L. SHANTZ, 72 

WarerMAN, W. G., Plant Eeology and Agricul- 
ture, 223 

WessteEr, D. L., Equations as Statements, 187 

Weesssg, A. O., Urine of the Horned Lizard, 517 

Weil, The Late Dr. Richard, 557 

Wells, F. L., Mental Adjustments, A. MryeEr, 587 

West, G. S., Alge, C. A. Korom, 413 

Wheat, Cropping, H. L. Botury, 49; The Tillering 
of, A. E. GRANTHAM, 392 

Wiuutston, S. W., The Future of Sigma Xi, 147 

Wiis, A. P., Magnetism and Molecular Struc- 
ture, 349 

Witson, E. B., Proceedings of The Nat. Acad. of 
Sci., 141, 166, 567 

Wison, L. B., Graduate Degree in Medicine, 127 

Wrnstow, M. F., Forbes Winslow Memorial Hos- 
pital, 484 


SCIENCE 


CoNTENTS AND 
InpEx. 


Wireless Time Service in the Philippines, 582 

WODSEDALEK, J. H., Starvation of Larve, 366 

Wo.r, F. A., The Sweet Pea, J. J. Taubenhaus, 
316; and A. C. Fostrr, Bacterial Leaf Spot of 
Tobacco, 361 

Wood, Mechanical Properties of, 516 

Wooprurr, L. L., Erasmus Darwin and Benjamin 
Franklin, 291 

Woopwarpd, R. 8., The Carnegie Institution and 
the Public, 573 . 

WoopwortH, R. S., Mental Conflicts and Miscon- 
duct, W. Healy, 481 

Wricut, G. F., Pennsylvania Glaciation, 37 


X., Rewards for National Service, 113 


YERKES, R. M., Psychology and National Service, 
101 


Zoological Research, C. H. HigENMANN, 302 
Zoologist, Vertebrate and National Efficiency, W. 
P. Taytor, 123 


fae leNCE 


New SERIES 7 SINGLE Corres, 15 Crs. 
Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 Fripay, Jury 6, 1917 


ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00 , 


SIXTH 


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Octavo of 1043 pages, containing 306 illustrations, many in colors. By WiLt1am H. HOWELL, Pu.D., M.D., 
Professor of Physiology, Johus Hopkins University. Cloth, $4.00 net, 


Lusk’s Elements of Nutrition — xew se gormion 


This book reviews the scientific substratum upon which rests present-day knowledge of 
nutrition both in health and in disease. Professor Lusk discusses starvation, regulation of 
temperature, the influence of protein food, the specific dynamic action of food-stuffs, 
the influence of fat and carbohydrate ingestion and of mechanical work—cverything 
bearing on metabolism. The book has been increased by 240 pages of new matter. 

Octavo of 641 pages. By GrawamjLusk, Pu.D., Professorfof Physiology,“Corneil Medical School. 


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Stiles’ Human Physiology PRINTING 


This physiology is particularly adapted for high schools and general colleges. It is written 
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12mo of 208 pages, illustrated. By PERcy GoLpTHWAIT STILEs, Assistant Professor of Physiology at Har- 
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SCIENCE 


Fripay, Juuy 6, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Relation of Chemical Laboratories to the 
National Welfare: Dr. Wiuu1am A. Noyes. 1 


Military Geology: Proressor JosrpH E. 


IER SiaqQueduas che son aoa o.oLs oa os nace. 8 


Scientific Events :— 
Tuberculosis and the French Army; Med- 
tcal Work in Brazil; Recommendations of the 
Third Interstate Cereal Conference; Organi- 


zation of the Engineering Council ........ 10 
Scientific Notes and News .............05.- 13 
University and Educational News .......... 15 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

An Institute for the History of Science and 

Cwilization: AKsEL G. S. JOSEPHSON. 

Popular Names of Plants: Prorrssor M. A. 

IB IGEM OWatetprersieie oy teiscreacis eke sienie vac c1aceat 15 
Quotations :— 

Technical College Graduates in War Time; 


Discoveries and Inventions ............... 17 


Scientific Books :— 


Books on Food: Proressor GraHam' Lusk. 18 


Special Articles — 
The Theory of Sex as stated in terms of 


Results of Studies on Pigeons: PRorEssoR 
Oscar RIDDLE 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE RELATION OF CHEMICAL LABOR- 
ATORIES TO THE NATIONAL 
WELFARE}? 


For two years and a half the world has 
been in a ferment. On the basis of an inci- 
dent which now seems trivial, the mutual 
jealousies and distrust of the nations of Eu- 
rope precipitated a war in which the inter- 
ests of all the nations of the world are in- 
volved. Those of us who think that our 
race is progressing toward better condi- 
tions can not but believe that there will 
grow out of this war some better method of 
settling differences between nations. The 
duel as a means of settling private quarrels 
has long since disappeared in England and 
America. It must surely cease as a means 
of settling quarrels between nations. It 
seems certain that the time will come when 
the world will look back to these years as a 
time of madness like the madness that drove 
men to the crusades of the middle ages. 

With all the loss and waste and dreadful 
suffering of these years the nations of the 
world are learning some lessons which 
would not have been learned in times of 
peace. Russia has solved her liquor prob- 
lem for the time being. Germany enforces 
a democratic equality in the distribution of 
food which is beyond the wildest dream of 
the socialists. Bread is distributed by 
cards and the wealthiest citizen can get no 
more than the day laborer. England has 
solved the problem of the unemployed— 
there is no longer a ‘‘submerged tenth’’ for 
whom conditions are utterly hopeless. One 
of my friends who has been in London with 

1 An address delivered at the dedication of the 


chemical laboratory of the University of Oklahoma, 
January 26, 1917. 


2 SCIENCE 


his family reports that his wife was com- 
miserating her charwoman on the suffer- 
ing of the war, when the latter replied: 
‘It’s not so bad—a pun’ a week and the 
man away from home—it’s too good to 
last.’’ 

In America, too, we are learning some 
lessons—among others that our industrial 
independence, at least in the matter of dyes 
for our textiles, is of some importance. 

If we try to find a single word which ex- 
presses that for which all of the warring 
nations are striving it is efficiency. It 
seems very dreadful that the desire to 
slaughter our fellow men should be the in- 
centive, and if we did not believe that the 
lessons learned under the stress of war will 
remain during the long years of peace that 
are to follow, we might well wish for the 
good old times before scientific efficiency 
was thought of. But whether we will or 
not a new sort of efficiency has come to 
stay and it is worth our while, here in 
America, to grasp its meaning and to look 
for the foundation on which it has been 
built. fi : 

I see with the eyes of a chemist, of course, 
and shall draw my illustrations from the 
science which I know best, but much that I 
have to say applies to other sciences as well. 

A little less than one hundred years ago, 
shortly after Europe had settled down 
from the tumult of the Napoleonic wars a 
young German doctor of philosophy, not 
yet out of his teens, went to Paris to study 
chemistry and succeeded in gaining admis- 
sion to the private laboratory of Gay Lus- 
sac. lLiebig was a born chemist, if ever 
there was one, and had worked with things 
chemical from early boyhood. But even 
Liebig needed the inspiration of contact 
with one of the master chemists of his time, 
and this Gay Lussae gave him. After a few 
months he returned to Giessen and there in 
a laboratory which was new of its kind in 
university life he gathered about him an 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1175 


enthusiastic group of young men who came 
to him for the study of chemistry. The lab- 
oratory was very crude and primitive in 
comparison with the palaces of science 
which we build to-day, but out of that lab- 
oratory went influences which have spread 
over the whole world—hiebig’s idea of a 
laboratory was not that it is chiefly a place 
for teaching what is already known, but 
rather that it is a workshop where teacher 
and pupil are striving together to learn 
something new from the great book of na- 
ture. Very soon many similar laboratories 
sprang up and within a few years Germany 
became the country to which young men re- 
sorted from all over the world for the study 
of chemistry. 

A. W. Hofmann, one of the talented 
young men of the Giessen group, was called 
to London by Prince Albert in 1845. There 
he taught in the college of chemistry. He 
employed as an honorary assistant, some 
years later, a young man by the name of 
William H. Perkin. Young Perkin became 
so interested in the subject that he was not 
content merely to work with Hofmann dur- 
ing the day, but he fitted up a private lab- 
oratory at home where he could work at 
night. Here he tried to do some experi- 
ments in the hope of obtaining a synthesis 
of quinine. His first experiments gave an 
unattractive reddish brown precipitate of 
the sort that most chemists would pass by 
as hopeless. He became interested, how- 
ever, and tried similar experiments with a 
simpler substance, aniline. The product 
was at first still more unpromising, but on 
further examination he found that it con- 
tained a beautiful purple coloring-matter 
which was capable of dyeing silk and other 
textiles. It was in fact the substance we 
now know as the ‘‘Mauve dye.’’ Perkin, 
then a lad of only eighteen years, con- 
ceived the daring idea that this color might 
be put to practical use. Fortunately his 
father had faith enough in his ability to 


Juty 6, 1917] 


furnish him with the necessary financial 
assistance. It was a new thing under the 
sun and it is fascinating to read of the diffi- 
culties met and overcome in developing the 
industry of the coal-tar dyes. The benzene 
which is now separated from coal-tar to the 
amount of thousands of tons annually was 
not to be had as a definite product and it 
was necessary to invent the machinery and 
apparatus for carrying out on a large scale 
operations which, hitherto, had been tried 
only in test-tubes. Even when the new dye 
had been made, the dyers, who were accus- 
tomed only to vegetable dyes, could not use 
the product and Perkin had to go into their 
dyehouses and teach them how to handle 
the material. All of these difficulties were 
finally overcome and a successful founda- 
tion was laid for a great industry, which in 
less than a generation revolutionized the 
artistic beauty of our wearing apparel. 

A few years later two German chemists 
solved the riddle of the structure of aliza- 
rin, the coloring matter of madder root, 
and showed that the dye could be made 
from the anthracene of coal tar. They did 
not, however, put the production of the ma- 
terial on a commercial basis and here, 
again, it was William H. Perkin who 
worked out the economic details of manu- 
facture in his factory. 

With such a beginning it would have 
seemed that England must be the leader in 
the manufacture of artificial dyes, but long 
before the end of the nineteenth century 
Great Britain had lost all her initial ad- 
vantage and Germany was preeminent in 
the production of synthetic colors. 

When we look for the reason for this sur- 
prising result we find it almost entirely in 
the laboratories founded on Liebig’s ideal 
—laboratories where students learned the 
chemistry already known, it is true, but 
where, much more than that, and as their 
prime object, teachers and pupils gave 
their energies intensely and incessantly to 


SCIENCE | 5) 


the development of an ever-changing sci- 
ence. Young men trained in such an at- 
mosphere proved to be the very ones who 
could solve the varied problems of an in- 
dustry which is so intimately connected 
with investigations in pure science. In ad- 
dition to the supply of trained chemists fur- 
nished by the universities there grew up a 
most intimate connection between the uni- 
versity laboratories and the factories where 
dyes were made. An illustration will help 
to make this clear. Kekulé, one of the men 
who worked with Liebig in Giessen, pro- 
posed his theory of the structure of benzene 
in 1865. This has become, perhaps, the 
most important single thought guiding the 
work of the color-chemists even to the pres- 
ent day. Baeyer, who had studied with 
Kekulé, took up, in the same year, some 
work on isatin, an oxidation product of 
indigo. He tells us with what pleasure he 
had spent for a piece of indigo a birthday 
present of two thalers, given him when he 
was thirteen, and with what a feeling of 
reverence he drew in the odor of orthoni- 
trophenol while he was preparing isatin 
from it by the directions which he found in 
an organic chemistry. 

After working upon isatin and other de- 
rivatives of indigo for four years with good 
success Professor Baeyer dropped the sub- 
ject for eight years because his former 
teacher Kekulé published a paper in which 
he announced that he was attempting a 
synthesis of isatin. It was evident that 
Kekulé did not succeed and in 1877 Baeyer 
felt justified in taking up the subject again. 
Three years later he discovered a synthesis 
of indigo which was of sufficient promise 
for a patent and the Badische Anilin Soda 
Fabrik began at once an attempt to put the 
synthesis on a manufacturing basis. But a 
successful synthesis in the laboratory is 
very different from successful production 
in a factory. The chemists of the factory 
worked over the process from every pos- 


4 SCIENCE 


sible point of view for fifteen years. The 
various steps in the process were greatly 
improved and more than a hundred patents 
were taken out, but it was never possible to 
convert Baeyer’s synthesis into a successful 
manufacture of indigo on a large scale. 
The original material required for that 
synthesis is the toluene of coal tar and the 
annual production of this substance would 
be sufficient to produce only about one 
fourth of the indigo required in the world. 
As toluene is used in the manufacture of a 
great variety of other dyes and compounds 
it is evident that any considerable use for 
the manufacture of indigo would cause 
such an increase in price as automatically 
to stop the manufacture. No manufacture 
of indigo could succeed unless the dye were 
made at a price to compete with the agri- 
cultural production in India. 

The factory found its way out of this cul- 
de-sac by means of a discovery made by 
Professor Heumann in the chemical labora- 
tory of the Polytechnic at Zurich, Switzer- 
land—a laboratory which has given us 
many brilliant discoveries in chemistry and 
which is conducted on a high scientific 
plane, not on the theory that it must devote 
itself to so-called practical problems. By 
combining Heumann’s discovery with 
another made by Hoogewerf and van Dorp 
in a laboratory in Holland it became pos- 
sible to manufacture indigo with naphtha- 
lene of coal tar as the starting-point. 
Naphthalene, known to us all in the fa- 
miliar moth balls, is abundant and cheap. 

Even with the aid of these fundamental 
discoveries from the university laboratories 
the chemists of the factory worked inces- 
santly upon the problem for seven years 
before they felt sufficiently sure of their 
ground to recommend the building of a 
plant for the manufacture on a large scale. 
Two incidents of the development are of 
sufficient interest to deserve mention. The 
first step in the process is the oxidation of 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 


naphthalene to phthalic acid. The proc- 
esses which had been used before that were 
too tedious and expensive. In the course 
of a systematic examination of all possible 
methods for cheapening the process a chem- 
ist accidentally broke a thermometer in a 
mixture of naphthalene and sulfuric acid 
which he was heating. The mercuric sul- 
fate which was formed proved to be the 
needed catalyst to hasten the reaction and 
the details of a successful process for the 
oxidation were soon developed. But, as is 
so often the case, the solution of one prob- 
lem brought out a second difficulty. 
Strong sulfuric acid is required for the 
oxidation and this is reduced to sulfur di- 
oxide, which it is necessary to recover and 
convert back into the strong acid by oxida- 
tion with air. This led to the transforma- 
tion of the old and well-known contact 
process for the manufacture of sulfuric 
acid into a new and radically changed form. 
Incidentally it may be remarked that the 
new contact process soon found its way to 
America and has been used to convert to 
sulfuric acid the sulfur dioxide obtained as 
the first step in the reduction of zine ores. 
The strong sulfuric acid has been used, in 
turn, in making dynamite. 

Finally, in July, 1897, the preliminary 
work was completed and the Badische Ani- 
lin Soda Fabrik was ready to begin the 
construction of the necessary factories. In 
October, 1900, Dr. Brunck reported that 
the firm had spent about eighteen million 
marks or four and a half million dollars 
upon their plant and that the production 
had already attained a proportion which 
corresponded with the natural production 
from 100,000 hectares or nearly 250,000 
acres of land. In reply to the suggestion 
that the competition might prove disastrous 
to the farmers of India he expressed the 
hope that the land now used for the pro- 
duction of indigo may be released for rais- 


Juuy 6, 1917] 


ing food stuffs, often sorely needed during 
the famines in that country. 

It has seemed worth while to consider 
this development of the manufacture of 
indigo in detail because it points out so 
clearly the road which we must travel in 
America if we are to succeed in the color in- 
dustry. It is a lesson which American 
manufacturers are learning, too, and this 
promises well for the future. A manufac- 
turer in Michigan has recently taken a 
promising research worker in organic chem- 
istry from the University of Michigan to 
help him develop the manufacture of in- 
digo, and another manufacturer in Buffalo 
last summer called a man from the Univer- 
sity of Illinois at twice the salary he was 
paid there, to organize a research labora- 
tory for the manufacture of dyes. In each 
case the man secured his training in the 
research work of a university laboratory. 

At the beginning of the war we were 
using dyes in the United States to the value 
of about $15,000,000 a year. Of this 
amount only about $3,000,000 worth were 
made in America. Nearly all the rest came 
from Germany. Textile industries having 
a product worth hundreds of millions are 
directly dependent on dyes and there is 
searcely a person in this country who has 
not seen in some form the effect of the 
shortage. The dye manufacturers have 
been alive to the situation and in another 
year they will be able to furnish the quan- 
tity of dyes required, though they will not 
be able to furnish as great a variety as were 
formerly used. 

We have heard a good deal, in recent 
years, about a scientific tariff commission. 
The action of Congress last summer illus- 
trates the need of such a commission. The 
importance of making ourselves independ- 
ent of other countries had become so evi- 
dent that a bill was introduced providing 
for an ad valorem tax on dyes of 30 per 
cent. and a specific tax of 5 cents per pound. 


SCIENCE 5 


The specific tax is to continue for five 
years. At the end of that time it is to be 
decreased one cent a year till it disappears. 
There is also a provision that if the Ameri- 
can factories do not produce 60 per cent. of 
the value of our home consumption at the 
end of five years the specific duties are to 
be completely repealed. While the specific 
duty is only two thirds of the amount which 
had been recommended by the New York 
Section of the American Chemical Society, 
it might, perhaps, have been sufficient if it 
were not for another provision which was 
allowed to creep in. Apparently at the in- 
stigation of some large user of dyes, indigo, 
alizarin and their derivatives were excluded 
from the specifie duties. No logical reason, 
whatever, can be given for this exclusion. 
It must be due either to stupidity or to an 
attempt to favor some special interests. As 
this class of dyes constitutes 29 per cent. of 
the whole and at least 10 per cent. of the 
other dyes are covered by foreign patents, 
it is evident that the hope that our fac- 
tories will produce 60 per cent. of our dyes 
in normal conditions of foregin competi- 
tion is small. 

Still other difficulties beset the industry. 
The manufacturers of dyes in Germany 
have very definite arrangements by which 
one dye is made by one firm, another by a 
second, and still another by a third so that 
there is no real competition in the manufac- 
ture of staple products. Such combina- 
tions are fostered rather than hindered by 
the German government, but similar com- 
binations in this country are forbidden by 
the Sherman law. The way out of this 
difficulty seems to be in the first place a 
census of dyes showing what dyes are used 
and the quantities of each. Such a census 
has already been prepared by the expert of 
the Department of Commerce and Labor. 
If we can combine with this, in accordance 
with a suggestion of Dr. Herty, the editor 
of our Journal of Industrial and Engineer- 


6 SCIENCE 


ing Chemistry, a frank statement by manu- 
facturers, of the dyes which they intend to 
make, we may find a solution of this prob- 
lem which is in accord with the democratic 
equality of opportunity which the Sherman 
law is designed to conserve. 

The greatest fear of the manufacturers is 
that after the war they may be subjected to 
an unfair competition designed to destroy 
the new industry. The following story was 
told during a discussion of the dyestuff sit- 
uation which was held in New York in Sep- 
tember. Mr. Dow, of Midland, Michigan, 
discovered a good many years ago that the 
salt brines of Michigan contain enough bro- 
mine so that the element can be economically 
produced, and in the course.of a few years 
he developed the manufacture to such a 
point that he shipped some bromine to Ger- 
many. Not long after a German appeared 
at his works in Midland and said to him: 
“*T have conclusive evidence that you have 
been selling your bromine in Germany. 
Didn’t you know that you can’t do that?’’ 
Mr. Dow replied that he knew of no law 
against it. The German said ‘‘Well you 
ean not. If you do, we will sell two pounds 
of bromine in America for every pound you 
sell in Germany.’’ Mr. Dow paid no at- 
tention to the threat but went on with the 
production of bromine. Some months later 
when he was in Texas on business he re- 
ceived a telegram ‘‘Bromine is selling at 15 
cents.’’ A normal price is 75 cents. Mr. 
Dow closed his story at this point. The rep- 
resentative of the German Kali-Industrie, 
who was present, got up and asked him: 
“Well, wasn’t it satisfactorly adjusted ?”’ 
But he made no reply. I am fortunate 
enough to have heard the rest of the story 
—which is known to a good many outsiders, 
so I am betraying no confidence in telling 
you. Mr. Dow stopped selling bromine in 
America and sent his whole product to Ger- 
many. It was not long before the German 
manufacturers were ready to come to 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1175 


terms. Before the war Germany was man- 
ufacturing three fourths of the coal-tar 
dyes used in the world and we may be sure 
that she will not easily relinquish her posi- 
tion of preeminence in this field. Her 
manufacturers will surely attempt to de- 
stroy our manufacture of dyes by the same 
methods which were used to stop the manu- 
facture of bromine—by the so-called 
‘‘dumping’’ of materials here at prices be- 
low the cost of production. Laws have 
been passed by Congress imposing severe 
penalties for such practises, but some of our 
manufacturers are very sceptical as to their 
efficiency. We are not in as favorable a 
position to compete in the making of dyes as 
Mr. Dow was for the production of bromine. 

I think it is clear from what has been 
said that the manufacture of dyes rests at 
its foundation upon the research work done 
in the chemical laboratories of the German 
universities and that we may trace it back 
very directly to the days when Liebig re- 
turned from France with the inspiration 
which came from Gay Lussac, and founded 
the laboratory in Giessen. One of the most 
important factors in the dreadful efficiency 
of Germany during the last three years 
may be traced back to the same source. Not 
a few of our leading men have emphasized 
the advantage of developing the dyestuff 
industry in America because the men 
trained in this industry will be most com- 
petent to handle the manufacture of ex- 
plosives in case of war. Personally I have 
a strong hope that at the close of the war 
the world will be organized on the basis of 
justice instead of force, but for the present 
we can not ignore such arguments. 

I wish to congratulate you on the com- 
pletion of this laboratory at a most oppor- 
tune time. We are in the midst of a very 
rapid development of our chemical indus- 
tries. New lines of manufacture are being 
established and old lines are being rapidly 
developed. Manufacturers realize as they 


Juny 6, 1917] 


have never done before how much chemis- 
try can contribute to their success. 

At the risk of seeming personal I will 
give a few illustrations of how chemical re- 
search in a single laboratory has demon- 
strated its value under American condi- 
tions. 

A young man graduated from the course 
in chemical engineering at the University 
of Illinois in 1910. Soon after he was em- 
ployed by a manufacturer of cement in the 
state of Washington. Something had gone 
wrong in the factory and hundreds of bar- 
rels of cement were rejected because the 
material did not meet the specifications. 
The young graduate, trained in methods of 
research, soon found the cause of the diffi- 
eulty and corrected it and the firm has con- 
tinued in the successful manufacture ever 
since. 

In 1907 a graduate of Worcester Poly- 
technic Institute who had spent one year at 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
came to Illinois as a research assistant. He 
completed his work for the degree of Ph.D. 
three years later and was continued as an 
instructor and later became assistant pro- 
fessor in charge of the division of organic 
chemistry. In 1916 one of the oldest of the 
firms manufacturing dyes in America 
searched the country over to find a man to 
organize their research laboratory. They 
selected this man, not because of any ex- 
perience which he had had in industrial 
work, but because of his record as a re- 
search worker in pure organic chemistry 
and because of his ability to apply the prin- 
ciples of physical chemistry to this field. 

Another young man, a graduate of Ober- 
lin College and trained in research by EKd- 
gar F. Smith, of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, came to Illinois in a subordinate 
position in 1907. During the eight or nine 
years following he became one of the lead- 
ing workers in this country in researches 
upon the rare earths, and he was gradually 


SCIENCE 7 


advanced to the position of professor of in- 
organic chemistry. Two or three years ago 
he was asked by a firm in Chicago to assist 
them in the details of an important applica- 
tion of tungsten to an industrial use. He 
solved the problem and the result proved to 
be of large commercial value. Last year he 
was asked by the firm to organize a research 
laboratory to study the application of rare 
metals to industrial uses. 

Another chemist who graduated at IIli- 
nois and afterwards took his degree of 
Ph.D. at Wisconsin is now state food com- 
missioner of Illinois. There is not a man, 
woman or child in the state of Illinois who 
is not directly or indirectly dependent on 
this chemist for the maintenance of proper 
standards for the food which he eats. 

Many similar illustrations of the impor- 
tance of trained chemists might be given by 
any large university in America. 

Such a laboratory.as this has three im- 
portant functions to perform. It must 
give an elementary knowledge of chemistry 
to many students who will not become 
chemists, but who yet should study the 
subject because chemistry touches the life 
of every one at many points. But this 
part of the work will be very poorly done 
if it merely imparts a set of so-called prac- 
tical facts about every day life. Such 
facts will be quickly forgotten, but chem- 
istry, better than almost any other science, 
furnishes a basis for clear scientific think- 
ing and for students to acquire the habit 
of reasoning from one point to another in 
such a manner as to connect and combine 
their knowledge into a coherent, logical 
system. The discipline acquired in this 
way is of greater value than any set of 
facts that may be learned. 

In the second place the laboratory will 
train a few men who will find their way 
into chemistry as a profession—it may be 
into some of the industries to which I have 
referred, or to become teachers, or to work 


8 SCIENCE 


in our experiment. stations over the im- 
portant applications of chemistry to agri- 
culture. 

The third and most important function 
of the laboratory is the contribution which 
it makes to the growth of our science. 
Here in Oklahoma you have many prob- 
lems which can be solved with the aid of 
chemistry. But just as Germany would 
have failed utterly to reach her highest 
achievements if her university professors 
had confined themselves to so-called prac- 
tical problems, so this or any other uni- 
versity will fail if its staff does not devote 
a considerable part of its energies to the 
advancement of the science of chemistry 
quite irrespective of whether industrial ap- 
plications for the results of their researches 
are apparent or not. No chemical labora- 
tory has a right to call itself a university 
laboratory if it loses sight of this, the 
highest of its functions. A high-school 
may devote itself exclusively to teaching 
and a college may possibly do the same, 
though of that there is serious question. 
For the university there can be no ques- 
tion. Ours is a vital, growing, rapidly 
changing science and only those who are 
intensely interested in its growth can prop- 
erly teach and inspire those who are to go 
out into the world and use for the ad- 
vantage of themselves and of the state the 
training they gain in university halls. 

Wiu1am A. NoyEs 


MILITARY GEOLOGY 


Mopern warfare is a science, or rather an 
application of many sciences, and therefore 
it can afford to neglect no scientific field the 
cultivation of which would make for added 
superiority, in however slight degree. The 
usefulness of certain sciences to the carrying 
on of war is obvious or has been made so by 
the conditions of the European contest: such 
are surgery and chemistry; the military ap- 
plication of certain other sciences, however, 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 


is not so apparent and needs to be pointed 
out from within the subject itself: thus it 
is with geology. If the service that this 
science can render to the country in time of 
war be clearly established, then it follows 
that geology will be incorporated in our plan 
of military development and be called upon 
to do its proper part in furthering the mili- 
tary effectiveness of the nation. 

This is a new role for geology, but a réle 
already played and established in the theater 
of war in Europe. Military geology is a 
phase of applied science that has served the 
warring nations abroad; it sees many duties 
that it may perform for the United States. 

In the first place, geological knowledge may 
be employed to advantage by an army in the 
field. “What a Geologist Can Do in War,” 
is the title of a brochure prepared by R. A. 
F. Penrose, Jr., for the geological committee 
of the National Research Council and pub- 
lished in April, 1917. This short essay in 
scarcely more than a thousand words speci- 
fies clearly the varied service that a knowl- 
edge of geology can render, not only to the 
army in camp, but to the army on the march 
and in battle. The importance of this ser- 
vice may be judged by observing some of the 
problems arising in the course of field opera- 
tions, which the geologist might appropriately 
be expected to solve. 

The selection of camp-sites involves prob- 
lems in drainage and sanitary arrangements, 
which become more difficult of solution in 
marshy country; in arid regions the possibil- 
ity of disastrous cloudbursts destroying 
camps improperly located demands attention. 
Trenches and tunnels must be placed, so far 
as strategic conditions allow, in easily work- 
able and drainable rock formations; while the 
stability of slopes depends upon the material 
in which the excavations are made. Ground 
for artillery positions should be selected not 
only from topographic considerations, but 
also in respect to the firmness and elasticity 
of the underlying rock, upon which the accur- 
acy of fire will in part depend. The construc- 
tion or repair of roads is a frequent military 
need, the more important because of the nec- 


Juuy 6, 1917] 


essity for transporting heavy artillery, for 
which the ordinary road-bed is inadequate. 

Topographic maps carry a special meaning 
for the trained geologist while geological 
maps yield information of value in regard to 
the strategic quality of the country of ad- 
vance; even without maps the geologist can 
draw inferences as to the ease and safety 
with which the country ahead may be trav- 
ersed. The vibration effects of prolonged 
artillery fire in mountainous regions are 
likely to cause landslides and _ snowslides, 
which may prove disastrous if not anticipated 
and guarded against; but vibrations arising 
from the enemy’s fire may be turned to ad- 
vantage through  seismographie records, 
showing the point of origin. Lastly, the 
question of an adequate water-supply is ever 
present, and the ordinary sources may often 
be enlarged or improved upon by the location 
of underground or artesian waters, while in 
deserts the avoidance or chemical improve- 
ment of waters too strongly alkaline becomes 
frequently of paramount importance. 

In these respects, then, an army without 
geological knowledge is at a disadvantage; 
for the problems mentioned are all within the 
capabilities of the geological engineer and 
some of them must remain unsolved if geol- 
ogical advice is not at hand. 

In the second place, an army employing 
geologists in its field activities can facilitate 
their effectiveness by maintaining a geological 
department at home for the accumulation of 
geological data and in particular of geologi- 
cal maps covering all possible regions of mili- 
tary activity. It is no small task to assemble 
such material in form and quantity suitable 
for use on short notice in any part of the 
world. Such a department, therefore, 
should be established in advance of field oper- 
ations. Anew type of map recently employed 
by physiographers, which shows by a block 
diagram both the topographic features and 
the underlying rock structures, would with- 
out question prove of distinct advantage to 
commanding officers planning a campaign 
or executing field manoeuvers. Few maps 
of this kind have ever been constructed; 


SCIENCE 9 


their preparation isslow and requires consid- 
erable skill and knowledge. It would fall 
within the province of the home office to 
develop the usefulness of this sort of map. 
The department also would appropriately 
assemble information on the water resources 
ot regions of prospective occupation, so 
that the geologist in the field might be sup- 
plied with such results of previous geologic 
work, particularly in the enemy’s country, as 
would facilitate his search for sources of 
water-supply. 

A third way in which geology can contrib- 
ute to the military strength of a country is 
through a study from a military standpoint 
of its mineral resources, the raw materials of 
war. In the United States, our mineral re- 
sources have long been the subject of organ- 
ized investigation on the part of the Geolog- 
ical Survey, which has accumulated detailed 
and accurate information regarding them of 
the highest value at the present time. But 
the investigations of the Geological Survey 
have naturally been confined largely to the 
economic and scientific aspects of its field, and 
while much of its information can be quickly 
interpreted in terms of military necessity, the 
fact remains that this accumulated knowledge, 
much of it of the deepest military significance, 
has remained largely unused by military au- 
thorities, and the United States to-day is un- 
prepared in respect to a few mineral products 
essential to war, such as nitrogen, potash, 
manganese, nickel, tin, and platinum. This 
country as a whole, however, is at a rel- 
atively efficient stage of preparedness in re- 
gard to her mineral industry, not because the 
government has studied and anticipated her 
military needs in this respect, but because re- 
cent economic demands have in most partic- 
ulars been analogous to impending war de- 
mands, and hence the mineral industry un- 
der present economic conditions is largely on 
a military footing. But this does not ob- 
viate the desirability of a further military- 
geological study of our mineral wealth, for 
conditions are ever changing and we should 
anticipate every eventuality. In the future, 
the military importance of minerals is bound 


10 SCIENCE 


to become of increasing significance with the 
approaching depletion of those resources most 
limited in quantity. 

Finally the science of geology can be made 
of increased effectiveness in military activ- 
ites through instruction of officers and mili- 
tary students in the elements of military geol- 
ogy. This may be acomplished at no great 
cost of time, by means of a brief and simple 
course of instruction given at military 
schools and training camps, supplemented by 
a manual which may be studied in the field. 
A knowledge of the properties and structure 
of the common rocks, and of the dependence 
of topography upon geologic conditions, 
would be of repeated usefulness to the officer 
and add to his efficiency. Some geological 
knowledge, at least, he must pick up in a 
practical way; its systematic acquisition 
might advantageously be made convenient for 
him. 

Geology as a science is keenly alive to the 
military service it can render. Many of its 
members, its state and federal organizations, 
and its principal societies, are actively at 
work on plans for geologic research and the 
immediate application of geologic knowledge 
to the public welfare. But the most effective 
service can not come from individual or class 
initiative; it must await incorporation into 
the general plans of governmental organiza- 
tion, which to be effective will omit no advan- 
tage that any department of knowledge can 
give. 

The problem facing the geologist, at the 
present moment, is not so much to apply his 
knowledge as to lead military authorities to 
see clearly the service that he is prepared to 
render. 

JosePH E. Poagur 

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
TUBERCULOSIS AND THE FRENCH ARMY 
Dr. Herman M. Bices of the New York 

State Department of Health, in the Survey, 
discusses tuberculosis in France as influenced 
by war conditions. According to a summary 
in the Journal of the American Medical As- 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 


sociation he states that while practically all 
epidemic diseases which have heretofore been 
scourges of armies in the field have been 
brought under control in the present war, 
tuberculosis has assumed a large part in the 
sanitary history of ‘the present struggle. 
France is the country that has been hard hit 
in this respect, though Biggs says that from 
such data as are obtainable Austria, Hungary, 
Russia, and perhaps to a less extent, Ger- 
many, have likewise suffered. As contrasted 
with England with 1 death from tuberculosis 
per thousand, New York State with 1.5, 
France before the war had 8 deaths per thou- 
sand, and in many cities the rate was higher. 
Biggs attributes this largely to the fact that 
even before the war France paid little sys- 
tematic attention to tuberculosis. It had not 
been recognized by the sanitary authorities, 
and even now it is not a notifiable disease. 
With the advent of the war and the rapid 
mobilization of the troops, with examinations 
which were not sufficiently rigid, and with the 
strenuous conditions imposed on troops in the 
field, latent or arrested tuberculosis mani- 
fested itself among the troops, and by the end 
of December, 1915, 86,000 soldiers had been 
returned to their homes with active tuber- 
culosis. In February, 1917, it was estimated 
that 150,000 had been returned for this cause. 
Biggs believes that in addition 3 or 4 per 
cent. of the population who formerly lived in 
the departments now in German occupation 
have the disease, which would mean another 
125,000, based on a population of 4,250,000. 
Half of these live back of the German lines, 
partly in their own homes, partly in concen- 
tration camps and partly deported into Ger- 
many, many of whom have been returned on 
account of illness which made them a burden 
to their captors. Biggs says that while he was 
in Switzerland, of 20,000 of these people re- 
turned, 5,000 were said to have tuberculosis, 
though the estimated infection among those 
deported into Germany has been placed at 
5 or 6 per cent., which Biggs believes is con- 
servative. Among the 350,000 or 400,000 
French prisoners in Germany an estimate of 
5 or 6 per cent. of tuberculous infection has 


Juuy 6, 1917] 


been made, although some French estimates 
run as high as 30 or 40 per cent. Among the 
four million men in the active French army 
at present it is estimated that 4 to 1 per cent. 
have tuberculosis. It is not believed that the 
eases of tuberculosis among the civil popula- 
tion have decreased since the war, and in the 
remaining 30,000,000 not accounted for in the 
foregoing figures, on a conservative estimate, 
taking as a basis the prevalence of the disease 
before the war, there would be at least 150,000 
cases, making in all about 500,000 eases, or, 
say, 400,000, to be extremely conservative, to 
be dealt with if the war were terminated at 
once. To deal with this vast number of cases 
Biggs says there are at present the so-called 
sanitary stations with 11,000 beds, which 
number it is hoped to increase to 16,000 by the 
end of the war, and a dozen or so well 
equipped dispensaries. There are practically 
no trained nurses or social service workers, 
but a few women are being trained in a three 
months’ course in the Laennee Hospital. Not 
more than a dozen physicians are said to have 
given any special attention tc tuberculosis, 
few have had sanatorium experience and still 
fewer are at all familiar with the tuber- 
culosis work of others. The outlook, Biggs 
feels, is not encouraging, though the French 
government has partially realized the situa- 
tion and is trying to meet the problem by the 
organization of dispensaries in the populous 
regions of France. 


MEDICAL WORK IN BRAZIL 


Dr. Grorce K. Stropr, a member of the In- 
ternational Health Board of the Rockefeller 
Foundation and who was one of the men sent 
to Brazil to make a study of medical condi- 
tions there, in a letter to Dr. David Riesman, 
which is quoted in Old Penn, writes in part as 
follows: 


The work of the International Health Board is in 
the hands of two of us down here. We have just 
completed an infection survey in the state of Rio de 
Janeiro, which has shown among 7,000 examina- 
tions for uncinaria a percentage of positives of 82. 
Malaria, I believe, is almost as wide-spread, and 
the two are a heavy drain on the people. Our work 
will shortly be extended to the states of Minas 


SCIENCE 11 


Geraes and Sao Paulo, which means the board will 
be busy in this country for a long time. At the 
present moment we are instituting an intensive 
campaign in one county of the state which will aim 
to cure and eradicate the disease in that area. 
This we hope will serve as a demonstration and will 
stimulate the authorities to continue the work. 

There are many diseases found here with which 
Iam not yet familiar; most important are Chaga’s 
disease (trypanosomiasis) and leishmaniasis. Tu- 
berculosis is, however, more important than either 
of these and is being combated by voluntary or- 
ganizations, 

Medical schools are government institutions, and 
the four leading ones are quite good. Six years 
are devoted to the course, the first two being al- 
most wholly given over to pre-medical work. The 
graduate is not required to serve as an interne, so 
that only about 30 per cent. take such work. In- 
deed, in most of the hospitals internships are not 
available. Research laboratories are few and far 
between; the most noted is the Oswaldo Cruz In- 
stitute, which I visited last week. Much good work 
is produced here, but it is unfortunately very nar- 
row in scope, entomology and parasitology being 
the only fields that are tilled. 


RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE THIRD INTER- 
STATE CEREAL CONFERENCE 

Iy view of the world shortage of cereal food 
crops, which is likely to continue for an in- 
definite period, the Third Interstate Cereal 
Conference held at Kansas City, Mo., June 12- 
14, urges the greatest practicable enlargement 
of wheat acreage and would further make the 
following recommendations: 

1. To encourage a larger wheat production, the 
producer should be guaranteed a minimum price, 
such price to continue at least one year after war 
is ended. 

2. Early preparation of the land for small 
grains, where these do not follow cultivated crops, 
should always be practised. In the winter wheat 
area it is very important that this be done im- 
mediately after harvest. 

3. Immediate action is required in providing 
seed for the next crop. At harvest time it is 
cheapest, and just before harvest seed in large bulk 
can best be selected. State and federal aid will be 
given in locating seed in localities of comparative 
abundance for use in localities where it is sorely 
needed. Clean seed, as free as possible from dis- 
eases, should be selected and arrangements be made 
for seed treatment. 


12 SCIENCE 


4, Varieties of grain best adapted for the lo- 
cality should always be used. The agricultural 
colleges and other state agricultural agencies will 
inform the farmers of the existence of these va- 
rieties and how and where to obtain the seed. 

5. Every means should be employed to eliminate 
weeds, by use of clean seed, crop rotations, early 
cultivation above mentioned, and any special 
methods reliably recommended for particular 
weeds in different localities. 

6. Seed testing for germination can well be 
further emphasized at this emergency period. The 
extension service, through county agents, should 
bring this matter home to every farm. 

7. Seed treatment will largely prevent certain 
smuts and other diseases of cereals, and, as a real 
war measure, we are bound to see that it is applied 
as nearly as possible on every farm, thus increas- 
ing our cereal production a hundred million bush- 
els or more, in one season. By field demonstra- 
tions the methods can and should be made plain to 
all concerned. 

8. The possible ravages of Hessian fly, chinch 
bug, green bug, stored grain and mill products in- 
sects, ete., must be kept also in mind and the 
progress of and means of checking these insects 
be communicated, so far as possible, in advance of 
their local occurrence 

9, As a means of reducing the great loss from 
rust, it is urged that all common barberry bushes 
(not the Japanese) and grass weeds harboring 
cereal rusts, be eradicated, and that rust-resistant 
cereal varieties be grown, if otherwise of good 
quality. 

10. It is a conservative estimate that 20 million 
bushels of wheat and proportional quantities of 
other cereals are annually lost by waste in har- 
vesting and thrashing. This waste can and 
and should be, in large measure, easily avoided. 
A man and team are known to have cleared $27 
to $62 a day from cleaning up after thrashers, 
and, in another instance, last year in Kansas, $500 
was gained by a man, with a team and fanning 
mill, cleaning up after thrashing machine set- 
tings, in three weeks’ time. 

11. In the western and southwestern plains, 
grain sorghums should be widely planted. In the 
northern plains, in the drier districts, flax and, 
under certain conditions, proso or Russian millet, 
may be used to a similar advantage. 

12. Suitable catch crops (such as cowpeas, soy 
beans, sorghums, millet, flax and buckwheat) 
should be grown on all lands on which staple crops 
can not be seeded at the proper time or on which 
they have been destroyed. 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 


13. The increased use of corn, rice, grain, sor- 
ghums, proso, barley, rye, beans, cottonseed meal 
and peanut meal as substitutes for, or in conjunc- 
tion with, wheat for human food is strongly recom- 
mended. Information on this matter can be ob- 
tained through the state agricultural colleges and 
the United States Department of Agriculture. 


ORGANIZATION OF THE ENGINEERING 
COUNCIL 


On June 27 was held the first meeting of the 
Engineering Council. This body is a depart- 
ment of the United Engineering Society and 
has recently come into being as a medium of 
cooperation between the four national engi- 
neering societies. The function of the council 
may perhaps best be described by the following 
extract from the by-laws of the United Engi- 
neering Society: 

The council may speak authoritatively for all 
member societies on all public questions of a com- 
mon interest or concern to engineers. 


The council is composed of twenty-four 
members, five being appointed-by each of the 
four founder societies and four by the United 
Engineering Society. Its present member- 
ship follows: 


American Society of Civil Engineers.—J. F. Stev- 
ens (Chas. Warren Hunt), George F. Swain, F. 
H. Newell, Alex. C. Humphreys, F. D. Galloway. 

American Institute of Mining Engineers—P. N. 
Moore, 8S. J. Jennings, B. B. Lawrence, J. Parke 
Channing, Edwin Ludlow. 

American Society of Mechanical Engineers.—I. N. 
Hollis, Chas. Whiting Baker, John H. Barr, A. 
M. Greene, Jr., D. 8. Jacobus. 

American Institute of Electrical Engineers—H. 
W. Buck, E. W. Rice, N. A. Carle, P. Junkers- 
feld, C. E. Skinner. 

United Engineering Society—Clemens Herschel, B. 
B. Thayer, I. E. Moultrop, Calvert Townley. 


At the organization meeting held in the 
rooms of the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers at 2.30 o’clock p.M., on the twenty- 
seventh instant, the following officers were 
elected: ; 

President: I. N. Hollis. 

Vice-presidents: H. W. Buck, George F. Swain. 

Secretary: Oalvert Townley. 

Executive Committee: The four officers named, 
with J. Parke Channing and D. S. Jacobus. 


Juuy 6, 1917] 


The council discussed at length ways and 
means by which the founder societies through 
the council may be of use to the nation. The 
unanimous desire to help the government in 
the prosecution of this war resulted in a resolu- 
tion instructing the executive committee to 
cooperate with the government in procuring 
the services of engineers, also the appointment 
of a committee of three consisting of Messrs. 
H. W. Buck, A. M. Greene, Jr., and Edmund 
B. Kirby, to consider the best means of utiliz- 
ing the inventive ability of members of the 
founders societies. 

The secretary was instructed to inform all 
government bureaus that might be interested 
in the organization of the Engineering Coun- 
cil and its desire to be of assistance. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Tue Index to Volume XLV. of Scrmnce is 
published with the present issue. It is sent 
to libraries and to those who have requested 
that copies of the index be sent regularly. It 
will be sent to any subscriber on application. 


Tuer degree of D.Sc. has been conferred by 
Williams College on Robert Grant Aiken, ’87, 
since 1895 astronomer at the Lick Observa- 
tory. 

Ar its ninety-sixth annual commencement 
the George Washington University conferred 
its doctorate of science on George Perkins 
Merrill, of the U. S. National Museum; on 
Elmer Ernest Southard, of the Harvard Med- 
ical School; on Arthur Powell Davis, of the 
Reclamation Service, and on Frederick Fuller 
Russel, major, Medical Corps, U. S. Army. 


Tue University of Arkansas has conferred 
its doctorate of laws on the governor of the 
state, Charles H. Brough, who before his elec- 
tion was professor of economics and sociology 
in the university. 

Sm Davw Prat, director of the Kew 
Botanical Gardens, has been elected president 
of the Linnean Society. 

Aurrep H. Brooks, formerly in charge of 
the Division of Alaskan Mineral Resources of 
the U. S. Geological Survey, has been ap- 
pointed a captain in the Engineer Officers 


SCIENCE | 13 


Reserve Corps and ordered to report for train- 
ing. During Mr. Brooks’s absence on mili- 
tary duty, Mr. George C. Martin will be 
geologist, acting in charge of Alaskan work. 


WE learn from Nature that Mr. J. Rams- 
bottom, of the department of botany, British 
Museum, has been appointed protozoologist to 
the medical staff at Salonika. The trustees 
of the museum have accepted Miss Lorrain 
Smith’s offer to act as temporary assistant in 
charge of the fungi during Mr. Ramsbottom’s 
absence. 


Miss Amy Watxer, M.A., Smith College, 
has been appointed research assistant in the 
chemistry of foods, Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, under the Ellen H. Richards 
Fund, for the year 1917-1918. The work 
will be carried on under the direction of Pro- 
fessor A. G. Woodman, and it is proposed to 
study chemical changes, with special refer- 
ence to the nitrogen compounds, which take 
place when fish decomposes before and after 
heating at relatively high temperatures. This 
question is of particular interest in the sar- 
dine industry. 


Sir Ernest SHACKLETON has now returned 
to England, after lecturing in Australia and 
America. He has received a commission in 
the army. 


Proressor JosepH S. Ames, of the Johns 
Hopkins University, who was sent to France 
early in April under the auspices of the Coun- 
cil of National Defense, has returned to Balti- 
more. Professor Ames will report on the de- 
velopment of aeronautics. 


Dr. H. D. Dakin, who was appointed last 
March, with Dr. Alexis Carrel, to have charge 
of the military hospital which is being con- 
structed and equipped by the Rockefeller 
Foundation on the grounds of the Rockefeller 
Institute of Medical Research, has returned 
to New York. Dr. Dakin went over to France 
in April to consult with Dr: Carrel, with whom 
he worked during 1915 and 1916 as a bacter- 
iologist. 

Tue Linnean Society, London, has pre- 
sented the Linnean gold medal to Mr. H. P. 
Guppy for his services to biology, and the 


14 SCIENCE 


Crisp medal to Dr. R. J. Hilliard, of the Uni- 
versity of Sydney. 


Dr. J. M. Coutrer, head of the department 
of botany, University of Chicago, delivered the 
annual Phi Kappa Phi address at the Kansas 
State Agricultural College on May 15. The 
subject of Dr. Coulter’s address was “ Science 
and the public service.” 


Dr. Frank Watpo, of Cambridge, formerly 
professor in the U. S. Signal Service, has vol- 
unteered a series of eighteen lectures on 
meteorology to the men at the Squantum avia- 
tion camp of the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. 


Proressor H. H. Bartiert, of the Univer- 
sity of Michigan, has given, during the week of 
May 21-26, a series of five lectures, under the 
auspices of the department of plant breeding, 
of Cornell University. The topics of the lec- 
tures follow: 

Elementary and collective species in nature. 

Evidences of mutation in plants and animals. 

The behavior of mutations and elementary spe- 
cies in inheritance. 

The critics of the mutation theory. 

The most recent investigations of variation and 
heredity in @nothera. 


M. Emit Boutroux, professor of philosophy 
at Paris, has been appointed Herbert Spencer 
lecturer at the University of Oxford for the 
present year. A Romanes lecturer at the uni- 
versity has not been appointed, the income hav- 
ing been transferred to the emergency relief 
fund of the university. 


Mr. STEPHEN PacET is preparing a biography 
of the late Sir Victor Horsley, the distin- 
guished English surgeon. 


Dr. Bert H. Bartey, since 1900 professor of 
zoology at Coe College, died on June 22, aged 
forty-two years. 


Dr. JosEPpH WEINSTEIN, an instructor in 
chemistry at Columbia University, died re- 
cently in the laboratory of the university. He 
was fifty-five years old, an analytical chemist 
and was graduated from the College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons, Columbia University. 


Sm Witiam D. Niven, F.R.S., formerly di- 
rector of studies at the Royal Naval College, 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 


Greenwich, died on May 29, at the age of sev- 
enty-five years. 

Dr. Wituiam Henry Besant, F.R.S., fellow 
of St. John’s College and lecturer on mathe- 
matics, died on June 2, in his eighty-ninth 
year. 

THE annual meeting of the Society for the 
Promotion of Engineering Education will 
be held in Washington, D. C., on July 6 and 
7 in connection with the educational com- 
mittee of the advisory commission of the 
Council of National Defense, instead of in the 
northwest as formerly planned. The topic 
which will be discussed at this meeting is 
“The relation of the engineering school to 
the national government during the present 
emergency.” F. L. Bishop is secretary of the 
society. . 

Captain Ropert A. BarTLETT, on June 30, 
telegraphed to the American Museum of Nat- 
ural History from St. Johns, Newfoundland, 
that he had taken command of the steam 
sealer Neptune at that port, and that early on 
July 1 he would steam for Sydney, C. B. The 
eight tons of supplies shipped from New York 
for the Crocker Land party are at Sydney and 
will there be stowed on the Neptune. Captain 
Bartlett expects to leave Sydney on either the 
third or fourth of July for Etah, Greenland, 
where the Crocker Land Expedition is now 
quartered. Coincident with the leaving of the 
Neptune, a special display devoted to the 
Crocker Land Expedition has been installed 
on the first floor of the American Museum of 
Natural History. The location of the expedi- 
tion, as well as the probable course of its re- 
turn, is indicated on a globe. This exhibition 
also includes pictures of the vessels which have 
been sent to the rescue of the party—the Nep- 
tune being the third. There is also on view a 
canoe of skin, the kyak, in which Dr. Harri- 
son J. Hunt, a member of the party, who ar- 
rived a few days ago, made part of his perilous 
journey from the base at Greenland to civiliza- 
tion. 

THE government of the Union of South 
Africa has appointed an advisory board to deal 
with the development of the natural resources 
of the country. A special scientific and tech- 
nical committee has been appointed to carry 


JuLy 6, 1917] 


out scientific investigations. This committee 
consists of Mr. J. Burtt-Davy (botany and 
agriculture); Mr. L. Colquhoun (chemistry) ; 
Professor Young (geology); Professor Orr 
(mechanical engineering) ; Mr. Bernard Price 
(electrical engineering); Professor Beattie 
(physics); Dr. Caldecott (metallurgy); Pro- 
fessor van der Riet (chemistry); Professor 
Malherbe (chemistry); Dr. L. Peringuey 
(president of the Royal Society of South 
Africa). The first step taken by the new com- 
mittee has been to arrange for the preparation 
of fifty-two reports by leading experts, dealing 
with the available raw materials of South 
Africa suitable for manufacture or export. It 
is intended that these reports shall be pub- 
lished for the guidance of intending manufac- 
turers and other business men. 


ARRANGEMENTS have recently been completed 
for the establishment of a new department of 
technical optics in connection with the Im- 
perial College of Science and Technology at 
South Kensington. According to a statement 
in the London Times, the new department is 
under the management of a Technical Optics 
Committee, of which Mr. Arthur H. D. Acland 
is chairman, and which at present consists of 
18 members representing the Admiralty, the 
Army Council, the Ministry of Munitions, the 
Royal Society, the National Physical Labora- 
tory, employers in the optical trades, glass 
manufacturers and the Imperial College; while 
two further members have yet to be elected 
representative of glass workers and metal 
workers. Mr. Frederic J. Cheshire has been 
appointed head of the new department at the 
Imperial College for a period of five years, with 
the title of director of technical optics and pro- 
fessor of technical optics at the Imperial Col- 
lege. Mr. Cheshire has been associated with 
optical instruments for many years at the 
Patent Office, and, since the formation of the 
Ministry of Munitions, has been deputy di- 
rector-general of the ministry and technical 
director of the optical department. He is 
president of the Optical Society. It is antici- 
pated that the organization of departments will 
be rapidly completed, and that training will 
begin at an early date. 


SCIENCE. 15 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

Puans for medical work at the University 
of Chicago, for which a fund of $5,500,000 has 
been raised, contemplate two medical schools 
and provision for research. One medical 
school on essentially the same basis as that 
of the Johns Hopkins University is to provide 
training for candidates for the degree of M.D. 
The other school, in connection with the Pres- 
byterian Hospital, is intended for the benefit 
of those in actual practise. It may be esti- 
mated that the entire amount of money in- 
volved, including all the corporations which 
unite for this work, will reach approximately 
$15,000,000. 

Mr. Levr Barzour, of Detroit, has given 
$150,000 to the University of Michigan, one 
hundred thousand dollars of which is to be 
used for a residence hall for women and fifty 
thousand for scholarships for women from 
oriental countries. 


As the result of recent gifts, Lawrence Col- 
lege, Appleton, Wis., is erecting a dormitory 
for women to cost $125,000 and a chapel to 
cost $120,000. 


Dr. Jessr More GREENMAN, associate pro- 
fessor in the Henry Shaw School of Botany 
of Washington University and curator of the 
herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden 
has been promoted to a professorship of 
botany in Washington University. 


At the recent commencement of Syracuse 
University, Dr. Louis M. Hickernell was pro- 
moted from an instructorship to be assistant 
professor of zoology. Mr. Harry S. Pizer, 
B.Se., won a teaching fellowship in zoology 
for the coming year. 

Dr. A. E. Suiptey, master of Christ’s Col- 
leee, Cambridge, and reader in zoology in the 
university, has been elected vice-chancellor for 
the next academical year. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 


AN INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 
AND CIVILIZATION 


To tHE Epiror or Scrmnce: Dr. Sarton’s 
plan for an Institute for the History of Sci- 


16 


ence and Civilization is one of the most impor- 
tant and fruitful suggestions that have been 
made for the advancement of knowledge. It 
is to be hoped that the realization of his idea 
might come soon and not have to wait until 
that rather indefinite time—“ after the war.” 
As Dr. Sarton very properly points out, it 
would be particularly important and fitting if 
this institute would be founded in this coun- 
try at this time. That the United States, since 
he wrote his communication, has entered the 
war should make no difference. We are, as I 
understand it, fighting for internationalism 
and the founding of the institute now would 
emphasize the international spirit of Ameri- 
can science. \ 

What most particularly interests me in Dr. 
Sarton’s plan is the place he gives to Bibliog- 
raphy. Some readers of Sctence will perhaps 
remember a couple of communications that the 
present writer sent to this journal, now many 
years ago, on the subject of a proposition for 
an Institute for Bibliographical Research. 
The two ideas should be combined. A third 
idea might perhaps be added to this combina- 


tion, namely the plan for a lending library for. 


libraries, consisting of large and expensive 
works, chiefly periodicals, transactions and col- 
lections, just the kind of publications that the 
Institute would need for the proper carrying 
on of its researches; that the collections of such 
a library would have to be made available to 
students all over the country should make no 
difference; it would emphasize the national 
character of the Institute. 

Now, as to Bibliography, one of the first 
duties of the Institute would be to prepare an 
adequate and, as far as possible, complete bib- 
liography of the history of science. The “ List 
of Books on the History of Science,” with its 
Supplement and its companion “ List of Books 
on the History of Industry,” published by The 
John Crerar Library, is merely a bringing to- 
gether of the material, and only part of the 
material, for such a bibliography. Further- 
more, bibliographical research must be one of 
the principal methods of study in the insti- 
tute. There should be a separate, specially or- 
ganized, division for Bibliography, the func- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 


tion of which should be not only to carry on 
bibliographical research and publication, but 
to give those who come to the institute what 
they do not seem to get in American universi- 
ties, a much needed training in the technique 
of bibliographical compilation and recording. 
It is not uncommon to find otherwise well 
equipped scholars totally incapable, apparently, 
of making bibliographical references in a con- 
sistent and systematic way, though thoroughly 
familiar with the bibliography of their subjects 
and its byways. Those who are interested in a 
few examples, will find them in an article by 
the present writer in volume 7 of the Papers 
of the Bibliographical Society of America, en- 
titled “ Efficiency and Bibliographical Re- 
search.” 
AKsEL G. S. JosEPHson 
THE JOHN CRERAR LIBRARY 


POPULAR NAMES OF PLANTS 

To tHE Eprror or Science: My attention 
was recently called to an article in your issue 
of February 2 concerning popular names of 
North American plants. I especially noted 
the following sentence: 

It is clear, however, that pupils in the public 
schools, as well as many of their teachers, do not 
take any interest in or remember the Latin names 
of plants. This being so, it is highly desirable that 
every species of plant inhabiting the United States 
and Canada should have an English name. It is 
further desirable that the name should not be a 
local one. ... 


Several years ago when acting as editor-in- 
chief of The Nature-Study Review, I took 
interest in this question of popular names of 
plants and discussed it with many competent 
teachers of nature-study. I was forced to the 
conclusion that in a large number of cases it 
is possible and highly desirable that we should 
make the English out of the generic names. 
It is my observation that children learn these 
names quite as easily as they do English 
names with which they are not already 
familiar. It is nonsense to claim that chil- 
dren can not learn scientific names, for 
example, chrysanthemum and hippopotamus. 
As examples of familiar plants which are very 
generally known by their scientific names or 


JuLy 6, 1917] 


by slight modifications thereof, I cite the fol- 
lowing list: cosmos, centaurea, aster, alyssum, 
ageratum, dahlia, canna, petunia, portulaca, 
primula (primrose), salvia, verbena, zinnia, 
impatiens, rosa (rose), gaillardia, heliotropium 
(heliotrope), lobelia, lilium (lily), magnolia, 
hyacinthus, chrysanthemum, anemone, oxalis, 
wistaria, clematis, iris, spirea, peonia 
(peony), forsythia, phlox, gladiolus, begonia, 
asparagus, arbutus, coreopsis, smilax, trillium, 
viola (violet), geranium, fuchsia, tulipa 
(tulip), catalpa. 

The suggestion that a species of Hrechtites 
be called white fireweed and one of Hpilobium 
be purple fireweed shows the absurdity of try- 
ing to standardize local names, for there are 
white species of Hpilobium. I am sure that 
it is easier for school children to learn this 
scientific name qualified by white or purple. 

There are some interesting popular con- 
fusions of scientific terms, e. g., syringa is a 
popular name but unfortunately has become 
attached to mock orange (Philadelphus) in- 
stead of correctly to lilac, which as an Eng- 
lish name has been applied to various kinds 
of shrubs. 

M. A. Bicrtow 


QUOTATIONS 


TECHNICAL COLLEGE GRADUATES IN 
WAR TIME 


One of the first effects of the entry of 
America into the war has been the volunteer- 
ing of the graduating classes, nearly en masse, 
throughout the country, into national defense 
service, with a considerable number of enlist- 
ments also in junior classes. This dedication 
of our trained youth for the maintenance of 
justice against brute-strength aggression is an 
admirable thing, and no one who believes in 
the ideals of young men will oppose it. It is 
important to remember, however, that in- 
judicious dedication to the world’s good may 
actually do the world harm, and well-intended 
action may by over-haste defeat its own 
purpose. 

War is a vast country-wide engineering 
enterprise. Theoretically speaking, an all- 
wise and powerful board of experts should de- 


SCIENCE | 17 


termine where each man and woman should 
be posted in the great war chain of fighters, 
for it is obvious that all specially trained 
men, and particularly all technically trained 
men, should keep at the posts where their 
training is needed. It was an inevitable mis- 
take made by our allies at an earlier stage in 
the war which led many young physicians, 
engineers, mechanics and valuable specialists 
to rush as volunteers for the front. It may 
overtax human intelligence to decide whether 
any particular man of military age is more 
needed at the front or at the rear. Mistakes 
must occur, and many of them; but the tech- 
nically trained men should be kept at their 
profession unless there happens to be a super- 
fluity of them. So long as there are earnest- 
ness and determination to serve, they also 
serve who only stand and wait. The junior 
men in colleges, and particularly in technical 
or medical colleges, will probably serve their 
country better by working hard at their educa- 
tional preparation than by abandoning their 
college work before their training is com- 
pleted. In general, however, every day’s work 


‘done in any sort of productive employment 


contributes to the war and therefore hastens 
the end of the war. To do any useful thing 
hard is to fight for the Allies—The Electrical 
World. 


DISCOVERIES AND INVENTIONS 

Tue fact can scarcely be reiterated too fre- 
quently that the government should extend 
patronage to scientific investigations and me- 
chanical inventions. Such a step is neces- 
sary to promote the arts and industries as 
well as to safeguard the nation in war. The 
United States can no longer proceed on a 
policy of bungling and neglect. Even the 
Naval Consulting Board is inadequate to the 
needs of the present emergency. The ability 
of its individual members is high, but the 
number of problems to which the board can 
give its attention is limited by the restricted 
membership. 

The problems taken up by these most com- 
petent experts are undoubtedly the most 
urgent, but even on these particular problems 


18 


the country is not receiving the benefit of all 
of the ideas worth considering. Independent 
inventors are reluctant to contribute the fruits 
of their efforts through a board whose mem- 
bers are identified with large industrial con- 
cerns. Unfortunately the sad story of the in- 
ventor who receives no compensation for his 
discoveries is only too well known. He lacks 
the means for proper experimentation, as well 
as for manufacture, and to obtain aid of the 
capitalist he has to mortgage his prospects 
too heavily. 

A correspondent has suggested that prizes 
should be offered to stimulate individual 
enterprise, but only investigators having 
private means would be in a position to com- 
pete for such prizes. It would be a better 
plan for the government to offer scholarships 
and to maintain extensive research labora- 
tories and shops where experimental work 
could be done on a large scale. The work of 
thousands of inventors is entirely wasted not 
only because of duplication, but because they 
are compelled to abandon their investigations 
after making some discoveries of more or less 
potential value. If records of their work were 
preserved a new epoch in the advancement of 
science might be inaugurated. 

On April 2, W. H. Fauber, of Brooklyn, ad- 
dressed a paper to the board of governors of 
the Aero Club of America advocating the 
creation of a government board of invention 
and research in aeronautics. He also called 
attention to the fact that it takes so long to 
adjudicate a patent that the inventor is apt 
to die during the process, and that an inven- 
tion really is not protected unless it is in the 
hands of a powerful corporation—The New 
York Evening Sun. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
BOOKS ON FOOD 


Witu1aMm M. Baytiss, the celebrated English 
physiologist, has written a small volume en- 
titled “The Physiology of Food and Economy 
in Diet” (Longmans, Green and Co., 1917). 
In a hundred pages he presents in clear, con- 
cise and fascinating language the fundamental 
principles of nutrition. Bayliss, though noted 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1175 


for his work on the secretory glands and not 
recognized as an expert on nutrition, has nev- 
ertheless written with the appreciative touch 
characteristic of the master mind. 

Miss Winifred Stuart Gibbs, the supervisor 
of home economics of the New York Associa- 
tion for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 
has made a valuable contribution to the food 
problem in “The Minimum Oost of Living ” 
(The Macmillan Co., 1917). The income and 
expense accounts of seventy-five families re- 
ceiving charitable aid, in the form both of ad- 
vice and of money, were analyzed. A food al- 
lowance made up from twenty-two items in 
quantities calculated to suffice for the mainte- 
nance of the family, as constituted, gave very 
successful results. The author states: “ Any 
one who has had experience in working with 
the tenement population knows how intimate 
a connection exists between food and the more 
common diseases of poverty.” Thus, before 
the allowance was granted, record after record 
read, “ children anemic,” or “ mother suffering 
from malnutrition.” But the allowance of a 
minimum standard laid the foundation of good 
health. “Such a sum can restore shattered 
nerves and renew courage for a mother who 
has been harassed by irregular and uncertain 
payments of an income inadequate at best. 
Such an assured minimum can change pale, 
listless children into rosy-cheeked romping 
boys and girls.” The “unit” of value for 
food per “man” per day was taken at 3,000 
calories and cost on October 1, 1916, thirty- 
four cents. Children were rated according to 
their ages at various fractions of a “man.” 
These latter values appear to be minima. The 
book tells of an inspiring deed of good work. 

Another book, “ Food for the Worker,” by 
Miss Frances Stern and Miss Gertrude T. 
Spitz, with a foreword by Lafayette B. Mendel 
(Whitcomb and Barrows, 1917), should fill a 
great need at the present time. In this vol- 
ume are found 120 household receipts, with 
their food values, and the arrangement of these 
recipes into different menus of balanced rations 
for use during a period of forty-nine days or 
seven weeks. It should be of aid to any eco- 
nomical housewife, although it aims specifically 


Juxy 6, 1917] 


to designate the food requirement of a family 
of five, containing three children whose ages 
are between eight and sixteen. The diet pro- 
vides 12,500 calories, contains 875 grams of 
protein, and cost one dollar and six cents per 
day in July, 1916. Of this, twenty-four per 
cent. was spent for bread, thirteen per cent. for 
milk, fifteen per cent. for meat, and the rest 
for seventy other articles. The bread ration 
contained 4500 calories or 35 per cent. of the 
total energy value of the food. This kind of 
information is of highest value to the house- 
wife of limited means and can be successfully 
applied by any intelligent person. 

“The Mothercraft Manual,” by Miss Mary 
L. Read (Little, Brown and Company, 1916), 
presents, in language which is a delight, mod- 
ern as well as old world knowledge helpful in 
the, creation of the best environment for the 
family and describes the care, nutrition and 
development of the child. 

GraHam Lusk 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


THE THEORY OF SEX AS STATED IN TERMS OF 
RESULTS OF STUDIES ON PIGEONS?* 


At the 1911 meeting of this society, in 
Princeton, I first made known the fact that the 
sex of pigeons had been experimentally con- 
trolled by Professor Whitman. The main fact 
of method being briefly that from a family 
cross practically only males, and from a generic 
cross nearly all males, are produced; but if, by 
special means the birds of generic crosses are 
forced to excessive reproductive overwork then 
the earlier eggs of such a series produce mostly 
or only males, while the later eggs—from the 
end of the series—will produce mostly or only 
females. At the same time and place I made 
to this society a first report upon the nature of 
the results of my own studies upon the ova of 
some of these sex-controlled series. These re- 
sults then indicated—to quote from the pub- 
lished abstract of that paper?— 


1Paper read December 28, 1916, before the 
American Society of Zoologists (New York Meet- 
ing). 

2 Science, N. S., Vol. XXV., No. 899, pp. 462- 
463; March 22, 1912. 


SCIENCE | 19 


that eggs (yolks) of smaller size, higher water-con- 
tent and smaller energy-content (i. e., fewer units 
of physiologically available energy) can be corre- 
lated with maleness in the offspring. That eggs 
(yolks) of larger size, lower water-content and 
greater energy-content can be correlated with fe- 
maleness in the offspring. 

The later results, which I have from time to 
time presented before this society and else- 
where, have fully confirmed and much ex- 
tended the evidence for that early announce- 
ment of the nature of the germinal differences 
which characterize the two sexes. 

Though all of the several lines of study that 
I have carried out on the doves and pigeons 
have thrown light on the nature of germinal 
and adult sexual difference most of these lines 
of study were primarily designed to test the 
possibilities of selective fertilization, differen- 
tial maturation and elective elimination of ova 
in the ovary as alternatives of a true sex-re- 
versal or control. In view of the well-estab- 
lished fact that the hetero-gametic sex produces 
germs of two kinds—a sex-chromosome being a 
differential already recognized—it has seemed 
obligatory to supply decisive tests for the possi- 
bilities just named. This has all been thor- 
oughly done in the pigeons; the result has been 
made possible because the female here is the 
hetero-gametic sex, producing male and fe- 
male ova, and we have here learned to identify 
each of the two kinds. In these forms Whit- 
man controlled sex and clearly demonstrated 
the methods of control. In these same forms I 
have for six years repeated the control and 
fully confirmed the method. In addition I 
have obtained adequate proof of the reality of 
the sex-control as against the above-mentioned 
alternatives and have further shown that in 
this material sex is a matter of essentially all 
gradations. And, of signal and unique im- 
portance is the fact that all, or at least many, 
gradations of sex are obtained from the same 
pairs of parents. The outlines of these find- 
ings have been published in several short papers 
beginning in 1911;% the entire body of evidence 

3See under note 2; and, Carnegie Year Book, 
1913; Sorence, Vol. 39, 1914; Bull. Amer. Acad. 
of Med., Vol. XV., 1914; Amer. Nat., Vol. L., 
July, 1916. 


20 


is now in course of preparation for publication. 
A still further fact of high importance has 
been learned from the pigeons, namely, that 
the sexual differences of the germs persist into 
the adult stages of the two sexes. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1175 


been a complete lack of corroborative evidence 
in other forms—the problem of the ultimate 
basis of sex was effectively broken loose from 
the morphological moorings which a decade of 
increasing knowledge of the sex-chromosomes 


DIAGRAM 
3 
s 4 g q 3 =| 
St ee aos 
SO OHMH SMM Vet) Bee Bi (Be a 
Sag = Sl iert =) Oi, Set 5 Ss 
9 SS (mh eA Ee Sa js a (blood) low % fat 
Bcorscogcassnccooonds . high metabolism 3 
high % H.O (?) : 
Human 
PARES) 51) Sie RDN ROS ee en kc (blood) high % fat 
QD oopoddcsodsodapoobe, ocasoddao0o0 9.5000 || s009a00 . low metabolism 
ay mG pids OPED anode He aaiao et hidnad | bbe Bana MOOG booed knoodenoecoos 
lowstatian gee Pewennimecter-vacretrcrt ot llscret vein | hegeneetaners (blood) low fat and P. 
SIMOMO ODONSIE ——  Sba3c050005 |) bod0 || dao0co00 || cogaoso55450a00sba0000 
Inve GG IO) oso aS eeoCoS Doon iosae coum laacoacadcoouonccaocod 
Eee TEE )§ oY HLS 
high¢tatyands Pai wasaneetets terrier dose) |Poascoone (blood) high fat and P. 
CO) UOT) GRACO DOWD 8  SBaoodbo0g0 Gg00'||a6c0do0d |lagocdoccecabbocépocccs 
Tow: Zoi FROM ii a Minn alevetel tears: sioleleyiiterayei oy til Welapaveraccyejiins suai skeloie sees) eels) oteteey etekereane 
high % H,0 (blood) low % fat roi 
IME adN! abe dbonoDO POCO Ol lel eh AL Te ET ToS ogndaoseccegooo0D0N 
e 3 Crab 
OR a A ( e aoooemoocnocons 
InGEWle aa lll WicdeacacondosoonoaG (blood) high % fat io) 
low % H,O a 
. 6’s from change of food and increased oxygen supply. 
Higdatingy {$5 from unchanged food and lesser oxygen supply. 
Daphnids ..... { sex-intermediates,—sexual or asex. reprod. influenced by conditions. 
Moths ........ { sex-intermediates,—quantitative germinal basis of sex. 


Again, since my first report of these results, 
several studies by other investigators on sev- 
eral different groups of animals, have appeared 
which in a most gratifying manner confirm the 
point of view of my first communication, and 
afford further evidence for the control and 
modifiability of sex. 

It is the purpose of this paper to arrange 
some of the results of studies on the pigeon in 
a diagram, upon which are properly placed 
these various results of other investigators of 
sex, in order to show that we are already in 
possession of the skeleton of fact which is nec- 
essary for a theory of sex that accords with the 
most important fact of sex-reversal and con- 
trol. And, that the theory of sex must be re- 
stated—or rather may now be stated—in terms 
that accord with the facts of sex-reversal is as 
certain as is the fact of sex-reversal itself. 
After our demonstration of the reality of sex- 
reversal in doves and pigeons—even there had 


had, to a considerable extent, fastened it. For, 
at the same time that it was proved that our 
experimental conditions break the correlation 
which normally certainly does obtain be- 
tween the chromosomal constitution of the 
zygote and the prospective sex of the adult, it 
was possible to identify those functional corre- 
lations which here continue to exist (as in the 
normal cases) and mark off the differences be- 
tween the germs of prospectively different sex- 
value. We know, till now, of no other material 
in which this basal persistent function has 
been definitely identified and quantitatively 
measured in the germ. As I have elsewhere 
pointed out, the basic fact is that the two 
kinds of germs are differentiated by the degree 
or level of their metabolism. When either of 
these two kinds of germs is forced experimen- 
tally into the production of the opposite sex, 
the level of its metabolism is shifted to the 
level characteristic of the germs of that oppo- 


Juuy 6, 1917] 


site sex. While the chromosomal correlation is 
here forced to failure the metabolic correla- 
lation here persists. The chromosomal consti- 
tution is not an efficient cause of sex; it is but 
a sign or index‘ and possibly an assistance in 
the normal maintenance of that which is es- 
sential—namely, two different metabolic levels. 
But the requisite metabolic level of the germ 
may be established in the absence of the usual 
or appropriate chromosome complex, and the 
sex of the offspring made to correspond to the 
acquired grade or level of metabolism. 
These facts which we consider firmly estab- 
lished in the pigeons carry the further essen- 
tial analysis of sex practically into the field of 
physiology and bio-chemistry. Further analy- 
sis of the basis of sexual difference—in germ 
or in adult—is to be sought in studies of the 
metabolic differences of the two kinds of sex- 
germs, of adults of the two sexes, and of in- 
dividuals of intermediate sex. Now that the 
problem of sex has been shown to belong in the 
field of metabolism we shall be able to note, in 
connection with our diagram, that a number of 
the requisite data bearing on germinal and 
adult sexual differences are already at hand. 
Turning now to the diagram we note that 
egg and adult stages are considered. In the 
eg of the pigeon we have identified maleness 
and femaleness by three differentials. Female- 
ness in the egg stage being accompanied by 
low metabolism, lower percentage of H,O, and 
higher total fat and phosphorus, or of phos- 
phatides. Maleness is here accompanied by 
high metabolism, higher percentage of water, 
and lower total fat and phosphatides. Now 
there are valid reasons for treating these three 
differentials not as absolutely separate and dis- 
connected facts, but rather as aspects or cor- 
rollaries of the same fact. For example, a 
high metabolism in a cell is consonant with 
less storage of fat and phosphatides, and with 
a more highly hydrated state of the cell-col- 
loids. It follows that where data for either of 


4Since the chromosomes are structural charac- 
ters they can not be expected readily to alter their 
numbers, etc., in response to new quantitative ley- 
els attained (permanently) by the fundamniental 
cell-functions. 


SCIENCE 21 


these three differentials are at hand, for either 
the germ or adult of any animal, we have in 
such data evidence of the kind we are looking 
for, z. e., evidence for the association of a 
given type of metabolism with the germ or 
adult of a given sex. 


TABLE I 


Sexual Differences of Fat and Phosphorus in the 
Blood of Adult Fowls and Man 


Sex Deere Av Doral | Ratio P. 
Males (roosters) ..... Pelleelps4o 6.48 100 
Non-laying females...... 17.87 7.42 115 
Laying females........... 27.80 13.15 205 
Males (man).............. 141.4 
Females (woman)....... 226.0 


For what forms then are such data available? 
And, what is now known of the persistence of 
this definite type of differentiation of the two 
kinds of sex-germs into adult stages of the two 
sexes? Recently Lawrence and Riddle®> have 
shown that one of these differentials—or one 
aspect of the differential which my own work 
has demonstrated in the egg—is clearly con- 
tinued in the blood of the adult male and fe- 
male (see Table I.). Fowls were substituted 
for doves in this case in order to increase the 
size of the sample, and thus increase the ac- 
curacy of the analytical results. In birds, 
therefore, we have fairly clear evidence that 
the metabolic differences of male and female 
germs persist in the male and female adults. 
In mammals too these aspects of sexual differ- 
ences of the adults have been fully demon- 
strated. Almost simultaneously with the 
above determinations, data were published by 
Goettler and Baker,® which as we have pointed 
out, show that the blood of the human male 
contains less fat, that of the female more.? 
Further, the basal metabolism of the human 
male and female has recently been accurately 


5 ‘Sexual Differences in the Fat and Phos- 
phorous Content of the Blood of Fowls,’’ Amer. 
Jour. of Phys., Vol. XLI., September, 1916. 

6 Jour. Biol. Chem., XXV., June, 1916. 

7 This result seems to have been anticipated by 
Gorup-Besanez in 1878. 


22: 


determined by Benedict and Emmes;$ they find 
that the metabolism of man is 5 per cent. to 6 
per cent. higher than that of woman. 

Have we any measure of either of our dif- 
ferentials in any mammalian egg? I think 
that the experiments on sex-determination in 
cattle, together with an observation by van der 
Stricht, afford some evidence that the water- 
content of the male-producing egg is high, and 
that of the female-producing egg is low. 
Thury reported in 1862 that from fertilizations 
made in the early period of heat in cattle an 
excess of females were produced; and that 
later (delayed) fertilizations give rise to an 
excess of males. Similar experiments have 
been four or five times repeated by others, and 
these have all shown an excess of one or the 
other sex in accordance with such early or late 
fertilization.2 No one definitely knows whether 
the ovum of the cow absorbs water in the Fal- 
lopian tubes in this interval between ovulation 
and fertilization, but we do know that every 
amphibian, reptilian and avian egg that has 
been investigated does absorb very appreciable 
amounts of water while being passed from the 
ovary to the exterior. And, van der Stricht 
has described phenomena of growth or swell- 
ing of the yoke granules in one mammal—the 
bat—which, I am sure from my own studies on 
yolk, indicate the taking up of water by the 
egg of this mammal. It is highly probable, 
therefore, that precisely that time relation 
which leads to an excess of males in cattle is 
preceded or accompanied by an increased hy- 
dration of the ovum. In mammals therefore 
there is some evidence that a shift of the meta- 
bolic level—as indicated by one partly known 
sex-differential—is associated with the ob- 
served changes in the sex-ratio of the germs 
which are thus modified. Further, in one 
adult mammal—man—two of the three sex- 
differentials have been definitely demonstrated. 
These results for both the egg and adult 
stages of the mammal are at every point in 

8 Jour. Biol. Chem., Vol. XX., 1915. These au- 
thors give references to earlier literature. 

9 The use of the terms early and late fertiliza- 
tions assumes that some ovulation occurs either im- 
mediately before, or shortly after, the beginning 
of heat. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1175 


complete agreement with our data for both the 
ege and adult stages of the bird. 

Experiments on the frog and the toad have 
afforded evidence for the control of sex. This 
evidence by many is not thought conclusive. 
Though selective fertilization has been elimi- 
nated as a possibility by Kuschekewitch there 
remains the possibility of parthenogenetic de- 
velopment to account for the excessive male- 
production in his experiments with the frog. 
But this appeal makes it impossible to explain 
the great excess of females obtained by Dr. 
King on the eggs of the toad, and leaves such 
doubters to lean here upon the discredited staff 
of selective fertilization—a proposition wholly 
disproved for the related frog and for the 
pigeon. E 

How does this situation look in the light of 
the sex-differentials already noted for birds 
and mammals? Richard Hertwig,!® and later 
Kuschekewitch,! allowed frog’s eggs to over- 
ripen—a process during which the eggs take up 
water—and obtained (in the case of the latter 
author) in some cases a total of 100 per cent. of 
males. Dr. King’? did the converse of this ex- 
periment with toad’s eges—withdrawing water 
from them before fertilization—and obtained 
nearly or quite 90 per cent. of females in cases 
where the mortality was less than 7 per cent. 
According to our knowledge of the sex-differ- 
entials in the pigeon’s eggs both of these ex- 
periments might have been predicted to result 
as these three investigators have reported. 

In the spider-crabs Geoffrey Smith1% has 
shown that both the blood and the liver of the 
adult male crabs contain less fat than do the 
blood and liver of the females. Here once more 
the facts concerning one of the sex-differentials 
is in complete accord with all the preceding 
cases. In the parasitically castrated spider- 
erabs Smith and Robson were able to show, 
moreover, that the parasitized male crabs, 
which under these conditions gradually as- 
sume several female morphological character- 


10 Verhand. deutsch. zool. Gesellsch., 1906. 

11 Festschrift. f. Rk. Hertwig, 1910. 

12 Jour. of Exp. Zool., Vol. 12, April, 1912. 

13 The Quart. Jour. of Micr. Sci., Vol. 57, No- 
vember, 1911. 


Jury 6, 1917] 


istics, are also found to have assumed the type 
of fat metabolism which characterizes the nor- 
mal female crab. How much these facts con- 
tribute to, and how completely they adjust 
themselves to, our own general theory, will be 
realized only after a moment’s reflection. 

A glance at the diagram indicates three 
other groups of animals which experimental 
work has thrown into the general question of 
the control of sex. The information at hand 
for these forms does not so expressly concern 
the egg as does that from the preceding cases, 
but all of these latter groups are concerned 
with early stages—some of them with the 
generation preceding the egg whose sex seems 
influenced by conditions. The results of stud- 
ies of the first of these groups—Hydatina—are 
of such a kind as to show that they are in gen- 
eral accord with the metabolic differentials of 
all of the previously mentioned cases of sex- 
control. One can scarcely doubt that change 
of food, and increased oxygen supply are con- 
sonant with increased metabolism, just as the 
studies of Whitney"! particularly, and later of 
Shull,® have shown that these changes lead to 
the appearance of male-producing daughters. 

The second of these groups—the Daphnids— 
have been studied by three independent in- 
vestigators who agree upon two points that are 
of importance in the question of the control of 
sex, and to the general theory of sex as stated 
here, though the results throw little light on 
precisely what is causally involved. Issako- 
witch,1® Woltereck!? and Banta,!8 all find nu- 
merous sex-intermediates in a material for 
which all agree that the type of reproduction— 
sexual or asexual—is influenced by environ- 
mental conditions. All further agree that 
“unfavorable conditions” (or is it a change 
from favorable conditions?) tends toward sex- 

14 Science, N. S., Vol. 39, June 5, pp. 832-33, 
1914. Also Jour. Exp. Zool., Vol. 17, November, 
1914, and later papers. 

15 Abstracts of Amer. Soe. Zool., 
meeting, Science, N. S., Vol. 43, 1916. 

16 Biol. Centralbl., Vol. 25, 1905. 

17 Intern. Rev. d. gesammt. Hydrobiol. u. Hy- 
drogr., Vol. 4, 1911-12. 

18 Carnegie Year Book, 1915, and Proc. Nat. 
Acad. Sci., Vol. 2, October, 1916. 


December 


SCIENCE 23 


ual reproduction, while “ favorable conditions ” 
favor asexual reproduction. 

In the third of these groups—the moths— 
the studies of Goldschmidt, and Goldschmidt 
and Poppelbaum,!® and the work of Machida, 
have demonstrated again sex-intermediates of 
various grades. Moreover, it has been shown 
that from among the various geographical 
races of moths certain matings can be ar- 
ranged which produce rather definite types of 
male- or female-intermediates—or sex-inter- 
grades, as Goldschmidt elects to call them. 
And further, from pairs involving still other 
species still other levels or grades of sex- 
intermediates may be freely obtained. A 
more or less factorial basis of the phenomena 
has hitherto been used in the discussion of 
these results; but recently Goldschmidt? has 
stated that “very important new facts will 
be published later which will probably enable 
us to replace the symbolistic Mendelian lan- 
guage, used here, by more definite physico- 
chemical conceptions.’”’ Such newer descrip- 
tions—we would say—is wholly in line with 
the requirements of present data on sex. In 
Whitman’s and our own material it has been 
clear from the first that the results far over- 
step the possibility of treating them in Men- 
delian terms, for it has been apparent from 
the beginning that we have had to do not 
with three or four points merely, but with a 
flowing graduated line. In the work with the 
moths, however, sex is clearly described in 
quantitative terms,.and we can readily believe 
that when the functional basis of sex can 
there be identified, sex will be found to accord 
with metabolic grades there, as it does else- 
where. 

Tt is clear then that all of the animal-forms 
for which there is reasonable evidence of sex- 
control show important correspondences with 
the situation fully elucidated in the pigeons. 
And that where the sex-differentials known to 


19 Goldschmidt u. Poppelbaum, Ztschr, induct. 
Abstammungsl., Vols. VII. (1912), and XII. 
(1914), and other papers 1913-16 by both au- 
thors. See R. Goldschmidt, below. 

20 R. Goldschmidt, Amer. Nat., Vol. L., Decem- 
ber, 1916. 


24 


exist in the pigeon’s ova have been traced in 
adults of the two sexes, the parallel rigorously 
holds there also. A general classification of 
male and female adult animals on the basis 
of a higher metabolism for the one, and a 
lower for the other, was indeed made by 
Geddes and Thomson?! many years ago. 
There can now be little question that this 
conclusion of these authors is a correct and 
important one. 

It remains to point out that another very 
old, and much-worked line of investigation 
supplies further confirmatory evidence for our 
present point of view. Studies on the effects 
of castration, gonad-transplantation, and 
gonad-extract injection, constitute a large 
body of observations which deal with sexual 
phenomena associated with the internal secre- 
tions of the sex-glands. These internal secre- 
tions, let it be remembered, are themselves 
metabolites, which have the capacity to influ- 
ence the metabolism of some, many, or of all 
the tissues with which they came in contact, 
or which they may reach indirectly. <A par- 
tial list of the animal forms that have been 
most studied in this respect is written ver- 
tically on the top of our diagram—in a 
position intermediate to egg and adult. The 
number of these animal forms might be much 
increased, and the names of the investigators 
of this aspect of the modification of sex are 
quite too numerous? to be mentioned here. 


21‘¢The Evolution of Sex,’’ 1890, Humboldt 
Publ’g Co., New York. 

22 The following partial references are suggested 
by the particular animals listed in the diagram: 
Stag—Darwin (1868); Caton (1881); Fowler 
(1894); Rérig (1900). Human—Hegar (1893) ; 
Selheim (1898); Hikmet and Renault (1906); C. 
Wallace (1907); Tandler and Gross (1909). 
Sheep—Shattock and Seligman (1904); Seligman 


(1906) ; Marshall and Hammond (1914). Guinea- 
pig—Bouin and Ancel (1903-09); Steinach 
(1910-13). Pheasant—Gurney (1888). Fowl 


and Duck—Darwin (1868) ; Gurney (1888); Foges 
(1903); Shattock and Seligman (1906-07) ; Good- 
ale (1910-16). Pigeon—Riddle (1914). Frog— 
Nussbaum (1907); Pfliiger (1907); Steinach 
(1910); G. Smith (1912). IJnachus and Carcinus 
—Potts (1909); G. Smith (1910-12). Free-mar- 
tin—Lillie (1916). Bonellia—Baltzer (1914). 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1175 


But the present point of interest is that these 
results, as a whole, demonstrate that the ex- 
tent of sexual modification in the experi- 
mental animal ts, in general, in proportion to 
the immaturity of the treated animal. That 
is to say, the earlier the internal secretion of 
the gonad is supplied or withdrawn, the more 
profound is the sexual modification of the in- 
dividual. The stag is a form that has long 
been known to show thus a considerable and 
beautiful series. The free-martin—another 
Ungulate—is now known to exemplify a much 
earlier point at which the foreign internal 
secretion begins to act; and here, true to the 
rule that has been established elsewhere in all 
this general line of work, the resulting modi- 
fication is correspondingly strong and striking. 
When, by whatever means, we effect a change 
in the metabolism (which is the essential 
thing) at a still earlier stage—in the egg- 
stage, in our own and in some other experi- 
mental reversals of sex,—then we obtain 
individuals whose sexual nature is quite 
thoroughly reversed; in many cases completely 
so, and in still other cases with varying de- 
grees of completeness. 

Professor Whitman’s main decisions con- 
cerning the nature of sex may here be briefly 
stated. These decisions were that the male 
proceeds from a “stronger ” germ, has greater 
“developmental energy,” and “carries the 
processes of development farther” than does 
the female. I am confident that his results 
fully justify his conclusions; and that these 
are in the completest harmony with the later 
and fuller developments of the sex-studies 
in the pigeons, and thus with the theory of 
sex which has been outlined in these pages. 

In conclusion, our present definite knowl- 
edge of the metabolic basis of sexual differ- 
ence, and the methods of attack which this 
new knowledge brings with it, offer the surest 
guarantees that the problem of sex can now 
be studied—and, indeed, the basal facts of the 
problem must be studied—in the field of the 
elemental protoplasmic functions. 


Oscar RIDDLE 
Cotp Sprina Harsor, N. Y. 


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Use of Geologists, Mineralogists, etc., in SLICING 
| and POLISHING all hard substances, "rocks, ete., and 
in preparation of MICROSCOPIC THIN SECTIONS. 


| GUSTAVUS D. JULIEN 
3 Webster Terrace NEW ROCHELLE, N. Y. 


| eo 

The Microscope 
12th Edition, Published April 10, 1917 

| Re-Written and largely Re-IIlustrated 


| By SIMON HENRY GAGE of Cornell University 
| Postpaid $3.00 
COMSTOCK PUBLISHING CO., Ithaca, N. Y. 


SCIENCE Wau. 


arr OF 


aS 


re 


Frinvay, JuLy 13, 1917. 


CONTENTS 
Physical Chemistry in the Service of Phyto- 


geography: Dr. J. ARTHUR HarRIS ...... 25 
Scientific Events :— 

Memorial to Sir William Ramsay; Smith- 

sonian Botanical Expeditions; War Service 

fOTCRENMUSTS i rarate(s a arereieia meio Oke cee 30 
Scientific Notes and News ............0000. 33 
University and Educational News .......... 36 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

A Remarkable Coincidence: Dr. W. W. 

CaMPBELL. Report of Dr. E. H. Williams on 

the First Phase of Pennsylvania Glaciation: 

Dr. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT ............... 36 
Quotations :-— 

The War and Scientific Investigation ..... 39 
Scientific Books :— 

Miinsterberg’s To-morrow: PRroressor T. D. 

ASS COCKERELU eey-tatciepaye stories voiaicierei este severe 40 
Special Articles :— 

Rhythmical ‘‘ Heat Period’’ in the Guinea- 

pig: Drs. C. R. Srockarp AND G. N. Papant- 

COHN coogonssiaooounocadas osbloobOeOudd 42 
The Iowa Academy of Science: Dr. JAMES H. 

NEES frcce'ccvascieravote evsereratefaietors overt storie a ovedlon 44 


MSS. Intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
treview should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. Y.- 


PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY IN THE SERV- 
ICE OF PHYTOGEOGRAPHY1 


BIoLoeists, grown in the present genera- 
tion from a mere squad of determined 
scouts to a splendid army of disciplined 
investigators, increasing daily in rank and 
equipment, have as their greatest task the 
placing of biology alongside physics and 
chemistry in the ranks of the exact sciences. 

In the title of this paper, Phytogeog- 
raphy, which even its most ardent disciples 
must confess is one of the least quantita- 
tive of the biological sciences, is coupled 
with Physical Chemistry, which is con- 
ceded by all to be one of the most precise 
of the physical sciences. This contrast has 
been made, not to magnify the chasm which 
conventionally has been assumed to sepa- 
rate the exact from the descriptive sciences, 
but to emphasize to biologists and to chem- 
ists and to physicists alike, the fact that the 
methods of the most advanced physical sci- 
ences can now be successfully employed in 
such a confessedly descriptive phase of biol- 
ogy as ecology and phytogeography. 

In turning to the task of the moment, 
which is to consider how certain of the 
simplest physico-chemical methods may be 
of service in ecology and phytogeography, 
it is important to place the group of prob- 
lems to be investigated in its proper bio- 
logical setting, and to state these problems 
in such a form that their relationship to a 
physico-chemical method of investigation 
is quite obvious. 

1A paper presented at the Symposium on Rela- 
tions of Chemistry to Botany, before the joint ses- 
sion of Section G, American Association for the 


Advancement of Science, and the Botanical Society 
of America, December 27, 1916. 


m JUL 14 19) 


aif 


ysoriian lustig. 
if 


% 
eS 


26 


Phytogeography has two main phases, 
the historical and the physiological. 

In the investigation of the historical] fac- 
tors involved in the geographical distribu- 
tion of plants, the methods of physical 
chemistry can be of little service. 

The physiological problems of ecology 
and phytogeography are essentially those 
of the relation of the organism to its envi- 
ronment. It is here that physical chem- 
istry, along with other quantitative and 
experimental methods of research may be 
profitably applied. 

It is a truism to say that the relations of 
the living protoplasm to its inert environ- 
ment constitutes one of the most funda- 
mental groups of biological problems. To 
cooperate in the solution of these problems 
is the greatest opportunity of ecologists. 
That the contribution of ecology has not al- 
ready been greater is largely attributable to 
the non-quantitative character of most of 
the work hitherto done. 

In the closer analysis of the relationship 
of the organism to its surroundings it is 
apparent that there are two planes of con- 
‘tact of protoplast and environment: that 
which lies between the protoplast and sepa- 
rates it from the outside world, and that 
which lines the vacuoles of the cell and 
separates the deeper-lying protoplasm from 
the internal environment of the vacuolar 
solution, just as the plasma membrane sepa: 
rates it from the external world. 

The processes which are taking place in 
these two planes are presumably physico- 
chemical processes. Certainly, physico- 
chemical methods of investigation are those 
which may be appled with the greatest 
hope of advance in the solution of the prob- 
lems presented by those planes of contact 
of organism and environment. 

That these processes are of fundamental 
significance to the student of the complex 
problems of ecology and phytogeography 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


of the higher plants should be evident from 
the fact that the differentiation of tissues 
in the vast majority of flowering plants, 
with which alone I am concerned in this 
paper, is such that the cell membrane comes 
into contact with two quite distinct phases 
of the environment. In water absorption, 
it separates the fluids of the cell from a soil 
solution of quite different properties. In 
water loss, it separates the fluids of an- 
other set of cells from an atmosphere vary- 
ing enormously in its water absorbing 
capacity. 

These two environmental factors, which 
stated in physiological terms may be re- 
ferred to as the force with which the sub- 
stratum withholds water from the plant 
and the force with which the atmosphere 
tends to withdraw water from the plant, 
have by common consent been given the 
place of first importance in the environ- 
mental complex. 

The importance of a thoroughgoing in- 
vestigation of the relationship of the plasma 
membrane to the concentration and the 
composition of the intracellular and the 
extracellular solution has long been recog- 
nized. Nor have physiologists interested in 
the problem of transpiration failed to recog- 
nize the fundamental significance of the 
membrane which separates the fluid con- 
tents of the cell from its gaseous environ- 
ment. 

It is quite natural that the problem of 
the permeability of the cell membrane 
should have been far more extensively in- 
vestigated than that of the relationship of 
the protoplast to the cell sap. Experi- 
mental modification of the solution sur- 
rounding the cell is subject to only the 
limitations imposed by the solubilities and 
other properties of chemical reagents and 
the viability under the influence of these 


- reagents of the cells or tissues employed. 


To determine the properties of the sap con- 


JuLy 13, 1917] 


tained in the vacuole at any moment is a 
problem of some difficulty, to modify these 
properties at will is in itself an undertaking 
of no mean magnitude, while to investigate 
with any degree of completeness the rela- 
tions of the properties of the sap of the 
vacuoles to the surrounding protoplasm 
would seem to be a task of almost unsur- 
mountable difficulties. 

Nevertheless, the time has come when an 
investigation of the properties of the sap of 
the vacuole in relation to the protoplast 
and in relation to the factors of the envi- 
ronment should be undertaken. It is in- 
conceivable that the properties of the sap 
should be uninfluenced by the forces which 
are acting upon and through the living 
membrane surrounding the cell. It is diffi- 
cult to think, for example, that the osmotic 
properties of the sap of the vacuoles should 
be independent of the forces which are 
tending to draw water from the cell in 
transpiration and of the forces in the sub- 
stratum which oppose water absorption. If 
this be true, an investigation of the prop- 
erties of the intracellular fluids of plants 
in various environments, in which the 
water-absorbing power of the air as well as 
the water-yielding capacity of the soil vary 
enormously, may throw much light upon 
the basic physiological problems of ecology 
and plant distribution. 

If progress is to be made, it is not merely 
necessary that problems be clearly defined, 
but that methods which are adequate and 
practical for use under the conditions sur- 
rounding the investigation shall be found. 
The question of method becomes, therefore, 
one of paramount importance. 

The phytogeographer must limit his 
choice to those methods which can be used 
under camp conditions. Otherwise he must 
be willing to forego work on phytogeog- 
raphy in the only regions in which it can 
be satisfactorily investigated, that is, in 


SCIENCE 27 


those which have not been completely modi- 
fied by the activities of man. Fortunately 
the determination of the depression of the 
freezing-point of a solution below that of 
the pure solvent furnishes a relatively 
simple method of calculating its osmotic 
pressure or osmotic concentration. It is 
quite possible to make cryoscopie determi- 
nations sufficiently exact for phytogeo- 
graphical problems in the field, and espe- 
cially at the field laboratories which fortu- 
nately are becoming more numerous. 

In addition to developing a simple tech- 
nique for use in the field, one who hopes to 
convince botanists that the investigation 
of the physico-chemical properties of vege- 
table saps should form an essential part of 
a comprehensive ecological or phytogeo- 
eraphical study, must show that in any 
region the sub-habitats, formations, asso- 
ciations, plant societies or whatever the 
nomenclatorial specialist may call them, are 
measurably different in their sap prop- 
erties, and that even more conspicuous dif- 
ferentiation exists in the sap properties of 
the larger phytogeographical regions. If 
he can also show that such ecological groups 
as the succulents, the epiphytes and the 
parasites are differentiated in the physico- 
chemical properties of their tissue fluids, 
the necessity for the use of physico-chem- 
ical methods in phytogeographical work 
will be self-evident. 

The foregoing outline of the fundamental 
conceptions underlying the studies which 
my associates and I have carried out in 
various regions has of necessity been so 
detailed that it will be impossible at this 
time to give any adequate summary of the 
many hundreds of determinations of 
osmotic concentration of tissue fluids of 
plants growing in various environments 
which are now at my disposal. 

The actual details, as far as published, 
are available in a series of technical papers. 


28 


How great the differences in the sap prop- 
erties of the vegetations of various regions 
may be is illustrated by the accompanying 
table in which the average concentration in 
atmospheres for Long Island, Arizona and 
Jamaican regions studied by my associates 
and myself and for a series of determina- 
tions made for a quite different purpose by 
Ohlweiler at the Missouri Botanical Garden 
are laid side by side. 


Ligneous Herbaceous 
, Region Plants Plants 

Montane rain forest: 

Blue Mountains, Jamaica... 11.44 8.80 
Mesophytic regions: 

Long Island habitats ...... 14.40 10.41 

Missouri Botanical Garden. 14.96 _—-— 
Desert regions: 

Jamaican coastal deserts ... 30.05 _—— 

Arizona deserts ........... 24.97 15.15 


Had it been possible to table the data of 
each of these regions, and that for others 
which are now available, according to local 
habitats it would have been seen that in 
any region the local habitats may be meas- 
urably differentiated with respect to the 
sap properties of their vegetation. Tabu- 
lation by local habitats would also have 
brought out clearly the fact that herbaceous 
and ligneous plants differ in the osmotic 
properties of their tissue fluids. 

The averages in the table are not pre- 
sented as complete descriptions of the sap 
of the plants of these regions, but merely as 
the simplest available means of summariz- 
ing their characteristics and emphasizing 
to the phytogeographer the fact that the 
vegetations are differentiated in the prop- 
erties of their sap as well as in their taxo- 
nomic composition and ecological structure. 

The explanation of such differences in 
vegetations as have just been demonstrated 
is by no means simple. 

The most direct and obvious relationship 
of the properties of the sap of the organism 
to its environment is to be seen in halo- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


phytes. The leaves of many of these are 
salty to the taste. It is quite apparent that 
they must have a relatively high concentra- 
tion due to the absorption of salts from the 
substratum. It is, however, a grave error 
to assume, as some botanists seem to have 
done, that the whole problem of sap con- 
centration is one of the absorption of elec- 
trolytes from the soil—to assume in fact, 
that the plant organism stands in the rela- 
tion of a sponge to the solution around it. 
Zoologists, who have devoted much atten- 
tion to the relationship between the con- 
centration of the blood of the marine organ- 
isms and that of the water in which they 
live, have long recognized that the osmotic 
concentrations of the two fluids may be 
identical but that the solutes to which these 
concentrations are due may be very differ- 
ent indeed, 

Even in the succulent halophytes, the 
leaves of which are essentially reinforced 
water bags, there appears to be by no 
means an identical capacity for adjustment 
to the concentration of their substratum or 
for the occupation of available areas. Thus, 
for example, Sesuviwm Portulacastrum and 
Batis maritima both occur on the highly 
saline flats of the southern shore of the 
island of Jamaica. Batis shows a far higher 
osmotie concentration than Seswviwm, 49.7 
as compared with 88.3 atmospheres on the 
average, and is seen in the obviously more 
saline localities. 

Now differences in the concentration of 
the soil solution may not be the determin- 
ing factor in the distribution of these two 
halophytes. Other factors require far more 
detailed investigation than any one has 
been able up to the present time to give 
them. The point to be emphasized here is 
that two species of halophytes, not with- 
out several points of similarity, differ in 
both sap concentration and in local dis- 
tribution. The chemical method has given 


JuLy 13, 1917] 


us at once measures of the physiological 
characteristics of these two forms. These 
quantitative measures furnish a first defi- 
nite step towards the solution of the prob- 
lem of their distribution. 

To diseuss adequately the many prob- 
lems presented by a comparison of the sap 
properties of the vegetations of diverse 
local habitats or phytogeographical regions 
wold carry us far beyond the limits of this 
address. Before leaving this phase of the 
subject it is important to point out that in 
its relationship to plant distribution, sap 
concentration may have a dynamic as well 
as a static significance. 

If the differences in the sap properties 
of the vegetations of various habitats be in 
part due to fixed hereditary differences in 
the species, instead of merely a resultant 
of local environmental conditions, and if 
one of the factors determining the capac- 
ity for survival in a given habitat be the 
osmotie concentration of the cell sap, it is 
clear that sap properties may be a factor in 
the migration of species. 

The factor of osmotie concentration 
would be active in two ways. First, in the 
determination of migration from warmer 
into colder regions, by virtue of capacity 
for frost resistance. Second, in migration 
from mesophytie into desert regions. 

The problem of the relationship of sap 
concentration to frost resistance need not 
delay us long. The freezing-point of plant 
tissues has been the subject of scores of 
investigations, most of which have been of 
a purely physiological or of an economic 
nature. 

The studies of Ohlweiler, Chandler and 
others render it highly probable that the 
osmotic concentration of the tissue fluids 
is one of the factors involved in the capac- 
ity for frost resistance. Such determina- 
tions as Mr. Popenoe and I have been able 
to make on the sap of the varieties of 


SCIENCE 29 


avocado (Persea americana) which have 
been introduced into the United States, 
indicate that the Mexican and Guatamalan 
types, which have been found by practical 
horticulturists to surpass the so-called 
West Indian type in capacity for frost re- 
sistance, have a slightly higher osmotic 
concentration of their cell sap. 

Concerning the rédle of osmotic concen- 
tration in the survival of plants intro- 
duced into xerophytic regions we have as 
yet practically no information. 

It is perhaps evident that the factors 
which limit the artificial introduction of 
species would also be active in determining 
the survival of species introduced into any 
region by hurricanes, ocean currents or by 
any other natural causes. Upon some of 
these questions I hope to be able to furnish 
more satisfactory information on a later 
oceasion. 

‘We must now turn to a discussion of cer- 
tain of the ecologically more interesting 
groups of plants. Among these may be 
mentioned the succulents, the epiphytes 
and parasitic plants. 

The studies of succulent physiology 
which have been carried out in recent 
years, and especially at the Desert Labo- 
ratory by MacDougal, Spoehr, Richards, 
Mrs. Shreve and others, have been far too 
detailed to make possible any adequate 
discussion of succuleney at this time. It 
is interesting to note in passing that the 
succulents are characterized by two quite 
different types of sap. On the one hand 
are the desert species with generally low 
osmotic concentration, on the other the 
halophytes with high osmotie concentra- 
tion. The physiological interpretation of 
this condition presents a most interesting 
problem for future research. 

Among the most characteristic, and 
ecologically most fascinating features of 
tropical regions is the burden of epiphytes 


30 SCIENCE 


borne by the trees. If one turns to the 
literature in search of work of a quantita- 
tive nature on the physiology of this taxo- 
nomically and morphologically diversified 
group of plants, his search will be prac- 
tically in vain. Material progress has al- 
ready been made in the study of the sap 
properties of some of the representative 
types, although it is quite too early to dis- 
cuss in detail even this phase of the physi- 
ology of these plants. 

Osmotic concentration in these forms is 
generally exceedingly low, Orchidacee 
from the Jamaican rain forest show an 
average of 3.34 atmospheres, those from the 
Florida hammocks an average of 4.88 
atmospheres. Tank epiphytes from the 
Blue Mountains of Jamaica show concen- 
trations ranging from 2.8 to 5.5 atmo- 
spheres. Comparable values are found in 
subtropical Florida. 

The succulent Peperomias and some 
other epiphytic species are also character- 
ized by a concentration of their tissue fluids 
only a fraction of that obtaining in the 
foliage of the arborescent plants of the 
same forests. 

Thus, in general, epiphytic species are 
characterized by low osmotic concentra- 
tion., This is not, however, a necessary con- 
dition of epiphytism. Determinations are 
available for at least one species of epi- 
phytic fern showing a sap concentration 
roughly three times as high as that gen- 
erally characteristic of the succulent 

Orchidacee and Piperacee and the tank 
' Bromeliacex. 

The keen botanical interest aroused by 
parasitic flowering plants has found ex- 
pression in an enormous number of macro- 
scopic and microscopic morphological and 
life-history investigations. Yet it should 
be clear that the problem of the distribu- 
tion of parasitic forms, both among the 
possible host plants.of a particular region 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


and from region to region, is primarily a 
physiological one. Among the possible 
factors, the relative concentration of the 
tissue fluids of the photosynthetic and 
transpiring organs of the host and para- 
site seems on @ priori grounds one of the 
greatest importance. Studies on the 
osmotic concentration of the tissue fluids of 
Jamaican Loranthacee on various hosts 
have shown that in general but not invari- 
ably, the osmotic concentration of the 
fluids of the leaves, or of the leaf homologs, 
of the parasite is higher than that of those 
of the host. 

In the foregoing discussion only a por- 
tion of the results of studies already made, 
but as yet largely unpublished, have been 
lightly touched upon. They are illustra- 
tive merely. For the mass of facts justi- 
fying generalization, the published tables 
must be consulted. Enough has, perhaps, 
been said to indicate the fundamental sig- 
nificance for the physiological phases of 
phytogeography of the physico-chemical 
measurements. As phytogeography be- 
comes more and more a problem of the 
physiology of individual species of plants, 
investigated in their own environment, as 
methods become more precise, and as re- 
sults are recorded and discussed in more 
quantitative terms, the ecologist’s sector of 
the attack upon the great problem of the 
relationship of the organism to its environ- 
ment will be increasingly successful. Con- 
currently, the relations of chemistry to 
botany will become more clearly defined in 
a field in which its existence has hereto- 
fore been little recognized, and the service 
of chemistry to botany will be increasingly 
great. J. ARTHUR HARRIS 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
MEMORIAL TO SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 
Tuer following appeal has been issued by a 
committee formed to raise a memorial to the 
late Sir William Ramsay. 


JuLy 13, 1917] 


A committee has been formed with the object of 
raising a suitable memorial to the late Professor 
Sir William Ramsay, K.C.B., F.R.S., by collecting 
a substantial fund to be utilized for the purpose of 
promoting chemical teaching and research. 

The committee, after prolonged and careful con- 
sideration, has resolved to aim at raising a sum of 
£100,000, and to devote that sum to two principal 
objects, viz.: 

1. The provision of Ramsay research fellowships, 
tenable wherever the necessary equipment may be 
found. 

2. The establishment of a Ramsay Memorial Lab- 
oratory of Engineering Chemistry in connection 
with University College, London. 

We should hesitate to ask for so large a sum of 
money in such exceptionally difficult times, were it 
not that the objects specified are objects of real 
and urgent national importance. The war has 
demonstrated in a manner previously unrealized 
the supreme importance of scientific, and, in par- 
ticular chemical, research to the national life, both 
in the conduct of the war and in the pursuits of 
industry and manufacture. 

The late Sir William Ramsay was himself en- 
gaged up to within a comparatively short time of 
his death in various important problems concerned 
with the bearing of chemistry upon the war, and no 
one realized more completely than he the poten- 
tialities of the plans which have since been formu- 
lated by this committee as a memorial to him. 

It is important that the fund should be raised 
speedily, so that the plans for the laboratory of 
engineering chemistry and the scheme for the 
award of fellowships may be prepared before the 
end of the war, and so that both schemes may 
begin to operate with as little delay as possible 
after the return of peace. 

Accordingly, we desire, through the columns of 
your paper, to appeal to friends and admirers of 
the late Sir William Ramsay, to old students, and 
to all persons who are interested in chemistry and 
its application to industry and manufacture, to 
contribute to this great national and international 
memorial to the late Sir William Ramsay, and to 
send their subscriptions to the honorable treasurers 
of the Ramsay Memorial Fund at University Col- 
lege, London, W.C.1. 


H. H. AsquityH, 


D. Lioyp GEorRGE, 
GAINFORD, 
RAYLEIGH, 

REAy, 

ROSEBERY, 

H. A. L. FISHER, 
J. J. THOMSON, 


President ; 


Vice-presidents ; 


SCIENCE . 31 


Chairman of the Execu- 
tive Committee ; 


Treasurer. 

It is stated in Nature that the sum already 
subscribed by Ramsay’s friends, and through 
their private efforts, amounts to more than 
£14,000. This includes the generous gift of 
£5,000 from Messrs. Brunner, Mond, Ltd.; 
£1,000 each from Lord Glenconner, Sir Hugh 
Bell, Sir Ralph C. Forster, Sir Robert Had- 
field, Mr. Robert Mond, and Mr. J. B. Noble; 
and £500 each from the president of the 
British Science Guild (Sir William Mather), 
Mr. Charles Hawksley, and Miss Lilias Noble. 

A memorial tablet, including a medallion 
portrait of Ramsay, is to be erected in the 
University of Glasgow, of which he was a 
graduate and teacher. The University Court 
has arranged that the memorial, which is de- 
signed by Sir John J. Burnet, shall be placed 
in a conspicuous position at the entrance to 
the Bute Hall. 


Hueu Betz, 


GLENCONNER, 


SMITHSONIAN BOTANICAL EXPEDITIONS 

A RECENT pamphlet on the field-work con- 
ducted by and for the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion states that, while carrying on botanical 
explorations in Venezuela last fall, Dr. J. N. 
Rose, associate curator of plants in the 
National Museum, secured some interesting 
specimens of “ sabadilla,” a Venezuelan plant 
of the lily family, from the seeds of which 
are produced some of the asphyxiating and 
tear-producing gases used in the present war. 

The specimens were secured by Dr. Rose 
through the cooperation of Consul Homer 
Brett, La Guaira, Venezuela, who stated in a 
report of the Department of Commerce, some 
time ago, that this plant is known locally as 
“ cevadilla,” a diminutive of the Spanish word 
“cebada,” meaning barley, and occurs in 
Venezuela and Mexico. Its highly poisonous 
seeds have long been used in medicine. The 
substances produced from sabadilla seed are 
cavadine, or crystallized veratrin, an alkaloid; 
veratrie acid, and sabadilline, a heart stimu- 
lant. 

Neither the consular report nor the Smith- 
sonian pamphlet gives the formula for the 
manufacture of the war gases, but it is stated 


32 SCIENCE 


in the former that the dust from the seed 
in the field irritated the eyes, throat, and espe- 
cially the nose, so much that the native labor- 
ers were obliged to wear masks. It has been 
reported that the Germans had bought all the 
available supply of these seeds before the 
declaration of war. Both the sabadilla seeds 
and all preparations compounded from them 
are now, however, declared contraband by 
England. 

Another plant of the same genus grows wild 
in Texas, and some botanists believe that 
should a need for sabadilla arise here it could 
easily be cultivated in Texas and in other 
southern states. Dr. Rose collected many 
other specimens during his trip, primarily in 
the mountains about Caracas and Puerto 
Cabello, where he made an especial search for 
cacti and orchids. 

Mr. Paul C. Standley, another botanist of 
the National Museum, spent three weeks in 
the vicinity of Fort Myers, on the west coast 
of southern Florida, collecting plants and 
studying the local flora. He was later de- 
tailed for field-work in New Mexico, and re- 
mained for four weeks at Ute Park, where he 
gathered over 5,000 specimens, including 
several genera new to the state, and many 
additional species. During his work, he 
secured the largest collection of eryptogams, 
the flowerless plants propagated by spores or 
simple cell division, ever obtained in New 
Mexico. This collection includes about 300 
species of fungi not previously found in this 
state. 

The Smithsonian pamphlet also describes 
the botanical explorations of Professor A. S. 
Hitchcock in the Hawaiian Islands, a report 
of which will be published shortly. 


WAR SERVICE FOR CHEMISTS! 

CHEMISTS and chemical engineers are nor- 
mally needed in almost all branches of in- 
dustry (including the standardization and 
control of food products) for the successful 
operation of processes, the detection and 
speedy correction of difficulties and the im- 
provement of products. England, France and 


1 Report to the Council of National Defense. 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


Italy found it necessary to recall all chemists 
from the ranks; Canada does not allow 
chemists to enlist; chemists have saved Ger- 
many up to the present time. 

There was a decided shortage in the supply 
of chemists in the United States even before 
April, 1914. The war has made the shortage 
acute, and it is certain that our own war 
needs and industries necessary to war will 
absorb chemists as rapidly as they can be 
trained. 

It takes from four to seven years to train a 
chemist. The shorter time is for college 
graduates and chemical engineers who become 
wholly useful only after a further year of ex- 
perience in a manufacturing plant or labora- 
tory (corresponding to the hospital year re- 
quired of medical students). The longer 
time is for the training of research men taking 
the doctorate degree in chemistry, on whose 
shoulders ultimately the vast need of the gov- 
ernment and the industries fall for meeting 
and solving new difficulties and problems of 
organized research. 

When chemists of mature years are called 
in for service in government laboratories, 
their places must be filled by younger men to 
keep the machinery working. It is, therefore, 
of the greatest importance that steps be taken: 

1. To keep and impress into service in 
chemical lines chemists drawn by the draft 
for service in the United States Army or 
Navy. 

2. To provide means for keeping open 
sources of supply of chemists from universi- 
ties, colleges, and schools of technology, and 
to procure volunteers in chemistry. 

A tentative plan for accomplishing these 
results is hereby appended and recommended. 
WiuiaM H. Nicnotrs, chairman of the Chem- 

istry Committee, National Defense Council. 

Past-president, Society of Chemical In- 

dustry. President, Eighth International 

Congress of Applied Chemistry. 

Marston T. Bocert, chairman of the Chem- 
istry Committee, National Research Coun- 
cil. Past-president, American Chemical 
Society. 


JuLy 13, 1917] 


A. A. Noyrs, Past-president, American Chem- 
ical Society. 

JuLius Srmcuitz, President, American Chem- 
ical Society. 

Cuartes L. Parsons, Secretary, American 
Chemical Society. 


PLAN FOR THE IMPRESSMENT OF CHEMISTS FOR WAR 
SERVICE AS CHEMISTS AND FOR THE PRESERVA- 
TION OF THE SUPPLY OF CHEMISTS 


I. There shall be organized a committee of three 
to advise the President of the United States 
through the War Department on requests for ex- 
emption of chemists. This committee might well 
include besides a government representative two 
chemists, one a chemical engineer or technical 
chemist, the second a university man. These men 
should be nominated to the President by the Coun- 
cil of National Defense. 

II. Requests for exemption of individual chem- 
ists shall be made to this committee by: 

1. Government, state or municipal laboratories 
and bureaus. 

2. Heads of manufacturing plants on the basis 
of the imperative need of these men for their suc- 
cessful operation. 

3. Presidents of universities, colleges and schools 
of engineering or mining on the basis of profic- 
iency, promise and ability of candidates for college 
or university degrees, specializing in chemistry. 
Men recommended under this head who are candi- 
dates for the doctorate degree shall not be over 
26 years of age when they receive the degree, and 
men who are candidates for a four-year college de- 
gree shall not be over 23 years of age when they 
are to receive the degree. 

III. (1) Chemists under 21 and over 30 years 
of age and chemists between 21 and 30 who have 
not been drafted may enroll with the above com- 
mittee as volunteers in chemistry subject to the 
same conditions as the enlisted and exempted men. 

(2) Students in chemistry under 21 years of age 
may enroll with the above committee for a ‘‘chem- 
ists reserve’? under the conditions specified in 
IT. (3). 

IV. Men thus enrolled and accepted under the 
provisions of the above paragraphs for war service 
as chemists shall be subject to the orders of the 
government as to location and nature of service 
and shall be entitled to wear a badge or other in- 
signia indicating their official status (practise of 
France and possibly of other European countries). 
Students enrolled in a ‘‘chemists reserve’’ shall be 
subject to the same conditions as obtain for other 


SCIENCE 


33 


reserves of the government and shall also be en- 
titled to wear some insignia or badge indicating 
their enrollment. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


A COMMISSION under the chairmanship of Dr. 
Frank Billings, of Chicago, is about to leave 
for Russia, under the auspices of the war 
council of the American National Red Cross. 
Its members include specialists in sanitary 
science, general medicine, tuberculosis, bac- 
teriology and other branches of medicine, engi- 
neering, foods, transportation, business, ete. 
Mr. William B. Thompson, of New York, is 
assuming the expense of the commission. 

Forty-FivE engineers of the topographic 
branch of the Geological Survey who are mem- 
bers of the Engineer Officers’ Reserve Corps, 
have been assigned to active duty in connec- 
tion with the military mapping now being 
done for the War Department. Among the 
men affected are Majors Frank Sutton, Wil- 
liam H. Herron, Robert B. Marshall, Glenn S. 
Smith, George T. Hawkins, Robert Muldrow, 
James H. Jennings, William H. Griffin, Robert 
H. Chapman, Joseph H. Wheat and Albert M. 
Walker; Captains Claude H. Birdseye, Emory 
I. Ireland, Clyde B. Kendall, Albert Pike, Her- 
bert H. Hodgeson, Carl L. Sadler, J. G. 
Staack, William L. Miller, Eugene L. McNair, 
Asahel B. Searle, William O. Tufts, Bertram 
A. Jenkins, James W. Bagley and Calvin E. 
Giffin. The list also includes twenty first and 
second lieutenants. 


Mr. Henry S. Graves, chief of the U. S. 
Forest Service, has arrived in Paris to make 
arrangements for the forest work which the 
American army engineers will undertake in 
France in connection with the military opera- 
tions of the allied forces. 

Dr. ALLERTON S. CusHMAN, president of the 
Institute of Industrial Research, with head- 
quarters at Washington, D. C., has been com- 
missioned a major in the Officers’ Reserve 
Corps, and will carry on special research work 
under the ordnance section on the chemistry 
of high explosives. 

Dr. ALEXIS CarreEL, of the Rockefeller Insti- 
tute for Medical Research, who has been at the 


34 SCIENCE 


head of one of the French military hospitals, 
arrived in the United States on July 4. 


Mr. C. P. Winstow has been appointed di- 


rector of the Forest Products Laboratory to 
sueceed Mr. H. F. Weiss, now in charge of the 
Division of Forest Products of the C. F. 
Burgess Laboratories. Dr. S. F. Acree severed 
his connection as chief chemist at the labora- 
tory and is now with the National Wood Chem- 
ical Association, with headquarters at Syra- 
cuse University. 


Dr. Frank D. Apans, of the faculty of ap- 
plied science of McGill University, has been 
elected a foreign honorary member of the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Bos- 
ton, Mass., and also an honorary member of 
the Mineralogical Society of Russia at Petro- 
grad. 

Mr. J. J. Manutry, the curator of the 
Daubeny Laboratory, has been elected to a 
fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, for 
the prosecution of special researches in phys- 
ics and chemistry. 


THE committee on science and the arts of 
the Franklin Institute has awarded its Edward 
Longstreth medals of merit to Professor A. E. 
Kennelly, Messrs. F. H. Achard and A. S. 
Dana, for their joint paper entitled “ Experi- 
mental researches on the skin effect in steel 
rails,” appearing in the August, 1916, issue of 
the Journal of the Franklin Institute. 


Mr. JoHn Hatt Sace, secretary of the 
American Ornithologists’ Union was, on April 
20, the guest of Dr. A. K. Fisher, at the camp 
of the Washington Biologists’ Field Club, at 
Plummer’s Island in the Potomac near Wash- 
ington, D. C., where they were joined by six- 
teen other fellows and members of the union 
who gathered there in honor of Mr. Sage’s 
seventieth birthday. 


A COMPLIMENTARY dinner was recently given 
to Mr. Thomas J. Parker by some of his 
friends, at the Chemists’ Club, New York 
City. The speakers were Dr. Milton C. 
Whitaker, Professor Chas. F. Chandler, Dr. 
Charles H. Herty and Dr. Hugo Schweitzer. 


Dr. Rosert H. Lowi, associate curator of 
anthropology. at the American Museum of Nat- 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


ural History, has received a temporary ap- 
pointment as associate professor in the Uni- 
versity of California for the academic year 
1917-18. He has been given a leave of ab- 
sence by the American Museum of Natural 
History. In exchange, Professor A. L. 
Kroeber will join the staff of the museum dur- 
ing the first half of the year 1918. 


Proressor H. H. Barruerr has received 
leave of absence from the University of Michi- 
gan for the next year and a half in order that 
he may take charge of the laboratories of the 
United States Rubber Co. in Sumatra. At a 
recent meeting of the board of regents of the 
university, a letter was presented from Pro- 
fessor Bartlett with respect to a clause in the 
contract between himself and the United 
States Rubber Company relating to certain 
fellowships to be established in the university 
during Professor Bartlett?s absence by the 
company in order to retain certain of Pro- 
fessor Bartlett?s graduate students. This 
clause received the approval of the board. 


Proressor R. G. Hosxins, of the North- 
western University Medical School, has been 
appointed editor of Hndrocrinology, the bul- 
letin of the Association for the Study of the 
Internal Secretions. 


Mr. Gzorcz H. Asuury has returned to the 
U. S. Geological Survey, Washington, D. C., 
having concluded his term as acting professor 
of geology in Vanderbilt University. He 
took the chair of geology for six months in 
the absence of Professor L. C. Glenn. 


W. E. TorrincHam, assistant professor of 
agricultural chemistry, College of Agriculture, 
Madison, Wis., is on leave of absence and is 
working at Johns Hopkins University with 
Professor Livingston, on special problems in 
plant chemistry and physiology. 


~ Junius Orro ScHLorrerBECK, professor of 
pharmacognosy and botany and dean of the 
College of Pharmacy of the University of 
Michigan, died on June 1. 

Tue death occurred at Cambridge on June 
9 of T. McKenny Hughes, F.R.S., Wood- 
wardian professor of geology in the university, 
at the age of eighty-five years. He was elected 


JuLy 13, 1917] 


a fellow of the Royal Society in 1889, and re- 
ceived the Lyell medal of the Geological So- 
ciety in 1891, when he acknowledged the value 
of his intimate association with Sir Charles 
Lyell, with whom he made many geological 
tours during his early years. As Sedgwick was 
elected Woodwardian professor in 1818 he and 
his successor have between them occupied the 
chair for ninety-nine years. 


Horas T. Kennepy, geologist of the Geo- 
logical Survey of Ireland, was killed on June 
6 while serving as lieutenant in the British 
Army. 


Tue annual meeting of the American 
Chemical Society will be held in Boston on 
September 11, 12 and 13. We learn from the 
Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chem- 
istry that the Northeastern Section has been 
requested by the directors to omit the usual 
annual banquet and excursions, and to arrange 
a program characterized by simplicity and 
seriousness, and bearing as fully as possible 
on questions concerning the activities of chem- 
ists both in the government service and in the 
industries during the present war. The gen- 
eral meeting will be held on Tuesday morn- 
ing. This will be followed in the afternoon 
by a general conference to be opened by Dr. 
W. H. Nichols, chairman of the committee 
on chemicals of the National Defense Council, 
and by Dr. M. T. Bogert, chairman of the 
Chemistry Committee of the National Re- 
search Council, the conference then to be con- 
tinued from the floor. It is expected that 
an informal, get-together meeting of a social 
character will be held on Tuesday evening, 
at which time opportunity will be given for 
informal discussion of problems of the day. 
Wednesday morning will be devoted to divi- 
sional conferences, and the afternoon to divi- 
sional meetings, with papers, or a continua- 
tion of the conferences, as the divisions may 
decide. The presidential address will be de- 
livered on Wednesday evening. Thursday, 
both morning and afternoon, will be given to 
divisional meetings. 


Tue Rockefeller Foundation has awarded 
contracts for the building of two hospitals 


SCIENCE 


30 


to cost $3,000,000. One of these will be 
located in Pekin and the other in Shanghai, 
and both will be for the work of the China 
Medical Board. It is also announced that the 
Foundation will send a hospital ship to the 
Moros and allied tribes of the Sulu Archi- 
pelago. The Philippine government is co- 
operating in this enterprise. The ship will 
cruise for five years among the many islands 
in the southern Philippine group. The 
foundation has learned that many of the 
Moros are suffering from skin diseases, ma- 
laria, hookworm, dysentery and other diseases. 


Tue state health commissioner of Massa- 
chusetts has appointed as a committee on the 
conservation of child life, Drs. David L. 
Edsall and William J. Gallivan, members of 
the public health council, and Dr. Lyman A. 
Jones, director of the division of hygiene of 
the state health department. As consulting 
members he has named Drs. Fritz B. Talbot, 
pediatrist and chief of the children’s medical 
department, Massachusetts General Hospital; 
Richard M. Smith, Boston, pediatrist, as- 
sistant in pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; 
Walter E. Fernald, psychiatrist, superintendent 
of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble- 
minded, and William Healy, psychologist, 
director of the psychopathic institute of the 
Chicago Juvenile Court, and Miss Mary 
Beard, director of the Instructive District 
Nursing Association. 


Tue Journal of the American Medical As- 
sociation states that on June 20, a session was 
held at the College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, Philadelphia, at which physicians past 
the age for medical service organized for the 
reclamation of men physically unfit for the 
United States Army or Navy. Dr. W. W. 
Keen was elected president of the organiza- 
tion and as vice-presidents, Drs. John B. 
Deaver and James M. Anders. Physicians 
more than 55 years of age, doctors who can 
not pass the reserve corps medical examina- 
tion and physicians who for other reasons 
ean not go to the front, will form the mem- 
bership of the organization which will include 
also dental surgeons, pharmacists and chiro- 
podists. The plan is to have a camp where 


36 


men who have been refused service in the 
army or navy for minor defects may have 
these defects cured or so remedied that they 
will be able to enlist later. This is carrying 
out the plan of Dr. William Duffield Robinson, 
which won the approval of the surgeon-gen- 
eral. The entire equipment of the German- 
town Hospital has been offered. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


Tue will of the late Colonel Oliver H. 
Payne provides bequests of more than $7,000,- 
000 to charitable and educational institutions. 
The largest gifts are to Yale University, Lake- 
side Hospital, Cleveland, and the New York 
Public Library, each of which will receive 
$1,000,000. An endowment of $500,000 is be- 
queathed to the Cornell University Medical 
College. Other gifts include: Phillips Acad- 
emy, Andover, Mass., $500,000; St. Vincent’s 
Charity Hospital, Cleveland, $200,000; Cleve- 
land Jewish Orphans Asylum, $200,000; Ham- 
ilton College, Clinton, N. Y., $200,000, and the 
University of Virginia, $200,000. 


Mrs. Reep, widow of late Dean John O. 
Reed, has presented to the library of the de- 
partment of physics of the University of Mich- 
igan about 400 scientific books and bound re- 
prints from the library of Professor Reed, the 
books being principally on physics and mathe- 
matics. There was received from Mrs. Reed, 
also, a gift of eight prisms of special design of 
various kinds of glass and natural crystals 
made by Professor Reed and used by him in 
research work. Mrs. Guthe, widow of the late 
Dean Karl E. Guthe, has presented to the li- 
brary about 100 volumes of scientific works 
from Professor Guthe’s library, together with 
about 1,000 catalogued reprints of scientific 
papers and a card catalogue of several thou- 
sand references. 


Proressor Ropert DC. Warp, of Harvard 
University, is giving instruction in meteorol- 
ogy in the school for the preliminary training 
of aviators, recently established at the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, in coopera- 
tion with the War Department. For the pur- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1176 


poses of this work, Professor Ward has become 
a member of the teaching staff at the Institute 
of Technology, and, under orders from the 
War Department, has been to Toronto to fa- 
miliarize himself with the instruction which 
is there being given at the Cadet School of the 
Royal Flying Corps. 


THE State College of Forestry at Syracuse 
announces the appointment of Mr. Ernest G. 
Dudley, of Leland Stanford University and 
the Yale Forest School, as assistant professor 
of forest extension. Mr. Dudley goes to the 
college from the U. S. Forest Service in Qali- 
fornia where he has recently been in charge of 
the Forest Service Exhibit at the Panama- 
California Exposition in San Diego. 


Dr. Minton ©. Winternirz, formerly associ- 
ate professor of pathology in Johns Hopkins 
University, has been elected professor of 
pathology in the school of medicine of Yale 
University. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE 


THE most remarkable coincidence known to 
me relates to the discovery of Perrine’s second 
comet. I published the facts in the case in 
The Observatory, Vol. 26, pp. 293-94, 1903, 
where they were made familiar to many as- 
tronomers. On describing the coincidence re- 
cently to a group of my colleagues in other 
sciences they urged strongly that I republish 
the facts in a journal of more general charac- 
ter, and thus make known the occurrence to 
students in other subjects. 

Professor Charles D. Perrine, of the Lick 
Observatory staff, discovered the first of his 
many comets on November 17, 1895. This was 
Comet c 1895. He observed it night after 
night until December 20, 1895, when it was lost 
to sight in the glare of the sun’s rays. The 
orbit of the comet was accurately determined, 
and its path for the early months of 1896 was 
computed and published in advance. I had the 
pleasure of assisting Mr. Perrine when he first 
looked for its reappearance from behind the 
sun, on the morning (just before dawn) of 
January 30, 1896. He found it at once, in the 


Juny 13, 1917] 


predicted position, and as an object easily vis- 
ible in medium-sized telescopes. Because the 
comet was following its predicted path so 
closely we decided not to squander money in 
cabling the fact of its reobservation to Euro- 
pean observers. Perrine observed his comet 
morning after morning as weather permitted, 
for fifteen days, until on February 14 a cable- 
gram was received from Kiel, Germany, an- 
nouncing that Lamp had reobserved Perrine’s 
Comet c 1895 that morning. The cablegram in 
cipher code was received at the Lick Observa- 
tory by one of the astronomers, in perfect 
order as shown by the control word; but in 
converting the cabled right ascension of the 
comet from degrees and minutes of are into 
hours and minutes of time the translator made 
an-error of 24 minutes of time, equivalent to 
6° of are. The erroneous translation was 
handed to Perrine. He compared this with 
what he knew to be the real position of Comet 
c 1895, by virtue of his observations in the 
preceding half month, and saw that there was a 
discrepancy of about 24 minutes of time. In- 
asmuch as the check word in the cablegram 
was correct he judged that the object observed 
by Lamp in Kiel must be a different comet 
from his own. The following morning was 
clear and he pointed the 12-inch telescope to 
the position that was handed to him. In look- 
ing through the finder of the telescope he saw 
an eighth magnitude comet in the field of view. 
This did not surprise him. He observed the 
position of the new comet, and we transmitted 
the observation by telegraph and eable, as 
usual, as belonging to a new comet discovered 
by Lamp in Kiel. This new object was at once 
known as Comet a 1896. Naturally consid- 
erable mystery existed (see Astronomical Jour- 
nal, Vol. 16, p. 56, 1896, and Astronomische 
Nachrichten, Vol. 139, pp. 365-66, 1896). Sey- 
eral weeks elapsed before the tangled situation 
was unravelled at Mount Hamilton by our 
looking up the original cipher cablegram and 
detecting the error of 24 minutes in the con- 
version of are into time, made after the cipher 
message had been translated and checked. 

It is a surprising fact that the error should 
have directed the telescope upon an unknown 


SCIENCE 37 


comet, but the surprise increases when we con- 
sider another attendant fact. The new comet 
was moving amongst the stars very rapidly; 
more than 2° east in right ascension and more 
than 3° north in declination, daily. When the 
cablegram was written in Kiel on the morning 
of the fourteenth the new comet was six or 
seven degrees from the cabled position. When 
the erroneous position was handed to Perrine 
on the morning of the fourteenth the new 
comet was three degrees from that position. 
When the first opportunity came, the following 
morning, to examine the erroneous position, 
the rapidly-traveling comet had moved into 
that position. Had the telescope been pointed 
to that position on any other morning whatso- 
ever, the celestial visitor would have been far 
outside the finder field, and the chances are 
fair that it would have come and gone un- 
seen. The cabled Kiel position of reobserva- 
tion of Comet c 1895 and Perrine’s position of 
Comet a 1896 were: 


Comet ¢ 1895, Feb. 14, R. A.=19h. 45m., 

Dec. =— 2° 23” (correct translation). 
Comet ¢ 1895, Feb. 14, R. A.=19h. 21m., 

Dec. =— 2° 23’ (erroneous translation). 
Comet a 1896, Feb. 15, R. A.=19h. 22m., 

Dee. =— 2° 49’, 

The angular radius of the finder field was 

about 1° .3. 


I doubt whether another case of coincidence 
as remarkable as this one is on record in the 
literature of astronomy. 


W. W. CaMpBELL 
Lick OBSERVATORY, 
June 4, 1917 


REPORT OF DR. E. H. WILLIAMS ON THE 
FIRST PHASE OF PENNSYLVANIA 
GLACIATION 


WuEN in 1880 Professor Lewis and myself 
conducted the survey of the terminal moraine 
across Pennsylvania (the results of which are 
embodied in volume Z of the Second Geolog- 
ical Survey of the State) we supposed at the 
outset that we were following the actual limit 
of glaciation. Soon, however, we were con- 
vineed of our error and spoke of a “ fringe” 
of territory sparsely covered with glacial 
markings, extending an indefinite distance 


38 SCIENCE 


beyond. In deference to others we had no 
objection to substituting the words “ atten- 
uated border” for the word we had selected. 
The only person who has studied this “ atten- 
uated border” comprehensibly and in detail, 
in Pennsylvania, is Dr. E. H. Williams, Jr., 
whose attention was called to the problem 
twenty-five years ago, while he was lecturer 
on mining and geology, at Bethlehem. 

By good fortune Bethlehem is almost 
exactly on the exterior limit of this atten- 
uated border; and Dr. Williams’ familiarity 
with the mineralogy of the region and with 
the many problems connected with the work 
of mining engineering, specially fitted him 
for prosecuting the investigations which he 
began and pursued at his own expense until 
the work was completed. Though many of 
the results of this work had been presented 
in piecemeal in various publications, it is 
only now that they are published in complete 
form and with adequate description and illus- 
trations, of which there are no less than fifty- 
six, mostly photographie reproductions. 

Following the example of Professor Cham- 
berlin, who first gave a satisfactory explana- 
tion of the lobate character of the moraines 
west of Pennsylvania, in the topography of 
the region, Dr. Williams has brought to light 
as never before the causes operating to direct 
and limit the movements of the ice over the 
mountainous regions of New England and 
the Middle States. 

1. There was a lobe extending southward 
between the Green Mountains and the Adi- 
rondacks through the Hudson Valley, the rock 
floor of which, between Lake Champlain and 
the Hudson River, was only 150 feet above 
tide. The average breadth of the upper Hud- 
son Valley between the 500-foot contour is 
sixteen miles. Between the 1,000-foot con- 
tours it is thirty-two miles; but at South 
Kingston, New York, Storm-King and Marl- 
borough Mountains rise abruptly 1,200 feet 
above the valley with a gorge between them, 
through which the river flows, only three 
fifths of a mile broad at the 500-foot contour 
and two miles at 1,000 feet. As a consequence 
the ice stream was diverted to the southwest 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1176 


through the Walkill-Rondout saddle into the 
great Pennsylvania valley, extending as far 
as Bethlehem, and damming up the Lehigh 
Valley so that the outflow of the drainage 
was turned over the watershed between the 
Lehigh and the Schuylkill at Topton; thus 
accounting for the glacial drift, which had 
been recognized by Salisbury, in the Schuyl- 
kill River at Norristown. 

A natural explanation of the northwest 
trend of the glacial border, as shown in east- 
ern and middle Pennsylvania, is found in the 
gradual rise of land to the west, which in 
Potter County attains an elevation of 2,500 
feet. But in Schuylkill County the swelling 
mass of ice surrounding and finally over- 
topping the Catskill Mountains penetrated to 
Morea a few miles north of Pottsville leaving 
glacial markings of great interest on the sur- 
face of the mammoth coal bed, at an elevation 
of 2,100 feet above tide. 

Again, as the Labrador ice advanced and 
increased in volume, passing around the ele- 
vation of the Adirondack Mountains it pen- 
etrated the Mohawk Valley through the 
Black River sag and entered the east fork 
of the Susquehanna, reaching the valley of 
the West branch at Williamsport and crossing 
over it so as to produce a dam causing the 
water to extend up Eagle Valley and run over 
into the Juniata at Tyrone, thus accounting 
for the glacial débris that I. C. White had 
found in the lower Juniata. 

But it is in northwestern Pennsylvania 
that most interesting facts come to light. It 
appears that there was a long interval after 
the Kewatin and the Labrador glaciers set 
out upon their careers before they became 
confluent; so that when the Kewatin ice in- 
vaded the valley of the Great Lakes and 
poured its torrential drainage into that valley, 
Labrador ice was obstructing the eastward 
exits both through the St. Lawrence and 
through the Mohawk. This caused a rise of 
water over the basin of western Ontario and 
western New York, until, through the Cone- 
wango, it eventually found an exit into the 
Allegheny Valley, which then was not con- 
tinuous but was separated by a col somewhat 


Juuy 13, 1917] 


south of Franklin from which streams were 
flowing both north and south. But this col 
was rapidly reduced by the glacial torrents 
and thus the present channel was formed. 
Tt was during this period that those remark- 
able deposits in the Conewango and the Alle- 
gheny about Warren were formed. At the 
bottom there is an immense deposit of fine 
sediment in horizontal lamine giving place 
towards the surface, which rises 300 feet or 
more from the rock bottom, to coarser de- 
posits indicating a southward flow of water. 

One of the most interesting discoveries at 
this point is a nugget of Lake Superior Cop- 
per embedded in undisturbed deposits of 
glacial origin, dropped as Dr. Williams 
believes by icebergs floating in this temporary 
lake. Nuggets of copper which Dr. Williams 
is pretty confident are from the Lake Supe- 
rior region are also found in glacial deposits 
of eastern Pennsylvania, brought thither as 
he believes by icebergs, which in an earlier 
period passed through the Mohawk Valley 
before it was completely obstructed by the 
Champlain-Hudson lobe of ice. 

Dr. Williams names his brochure “ Penn- 
sylvania Glaciation; First Phase,” and gives 
ample reasons for believing that in the East, 
at any rate, there is not that immense sep- 
aration between the earliest and _ latest 
phases which geologists in the Mississippi 
Valley have been accustomed to assume as 
separating the Kansan from the Wisconsin 
stages. In Pennsylvania it is certain that 
such a wide separation can not be main- 
tained; for, though it is true that the glacial 
deposits over the attenuated border are in 
general more highly oxidized than those in 
and north of the moraine, they are not all 
highly oxidized. Mingled with the highly 
oxidized material of this area there is a small 
proportion of comparatively fresh material, 
and it is that which must determine the age. 
It is evident that the most of the material on 
the attenuated border was oxidized in pre- 
glacial times and was brought forward in 
that condition by the ice movement. For ex- 
ample, numerous pebbles are found which are 
oxidized on the outside, while there is a core 


SCIENCE 39 


on the inside that is unoxidized, while in 
some instances such pebbles have been ground 
off on one side by the glacial movement, ex- 
posing this unoxidized core and leaving the 
thick covering of oxidization on the other 
side. 

Certainly the scientific public is greatly 
indebted to Dr. Williams for the pains which 
he has taken: first, to collect the facts which 
are found in this brochure, and second for 
bringing them before the public in such full 
measure, at his own expense. No glacialist 
ean afford to remain ignorant of the facts 
and discussion of principles contained in it. 
The reader will lack only a detailed map of 
the state of Pennsylvania, which he needs to 
have constantly before him. The small relief 
map accompanying the publication is good so 
far as it goes, but needs to be supplemented 
for reference by one that gives. minute details 
of topography and geology. 


G. Freperick WricHtT 
OBERLIN, 


May 22, 1917 


QUOTATIONS 

THE WAR AND SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 

THE commendable patriotic ambition of 
every rightminded American to render his best 
help in the time of his country’s need has 
raised questions of choice for many citizens. 
The spirit of service is rife throughout the 
country, and one’s first impulse frequently 
urges him to enter those avenues of activity 
that lead nearest to the combat. A sane, calm 
review of the situation indicates, however, 
that there are many fields which require pro- 
found attention, even though they often seem 
quite remote from the trenches. The chemist 
in the munitions works, the bacteriologist who 
is testing the efficiency of the latest anti- 
septics, the agriculturist who is striving to 
solve the immediate difficulties of farm prac- 
tise or aiding in the “speeding up” of the 
production of staple crops, live stock and other 
food products—all of these workers are an 
indispensable part of the great human organi- 
zation that must cooperate to lead the way 
to victory. Frequently many workers, par- 


40 SCIENCE 


ticularly younger men engaged in important 
investigations, gain the uncomfortable feeling 
that they are not doing their full duty when 
they plod along so far removed from the noise 
of the conflict. Such persons need encourage- 
ment at the present moment. They must not 
all be permitted to withdraw from the less 
conspicuous though highly important labor of 
productive investigation which may anticipate 
the needs of the hour. The war has already 
directed attention as never before to the inti- 
mate relations between science and industry, 
as well as to the vital necessity of fostering 
these relationships. Two generations ago, Dr. 
Lyon Playfair deplored the holding “to mere 
experience as the sheet anchor of the country, 
forgetful that the molds in which it was cast 
are of antique shape, and ignorant that new 
currents have swept away the sand which 
formerly held it fast, so that we are in immi- 
nent risk of being drifted ashore.” Despite 
the brief period full of the enormous diffi- 
culties of organizing a great military cam- 
paign and instituting active defenses as well 
as naval warfare, substantial headway has 
already been made in the mobilization of 
scientific investigation. Researches can not 
be manufactured on command or completed 
over night. Nevertheless the National Re- 
search Council has already made a commend- 
able beginning in a movement that will enlist 
some of the best scientific minds of the na- 
tion and encourage them to continue the work 
for which they are specially trained and best 
equipped. In our enthusiasm for the more 
apparent helps to success we must not forget 
these potent silent forces, nor allow the leaders 
of the nation to overlook the need of support- 
ing and stimulating them. Even war thrives 
thrugh the fundamental discoveries of science. 
—The Journal of the American Medical As- 
sociation. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
Tomorrow: Letters to a Friend in Germany. 
By Huco Munstrrsere. D. Appleton & Co. 
$1. 
As soon as Columbia really sets her face toward 
peace, the war clouds will be dispelled and the age 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


of our hopes will dawn. My mind is gleaming with 
radiant hopes. Peace must come soon, and who 
knows, my friend, when the roses bloom again in 
your beautiful garden, one of the German ships 
interned here in Boston may have brought me back 
to the Fatherland to you. I am sure in one won- 
drous hour at home I can tell you face to face so 
much more than I have told you in these letters. 
Yes, when the roses bloom... . 


The roses will bloom, and perchance peace 
will come, but the author of these hopeful 
words has departed, leaving a message which 
will not soon be forgotten. Professor Miin- 
sterberg wrote his last book, well called “ 'To- 
morrow,” in the form of letters to a friend in 
Germany. The professor of psychology has 
given us a study of extraordinary psycholog- 
ical interest; wherein, under a certain appear- 
ance of unity, we see the ferment of German 
and American ideals, and their influence on a 
scholarly mind. When he came to this coun- 
try, Miinsterberg stipulated that he would re- 
main a German citizen. He did so remain, in 
a political sense; yet he could not escape 
Americanization, and his last wish, in the 
midst of war and of anti-Germanism, is for the 
union of Germany, England and the United 
States! 

Nevertheless, the German point of view is 
never forgotten. The ideal is nationalism, 
combined with a not too insistent internation- 
alism. Science, philosophy, art, must be inter- 
national; the new nationalism of Germany, 
which “pleads for a kind of intellectual em- 
bargo,” is petty and dangerous to real culture; 
yet “truth must be clothed in its national 
garb.” What is nationalism? It is not the 
cult of race: “we have heard so often and with 
so much assurance the story of the omnipo- 
tence of race in human history. The true psy- 
chologist always knew that it was a legend, and 
the war has demonstrated it again.” Yet, we 
are told, “in every nation we grasp a oneness 
of traditions and memories, of language and 
customs, of laws and literature, of arts and 
sciences, of commerce and politics, of morals 
and religion.” Do we, indeed? In Switzer- 
land or the British Empire, for example? Is 


JuLy 13, 1917] 


it not a fact that the nation, as nations go to- 
day, is an artificial alliance for economic pur- 
poses? The real groupings of mankind, in a 
spiritual, intellectual or even historical sense, 
are usually not coincident with national boun- 
daries, and afford no support to the doctrine 
that nations are the most sacred of all human 
units. How far Miinsterberg could be led 
astray by the ideal of nationalism is shown in 
his defense of the militant professors who, 
“uplifted by a healthy patriotism,” proclaimed 
historie and political facts as they appeared 
from the angle of their hopes (p. 87); yet he 
hastened to add that “ while our beliefs may 
clash, no hatred ought to darken our vision.” 

The new idealism, as interpreted by Miin- 
sterberg, is that of organization for public serv- 
ice. “ Where individualism prevails, subordina- 
tion is unwelcome; and that means that dilet- 
tantism flourishes and the expert is powerless. 
The dilettant is now ruled out and the triumph 
of the expert secured all over the world for the 
days to come; organization replaces haphazard 
performance; the self-conscious will of the 
group suppresses the individual whim. To 
have attained this is the most important vic- 
tory of the German nation. If the war brought 
nothing else, this alone may make us feel that 
those who died on both sides did not give their 
lives in vain” (p. 137). With this interpreta- 
tion, the new nationalism finds fresh meanings. 
The nation is now the cooperative unit. It 
is the machine, all parts of which work to- 
gether in harmony. Why not extend this idea 
further, and let the unit be mankind? 

The conception of universal cooperation, 
once we have grasped and appreciated the ex- 
traordinary coherence of such a strange con- 
glomeration as the British Empire, is simple 
and attractive. Since nations, artificial as 
they are, are such workable units in time of 
stress, what is to prevent the extension of the 
national method until nations are no more? 
Miinsterberg looked forward to something like 
that: “the world federation ought to be an 
ideal . . . but it must have ages to mature.” 
It can not come through law, but must arise 
“out of the needs of the active nations,” must 
be dynamic and constructive. 


SCIENCE 


41 


The interplay of diverse ideas and ideals 
produces inconsistencies which alternately 
irritate and charm. It is irritating to find 
what seems to be a failure in the integrity of 
scientific reasoning, but one is charmed at the 
naive sincerity of the utterances. After all, 
the road to salvation is not the straight and 
narrow path we have been led to imagine, but 
has many turns. Every promising path ap- 
pears to have its obstacles and its dangers. 
Even the federation of the world might lead 
to an ossification of the springs of originality 
in mankind. State socialism may go the way 
of all organization carried to extremes, and 
lead to petrefaction. 

History shows us that the causes of progress 
are largely individual. The new movement 
arises as a consequence of the breaking away 
of some personality from the fetters of the es- 
tablished order. He may be crucified, but his 
work permeates society, and fructifies through 
social cooperation. Thus individualistic and 
socialistie forces are alike indispensable for 
progress. Miinsterberg seems not to have fully 
appreciated this; the Germans, as a nation, do 
not appreciate it, and that is why we dread the 
“ Prussianization ” of the world. On the other 
hand, we have not sufficiently appreciated the 
importance of organization; and here in Amer- 
ica, in particular, the work of individuals fails 
for lack of adequate cooperation. 

We grant with Miinsterberg that a genuine 
idealism is at the base even of German war- 
fare. He himself defines it exactly. “It is a 
belief in ‘absolute’ values... . Belief in ab- 
solute values means simply that the deed is 
valued independent from the pleasure it brings. 
... If we are filled with the belief that an ac- 
tion has value without any reference to pleas- 
ure or pain, then we credit it with absolute 
value. To be guided in life by such a belief is 
idealism.” This conception is expanded quite 
fully, and as presented has its attractive side. 
Indeed, who can go through life sanely or use- 
fully without some such idealism, some belief 
in unprovable axioms or “absolute values” ? 
Yet modern science becomes more and more 
experimental, more and more inclined to test 
all things, and hold fast to that which is good, 


42 


as shown by the test. Pragmatism may be 
vicious when narrowly conceived, but the prag- 
matic attitude leads us away from dogmatic 
idealism toward intelligent action. The Ger- 
man army, in its conduct toward its own mem- 
bers as well as its treatment of the unfortunate 
peoples who come under its power, does indeed 
strive for “values” independently of pleasure 
or pain. Nationalistic idealism can be made 
the excuse for deeds which could find no justi- 
fication in the presence of the simplest en- 
quiries into consequences, as measured by 
those supposedly negligible phenomena, human 
pleasure and pain. Miinsterberg, great-hearted 
and striving after good, would not have so far 
forgotten the relations between cause and ef- 
fect; but we must combat any philosophy, any 
course of action, which does not incessantly 
seek justification by results measured in hu- 
man welfare. 
T. D. A. CocKERELL 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


A RHYTHMICAL “HEAT PERIOD” IN THE 
GUINEA-PIG 


Durine the past,six years we have been using 
guinea-pigs in an extensive breeding experi- 
ment and it has become more and more eyi- 
dent as our work goes on that the existing no- 
tions of the ovulation periods in these ani- 
mals are of no practical value, or are prac- 
tically incorrect. In a number of the experi- 
ments it became important to know accurately 
when the females “ came into heat” and when 
ovulation took place. We had concluded, from 
numerous observations as well as theoretically, 
that the female guinea-pig very probably had 
a definitely regular and periodic sexual cycle 
if it could be worked out exactly. On account 
of the need of this exact information, we have 
studied the cestrous cycle in these animals dur- 
ing the past eighteen months. 

Most other attempts at a solution of this 
problem have centered in a study of the ovary, 
which necessitated either its removal by oper- 
ation or the killing of the animal. In either 
ease the procedure brought to a conclusion the 
observation or experiments on the ovulation 
cycles in that specimen. Recognizing, on the 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1176 


other hand, that no thorough investigation of 
the uterus and vagina in the living female had 
been made, it occurred to us that possibly 
cestrous changes might take place even though 
they are so feebly expressed as not to be notice- 
able on casual observation. The absence of an 
apparent cestrous or prowstrous flow from the 
vagina of the guinea-pig has, no doubt, been 
the chief reason for the general lack of knowl- 
edge of the estrous cycle. It was, therefore, 
determined to make a minute examination of 
the contents of the vagine of a number of fe- 
males every day for a long period of time to 
ascertain whether a feeble flow might exist, al- 
though insufficient in quantity to be noticed 
at the vaginal orifice or vulva. 

The observations were made by using a small 
nasal speculum which was introduced into the 
vagina and the arms opened apart by means 
of the thumb screw. This instrument permits 
an examination of the entire surface of the 
vaginal canal. In this way the vagine of a 
number of virgin females have been examined 
daily and smears made from the substances 
that happened to be present in the lumen. 

By the use of such a simple method, it was 
readily determined after examining the first 
lot of animals for a few months that a definite 
sexual period occurs lasting for about twenty- 
four hours and returning with a striking reg- 
ularity every fifteen or sixteen days. During 
this twenty-four hour period the vagina con- 
tains an abundant fluid which is for about the 
first half of the time of a mucous consistency. 
The vaginal fluid then changes into a thick 
and cheese-like substance which finally be- 
comes slowly liquefied and serous. This thin 
fluid exists for a few hours and then disap- 
pears. Occasionally toward the end of the 
process a slight trace of blood may be present, 
giving the fluid a bloody red appearance, other- 
wise it is milk-white or cream color. 

According to the changes in appearance and 
consistency of the vaginal fluid, one may dis- 
tinguish four different stages. The first stage 
having a mucous secretion, a second stage the 
cheese-like secretion, a third stage with the 
fluid becoming serous and a fourth stage, not 
always recognized, during which a bloody dis- 


Jouuy 13, 1917] 


charge is present. The duration of these sev- 
eral stages is subject in the different animals 
to individual variations. The first stage, how- 
ever, is generally longest and lasts from six to 
twelve hours or even more, and during this 
time there is a gradually increasing quantity 
of the mucous secretion which at its height is 
very abundant and fills the entire lumen of the 
vagina. The second stage is shorter, lasting 
from two to four hours, and passes gradually 
over into the third stage which lasts from four 
to six hours. The fourth stage is the shortest, 
only about one to two hours long, and for this 
reason it is often missed in examining the 
animals during the periods. It is also possible, 
as mentioned above, that the fourth stage may 
not typically exist in all individuals and the 
quantity of blood present is very different in 
the different specimens. The succession in 
which these stages follow one another is re- 
markably definite. We have never observed 
any change in the typical sequence of the 
stages and the time consumed by the entire 
process is closely the same in all cases. 

A macroscopical examination of the uterus 
and vagina during this period of sexual activ- 
ity shows the entire genital tract to be con- 
gested. The vessels to the ovary, uterus and 
vagina are large and conspicuous, the uterine 
horns and the vagina are slightly swollen and 
inflamed. However, as soon as this short 
period of activity is over, the congestion disap- 
pears and the uterus and vagina take again 
their normal pale aspect. At the same time 
the vaginal fluid diminishes and the vagina, 
especially during the first week after the sex- 
ual activity, is as clean as possible, showing 
none of the secretion. The external vaginal 
orifice, which during the period of activity is 
more or less open, actually showing in a few 
eases a little fluid or some blood, closes and be- 
comes less accessible after the period. 

During the second week following estrus a 
little mucous discharge begins to appear in the 
vagina and increases progressively, indicating 
that the new period of activity is nearer and 
nearer approaching. The orifice of the vagina 
is sometimes open during this stage and thus 
explains why this sign, which was observed be- 


SCIENCE ~ 43 


fore, does not make it possible to detect the 
actual time of the regular estrous activity. 

The complete results of the present study 
which will be published in full elsewhere may 
be stated in brief as follows. 

Guinea-pigs kept in a state of domestication 
and under uniform environmental conditions 
possess a regular dicwstrous cycle repeating 
itself in non-pregnant females about every six- 
teen days throughout the entire year with 
probably small and insignificant variations 
during the different seasons. 

During each cycle typically corresponding 
changes ,are occurring in the yagina, the 
uterus, and the ovary; a given stage in one of 
these organs closely accompanying parallel 
stages in the other two. 

Each period of sexual activity lasts about 
twenty-four hours and is characterized by the 
presence of a definite vaginal fluid, which is 
not sufficiently abundant to be readily de- 
tected on the vulva, but is easily observed by 
an examination of the interior of the vagina. 

The composition of the vaginal fluid changes 
with the several stages of change occurring in 
the uterus and vagina. 

(a) To begin with, during what we term the 
first stage, the fluid consists of an abundant 
mucous secretion containing great numbers of 
desquamated vaginal epithelial cells. At this 
time sections of the vagina show an active 
shedding or desquamation of its epithelial lin- 
ing cells. The cells of the uterine epithelium 
are loaded with mucus, and an active migra- 
tion of polynuclear leucocytes is taking place 
from the vessels of the vagina and uterus out 
into the stroma and towards the epithelial 
layer. 

(b) During the second stage the contents of 
the vagina become thick and cheese-like on ac- 
count of the great accumulation of desqua- 
mated epithelial cells. The walls of the uterus 
and vagina become congested and the migra- 
tion ‘of leucocytes becomes still more active. 

(c) The leucocytes reach the epithelium and 
vigorously invade its cells and intercellular 
spaces during the third stage. These wander- 
ing cells become enclosed within and appar- 
ently dissolve the breaking-down dead cells of 
the epithelium. The vaginal fluid becomes 


44 


thinner under the dissolving or digesting ac- 
tion of the leucocytes. The congestion in the 
uterus and vagina becomes still more pro- 
nounced, giving rise to small blood masses or 
hematomata beneath the epithelium. The epi- 
thelium of the uterus is highly disorganized, 
vacuolized and richly invaded by the leuco- 
cytes, so that portions of it fall away en 
masse, actually carrying with it in some cases 
cells of the stroma. 

(d) The fourth stage is merely a continua- 
tion or result of the activities of the third. 
The falling away of the epithelial pieces and 
stroma cells permits the escape of the small 
hematomata or blood knots, thus causing a 
slight bleeding into the lumen of the uterus 
and vagina. These traces of blood often give 
a reddish aspect to the vaginal fluid. At this 
same stage a regeneration process begins from 
the necks of the uterine glands and also appar- 
ently from the epithelial infoldings in the va- 
gina, so that the lost epithelium becomes rap- 
idly replaced almost before it has ceased fall- 
ing away. 

The regeneration process in the guinea-pig 
is very short, lasting only a few hours, from 
six to twelve in all. 

Ovulation seems to occur spontaneously dur- 
ing every heat period without exception. The 
rupture of the follicles with the consequent 
ovulation takes place about the end of the sec- 
ond stage or the beginning of the third; that 
is, during the presence of the thick cheese-like 
vaginal fluid. 

During the dicstrum or intermenstrual 
period there is very little fluid to be found in 
the vagina. This scant fluid consists of 
mucus in which are some atypical squamous 
cells from the vaginal wall and many leuco- 
eytes. A number of the leucocytes are old 
but there are probably new ones arriving al- 
most continuously from the wall of the vagina. 
The only time at which the vagina seems to be 
practically free of leucocytes is immediately 
before and during the first and second stages 
of the estrous period described above. 

A marked correlation exists between the 
cestrous changes in the uterus and the develop- 
mental cycle of the corpora lutea. When the 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1176 


corpora lutea are highly developed and ap- 
parently active the mucose of the uterus and 
vagina show a normally vigorous and healthy 
condition. While on the other hand, when the 
corpora lutea begin to degenerate during the 
second week after the “heat period” the 
mucose of the uterus and vagina also begin to 
shown signs of degeneration and the process 
of desquamation slowly commences. At about 
two weeks after the last “heat period,” when 
the wholesale destruction of the mucosa be- 
gins, the corpora lutea are almost completely 
degenerated. The breaking of the Graafian 
follicles occurs during the estrus as a result 
of a congestion which began in the theca fol- 
liculi at about the same time as the congestion 
of the stroma of the uterus and vagina. And 
finally when the regenerative growth of the 
uterine mucosa sets in, the ovaries then pos- 
sess new corpora lutea in an active state of dif- 
ferentiation which were derived from the re- 
cently ruptured follicles. 

It, therefore, might be imagined that the 
secretion from the corpora lutea exerts a pro- 
tective influence over the uterus and vagina 
while the absence of this secretion permits the 
breaking down and degeneration of the uterine 
epithelium typical of the “heat period.” 

C. R. Stockarp, 
G. N. PapanicoLaou 


THE IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 


THE thirty-first annual session of the Iowa 
Academy of Science was held at Grinnell College, 
Grinnell, on April 27 and 28. The opening meet- 
ing was called to order on Friday afternoon by 
President Stewart, of the State University. After 
the transaction of preliminary business the presi- 
dent delivered his annual address on ‘‘ Recent ad- 
vances in physical science and the relation of the 
Iowa Academy to scientific progress.’’ Professor 
Conard, of Grinnell, who had been the academy’s 
delegate to the tenth annual meeting of the Ill- 
nois Academy of Science, gave a report of that 
meeting. A number of papers of general interest 
were read and the president announced that other 
papers would be read before the appropriate sec- 
tions, which were: 1, Geology; 2, Zoology and Bot- 
any; 3, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. 

Professor R. A. Millikan, of the University of 
Chicago, was to have given the annual address, but 


JuLy 13, 1917] 


as he was unable to leave his work on the Council 
for National Defense, at Washington, Professor S. 
M. Woodward, of the University of Iowa, gave the 
address on the ‘‘Application of science to flood 
prevention,’’ an outline of his work on the Dayton, 
Ohio, flood-prevention project. 

Following the meetings of the sections on Sat- 
urday morning the business meeting was held, at 
which the following officers were elected for the 
coming year. 

President—L. §. Ross, Drake University, Des 
Moines. 

First Vice-president—S. W. Beyer, State College, 
Ames. 

Second Vice-president—C. E. Seashore, State 
University, Iowa City. 

Secretary—James H. Lees, Iowa Geological Sur- 
vey, Des Moines. 

Treasurer—A, O. Thomas, 
Iowa City. 

Resolutions were adopted pledging the support 
of the academy to the President of the United 
States, also commending the action of the Iowa 
legislature in passing laws to give quail and 
prairie chicken a closed season of five years and 
providing for a board of conservation to investi- 
gate localities in Iowa which are of scenic, scientific 
and historic interest. 


State University, 


PROGRAM 


Geology and Allied Subjects 

A notable mound group near the proposed govern- 
ment park at McGregor: ELLISON Orr. 

(a) Wave action and results of ice action as seen 
near the Macbride Lakeside laboratory, summer 
of 1916. (b) Second record of oscillations in 
lake level, and records of lake temperatures and 
meteorology, at the Macbride Lakeside labora- 
tory, July, 1916: JoHN L. Tinton. 

Possible fan structure in 
CHARLES KEYES. 

The Cordillera in Jasper Park, in northwest Al- 
berta, as in other parts of the great mountain 
chain, is characterized by tremendous thrust 
planes; but unlike most other portions there is on 
the east flank a sharp flexing on a large scale. 
The especially notable feature is the Appalachian 
or Alpine type of structure. The relationships of 
the various members are presented with greater 
perspicuity than anywhere else throughout the en- 
tire extent of the Rocky Mountain region, per- 
haps with greater graphic distinetness than Appa- 
lachian structure is exhibited in the whole world. 
A hundred miles farther south, on the west side of 


Canadian Rockies: 


SCIENCE | 


45 


the chain, the pre-Cambrian clastics with steep but 

variable slants indicate the presence of the other 

half of the orographie fan. 

Glacier dams of central Washington: CHARLES 
KEYES. 


Extent and age of Cap-au-Grés fault: CHARLES 
KEYES. 


A bibliography of the driftless area: W. D. Surr- 
TON. 

(a) The Iowan glaciation and the so-called Iowan 
loess deposits. (b) Post-Kansan erosion. (c) 
The Buchanan gravels of Calvin and the Iowan 
outwash: M. M. LrIcHTon. 

The loess and the antiquity of man: B. SuimeEK. 


History of the Pleistocene in Iowa: Emer J. 
CABLE. 

Pleistocene deposits between Manilla in Crawford 
county and Coon Rapids in Carroll county, Iowa: 
Grorce F. Kay. 

The most significant features that have been re- 
vealed by a study of the Pleistocene deposits in 
many deep cuts made recently between Manilla in 
Crawford county and Coon Rapids in Carroll 
county, by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul 
Railway Company, were described. 


Ocheyedan mound, Osceola county, Iowa: GEORGE 

F. Kay. 

This brief paper describes the chief characters 
of the long time famous Ocheyedan mound, which 
is thought by many persons to be the most pic- 
turesque topographic feature in northwestern Iowa. 

The mound is a kame which was formed during 
the recession of the Wisconsin ice sheet. 

The esthetie value of such beautiful and inter- 
esting geological phenomena as Ocheyedan mound 
should be fully appreciated by the citizens of the 
state, and every effort should be made to prevent 
their destruction. Already Ocheyedan mound has 
been somewhat marred by the removal at its sum- 
mit of sand and gravel which was used for com- 
mercial purposes. To be sure, the mound is valu- 
able for the many thousands of tons of material 
that might be taken from it to be used for road- 
making or other purposes, but of far greater value 
is it to the state as a beauty spot, a landmark, 
which should be conserved for future generations 
just as zealously as we are wont to conserve our 
material resources. 


A note regarding a slight earthquake at Iowa City, 
on April 9, 1917: GEORGE F. Kay. 

A supposed fruit or nut from the Tertiary of 
Alaska: A. O. THOMAS. 


46 


The specimen, which was collected in the coal- 
bearing beds of the Tokun formation, is about 8 
em. in diameter. The symmetrical arrangement of 
certain meridional and other lines on its surface 
and attached fragments of what appears to have 
been an epicarp suggest that it may be a fossil 
fruit or nut. Other possibilities are suggested. . 


A large colony of fossil coral: A. O. THOMAS. 

A coral colony of gigantie proportions was re- 
cently discovered in a reef of Niagaran corals in 
Jones county. Conditions under which the colony 
oceurs, its dimensions and associations, are de- 
seribed. Illustrations. 


Notes on a decapod Crustacean from the Kinder- 
hook shale near Burlington: OTTo WALTER. 
Mississippian crustaceans are comparatively 

rare. An incomplete specimen found imbedded in 

a hard shaly nodule is described. It seems to be 

allied to the old genus Paleopaleomon. 


Some observations on the history of Yangtse 
River, China: C. L. Foster. 


Some geologic aspects of conservation: JAMES H. 
LEES. 
Some of the beauty spots of Iowa are described 
and their scenic and geologic values are mentioned. 
The necessity for their preservation is emphasized. 


Some fundamental 
JAMES H. LEES. 
After a brief discussion of the evidence for pro- 

gressive development of the material world there is 

given an outline of the trend of thought regarding 
the history of the earth. This outline covers the 
work of leading thinkers from the Greek and Ro- 
man philosophers to the great systems evolved by 
La Place and Chamberlin. 


(a) The Prairie du Chien-St. Peter unconformity in 
Iowa. (b) The origin of the St. Peter sand- 
stone. (c) Some conclusions concerning the 
erosional history of the driftless area: A. C. 
TROWBRIDGE. 


concepts of earth history: 


Home Economics 


Improved method for home canning: C. N. KINNEY 

AND Maurice RICKER. 

Suggested use of calcium chloride and other 
salts in solution in outer vessels of double boilers 
to raise boiling point in inner vessel. 

Experiments in cooking cereals, canning fruit 
and vegetables indicate that this cheaper device 
may replace the auto-clav for these purposes, espe- 
cially when the inner vessel is subjected to slight 
pressure. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


| Physics 

(a) Certain features of rheostat design. (b) An 
interesting case of resonance in an alternating 
current circuit: H. L. Dover. 

The absence of relationship between electro-me- 
chanical properties of selenium crystals and their 
photo-electric emission by ultra-violet light: F. 
C. BROWN AND F. S. YETTER. 

The X-ray K-radiation from tungsten: ELMER DER- 
SHEM. iT 

The influence of intensity ratio in binaural sound 
localization: EH. M. Berry anp C. C. BuNcH. 

A peculiar electrically conducting layer on the sur- 
face of mica: G. W. STEWART. 

On the torsional elasticity of drawn tungsten wires: 
L. P. Size. 

The thermal conductivity of tellurium: ArtTHuR R. 
FortscH. 


(a) Electrical capacity of similar, non-parallel 
plane plates, and its application where the plates 
are non-rectangular. (b) Mathematics of stro- 
boscopy; The strobodeik; Theory of the stro- 
boscopic effect by reflection of light from vi- 
brating mirrors. (¢) Precontact conduction cur- 
rents: L. E. Dopp. 

Effect of drawing on the density and specific re- 
sistance of tungsten: WM. SCHRIEVER. 

Effect of gases on unilateral conductivity: ROBERT 
B. Dopson. 


Zoology and Allied Subjects 
Birds of the past winter, 1916-17, in northwestern 

Iowa: T. C. STEPHENS. 

A list of the birds observed in Clay and O’Brien 
counties, Iowa: IrA N. GABRIELSON. 
An annotated list of the mammals of Sac county, 

Iowa: J. A. SPURRELL. 

Bell’s vireo studies: WALTER W. BENNETT. 
lustrated with lantern.) 

Observations on Bell’s vireo, a species of the 
central United States which has heretofore been 
little studied. Near Sioux City it arrives unob- 
trusively from the south during the second and 
third weeks in May. During nesting, which imme- 
diately follows, the bird has been found to sing on 
the nest after the fashion of the warbling vireo. 
A tendeney of the bird to become easily tamed, a 
habit of very frequently sitting for long periods in 
a resting attitude near the nest, and other charac- 
teristic actions have been noted. Also, an un- 
usually large proportion of cowbird’s eggs in their 
nests and other facts point to a possible diminish- 
ing number of individuals of the species, at least 
near Sioux City. 


(Il- 


Juty 13, 1917] 


An analysis of the cranial ganglia in Squalus 
acanthias: Sauuy P. Hueues. (Illustrated with 
lantern.) 

This analysis confirms the results of Strong 
(1903) and Landacre (1916). The trigeminus 
ganglion is constricted into a ventral maxillaris 
and a dorsal mandibular and superficial ophthalmic 
portion; the ophthalmicus profundus has a distinct 
ganglion. The facialis comprises the geniculate 
ganglion, a motor root distributed through the 
hyomandibular trunk, and three lateral line gang- 
lia—a buceal, a superficial ophthalmic VII., and a 
third out in the hyomandibular trunk—the fibers 
from the last two forming the dorsal lateral line 
root, those from the buccal, the ventral. The audi- 
tory ganglion is distinct, rising by a large root 
just ventral and posterior to the lateral line roots 
of the VII. The IX. ganglion is visceral sensory 
with a small lateral line ganglion in its anterior 
end. The lateral line fibers rise by a small sepa- 
rate root just barely in contact dorsally with the 
lateral line root of the X. The vagus rises by a 
large anterior lateral line root followed by a suc- 
cession of visceral sensory and motor roots. There 
are three lateral line ganglia on the X., almost 
fused together. A small general cutaneous element 
is given off with fibers from the first two of these. 
The visceral ganglia are also slightly segmented 
into four branchial and one intestinal portion, the 
last two quite inseparable. The cervical plexus, 
comprising the two occipitals and first three spinal 
nerves, is in contact with the vagus, but entirely 
distinct from it. 


The eyeball and associated structures in the blind- 
worms: H. W. Norris. (Illustrated with lan- 
tern.) 

The optical apparatus in the Cecilians under- 
goes various degrees of degeneration and trans- 
formation, from a condition where the entire 
mechanism is present, but in a rudimentary condi- 
tion, to that where only a vestigial eyeball and 
much modified and transformed retractor and 
levator bulbi muscle are present. 


Bermuda as a type collecting ground for inverte- 
brates: H. A. Cross, JR. 
White grub outbreaks in northeastern Iowa: R. L. 

WEBSTER. 

A brief account of the destructive outbreaks of 
white grubs in northeastern Iowa in 1912 and 
1915; the relation of the contour of the land and 
the abundance of timber to these outbreaks; the 
prospects for damage in the near future. 


SCIENCE 


47 


The influence of the male on litter size: Epwarp N, 
WENTWORTH. 
Entomostraca of 

STROMSTEN. 

The following is a list of Entomostraca collected 
in the neighborhood of the Macbride Lakeside Lab- 
oratory, Lake Okoboji, Iowa, during August, 1916: 
Sida crystallina, Daphnia hyalina, Daphnia kahl- 
bergensis, Daphnia Scapholebris mucronata, Simo- 
cephalus vetulus, Simocephalus serrulatus, S. ameri- 
cana, Bosmina longirostris, Camptocercus macru- 
rus, Alonella excisa, Pleuroxus stramineus, P. 
hamatus, P. denticulatus, P. procurvus, Diaptomus 
sicilis, D. signicauda, D. oregonensis, D. clavipes, 
D. pallidus, Cyclops signatus var. coronatus, C. s. 
var. tenucornis, C. insignis, C. serrulatus, C. macru- 
rus, C. fluviatilis, C. affinis, C. bicolor, C. phaleratus, 
C. fimbriatus. k 


northwestern Iowa: F. A. 


The development of the musk gland in the logger- 
head turtle: FRANK A, STROMSTEN. 


Some new endoparasites of the snake: THESLE T. 

JOB. 

Porocephalus globicephalus Hett; the characters 
of the male, which Hett did not have in describing 
the species, are recorded and additional notes on 
the habits and anatomy of both sexes offered. 

A distome, Renifer sp?, closely allied to R. 
ellipticus Pratt. Measurements of the specimens 
recorded. 

Larve of Acanthocephalia, Gigantorynchus sp?, 
larval condition described. 


Further notes on the venous connections of the 
lymphatic system in the common rat: THESLE T, 
Jos. 

In addition to the portal, renal and ilio-lumbar 
vein communications reported in 1915, an inferior 
vena caval communication at the level of the lum- 
bar nodes has been demonstrated. The variable 
occurrence of the communications and the lack of 
correlation of these taps is shown. The possible 
effect of the physiological condition of the animals 
and of the injecting technie on the demonstration 
of the communications is suggested. Conclusions 
as to the significance of the communications are 
delayed until the embryological study now in 
progress is completed. 


Mites affecting the poison oak: H. E. Ewine. 

The Odonata of Iowa: Luoyp WELLS. 

Observations on the Protozoa, with descriptions 
and drawings of some probable new species: 
CLEMENTINA S. SPENCER. 

Notes on some Iowa rodents: Dayton STONER. 
A brief progress report of some work now under 


48 


way on the rodents of Iowa for the Iowa Geolog- 
ical Survey. Two forms, Sciurus hudsonicus min- 
nesota Allen and Lepus californicus melanotis 
Mearns, are for the first time recorded from Iowa 
and the known distribution of some other species 
of rodents is extended. A brief survey of the 
bounty system in the state is also given. 


Botany 

The Sand-flora of Iowa: B. SHIMEK. 

Some additional notes on the pollination of red 
clover: L. H. PAMMEL AND L. A. KENOYER. 

The germination and juvenile forms of some oaks: 
L. H. PAMMEL AND CHARLOTTE M. KING. 

Plant studies in Lyon county, Iowa: D. H. Boor. 

Notes on Melilotus alba: WALTER E. ROGERS. 

The cleistogamy of Heteranthera dubia: R. B. 
WYLIE. 
The influence of soil management on the formation 
and development of fruit buds: R. 8. Kirsy. 
(a) The white waterlily of Clear Lake, Iowa. (b) 
Tree growth in the vicinity of Grinnell, Iowa: 
H. S. Conarp. 

A picea from the glacial drift: 
THOMAS. 


WILBuR H. 


Pioneer plants on a new levee, III.: FRANK E. A. 
THONE. 


The morphology of the thallus and cupules of 
Blasia pusilla: MARGUERITE B, ROHRET. 
Chlorotic corn: W. H. Davis. 


The ecial stage of alsike clover rust: W. H. Davis. 

The rusts on clover were formerly classified as 
one species until Liro proved the rust on white 
elover (7. repens L.) separate, autecious and pos- 
sessing all spore forms. 
clover rust was definitely described by Davis and 
Johnson at a meeting of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, December, 1916. 
They showed this rust to be autecious also, and 
composed of all spore forms. The disposition of 
the rust on alsike clover has not been clear; some 
place it with red clover rust while it is generally 
regarded as white clover rust. The ecial stage has 
not been reported in the United States, but has 
been reported in Germany by Rostrup (1888). 
The correct determination of his host is not gen- 
erally accepted. 


The use of ferric and ferrous phosphate in nutrient 
solutions: GEORGE E. CorsoN AND ARTHUR L. 
BAKKE. 

A series of experiments have been performed 
using varying amounts of ferrous and ferric phos- 


SCIENCE 


The excial stage of red’ 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1176 


phate in Shive’s solution as a general basis, in the 
growth of wheat and Canada field pea seedlings. 
Ferrous phosphate can not replace the ferric phos- 
phate. The amount as used by Shive has been de- 
termined to be the best for the growth of wheat, 
but for Canada field pea the iron requirement is 
evidently higher. 


Chemistry 
(a) Some natural waters of central New York. 


(b) Diffusion phenomena of double salts: 
NicHoLaAs KNIGHT. 


Water-works laboratories: JAcK J. HINMAN, JE. 

A collection of data from ninety water works 
laboratories in the United States and Canada, 
safeguarding an average daily supply of 2,800,000,- 
000 gallons for more than 17,000,000 people. All 
of these laboratories have been established since 
1897. Their organization and methods of chemical 
and bacteriological control are discussed from the 
technical standpoint. 

Laboratory control is essential to the proper 
operation of water-works plants which treat a 
water of variable character. 


The free energy of dilution of lithium chloride in 
aqueous and alcoholic solutions by the electro- 
motive force method: F. S. Mortimer AnD J. N. 
PEARCE. 


The electrical conductivity and viscosity of solu- 
tions of silver nitrate in pyridine: H. L. DuNLAP 
AND J. N. PEARCE. 


A study of the relation between solubility, the heat 
of solution and the properties of the solvent: H. 
E. FOWLER AND J. N. PEARCE. 


The partial analyses of some Iowa clays (prelimi- 
nary report): J. N. PEARCE. 


The protein content and microchemical tests of the 
seeds of some common Iowa weeds: L. H. PAam- 
MEL AND A. W. Dox. 

(a) Synthesis of a naphthotetrazine from diethyl 
succinylosuccinate and dicyandiamide. (b) The 
behavior of benzidine toward selenic and telluric 
acids. (c) Amino acids and microorganisms: 
ArtTHuR W. Dox. 

The separation and gravimetric estimation of po- 
tassium: S. B. Kuzirian. 

The action of the amino group on amylolitic 
enzymes: BE. W. Rock woop. 

Some of the factors that influence the extraction of 
gold from ores by the cyanide process: A. W. 
HIXxson. JAMES H. LEES, 

Secretary 


SCIENCE 


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We are sole distributors of these bottles which have been developed 
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as the Duty paid prices specified for Stender bottles in the 1913 edition 
of our catalog “C.” List of labels at present available sent on ap- 
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SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


THE 
PRINCIPLES OF 
STRATIGRAPHY 


BY 


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PROFESSOR OF PALEONTOLOGY IN 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


**Should be on the reference shelf of every col- 
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UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA 
PROFESSORSHIP OF ZOOLOGY 


New Appointment 


The Board of Governors of the University of Manitoba 
beg to announce the establishment of a chair of Zoology in 
the University. for which they invite applications. The 
duties will include the usual courses of lectures, laboratory 
work and examinations; and the appointee will be ex- 
pected to carry on research work. The first appointment 
will be for one year, but on reappointment the tenure will 
be for an indefinite term. The salary will be $3 000.00 per 
annum. The board desires, if possible, to date the appoint- 


| ment from September Ist, and the duties from September 


15th. Each applicant should send a full statement of his 


| career, two copies of each testimonial, one copy of each 


original publication, full personal particulars, and a recent 
photograph. Applications should be sent at early date to 


THE REGISTRAR, 


University of Manitoba 


Queen’s University 
Kingston Ontario, Canada 


Applications will be received until August 1st, for the positions 


|. of Assistant Professor of Physics and also of Lecturer in Physics, 


duties to commence September 26th, 1917. 
GEO. Y. CHOWN, Registrar 


INSTRUMENT MAKER 


for a modernly equipped shop of a physical labora- 
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SCIENCE 


Fripay, Juty 20, 1917 


CONTENTS 
The Next Step in Improvement in Wheat 
Cropping: Proressor H. L. Boutny ...... 49 


Scientific Events :— 


Agricultural Education and Research in 
China; The British Meteorological Com- 
mittee; The Wisconsin Pharmaceutical Ex- 


PIGUET EW SUQLLON uos0\s jerseys sjelousiae tel eletckelecchelsl 54 


Scientific Notes and News ..........2.+eee 56 


University and Educational News .......... 60 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Use of Prehistoric Canadian Art for 
Commercial Design: Harutan I. Siva. 
Methods and Materials for the Preparation 
of Wall Charts: Dr. R. M. Strone. The Ele- 
mentary Treatment of Force: Dr. Pau 


GH ICTGPS DEG ups .* dross sh oink Seve ta vois:e seater he ssaveye 60 


Quotations :— 


Royal Society Fellowships ............... 65 


Notes on Canadian Stratigraphy and Paleon- 
tology: Kirtury F. MATHER ............. 66 


Special Articles :-— 
The Vitality of Cysts of the Protozoon, 


Didinium nastutum: Proressor S. 0. 


Mast 


Societies and Academies :— 


The Botanical Society of Washington: Dr. 
H. L. SHantz 


MSS. Intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review sheuld besent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE NEXT STEP IN IMPROVEMENT IN 
WHEAT CROPPING—HOW TO IN- 
CREASE WHEAT PRODUC- 

TION IN 1918 AND 19191 

Your secretary has requested me to pre- 
pare a paper on soil organisms affecting 
cereal production. The subjects which 
should come before you at this time are 
without question of the greatest impor- 
tance to this nation and particularly to the 
cereal-producing states, and, of these, none 
are of greater import than those which 
touch upon the causes of seed and crop de- . 
terioration in cereals, under the general 
cropping and marketing processes now in 
use. In the case of wheat on the general 
market it may be truthfully described as 
yearly more closely approaching the ‘‘no 
grade’’ condition because of mixtures of 
kinds and qualities through the jumbling 
methods of the handling processes. In the 
case of the seed used on the land in such 
general cropped regions, the start or first 
crops produced are always at ‘‘No. 1 qual- 
ity.’’ The finish is always reached after a 
gradual yearly reduction in purity, vital- 
ity and weight quality, until. crop failure 
ushers in seed importation, and then, final 
failure of the cereals as the chief crops. 
Are these consequences a matter of neces- 
sity? 

I am well aware that agriculturists, fer- 
tilizer experts, agronomists, and perhaps 
some plant pathologists, do not agree with 
me in assigning as great importance to the 
role of plant diseases and to soil and seed 
sanitation in cereal cropping as I do. 
However, stock raising, gardening and 

1 Read before the third Interstate Cereal Confer- 
ence, 


50 


fruit growing communities have in a large 
way already adjusted themselves to sani- 
tary methods of agriculture. At the risk 
of appearing too pointed, I bring to you the 
thought that it is time that cereal agricul- 
ture be adjusted so that the cropping 
methods known under the heading of till- 
age, crop rotation and soil fertilization may 
come into their own and prove their real 
merits through the agriculturists, agrono- 
mists and the cerealists getting together on 
a program which shall properly take into 
account the teachings of the soil biologists, 
plant physiologists and pathologists for 
the great cereal crops as has been done for 
flower and vegetable farming, for potatoes, 
fruit cropping and other types of intensive 
crop culture. It is notorious that aside 
from the applications of the principles of 
seed disinfection for the prevention of 
smut and a considerable work looking 
toward the selection of disease-resistant va- 
rieties very little in an organized way has 
been done looking toward putting cereal 
agriculture on a plane of sanitary cropping 
comparable to the intensive methods used 
with the crops mentioned. 

I think you will agree that the present 
wheat bushelage can not on the average 
year be greatly increased by just sowing 
more acres on the same old areas in the 
same old way or even in the same districts 
unless a great change is introduced. How 
wonderful has been the influence of plant 
pathology on the grape industry, on the 
fruit industry, on the apple crop and for 
the potato crop. When we want to grow 
these in the best way do we forget all prin- 
ciples of soil sanitation or of disease intro- 
duction and modes of distribution and in- 
fection? If the principles of sanitation as- 
sociated with proper cropping methods in 
these more confined crops have been of 
benefit, what may they not do for the 
cereal crops when properly applied and 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


adjusted to the cropping conditions of each 
great cereal district. 

Now that the governmental officials have 
appealed to this country to raise the great- 
est possible wheat crop, what have we done 
to get it? We have only advocated the sow- 
ing of the greatest number of acres in the 
quickest possible time. Granted that we 
were unprepared to do otherwise, shall the 
process be continued? Every conceivable 
bushel of every conceivable kind of wheat, 
mixed, diseased or otherwise, has gone into 
the soil and into any area available. Noth- 
ing more can be done now than to see that 
the crop is properly harvested so as to save 
the greatest possible bushelage in the best 
possible condition to prevent its food value 
from being injured, and particularly, that 
it may not be spoiled as seed for the crop 
of 1918-19. If such better harvesting is to 
occur, it must take place in a sanitary 
method. If it is to be done intelligently, 
there must be a comprehensive plan; and 
those who handle the crop after it is grown 
should know that their handling processes 
are as important as the cropping processes. 

Experiments in North Dakota with po- 
tatoes, flax, wheat and allied cereals, ex- 
tending over the period of time from 1890 
to 1917, dealing always with the problems 
of seed disinfection, soil purification and 
cropping methods for the control of dis- 
ease, allow me to say with assurance that 
soil and seed infection has largely ac- 
counted for the many anomalous results ob- 
tained in various extensive experiments on 
wheat and cereal cropping, particularly as 
referring to variety tests, the influence of 
rotation, methods of plowing, tillage, ete. ; 
for it is now known that through all these 
experiments in all cereal states there has 
been acting in greater or less virulence the 
constant attack of seed- and soil-borne dis- 
eases, which have not been properly taken 
into account. This lack of the proper con- 
sideration of sanitary measures as affecting 


Juuy 20, 1917] 


cropping processes accounts chiefly for the 
reduction of yields and the deteriorated 
quality of the grain which comes from year 
to year from the old, rather constantly and 
extensively cropped cereal areas. I call 
your attention to the history of wheat 
cropping in California and in the semi-dry 
regions of Washington and Oregon as af- 
fected by smut epidemics. Ordinarily, in 
the wetter regions, seed disinfection for the 
prevention of stinking smut of wheat is all 
that is necessary. It is not even necessary 
to have a reasonable crop rotation, but in 
semi-dry regions the smut spores do not 
so readily die out by rapid germination ; 
and the combination harvesting and thresh- 
ing has proved to be a process which 
quickly undoes the work of possible con- 
trol of smut through seed disinfection. 
That process of cutting and threshing the 
grain and returning the chaff, straw and 
dust to the soil, evenly distributed, did 
more than introduce smut. With it goes 
the spores of a large number of so-called 
‘imperfect fungi,’’ particularly the Hel- 
minthosporia and Fusarial types. These 
and others have brought about seed and 
root blighting, and with the smut, drought 
and other conditions soon throws the crop 
below a paying condition. 

In the hard spring wheat regions of Min- 
nesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and 
Montana, one readily sees the detrimental 
influences of extensive cereal culture as 
affecting the introduction, even distribu- 


tion and destruction by the ‘‘imperfect - 


fungi’’ as transmitted by the seed to new 
areas, by farming implements, wind and 
wash waters, and as imbedded in the soil in 
the dead bodies of the previous crop. 

It is a peculiarity of all these seed and 
soil borne fungi that they are destructive 
regardless of the year and soil conditions, 
and vary in intensity according to weather 
and soil conditions. Thus in intensely dry 
seasons, particularly preceding the harvest 


SCIENCE 51 


time, old wheat lands often produce almost 
normal, plump seeds, but when there is 
sufficient water content in the soil and suffi- 
cient rainfall during the heading period to 
make a normal stand and growth for what 
should be a large yield, these parasites resi- 
dent in the seed and in the old stubble 
lands and often evenly distributed during 
moist weather from plant to plant, bring 
about a rag-like condition of the cellular 
tissues of the straw. They invade it at all 
parts, and bring about an intense blighting 
of the flowers and ovules at the time of seed 
formation so that the heads are never 
properly filled. Under these conditions 
seldom any of the grains reach normal 
form as to color, size and weight. 

To call your attention to what I have in 
mind I can do no better than to quote from 
some previous publications of mine in this 
line. From Bulletin 13, North Dakota Ex- 
periment Station, 1894, p. 26: 

It is apparent that after all is said concerning 
culture of wheat in the northwest, haphazard, 
careless methods of saving the grains at harvest 
time are yet to be placed as the chief cause in 
the reduction of the milling quality of the wheat 
as it now appears upon the market. 

From ‘‘Plans for Procuring Disease Re- 
sistant Crops’’ in Report of The Society for 
the Promotion of Agricultural Science, 
1907: 

At present the farmers are confused by conflict 
of authority as to the proper line of seed improve- 
ment. For the most part, they believe that seed 
for crops must be bred to a high standard upon a 
high-class soil and that it will degenerate when 
put into general cropping conditions on their 
farms, . . . The facts remain that crops suffer 
under systems of constant cropping, while the idea 
of home grown seed for local crops is fast gaining 
recognition as right in principle. . . . It is recog- 
nized that crop diseases, as well as chemistry of 
soil and air, play a great, if not master, réle.... 
Crop yields more often depend upon features of 
disease resistance, or upon conditions of environ- 
ment in which disease producing organisms can not 
be active, than upon whether the soil is especially 
balanced chemically. Crops fail as often through 


52 SCIENCE 


tust, blight, wilt and rot, and insect mites on fer- 
tile soils as upon unfertile soils. 


From ‘‘Interpretations of Results noted 
in Experiments upon Cereal Cropping 
Methods after Soil Sterilization,’’ in Pro- 
ceedings of American Society of Agronomy, 
Vol. 2, 1910: 


Soils and seed may be, and usually are, infected 
by several destructive wheat-destroying, parasitic 
fungi. Indeed, these are found to be apparently 
cosmopolitan in distribution with the wheat plant. 
They are especially transmitted in the seed in- 
ternally, and it seems quite certain that they are 
sufficient in their influence to account for most of 
the causes of rapid first crop deterioration and 
for the difficulties which farmers have in intro- 
ducing any sort of culture, which will again raise 
the standard of crops. Their exclusion, in so far as 
it is perfectly or imperfectly done, is sufficient to 
account for the anomalies in soil sterilization ex- 
periments. 


From ‘‘Conservation of the Purity of 
Soils in Cereal Cropping,’’ October, 1910, 
before Dry Land Congress, Spokane, in 
Science, N. 8., Vol. XXXII., No. 825: 


I recommend both our trained agriculturists and 
the farmer to look for help from a careful con- 
sideration of soil sanitation. . . . I consider it 
particularly important that this question should be 
brought before this congress, for this meeting is 
located at a point west of the center of the last 
great virgin soil areas of this country. And be- 
cause, while I recognize the great good that is 
done by the advocates of the conservation of the 
chemical qualities of the soil and still remain a 
strong advocate of the importance of that feature, 
I feel that we have followed it so persistently as 
to lose sight of other features which have vitiated 
many of the conclusions which have been drawn. 
... My belief is that we must yet be able to pro- 
duce the bread of the world by the use of exten- 
sive machinery and upon extensiwe plans, such as 
are yet being carried on in the new lands of the 
west. I have set forth the reasons why this can 
not be done unless we recognize this question of 
soil sanitation, or, if you will, the necessity of con- 
serving the virgin purity of the land. I am, how- 
ever, confident that with the proper understanding 
of the methods which are now known for selecting 
seed, disinfecting seed, rotating crops and perfect- 
ing the seed bed there should be no necessity of 
growing wheat upon the costly lands now under 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


intensified farming systems, and that there is no 
immediate necessity of abandoning the cropping to 
cereals on the large plan which is characteristic of 
the northwest. I believe firmly, however, if we do 
not thus recognize this matter of the necessity of 
soil sanitation and soil disinfection by means of 
proper cultivation, and well-planned series of crop 
rotation, that, no matter how fertile the soil of one 
of your western valleys may be, no distant year 
will see your crop fall very close to the world aver- 
age for that particular cereal. 


From ‘‘Cereal Cropping: Sanitation, A 
New Basis for Crop Rotation, Manuring, 
Tillage and Seed Selection,’’ in Sciencz, 
N.S., Vol. XX XVIII., No. 978, 19138: 


Deteriorated wheat, as seen in depressed yields 
and low quality, as now quite commonly produced 
in the great natural wheat-producing regions of 
this country, is not, primarily, a matter of lost fer- 
tility or of modified chemical content of the soil, 
but is specifically a problem of soil and crop man- 
agement. Crop rotation, for example, is not, pri- 
marily a farm process which is likely to conserve 
the fertility of the soil, but when properly ar- 
ranged in a system so that the proper crops follow 
one another, it is definitely a sanitary measure 
tending to maximum production. . . . Wheat does 
not do well in the presence of its own dead bodies, 
not because of any changes which the wheat plants 
have made in the content of the soil fertility, nor 
because of any peculiar poisons (toxins) which the 
crops may be thought to have introduced, but pri- 
marily, because of infectious diseases which are 
characteristic of the crop. ... Proper methods of 
soil tillage and handling of manures and artificial 
fertilizers are not merely measures for supplying 
plant food, but also involve vital features of a sani- 
tary nature. ... That there is a real problem be- 
fore the agriculturists of the world, especially as 
affecting the question of maintaining the output 
of wheat in amount and quality, all must agree. 
The present approximate annual output of 700,- 
000,000 bushels in its occurrence is somewhat 
analogous to the varying annual output of gold. 
It is maintained at these approximate figures, es- 
sentially not through increased yields of grain of 
better quality per acre on old cultivated areas 
through certain exact methods, but rather through 
the breaking up or turning over of new areas, in 
the same wasteful methods. The most alarming 
feature of the whole condition rests not so much 
in these facts as in the evident rapid deterioration 
of the quality of grain which invariably accom- 


Juny 20, 1917] 


panies the first few years of cropping upon new 
land areas. 

All these statements have to do with the 
fact that wheat in particular and most 
cereal grains are attacked by certain para- 
sitie fungi which have been usually consid- 
ered saprophytes or semi-parasites. They 
attack in such manner as to invade all parts 
of the plant body, break down the tissues, 
clog up the ducts, and rot off the roots, and 
they are particularly destructive as the 
seedling and stooling stages, and finally 


cause blighting and shrivelling of seed.. 


We have developed a particularly interest- 
ing method of attempting to purify such 
internally infected wheat grains and other 
cereals by special methods of heavy seed 
disinfection, aiming at seed-coat disinfec- 
tion. The seedlings are then grown upon 
agar just as one grows a pure culture of a 
fungus or a bacterium. This allows proper 
study of the root characters and other con- 
ditions as affected by the organisms, and 
makes it possible to separate uninfected 
seedlings to be grown on purified soil. This 
work has been associated with special stud- 
ies upon soil and seedling purification in 
many ways. The results of tests extending 
over a number of years show that continu- 
ous cropping to wheat and flax brings 
about a continuous cumulative infection of 
soil and seed. In flax the wilt fungus, 
Fusarium lini, remains indefinitely in fer- 
tile soil and makes it essentially sterile for 
that crop. So, also, certain fungi of wheat 
eat away at the roots and attack seedling 
plants from the stubble or seed and through 
accumulation in the seed carry always an 
accumulating infection to new or cleaned 
lands, undoing the proper effects of tillage 
and crop rotation. 

A few of the genera particularly con- 
cerned in the destructive work upon wheats 
are Alternaria, Colletotrichum, Helmintho- 
sporium and Fusarium. Hach of these is 
peculiarly destructive in its own way, and 


SCIENCE 


53 


in certain years one or other may excel in 
the destruction of the crop. 

To these attacks the wheat plant reacts 
as best it can by the growing and sending 
down of new roots, adventitious or brace 
roots, as fast as the old ones die. Its fibrous 
rooting capacity stands it well in hand, 
with the result that, unlike flax, it usually 
holds on to the ground and does not give an 
absolute failure, though a very irregular 
erop is characteristic. The disease gener- 
ally known as seab falls under the group 
known as Fusarial infections. These no 
doubt spread from head to head to a cer- 
tain extent, but by far the largest amount 
of damage is done by direct attack upon 
the roots just as in flax-wilt and other 
Fusarial wilts. I need not go further into 
this phase of the subject. 


If the diagnosis is correct, we shall never 
get the full benefits from the campaign for 
a better agriculture until steps are taken to 
rather suddenly and generally bring about 
an actual compliance in better sanitary 
methods of harvesting the crop and hand- 
ling the soil and seed. 

Mr. Rockwell Sayre, of Chicago, has not 
been wholly wrong in his campaign for 
compulsory crop rotation laws. Our peo- 
ple do not like to be compelled to do any- 
thing. Perhaps the better method is to edu- 
eate, but general education comes too 
slowly to be effective in any sanitary meas- 
ure. On small areas such as are occupied 
in potato cropping and in intensive farm- 
ing propositions the educational process 
ean be brought about and rather effectively 
carried into operation, but with the great 
cereal crops where practically three fifths 
or more of the entire area of a state is put 
under wheat and allied cereal culture, these 
diseases, under present methods, run riot. 

What to do: It is with a-good deal of 
temerity that I offer the following sugges- 
tions. I recommend through this congress 


54 SCIENCE 


to the United States Department of Agri- 
culture that it, in association with proper 
state authorities, immediately put on an 
extended wheat crop survey, (1) to insure 
a proper harvesting and selecting of the 
fields from which seed is to be saved for the 
erop of 1918, so that selection may be made 
on the basis of freedom from disease and 
purity as to variety; and (2) to save the 
seed so it shall be as free as possible from 
water effects following the period of ma- 
turity ; for it is through moisture that the 
invasion of the seed coats becomes most ac- 
tive. This invasion prevents ordinary seed 
disinfection from being effective. 

With this seed survey a soil survey should 
go hand in hand as follows: (1) Map and 
locate the virgin lands of the wheat states; 
(2) map those lands which have had crops 
on them for the last five to seven years 
which are of such nature as not to bear the 
chief diseases of the wheat crop, and (3) 
set aside these virgin or clean lands and 
prepare them for the wheat crop of 1918 
and 1919. 

As a corollary to the seed and soil sur- 
veys, the United States Department of 
Agriculture should commandeer and con- 
tract for sufficient of the wheat coming 
from the virgin lands or from the field crop 
inspected areas of the older regions which 
are found to be free from disease, to redis- 
tribute to the lands which by the survey 
have been found to be essentially free from 
the chief diseases of wheat. Finally, there 
should be put on a campaign of education 
which shall reach every grower of wheat 
in the United States. 

If this national survey of soil and of seed 
production is to be done so as to be effective 
on the crop of 1918, the work should start 
before the harvest of 1917, and be so con- 
tinuously followed up that the plowing may 
be done for next year and the ground pre- 
pared for early seeding. Somewhat over 
one half of all the land of North Dakota 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


has still been untouched by the plow, or at 
least has not been subject to wheat culture. 
A similar condition exists in most of the 
spring wheat-producing states. A proper 
seed .bed for the production of wheat can 
be made upon this new land if it is broken 
early in the present summer; and, if it is 
plowed during any portion of this summer, 
it can be packed and worked down in fine 
shape for some crop which is suitable to 
precede wheat, so that in 1919 the wheat 
can go into this land without further plow- 


.ing in the finest possible condition. 


To summarize: How shall we improve the 
bushelage and quality of wheat produced 
in 1918 and 1919? (1) Put on a field crop 
survey which will locate seed of highest 
weight and color quality free from disease 
infection and weather effects; (2) locate 
the soils upon which such seed should be 
seeded; (3) take the proper steps to pro- 
cure that seed and see that it is sowed. 
Should the government find it necessary to 
force a proper consideration of the lands 
upon which wheat is to be sowed and the 
use of the proper quality of seed, properly 
disinfected, it would, in my belief, even- 
tually receive the entire sanction of the 
American farming and business public and 
we would learn within two or three years 
the enormous value which would accrue 
from proper soil and seed sanitation in the 


cropping cereals. H. L. Boutry 
North Daxota AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, 
May 30, 1917 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 
IN CHINA? 


CONSIDERABLE attention is now being devoted 
in China to agricultural education and ex- 
perimentation in various classes of institu- 
tions. An experiment station was located at 
Peking in 1907 under the control of the board 
of agriculture, industry and commerce. An 
experimental tract of nearly 300 acres is avail- 


1From the Experiment Station Record. 


Tuny 20, 1917] 


able, and departments of crops, soils, animal 
husbandry, horticulture, floriculture, entomol- 
ogy, botany, forestry, bacteriology and biology 
have been put in operation. In 1908 an agri- 
cultural college was organized in connection 
with the station, but this was disbanded in 
1915. 

Subsequently an agricultural college and ex- 
periment station was established at the capital 
of each province along much the same lines as 
at Peking, and many other stations in addi- 
tion. There are now reported to be 130 sta- 
tions in the 22 provinces, of which 31 are in 
Chihhi, 25 in Szechwan, 15 in Hu-Long-Kiang, 
7 in Hupeh, and 7 in Kwangtung. 

Among these are two cotton experiment sta- 
tions, one at Cheng Ting Hsien, Chihli, and 
one at Nan T’ung Chou, Kiangsu, with a third 
under consideration at Tung Haing Chou, 
Hupeh. Experiments are being conducted at 
these stations in seed selection, seed distribu- 
tion, plant harvesting, soils and manures, 
treatment of pests and cotton weaving. A 
corps of students is also being trained at these 
stations. H. H. Jobson is in charge of the 
organization of the cotton work, with H. K. 
Fung as associate. 

Stock-raising experiment stations have been 
established at Kalgan and Shih Men Shan, 
Anhui. These are expected to study the im- 
provement of breeds of domestic animals, pro- 
mote the breeding and sale of stock and stock 
raising enterprises, and the cultivation of 
forage crops. 

Considerable attention is also being devoted 
to forestry in China. A department of for- 
estry was organized in January, 1916, with a 
forestry commissioner in each province. For- 
estry experiment stations and training schools 
have been established at Ch’ang Ch’in Hsien, 
Shantung, and in the Temple of Heaven at 
Peking. 

The university at Nanking has maintained 
a college of agriculture and a school of for- 
estry for several years. This is an American- 
supported institution, and in 1915 had en- 
rolled about 70 students in agriculture. <A 
colonization association has been organized 
under its auspices, with provision for the reser- 


SCIENCE 


55 


vation of about 35 acres in each colony for a 
model farm. A tract already purchased on 
Purple Mountain, just outside Nanking, is to 
be used as an experiment station in connection 
with the different colonies. 

An agricultural experiment station was 
opened at Nanhsuchou, Anhwei, in 1915, as a 
part of the American Presbyterian mission sta- 
tion. Agricultural work was taken up at this 
institution partly as a practical way to teach 
Christianity, partly to make friends and partly 
to improve economic conditions. The station 
is located on the railway between Nanking 
and Tientsin, and attempts to serve an area of 
about 6,000 square miles and from 1,500,000 
to 2,000,000 people. The farming methods in 
use are those of from one to two thousand 
years ago. Special prominence is being given 
in the experimental work to seed selection, 
better tillage methods, more and better fertili- 
zation, drainage and animal husbandry. The 
work is to be largely of a demonstration nature 
during the present pioneer stage, and will also 
include an agricultural school, a school farm 
and short winter courses for farmers. J. Los- 
sing Buck has been in charge of the agricul- 
tural work at the station from the outset. 


THE BRITISH METEOROLOGICAL COMMITTEE 

Tue eleventh annual report of the British 
Meteorological Committee for the year ended 
March 31, 1916, states, according to an abstract 
in the London Times, that during the year the 
staff of all departments of the office was fully 
oceupied in supplying information in reply to 
inquiries from the various departments of the 
Admiralty and the War Office. “ The results 
of meteorological inquiries initiated in what 
appeared to be the remote interest of the theory 
of the circulation of the atmosphere have 
turned out to have important practical bear- 
ings, and collections of statistics compiled in 
the ordinary course of meteorological duty 
have now come in most usefully to meet 
urgent requirements.” “A separate unit of 
the Royal Engineers has,” says the report, 
“been created for meteorological service in 
the field. The service with the Expeditionary 
Force in France is under the command of 


56 SCIENCE 


Major Gold, one of the superintendents of 
division in the office, and that with the force 
in the Eastern Mediterranean under Captain 
E. M. Wedderburn, honorable secretary of the 
Scottish Meteorological Society. With him is 
Lieutenant E. Kidson, a graduate of Canter- 
bury College, New Zealand, who has distin- 
guished himself as magnetician in the service 
of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 
and came to this country to offer his services. 
In the organization of these meteorological 
services, the committee has received great 
assistance from one of its members, Major 
H. G. Lyons, R.E., formerly director-general 
of the Egyptian Survey Department, whose 
services were lent by the War Office in view of 
the importance of an adequate knowledge of 
the weather to the proper conduct of naval and 
military operations in the Mediterranean, to 
which attention was called by the Admiralty. 
Major Lyons has taken charge of that de- 
partment of the work of the Office from May 
17, 1915, and more recently he has been ap- 
pointed to represent the War Office on the 
committee. The special thanks of the Ad- 
miralty for the services of the meteorological 
officer in the Mediterranean have been received 
through the War Office. In view of the im- 
portance of coordinating the experience of 
flying officers with the work of the office and 
observatories in order to obtain more effective 
knowledge of the structure of the atmosphere 
for the use of the air services, the committee 
represented to the director of military aero- 
nautics the desirability of appointing a pro- 
fessor of meteorology to the Royal Flying Corps 
(with the rank of major during the war). The 
director of military aeronautics concurred, and 
the Army Council approved the appointment 
of Lieutenant G. I. Taylor, R.F.C., to that 
office. Major Taylor was Schuster reader in 
meteorology from February 20, 1912. His 
services were lent to the Board of Trade for 
meteorological work on the steamship Scotia, 
chartered for the investigation of ice in 1918. 


THE WISCONSIN PHARMACEUTICAL EXPERI- 
MENT STATION 


Ar the request of the State Pharmaceutical 
Association, the Wisconsin Pharmaceutical 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


Experiment Station was established by special 
legislative enactment four years ago. Its 
meager budget of $2,500 nevertheless yielded 
modest results since practically the entire sum 
was expended in productive work. This was 
made possible because of the close cooperation 
of the station with the department of phar- 
macy of the university. 

As a war measure, the present legislature 
has doubled the income of the station. The 
pharmaceutical garden has been increased 
from three to ten acres, with ground that ad- 
mits of an increase to thirty acres as soon as 
the means of the station permit. This increase 
in garden area was made largely at the request 
of the Office of Drug-Plant and Poisonous- 
Plant Investigations, which keeps an expert on 
the grounds, in order that acre experiments of 
greater economic significance might be car- 


‘ried out. 


The station also enjoys a research fellow- 
ship of $500 for the investigation of thymol 
and related problems, established for the aca- 
demic year 1917-18 by Fritzsche Bros., of New 
York. Another $500 previously offered as fel- 
lowship by the Kremers-Urban Co., pharma- 
ceutical manufacturers of Milwaukee, was 


utilized toward an endowment fund for phar- 


maceutical research, a movement, which, like 
the station movement five years ago, was 
started by the pharmaceutical alumni of the 
university. 

In addition, the income from $10,328, be- 
queathed by the wills of the late Mr. and Mrs. 
Albert Hollister, is available for graduate 
study and research in the form of the Hol- 
lister fellowship in pharmacy. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

Preswent R. A. Pearson, of the Iowa State 
College, is acting as assistant to the secretary 
of agriculture to cooperate with the state 
boards for food production and conservation. 

Dr. Frank M. CuHapMan, curator of orni- 
thology in the American Museum of Natural 
History, is now in Washington, where he is 
director of the Red Cross Bureau of Publica- 
tions. He is the editor of the newly estab- 
lished Red Cross Bulletin, which is designed 


Joy 20, 1917] 


to keep the public informed as to the activi- 
ties of the organization. 


Dr. C.-E. A. Wiystow, of the Yale School 
of Medicine, is engaged in Red Cross work in 
Russia. During his absence the editorship of 
the Journal of Bacteriology has been assumed 
by Professor Leo F. Rettger, Yale University. 
Manuscripts for the journal should be sent, as 
heretofore, to Professor Winslow’s office, Yale 
School of Medicine. 


Dr. Aucustus TrowsripcE, professor of 
physics in Princeton University, has been 
made director and commissioned a major in 
the signal corps of the U. S. Army. Under 
him there is now a staff of twenty-five men 
working in the Palmer Physical Laboratory. 


Leave of absence during 1917-18 for war 
service has been granted to Professor J. S. 
Shearer of the department of physics of Cor- 
nell University. He is directing the standard- 
ization of X-ray apparatus for the medical 
corps. 


Dr. Joun A. Exuiott, associate plant path- 
ologist of the Delaware College Experiment 
Station, has been elected plant pathologist of 
the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tion, to fill the vacancy created by the resigna- 
iton of Professor J. Lee Hewitt, who has be- 
come secretary and chief inspector of the 
Arkansas State Plant Board. 


M. Emme Picarp, recently elected perma- 
nent secretary of the Paris Academy of Sci- 
ences, has been appointed to represent the 
French government on the International 
Geodetic Association. 


M. Ernest Sotvay, the distinguished Bel- 
gian industrial chemist, who has made large 
gifts for the endowment of chemical and 
physical research, has been elected a corres- 
ponding member of the Paris Academy of 
Sciences in the place of the late Sir Henry 
Roscoe. 


GerNERAL BourGeois, professor of astronomy 
in the Paris School of Technology and 
director of the geographic service of the 
French Army, has been elected a member of 
the Paris Academy of Sciences in the Section 


SCIENCE 


57 


of Geography and Navigation, to fill the place 
vacant by the death of M. Phillip Hatt. 

Tue University of Nebraska has conferred 
the doctorate of science on Patrick Joseph 
O’Gara, ’02, chief in charge of agricultural 
and smelter waste investigations for the 
American Smelting and Refining Company 
at Salt Lake City. For the past four years 
Dr. O’Gara has been making extensive in- 
vestigations on the effects of gaseous and solid 
smelter wastes on vegetable and animal life. 

Mr. C. D. Genet, chemist and bacteriologist 
in the state food laboratory, Madison, Wis., has 
accepted a position in the Bureau of Chemis- 
try, Washington, D. C., and assumed his new 
duties on June 15. 

H. K. Benson, instructor in industrial chem- 


istry at the University of Washington, Seattle, 


and director of the Bureau of Industrial Re- 
search, will spend his summer vacation at the 
plant of the American Nitrogen Products 


Company at La Grande, Wash., where he will 


conduct research work relating to the manu- 


facture of nitrogen products from the air by 


use of electricity. Professor Benson will re- 
turn to his school work in the fall. 

Proressor C. E. Davis has resigned as pro- 
fessor of chemistry at the Utah Agricultural 


College at Logan, and accepted a position as 
esearch chemist for the National Biscuit Co., 


with headquarters in the Havemeyer Labora- 
tory, Columbia University. 


Mr. L. W. Bauney has left the Sheffield 


Scientific School of Yale University to take a 


position as metallurgical engineer with the 
Seovill Manufacturing Co., Waterbury, Conn. 


Proressor Liroyp Van Doren, of Eartham 
College, Richmond, Ind., has been cooperating 
with The McIntosh Stereopticon Co., Chicago, 
in the compilation of a series of lantern slides 
suitable for illustrating topics in general chem- 
istry and in industrial chemistry. 

Mr. Burr A. Ropryson has resigned as as- 
sistant secretary of the American Institute of 
Mining Engineers to go into industrial work, 
and Professor G. A. Roush, of Lehigh Univer- 
sity, has taken up his work as managing editor 
of the institute’s monthly bulletin. 


58 


Tue following assistants in the American 
Museum of Natural History have enlisted in 
the army: Carlos D. Empie and Harold E. 
Anthony, mammalogy; Charles Camp, verte- 
brate paleontology; Leo E. Miller and James 
P. Chapin, ornithology. Howarth S. Boyle, 
ornithology, is now in the service of the navy. 

Dr. Hermann M. Bicas, state commissioner 
of health of New York, is chairman of a sub- 
committee on tuberculosis appointed by the 
‘general medical board of the Council of Na- 
tional Defense. Other members of this special 
committee are: Dr. John W. Trask, of the 
United States Public Health Service; Dr. 
George T. Palmer, of Springfield, Ill.; Dr. 
Charles B. Grandy, of Newport News, Va.; Dr. 
E. R. Baldwin and Dr. Lawrason Brown, of 
Saranac, N. Y., and Mr. Homer Folks, of New 
York. 

THE commission for the prevention of tuber- 
culosis, which the Rockefeller Foundation is to 
send to France, will, as has already been an- 
nounced in Science, be headed by Dr. Living- 
ston Farrand, president of the University of 
Colorado, who for ten years was the executive 
secretary of the National Association for the 
Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. Dr. 
Farrand will be accompanied by Dr. James 
Alexander Miller, of New York; Homer Folks, 
of New York, and Professor Selskar M. Gunn, 
of Boston. Hermann G. Place, of New York, 
has been appointed secretary. Dr. Miller is 
professor of clinical medicine in Columbia 
University, the director of the tuberculosis 
work of Bellevue Hospital, and president of the 
Association of Tuberculosis Clinics in New 
York City. 
the.State Charities Aid Association. In addi- 
tion to his connection with the commission, 
Mr. Folks will take charge of the tuberculosis 
relief work of the American Red Cross in 
France. Selskar M. Gunn holds a professor- 
ship in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, is the secretary of the American Pub- 
lic Health Association, and editor of the 
American Journal of Public Health. 

THE war council of the American Red Cross 
announces the appointment of a medical ad- 
visory committee, the membership of which is 


SCIENCE 


Holmer Folks is the secretary of. 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


as follows: Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the 
Rockefeller Institute, chairman; Dr. John W. 
Kerr, assistant Surgeon General, United States 
Public Health Service; Dr. Hermann M. Biggs, 
director of the New York State Department 
of Health; Dr. William H. Welch, dean of the 
School of Hygiene, Johns Hopkins University ; 
Dr. Frank S. Billings, professor of medicine, 
University of Chicago; Dr. M. J. Rosenau, 
professor of preventive medicine, Harvard 
University; Mr. Wickliffe Rose, director of 
the International Health Board; Dr. Victor C. 
Vaughan, professor of hygiene, University of 
Michigan; Dr. Charles V. Chapin, Department 
of Health, Providence, R. I.; Dr. Richard P. 
Strong, professor of tropical medicine, Har- 
yard University; Dr. Richard M. Pearce, pro- 
fessor of research medicine, University of 
Pennsylvania. Ex-officio members of the com- 
mittee will be: Colonel Jefferson R. Kean, di- 
rector general, department of military relief, 
and Dr. T. W. Richards, assistant director gen- 
eral, department of military relief. Perma- 
nent offices for the medical advisory committee 
will be opened in the Red Cross headquarters 
in Washington, in charge of Dr. Richard M. 
Pearce, who will act as secretary. 


“ ScIENCE and industry: the place of Cam- 
bridge in any scheme for their combination ” 
was the subject of the Rede Lecture delivered 
at Cambridge by Sir R. T. Glazebrook, F.R.S., 
fellow of Trinity, and director of the National 
Physical Laboratory. 


Cuartes Horton Prcr, former state 
botanist of New York, died at his home in 
Albany on July 11. Dr. Peck’s official term 
of scientific service began in 1867, and ex- 
tended over a period of forty-six years. He 
retired on account of illness and age in 1918, 
and at the time of his death was in his 
eighty-fifth year. 


Atois von IsaKkovirz, an industrial chemist, 
known for his work on perfumes and flavoring 
materials, born in Bohemia in 1870, died at 
his home in Montecello, New York, on 
June 5. 


Epwarp RanpotpH Tayior, since 1877 a 
manufacturer of chemicals at Penn Yan, N. 


JuLyY 20, 1917] 


Y., known for his work on the electric furnace 
and the determination of carbon.in steel, and 
later for work on the conservation of water 
for power, has died at the age of seventy- 
three years. 


PHILIPPE DE ViLMoRIN, known for his work 
in plant and animal genetics and head of the 
well-known seed-growing establishment, died 
on June 30, at the age of forty-five years. 


Dr. Viraui, formerly professor of pharma- 
ceutical chemistry in the University of Bo- 
logna, has died at Venice at the age of eighty- 
five. 


WE learn from Nature that the late Lord 
Justice Stirling’s herbarium, consisting chiefly 
of about 6,000 varieties of mosses and liver- 
worts from many parts of the world, has been 
presented by Lady Stirling to the Tunbridge 
Wells Natural History Society. 


Free public lectures will be delivered in the 
lecture hall of the museum building of the 
New York Botanical Garden, Bronx Park, on 
Saturday afternoons, at four o’clock during 
the summer as follows: 

July 7. Wild flowers of summer, by Dr. N. L. 
Britton. 

July 14. Plants grown by the American In- 
dians, by Dr. A. B. Stout. 


(Exhibition of Flowers, July 14 and 15.) 


July 21. Flowers for the summer garden, by 
Mr. G. V. Nash. 
July 28. How the introduction of foreign plant 


diseases is prevented, by Mr. H. B. Shaw. 
August 4. Floral and scenic features of Cuba, 
by Dr. M. A. Howe. 


August 11. Books on gardening, by Dr. J. H. 
Barnhart. - 
August 18. Trees and flowers of the Yellow- 


stone National Park, by Dr. P. A. Rydberg. 
August 25. Insect enemies of plants, by Dr. F. 
J. Seaver. 


(Exhibition of Gladioli, August 23-26.) 


THE department of physics at the Univer- 
sity of Lllinois is giving the following popular 
lectures in the summer session on recent ad- 
vances in physics: 

Professor C. T. Knipp: The production of high 
vacua; discharge of electricity through gases; elec- 


SCIENCE 


59 


trons and X-rays; the electrostatic and magnetic 
deflection of cathode rays (electrons); positive 
electricity. 

Professor Jakob Kunz: The electron; Radiation; 
Photo-electricity. 

Mr. Sebastian Karrer: X-rays and structure of 
erystals. 

Mr. C. S. Fazel: Atomie models and chemical 
properties; Atomie models and radiation. 

Mr. H. T. Booth: Temperature measurements. 

Mr. W. H. Hyslop: Wireless telegraphy. 

Professor J. W. Hornbeck (Carleton College) : 
Electromagnetic waves, 

Professor F. R. Watson: Acoustics of buildings; 
Acoustical phenomena. 


Tue Bureau of Fisheries announces the 
continuation of the investigation of lakes in 
Wisconsin, which is directed by Dr. E. A. 
Birge, of the University of Wisconsin. Dr. 
N. L. Gardner, of the University of Cali- 
fornia, is making a systematic and economic 
study of the marine algw of the Pacific coast. 
A small allotment has been made for investi- 
gation of parasites of fishes in Oneida Lake, 
N. Y., in connection with the biological sur- 
vey of that lake under the direction of Dr. 
C. C. Adams, of the New York State School 
of Forestry. Dr. J. J. Wolfe, of Trinity Col- 
lege, N. C., assisted by Mr. Bert Cunningham, 
will continue his studies of the plankton col- 
lections in Chesapeake Bay made by Lewis 
Radcliffe in connection with the extended 
survey of the bay. Mr. Willis H. Rich, of 
Stanford University, will continue the in- 
vestigations of the habits and migrations of 
the Pacific salmons. Dr. J. E. Reighard, of 
the University of Michigan, will be engaged 
in studies of the breeding habits of fishes and 
will also direct investigation of the distribu- 
tion and habits of salmonoid fishes of the 
Great Lakes, based in part upon field observa- 
tion and collections and in part upon a study 
of scale characters. Among other investiga- 
tions that will be continued in progress are 
those of Dr. A. H. Wright, of Cornell Uni- 
versity, on the natural history and propaga- 
tion of frogs, and Professor Trevor Kincaid, 
of the University of Washington, on the cul- 
ture of oysters in Puget Sound. 


60 SCIENCE 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

At The Ohio State University, J. A. Bow- 
nocker, professor of inorganic geology and 
curator of the museum since 1901 and state 
geologist since 1906, has been made head of 
the department of geology to succeed the late 
Charles S. Prosser. J. E. Carman, Ph.D. 
(Chicago), assistant professor, has been made 
professor of historical geology and curator of 
the museum, and Arthur Bevan, A.B. (Ohio 
Wesleyan), for the past two years a graduate 
student at Chicago, has been made instructor 
in geology. 


Harotp Veacu Bozeuu, director of the 
school of electrical engineering of the Uni- 
versity of Oklahoma, who during the past year 
has been on sabbatical leave studying in Yale 
University, has been appointed to a chair in 
the Sheffield Scientific School. Associate 
Professor Lester William Wallace Morrow, of 
the University of Oklahoma, has been pro- 
moted to succeed Professor Bozell, and T. G. 
Tappan, now of Cornell University, has been 
appointed to the position of associate professor 
of electrical engineering in the University of 
Oklahoma. 


Av Oberlin College, Robert E. McEwen, 
Ph.D. (Columbia, 717), was recently appointed 
instructor in the department of zoology. 


L. D. Barcuretor has been appointed pro- 
fessor of plant breeding in the University of 
California, his work being at the citrus station 
of the graduate school of tropical agriculture. 


Dr. Ernest M. R. Manxey, of the Univer- 
sity of Illinois, has been appointed head of a 
new division of plant physiology at the Dela- 
ware College. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 


THE USE OF PREHISTORIC CANADIAN ART FOR 
COMMERCIAL DESIGN 


Tue Archeological office of the Geological 
Survey, Department of Mines, Ottawa, is now 
prepared to show to Canadian manufacturers 
and their commercial artists a very complete 
series of several hundred examples of motives 
for decorative and symbolic designs and trade 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


marks, although it has no facilities for ma- 
king designs. These motives are all from pre- 
historic Canadian art and handiwork. Such 
archeological material supplies not only the 
oldest human decorative material from Can- — 
ada, but material unsurpassed in distinctive- 
ness. The fossils, animals, flowers, leaves, 
fruits, ete., and especially the historic objects 
from Indians found only in Canada would no 
doubt supply other motives capable of use as 
the lotus blossom has supplied innumerable de- 
signs used throughout much of the world. 

Mr. Joseph Keele, of the ceramic laboratory 
of the department, has used some of these 
shapes and motives in the modelling of part of 
the vases made to test Canadian clays. Many 
of these pottery products after serving their 
purpose were given to the Women’s Canadian 
Club, who sold them for the benefit of the Red 
Cross. At the sale there was a greater call for 
the vases made after these Canadian motives 
than for any of the others. Eighteen manufac- 
turers, representing six totally different indus- 
tries, a museum and an art school have already 
applied for copies of these motives. This is 
over 20 per cent. of those informed of the 
opportunity and one firm has already sent two 
representatives from Toronto to Ottawa to 
look into the matter. They express themselves 
as surprised at the quantity and usefulness of 
the material and have already selected motives 
for their designers to use. 

This seems to prove that there is a demand 
for motives or inspiration for’ new and char- 
acteristic Canadian designs and trade marks. 
This demand we may expect to grow at the 
close of the war, when Canada makes special 
efforts to stand on an even footing with other 
countries in producing manufactures recog- 
nized all over the world as individually and 
characteristically her own. 

These motives may be used as they are or 
may be conventionalized or dissected or multi- 
plied or developed in several of these ways. 
Designers may use them as inspiration for de- 
signs which may be applied to fronts of build- 
ings, gargoyles, fountains, terra cotta, pottery, 
china, ornamental work, cast iron railings, 
stoves, carpets, rugs, linoleum, wall paper, 
stencils, dress fabrics, lace, embroidery, neck- 


Juuy 20, 1917] 


ware, umbrella handles, jewelry, brooches, sil- 
verware, knife, fork and spoon handles, belt 
buckles, hat pins, book covers, tail pieces, toys 
souvenirs, trade marks and many other lines 
of work. 

It is hoped to publish drawings of these mo- 
tives as soon as the drawings can be made. 
Each drawing will be labeled as to what the 
specimen is, where it was found, where it is 
now, its size, material, and, to a certain ex- 
tent, with the region in which the type of mo- 
tive is found. The area in which each motive 
is found is given, so, for instance, that a Brit- 
ish Columbian manufacturer may know which 
motives are appropriate for British Columbian 
manufactures rather than use one appropriate 
only for Manitoba. Some of these areas ex- 
tend into the United States as does the area of 
the maple leaf and the beaver; others are con- 
fined to parts of Canada. Reference is made 
to photographs, lantern slides, and published 
illustrations wherever such exist. The actual 
specimens are scattered in this museum, the 
Provincial Museum at Toronto, Provincial 
Museum at Victoria, the Museum of the Nat- 
ural History Society, St. John, New Bruns- 
wick, the Provincial Museum at Halifax, the 
American Museum of Natural History, New 
York, the Museum of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, the British Museum and museums in 
San Francisco, Florence, Italy, Berlin, Ger- 
many and elsewhere. 

If this publication is issued it will no doubt 
be sent to every large library, every member 
of Parliament, every newspaper in Canada, 
probably, to all Canadian manufactures using 
designs and certainly to all such manufac- 
turers who express the need for it. 

As it may be months before all the draw- 
ings can be made the archeological office will 
make every effort to give free of all expense 
any practical aid that it can in the use of 
these motives. These data are at the service 
of any manufacturer who desires to call at 
the office. Possibly photographs can be made 
of a few of the motives for such manufac- 
turers as specify just what they would like 
to have photographed. A typewritten list 
of the books containing pictures of some of 
the specimens will be supplied on request. 


SCIENCE 61 


The office will do all in its power to hasten 
this work and will be obliged to manufac- 
turers if they will call or write to offer sug- 
gestions and express their needs. Such an 
expression will very likely be of service to 
the office in securing the improvement and 
hasty publication of the album of motives. 


Haruan J. Smitru 
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, CANADA 


METHODS AND MATERIALS FOR THE PREP- 
ARATION OF WALL CHARTS 

Various grades of paper, with or without 
cloth-backing, have been used extensively for 
many years in making charts to be used in 
lecture rooms. However, unbacked paper does 
not wear well, and cloth-backed paper is heavy 
and stiff, besides being expensive. 

Shade cloth is cheaper, lighter, and much 
more durable than any chart paper. One 
variety known as Holland Shade Cloth is 
used by several workers in my acquaintance. 
A large chart of this cloth may be folded into ° 
a small package or rolled into a close roll con- 
venient for carrying in a suit case to a meet- 
ing in some distant city. When unpacked it 
requires no heavy sticks to make it hang 
smoothly. 

This cloth furnishes a fine surface for line 
drawings. The air brush may be used on it 
in shading, and wax crayons may be em- 
ployed. However, when large areas of wash 
shading with a brush are involved, there is a 
good deal of puckering of the cloth. For this 
reason, I have made trials of other fabrics in 
the past three years, and I have found that 
so-called Peerless Cambric Shade Cloth, Ivory 
White, is excellent for large wash drawings. 
It does not pucker noticeably, and it has a 
good drawing surface. There is no trouble 
with “drying lines” in applying washes. 
This cloth is a little heavier and stiffer than 
Holland cloth, and it can not be packed so 
compactly without forming creases. I have 
recently been informed that the puckering 
may be avoided by mixing equal parts of 80 
per cent. alcohol and the ink solution em- 
ployed. 

I have not found it practicable to erase ink 


62 SCIENCE 


marks from shade cloth to any extent, but 
lead pencil marks are more easily removed 
than from paper. When a mistake is made 
with ink that can not be erased, I find it 
best to paste a bit of the shade cloth over the 
error. This is not noticeable at the distance 
- of even the front row, in any ordinary lecture 
room. 

For making lines, I find so called round- 
writing pens (single pointed) better than a 
ruling pen as it is hard to make lines broad 
enough with the latter instrument. Round 
writing pens may be obtained in different 
widths, and they are inexpensive. The wider 
pens are useful especially for making bold 
strong lines to be seen in a lecture room of 
some size. 

Most of my charts are made with water- 
proof inks of the best grade. These are kept 
in various dilutions in a series of one-ounce 
bottles. Thus I keep about six dilutions of 
black ink in as many bottles labelled one to 
six, for use in neutral gray shading. A few 
drops of black ink in an ounce of water make 
a dark shade. Several drops of this added 
to an ounce of water in another hottle make 
a weaker solution, and so on according to the 
eye of the user. 

I dilute the colored inks usually by placing 
a few drops of ink in an ounce of water, ac- 
cording to the color desired. Many varieties 
of color shade and tint may be obtained by 
mixing colors in water and by adding a little 
much-diluted black ink to a colored solution 
in varying proportions. It is my practise to 
dilute almost all of the ink used, to some 
extent. Softer and more pleasing effects are 
produced, and the ink goes farther. It is also 
more easily applied. 

For class use and for convenience in stor- 
ing, I find it desirable to have charts 
mounted. Two half-round pieces of one inch 
diameter are glued together with the lower 
end of the chart between their flat surfaces. 
To make the binding still more secure, nails 
are also used. Light one-half-inch half- 
round material is used for the top in the same 
way. Straps for hanging, of strong braid 
one half to three quarters of an inch wide 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1177 


and a foot or so long are fastened to the top 
strips at suitable places. These also serve in 
the usual way for tying the charts up when 
rolled. It is particularly important that the 
straps be attached strongly. 

Some readers of this article may not be 
familiar with the possibilities of a pantograph 
in copying small drawings enlarged on 
charts. The best pantographs are expensive, 
and the cheapest unsatisfactory. However, 
I have found one costing about $5.00 of con- 
siderable service. It enables one to get the 
general outlines of the drawing, but these 
must be corrected by free-hand work later. 

Neat labelling, that can be read in the rear 
seats of the room in which the chart will be 
used, is exceedingly important. It is my 
practise both with charts and lantern slides 
to avoid any details in either labelling or 
drawing that can not be distinguished easily 
in the more remote parts of any lecture room 
in which the illustrations are to be used. 

It is distressingly common, especially when 
lantern slides are employed, to find this rule 
violated. Large sheets of typewritten ma- 
terial are often crowded into a lantern slide 
with the result that they can be read only 
when very near the screen, if at all. In the 
case of lantern slides, any details which can 
not be distinguished easily in the slide will 
also be too minute on the screen. In prepar- 
ing charts it is a good practise to put letters 
and drawing details of various sizes on a 
blackboard which may be viewed from the 
most distant seats in order to determine the 
most practicable proportions. 

Labelling may be quickly and neatly done 
with the aid of the so-called sign-painters’ 
rubber stamps. Sets may be bought in vari- 
ous sizes and with both caps and small letters 
as well as Arabic figures, etc. Inks of vari- 
ous colors may be obtained for the stamping. 
Quick-drying inks save time in the prepara- 
tion of a chart. 

It is my experience that most and some- 
times all the chart work described in this 
article can be done by student service under 
direction, especially if students who draw well 
are available. 


JuLy 20, 1917] 


Though I am reluctant to appear to adver- 
tise dealers, for the convenience of readers 
I think I am warranted in stating where the 
materials mentioned in this article may be 
purchased. The shade cloths may be pur- 
chased from the Remien and Kuhnert Co., 61 
W. Grand Ave. Chicago. In September, 
1916, I was given a price of 38 cents per yard 
for “Peerless Cambrie Ivory White” shade 
cloth, 48 inches wide in entire rolls. The 
price was 44 cents per yard in small quanti- 
ties. The White Holland shade cloth was 
slightly cheaper. Dr. G. R. LaRue, of the 
University of Michigan, has informed me re- 
eently that “Linaura Chart Cloth” sold by 
the Williams, Brown & Earle Co., Phila- 
delphia, is very satisfactory. 

For labelling, we are using a so-called “ Sign 
and Price Marker” set, No. 48 in catalogue 
No. 28 of Meyer and Wenthe, 108 N. Dear- 
born St., Chicago. The catalogue price is 
$5.00 for the complete set. It is adapted to 
charts to be used in large lecture rooms. Set 
No. 6 at $4.00 and set No. 4 at $2.50 are 
recommended for smaller rooms. The round 
writing pens can probably be bought at many 
art and drafting instrument stores. Mine 
were obtained of A. H. Abbot and Co., 119 
N. Wabash Ave., Chicago, + gross for 25 


cents. 
R. M. Strone 
ANATOMICAL LABORATORIES, 
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MeEpIcAL ScHOOL 


THE ELEMENTARY TREATMENT OF FORCE 

THE discussion by G. S. Fulcher in Science, 
XLIV., 747, 1916, concerning some of the 
errors and inconsistencies in our elementary 
texts regarding the questions of force and 
Newton’s laws of motion, are most timely. 
No doubt many of us who are trying to build 
up in the minds of our beginning students a 
sound structure of physical ideas, and above 
all, are hoping through physics to give them 
something of the scientific attitude, have 
almost despaired of finding a text which is 
free from the faults mentioned. To approach 
the ideal, a text should be brief in its state- 
ments but so explicit as to allow of but a 
single interpretation; it should not anticipate 


SCIENCE 63 


knowledge which obviously the beginning stu- 
dent does not possess, nor should it attempt to 
circumvent this deficiency by repeatedly re- 
ferring the student to articles further along; 
it should, in fact, be written upon the premise 
that the only source of physical ideas which 
the average beginning student of physics has 
is his own experience. 

In introducing force, therefore, all specula- 
tion and conjecture, made in the light of the 
author’s own familiarity with the subject, is 
decidedly out of place, and can serve only to 
confuse the student. It should be presented 
to him primarily in terms of his immediate 
impressions, 7. e., in terms of his muscular 
sense. Let us tell him first that “ force” is 
the term applied to the equivalent of a push 
or a pull. The average student has pretty 
clear ideas as to what such an action can 
accomplish. It is then not difficult to repre- 
sent Newton’s first law as a test for the ab- 
sence of a force, nor the second law as a test 
for its presence. After familiarity with these 
notions has been gained, we can further repre- 
sent the second law as a quantitative test for 
force, and can show how we can experi- 
mentally establish the relation f—=ma. This 
may then be regarded as a more exact defini- 
tion of force, derived from our observations 
upon objects external to ourselves. In all of 
this discussion it is of greatest importance 
to emphasize by repetition the fact that when- 
ever a force is exerted, two bodies are in- 
volved: A, the body acting, and B, the body 
acted upon.1 This is one of the outstanding 

1In his reply (Screncr, XLV., 480, 1917) to A. 
H. Patterson (Science, XLV., 259, 1917), which 
was printed after the present paper had been sub- 
mitted for publication, Dr. Fulcher has already 
emphasized this point. 

In this connection, may I suggest that we dis- 
continue the use of the phrase, ‘‘a force acts upon 

.’’? which is so exceedingly common in our 
texts? It seems to me that the phrase attributes 
to force a property which it does not possess. 
Why not be unequivocal and say ‘‘a force is ex- 
erted upon...’’? This latter way of stating the 
fact serves better than the former in keeping the 
above italicized principle before the student, in 
that it deprives the notion of force of that seeming 
independence which does not pertain to it. 


64 SCIENCE 


points which have been disregarded in our 
texts. The result has been that in a large 
number of cases the student did not see how 
the force was being exerted; he felt that 
there was an intangible something about force 
beyond the range of his ability to grasp. It 
is small wonder that rapidly increasing con- 
fusion results from this lack of self-confidence. 

Another point can not be too strongly em- 
phasized. No author of an elementary text 
seems as yet to have recognized the impor- 
tance of distinguishing most carefully between 
forces of action and forces of reaction. It 
seems to me of prime importance, if the stu- 
dent’s ideas about force are to be sharply out- 
lined, to make this distinction. 
gest that it lends facility to the treatment to 
use the terms “ applied” force and “ reactive” 
force for forces of action and of reaction, re- 
spectively. The following treatment may 
bear out the contention concerning the im- 
portance of recognizing both. 

Let us first apply Newton’s third law of 
motion to the case of a body A, acting upon 
a fixed body B. Im this case the student 
readily understands that B exerts a reactive 
force equal and opposite to the applied force 
exerted by A; for if this were not true, mo- 
tion should ensue in accordance with the 
second law. He also readily sees that the 
reactive force arises and ceases simultaneously 
with the applied force. Often, however, when 
the third law is applied to a movable body B, 
and the student is told that the accelerated B 
exerts a reactive force upon A, equal and 
opposite to the applied force exerted by A, he 
is dubious and asks: “If that is true, how 
can there be an acceleration? By the first 
law, B should then remain at rest or in uni- 
form motion.” With the distinction between 
applied and reactive forces clearly drawn, this 
question can not arise. In this particular 
case we may point out that, to be sure, no 
acceleration of B could occur if the force 
exerted by A upon B were opposed by another 
applied force, exerted upon B in the opposite 
direction by a third body, C. However, since 
there is only the one applied force, that due 
to A, acceleration must ensue in accordance 


I would sug-- 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


with Newton’s second law; and, simultane- 
ously with this acceleration, ergo, with the 
applied force, there arises the reactive force 
of B upon A. We may, to present the case 
somewhat more tangibly, speak of the applied 
force as being exerted by that particular body 
which, so to speak, takes the initiative in the 
processes. It is well to point out, further, 
that the reactive force of B upon A arises re- 
gardless of whether the motion of B is in the 
direction of the force exerted by A, or whether 
there is a finite angle between these two direc- 
tions. If this angle is a right angle, the 
applied force causes B to move in a circular 
path, without change in speed; the applied . 
force is then called centripetal. The reactive 
force exerted by B upon A under these con- 
ditions is called the centrifugal force, which 
disappears at exactly that instant which marks 
the disappearance of the applied force. 
Numerous examples to illustrate these state- 
ments will occur to the teacher. 

If the student is familiar with the above 
principles, the problem of Atwood’s ma- 
chine becomes very simple. For here con- 
sidering the moving system as a unit, the ap- 
plied force of A (the earth) upon B (the sys- 
tem) is obviously (m,—m,)g; the reactive 
force of B upon A is (m,-+m,)a. These, by 
the third law, are equal. The value of a, 
or of g, immediately follows from the equality. 

I can not quite agree with Dr. Fulcher that 
the failing of our authors in treating reactive 
forces, especially centrifugal force, as they do, 
is because of “their forgetting that these 
forces are purely imaginary.” Is it not rather 
attributable to their previous neglect in not 
having emphasized the difference between ap- 
plied and reactive forces? 

Just an illustration, in conclusion, to show 
that American writers do not alone fall under 
the criticism of giving insufficient thought to 
the presentation of some of the fundamental 
things. We find, for example, in a German 
text, widely used in the Realschulen, by an 
author reputed to have been one of the fore- 
most teachers of physics, a treatment as fol- 
lows: “Upon the liquid particle A there are 
acting two forces, the force of gravity, ver- 


Tuny 20, 1917] 


1 


tically downward, and the centrifugal force, 
acting horizontally. . The resultant is 
found by the parallelogram law. Its direc- 
tion must be normal to the surface of the 
liquid.” Had this author, and our American 
authors, been careful to draw the distinction 
between applied and reactive forces, they could 
not easily have fallen into the error of com- 
bining an applied force with a reactive force 
and obtaining—what kind of a force? What- 
ever the kind, it can not be an applied force; 
for if it were, it should, according to the 
second law, produce an acceleration in its own 
direction. But such an acceleration, as 
pointed out by Dr. Fulcher, does not here 
exist. 

There are many other fundamental ques- 
tions in physics about the best method of pre- 
sentation of which we are not agreed. Teach- 
ers of college physics should welcome the 
opportunity of discussing them, and by so 
doing, clearing up their own ideas about 
them. Perhaps, also a thoroughly satisfactory 
text might thereby be evolved. 


Paut E. Kiopstse 
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 


QUOTATIONS 
ROYAL SOCIETY FELLOWSHIPS 

A QuEsTION of more than ordinary interest 
and importance is involved in the opposition 
of a majority of the Fellows of the Royal So- 
ciety to a proposal of its council to amend the 
statute of the society governing the election of 
fellows. On June 7 a special general meeting 
of the Royal Society was held, as the re- 
sult of a petition to the council, to consider a 
proposal by the latter embodied last year in 
their report for 1916. It was to amend Statute 
XII. by empowering the council to reeommend 
for election (a) privy councillors “ whose elec- 
tion would assist the work of the society ”; and 
(b) “men distinguished in the scientific or 
educational service of the state, or by their 
services to science and its applications.” The 
opposition to this proposal, led by Sir David 
Bruce and Sir E. Ray Lankester, had been 
energetically whipped up among the unofficial 
fellows since last November, and there was an 


SCIENCE 65 


unusually large attendance at the meeting. 
The result was that a vote was taken, adverse 
by a considerable majority to the council. The 
following resolution was carried: “That this 
meeting is of opinion that the council will 
serve the best interests of the society by re- 
storing Statute XII. to the form it had before 
the change made in it by the council on No- 
vember 2, 1916, and by postponing further con- 
sideration of the statute relating to the election 
of fellows until after the termination of the 
war.” The precise effect of the action thus 
taken by a majority of the fellows is for the 
moment rather uncertain, and the position is a 
somewhat embarrassing one for the president 
and council, who have thus suffered an appar- 
ent rebuff. According to the constitution of 
the Royal Society, the power of making and 
amending its statutes resides solely in the 
council, so that, strictly, the resolution is a 
brutum fulmen. On the other hand, the actual 
election of fellows rests with the society, and 
the council can only recommend candidates. 
So that the council is hardly likely to provoke 
an unseemly opposition to candidates it might 
recommend for election under the amended 
statute—even if it declines to stultify itself by 
“restoring ” the status quo ante as suggested 
—hby flying in the face of the adverse vote. 
We understand that the president and coun- 
cil were, in fact, quite ready to meet the oppo- 
sition raised within the society so far as con- 
cerns a postponement of any action on the 
amended statute till after the war. And in the 
comment we propose to make we can not, 
partly for that reason, express our entire dis- 
agreement with the opposition too strongly at 
this juncture. At the same time we think it 
desirable to say at once that we think the hos- 
tility of so many fellows to a proposal intended 
to increase the prestige and the value of the 
Royal Society distinctly regrettable. It was 
based, we are well aware—at any rate among 
some of the more eminent fellows who led the 
opposition—largely on suspicions of the intro- 
duction of state patronage into scientific re- 
search. But we have no doubt also that the 
influence of “vested interests” in the existing 
system of election to the coveted distinction of 


66 


F.R.S. has been even more potent in secur- 
ing the majority against the proposal of the 
council. What we are quite certain about is 
that for a long time past the elections to the 
fellowship of the Royal Society have (largely 
through this influence of “vested interests ”’) 
got far too much into a groove. The honor of 
being labelled F.R.S. has gradually come to be 
regarded more and more simply as a higher 
“degree” added to the academic distinctions 
of men who have passed through the regular 
scientifie “mill” and have contributed a cer- 
tain number of papers to the Transactions. 
The result is that the Royal Society is not as 
fully representative as it ought to be of the 
genius of the country, to which, as in earlier 
days, its fellowship should be extended. This 
is particularly true of “men distinguished in 
the scientific or educational service of the 
state,” the importance and originality of whose 
work for the nation have secured much more 
adequate appreciation in consequence of the 
light thrown on it during war-time. A more 
elastic procedure in the recommendations to 
fellowships has for some time past been seen 
to be called for by the wisest heads in the so- 
ciety, and the proposal of the council was the 
outcome. We hope that it will still be pushed, 
with more persuasive effect, even though for 
the moment nothing further is done. 


NOTES ON CANADIAN STRATIGRAPHY 
AND PALEONTOLOGY 
CORDILLERAN PROVINCE 


Graham Island—The Queen Charlotte Isl- 
ands form part of the outer, largely sub- 
merged ranges of the northwestern Cordillera 
and are generally considered to be the north- 
ern continuation of the Vancouver Range. 
Graham Island is the largest and one of the 
most northerly of the group. Its geology is 
the subject of a memoir by MacKenzie.t 
The oldest rocks exposed on the island belong 
to the Vancover group and are divided into 
two formations, the Maude and the Yakoun. 
The former consists of argillites, sandstones, 
and tuffs; it contains a marine fauna of early 


1J. D. MacKenzie, ‘‘Geology of Graham Island, 
B. C.,’’ Geol. Sury., Canada, Mem. 88, 1916. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


Jurassic age and at two localities in the lower 
beds are “probably Upper Triassic” forms. 
The Maude formation contains a _ large 
amount of pyroclastic material in its upper 
portion and grades upward into the Yakoun 
voleanie agglomerate, composed of rather 
massive water-laid beds. Its marine fauna, 
largely pelecypods and ammonites, suggests 
correlation with Middle Jurassic sandstones 
in Alaska. Both formations are moderately 
metamorphosed and considerably disturbed by 
folds and faults. They are cut by batholithice 
intrusions which may be correlated with the 
Upper Jurassic Coast Range batholith. The 
orogenic movements causing the deformation 
of the Vancouver group manifested themselves 
as compressive stresses acting in a direction 
north 60° east and were concomitant with 
these intrusions. 

Erosion during Comanchean time reduced 
the mountain ranges thus formed to a sub- 
dued topography which was buried beneath 
the Queen Charlotte series in the Cretaceous 
period. That series consists of the Haida 
sandstones and coal-bearing shales, the Honna 
conglomerates and sandstones, and the Skide- 
gate sandstones and shales, named in ascend- 
ing order. It is probable that the Queen 
Charlotte series was formed in estuarine 
basins by the sudden influx of a large amount 
of sediment carried in by rapid streams, and 
that the series as a whole represents a delta 
deposit reassorted and modified by the waves 
and currents of a shallow sea. During the 
Laramide revolution the rocks of this district 
were slightly folded and upraised; dacite and 
andesite dikes and sills were extensively in- 
jected. Following this uplift, the Cretaceous 
sediments were largely stripped from the 
underlying rocks, remaining only in synclinal 
basins. 

Shallow-water sediments forming the 
Skonun formation were deposited during the 
Miocene period. Sedimentation was cut short 
by the resumption of voleanic activity on a 
tremendous scale, by which the Masset forma- 
tion was built up. This vulcanism is best 
placed in the early or mid-Pliocene, and the 
close of this epoch was marked by a recur- 


JuLy 20, 1917] 


rence of deforming forces which locally 
severely flexed the Tertiary formations but in 
general disposed them in broad open folds. 
Quaternary time has been marked by erosion, 
glacial as well as fluvial, and there are some 
suggestions of a recent, slight, negative move- 
ment of the strand line. 

A yaluable correlation table of formations 
of Graham Island and neighboring districts 
faces page 118 of this excellent report. 

Flathead Valley—The Flathead coal basin, 
occupying a portion of Flathead Valley in 
British Columbia near the international 
boundary, is described in another memoir by 
the same author.2 Bedrock formations range 
from strata which are probably Devonian to 
those of Eocene age. At the base are black 
limy sandstones and shales which have not 
yet yielded identifiable fossils but are re- 
ferred to as “Devono-Carboniferous.” Grey 
and black limestones conformably overlie the 
shales and range in age from Upper Missis- 
ippian to Lower Pennsylvanian, according to 
Girty’s interpretation of two lots of fossils 
obtained from the middle and near the top of 
the formation. Above these limestones a 
white, quartzose sandstone was found. It is 
provisionally referred to the Triassic because 
of its position beneath the Fernie shales 
which elsewhere have been proved to be of 
Jurassic age. (The lithologic similarity be- 
tween this Triassic (?) sandstone and the 
Jurassic La Plata sandstone of Colorado is 
noteworthy.) The Fernie formation is con- 
formably overlain by the coal-bearing Koote- 
nay sandstones and shales. The Kootenay 
beds were “accumulated in a long lake of 
varying depth, or, more probably, in a chain 
of lakes and swamps extending along what is 
now the axis of the Rocky Mountains.” They 
are of Lower Cretaceous (Comanchean) age. 
Upper Cretaceous conglomerates and sand- 
stones are believed to represent the Dakota 
formation. Orogenic disturbance during the 
Laramide revolution was followed by the de- 
position of the Kishinena formation during 


2J. D. MacKenzie, ‘‘Geology of a Portion of the 
Flathead Coal Area, British Columbia,’’ Geol. 
Surv., Canada, Mem. 87, 1916. 


SCIENCE 67 


Tertiary time. The Kishinena beds are of 
freshwater origin and may be of Eocene age. 


CAMBRIAN 

Trilobites—A recent number*® of Walcott’s 
memoirs on Cambrian Geology and Paleon- 
tology contains descriptions and figures of 
several trilobites, some of them new, from the 
Lower and Middle Cambrian of Newfound- 
land, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia. 
Corynexochus senectus serves to correlate the 
upper beds of the Olenellus series of Newfound- 
land with the top of the Mount Whyte forma- 
tion in the Lower Cambrian of British 
Columbia. A new subgenus of Corynexochus 
is named Bonnia, and to it are referred two 
closely allied species, one from the Mount 
Whyte formation and the other from the 
Lower Cambrian of Labrador and Quebec. 
To the genus Bathyuriscus are referred a new 
species from the Stephen formation near 
Field, B. C., and a new subgenus, Poliella, 
which comprises several small-tailed trilobites. 
Most of them are of Middle Cambrian age, 
but one occurs in the Mount Whyte formation 
and lived near the close of Lower Cambrian 
time. Dolichometopus and Ogygopsis receive 
thorough treatment and Olenellus gilberti is 
transferred to the genus Mesonacis on the 
basis of data derived from a Mount Whyte 
specimen. A new genus, Pagetia, is founded 
upon material from the Burgess shale member 
of the Stephen formation near Field. 

New Brunswick—aA. brief but important 
paper by G. F. Matthew‘ contributes to knowl- 
edge of the paleogeography of eastern Canada 
in early Cambrian time. The relations of 
Cambrian rocks in New Brunswick are pre- 
sented in tabular form. At the base is found 
the non-fossiliferous Coldbrookian terrane, 
composed largely of voleanic rocks, overlain 
by the Etchiminian slates and sandstones 
with a scanty fauna of Hyolithes and Obolus. 
The overlying Acadian division of the St. 
John group is much more extensive because 

3C. D. Walcott, ‘Cambrian Trilobites,’’ Smith- 
sonian Mise. Coll., Vol. 64, pp. 303-456, 1916. 

4G. F. Matthew, ‘‘Notes on Cambrian Faunas,’’ 
No. 12, Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada., Ser. 3, Vol. 10, 
Sec. 4, pp 45-54, 1916, 


68 


of sea transgression. The lower fifty feet of 
this division contains the Protolenus fauna 
which Walcott interprets as marking the 
passage beds between Lower and Middle Cam- 
brian. Above are shales and slates, 200 feet 
thick, carrying the Paradoxides fauna. The 
middle division, Johannian, of the St. John 
group consists of coarse clasties characterized 
by the presence of Lingulella, while the upper 
one, Bretonian, is largely dark gray to black 
shale which is in part of Ordovician age. 

Emphasis is laid upon the complete separa- 
tion of the Atlantic coastal seas from those 
of the interior of North America during early 
Cambrian time, and “the presence of a deep 
and broad abyss off the Atlantic coast in this 
early time” is postulated. 

Ontario—The Potsdam sandstones which 
outcrop in the vicinity of Kingston are de- 
seribed by M. B. Baker® in a report which in 


Faunal Relations Manitoulin Island 


Whitewater 


Saluda Rich- 


mond 


SCIENCE 


Toronto-Hamilton 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1177 


the main treats of pre-Cambrian geology. 
Two members, a lower buff, and an upper red 
sandstone, are recognized as forming the 
Potsdam formation. Both were deposited in 
the basins and hollows between low rounded 
hills of pre-Cambrian rock. Basal and other 
conglomerates are common. Cross-bedding is 
frequently observed and the strata are non- 
fossiliferous. The so-called “tree concre- 
tions ” are interpreted as structural accumula- 
tions resulting from whirlpools and eddies. 


ORDOVICIAN 
Ontario—Fossils from the Trenton lime- 
stone in the the Balsam Lake region are de- 
scribed by Ruedemann.* A new species of 
graptolite is referred to the genus Inocaulis. 
Unusualy well-preserved specimens of Sten- 
aster salteri confirm the suspicion that this 


Kingston Ottawa Valley 


| Queenston 


Minnesota Prosser 


Kentucky Curdsyille 


Watertown, | Decorah, 
ING YG Minn. 


Waynesvillle 


Richmond 


Wekwemikongsing 


Pulaski 


Sheguiandah 


i Lorraine 


Eden 


Utica 


| Collingwoood 


Collingwood 


PAnech 


| Prasopora zone 


Stromatocerium zone 


| Curdsville Trenton 


Black River 


Leray 


| Lowville 


| 
ieec ee 


| Richmond 
Lorraine 


Gloucester 
Collingwood 
Upper Picton 
Lower Picton 


Trenton 


| 


Decorah zone 


Hull 


| Rockland 


Leray 


| Leray 


Lowyille 


| Lowville 


Pamelia 


Pamelia 


| Aylmer 


Fie. 1. Correlation chart of Ordovician strata in Ontario. Compiled from papers by Foerste, Parks, 


Kindle and Raymond. 


5M. B. Baker, ‘‘The Geology of Kingston and 
Vicinity,’’ Ontario Bur. Mines, Ann. Rept., Vol. 25, 
Pt. 3, pp. 1-36, 1916. 


6R. Ruedemann, ‘‘Paleontologie Contributions 
from the New York State Museum,’’? New York 
State Mus. Bull. 189, 1916. 


JuLy 20, 1917] 


remarkable stelleroid belongs to the subclass 
Auluroidea. It is believed to be a primitive 
ophiuroid, which was still very close to the 
ancestral asterozoans. 

The Ordovician strata of Ottawa Valley are 
described in summary style by Raymond." 
The formational nomenclature and relation- 
ships are. indicated in the accompanying 
table. Gloucester is a new formation name 
applied to the carbonaceous shales between the 
Collingwood and Cincinnatian strata. In 
correlating the Ottawa formations with those 
of New York, Kentucky, and Minnesota, Ray- 
mond makes a number of radical departures 
from the conclusions of Ulrich and Bassler. 


In certain details, the correlation chart® is. 


not in complete harmony with the statements 
made on the accompanying pages of text, as, 
for example, in regard to the faunal relations 
of the Kentucky Curdsville. 

The limestones of the Kingston district are 
described by Kindle.® The formations recog- 
nized are indicated in Fig. 1, which departs 
from Kindle’s usage only in the separation of 
the Decorah zone as-a distinct stratigraphic 
unit above the Lowville-Leray. The term, 
“Rideau,” originally proposed by Ami?® in 
terms which, in the reviewer’s opinion, in- 
elude the Potsdam sandstone described by 
Baker as noted above, is applied to the green- 
tinged, arkosic and generally conglomeratic, 
shaly beds at the base of the Pamelia forma- 
tion. Accompanying the description of Ordo- 
vician strata is a report upon their faunas by 
Miss Wilson and K. F. Mather.11 Faunal 


7P. E. Raymond, ‘‘ The Correlation of the Ordo- 
vician Strata of the Baltic Basin with those of 
Eastern North America,’’ Harvard College Mus. 
Comp. Zool., Bull., Vol. 56, pp. 179-286, 1916. 

8 Raymond, op. cit., p. 257. 

9B. M. Kindle, ‘‘The Ordovician Limestones of 
the Kingston Area,’’ Ontario Bur. Mines, Ann. 
Rept., Vol. 25, Pt. 3, pp. 37-44, 1916. 

10H. M. Ami, ‘‘Ordovician Succession in, East- 
ern Ontario,’’? Geol. Soc America, Bull., Vol. 13, 
pp. 517-518, 1902. 

11 Alice E. Wilson and Kirtley F. Mather, 
‘«Synopsis of the Common Fossils of the Kingston 
Area,’’ Ontario Bur. Mines, Ann. Rept., Vol. 25, 
Pt. 3, pp. 45-66, 1916. 


SCIENCE 


69 


lists and descriptive keys to the common 
fossils are aranged in two parts, one for the 
Black River and the other for the Trenton 
rocks. 

Quebec.—The district about Lake St. John 
at the head of Saguenay River in Quebec is 
of interest to the stratigrapher because of the 
occurrence of Paleozoic sediments far within 
the limits of the Pre-Cambrian “shield” of 
northern Canada. These outliers, described 
by Dresser,!2 are preserved in a basin formed 
by normal faulting which may have occurred 
at the close of the Paleozoic Era. The sedi- 
ments include Trenton limestone, Utica shale, 
and Richmond limestone, said to be “ de- 
posited in conformable succession.” 

Fossils from the Trenton and Utica were 
identified by Raymond. The Trenton fauna 
is preponderantly mollusecan and is probably 
basal Trenton, “about the horizon of the 
Rockland beds of the Ottawa district.” The 
Utica fauna is small and not distinctive. Ac- 
cording to Foerste, the Richmond faunas cor~ 
respond to those of the Waynesville member 
of the Ohio Richmond. 


SILURIAN 


A star-fish from the Arisaig series at the 
mouth of Stonehouse brook, Nova Scotia, is 
described by Ruedemann?* as a new variety 
of Urasterella ruthvent of the Upper Ludlow 
in England. 

DEVONIAN 


E. M. Kindle* records the occurrence of 
limestones containing a Devonian coral at 
Gull Lake, in the lower MacKenzie Valley, 
where published data show only Cretaceous 
and pre-Cambrian terranes. Two other small 
eollections of Devonian fossils from Mac- 
Kenzie Valley, one from within the Arctic 
circle, are commented upon. 


12 J, A. Dresser, ‘‘Geological Structure of the 
Basin of Lake St. John, Quebec,’’ Trans. Roy Soc. 
Canada, Ser. 3, Vol. 10, Sec. 4, pp. 125-130, 1916; 
“‘Part of the District of Lake St. John, Quebec,’’ 
Geol. Sury., Canada, Memoir 92, 1916. 

18 Op. cit., p. 46. 

14H. M. Kindle, ‘‘ Notes on Devonian Faunas of 
the MacKenzie River Valley,’’ Am. Jour. Sci. (4), 
Vol. 42, pp. 246-48, 1916. 


70 SCIENCE 


CARBONIFEROUS 


R. L. Moodie! reprints, in his monograph 
of Pennsylvanian amphibia, descriptions and 
figures of the remarkable microsaurs from the 
Joggins coal fields in Nova Scotia, which 
were published by Dawson between 1860 and 
1895. 

TRIASSIC 

L. M. Lambe?* has published descriptions 
of three new fishes, two Paleoniscids and one 
Crossopterygian, from localities west of Banff. 
The strata have heretofore been assigned to 
the Jurassic period!? but are more correctly 
correlated with the Upper Banff shale on the 
basis of invertebrates associated with the fish 
remains. The Upper Banff fauna, according 
to Girty and Kindle, represents the horizon 
of the Lower Triassic Meekoceras beds of 
Idaho and Wyoming. It should no longer be 
referred to the Permian. 


CRETACEOUS-EOCENE 


The geology of the region about Wood 
Mountain and Willowbunch, adjoining the 
international boundary south of Moosejaw, 
Sask., is described by Bruce Rose.18 The 
strata exposed range from the Fox Hills and 
Pierre Cretaceous through the Lance forma- 
tion to the Fort Union Eocene. The latter 
contains lignitic coal of value. An excellent 
description of the Prairie Plains of Saskat- 
chewan and their Quaternary history forms 
the second chapter of the report. 

New types of duck-bill dinosaurs from the 
Cretaceous of Alberta are described by 
Brown.?® 


15 R. L. Moodie, ‘‘The Coal Measures Amphibia 
of North America,’’ Carnegie Inst. Washington, 
Pub. 238, 1916. 

16]. M. Lambe, ‘‘Ganoid Fishes from near 
Banff, Alberta,’’ Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, Ser. 3, 
Vol. 10, Sec. 4, pp. 35-44, 1916. 

17J. A. Allan, ‘‘Bankhead to Golden,’’ Cong. 
géol. internat., Guide Book 8, Pt. 2, p. 191, 1913. 

18 Bruce Rose, ‘‘Wood Mountain-Willowbunch 
Coal Area, Saskatchewan,’’. Geol. Sury., Canada, 
Mem. 89, 1916. 

19 Barnum Brown, American Mus. Nat. Hist., 
Bull., Vol. 35, pp. 701-708, 1916. 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


MIOCENE 
A new species of cyprinid fish, based upon 
four specimens discovered by Bruce Rose of 
the Canadian Geological Survey near Kam- 
loops Lake, B. C., is described by Hussakof.?° 
It has considerable resemblance to Leuciscus 
balteatus living to-day in the Columbia basin. 
Kirtitey F. MatHer 
QUEEN ’S UNIVERSITY, 
KINGSTON, CANADA, 
March 5, 1917 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


THE VITALITY OF CYSTS OF THE PROTO- 
ZOON, DIDINIUM NASUTUM 


It is well known that many of the unicel- 
lular forms encyst under certain conditions, 
2. €., become inactive and form a heavy wall 
about themselves, and that in this state they 
can endure environmental conditions which 
are otherwise fatal. For example, the loss of 
water readily kills didinia when they are in 
the active state, but when they are encysted 
desiceation such as is produced by exposure 
even for months to ordinary atmospheric con- 
ditions does not necessarily kill them. This 
is also true of many other forms. When they 
are thus dried they may be widely scattered 
by the wind; encystment consequently may 
have a twofold function, protection and dis- 
tribution. Whether or not it functions still 
further in rejuvenescence in accord with the 
contention of Fermor (1913) and Calkins 
(1915) is a question which will be considered ~ 
at some length in a later paper. 

The degree of protection and the extent of 
distribution that organisms secure by encyst- 
ment depends upon the vitality of the cysts. 
The longer they live the greater the protec- 
tion and the wider the distribution. It is 
consequently important to know how long 
organisms can live in the encysted state. 
This is especially true regarding pathogenic 
forms, and these forms are the only ones, with 
the exception of the rotifers, in which the 
problem has been seriously investigated. 
Knowledge regarding the endurance of cysts 

20 L. Hussakof, ‘‘A New Cyprinid Fish, Leucis- 
cus rosei, from the Miocene of British Columbia,’’ 
Am. Jour. Sci. (4), Vol. 42, pp. 18-20, 1916. 


JuLy 20, 1917] 


may also throw some light on the nature of 
protoplasm in that it gives information con- 
cerning the lower limit of metabolism neces- 
sary for life. 

In a series of experiments made in connec- 
tion with other work on Didinium described 
elsewhere, it was found that the cysts live 
much longer than had been anticipated. On 
June 11, 1910, several didinia, all derived 
from the same individual, were put into a 
100 e.c. beaker containing 50 c.c. of solution 
with numerous paramecia. The beaker was 
then placed in a damp chamber and left until 
January 15,1911. At this time many didinia 
cysts were found in the beaker, and no active 
organisms except a few rotifers. It is not 
known just when these cysts were formed, but, 
judging from what usually occurs under 
similar circumstances, they were probably all 
formed within a week after the didinia had 
been added to the culture of paramecia, 7. e., 
about the middle of June, 1910. 

On May 31, 1911, a 10 e.c. vial was filled 
with solution from the beaker containing 
about one half the cysts. The vial was then 
corked, sealed airtight with paraffin and laid 
away in a dark drawer. The remaining cysts 
were added to a portion of a vigorous culture 
of paramecia, and the rest of this culture was 
retained as a control. Two days later there 
were several didinia in the portion seeded 
with cysts, none in the control, showing that 
the cysts were still viable. A few cysts were 
remoyed from the vial and similarly tested on 
each of the following dates: October 22, 1912; 
January 23, 1914; December 12, 1914; Jan- 
uary 7, 1915; March 1, 1915, and March 4, 
1915. In all of these tests except two, De- 
cember 12, 1914, and January 7, 1915, active 
didinia were secured from the cysts. No di- 
dinia were found in any of the control cul- 
tures. This proves conclusively that the 
eysts of Didinium nasutum can live, at least, 
nearly five years. 

In all of the tests observations were made 
daily. In the test of October, 1912, active 
didinia were found on the fifth day after 
adding paramecia, in those of January, 1914, 
on the second day, and in those of March, 


SCIENCE 71 


1915, on the sixth and tenth days respec- 
tively. 

In each of these tests, except the first two 
and the last, four watch glasses containing 
cultures of paramecia were seeded with the 
cysts. In the last test, March 4, 1915, all 
of the remaining cysts were added to two liter 
jars containing vigorous cultures of para- 
mecia. In the test of January, 1914, didinia 
appeared in three of the watch glasses, in 
those of December, 1914, and January, 1915, 
in none, although observations were made for 
more than two weeks; in those of March 1, 
1915, active didinia appeared in only one of 
the four watch glasses; but in the last test 
of the series they appeared in both jars. 
In one of these jars only a few small speci- 
mens were found and these soon died out; 
in the other, however, the didinia appeared 
to be perfectly normal; they developed rapidly 
and produced a vigorous culture which is 
still in existence, February, 1917. 

It is thus evident that some of the cysts 
were still viable at the close of our experi- 
ment, which extended through nearly five 
years, but it is not clear how much longer 
they could have remained viable. However, 
at the close of the experiment the cysts were 
much shriveled, only partially filled with pro- 
toplasm, and yellowish in color, whereas in 
the beginning they were well filled with proto- 
plasmic granules and grayish in color. To- 
ward the close of the experiment the propor- 
tion of failures was also much larger than at 
the beginning. All this indicates that the 
cysts would probably not have lived much 
longer. On the other hand only a very small 
proportion of the cysts developed in any of 
the tests, probably not more than two per 
cent. Consequently, since the cysts became 
less numerous as the experiment proceeded 
the large proportion of failures toward the 
close may have been due to an insufiicient 
number of cysts rather than to their age. 

We have thus demonstrated conclusively 
that didinia in the encysted state can live 
nearly five years in a solution from which 
they probably get nothing in the nature of 
food. If the eysts are dried they probably 


t2 SCIENCE 


live even longer than they do in a solution 
as the results of the following series of experi- 
ments show. 

Early in the spring of 1910 ten eight- 
liter battery jars nearly full of solution con- 
taining numerous didinia were set aside in 
the laboratory. Eight of these jars were cov- 
ered and two were left uncovered. The solu- 
tion of one of these contained much débris, 
hay, ete., that of the other almost none. The 
solution in both evaporated gradually, so 
that on the last day of May there was only a 
trace of moisture left in either jar. When 
they were next examined early in August the 
debris was so dry that it could be readily 
crumbled between the fingers. 

On January 14, 1911, one half of the solu- 
tion in each of the eight jars was poured off 
and replaced by hay solution (1 gm. hay to 
200 ec. water boiled ten minutes), and the 
two empty jars were half filled with the same 
solution. All of the jars were then examined 
from time to time until February 10. Active 
didinia were found in only one of the jars, 
and this was one of the open jars, the one 
which contained much debris. Several active 
didinia were found in this jar January 17 and 
more later. Numerous colorless flagellates, 
some vorticelle and also a few other forms 
appeared but no paramecia. 

The results of these experiments, con- 
sequently, clearly indicate that the vitality of 
dried cysts is greater than that of wet cysts. 
The number of cultures tested was, however, 
so small that the siginficance of the results 
obtained is somewhat doubtful. The tests 
should be repeated and extended in connec- 
tion with a study of the histological changes 
that may occur in the cysts. 


S. O. Mast 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 


THE 121st regular meeting of the Botanical So- 
ciety of Washington was held in the Assembly 
Hall of the Cosmos Club at 8 P.m., May 1, 1917, 
with thirty-nine members present. Mr. Burt A. 
Rudolph, Mr. Glenn C. Hahn and Mr. Horace W. 
Truesdell were elected to membership. 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1177 


The regular program was devoted to a sym- 
posium on the flora of the District of Columbia. 
Professor A. S. Hitchcock discussed ‘‘The plan of 
the flora’’ and traced briefly the history of the 
flora from Brereton’s studies in 1831 to the pres- 
ent time. In 1906 a mimeograph list of the vas- 
cular plants was prepared by Mr. P. L. Ricker. 
The flora is now under the leadership of Professor 
A. S. Hitchcock and Mr. P. C. Standley. Twenty- 
five collaborators are now at work preparing the 
preliminary manuscript which is to be finished by 
June 1 and the manuscript completed by November 
1, 1917. 

Mr. Edgar T. Wherry, at the invitation of the 
society, furnished a paper on ‘‘Geological areas 
about Washington.’? The paper was read by Mr. 
Hitchcock. The prominent geological feature is 
the Fall Line which separates the Piedmont 
Plateau on the northwest from the Coastal Plain 
on the southeast. Above this line the valleys are 
steep-sided, and below broad and open. The Pied- 
mont Plateau consists chiefly of crystalline gneisses 
of early periods, while the Coastal Plain is occu- 
pied by unconsolidated gravels, sands and clays. 
The soils on the Coastal Plain are acid for the 
most part while those on the Piedmont are not. 

Mr. George E. Sudworth discussed ‘‘The distri- 
bution of trees in the floral area.’’? Oaks predomi- 
nate and constitute from one half to three fourths 
of the upland cover. There are about 140 species 
of native and naturalized trees of which the broad- 
leaved trees number about 122 species. 

“‘Humus as a factor in plant distribution’’ was 
discussed by Mr. Frederick V. Coville. Mr. Coville 
exhibited two samples of organie matter—the one 
a raw, brown and leafy turf found in laurel thick- 
ets produced chiefly by the decay of the laurel 
leaves, and the other a black, fully-reduced, non- 
structural leafmold formed by leaves high in lime 
content such as the tulip poplar. The former is 
acid and the latter alkaline in reaction. 

Mr. P. L. Ricker discussed briefly the subject of 
‘“Collecting and preparing specimens.’? Mr. 
Ricker exhibited several types of portfolios suitable 
for collecting plants and also suggested the use of 
corrugated driers and artificial heat, especially 
where large numbers of plants are being collected 
on field trips. 

The program was followed by an informal dis- 
cussion by Messrs. Safford, Beattie, Norton, Waite, 
Lewton, Shantz, Coville, Hitchcock, Sudworth and 
Ricker. 

H. L. SHantz, 
Corresponding Secretary 


Poo ti NCE 


New S 
cea Fripay, Juny 27, 1917 oe Oe ee 


VoL. XLVI. No. 1178 


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GRAND PRIX—PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 


_ SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


THE 
PRINCIPLES OF 
STRATIGRAPHY 


BY 


AMADEUS W. GRABAU, S.M., S.D. 


PROFESSOR OF PALEONTOLOGY IN 
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SCIENCE 


Fripay, Juuy 27, 1917 


CONTENTS 


Acidosis: Proressor L. J. HENDERSON ...... 73 


Scientific Events :— 


The Iron Industry; Meteorology and Aero- 
nautical Engineering; Western Agronomic 


Workers; The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal. 8&3 
Sctentijic Notes and News ...........2.0.00. 86 
HouBbonUG 87 


University and Educational News 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Man and the Anthropoids: Mattoon M. 


Curtis. Girdling of Bean Stems caused by 

Bact. phaseoli: J. H. MUNCIE ............ 88 
Quotations :— 

SATA? CRO) TEMG) sod sno andoseeoe bone 89 


Scientific Books :— 
Tuttle on the Theory of Measurements: 
PROFESSOR A. DEFOREST PALMER .......... 89 


Special Articles :— 
Lithologic Evidence of Climatic Pulsations: 
GO MTEMEVIATI Rete stat teys steele ereieitie lero srvascree 90 


The Kansas City Meeting of the American 
CREMA*CAL SOCtE CH ie ast cnersisteseielcinn cleie ethostcte 94 


MSS. Intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. ¥ 


ACIDOSIS? 
I 


For many years students of metabolism, 
of general physiology and of pathology 
have been investigating various aspects of 
the acid-base equilibrium of the body, al- 
ways with an eye to the problem of acidosis, 
but at first with small success in unifying 
our knowledge of that complex subject. 
Suecessively it has been shown that in 
acidosis there may be a production of B-oxy- 
butyrie acid or some other specific defect 
of metabolism, an increase of the urinary 
ammonia, a diminution of the total car- 
bonie acid of the blood, and of the blood’s 
bicarbonate, an increase of its concentra- 
tion in hydrogen ions, a diminution in the 
concentration of carbon dioxide in the al- 
veolar air and of the free carbonic acid in 
the blood, an impairment of the affinity of 
the red corpuscles for oxygen, and a deple- 
tion of the alkali reserves of the body. Not 
all of these changes, however, are invariably 
present, and much confusion has resulted 
from the attempt to distinguish essential or 
primary phenomena. 

At length it has become clear that acido- 
sis is, from the standpoint of physical sci- 
ence, no simple and unitary state or proc- 
ess, but that, like metabolism or respira- 
tion, its unity is biological or functional, 
and that it consists in any disturbance, 
large enough and so long enduring as to be 
properly called pathological, of the regula- 
tion of alkalinity in the body. What are 
the disturbances to which this regulatory 
process is liable? They are such as are 
made possible by its normal and essential 


1The Samuel D. Gross lecture, 1916. 


74 


peculiarities and general characteristics. 
These peculiarities can only be the object 
of special physiological investigations and 
the subject of special physiological knowl- 
edge. But in great part the more general 
characteristics are those of all organic regu- 
lations, and at this very point organic regu- 
lation is to-day best understood and 
analyzed. Accordingly, the description of 
acidosis must rest upon a clear definition of 
the nature of organization itself; it may 
then, in turn, help to define the larger prob- 
lem. 

This conclusion points straight back to 
Aristotle, whose great attainments as a zool- 
ogist together with his extreme virtuosity in 
conceiving and applying abstract ideas and 
formulas led him to an analysis of organi- 
zation that remained the best for more than 
two thousand years. The words of Aris- 
totle are as follows: 

The animal organism must be conceived after 
the similitude of a well-governed- commonwealth. 
When order is once established in it there is no 
more need of a separate monarch to preside over 
each several task. The individuals each play their 
assigned part as it is ordered, and one thing fol- 
lows another in its accustomed order. So in ani- 
mals there is the same orderliness—nature taking 
the place of custom—and each part naturally do- 
ing his own work as nature has composed them. 
There is no need then of a soul in each part, but 
she resides in a kind of central governing place of 
the body, and the remaining parts live by continu- 
ity of natural structure, and play the parts Nature 
would have them play. [‘‘De motu animalium,’’ 
II., 7032, 30-35, Oxford, 1912.] 

This statement surpasses the efforts of 
the modern philosophers, who either have 
not understood the problem at all, or, like 
Leibnitz and Kant, have but imperfectly 
conceived it. The earlier modern biologists 
are also inferior to Aristotle, for when they 
have perceived the riddle of organization, 
it has led them into sterile vitalistic theo- 
ries or mere bewilderment. But during 
the last century there took place a steady 
improvement in the biological analysis and 


SCIENCE ° 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1178 


lately the subject has been partly cleared 
of misunderstanding, so that it is to-day in 
the minds of most thoughtful investigators. 

In the nineteenth century the concept of 
organization appears for the first time as an 
explicit postulate of scientific research. 
Of course there has never been a period 
when the idea of function was absent from 
physiological investigation. And it would 
be an almost hopeless task to trace the 
transformation of this idea, with widening 
experience, into the larger one of organiza- 
tion. Provisionally it may therefore suffice 
to note the conscious and deliberate use of 
the latter idea in Cuvier’s so-called law. 
According to this hypothesis it is possible 
after a careful study of any one part of an 
animal, for example a tooth, to reconstruct 
the whole. Nothing could correspond more 
perfectly with Aristotle’s original position 
concerning the organic relation between the 
parts and the whole. 

Physiology was more deliberate in set- 
ting up the principle, because organic ac- 
tivity is harder to define and to describe. 
At least as early as the time of Johannes 
Miiller the idea was clearly grasped. But 
not until the establishment of experimental 
morphology did it become overtly a guiding 
principle of physiological research. One 
very important influence toward this result 
is to be found in the speculations of von 
Baer. 

The truly Aristotelian idea of internal 
teleology of the organism is at the bottom 
of von Baer’s biological philosophy. Bichat 
and he are the first of the organicists. Their 
successor is Claude Bernard. This great 
man, whose purely mechanistic researches 
stand at the foundation of many depart- 
ments of physiology, steadily exerted all his 
influence in favor of the idea of organiza- 
tion. He recognized a directive and organ- 
izing idea in the animal, and again and 
again insisted upon it. Yet his analysis of 
the problem, like that of von Baer, was not 


Juuy 27, 1917] 


complete. Though he, like all other physiol- 
ogists, employed the idea of functional 
activity as a guide in research, though 
he was fully aware of Cuvier’s method in 
paleontology, his just concern for the in- 
tegrity of physiological method beguiled 
him into declaring that ‘‘the metaphysical 
evolutive force by which we may character- 
ize life is useless in science, because, exist- 
ing apart from physical forces, it can exer- 
cise no influence upon them.’’ 

This, strange to say, is an old error of 
Kant’s. It is as if one should declare that 
the idea of the periodic system of the ele- 
ments is useless to science, because, existing 
apart from the physical forces, it can exer- 
cise no influence upon them. What Claude 
Bernard well knew, but failed here to point 
out, is that organization, like the second 
law of thermodynamics, is a condition of 
those physio-chemical phenomena which 
were the subject of his investigations. At 
times, however, he stated the case more cor- 
rectly. 

During the later years of von Baer and 
Claude Bernard, the ideas of Darwin were 
accomplishing a revolution in general biol- 
ogy. Not the least important result was at 
least temporarily to establish adaptations 
as the most positive of realities. Yet an 
adaptation is only to be defined in terms of 
organization. In the orthodox Darwinian 
view it is that which contributes to the 
preservation of the whole. There is noth- 
ing in its merely physical character which 
enables us to recognize it as an adaptation. 
Only its function reveals its true nature. 

In the course of time some of Darwin’s 
original positions have been weakened and 
the more extreme views of his followers 
overthrown. As a result this manner of 
thinking about adaptation is somewhat out 
of fashion. But it endured quite long 
enough to leave its mark upon several de- 
partments of the science. And it is very 
doubtful if any one will be bold enough 


SCIENCE 


75 


ever again to put aside the idea of function 
itself or to deny its necessary implications. 

Meanwhile a number of independent lines 
of investigation have arisen from Darwin’s 
researches. One of the most interesting of 
these is the study of experimental morphol- 
ogy to which Sachs gave an impetus. This 
subject appears to have developed, partly 
at least, as the realization of a program of 
research founded upon Roux’s quasi-philo- 
sophical analysis of the characteristics of 
life. 

Such a process is a genuine curiosity in 
the history of science. According to Roux 
the living being may be defined as a natural 
object which possesses nine characteristic 
autonomous activities, e. g., autonomous ex- 
cretion, autonomous ingestion, autonomous 
multiplication, autonomous transmission of 
hereditary characteristics, ete. This con- 
ception, as Roux admits, is closely related 
to Herbert Spencer’s famous conception of 
life as ‘‘the continuous adjustment of in- 
ternal relations to external relations.’’ 
Roux’s discussion of the subject was inde- 
pendent of Spencer’s influence and, in its 
specification of conditions, his analysis pos- 
sesses certain advantages over the English 
philosopher’s more abstract statement. 
But, from the standpoint of physical sci- 
ence, it is gravely deficient in method and 
has never been regarded as more than a 
preliminary statement of the several physio- 
logical aspects of the fact of organization. 

What has given Roux’s investigation a 
certain value and influence is that there is 
thus presented, however dogmatically, a 
provisional discrimination of organic ac- 
tivities as a basis for the experimental 
physiological study of organization itself. 
With the foundation of experimental 
morphology the problem of organization 
assumes its proper place in physiological 
research. The experimental results of the 
new science clearly prove that the place is 
secure. 


76 


This department of science has developed 
independently, and only in recent years can 
its influence upon the older science of 
physiology be detected. The physiologists, 
in their more abstract and more analytical 
researches have usually dealt exclusively 
with physical and chemical phenomena. 
Unlike Roux’s followers, they have been 
concerned with those things which are or- 
ganized in the living being, rather than 
with the organization of them. Their very 
method of research, which proceeds from a 
preliminary analysis of the factors of or- 
ganization, has obscured the larger biolog- 
ical problem. 

At length Pavlov’s researches on the 
glands of digestion, the study of internal 
secretions and hormones, Sherrington’s 
investigation of the integrative action of 
the nervous system, Cannon’s study of the 
emotions, and many other independent 
lines of investigation have cleared the 
ground, and at the present moment the 
physico-chemical treatment of the problem 
of organization is widely, if somewhat 
vaguely, recognized as the ultimate goal of 
physiological research. An _ interesting 
statement of the present condition of 
physiology in this respect may be found in 
Haldane’s little book ‘‘Mechanism, Life 
and Personality.’’ It is doubtful, however, 
if all the philosophical conclusions that Hal- 
dane draws can be regarded as well 
founded. 

In the study of metabolism, which has 
also had an independent development, the 
idea of organization has long dominated re- 
search. This is due to the fact that here 
the concept of equilibrium can not be 
avoided. At an early period in the history 
of the science it was discovered that a nor- 
mal organism is in a state of nitrogen 
equilibrium. That is to say, the composi- 
tion, in respect of compounds of nitrogen, 
is steadily preserved, through the regula- 
tion of a long chain of intricate chemical 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1178 


processes. Day by day the ingestion of 
nitrogen is approximately equal to the ex- 
eretion. A modification of the diet may 
cause a temporary disturbance of the con- 
dition, but this is soon restored. The phe- 
nomena of growth and disease are found to 
involve more enduring changes. Hereupon 
by a process of reasoning patterned upon 
that of physical science, growth is declared 
to involve nothing more than other phe- 
nomena superimposed upon the underlying 
conditions, thereby modifying the observed 
facts in such manner that the fundamental 
state is partly obscured. And disease is 
after all, in its very essence, a disturbance 
of organization; in short, diseases of meta- 
bolism involve by definition disturbances of 
equilibria, which may or may not be com- 
pensated. 

Further research reveals similar equi- 
libria concerning carbon, sulphur, phos- 
phorus and the other elements. The results 
are extended to definite chemical compounds 
such as water, salt, sodium bicarbonate, 
glucose and the like. It is perceived that 
the equilibria of temperature, of volume, of 
alkalinity, which involve physico-chemical 
states, are truly analogous phenomena. 

Meanwhile it has always been clear that 
within certain limits the existence of these 
equilibria is essential to the preservation of 
life itself, and that they might have been 
taken for granted. The real question has 
been to define the normal and pathological 
fluctuations, their duration, their limits 
and their relations to other phenomena. In 
short, so far as these problems are con- 
cerned, the study of metabolism has con- 
sisted in an attempt to describe as thor- 
oughly as may be, and if possible to explain, 
the fluctuations of the approximately con- 
stant physical and chemical conditions of 
the body. In other words, the task of the 
investigator has been to make known the 
facts concerning the regulation of the ulti- 
mate physical and chemical constitution of 


Suny 27, 1917] 


the organism. In this undertaking he has 
always kept in mind the idea that the or- 
ganism exists in a,state of dynamic equi- 
librium, just as it was long ago conceived 
by Cuvier, and more vaguely by Hume, and 
by Lueretius. 

Now this idea of regulation, so familiar 
in the investigations of the temperature of 
the body, and in many other general prob- 
lems of metabolism, is the very concept to 
which all the other independent investiga- 
tions of organization as a physiological 
problem also lead. Thus Roux has long 
since declared, and recently reasserted the 
belief, that the capacity of autonomous reg- 
ulation of all nine of his elementary char- 
acteristics is quite the most important of 
all the peculiarities of life. For example, 
_he thinks that this is what makes possible 
the direct adaptation to the environment, 
or, in other words, the acquiring of charac- 
teristics. In like manner the action of hor- 
mones, the integrating function of the ner- 
vous system, and the phenomena of emo- 
tional excitement investigated by Cannon 
are all regulatory. 

It is now possible to see that Herbert 
Spencer’s conception of life as ‘‘the con- 
tinuous adjustment of internal relations to 
external relations,’’ though doubtless far 
from satisfactory as a characterization of 
life itself, is really a true statement of the 
phenomena of organization. Vague though 
it may be, it is confirmed by the results of 
experimental morphology, of physiology 
and of the science of metabolism, and I sus- 
pect that pathology affords some of the 
most striking justifications for such a view. 
Indeed pathology has its prerogatives, and 
of these not the least is to follow up the 
disturbances which, step by step, result 
from a single lesion or deranged activity 
until they close a vicious circle, to note the 
compensatory changes, regenerations and 
repairs that oppose this process, and thus 
to perceive the organism as a whole acting 


SCIENCE 77 


so as to preserve that state of dynamic 
equilibrium which is essential to life itself. 

But Spencer’s formula is at best imper- 
fect and needs to be modified in order to 
conform more exactly to Aristotle’s 
thought. Perhaps we may say that life is 
to be conceived as the continuous adjust- 
ment of internal relations to the state of the 
organism as a whole in accordance with 
changes of internal and external relations. 
Yet I can not believe that such formulas 
are of much account. What we need to 
know and always to remember is that or- 
ganization qualifies the body mechanisms. 
They are mechanisms and also they are or- 
ganized. It is in no sense a form of vital- 
ism that is implied in this statement, nor 
ean I think it, as Haldane believes, anti- 
mechanism. While I am in hearty agree- 
ment with many of Haldane’s positions, I 
can not but repudiate this view. Yet a doc- 
trine essential to all genuine biological 
progress does arise from this statement, 
and we are all indebted to Haldane for 
making it clear and insisting upon it. This 
doctrine teaches a very necessary truth 
concerning our present problem of acidosis, 
viz., that there is no one process or phenom- 
enon which is the fundamental or essential 
one, but that each is integral, at once as 
cause and as effect in a cycle of pathological 
changes whose onset may be at any one of 
many points and which as a whole, as a 
eyele, constitutes the deranged acid-base 
metabolism. But this, moreover, is not the 
whole of the matter, for, just as the parts 
of this eyele engage in the whole of the 
process of acid-base metabolism, so do they 
also engage, as parts, in other processes, 
some of them in the respiration, some in the 
process of excretion, and so on indefinitely. 
Thus the condition known as acidosis can 
only be truly conceived in terms of the or- 
ganization of the body as a whole. Such is 
the abstract nature of the subject ; with this 
the known facts correspond. 


78 


pu 

From its very beginning, Arrhenius’s 
theory of ionization emphasized the pecu- 
liar importance of the ions of hydrogen and 
hydroxyl. As products of the electrolytic 
dissociation of water these ions must be 
present in all aqueous liquids. As products 
of the dissociation of acids in one case and 
of bases in the other, they must be essen- 
tial factors, or at least the only constant 
factors, of acidity and alkalinity in aqueous 
solutions. 

Methods for the estimation of the concen- 
tration of these ions were presently found, 
and before long successfully, if rather 
roughly, applied to physiological problems. 
Thus it was proved that the reaction of 
blood is nearly neutral and very constant. 

Meanwhile the theory was extended, 
with the help of the mass law, until it be- 
came a quantitative theory of acidity, neu- 
trality and alkalinity. The principal re- 
sults of this development of the subject, so 
far as they concern the biologists, are as 
follows: 

First, the product of the concentrations 
of hydrogen and hydroxyl ions (at constant 
temperature) is approximately constant. 

(H).(OH) = e. 
Therefore the concentrations of these two 
ions always vary inversely. 
(H) =. 
(OH) 

Secondly, if for convenience, just as the 
histologist uses microns instead of meters, 
we adopt as unit concentrations of hydro- 
gen and hydroxyl ions a very small quan- 
tity, viz., the concentration of these ions in 
neutral solutions, the value of this constant 
becomes unity. 


(ED) (OH) 


a 


It may be noted that, using this unit of 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von, XLVI. No. 1178 


concentration, an ordinary decinormal so- 
lution of hydrochloric acid has a concen- 
tration of hydrogen ions of nearly 1,000,- 
000; and a decinormal solution of sodium 
hydroxide a corresponding concentration 
of hydroxyl ions. Other common dilute 
acid and alkaline solutions are only less 
remote from the concentrations of neutral 
solutions and of blood. 

Thirdly, upon this basis the definitions of 
neutrality, acidity and alkalinity are as 
follows: 


For neutrality, 


(H) — 1 — (OH): 
For acidity, 


(H) >1> (OH). 
For alkalinity, 


(H) <1< (OH). 


Finally, in any solution containing a 
weak acid and its salts with one or more 
bases, regardless of the other components of 
the solution, the concentration of hydrogen 
ions is approximately proportional to the 
ratio of free acid to combined acid. 

HA 
=hax: 
This relation, however, holds only when the 
ratio of acid to salt is neither very large nor 
very small. 

It is therefore evident that in the solution 
of any weak acid, when the quantities of 
free and combined acid are equal, the value 
of (H) is k; if the ratio of acid to salt be 
10:1, (H) is 10 k, if the ratio be 1:10 (H) 
is 0.1 k. 

This is the total outcome of the theoret- 
ical analysis so far as it is necessary for a 
general understanding of the biological 
problem. 

We may now turn to the special case of 
carbonic acid. For this substance the value 
of k, expressed in our present units, is 
about 5. Accordingly, in a solution of car- 


(H) 


JuLy 27, 1917] 


bonie acid and bicarbonate, if the ratio of 
acid to salt be 10 the concentration of hy- 
drogen ions must be 50, if the ratio be 1 
the concentration will be 5, and if the 
ratio be 0.1 the concentration will be 0.5. 

Thus we can see why carbonate solu- 
tions are almost always nearly neutral 
(e. g. 100 > (H) > 0.01), and, taking ae- 
count of the universal distribution of free 
and combined earbonie acid in the ocean, 
in lakes and streams, and in all organisms, 
we understand the primary cause of the 
approximate neutrality of nearly all nat- 
ural solutions, both organie and inorganic, 
upon the earth. In blood the concentra- 
tion of hydrogen ions is about one third of 
the present unit, hence the ratio of free to 
combined carbonic acid must be less than 
1:10. 

In general it is evident that when the 
value of & for an acid is nearly 1 solutions 
containing that acid and its salts will be 
nearly always neutral; but that if the value 
of k differs largely from 1 such solutions 
will be nearly always appreciably acid or 
alkaline. 

Beside carbonic acid, there is but one 
biologically common acid substance, viz., 
phosphorie acid after one hydrogen has 
been neutralized by base as in acid sodium 
phosphate, that possesses the value of k 
nearly equal to 1. Most weak acids have 
a value hundreds or thousands of times 
greater. Phosphate solutions are therefore 
commonly nearly neutral, and they share 
with carbonate solutions the function of 
preserving the constant alkalinity of the 
body. 

It is easy roughly to demonstrate the gen- 
eral character of such acid-base equilibria 
with the help of the phosphates. Thus, 
for example, a solution of acid sodium phos- 
phate has a faintly acid reaction, a solution 
of ordinary sodium phosphate an alkaline 
reaction, but almost any mixture of the 


SCIENCE 79 


two salts is neutral to ordinary indicators, 
and will take up strong acids or alkalis 
in large quantities without apparently 
changing its reaction. Of course every 
drop of acid or of alkali does change the 
reaction, but the change is so slight that it 
can not be detected by ordinary means. 
This depends upon the fact that strong 
acids and bases combine quantitatively with 
the alkaline or acid phosphate: 
HCl + Na,HPO,= NaCl + NaH,PO,, 

NaOH + NaH,PO,= Na.HPO, + H,O. 
Accordingly, there is only a change in the 
ratio between the concentrations of the two 
phosphate salts, and of hydrogen ion con- 
centration in due proportion, according to 
the analysis already given. 

If the solution is supposed to contain 
bicarbonates, as well as phosphates, the 
above experiment fully illustrates the gen- 
eral character of the process by which acids 
are immediately neutralized in the body. 
The proteins, to be sure, are also involved, 
ut their share in the process is small, 
though not physiologically insignificant. 

Upon this physico-chemical basis the phys- 
iological processes are erected. It is as a 
means of restoring bicarbonate and alkaline 
phosphate from the products of reaction 
of these substances with acids, or as a means 
to neutralize acid, and thus prevent its 
reaction with \bicarbonates and phosphates, 
that ammonia is produced in the meta- 
bolism. 

In like manner the acidity of the urine 
is the result of the reversal in the kidney of 
the reaction by which acids have been neu- 
tralized inthebody. Inthe renal function 
phosphates almost alone are concerned. 
Therefore the process may ‘be described as 
follows: In the blood, as the result of the 
production of acid, a certain amount of al- 
kaline phosphate has been converted into 
acid phosphate, so that the ratio of acid 
phosphate to alkaline phosphate has been 


80 , SCIENCE 


slightly inereased. (Under normal cir- 
cumstances this change is probably in- 
finitesimal.) The kidney now removes 
relatively a siill larger amount of acid than 
of alkaline phosphate, perhaps on account 
of changes in the blood bicarbonate rather 
than in the phosphate, and thus restores 
the ratio of base to acid in the blood. Here 
ihe essential factor is the ability of the kid- 
ney widely to vary the ratio of acid to al- 
kaline phosphate without large variation 
of the hydrogen ion concentration of the 
urine. This very important fact once more 
depends upon the favorable value of k& for 
acid phosphate. 

It is because, in the normal individual, 
both the production of ammonia and the 
ratio of acid to alkaline phosphate in the 
urine are variable within wide limits, and 
can be made to conform exactly to the 
varying ingestion and production of acid 
in ‘he body, that the fundamental physico- 
chemic2] apparatus can be kept intact and 
accurately adjusted. 

A further factor in the process is the 
activity of the lung in excreting carbonic 
acid. This substance is the chief excretory 
product of the organism. As such it must 
be eliminated promptly and completely. 
Moreover, in that it leaves the body not 
in aqueous solution and as an acid, but 
almost exclusively in the form of gaseous 
carbon dioxide, there is no possibility of 
any variation of the permanent effect pro- 
duced upon the reaction of the body by 
the elimination of a definite amount of it. 
In the final regulation by excretion it is 
not, therefore, concerned. And yet it has, 
in the process of excretion, a very impor- 
tant role in regulating the reaction of the 
body. This depends upon the fact that 
carbonic acid is not only a waste product, 
but also a normal constituent of the blood, 
and, as such, a principal factor in the 
physico-chemical regulation. Thus, if the 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1178 


ratio of carbonic acid to bicarbonates in a 
normal individual were 1:15, a large pro- 
duction of acid might cause a destruction 
of a third part of all the bicarbonates, pro- 
ducing in its place an equivalent amount 
of free carbonic acid. This, if nothing else 
occurred, would reduce the relative amount 
of bicarbonates from 15 to 10, and simulta- 
neously increase the free carbonic acid 
from 1 to 6. The ratio would now be 6:10, 
and since the hydrogen ion concentration is 
porportional to this ratio, this ion would 
suffer a nearly ten-fold increase of con- 
centration. But at this point, or, more 
strictly speaking, continuously during the 
process, the excretory function intervenes. 
There is a tendency for the respiratory 
process to hold the tension of carbonie di- 
oxide in the blood nearly constant. This 
is the reason why carbonic acid has some- 
times been thought the respiratory hor- 
mone. Assuming that the exact quantity 
of carbonic acid set free by the reaction of 
neutralization were thus eliminated, the 
ratio would be reduced to 1:10, and the 
hydrogen ion concentration would rise but 
one third above its original value. More 
recent investigations, however, have shown 
that a tendency to acidity is accompanied 
by a lowering of the tension of carbon di- 
oxide. Let us suppose that in this case 
the tension was lowered one third. The 
free carbonic acid of the blood would then 
become 0.67 instead of 1.00, and the ratio 
of acid to salt 0.67:10, which is exactly 
equal to 1:15, the original ratio. Accord- 
ingly, the hydrogen ion concentration 
would be restored exactly to its original 
value, and the regulation by excretion 
would be quite perfect. Now there is 
abundant evidence to show that something 
very much like this is always occurring in 
the body, and, on the whole, I believe that 
the most delicate of all means to regulate 
the reaction of the body is to be found in 


Juty 27, 1917] 


this variation of the tension of carbonic 
acid during its excretion. Such consid- 
erations have strengthened the hypothesis 
that the hydrogen ion is the true respir- 
atory hormone. Originally suggested as a 
guess, this theory has been supported by 
many investigations. But I think that it 
marks the opening rather than the closing 
of a chapter in physiology, for the subject 
is involved in many complexities. 

The whole physiological equilibrium may 
now be concisely summed up. The hydro- 
gen ion concentration of the body has been 
seen to depend upon the ratio 


H.CO; 
NaHCO, 


Acid reacting with this system causes a 
diminution of the denominator and an in- 
crease in the numerator of the fraction, the 
value of the fraction increases, and with it 
the hydrogen ion concentration. Here- 
upon the lung reduces the value of the 
numerator by diminishing the concentra- 
tion of carbon dioxide in blood and alveo- 
lar air, the value of the fraction is restored 
more or less exactly to its original value 
and with it the concentration of the hy- 
drogen ion. But the denominator is still 
below normal. To offset this, there occurs, 
on the one hand, a production of ammonia 
which takes the place in the urine of al- 
kali existing as salt in the blood. This al- 
kali recombines with carbonic acid, form- 
ing bicarbonate, and thus increasing the 
denominator. On the other hand, the kid- 
ney removes less alkali in combination with 
phosphates than exists in this state in the 
blood. This alkali, too, helps to regen- 
erate sodium bicarbonate, and thus to in- 
crease the denominator. Both of these 
processes are so regulated that the denom- 
inator is restored to normal. The con- 
centration of carbonic acid responds 
through the activity of the respiratory 


SCIENCE 81 


mechanism, and the organism returns to 
its normal state. 

These processes, of course, go on simulta- 
neously and not in succession. They are, 
moreover, far less simple than such an 
analysis admits, for on the one hand the 
interaction of phosphates and proteins has 
not been fully described, and, on the other 
hand, many of these variations influence 
other conditions and processes in the or- 
ganism. 

Among these effects are the influence of 
carbonic acid concentration and of the hy- 
drogen ion on the affinity of hemoglobin 
for oxygen and on the volume of the red 
corpuscles. More general is a necessary, 
but at present indeterminate, effect on the 
distribution of electrolytes in the body, on 
the osmotic pressure, on the state of col- 
loids, and on the volume. I fully believe 
that such effects are real and that when 
acid is produced through long periods and 
in large quantities in particular organs or 
tissues, as during diabetes, they may well 
surpass the direct effects of the simple chem- 
ical reactions of acid in the pathological 
complex, and produce a condition very dif- 
ferent indeed from that of experimental 
acidosis. For in such conditions the whcle 
physico-chemical composition of the cell, 
its concentrations and colloidal equilibria, 
might be sensibly altered. 

But such guesses are one thing and the 
detailed and very dogmatic speculations of 
Dr. Martin Fischer cuite another. And I 
feel obliged to say that there is not one 
particle of evidence for his conclusions, 
which are indeed inconsistent with, or 
totally without bearing upon, all the exist- 
ing . quantitative information that we 
possess upon this subject. 


mI 
What then is acidosis? Evidently a con- 
dition lacking necessary connection with 


82 SCIENCE 


the production of oxybutyrie acid or with 
the magnitude of the hydrogen ion con- 
centration in blood; still less a condition 
involving the existence of acid in the blood. 
It is often characterized by high urinary 
ammonia, but sometimes this quantity is 
low; the concentration of carbon dioxide 
in the alveolar air is commonly low, but 
one can not feel sure that this is invariably 
the case; in acidosis the oxygen capacity of 
the blood seems to be generally diminished, 
but we do not yet understand this subject 
well enough to be sure that compensatory 
changes may not take place. ,Upon the 
whole I think that we come nearest to cer- 
tainty if we say that acidosis must involve 
a depletion of the body’s alkali reserves, 
and specifically a depletion of the bicar- 
bonate of the blood. So long as this has 
not taken place the pathological condition 
can not amount to much, so far as the acid- 
base equilibrium is concerned; when this 
defect is established the whole chain of 
causation, involving breathing, oxidation, 
nitrogen metabolism, renal activity and so 
on, has been set in motion. 

The cause of the condition may vary 
widely. It may be due to the production 
of acid, or the-ingestion of acid, or to lack 
of alkali in the food; it may be due to fail- 
ure to eliminate acid, e. g., acid phosphate, 
or to failure to produce and eliminate am- 
monia; but so far as can be seen it must 
always involve at least a diminution in the 
concentration of bicarbonate in the blood. 
As a practical maxim, we are therefore 
fully justified in saying that acidosis is a 
state of diminished bicarbonate in the 
blood. 

Accordingly, it may also be said that the 
best means to the recognition of acidosis is 
proof of diminution in the bicarbonate of 
the blood. It is true that alveolar air, or 
the oxygen capacity of the blood, or the 
urinary ammonia, or the acidity of the 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1178 


urine, or the excretion of acetone bodies, 
may ‘be definitive in any particular case. 
But a state of acidosis is certainly not 
always dependent on some of these vari- 
ables, and may possibly be independent of 
all of them. 

The most direct proof of diminution of 
the bicarbonate of the blood is afforded by 
an estimation of the capacity of the blood 
for carbon dioxide at a specified tension of 
the gas. This, or a related method, prop- 
erly employed, will always give accurate in- 
formation and need not make considerable 
demands upon the technical skill of the 
investigator. 

But there is another method, consisting 
of a physiological test of the greatest sim- 
plicity and involving no experimental skill 
at all, which seems often to lead to equally 
trustworthy conclusions. 'The test depends 
upon an observation made by Sellards and 
also by Palmer and myself that in different 
pathological conditions and in different in- 
dividuals the amount of soda administered 
by the mouth that is necessary to make the 
urine alkaline is a very variable quantity. 
Further extensive investigations of Dr. 
Palmer’s have convinced me that this 
phenomenon depends on nothing but the 
retention of alkali by an organism whose 
store has been depleted, until the normal 
amount has Ibeen once more acquired. The 
addition of five or ten grams of soda to the 
food is enough to make the urine of a 
healthy person alkaline, and if more than 
that is retained, experience justifies the 
conclusion that a state of acidosis exists. 

This test also points to a rational treat- 
ment of acidosis. For if sodium bicar- 
bonate is administered at frequent in- 
tervals in quantities just sufficient to make 
the urine as alkaline as the blood, acidosis 
can not exist. The reaction of the urine 
can be followed closely enough even with 
litmus paper, a so-called amphoteric re- 


Juuy 27, 1917] 


action indicating that sufficient alkali has 
been provided, and if the reaction does not 
become more alkaline than this there seems 
to be no danger of injuring the kidney. 

Of course this method may be inadequate 
to cope with the more complex problems of 
diabetic acidosis, and it is very doubtful 
if the alkali can always penetrate in suffi- 
cient quantities to the seat of acid pro- 
duction. There is, moreover, no reason to 
suppose that it can influence the cause of 
the condition. Indeed this is rather a 
matter of proper feeding than a thera- 
peutic measure. For next to water and 
sodium chloride the concentration of so- 
dium bicarbonate is the greatest in blood, 
and it seems not unreasonable to care for 
a sufficient supply of this substance as one 
does for a supply of water. 

There is the more reason for bearing 
these conclusions in mind because acidosis 
is one of the commonest of pathological 
states. Indeed I think that it is probably 
more common than fever. Therefore one 
may conclude that in serious illness the 
test for acidosis should always be made, 
especially because it is often a very simple 
matter to repair the defect. And I think 
there is some reason to suppose that such 
action may occasionally be of the greatest 
importance. 

But the use of alkali must always be de- 
liberate and founded upon the urinary re- 
action, for too much alkali may be very 
harmful indeed. As employed by Martin 
Fischer in nephritis, experience has con- 
vinced me that it is a source of grave 
danger and, if possible, graver suffering to 
patients who can often expect from the 
physician little more than some relief from 
pain. Yet even in nephritis there is at pres- 
ent no reason to avoid the proper use of al- 
kali. In fact, I have never known a kidney 
to be unable to excrete a small excess of it, 
and I think that we may therefore always 


SCIENCE 83 


undertake the administration of soda ac- 
cording to the rule above laid down, with 
the conviction that when the quantity of 
sodium bicarbonate in the body is below 
normal, no harm is to be expected from the 
action of sodium bicarbonate. 

Finally, if I may be permitted to express 
as a precept my own conclusion of the 
bearing of all these intricate facts upon 
medical practise, it is as follows: The duty 
of the physician is to discover that the 
quantity of sodium bicarbonate in the 
blood is diminished, to restore that quan- 
tity to normal, and to hold it there. But 
while restoring it, he must never increase 
the quantity above normal. Thus found- 
ing practise upon exact knowledge, upon 
theory fully confirmed, and upon an under- 
standing, however imperfect, of the organi- 
zation of allthe manifold processes of meta- 
olism, he may hope sometimes to block a 
cycle of changes leading to final disinte- 
gration, and perhaps more often to alle- 
viate discomfort and pain. 


L. J. Henprerson 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
THE IRON INDUSTRY 

ABNORMAL conditions prevailed in the iron 
industry during the first half of 1917, mainly 
on account of the war in Europe. At the 
beginning of the year, when pig iron was 
being made at the average rate of about 102,- 
000 gross tons daily, the blast furnaces were 
operated at slightly reduced capacity, accord- 
ing to E. F. Burchard, of the Geological 
Survey. This rate dropped to less than 95,000 
tons daily in February, but in March the rate 
rose to 105,000 tons daily, and in April and 
May it stood at more than 110,000 tons, com- 
pared with the maximum rate of 113,000 tons 
in October, 1916. 

The prospective ° blast-furnace capacity 
seems not to have kept pace with the demand, 
however, as is indicated by the enormous in- 


84 SCIENCE 


creases in price, especially since the United 
States entered the war. 

The total output of coke and anthracite 
pig iron in the first five months of 1917 was 
about 15,800,000 gross tons, compared with 
about 16,175,000 tons during the correspond- 
ing period of 1916, a decrease of about 2 
per cent. 

The quantity of iron ore from mines in 
the Lake Superior region shipped from upper 
Lake ports from January 1 to June 1, 1917, 
was about 6,500,000 gross tons, compared with 
slightly more than 10,100,000 tons for the cor- 
responding five months of 1916, a decrease of 
about 3,600,000 tons, or more than 35 per cent. 
This apparently large decrease in ore ship- 
ments from the principal producing region 
was not due to inability to mine ore but 
largely to the belated opening of Lake traftic 
because of ice blockades and to many ore- 
carrying boats having been put out of com- 
mission through accidents. 

Plans are being made by committees of the 
Council of National Defense to increase ship- 
ments of iron ore, coal and coke during the 
remainder of the season through cooperative 
methods, and possibly the June shipments will 
nearly equal those of June, 1916. In the 
meantime the blast furnaces have been draw- 
ing on large stocks of ore at lower Lake ports 
in order to offset the deficiency in upper Lake 
shipments. Deferred shipments of coke and 
other causes of traffic congestion have also re- 
tarded operations at some furnaces. 

Prices of pig iron at western Pennsylvania 
furnaces have advanced since January 1, 1917, 
61 to 77 per cent. and since a year ago 134 to 
200 per cent. On July 3, 1917, basic iron was 
quoted at Valley furnaces at $52 a ton, Bes- 
semer iron at Pittsburgh at $57.95, and No. 2 
foundry iron at $55, while at Birmingham, 
Ala., foundry iron, which one year ago sold 
at $14 brought $47 a ton. Low-phosphorus 
iron has been quoted at $70 to $80 a ton. 
Feverish buying of pig iron by private con- 
sumers who were endeavoring to provide for 
their present needs, as well as for their needs 
far into 1918, has caused much of the recent 
increase in price. The extent of the govern- 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1178 


ment’s war needs for steel is not yet defined, 
but increasing. Orders are being placed 
slowly, however, and they should not inter- 
fere seriously with deliveries of steel to private 
consumers. As the government is not com- 
peting in price it would seem that there may 
be at least some warrant for belief that prices 
may eventually adjust themselves without need 
for further great inflation. 


METEOROLOGY AND AERONAUTICAL 
ENGINEERING? 


Introductory: Importance of meteorology in 
aviation; aircraft and weather in war: (a) 
general climate; (b) weather and weather 
forecasts: military field meteorological serv- 
ices. 

The Atmosphere: Composition; height; 
“troposphere” and “stratosphere”: general 
characteristics of each. 

Temperatures in the Free Air: Vertical 
temperature gradients; temperatures at vari- 
ous heights; inversions; stable and unstable 
conditions in relation to flying. 

Pressure: Importance; comparison with 
water; decrease with altitude; physiological 
effects of diminished pressure; measurement; 
mercurial and aneroid barometers and baro- 
graphs: use, errors, corrections; determination 
of altitudes by means of barometers; isobars; 
pressure gradients. 

The Wind in Relation to Pressure at 
Earth’s Surface: Wind direction; deflection 
of winds from gradient: earth’s rotation and 
friction; cyclonic and anticyclonic wind sys- 
tems; “gradient wind;” Buys Ballot’s Law; 
isobaric types. Wind velocity; general rela- 
tion to gradient; Beaufort Scale and its 
equivalents in force and in velocity in miles 
an hour; anemometers; Robinson and Dines; 
gustiness of wind. 

Conditions of the Atmosphere Affecting 
Aviation: General and Local; (a) general air 
movements, essentially horizontal; atmospheric 

1 Syllabus of ten lectures on Meteorology given 
in the course in aeronautical engineering at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in coopera- 
tion with Harvard University, by Robert De C. 
Ward, professor of climatology, Harvard Univer- 
sity. 


JuLy 27, 1917] 


layers and waves; (b) local convectional cur- 
rents, essentially vertical, due to thermal con- 
trols: causes and conditions; (c) effects of 
topography upon air movements, combining 
both horizontal and vertical elements, due to 
mechanical controls: effects of friction, topog- 
raphy, and character of surface; vertical and 
horizontal movements in general in relation 
to flight. 

Weather Forecasting: Explanation of daily 
weather map; principles of forecasting ex- 
plained by reference to type maps, for United 
States and for Europe; general characteristics 
of cyclones and anticyclones; tracks; veloci- 
ties of progression. 

Non-Instrumental Local Forecasts: Baro- 
metric tendency; veering and backing winds; 
changes in wind velocity; weather proverbs. 

Clouds: Types; cloud classification ; methods 
of determining cloud heights and velocities, 
and results; value as weather prognostics; fair 
and wet weather clouds; fog, special con- 
sideration of cumulus and cumulo-nimbus. 

Forecasts of Wind Velocity and Direction 
Aloft: Direct observation by means of pilot 
balloons, kites and cloud movements; direc- 
tions of cloud movements in cyclonic and anti- 
cyclonic systems in the United States and in 
Europe; estimates based on surface conditions 
and on general knowledge of upper air cur- 
rents; “gradient wind;” diurnal variation in 
wind velocity and direction; changes due to 
progression of cyclones and anticyclones; wind 
and cloud directions and night flying. 

Favorable and Unfavorable Weather for 
Flying: Wind; clouds; haze, ete. 

Laboratory Work is given at Blue Hill Ob- 
servatory (10 hours) by Alexander G. McAdie, 
Abbott Lawrence Rotch, professor of meteor- 
ology, Harvard University, and director of the 
Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, Read- 
ville, Mass. 


THE DANIEL GIRAUD ELLIOT MEDAL 
AT a meeting of the council of the National 
Academy of Sciences, held June 19, 1916, the 
gift of Miss Margaret Henderson Elliot of 
$8,000 to establish a fund in memory of her 
father, Daniel Giraud Elliot, was accepted. 
This money was given to be held in trust and 


SCIENCE 85 


invested in order that there should be an in- 
come annually for a medal to be known as the 
Daniel Giraud Elliot Gold Medal, and an 
honorarium to be awarded by the National 
Academy of Sciences. 

The conditions under which the gift is to be 
administered are contained in the following 
two paragraphs of the deed of gift: 


One such medal and diploma shall be given in 
each year and they, with any unexpended balance 
of income for the year, shall be awarded by the 
said National Academy of Sciences to the author of 
such paper, essay or other work upon some branch 
of zoology or paleontology published during the 
year as in the opinion of the persons, or a major- 
ity of the persons, hereinafter appointed to be the 
judges in that regard, shall be the most meritorious 
and worthy of honor. The medal and diploma and 
surplus income shall not, however, for more than 
two years successively, be awarded for treatises 
upon any one branch of either of the sciences above 
mentioned. Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, of 
New York, the scientific director of the American 
Museum of Natural History in New York City 
and the secretary of the Smithsonian Institute at 
Washington for the time being, are appointed as 
such judges. Vacancies at any time oceurring in 
the number of the judges shall be filled by the 
council of the said National Academy of Sciences, 
and in each ease of a vacancy it is the wish of the 
said Margaret Henderson Elliot that the council 
will, if practicable, appoint to the position an 
American naturalist eminent in zoology or paleon- 
tology. 

As science is not national the medal and diploma 
and surplus income may be conferred upon nat- 
uralists of any country, and as men eminent in 
their respective lines of scientific research will act 
as judges, it is the wish of the said Margaret 
Henderson Elliot that no person acting as such 
judge shall be deemed on that account ineligible 
to receive this annual gift, and the medal, diploma 
and surplus income may in any year be awarded to 
any one of the judges, if, in the opinion of his as- 
sociates, he shall, by reason of the excellence of any 
treatise published by him during the year, be en- 
titled to receive them. 

The council of the academy has accepted the 
gift and has appointed as the three judges for 
the bestowal of the medal and honorarium: 
President Henry Fairfield Osborn, of The American 

Museum of Natural History. 

Secretary Charles D. Walcott, of the Smithsonian 


86 


Institution of Washington. 

Director Frederie A. Lucas, of The American Mu- 
seum of Natural History. 

The income from this gift to the academy 
will be sufficient to award the first medal and 
honorarium at the April meeting, 1918. Dr. 
Henry Fairfield Osborn has been designated 
by the president of the academy to act as chair- 
man. 


WESTERN AGRONOMIC WORKERS 

Tue second annual meeting of western 
agronomic workers will be held at the Wash- 
ington State Agricultural College, Pullman, 
Washington, and the University of Idaho, 
Moscow, Idaho (only nine miles apart), on 
July 31 and August 1 and 2, inclusive. The 
geographic scope of the gathering is the eleven 
western states occupying the territory from 
the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. 

The following topics will be discussed dur- 
ing the session: 

1. Where and to what extent is it possible to 
eliminate summer fallow? 

9. Rotation systems for irrigation sections. 

8. Rotation systems for coast and intermedi- 
ate sections. 

4. Rotation systems for dry land. 

5. Organic matter and nitrogen content of 
soil as affected by cropping systems. 

6. Irrigation and alkali studies. 

4". Methods and organization for supplying 
and distributing superior seed. 

8. Possible extended use of new crops and 
the production of crops in the United States 
formerly supplied from other countries. 

9. Cooperation among the states for investi- 
gating new problems. 

10. The practical application of our investi- 
gations. 

11. Better marketing, a factor for increas- 
ing food supply. 

12. Collegiate courses in agronomy. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Tue Albert medal of the Royal Society of 
Arts for the current year has been awarded to 
Orville Wright, “in recognition of the value of 
the contributions of Wilbur and Orville 
Wright to the solution of the problem of me- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1178 


chanical flight.” The report of the council 
says: “ The largest share in the honor of hav- 
ing invented the aeroplane must always be 
given to the two brothers, Wilbur and Orville 
Wright.” 

M. LectatncHe has been elected a member 
of the section of agriculture of the Paris 
Academy of Sciences, to sueceed M. Chauveau. 


Dr. Wituiam J. Mayo, of Rochester, Minn., 
has been summoned to Washington to confer 
with the government officials relative to the 
formation of a central medical staff in Wash- 
ington, the purpose of which will be to obtain 
the best medical service for American soldiers 
while in the field. 


DeEWELL GANN, JR., of the medical depart- 
ment of the University of Arkansas, secretary 
of the Arkansas Academy of Sciences, has been 
commissioned a first lieutenant in the Officers’ 
Reserve Corps, and expects assignment to a 
medical unit in France. 


Mr. Barrincton Moors, associate curator of 
woods and forestry in the American Museum 
of Natural History, has gone to France to give 
his services in a forestry regiment. 


Proressor Eviot BLacCKWELDER, of the Uni- 
versity of Illinois, is at present in California 
as a geological member of an advisory com- 
Mission appointed by the governor of Cali- 
fornia to investigate the petroleum resources 
of the state. 

Mr. Kart P. Scomt, assistant in herpetol- 
ogy in the American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, has been appointed a member of the New 
York State Food Commission. 


Tue Geographical Review gives information 
concerning field work by botanists as follows: 
Professor F. E. Clements, who has accepted a 
position in the department of botanical re- 
search of the Carnegie Institution, is in the 
west and will devote the summer largely to 
grazing problems in connection with the na- 
tional emergency. Incidentally he hopes to 
complete the task of securing material for a 
monograph he is planning to write on the bad 
lands. Dr. O. E. Jennings, of the Carnegie 
Museum of Pittsburgh, is spending the sum- 
mer in botanical exploration and collecting 


Juny 27, 1917] 


along the eastern shore of Lake Nipigon, the 
large lake in Ontario immediately north of 
Lake, some sixty miles distant. Mr. Thomas H. 
Lake, some sixty miles distant. Mr. Thomas H, 
Kearney, of the Bureau of Plant Industry of 
the U. S. Department of Agriculture, is plan- 
ning in cooperation with Dr. H. L. Shantz, of 
the U. 8. Department of Agriculture, the stud- 
ies of native vegetation as an indicator of the 
agricultural capabilities of land in the western 
states which have been in progress during the 
past five or six years. 


Proressor LAwreNcCE Martin, of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, gave instruction in 
topography at the Officers Training Camp, 
Fort Sheridan, Ill., during the last part of 
June and first part of July. 


Dr. HucH MoGuican, professor of pharm- 
acology in the Northwestern University, re- 
cently delivered an address on “ Blood Sugar 
in relation to Diabetes” before the faculty 
and students of the graduate summer quarter 
in medicine of the University of Illinois. 


Tue first appointment to one of the new 
Logan fellowships at the University of 
Chicago has been made to Professor Walter 
George Sackett, of the Agricultural Experi- 
mental Station, Fort Collins, Colorado, for 
the academic year 1917-18. These fellowships 
were recently endowed by Mr. and Mrs. Frank 
G. Logan, of Chicago, for research in experi- 
mental medicine for the purpose of discover- 
ing new methods and means of preventing and 
curing disease. 


Tue Council of the University of Leeds has 
conferred upon Colonel de Burgh Birch, O.B., 
late professor of physiology and dean of the 
faculty of medicine, the title of emeritus 
professor. 


Sir Cooper Perry, physician at, and super- 
intendent of, Guy’s Hospital, has been elected 
to the office of vice-chancellor of the Uni- 


versity of London for the year 1917-18, in. 


succession to Sir Alfred Pearce Gould. 


Sm Napier SuHaw, director of the British 
Meteorological Office, has been 
Halley lecturer for 1918, at Oxford. 


appointed 


SCIENCE 87 


Tue death is announced of H. Van Laer, 
professor of chemistry at Mons, and president 
of the Chemical Society of Belgium. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

At the meeting of the board of regents of 
the University of Texas, held on J uly 12 and 
13, President Vinson was continued as head of 
the institution, though without formal action 
to that effect on the part of the board. The 
following members of the faculty were 
dropped: Professors L. M. Keasbey, W. H. 
Mayes, W. T. Mather and A. Caswell Ellis, and 
the secretary of the university, John A. Lomax. 
Of these most had been previously mentioned 
as slated for dismissal by the governor, but 
Professor Keasbey was charged with disloyal 
utterances at the recent pacifist meeting in 
Chicago. The governor has not indicated any 
method by which the funds for the mainte- 
nance of the university may be secured, but 
the regents are making plans, on a restricted 
program, to have the institution open for work 
in the autumn. 


WE learn from Nature that the valuable col- 
lections of Arachnida, containing more than 
1,000 types, with the library, notebooks, draw- 
ings and papers in connection therewith, be- 
queathed by the late Rev. O. Pickard-Cam- 
bridge, to the University of Oxford, have been 
deposited in the University Museum and 
placed in the charge of the Hope professor of 
zoology, Professor E. B. Poulton. 


J. C. Brapiey, of Cornell University, will 
spend next year as assistant professor of ento- 
mology at the University of California. 


Frep W. Papcert, who for the past four 
years has been research fellow in oil, gas and 
gasoline in the University of Pittsburgh, has 
been appointed associate professor of chemis- 
try in the University of Oklahoma, where he 
will have charge of developing a research de- 
partment in oil, gas and gasoline. 

Harry Criiyton Gossarp, assistant professor 
of mathematics in the University of Oklahoma, 
has been appointed to a mathematical position 
in the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. 


88 SCIENCE 


Dr. Sam Fartow TRELEASE has been ap- 
pointed assistant professor of plant physiology 
in the agricultural college of the University of 
the Philippines. He sailed on July 18 and be- 
gins his work on arriving at Los Baios. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
MAN AND THE ANTHROPOIDS 


In our current scientific literature one fre- 
quently meets the assertion that man is a lin- 
eal descendant of the anthropoid apes. The 
evident implication is that the extant an- 
thropoids, orang, gibbon, gorilla and chim- 
panzee, are intended. Thus in the issue of 
“ Scrncz,” of February 23 ultimo, Professor 
Stewart Paton remarks: 

The time is rapidly passing, as Yerkes has 
pointed out, when on account of the disappearance 
of the higher apes it will be possible to trace the 
various gradations in our ancestral line. ° 


The correction of this common error lies 
all along the line of technical evolutionary 
thought from Huxley to the present, but it 
does not seem to have penetrated popular sci- 
ence. Our leading authority in this field, 
Professor Duckworth, in his “ Morphology 
and Anthropology,” Volume I, page 238, 
Second Edition, 1915, writes: 

We must conclude that the existing anthropoid 
apes, constituted as they now are, did not figure in 
the ancestral history of man. 


This should relieve our anxieties regarding 
“our ancestral line.” 

While our knowledge of the anthropoids is 
not as complete as we might wish, the whole 
of it is against the supposition of the natives 
of the Congo and of Borneo that man is 
ascended from the anthropoids or the latter 
are descended from man. The thraldom of 
morphology accounts for much _ biological 
belief both ancient and modern, but the sci- 
ence of the present puts much more weight 
on anatomy and physiology. It appears to 
be a sound principle that groups showing in- 
verse developments are not genetically related. 
Duckworth points out some of these inversions 
as regards man and the anthropoids, such 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1178 


as in dentition, in the spheno-ethmoidal angle, 
and in the spheno-maxillary angle. Metchni- 
koff, while he assumes as a hypothesis that 
man is descended from “some anthropoid 
ape,” pointed out that the present anthropoids 
have the os penis which does not appear in 
man, and that the hymen which is unique to 
the genus Homo is absent in the anthropoids. 
Several anatomists have followed Aristotle 
in holding that the hand places man in a 
distinct order, while Topinard was equally 
emphatic regarding the human foot. Ev- 
idences along these lines are supplemented 
by pre-historic archeology, as all the older 
human crania are dolichocephalic, while the 
crania of all anthropoids are extremely 
brachycephalie. 

Whether “ scientists ” are entitled to believe 
what they please or are to be guided by ob- 
servations and verifications is perhaps an open 
question. Weismann accepted generatio 
aequivoca, although he admitted “all the 
evidence is against it.” Still, many of us 
believe that a sound science and a sound ed- 
ucation demand fidelity to the facts of expe- 
rience and to those theories alone which grow 


out of them. Mattoon M. Curtis 
CLEVELAND 


A GIRDLING OF BEAN STEMS CAUSED BY. 
BACT. PHASEOLI 


Durine a field trip in Michigan in July, 
1914, the writer found a peculiar girdling of 
the stems and branches of field beans to be 
prevalent in several localities. Specimens 
were collected from Kent, Newaygo and Tus- 
cola counties. Since then specimens of this 
disease have been collected from various 
parts of the state each year. 

The disease appears at the nodes of stems 
and branches as small water-soaked spots. 
These enlarge, encircling the affected parts. 
Later these diseased areas become amber- 
colored. This girdling is usually completed 
by the time the pods are about half mature. 


‘The affected tissue is so weakened that from 


the weight of the tops the stem breaks at the 
diseased node. These signs of the disease 
may appear before any evidence of the bac- 
terial blight upon the pods. 


JULY 27, 1917] 


Inoculations into stem nodes of healthy 
plants, with a pure culture of Bact. phaseoli 
Erw. Sm. have produced typical signs of the 
disease. Plants so inoculated also showed the 
characteristic breaking at the stem node. 

Plants inoculated in a similar manner with 
cultures of species of Fusarium and Rhizoc- 
tonia isolated from platings of this diseased 
stem tissue, showed no girdling or breaking. 

It seems likely that infection results from 
the washing of bacteria from affected coty- 
ledons or leaves to the axils of the leaves, but 
the method of entry of this organism is not 
yet worked out. 

A more complete report upon this disease 
will be given at a later date. 


J. H. Muncre 
MicuHIGAN AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 


QUOTATIONS 
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY 

Tue important and impressive review of the 
rise and progress of the organic chemical in- 
dustry issued by Messrs. Levinstein, Ltd., of 
Blackley, near Manchester, and of Ellesmere 
Port, which appeared as a supplement to the 
Manchester Guardian of June 30, marks a 
welcome development of industrial enterprise. 
Even the most indifferent and ill-informed 
reader can not but be made aware, as a result 
of its perusal, of the importance of the highest 
facilities for scientific education and training, 
when in so striking a fashion he is compelled 
to realize the fruits of it in the enormous in- 
dustrial advance of Germany in all that per- 
tains to the organic chemical industries, 
whether it takes the form of artificial dye- 
stuffs, synthetic organic products, or that of 
chemico-therapeutics. The advent of the war 
quickly laid bare our serious deficiencies, not 
to say our utter poverty, in all three depart- 
ments of chemical manufacture. 

In the course of the articles, which have 
been written by men eminent in their re- 
spective fields of chemical science and its ap- 
plications, the distinction is made absolutely 
clear as between industries the development 
of which has mainly been the result of the 


SCIENCE 89 


adoption of steam power and of mechanical 
appliances, and those depending upon funda- 
mental researches of a physical and chemical 
character, such as are, to use the phrase of one 
of the writers, “built up from the depths,” 
and require, therefore, not merely the ener- 
getic business organizer and “ scientific man- 
agement,” with a view to output, but the 
highly trained scientific man capable of ap- 
preciating the discoveries of pure science and 
apt in their application to human needs. In 
this valuable review of the progress of the 
many departments of a vital industry—the 
key, indeed, to the successful prosecution of 
many allied and dependent industries—it is 
clearly revealed how remiss the nation has 
been in a true appreciation of what con- 
stitutes the firm foundation of industrial pre- 
eminence. The fault has lain not so much, 
as some of the writers seem to indicate, with 
the colleges and universities as with the indus- 
tries concerned, which have hitherto offered 
small salaries and poor prospects to the care- 
fully trained and competent science student; 
indeed, have looked upon the chemist as a 
necessary evil, to be avoided if possible. 

One of the most important articles is that 
by Dr. Levinstein, inasmuch as he carefully 
points out the. respective spheres of the uni- 
versity and the works in the effective train- 
ing of the future industrial chemist. Once 
those concerned with the successful adminis- 
tration of our industries realize the necessity 
for encouraging by a liberal payment the work 
of the efficiently trained chemist there will be 
no lack in the supply of suitable men. That 
the nation contains such men has been shown 
by the fact that the demands of this devastat- 
ing war for the supply of high explosives have 
been met with an energy and an efficiency 
which have surprised our chief enemy.— 
Nature. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


The Theory of Measurements. By Lucius 
Turtie, B.A., M.D., Philadelphia, Dr. Lu- 
cius Tuttle, Jefferson Medical College. 
1916. Pp. xiv-++ 303. Price $1.25. 

Any one who has read the reports on elemen- 


90 SCIENCE 


tary laboratory work in physics presented by 
average students must have been impressed 
frequently by the writer’s lack of familiarity 
with ordinary methods of computation and by 
his inability to draw rational conclusions re- 
grading the accuracy and significance of his 
results. Unfortunately, the instruction in these 
matters presented by many widely used labora- 
tory manuals is very inadequate and frequently 
misleading. We all admit that the primary 
object of elementary laboratory work is to put 
the student in personal touch with the facts 
and principles of physical science. But every 
experienced teacher knows that this object is 
not attainable without more or less formal 
instruction in the methods of reduction and 
interpretation of observations. Moreover, the 
student is seriously handicapped by the long- 
hand arithmetical processes taught in second- 
ary schools when greater precision and facility 
can be attained by the shortened methods of 
computation adopted by every competent phys- 
icist. 

A number of books designed to fill this gap 
by a detailed discussion of methods of com- 
putation and the theory of errors have ap- 
peared during the past few years. Dr. Tuttle’s 
“Theory of Measurements” belongs in this 
group and it meets the needs of students in 
elementary physics more adequately than any 
other text that has come to the reviewer’s 
attention. For the most part, concrete ex- 
amples are developed to illustrate general prin- 
ciples and the discussions are so clear and well 
stated that the student can hardly fail to grasp 
‘ their significance. The treatment presupposes 
no training in mathematics. beyond that 
usually required for admission to college. In 
fact capable high-school pupils should find 
little difficulty in following the discussions. 

The most important topics treated in the 
first one hundred pages of the book are as 
follows: fundamental ideas, abridged methods 
of multiplication and division, units and meas- 
urements, angles and circular functions, ac- 
curacy and the correct use of significant fig- 
ures, logarithms, computations involving small 
magnitudes, and the use of the slide rule. The 
reviewer would be inclined to place more 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1178 


emphasis on the importance of systematic 
orderliness in computation and exact specifi- 
cation of units in writing numerical results. 
But on the whole the treatment is very good 
and guards against most of the common 
errors of inexperienced computers. 

About seventy pages are devoted to a very — 
illuminating discussion of the methods of 
graphical representation and reduction of ob- 
servations, including a brief treatment of in- 
terpolation and extrapolation. The possibil- 
ity of emphasizing the significance of the 
plotted data by a suitable choice of scales is 
illustrated by numerical examples and. the 
advantages of so choosing the variables that 
the graph will be linear are pointed out.. The 
uses of logarithmic and _ semi-logarithmic 
papers are also illustrated. 4 

The remaining portion of the book deals 
with errors of observation and measurement, 
statistical methods, the determination of the 
best representative value from a series of dis- 
cordant observations, the estimation of the 
precision of direct and indirect measurements, 
and simple applications of the method of least 
squares. The formule of the theory of errors 
are not derived mathematically but their sig- 
nificance and use are very clearly explained 
and illustrated by numerical examples. 

The book is neatly printed and substantially 
bound. It should find a place in every phys- 
ical laboratory devoted to the: instruction of 
students. 

A. pEForest PaLMER 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


LITHOLOGIC EVIDENCE OF CLIMATIC 
‘PULSATIONS ~ 


Tue geologic evidences of changes of cli- 
maté, as is well known, are numerous and 
incontrovertible, particularly as regards ex- 
tremes of temperature and their accompany- 
ing variations of flora and fauna. The cli- 
matic changes which have produced the most 
widespread changes in life forms, as well as 
physiographic features, have been the ones 
most clearly recognized and easily studied. 
These changes are known to have been pulsa- 
tory or periodic, but with periods or cycles 


JuLY 27, 1917] 


enduring for possibly many thousands of 
years. 

In modern times, and in very recent geo- 
logic times as well, there have been minor fluc- 
tuations or pulsations in climate in various 
parts of the earth, as ably demonstrated by 
Briickner, Huntington and others. The 
“ Briickner cycle,’ about thirty-five years in 
length, illustrates one type of pulsation. 
Hann, Melldrum, Douglass, and others have 
observed an eleven-year period to be about the 
average length of time between the maxima 
of wet or dry conditions. While the length 
of the cycles or periods may vary, the com- 
binations of these shorter cycles of climatic 
changes are considered as making up the 
grand or climatic eycles, which are the ones 
best known in geology. 

If the pulsatory theory of climatic change 
is a true interpretation of the observed facts 
of recent times, as seems very probable, then 
one may naturally inquire if similar pulsa- 
tions or minor changes in climate have not 
occurred in the geologic past. If they have, 
what evidence, if any, is to be found in the 
rocks? The work of Barrell, Sayles, Case 
and others, in their studies of sedimentation, 
seems to definitely correlate climatic fluctua- 
tions with various phases of erosion and 
deposition. It may be of interest to submit 
some facts which may prove to be additional 
evidence of climatic pulsations, as afforded 
by certain “sedimentary ” rocks. 

The writer, in the course of a study of the 
sandstone formatioris in the foothills south- 
west of Fort Collins, in northern: Colorado, 
came to the conclusion that much of this 
sandstone is of subaerial, anid not subaqueous, 
origin. The sandstones of this region are 
commonly referred to as “ Red Beds.” The 
stratigraphic names are the Lyons, and the 
Lykins formations. 

In the most prominent ridge of the Lykins 
outcrop are located a number of quarries from 
which flagging and building stone have been 
taken for many years. One prominent 
feature of much of this stone is its variegated 
laminations. These are usually alternate 
layers of white: and brown sands, although 


SCIENCE 91 


other colors are occasionally found. These 
layers vary in thickness from about 0.5 mm. 
to 30 or 40 mm. In a number of eases the ° 
white layers are much thicker than the brown, 
while in many other cases the two kinds of 
layers are nearly equal in thickness. Also, 
the brown layers are often thicker than the 
white. Very thin alternate layers often 
occur, and there are usually many of these in 
a group when they do occur. 

Examination of the character of typical 
samples from these layers shows, essentially, 
the following facts: 

1. The white layers are composed almost 


“wholly of very well rounded grains of white 


quartz, with scattered specks of iron oxide; 
the quartz grains are nearly uniform in size, 
the largest being rarely over 1 mm. in di- 
ameter, and the smallest about 0.8 mm. in 
diameter; the white layers are almost wholly 
free of any colored cement, and of angular or 
even subangular grains; many of the grains 
are pitted; wind ripples are frequently found 
at the top of a white layer, on exposed bedding 
planes. 

2. The brown layers are composed almost 
wholly of angular and subangular grains of 
many different sizes, from very small to over 
1 mm. in diameter; comparatively few rounded 
grains are present; the color is due to a coat- 
ing of iron oxide on most of the grains. 

These differently colored layers of sand, 
having such markedly different character- 
istics, would seem to point clearly to rather 
different origins. The factors and forces con- 
tributing to their formation can hardly be 
said to be identical. The material of the’ 
white layers suggests rounding, pitting, sort- 
ing, and deposition by the wind. The ma- 
terial of the brown layers has evidently been 
water-worn and water-borne, coming from a 
comparatively distant -region. The occur- 
rence of these different layers with their im- 
plied differences in origin and deposition may 
well suggest something of the history of this 
region, especially in regard to the extent and 
frequency of rainfall. 

As these rocks contain no fossils, and in 
their general lithological character point to 


92 SCIENCE 


deposition by the wind, one may at least ten- 
tatively conclude that the climate of this 
region was rather arid at the time the sands 
composing these rocks were put in place by 
the forces of nature. This part of the con- 
tinent was evidently a portion of the great 
inland desert which is thought to have existed 
in Triassic times. 

It seems probable that at one season this 
particular locality was swept by winds carry- 
ing a burden of well-worn quartz grains, 
which was dropped when the force of the 
wind was checked. When the wind rose 
again, some of this sand was doubtless moved 
farther on, but a little remained to add to the 
accumulating layers beneath. At another 
season, the surface of this wind-laid sand was 
covered by a deposit of entirely different ma- 
terial, probably brought from some neighbor- 
ing zone of alluviation by torrential rains. 
When the water had flowed on, or evaporated, 
the red-brown material became exposed to the 
winds, part of it was doubtless swept away, 
but some was covered with desert sand which 
continued to accumulate until the next 
freshet sent more of the red-brown sediment 
into the depression in the zone of dunes. 
That this was approximately the mode of 
deposition seems likely, when we find the one 
layer to be characteristically wind-borne, and 
the other water-borne, when all the accom- 
panying facts are considered, and comparison 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1178 


is made with sand deposits that are being 
formed at the present time. 

The study of this sandstone takes on an 
added interest if we note further that the 
frequency of recurrence of the brown or white 
layers often shows a striking regularity or 
periodicity. Where we find fairly broad 
white bands, with very thin brown layers 
alternating, it would seem that a relatively 
dry season is indicated. On the other hand, 
when the brown layers are very numerous and 
close together, it apparently points to fre- 
quent rains, with comparatively little deposi- 
tion of the white sands by the wind. In the 
solid rock wall, as observed in the quarries, 
one can note the more or less regular recur- 
rence of the wider bands of white, and if one 
could be sure that here a wide white band 
and one or more narrow brown bands repre- 
sented the deposit of an arid year, one could 
determine the time required to produce a 
given thickness of this rock and also draw 
some conclusion as to the relative aridity of 
a given year or a series of years. But one 
can not at present state, beyond reasonable 
limits, the amounts of either kind of material 
that might be deposited in a year, and there- 
fore one may not yet say definitely how long 
it took for a given stratum to be formed, or 
whether the aridity indicated by a white band 
corresponds to one ‘season or to several. It 
may be interesting to note, however, that the 
recurrence of groups of brown layers with a 


Quarry ‘‘A’’ 
Thickness of White Layers, in Mm., Bottom to Top 
White Layer == 
Section I. Section IT. 

Fifteenth........ 22 | 
Fourteenth...... 2 14 (top) 
Thirteenth...... 5 13 
Twelfth........... 5 12 
Eleventh........ 17 15 8 
Mlentheeeesessos Ul 8 9 
Nin theessenee sees 4 6 22 8 82 
Fightiv........... 10 8 15 7 25 
Seventh. soll uel} 8 4 7 8 28 22 
Sixth... cali) ALO) 8 11 15 10 20 22 15) 
JR yb Neenenrcencocoe 5 10 3 17 10 15 15 15 
Hlourthaeesseeess 5 11 12 7 8 13 20 18 
bird eeeyseeeeeee 5 10 16 5 5 20 16 21 6 (top) 
Second... 10 8 4 6 7 25 18 15 12 
First..............| 15(B) (15) (22) | (15) (22) 25(B) | (82) (22) (16) 


Juuy 27, 1917] 


corresponding decrease in thickness of the 
white layers is found, on the average, follow- 
ing every tenth or eleventh layer. 

This recurrence, as observed at a number 
of places on the quarry walls, as well as on 
detached fragments, ranges from the sixth to 
the fifteenth white layer. For example, at 
one place (Quarry “A,’ Section I.) the 
writer measured the thickness of the series of 
white layers, the thickest layers recurring as 
follows: seventh, eleventh (from and includ- 
ing the seventh), fifth (or fifteenth from the 
seventh), eleventh, ninth, fourteenth. At 
Section II., Quarry “A,” the thickest white 
layers recur as follows: ninth, seventh, sixth. 


SCIENCE 


93 


1, Section I., Quarry “A,’ to the top of 
column 4, same section, there are a total of 
33 white layers. In the section from Quarry 
“ B,” from the layer at the top of column 4 
to the top of column 7, there are 34 white 
layers; from the top of column 7 to the top 
of column 11, there are 34 white layers. Like- 
wise, from the top of column 2 to the top of 
column 6 there are 40 white layers; from the 
top of column 6 to the top of column 10 there 
are 38 white layers. 

It may be that it is just by chance that 
these layers are arranged in this way, yet the 
agreement with known climatic pulsations is 
so striking as to make one ask whether it is 


Quarry ‘‘B,’’ Section I 


White Layer | Thickness of White Layers, in Mm., Bottom to Top 
Fifteenth......... 11 
Fourteenth...... 3 
Thirteenth ...... 2 10 
Twelfth........... 15 9 11 4 
Eleventh.. 5 15 5 7 7 
Tenth.... 6 6 13 4 5 14 9 6 
Ninth.... 3 3 6 5 6 8 10 5 
Eighth..... 5 3 4 10 8 10 10 5 
Seventh.. 4 2 10 15 10 5 7 8 7 6 (top) 
Sixth..... 4 2 9 15 10 8 3 6 20 a 13 
ifthyeccss 5 5 10 18 4 4 9 10 6 5 13 
Fourth 7 4 6 5 2 15 12 11 5 7 10 
Third..... 6 4 4 10 3 15 10 6 5 6 10 
Second Sal als 5 3 3 5 10 5 0 S 13 8 
First. .| 10(B)| (6) | (25) | (28) | (45) | (45) | (22) | (14) | (22) | (20) | (20) 


At another place (Quarry “B”), about a 
quarter of a mile away, the following periods 
were observed: tenth, twelfth, tenth, seventh, 
eleventh, fifteenth, tenth, twelfth, sixth, thir- 
teenth, sixth. These three sections are about 
2.5, 2 and 4 feet in thickness, respectively. 
The details of these measurements are shown 
in the tables above. On about 18 quarried 
fragments it was found that on the average 
every eighth to twelfth white layer was thicker 
than those between. On several such frag- 
ments, this recurrence was observed as fol- 
lows: eleventh; tenth; eleventh and following 
ninth; eighth; ninth and following eleventh; 
tenth. 

Another striking periodicity may be noticed 
in the tables. These periods correspond 
rather well to the average number of years in 
the Briickner cycle, as from the top of column 


just chance after all, or a result of natural 
laws. It is quite evident that the recurrence 
of layers of a certain character is periodic. 
Whether one can in this manner safely assign 
a limit to the yearly deposits seems question- 
able, but one may certainly inquire into the 
probability of deducing from a study of these 
variegated sandstones the conclusion that at 
the time of their formation the climatic con- 
ditions, especially with reference to rainfall, 
were fluctuating much as they have been 
within recent times. 

It would be distinctly interesting to know 
whether geologists can find, in more exact and 
complete studies, further evidence of pulsa- 
tory changes of climate haying been recorded 
in the clastic rocks. C. E. Vai 

CoLoraDO AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, 

Fort CoLiLins 


94 SCIENCE 


KANSAS CITY MEETING OF THE AMER- 
ICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 

THE fifty-fourth meeting of the American Chem- 
ical Society was held at Hotel Muehleback, Kan- 
sas City, Kansas, from April 10 to April 14, 1917. 
The general program was carried out under the 
able leadership of Professor Julius Stieglitz, presi- 
dent of the society, and Dr. Charles L. Parsons, 
secretary, while the various divisions were pre- 
sided over by Charles L. Alsberg, E. H. S. Bailey, 
J. E. Breckinridge, J. R. Bailey, H. E. Howe, H. P. 
Talbot, L. F. Kebler and T. J. Bryan. 

During the session the usual order of business 
was carried out, consisting of meetings of the 
council, inspection of plants, with general and pub- 
lic sessions. A complimentary smoker and sub- 
scription banquet added to the diversion of the 
week. i 

On Wednesday morning, April 11, addresses of 
welcome were given by Hon. George H. Edwards, 
mayor of Kansas City, and by Dr. Frank Strong, 
chancellor of the University of Kansas. Response 
to these addresses was made by President Julius 
Stieglitz. Mr. Arthur J. Boynton gave a very in- 
teresting paper on the Economic resources of the 
Kansas City zone. 

Wednesday afternoon was given over to a pub- 
lic session, of which the program was as follows: 


PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS 
H. P. Cady, Chairman 


The geology of the mid-continent oil and gas fields: 
RAYMOND C. Moore. 

Variations in the composition of gases of the mid- 
continent field: H. C. AuLEN and E. E. Lyper. 

Helium and associated elements in Kansas natural 
gases: C. W. SEIBEL. 

Some experiences in the use of oxy-acteylene weld- 
ing in long distance natural gas transportation: 
E. P. FISHER. 

The cracking of petroleum in the liquid phase: 
Roy Cross. 

One billion gallons of synthetic gasolene in 1918: 
WALTER F. RITTMAN. 

The chemical work of the petroleum division of the 
Bureau of Mines: Harry H. Hiuu. 

Thursday morning was given over to a sym- 
posium on the chemistry and metallurgy of zine, 
Professor John Johnson presiding. The remainder 
of the day and Friday were occupied with the 
meetings of the divisions. 

The following abstracts of papers presented 
have been prepared by the authors for publication 
in SCIENCE: 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1178 


DIVISION OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY 
C. L. Alsberg, Chairman 
I. K. Phelps, Secretary 
The toxicity of galactose and mannose for 
green plants and the antagonistic action of other 
sugars toward these: LrEwis KNupson. The 
toxicity of galactose to the growth of Pisum 
arvense L. and to Triticum sativum L. was in- 
hibited by glucose or saccharose, the former be- 
ing slightly more effective than the latter. But 
levulose, arabinose, maltose and raffinose do not 
inhibit the toxicity of galactose, although in pres- 
ence of levulose the primary root may continue its 
growth to a limited extent It was found that 
0.0125 mol. galactose was as toxic as 0.025 mol, the 
other sugars being used at a concentration of 0.025. 
Mannose had a toxie effect similar to galactose. 
Glucose or saccharose inhibited the toxicity of 
mannose, 


The effect of three annual applications of boron 
on wheat: F. C. Cook and J. B. Wiuson. Borax 
and colemanite were applied to horse manure in 
amounts sufficient to act as a fly larvicide. The 
manure was applied to the same plats at the rate 
of 20 tons per acre for three consecutive years and 
wheat was grown on the plats each year at Arling- 
ton, Va. A borax, a colemanite, a manured control 
and an unmanured control plat were used. It is 
calculated that the upper 6 inches of soil of the 
borax plat received .0088 per cent. H,BO; the first 
year and .0022 per cent. the second and third 
years. The colemanite plat likewise received .0029 
per cent. H,;BO;. Borax reduced the yield of 
grain 10 per cent. in 1914 and 1915, colemanite had 
little effect. In 1916 the yields from all four plats 
were low, but the borax plat gave the largest yield. 
The only apparent injury to the wheat was the 
first season on the plat receiving the large amount 
of borax. There were no evidences of any cumu- 
lative action of boron in the soil. 

The after-ripening of fruits: EF. W. Munciz and 
W. P. JAMES, Illinois Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tion, Department of Horticulture. Attempts to 
preserve peaches by encasing with hard paraffin 
were unsuccessful, since considerable decomposi- 
tion resulted after two months, with a marked pro- 
duction of alcohol and an intensely bitter taste. 
The color, however, remained normal, and the 
skeleton of the fruit was not broken down. This 
last condition is similar to that described for other 
fruits kept in an atmosphere of CO, by other work- 
ers and is apparently due to an accumulation of 
carbon dioxide within and about the fruit. 


JULY 27, 1917] 


Peaches decomposed rapidly about the spot where 
an injection of invertase had been made, or in a 
solution of invertase. Similar experiments are in 
progress with apples, in an effort to explain the 
discrepaney between the decrease in sucrose con- 
tent of apples during ripening found by Bigelow, 
Gore and Howard and the absence of invertase 
from the apples studied by Thatcher. Flesh and 
epidermis of peaches kept in an atmosphere of O, 
for two months became golden yellow, but turned 
brown quickly on exposure to air. The flesh was 
soft, contained a little alcohol, and had an insipid 
taste. Quantitative study of the respiration of 
apples in an atmosphere of oxygen, showed that 
the rate is higher under this condition than in an 
atmosphere of air. 

Quantitative determination of carbohydrates in 
plant tissues: F. W. Munoiz and D. T. ENGLIs. 
If fresh plant tissue is plunged into warm alcohol 
and after standing two weeks, the aleohol removed 
by decantation and expression before extraction 
with hot alcohol, a large percentage of the sugar 
(96 per cent. in one experiment) is removed and 
loss of fructose by hot extraction largely avoided. 
Mercurie nitrate is more satisfactory to use than 
the acetate and 10 per cent. phosphotungstic acid 
than the more concentrated solution used by them. 
Asparagin also is quantitatively removed from so- 
lution by mercuric nitrate provided the solution is 
made just alkaline to litmus with sodium hydrox- 
ide or carbonate after addition of the mercuric 
salt, then just acid with a few drops of weak acid. 
No mereurie oxide is precipitated by such a pro- 
cedure. These reagents, especially the phospho- 
tungstie acid, invert sucrose so quickly that they 
are not applicable to the determination of a mix- 
ture of sucrose, glucose and fructose, excepting 
when sucrose has been previously determined. This 
may be done by using basic lead acetate as the 
clearing agent, by the polarimetric method if the 
inversion is made with invertase or solution again 
made neutral after use of acid. When the value 
for sucrose is known, the original solution par- 
tially cleared with SO,-free alumina cream is in- 
verted with invertase, then nitrogenous impurities 
removed with mercurie nitrate and phosphotungstic 
acid and total glucose and fructose determined. 
Subtraction of value for sucrose leaves the values 
for glucose and fructose present in the original 
solution. 

A physical and chemical study of the kafir ker- 
nel: GEORGE L. BIDWELL. Dwarf, black-hulled, 
white kafir kernels were separated by hand into 
bran, germ and endosperm. These parts were 


SCIENCE 95 


analyzed and compared to corresponding parts of 
corn and were found to resemble them closely. In 
the bran a wax-like substance was found. The 
ether extract of the germ was found to be liquid. 
The endosperm yielded an ether extract not yet 
examined. The coloring matter in this sample 
does not seem to be associated with tannin. The 
endosperm may be separated into starchy and 
horny parts, the former having less protein than 
the latter. 


Oil from the avocado: H. 8. Bamry and L. B. 
Burnett. The production of the avocado or alli- 
gator pear in the United States is increasing so 
rapidly that there is a possibility of large quanti- 
ties of this fruit being available as a source of oil. 
The fruit when fully ripe contains approximately 
80 per cent. of moisture and the dried material 
about 50 per cent. of oil. So far no method has 
been found by which the oil can be extracted from 
the fruit in a sweet, edible condition, and as the 
oil when extracted with ether and the solvent re- 
moved at low temperature in vacuum has a bitter 
taste, it is very doubtful whether the oil as it ex- 
ists in the fresh fruit itself is palatable if sepa- 
rated from the accompanying pulp. By means of 
the usual hydrogenation process it is compara- 
tively easy to convert either the expressed oil or 
that extracted by solvents into a solid, white, 
tasteless, fat which resembles in its physical prop- 
erties ordinary hydrogenated cottonseed oil. 


Oil from the Stillingia sebefera: H. S. BamEy 
and L. B. Burnerr. The fruit of the semi-trop- 
jeal tree Stillingia sebefera, which grows in China 
and has been introduced into some of the southern 
states of this country, produces two glycerides. 
The exterior of the seed is covered with a wax-like 
substance from which is derived the Chinese 
vegetable tallow of commerce. The interior of the 
seed contains an oil usually known as stillingia oil. 
Certain statements in the literature indicate that 
this oil even in China is not used for food purposes 
and probably has poisonous properties. The con- 
stants of these oils have been determined, and ex- 
periments made by Dr. William Salant, of the Bu- 
reau of Chemistry, in feeding rabbits with both 
the expressed and extracted oils, So far as the 
results obtained with the small amount of ma- 
terial available are conclusive, it appears that 
stillingia oil is not toxie and has practically the 
same effect as other vegetable oils. 

A noteworthy effect of bromides upon the action 
of malt amylase: ArTHUR W. THomasS. The ac- 
tion of sodium and potassium bromide upon malt 
amylase was found_to be inhibitory when present 


96 


in small amounts, but when these salts were pres- 
ent in greater concentration an activating action 
was obtained. This action was found when highly 
purified Lintner soluble starch and thrice repuri- 
fied bromides were used. 


Availability of the energy of food for growth: 
C. Rosert Mouton, Missouri Agricultural Experi- 
ment Station. Three beef steers were subjected to 
digestion trials and maintenance trials. One was 
slaughtered as a check. The other two were fat- 
tened, one to full prime condition and the other to 
forty or fifty days under prime. All were analyzed. 
From the analysis the composition of the animals 
was determined and the composition of the gain. 
From the feed records and analyses the nutrients 
consumed above maintenance were determined. 
The energy equivalent of the flesh gained and of 
the feed consumed above maintenance was caleu- 
lated. The two fattened steers saved in flesh 
gained 53.39 and 52.49 per cent. of the metabo- 
lizable energy consumed aboye maintenance. For 
similar conditions and a similar ration Armsby 
shows about 55 per cent. availability. This is an 
experimental verification of his calorimetric work. 

Investigation of the Kjeldahl method for de- 
termining nitrogen; the influence of reagents and 
apparatus on accuracy: I. K. PHELps and H. W. 
Daupt. As a result of many experiments the con- 
clusion was reached that in all routine work in- 
volving determinations by the Kjeldahl method it 
is necessary to deduct from the result obtained 
the amount corresponding to the nitrogen con- 
tributed by reagents and apparatus in use in the 
particular experiments. It is obvious that under 
less carefully controlled conditions in routine work 
the errors, which are here called inappreciable, will 
become large enough to seriously effect the accu- 
racy of the results obtained. 


A study of the estimation of fat in condensed 
milk and milk powder: C. H. BIESTERFELD and O. L. 
Evenson. The Roese-Gottlieb method as applied 
to condensed milk and milk powder gives low re- 
sults, the average error in the case of condensed 
milk being 0.04 per cent. The residual fat is ob- 
tained by treating the liquid left after three ex- 
tractions by the Roese-Gottlieb procedure with 
acetic acid, heating and reextracting with ethyl 
and petroleum ethers. A method also is described 
which permits the recovery and repeated use of the 
solvents, 


The Schneyer method for the determination of 
lactic acid in urine: Mary E. Maver. The 
Schneyer method for the quantitative determina- 
tion of lactic acid in urine is not applicable, par- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von, XLVI. No. 1178 


ticularly under pathological conditions. The 
method is based on the production of CO when the 
ether extract of urine is treated with H.SO,. 
Hippuric acid is present in the ether extract and 
does yield- CO. Other substances yielding CO, 
such as oxalic and citric acid, do not enter the 
ether extract by this method. Citric acid is pres- 
ent in normal urine. The method is of unques- 
tionable value in indicating the excretion of sub- 
stances under pathological conditions which belong 
to a group of substances capable of yielding CO 
under the conditions of the experiment. 


On the optimum reaction for tryptic proteolysis: 
J. H. Lone and Mary Huu. It has generally 
been assumed that tryptic digestion is possible in 
a neutral or slightly alkaline medium only, but 
some recent investigations suggest that these lim- 
its are too narrow. Employing fibrin as a sub- 
strate, the authors have found the optimum point 
at a hydrogen ion concentration between 10-8 and 
5 X 10-9, which is in agreement with the results of 
Michaelis and Davidsohn for a fibrin peptone sub- 
strate. The authors have found, however, that for 
casein as a substrate the optimum point is dis- 
tinetly higher, and within the limits 3 x 10-6 and 
5 x 10-7. It is probable that for each type of 
protein there is a distinct range for the optimum 
activity and that casein may not be the only pro- 
tein which is changed readily on the acid side of. 
neutrality. Investigations on other proteins are 
in progress. 

On the normal reaction of the intestinal tract: 
J. H. Lone and FREDERICK FENGER. Employing 
the electrometric method of estimation the au- 
thors have studied the reaction of the small intes- 
tines of a number of animals and also of man. 
Misled by the false interpretation of the results of 
indicator tests certain writers have reached wrong 
conclusions regarding the normal or usual reac- 
tion between the pylorus and the lower end of the 
ileum. In the case of animals the whole intestine 
has been removed immediately after death, tied 
into three loops and each loop investigated sepa- 
rately. In some eases the reaction has been found 
to be acid throughout and from 1 to 3 xX 10-7. 
Alkaline reaction seems to be less common than 
acid, and far from the strength once assumed for 
the duodenum with its alkaline ‘‘zone.’’ In the 
human subject material has been secured from 
points well below the duodenum by aid of Rehfuss 
tubes. An acid reaction is frequently noted here 
and persisting more frequently than the tempo- 
rary alkalinity following the entrance of bile and 
the pancreatic fluids 


Juy 27, 1917] 


Studies of the gastric residuum. No. III. The 
relation of total phosphorus to acidity: CHESTER 
C. Fow er, Iowa State College. In view of re- 
cent support of a modification of Maley’s hypothe- 
sis concerning gastrie hydrochlorie acid formation 
and a suggestion of approximate proportionality 
which might be expected to occur between the 
acidity of the juice and its acid calcium phos- 
phate, it seemed desirable to study phosphorus and 
phosphorus partition of the gastric residuum. 
Thus fifty-two samples from apparently normal 
women were obtained and individually analyzed 
for total phosphorus. The conclusions follow: 
(1) Total phosphorus was not proportional to total 
or free acidity. (2) The minimum P.O, content 
was 6.48 mgr. per 100 e.c. and the maximum was 
30.03 mgr. (3) About 58 per cent. of the samples 
fell within the range P.O, equivalent to 12-18 
mgr., while about 21 per cent. lie above and 21 
per cent. below these values. (4) A tendency 
toward a constant P.O, content was shown in in- 
dividuals who were examined more than once. 
(5) The average P.O, content was 15.66 mgr. In 
a previous investigation made upon a composite 
residuum sample obtained from seventy men, a 
value of 12.16 mgr of P.O, per 100 e.c. of re- 
siduum was obtained. 


The utilization of carbohydrate on a relatively 
high and low cereal dict: ZELMA ZENTMIRE and 
CHESTER C. FowLer. The object of the study was 
to determine any differences in the utilization of 
cereal protein and carbohydrate in thoroughly 
cooked eream of wheat when ingested in varying 
amounts. The data on protein utilization will be 
presented in a later paper. The experiment was 
divided into two periods of five days each with 
relatively high and low amounts of cereal in the 
diet; and two periods of two days each of nitrogen- 
free diet of relatively low and high starch con- 
tent. Casein and milk were added to the cereal 
diets and butter fat and sucrose to all diets. 
Foods and feces were weighed and analyzed. The 
total carbohydrate utilization for each of the four 
periods was over 99 per cent. If the utilization of 
sucrose and milk sugar is taken as 100 per cent., 
the utilization of the starch and cereal carbohy- 
drate is about 98 per cent. 

The nature of the inosite phosphoric acids of 
some important feeding materials: J. B. RATHER, 
Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station. An 
inosite phosphoric acid has been separated from 
wheat bran corresponding in composition to the 
formula C,.H,,0..P,, the formula previously pro- 


posed for this substance by the writer. It corre- 


SCIENCE 


97 


sponds equally as well to the formula 
C,H,(OH) (H.PO,)., 


inosite pentaphosphorie acid. The latter formula, 
almost exactly one half of the first formula, and 
that of a theoretically possible compound is 
adopted as the more desirable. The principal ino- 
site phosphoric acid of a sample of corn was found 
to be inosite pentaphosphorie acid, and neither ino- 
site hexaphosphorie acid, nor the acid C,H,P.O,. 
The principal organic phosphoric acid of a sample 
of kafir corn was found to be inosite pentaphos- 
phorie acid. 

The formation of ester hydrolyzing substances 
by the action of alkali on casein: FLORENCE HUL- 
TON FRANKEL. Harriman Research Laboratory, 
Roosevelt Hospital, New York. The action of 
alkali on casein causes the formation of ester 
hydrolyzing substances, the formation of which is 
practically independent of the concentration of 
alkali, time of standing and temperature of stand- 
ing. The substance is more active in very slightly 
alkaline solution (10-8-10-1°) and loses a part of 
its activity on boiling. It can be entirely removed 
by long dialyzing. The action was tried on vari- 
ous esters. 

Factors influencing the proteolytic activity of 
papain: EpwarpD M. FRANKEL. Papain may be 
purified by precipitation from aqueous solution 
with acetone or ethyl alcohol. The ferment is in- 
activated by acids and alkalis in concentrations 
from 0.02 normal upwards. The enzyme is active 
between hydrogen ion concentrations 10-2 and 
10-9, the optimum being at 10-5, calorimetric 
standards being used throughout. The quantita- 
tive relations of the enzyme and substrate have a 
marked effect on the extent of proteolysis, inereas- 
ing quantities of either component causing an in- 
crease up to a certain point after which further 
additions have little effect. In the presence of 
HCN the proteolytic activity of papain is largely 
inereased the same general relations between 
enzyme and substrate holding. Inereasing the 
amount of HCN causes increased proteolysis up to 
a certain point, after which further addition caused 
no marked change. The same hydrogen ion opti- 
mum holds for papain in the presence of HCN as in 
its absence. HCN will cause further proteolysis in 
enzyme substrate mixtures that are apparently in 
equilibrium. 

Variations in the chemical composition of alfalfa 
at different stages of growth: H. 8. GrinpLEy and 
H. C. Ecxstery. In connection with inyestiga- 
tions which the Illinois Experiment Station is ma- 


98 SCIENCE 


king to determine the value of forage crops for the 
growth of farm animals, it became necessary to 
make complete chemical analyses of young grow- 
ing grasses and legumes. The first young forage 
crop to study was that of alfalfa. The work in- 
cludes the determination of the approximate com- 
position, the forms of non-protein nitrogen, and 
the forms of protein nitrogen in the grasses and 
legumes. The results so far obtained with alfalfa 
lead in general to the following conclusions: First, 
that young alfalfa is very rich in crude protein; 
second, that as alfalfa grows older, there is a 
marked increase in the percentage of nitrogen free 
extract and crude fiber and a marked decrease in 
the crude protein of the water-free substance of 
the plant; third, it seems probable that the 
marked efficiency of young growing pasture grasses 
is due (a) to their high content of crude protein 
(b) to their high content of mineral constituents 
and (c) to the low content of crude fiber. 


Physical and chemical constants of some Ameri- 
can tomato seed oils: H. 8. BatuEy and L. B. Bur- 
NneTT. A number of tomato-seed oils have been 
made from seeds collected at various tomato pulp 
factories in Indiana and Maryland and the phys- 
ical and chemical constants of these oils and their 
fatty acids determined. One point of particular 
interest in connection with the tomato-seed oil is 
that it gives a positive test for peanut oil by the 
Renard test. If sufficient care, however, is taken 
in determining the melting point of the final erys- 
talline acids it will be found that they are higher 
than 72° C., which is usually accepted as the 
proper temperature for arachidie acid obtained in 
this method. The analysis of the methyl esters of 
tomato seed oil and of the saturated fatty acids ob- 
tained by the lead-salt-ether method from tomato- 
seed oil have been made. 


A laboratory method for the hydrogenation of 
oils: L. B. Burnett and H. S. Batnzy. A method 
of preparing a nickel catalyzer, suitable for the 
hardening of vegetable oils on a small scale in the 
laboratory, was described. 


Electrically heated melting point apparatus: H. 
S. Barry. A form of melting point apparatus 
heated by the passage of an electric current 
through a bath of dilute sulphuric acid, was de- 
scribed. The resistance of the solution to the 
passage of the current produces the heat, the in- 
crease in which may be regulated by adjustment 
of the distance between the poles. 

The alkaloids of Bocconia frutescens: EMERSON 
R. MitiEr. In 1895 Battandier examined the bark 
of Bocconia frutescens and reported the presence 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1178 


of fumarine (protopine), bocconine, chelerythrine 
and traces of an alkaloid giving reactions similar 
to those of cheliodonine. Bocconine, according to 
Schlotterbeck, is identical with @-homochelidonine. 
The writer separated from the leaves of the above- 
named plant protopine, chelerythrine, B-homocheli- 
donine and y-homochelidonine. The indications 
are that the bark contains sanguinarine in addi- 
tion to the alkaloids reported by Battandier. 

On the presence of free hydrocyanic acid in cas- 
sava: EMERSON R. Miuurr. Some experiments 
carried out by the writer while connected with the 
Cuban Experiment Station show that most of the 
hydrocyanie acid contained in the roots of Manihot 
utilissima is present, combined as a eyanogenetic 
glucoside. 


The effect of feeding acids upon the growth of 
swine: A. R. Lamp and JoHn M. Evvarp. Al- 
though the power to use ammonia produced in the 
body tissues for the neutralization of acids is 
known to be possessed by animals, the practical 
question of the effect of acid-feeding upon growth 
has not been investigated. Inasmuch as silage 
contains organic acids in considerable amount and 
the mineral content of many feeding-stuffs is 
strongly acid in character, this question is impor- 
tant. Eight pigs, divided into 4 lots, were grown 
successfully from 85 to 260 pounds weight in seven 
months upon a normal ration to which consider- 
able amounts of lactic, acetic and sulphuric acids 
were added. 


Can swelling of the colloids furnish a basis for 
the explanation of edema? A. D. HIRSCHFELDER. 
Edema due to mustard oil in the conjunctival tis- 
sues, the effects of immersing the lid in blood 
serum, hydrochloric acid, ete., effects of local and 
general changes in blood pressure upon the de- 
velopment of edema, were discussed. 

The following papers were read by title: 

The proteins of the peanut, Arachis hypogea. II. 
The distribution of the basic nitrogen in the 
globulins arachin and conarchin. 

Tissue transplantation as a biochemical method: 
Lro LoEs. 

The alkaloids of Bocconia frutescens: EMERSON R. 
MILLER. 

Microchemical studies on the mosaic disease of to- 
bacco: G. W. FREIBERG. 

Some peculiarities of plant decoctions as nutrient 
media for fungi: R. M. Duaear. 

Isolation of parahydroxy-benzoic acid from sotl: 
E. H. WALTERS. 

(To be continued) 


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The chapter titles are: I, The Principles 
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CONTENTS 
The Work of the National Research Cowncil.. 99 


Psychology and National Service: PROFESSOR 


RG MES VIER S UATE ss Aa) sbele ne osylclere erstoheiacts 101 
William Bullock Clarke .........ceeec cece 104 
Scientific Events :— 

The Asiatic Zoological Expedition of the 

American Museum of Natural History; War 

Service of Chemists; The Boston Meeting of 

the American Chemical Society ........... 106 
Scientific Notes and News ............--22 109 
University and Educational News .......... 111 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

Reply to Dr. Erlanger: Dr. A. M. Berne. 

Faunal Conditions in South Georgia: Ros- 

ERT CUSHMAN MurpHy. A Personal and 

Family History Register: PRoressor 

CHARLES W. Hareirr. Rewards for National 

MS ERUUCE SHENG: era ls veunite slogan Setsls oye aueyetoreeoie aie 111 
Scientific Books :— 

Miyake’s Treatise on Entomology: Dr. L. 

ORT OWARD eth tattoo ne eee tet 113 
Herb-growing in the British Empire ........ 114 
Special Articles :— 

The Chemical Basis of Regeneration and 

Geotropism: Dr. JACQUES LOEB ........... 115 
The American Chemical Society ............ 119 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should besent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. Y- 


THE WORK OF THE NATIONAL 
RESEARCH COUNCIL 


As has already been announced, the 
National Research Council is acting as a 
department of the Council of National De- 
fense, dealing with the organization of 
science and research as affected by the 
war. 

Direct connection with the work of the 
Army and Navy, both at home and in the 
field, has also been established. Brigadier 
General George O. Squier, chief signal 
officer, has recently addressed the follow- 
ing letter to the chairman of the Research 
Council: 

Dr. GrorGE E. Hate, 


Chairman, National Research Council, 
Munsey Building, 
Washington, D. C. 

My dear Dr. Hale: In the Signal Corps ques- 
tions involving the selection and organization of 
large numbers of scientific men and the solution of 
research problems are constantly arising. The Na- 
tional Research Council, organized at the request 
of the President, and acting as a department of the 
Council of National Defense, in close cooperation 
with similar bodies abroad, has federated and co- 
ordinated the scientifie resources of the country 
and concentrated them upon the solution of 
military problems. It is accordingly the one 
agency in a position to meet the present needs of 
the Signal Corps. 

I therefore request the Research Council to act 
as the advisory agent of the Signal Corps in the 
organization of its various scientific services and 
the solution of research problems. To this end I 
would suggest that Dr. Robert A. Millikan, vice- 
chairman and executive officer of the Research 
Council, apply for a major’s commission in the 
Officers’ Reserve Corps, for detail in charge of this 
work. Very truly yours, 

GrorGE O. Squier, 
Brigadier General, 


July 2, 1917 C. S. O. 


100 


In accordance with this request Dr. 
Millikan is now acting as the representa- 
tive of the National Research Council in 
general charge of scientific questions re- 
ferred to the council. Dr. C. E. Menden- 
hall has been put in charge of the develop- 
ment of the various instruments used in 
connection with airplanes. Dr. Augustus 
Trowbridge, also nominated by the council, 
has organized an important branch of the 
scientific service for the army in France. 
Other scientific services for the army are 
in process of organization. 

The Navy Department has recently 
established a special board of four naval 
officers and four civilian advisory mem- 
bers to coordinate and organize all prob- 
lems relating to submarine warfare. The 
National Research Council is officially rep- 
resented on this board by its executive 
officers. The general plan adopted by the 
Navy Department contemplates the closest 
possible cooperation between the Navy 
Department bureaus, Navy Department 
boards, the Naval Consulting Board, and 
the National Research Council. A group 
of forty leading physicists, convened by 
the National Research Council for an ex- 
haustive discussion of submarine problems 
with the members of the French Scientific 
Mission, is now represented by a committee 
cooperating with the above mentioned 
special board in tests and investigations 
of various devices for submarine offense 
and defense. Many physical laboratories 
are also taking part in this work. 

The chairman of the council, Dr. George 
E. Hale, has given his entire time to the 
work in Washington, and the following 
members of the council are residing there 
as well: 

Dr. Raymond Pearl, chairman of the agricultural 
committee. 


Dr. William H. Holmes, chairman of the anthro- 
pology committee. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


Dr. 8S. W. Stratton, chairman of the committee on 
census of research. 

Dr. M. T. Bogert, chairman of the chemistry com- 
mittee. 

Dr. W. F. Durand, chairman of the aeronautics 
committee, and vice-chairman of the engineering 
committee. 

Dr. Alonzo E. Taylor, chairman of the food com- 
mittee. 

Dr. V. C. Vaughan, chairman of the committee on 
medicine and hygiene. 

Dr. Charles D. Walcott, chairman of the military 
committee. 

Dr. L. A. Bauer, chairman of the committee on 
navigation and nautical instruments. 

Dr. Van H. Manning, chairman of the committee 
on noxious gases. 

Dr. R. A. Millikan, chairman of the physics com- 
mittee. 

Dr. C. E. Mendenhall, vice-chairman of the physics 
committee. 


During the past month the above-men- 
tioned members of the council have been 
actively cooperating with the members of 
the French scientific mission now in Wash- 
ington, as a result of which it has been 
possible to formulate various agencies for 
the consideration of technical problems for 
the solution of which definite need has 
arisen at the battle front. The members 
of this mission have recently been joined 
by Dr. Giorgio Abetti of the Royal As- 
tronomical Observatory of Rome, sent as a 
representative of the Italian Government. 

Furthermore, most of the members of 
the foreign service committee of the coun- 
cil, who have been in France and England 
for a period of two or three months, have 
returned to the United States and have 
brought with them much valuable informa- 
toin relative to the organization and de- 
velopment of scientific activities in con- 
nection with the war. A few members of 
the committee have remained in France 
to continue their observations and investi- 
gations, under special detail. Formal re- 
ports have been submitted to the council, 
through its executive and military com- 


AucustT 3, 1917] 


mittees, relating to the observations and 
experiences of the members of this com- 
mittee, in connection with which recom- 
mendations for cooperative investigations 
in this country are made. 

The special committees of the council 
on the subjects of optical glass and noxious 
gases have submitted reports, which in turn 
have been transmitted by the executive 
committee of the council to the General 
Munitions Board and the Council of 
National Defense. As a result, arrange- 
ments have been made for providing the 
government with optical glass through co- 
operation between the Bureau of Stan- 
dards, the geophysical laboratory of the 
Carnegie Institution of Washington, the 
Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, and the 
Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. Re- 
searches on noxious gases have been placed 
under the charge of the director of the 
Bureau of Mines, acting in cooperation 
with the army and navy and the com- 
mittee on noxious gases of the National 
Research Council. 

It is expected that announcement may 
be made at a later date relative to prob- 
lems initiated by the various committees 
of the council and means for their solu- 
tion. 

A number of friends have generously 
contributed to provide funds for the ex- 
penses of the council. It is also a pleasure 
to announce that at a recent meeting of 
the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 
the following resolution was passed: 


Resolved, That the sum of fifty thousand dollars 
($50,000) or so much thereof as may be necessary, 
be and it hereby is appropriated to the Carnegie 
Institution of Washington, to be expended in the 
discretion of the president of said institution to 
meet expenses incurred by the National Research 
Council during the war; and that the treasurer be 
and he hereby is authorized to make payments as 
needed on the certificate of the Carnegie Institu- 
tion of Washington. 


SCIENCE 


101 


PSYCHOLOGY AND NATIONAL 
SERVICE 


Amone the many scientific problems which 
the war has forced upon the attention of our 
military authorities there are several which 
are either psychological or present a psycho- 
logical aspect. In the opinion of experts many 
of these problems are immediately soluble 
and it therefore becomes the duty of profes- 
sional psychologists to render national service 
by working on such problems. For this rea- 
son a committee on psychology has been or- 
ganized, with the approval of the council of 
the American Psychological Association, by 
the National Research Council. This com- 
mittee consists of J. McKeen Cattell, G. Stan- 
ley Hall and E. L. Thorndike from the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences; Raymond Dodge, 
S. I. Franz and G. M. Whipple from the 
American Psychological Association, and C. 
E. Seashore, J. B. Watson and R. M. Yerkes, 
chairman and member of the National Re- 
search Council, from the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science. 

At the first meeting of the committee, it 
was voted “that whereas psychologists in com- 
mon with other men of science may be able 
to do invaluable work for national service and 
in the conduct of the war, it is recommended 
by this committee that psychologists volunteer 
for and be assigned to the work in which their 
service will be of the greatest use to the nation. 
In the case of students of psychology, this 
may involve the completion of the studies on 
which they are engaged.” 

It is the function of this general committee 
to organize and, in a general way, supervise 
psychological research and service in the pres- 
ent emergency. Problems suggested by mili- 
tary officers or by psychological experts are 
referred by the committee to appropriate. in- 
dividuals or institutions for immediate atten- 
tion. Already at the suggestion of the council 
of the American Psychological Association 
the chief psychological laboratories of the 
country have been offered to the committee 
for such use as the military situation dictates. 
Moreover, the membership of the American 
Psychological Association, in response to a 


102 


letter addressed to it by the council, has re- 
sponded most promptly and heartily with 
offers of personal service. 

At a meeting held in Philadelphia, April 21, 
the council of the American Psychological 
Association, in addition to approving and 
urging the appointment of a committee on 
psychology for the National Research Council, 
authorized the organization of twelve commit- 
tees to deal with various important aspects of 
the relations of psychology to the war. 

The list of committees with their personnel, 
so far as at present announced, follows, to- 
gether with brief comment on the status of 
their work: 

COMMITTEES 


Committee on psychological literature re- 
lating to military affairs. It is the function 
of this committee to prepare bibliographies 
and abstracts of important psychological mil- 
itary contributions for the immediate use of 
committees, individual investigators and for 
publication. Chairman, Madison Bentley, 
University of Illinois. 

Dr. Bentley already has rendered valuable 
service to several of the committees. 

Committee on the psychological examining 
of recruits. The first task of this committee 
is the preparation and standardization of 
methods and the demonstration of their serv- 
iceableness. Chairman, Robert M. Yerkes, 
Harvard University, W. V. Bingham, Henry 
H. Goddard, Thomas H. Haines, Lewis M. Ter- 
man, F. L. Wells, G. M. Whipple. 

This committee has prepared a method of 
group examining, and also varied methods of 
individual examining. The work, covering a 
period of four weeks, was generously financed 
by the Committee on Provision for the Feeble- 
minded. The methods are now (July 25) 
being tested in three army camps and one 
naval station. The expense of this initial 
trial, which is made primarily for the further 
development and perfecting of the methods, 
is met by an appropriation of twenty-five 
hundred dollars made by the Committee on 
Furnishing Hospital Units for Nervous and 
Mental Disorders to the United States govern- 
ment. At the present writing, the surgeon 
general of the Army awaits lists of psychol- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1179 


ogists who are both adequately prepared and 
willing to serve as psychological examiners. 

It is the conviction of the committee that 
the psychological examiner, by applying 
specially prepared and adapted methods to 
recruits in the camps, should obtain measure- 
ments valuable alike to line officers, to gen- 
eral medical officers, and to the special officers 
in charge of the psychiatric hospital units. 

It is assumed that the work of psychologists, 
although not strictly medical in character, but 
instead vocational, educational and social, 
will supplement that of the medical examiner 
by supplying him with information otherwise 
not available. Further, the psychologist may 
aid the psychiatrist by detecting and referring 
to him those individuals for whom careful 
psychiatric examination is obviously desirable. 

Committee on the selection of men for 
tasks requiring special skill. This includes 
the selection and promotion of officers, as well 
as choice of men for varied. kinds of skilled 
service. Chairman, Edward L. Thorndike, 
Columbia University, J. C. Chapman, T. L. 
Kelley, W. D. Scott. 

A method of selecting officers devised by 
Dr. Scott is now in use in many of the 
Officers Training Camps. 

Committee on psychological oleae of 
aviation, including examination of aviation 
recruits. Chairman, H. E. Burtt, Harvard 
University, W. R. Miles, L. T. Troland. 

Work looking toward the development and 
thorough testing of methods for the selection 
of aviation recruits has been authorized by 
the Government and already is in progress in 
at least one of the institutions where the re- 
eruits are being trained. 

Committee on the psychological problems 
of incapacity, especially those of shock, re- 
education and vocational training. Chair- 
man, S. I. Franz, Government Hospital for 
the Insane, K. 8. Lashley, J. B. Watson. 

The task proposed for this committee is a 
large and difficult one and the chairman plans 
to organize, in intimate relations with various 
military activities and agencies, a committee 
which shall be competent to deal with the 
varied scientific problems of incapacity. 

Dr. Franz has himself developed methods for _ 


Aveust 3, 1917] 


the reeducation of certain paralytics, and ac- 
cording to our information his methods are 
now used by the Military Hospitals Com- 
mission of Canada. It is greatly to be hoped 
that his own country may be equally ready to 
avail itself of these methods, and that it may 
adequately prepare in advance for the ex- 
tremely important as well as difficult task of 
rehabilitating maimed and paralyzed soldiers 
and sailors. 

Committee on psychological problems of 
recreation in the Army and Navy. Chairman, 
George A. Coe, Union Theological Seminary, 
W. C. Bagley, H. L. Hollingworth, G. T. W. 
Patrick, J. H. Tufts. 

This committee will serve the national cause 
by cooperating in every profitable way with the 
committee on military recreation of the Y. M. 
C. A. and with such other agencies as are im- 
mediately concerned with this kind of military 
aid. Psychologists will find abundant oppor- 
tunity for the study of psychological aspects 
of recreational problems. 

Committee on pedagogical and psychological 
problems of military training and discipline. 
Chairman, Charles H. Judd, University of 
Chicago. 

Committee on problems of motivation in 
connection with military service. Chairman, 
Walter D. Scott, Northwestern University, 
H. S. Langfeld, J. H. Tufts. 

Committee on problems of emotional stabil- 
ity, fear and self-control. Chairman, Robert 
S. Woodworth, Columbia University, W. B. 
Cannon, G. Stanley Hall, J. B. Morgan, J. F. 
Shepard. 

It is probable that in addition to dealing 
with the special problems of emotional stability 
this committee will find it desirable to under- 
take a careful study of incorrigibility. 

Committee on acoustic problems of military 
importance. Chairman, Carl E. Seashore, 
University of Iowa, R. M. Ogden, OC. A. 
Ruckmich. 

Already the chairman of this committee has 
interested himself in the relations of the prin- 
ciples of acoustics to various naval situations. 
Methods of localizing sounds and their util- 
ization for the detection of submarines, the 


SCIENCE 


103 


identification of guns, and the locating of 
batteries are clearly important. These ques- 
tions are under investigation by the physics 
committee of the National Research Council, 
with which Dr. Seashore’s committee will co- 
operate. 

Committee on visual problems of military 
significance. Chairman, Raymond Dodge, 
Wesleyan University, R. P. Angier, H. A. 
Carr, L. R. Geissler, S. P. Hayes, G. M. 
Stratton, L. T. Troland. 

Chairman Dodge has devised and perfected 
an apparatus for the measurement of various 
important aspects of the naval gunners reac- 
tion. This is now installed for trial on a 
number of battleships. The committee has 
also been requested to prepare and recom- 
mend to the Navy methods for the selective 
examinating of men for various kinds of 
service. This work is in progress and its 
results will shortly be reported to the officials 
directly concerned. 

If the war continues for as much as a year 
American psychologists will have opportunity 
to serve importantly, not only in the examin- 
ing and classifying of recruits but also in the 
selection of men for positions of responsibil- 
ity, and in the choice and training of avi- 
ation recruits, naval gunners and others in 
skilled service. It is no longer a matter, as 
at first appeared to be the case, of inducing 
military authorities to accept methods of 
psychological measurement, but instead pri- 
marily one of meeting their expressed needs 


and requests for assistance. 


As psychological research along such lines 
as have been indicated above progresses and 
as the applicability and serviceability of meth- 
ods are demonstrated, it is probable that 
effective use can be made by the government 
of all scientists who are skilled in the study 
and control of human behavior. For after all, 
the human factors in the war are as important 
as are the mechanical and it can not be 
doubted that brains and not brawn will decide 
the great conflict. 


R. M. Yerkes, 
Chairman 


104 


WILLIAM BULLOCK CLARKE 

Dr. WituiAM Buiiock OxarkE, professor of 
geology in the Johns Hopkins University, 
eminent for his contributions to geology, died 
suddenly from apoplexy on July 27, at his 
summer home at North Haven, Maine. 

Wm. Bullock Clarke was born at Brattle- 
boro, Vermont, December 15, 1860. His 
parents were Barna A. and Helen (Bullock) 
Clark. Among his early ancestors were 
Thomas Clark, who came to Plymouth, Mass., 
in the ship Ann in 1623 and who was several 
times elected deputy to the general court of 
Plymouth Colony; Richard Bullock who came 
to Salem, Mass., in 1643; John Howland, a 
member of council, assistant to the governor, 
and several times deputy to the general court 
of Plymouth Colony, who came to Plymouth 
in the Mayflower in 1620; John Tilly who 
likewise came in the Mayflower; and John 
Gorham, captain of Massachusetts troops in 
King Philip’s War. Among later ancestors 
were William Bullock, colonel of Massa- 
chusetts troops in the French and Indian 
War, and Daniel Stewart, a minuteman at 
the battle of Lexington in 1775. 

Clark studied under private tutors and at 
the Brattleboro high school, from which he 
graduated in 1879. He entered Amherst Col- 
lege in the autumn of 1880 and graduated 
with the degree of A.B.-in 1884. He im- 
mediately went to Germany and from 1884 to 
1887 pursued geological studies at the Uni- 
versity of Munich from which he received the 
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1887. Sub- 
sequently he studied at Berlin and London, 
spending much time in the field with members 
of the geological surveys of Prussia and Great 
Britain. 

Before leaving Munich Dr. Clark was of- 
fered and accepted the position of instructor 
in the Johns Hopkins University. He was 
instructor from 1887 to 1889, associate from 
1889 to 1892, associate professor from 1892 to 
1894, and professor of geology and head of 
the department since 1894. He has been for 
a long time a member of the academic council 
—the governing body of the university—and 
always took a very active interest in its 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


affairs, acting as one of the committee of ad- 
ministration while the university was without 
a president. 

In 1888 he was also appointed an assistant 
geologist on the U. S. Geological Survey and 
detailed for work on the Cretaceous and Ter- 
tiary formations of the Atlantic Coastal 
Plain. At the same time he was requested to 
prepare the correlation bulletin on the Eocene, 
one of a series of reports which were presented 
to the International Geological Congress in 
Washington in 1891. Professor Clark spent 
the summer of 1889 in a study of the Kocene 
deposits of the far west while the remaining 
period was occupied in the investigation of the 
Eocene formations of the Atlantic border. 
He was advanced to geologist on the staff of 
the U. S. Geological Survey in 1894 and held 
this position until 1907, since which time he 
has acted as cooperating geologist. 

Professor Olark organized the Maryland 
State Weather Service in 1892 of which he 
was appointed the director. He has held the 
position continuously to the present time. In 
1896 he organized the Maryland Geological 
Survey and has been state geologist since the 
establishment of that bureau. The Geological 
Survey was enlarged in scope in 1898 by the 
addition of a highway division which was in- 
structed to investigate and report on the con- 
ditions of the roads of the state and the best 
means for their improvement and Professor 
Clarke and his associates through their pub- 
lications and addresses aroused much interest 
in the subject throughout the state. In 1904 
the duties of the highway division were much 
increased by the appropriation of $200,000 
annually to be met by a similar amount from 
the counties for the building of state aid roads 
by the survey. A sum exceeding $200,000 
was also subsequently appropriated for the 
building of state aid roads by the survey, at 
the expense of the state alone, of a highway 
connecting Baltimore and Washington. The 
duties of the highway division were trans- 
ferred in 1910 to a newly organized State 
Roads Commission, of which Professor Clarke 
was made a member and which position he 
held until 1914. Nearly $2,000,000 had been 


Aveust 3, 1917] 


expended, however, by the State Geological 
Survey in the supervision and building of 
roads up to the date of the transfer. 

Under an Act of the Legislature passed in 
1900 Professor Clarke was appointed com- 
missioner for Maryland by the governor to 
represent the state in the resurvey of the 
Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary, commonly 
known as the Mason and Dixon line. This 
survey was completed four years later and an 
elaborate report prepared. In 1906 he was 
made a member of the Maryland State Board 
of Forestry and elected as its executive officer, 
which position he held at the time of his 
death. The governor appointed him in 1908 
a member of the State Conservation Com- 
mission. 

Professor Clarke organized and directed the 
preparation of the official state exhibits. of 
Maryland mineral. resources at. the Buffalo, 
Charleston, St. Louis, Jamestown, and San 
Francisco expositions in 1901, 1902, 1904, 
1907, and 1915.. These ~ exhibits: attracted 


much attention at the time and recéived ‘a’ 


large number of conspicuous awards. These 
exhibits have been permanently installed as a 
state mineral exhibit at the state house in 
Annapolis. 


When President Roosevelt invited the gov- 


ernors of the states to a conference on. con- 


servation at the White House in May, 1908): 


it was arranged that each governor should 
appoint three advisers to accompany him. 


Professor Clark was one of the Maryland ad- 


visers and took part in the conference. 
After the great Baltimore fire in 1904 the 
mayor of the city appointed Professor Clarke 
a member of an emergency committee to: pre- 
pare plans for the rehabilitation of the burnt 
district and for several months he served as 
vice-chairman of the important subcommittee 
on streets, parks, and docks whose plans re- 
sulted in the great changes subsequently 
earried out. The following year he was ap- 
pointed by the.mayor a member of a com- 
mittee to devise a plan for a sewerage system 
for the city which has resulted in the build- 
ing of the present modern system of sewers. 
Again in 1909 the mayor also appointed him 


SCIENCE 


105 


a member of a committee for devising a plan 
for the development of a civic center for 
Baltimore. 

Since 1901 Professor Clark has been presi- 
dent of the Henry Watson Children’s Aid 
Society of Baltimore and was a delegate to 
the White House Conference called by Presi- 
dent Roosevelt in February, 1909, to consider 
the subject. of the dependent child. He was 
also a member of the executive committee of 
the State Tuberculosis Association and a 
vice-president and chairman of the executive 
committee of the federated charities of Balti- 
more. 

Numerous scientific societies have elected 
him to membership, among them the National 
Academy of Science, of which he was chair- 
man of the Geological Section, the American 
Philosophical Society, the Philadelphia Acad- 
emy of Natural Sciences, the American Acad- 
emy of Arts and Sciences, the Deutsche Geol- 
ogische Gesellschaft, the Washington Acad- 
emy of Science, Paleontologische’ Gesellschaft, 
and the American Association for the ‘Ad- 
vancement of Science. He was councillor and 
treasurer of the Geological Society of Amer- 
ica at the time of his death. In 1904 he was 
élected a foreign correspondent of the Geo- 
logical Society of London. He was also presi- 
dent. of the Association of State Geologists. 
Amherst conferred on him the degree of LL.D. 
in 1908. He had numerous offers from other 
institutions, perhaps the most important being 
the professorship and head of the department 
of geology at Harvard University, but all of 
these were refused, and his devotion to Hop- 
kins and the ideals for which it stood was un- 
swerving. 

At the time of the International Geological 
Congress in St. Petersburg in 1897 Professor 
Clarke was an official delegate from the United 
States and spent several months in an extended 
trip through Russia and its provinces. In 
1906 he spent the summer on an expedition to 
central Alaska, visiting the region to the north 
of Prince William Sound. He traveled ex- 
tensively in western America and Mexico, 
reaching distant portions of the western Sierra 
Madre district. 


106 


With the outbreak of the war Professor . 


Clarke became actively interested in problems 
of defense and economic preparedness.. He was 
appointed a member of the National Research 
Council and was chairman of the subcommittee 
on road materials and a member of the com- 
mittee on camp sites and water supplies. He 
was also chairman of the committee on high- 
ways and natural resources of the Maryland 
Council of Defense. 

Professor Clarke made numerous contribu- 
tions to geological literature, his work being 
confined largely to the Cretaceous and Tertiary 
formations of the Atlantic Coastal Plain and 
the Carboniferous deposits of the central Appa- 
lachian region. Professor Clarke’s chief 
paleontological interest was centered in the 
Kchinoidea, to the elucidation of which group 
he published several monographs. One of his 
monuments will be the series of reports of the 
Maryland Geological Survey, which set a new 
standard for state publications both as to sub- 
ject-matter and book-making. The systematic 
reports in which he was most interested will 
be of perennial service to science. 

He was a member of numerous ¢lubs includ- 
ing the University, Maryland, of which he was 
a vice-president, Baltimore Country, Johns 
Hopkins, and City Clubs of Baltimore and the 
Cosmos Club of Washington. 

He was married October 12, 1892, to Ellen 
Clarke Strong, daughter of the late Edward 
A. Strong, of Boston, and had four children, 
Edward Strong, Helen, who was recently mar- 
ried to Captain H. Findlay French, Atherton 
and Marion, all of whom survive him. 

Professor Clarke’s administrative ability 
and professional attainments are largely re- 
sponsible for the extensive development of 
Maryland’s mineral resources and his loss will 
be severely felt in all quarters. He was always 
keenly interested in the educational value of 
the work of the various state bureaus which he 
directed and had just finished writing a geog- 
raphy of Maryland for school teachers. At the 
time of his death he was engaged in writing a 
report on the underground waters of the state 
and another on the coals. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


THE ASIATIC ZOOLOGICAL EXPEDITION OF 
THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL 
HISTORY 
Dr. Henry Farrmeptp Osporn, president of 
the museum, has received news from Mr. Roy 
C. Andrews, who is in charge of the expedi- 
tion. The principal work of the expedition 
was done in remote regions of the province of 
Yunnan, China, where no white man had ever 
been seen before the explorer and his party 
entered that region. Mr. Andrews is accom- 
panied by Mrs. Andrews, who is the official 
photographer of the expedition. The party, 
since it has been in Yunnan, has ridden 2,000 
miles on horseback and made camps in 107 
different localities varying from 1,700 to 15,- 
000 feet above the level of the sea. Mr. 
Andrews says in his report, which is dated at 

Hui-Yao, May 23, 1917: 

The active field work of the expedition ceases 
to-morrow, exactly one year since it began by our 
first trip up the Min River from Foochow—a trip 
which was interrupted rather seriously by the re- 
bellion, but which gave us some very interesting 
experiences. We have as results the following: 
2,100 mammals, 800 birds, 200 reptiles, 75 skele- 
tons of mammals, 8,000 feet of motion-picture film, 
150 Paget natural color photographs, 300 black 
and white negatives. Our attention to the subject 
of mammals has, I believe, yielded the largest col- 
lection ever taken out of China by a single expe- 
dition. We visited first the northern alpine coun- 
try along the Thibetan frontier where we were 
seldom below an altitude of 9,000 feet and eol- 
lected as high as 15,000 feet. The mountains 
among which we were working were tremendous, 
reaching as high as 18,000 feet. In this region we 
were frequently with natives who had never seen a 
white person. The northern trip occupied some 
four months and we then started on a long jour- 
ney southward to the Burma border where we col- 
lected in regions only 1,700 feet above sea level, 
where, of course, we found a totally different 
fauna. Thus the collection covers a wide range of 
climate as well as actual distance. Our large mam- 
mals inelude seven gorals (Nemorhacdus) from the 
Thibetan region and four serows (Nemorhacdus) 
—all complete with accessory material for group 
mounting. On the Burma frontier we collected 
twenty-five gorals—a perfectly splendid series, all 
from one mountain and of allpossible ages from 
just born, young to very old males and females. 


“egei: 


Aveust 3, 1917] 


I do not hesitate in saying that this is the finest 
series of these rare animals in any museum of the 
world. It is quite a different species from those 
we shot in the north. A few days ago I had the 
good fortune to shoot a splendid coal-black serow 
—an animal quite unlike the serows of the Thibetan 
border and exceedingly rare in this region. We 
have also arranged to buy a fine male serow from 
Fukien Province, This gives us six of these strange 
animals of three different species. We have a 
very large sambur (Rusa) stag in perfect mount- 
able condition, ten red barking deer (Cervulus) and 
two of the very rare blue, or crested, muntjacs 
(Elaphodus). The collection contains twenty-five 
monkeys of five species and four genera. Two 
species of gibbons (Hylobates), one very small 
yellow one, and another large black variety, as well 
as eleven large gray monkeys (Semnopithecus) of 
all ages and sexes. Six or seven baboons of two 


species. Of medium-sized carnivores we have 
about 50—especially Viverrines, and one fine 
leopard. 


The large mammals of this province, as indeed 
throughout all China, are by no means abundant, 
and are in widely separated districts, so that we 
feel we have a fairly good proportion. The col- 
lection of small mammals is especially rich in In- 
sectivores, and I believe that some. remarkable 
types will be found among them. 

The collection of skeletons comprises all species 
of large or medium sized mammals, and specimens 
of each species of small mammal in formalin. Also 
fetal examples of gibbon, goral, muntjac, langur, 
baboon, ete., in formalin. 

We collected birds whenever we were not occu- 
pied with mammals and during our long journeys 
between collecting points. About one third of the 
collection is from Fukien Province and the re- 
mainder from Yunnan. 

Neither Mr. Heller nor myself has ever been in 
such a poor reptile country. Some five months of 
the trip, while we were in the north, the weather 
was so cold that no reptiles at all were to be found. 
Those we have collected were mostly taken during 
the few months of our southern trip. 

The photography of the expedition will, I be- 
lieve, prove of extraordinary value and interest, 
comprising, as it does, motion film, natural color 
and black and white negatives. The Paget color 
plates will be especially interesting, and have not, 
I believe, ever been used upon an expedition of 
this character before. The motion film shows the 
general life of the people along the Thibetan 
border and in the far south, and, since it was de- 
veloped in the field, the suecess of the film, from a 
technical standpoint, is assured. 


SCIENCE 


officials with whom we have come in contact. 


107 


We have met with the greatest courtesy from all 
The 
Chinese government has granted willingly every 
request which we have made, and French and Brit- 
ish officials have given us free entry of goods, re- 
duced freight rates and assisted in various other 
ways. 


Mr. Andrews will leave Mr. Heller at ° 
Bhamo and proceed to Caleutta, where he ex- 
pects to spend a week or ten days at the 
museum comparing a selected series of his 
collection of small mammals with those ob- 
tained by the Anderson Yunnan Expedition 
in 1875—the only other expedition which has 
ever collected in that province. He will then 
go to Colombo and tranship for Hong Kong— 
a journey of twenty days or more. From 
Hong Kong, Mr. Andrews will return direct 
to New York, arriving about the end of Sep- 
tember or the first of October. Mr. Heller 
will probably spend some time traveling in 
India, but will no doubt reach New York 
about the same time. 


WAR SERVICE OF CHEMISTS 


Dr. JuLius Stincrirz, president of the Amer- 
ican Chemical Society, and Dr. Charles L. 
Parsons, secretary, have, under date of July 
24, addressed the following letter to the mem- 
bers of the American Chemical Society: 


In accordance with the resolutions passed by the 
society at the Kansas City meeting, the officers of 
your society have been urging the government that 
chemists, as in England, Canada and France, be 
used for chemical service in the war, either in the 
employ of the military branch, of the other govy- 
ernment branches, or of necessary industries. A 
special committee was organized by your presi- 
dent, consisting of Dr. W. H. Nichols, chairman, 
Drs. M. T. Bogert, A. A. Noyes, your secretary 
and your president, to lay definite recommenda- 
tions before the authorities. These have been pub- 
lished in the July number of the Journal of Indus- 
trial and Engineering Chemistry. 

The government, it appears, has decided that 


.there will be no general exemption of any class of 


men as a class—for reasons which are eminently 
wise and necessary at the present moment. At 
the same time, no doubt, it is anxious to see every 
man used in what appears to it to be the right 
place for him. It has seemed perhaps best to make 
no general ruling whatsoever, except to the effect 
that there will be no class exemptions, and to leave 


108 


all individual cases to the federal district exemp- 
tion boards, to which exemptions for industrial, 
agricultural and professional reasons are left by 
law. 

Under the circumstances, in the absence of in- 
structions from the government and in view of the 
general desire on the part of our members for 
guidance and advice in this matter, we would ree- 
ommend to you wnofficially the following proced- 
ure: Chemists of military age selected by draft 
for service and accepted by the local boards to 
which the physical examination, etc., is committed 
are advised to submit to their federal district 
boards: 

1. An official certificate of their employers, or of 
the university or college from which they have re- 
ceived degrees or with which they have been or are 
connected, certifying as to their education and ex- 
perience as chemists. 

2. An official statement by their employers of 
the nature of their work as chemists. 

3. A recommendation, if such seems right, from 
their employers, or their university or college, that 
they be assigned to continue their work as chem- 
ists. 

4, A request that in default of such assignment, 
they be detailed to serve as chemists in the mili- 
tary branch of the government. 

5. If enlisted in any capacity, inform the secre- 
tary of the society by postal card of the company, 
regiment and corps in which you are enrolled, in 
order that a record may be kept of the fact and 
the War Department advised from time to time of 
chemists in the army should their services as chem- 
ists be required. 

The purpose of this recommendation is to put 
into the possession of the government authorities all 
the facts necessary for it to decide exactly for 
what service a given man is most fitted. We be- 
lieve this to be in accordance with the resolutions 
adopted at the Kansas City meeting and in ac- 
cordance with the patriotic duty of every Ameri- 
ean chemist to serve his country under the selective 
draft in the capacity the government itself, with a 
full knowledge of the circumstances, selects for 
each individual. 


THE BOSTON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY 
Tur September meeting of the American 
Chemical Society will be held in the buildings 
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
Charles River Road, Cambridge, Mass., Sep- 
tember 11, 12 and 18, 1917. The Northeastern 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


Section has been requested by the directors to 
omit the usual annual banquet and excursions, 
and to arrange a program characterized by 
simplicity and seriousness, and bearing as 
fully as possible on questions concerning the 
activities of chemists—both in the government 
service and in the industries during the war. 
The following is a list of the chairmen of 
local committees: 
Ezecutive—H. P. Talbot, Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
Finance.—A. D. Little, 93 Broad Street, Boston, 
Massachusetts. 
Registration—K. L. Mark, Simmons 
Brookline, Massachusetts. 
Entertainment.—R. S. Williams, Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
Press and Publicity.—R. W. Neff, 22 India Square, 
Boston, Massachusetts. 
Entertainment of Ladies—Mrs. A. D. Little. 


Registration will be conducted at the build- 
ings of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, Cambridge, except on Monday, Sep- 
tember 10, when it will be held at the Hotel 
Lenox. Society headquarters will be at the 
Hotel Lenox at the corner of Boylston and 
Exeter Streets. The use of the Engineers’ 
Club, at the corner of Arlington Street and 
Commonwealth Avenue, will be extended to all 
members of the society. 


College, 


PROGRAM 
Monday, September 10 


4 p.m.—Council meeting. Engineers’ Club. 
7 p.M.—Dinner to the Council at the Engineers’ 
Club (tendered by the Northeastern Section). 


Tuesday, September 11 


10 a.m.—General meeting of the society in the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Address of Welcome: Dr. R. C. Maclaurin, presi- 
dent, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Response: Julius Stieglitz, president, American 
Chemical Society. 

General papers: 

2 p.m—General Conference on Chemistry and 
Chemistry in Warfare, opened by William H. 
Nichols, chairman, committee on chemicals, Coun- 
cil of National Defense. Marston T. Bogert, chair- 
man, chemistry committee, National Research 
Council. 

5 p.M.—Harbor trip to Hotel Pemberton, where 
an informal shore dinner and smoker will be held. 


Aveust 3, 1917] 


Wednesday, September 12 
Morning.—Conferences of Divisions. 
Afternoon.—Divisional Meetings. 
Evening—President’s address, Huntington Hall, 

Rogers Building, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, Boylston Street. 


Thursday, September 13 

Morning and Afternoon.—Divisional Meetings. 

The usual meetings, including the annual elec- 
tion of officers, will be held by all the Divisions, 
and by the Rubber Chemistry Section, with the fol- 
lowing special program: 

Physical and Inorganic and Organic Divisions 
may hold a joint conference on Wednesday morn- 
ing, September 12. 

Division of Industrial Chemists and Chemical 
Engineers, Wednesday, September 12. Conference 
on ‘‘The industrial chemist in war time.’’ 

Division of Organic Chemistry will hear and dis- 
cuss the report of the committee on ‘‘The supply 
of organic chemicals for research during the war,’’ 
by the chairman, C. 8S. Hudson. 

Division of Pharmaceutical Chemistry.—Con- 
ference on ‘‘ Pharmaceutical chemistry and the fu- 
ture,’’ opened by L. F. Kebler. The secretary of 
the Division wishes to call the attention of the 
members to the fact that papers on the composi- 
tion of plant drugs or any of their constituents, 
the composition of volatile oils, ete., are appropri- 
ate to the program of this division. Papers on 
pharmacological testing should also be presented 
to this division. 

The Fertilizer Division will have papers of un- 
usual interest dealing with the fertilizer situation 
of to-day in relation to the chemical methods em- 
ployed in the analysis of fertilizers, sampling of 
fertilizers, etc. A conference where the papers 
previously read will be freely discussed and general 
conditions affecting the fertilizer business from a 
chemical standpoint will close the meeting. 

Division of Biological Chemistry. The sessions 
of the Biochemical Division include for Wednes- 
day a special program concerning ‘‘ Enzymes and 
their action.’’ 

Division of Water, Sewage and Sanitation will 
hold a conference on ‘‘Sanitation in warfare.’’ 

All titles for papers should be in the secre- 
tary’s hands on or before August 27; or in the 
hands of the secretaries of divisions on or be- 
fore August 25, with the exception that titles 
of papers should reach the secretary of the 
Division of Industrial Chemists and Chemical 
Engineers on or before August 21. In order 


SCIENCE 


109 


that the meeting may receive due and correct 
notice in the public press, every member pre- 
senting a paper is requested to send an abstract 
to Professor Allen Rogers, Pratt Institute, 
Brooklyn, N. Y., chairman of the society’s 
press and publicity committee. The amount of 
publicity given to the meeting and to the indi- 
vidual papers will entirely depend upon the 
degree to which members cooperate in obsery- 
ing this request. A copy of the abstract should 
be retained by the member and handed to the 
secretary of the special division before which 
the paper is to be presented in Boston or, bet- 
ter, sent in advance of the meeting to R. W. 
Neff, 22 India Square, Boston, Mass. Short 
abstracts will be printed in Science. 

The final program will be sent to all mem- 
bers signifying their intention of attending the 
meeting, to the secretaries of sections, to the 
council, and to all members making special re- 
quest therefor. 

Cuares L. Parsons, 
Secretary 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

Proressor Lionen S. Marks, head of the 
combined departments of mechanical engineer- 
ing of Harvard University and the Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology, has been ap- 
pointed to take charge of investigations re- 
lating to airplane engine design being con- 
ducted by the national advisory committee for 
aeronautics at the Bureau of Standards. 

Proressor WiLLIAM D. Hurp, director of the 
extension service of the Massachusetts Agri- 
cultural College, has been called to Washing- 
ton to act as assistant to the Secretary of Agri- 
culture. 


A COMMITTEE on industrial fatigue has been 
organized under the advisory commission of 
the Council of National Defense with the fol- 
lowing membership: Dr. Thomas Darlington, 
New York, chairman; Professor Frederic S. 
Lee, Columbia University, executive secre- 
tary; Professor Robert E. Chaddock, Colum- 
bia University; Professor Raymond Dodge, 
Wesleyan University; Dr. David L. Edsall, 
Harvard Medical School; Mr. P. Sargant 
Florence, Columbia University; Miss Jo- 
sephine Goldmark, National Consumers 


110 


League; Professor Ernest G. Martin, Leland 
Stanford University; Dr. J. W. Schere- 
schewsky, Public Health Service; Dr. Ernest 
L. Scott, Columbia University. The com- 
mittee is investigating munition factories and 
other industrial establishments that are manu- 
facturing war supplies, with the view of show- 
ing how avoidable fatigue may be eliminated 
and how the greatest output of the necessities 
of war may be secured compatible with the 
maintenance of the working-power of the 
workers. 


Dr. Horace D. Arnoxp, of Boston, has been 
elected chairman of the Council on Medical 
Education of the American Medical Associa- 
tion, succeeding Dr. Arthur Dean Bevan, of 
Chicago. 

Dr. Leverett D. Bristot has been appointed 
state health commissioner of Maine. 


Dr. J. Enruich has been appointed chief 
chemist of the Verona-Chemical Company, 
North Newark, N. J. 


Sirk Grorce Newman, chief medical officer 
of the British Board of Education, has joined 
the committee appointed by the president of 
the Board of Agriculture to investigate the 
production and distribution of milk. 


Sm Mancoum Morris has been elected presi- 
dent of the Institute of Hygiene, London, in 
succession to Sir William Bennett, who has 
held the post for the past ten years, and will 
continue his association with the institute as 
vice-president. 

Tue Harben gold medal of the Royal Insti- 
tute of Public Health of Great Britain, given 
every third year for eminent services rendered 
to the public health, has been awarded this 
year to Surgeon-General Sir Alfred Keogh, 
G.C.B., director-general of the Army Medical 
Service, and the gold medal for conspicuous 
services rendered to the cause of preventive 
medicine to Dr. E. W. Hope, M.O.H. for the 
city and port of Liverpool, and professor of 
public health in the university. 


As has been noted in Scmnce the annual 
meeting of the British Association has been 
given up. We learn from Nature that meet- 
ings of the organizing committees of the 
various sections, the delegates of correspond- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


ing societies, the committee of recommenda- 
tions, and the general committee have now 
been held. It has been decided to continue 
Sir Arthur Evans in the presidency for 
another year, while the Hon. Sir C. A. 
Parsons, who would have presided over this 
year’s meeting, will do so at the meeting 
which it is hoped will take place as arranged 
at Cardiff next year. The meeting this year 
would have been at Bournemouth, and that 
borough has repeated its invitation, which 
has been accepted, for 1919. Grants amount- 
ing to £286 were made in aid of such re- 
searches as were regarded as essential to carry 
on, having regard to present conditions. The 
new members of the council of the Associa- 
tion are Dr. E. F. Armstrong, Mr. J. H. 
Jeans, Professor A. Keith, Professor W. H. 
Perkin, and Mr. W. Whitaker. 

We learn from The British Medical Journal 
that at a recent meeting of the administra- 
tive council of the Pasteur Institute, Paris, 
Dr. Albert Calmette, director of the Pasteur 
Institute at Lille, and Dr. Louis Martin, © 
director of the Pasteur Hospital, were unan- 
imously appointed subdirectors in the room 
of Dr. Chamberland and Professor Metchni- 
koff. Dr. Chamberland, who died in 1908, has 
had no successor till now. Dr. Calmette, who 
founded the Pasteur Institute at Saigon, has 
taken a leading part in the campaign against 
tuberculosis in France, and Dr. Martin, who 
has been associated with the Paris Institute 
since 1902, has made researches on the bac- 
teriology of diphtheria, the prophylaxis of 
contagious diseases, tuberculous meningitis, 
tetanus, anthrax, and sleeping sickness. At 
the same meeting M. Vallery-Radot, Pasteur’s 
son-in-law and biographer, was elected presi- 
dent of the administrative council. 


Dr. Harotp CO. Brapiey, professor of physio- 
logical chemistry in the University of Wis- 
consin, recently delivered an address on “ Auto- 
lysis and the mechanism governing atrophy 
and hypertrophy of tissues ” before the faculty 
and students of the graduate summer quarter 
in medicine of the University of Illinois. 

Proressor G. A. Minuer, of the University 
of Illinois, will contribute the article on 
mathematics for the 1917 edition of the 


AuGust 3, 1917] 


“ American Year Book,” succeeding Professor 
E. B. Wilson, who was recently appointed head 
of the department of physics in the Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology. 


David WENDELL SPENCE, for twenty-seven 
‘years a professor of civil engineering, and for 
the past ten years dean of the school of engi- 
neering and professor of civil engineering in 
the Texas College, died at Galveston on 
June 28. 


Dr. CHARLES BASKERVILLE, professor of chem- 
istry in the College of the City of New York, 
has been appointed by the Ramsay Memorial 
Committee to organize a committee in the 
United States for receiving subscriptions to 
the fund from Americans. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


ANNOUNCEMENT is made that a gift of $50,- 
000 from George W. Brackenridge of San 
Antonio, Tex., will enable Columbia Uni- 
versity to open its doors to women students 
this autumn. Work will be begun at once 
on the addition to the present building to 
provide extra laboratory facilities in the de- 
partments of chemistry, pharmacology, pa- 
thology and bacteriology. 


Proressor BensaMin T. MarswHaty, of Dart- 
mouth College, has been appointed president 
of Connecticut College for Women at New 
London, to succeed President Frederick 
Sykes. 

Drawn W. G. Raymonp, head of the College 
of Engineering of the State University of 
Iowa, has declined the presidency of the Colo- 
rado school of mines situated at Golden, 
Colo. 


Dr. Hue McGuigan, professor of pharma- 
cology in the Northwestern University, has 
accepted the position of professor and head 
of the department of pharmacology, materia 
medica and therapeutics in the college of 
medicine of the University of Illinois. 

Dr. H. R. Crosnanp of the department of 
psychology of the University of Minnesota, 
has been elected assistant professor of psy- 
chology in the University of Arkansas. 


SCIENCE 


111 


Lorp Crewe has accepted the invitation to 
become chancellor of the University of Shef- 
field, in succesion to the late Duke of Norfolk. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
REPLY TO DR. ERLANGER 


On p. 384 et seq., Vol. XLV, of this journal 
Dr. Erlanger criticizes an abstract of my 
paper which he did not stop to hear and which 
is not yet published. 

Dr. Erlanger completely misses the point of 
my paper and somewhat radically changes 
some statements in his own paper.t 

Dr. Erlanger stated that the pressure os- 
cillations are in direct numerical ratio to the 
manometer pressures in the compression cham- 
ber; I showed that the ratio is determined by 
the barometric plus the manometric pressure 
—i. e., Boyle’s Law. 

He says :2 

Inasmuch as the volume of incompressible fluid 
entering the artery is practically the same through- 


o ——> Pressure determined by the pulse 


T2997 Tos 
[ena] woay 
T2047 21199895 


Diastolic Compression 


hayjev oy parjddo warss sudo 


Mean Compression 


Sustohe Compression 


Fig. 1. 


out the diastolic-systolic range of compression 
and since at this time, as premised above, the com- 
pression pressure is nearly twice that which ob- 
tained at D, the pressure in the compression cham- 
ber will be raised almost twice as high by the 


1 Erlanger, Am. Jour. Physiol., 1916, XXXIX., 


401. 
2 Loc. cit., 409. 


112 


pulse at Z as at D; for the rise of pressure de- 
termined by the addition of a given volume of in- 
compressible material to a confined gas-filled space 
is proportional to the pressure of the gas filling the 
space. 

This statement is also expressed in the dia- 
gram? which is here given in photographic 
reproduction. The beginning pressure is 
marked zero—%. e., ignoring barometric pres- 
sure—the “ diastolic pressure” marked on the 
ordinate is just half way between zero and the 
“systolic pressure.” The ordinates drawn to 
represent the extent of oscillations are in the 
same ratio, that is the “systolic rise ””—H V’— 
at double the manometer pressure is just 
twice that marked at NV near DV for diastolic 
pressure—a ratio of 1: 2. 

Boyle’s Law shows that the ratio would be 
P’/P where P is the original total pressure; 
P’ the new pressure produced by the addition 
of a constant volume of fluid. Accordingly: 
introducing V and V’ as the respective vol- 
umes of the gas with K as the constant it was 
found in a concrete case where V was 100 e.c. 
and where 1 c.c. of fluid was added with the 
barometer at 747 mm. that the ratio of the 
size of the oscillations at 50 mm. (manometer) 
beginning pressure as compared with 100 mm. 
(797 mm. and 847 mm. total pressure) was 
8.05: 8.55 or 1: 1.06 plus instead of 1:2 as per 
Erlanger hypothesis. 

The ratio at 0 mm. (manometer) beginning 
pressure as compared with 100 mm. (manom- 
eter pressure was 7.54:8.55 or 1:1.13 in- 
stead of 1: infinity as demanded by the Er- 
langer hypothesis. 

A. M. Burne 

Oxnio STATE UNIVERSITY, 

CoLUMBUS 


FAUNAL CONDITIONS IN SOUTH GEORGIA 


Regarding Mr. Luke’s note on the rats of 
South Georgia, it may be of interest to record 
that his question as to “ what characteristics 
the rat would develop after a few years of such 
a specialized habitat” has been at least pro- 
visionally answered by the Swedish zoologist, 
Dr. Einar Loénnberg. This author in 1906 
described the South Georgia rat as a new sub- 


3 Loc. cit., 407. 
1Scrence, N. 8., XLV., 502, 503, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


species, and noted that it apparently differed 
from the typical brown rat in haying a 
thicker skin, denser and longer fur, and a 
more rusty color. : 

Several of Mr. Luke’s observations would 
be hard to substantiate, for instance the state- . 
ment: 


Until about thirty years ago there were no rats 
on the islands. 


It is much more probable that these ubi- 
quitous rodents were introduced in sealing 
vessels not long after American and British 
sealers first began to exploit South Georgia 
on a large scale, which was in the year 1800. 
Klutschak, who visited South Georgia in 
1877, transcribed and published an American 
sealer’s chart of the island, and designated 
as “ Rattenhafen ” * the bay known to modern 
Norwegian whalemen as “ Prince Olaf Har- 
bor,” but called “Port Gladstone” on the 
latest British map. Rats are still exceedingly 
abundant about this inlet, as I found in 19138. 
Within recent years rats are known to have 
been reintroduced repeatedly at Cumberland 
Bay. 

The rats at South Georgia can not fairly 
be accused of having “devastated the few 
small animals living on the island,” unless the 
birds are meant; there are no other native 
land vertebrates. Rabbits were introduced 
about 1872 by a sealer coming from Tristan 
da Cunha, and perhaps two or three times 
since, but they never gained a foothold. A 
few horses and reindeer have been thriving 
there in a feral state for a number of years. 

The whaling industry was started at South 
Georgia not “a few decades ago,” but in 1904. 
Although the rats do feed upon the whale 
carcasses, as Mr. Luke writes, it would be a 
mistake to suppose that they are at all de- 
pendent upon this source of food, for the 
creatures appear to be very nearly as abun- 
dant about the uninhabited fiords as they are 
along the shores of the carcass-strewn bays. 
I observed at Possession Bay, the Bay of Isles, 
and elsewhere, that the rats eat the young 


2 Kungl. Sv. Vet. Akad. Handlingar., Bd. 40, No. 
5, 21-23, 1906. 

3 Deutsch. Rundschau f. Geogr. u. Stat., Bd. IIL., 
522-531, 1881. 


Aveust 3, 1917] 


tussock grass, and that they devour also enor- 
mous numbers of the smaller species of sea- 
birds (Tubinares), which nest in burrows. 

I shall refer again to the rats of South 
Georgia in two forthcoming papers, one of 
which is already in type. The following 
references are to articles by the writer that 
throw light upon faunal conditions at South 
Georgia, and the way in which they have been 
affected by human agency: (1) “A Desolate 
_Island of the Antarctic,” Amer. Mus. Journ. 
XTIT., 242-259, 1918. (2) “A Subantarctie 
Island,” Harper’s Mag. January, 1914, 165- 
176. (3) “Cruising in the South Atlantic,” 
Brooklyn Mus. Quart. July, 1914, 83-110. 
(4) “A Report on the South Georgia Ex- 
pedition,” Sct. Bull. Brooklyn Mus., II., 41- 
102, 1914. (5) “The Penguins of South 
Georgia,” Sci. Bull. Brooklyn Mus., II., 103- 
133, 1915. 


Ropert CusHMan MurpHy 


DEPARTMENT OF NaTuRAL SCIENCE, 
BROOKLYN MusEUM 


A PERSONAL AND FAMILY HISTORY REGISTER 


To tHE Eprror or Scrence: In Sorence of 
May 16, 1913, the writer called attention to a 
eall made by Dr. J. Madison Taylor in an 
earlier issue of Science, seeking aid and co- 
operation in a plan to secure a body of trust- 
worthy vital statistics, and attempted to em- 
phasize the crying need of just such a de- 
sideratum. It is gratifying to know that the 
aim of Dr. Taylor is now realized, and that 
under the above caption he has made available 
a means by which such data may be intelli- 
gently compiled and made permanent. The 
register forms a volume, quarto in size, and 
well bound, with provisions and directions for 
recording personal and family traits, history 
of birth, growth, health, disease, etc., and also 
blanks for various supplemental data that may 
be considered desirable in such a history, such 
.as photographs, clinical and dental records. 

The volume closes with a timely discussion 
of subjects relating to human welfare, and in- 
cludes such topics as The Child as a Problem 
to Parents, The Building of a Citizen, En- 


SCIENCE 


113 


vironment and inherited Tendencies, Personal 
Hygiene, Age and Age Values, Development of 
the Mind, all of which are presented in terms 
easily understood, and at the same time with- 
out sacrificing scientific accuracy. 

The writer welcomes this register as a 
worthy contribution toward a better under- 
standing of the importance of human statistics 
in relation to the imperative necessity of both 
human conservation and racial betterment. 
The author has spared no pains, and has evi- 
dently devoted long and strenuous labor in its 
production, and the publishers, F. A. Davis 
Company, Philadelphia, have also done well 
their part in giving to the book their usual ex- 
cellence of artistic and mechanical values. 


Cuartes W. Haraitr 
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY 


REWARDS FOR NATIONAL SERVICE 


To THE Epitor or Science: The American 
government has embarked in what will be the 
greatest war in its history and as such de- 
serves and demands the unqualified support of 
its citizens and that every effort be made to 
secure such services at the minimum cost. 

An effort, I believe, is being made to or- 
ganize and direct the inventive skill of the 
American people so as to render victory more 
certain, save life and property and shorten the 
conflict. Abroad in many eases such services 
are rendered gratuitously but the donator in 
meritorious cases is rewarded by a suitable 
decoration. This in many ease is prized more 
highly than a monetary reward. 

Since the government is making an effort 
to secure such expert inventive assistance as 
practicable, would it not be possible to prevail 
upon the government to institute such a 
decoration and if not for the American As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science, as 
the greatest organization competent to repre- 
sent the consensus of expert opinion to do so. 


x 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


Konchigaku Hanron Jékwan (General Trea- 
tise on Entomology).. By Dr. T. Miyaxrr. 


114 


Shokabo, Nihonbashi, Tokyo, June, 1917, 

3.50 yen. 

Dr. T. Miyake, of the Imperial Agricultural 
Experiment Station at Nishigahara, Tokyo, 
has just brought out an excellent book which 
will serve as the first part of a handbook of 
entomology. It is beautifully printed in Ja- 
panese, fully illustrated, and handsomely 
bound. It deals with the morphology, physiol- 
ogy and embryology of insects, a field to which, 
the author states, Japanese entomologists have 
hitherto made very few contributions. The 
book is therefore largely a compilation, though 
here and there the researches of Japanese ento- 
mologists are quoted. The work is a pioneer 
of its kind, and the most detailed book that has 
ever appeared in Japan. It covers 347 pages 
and contains 227 figures. The majority of the 
figures are borrowed from German, American, 
English and other writers, and are fully 
credited. Some of the line drawings are ap- 
parently original and are very well done. 

Dr. Miyake proposes, in his second volume, 
to publish a brief history of entomology in 
Japan. He expects to publish four volumes 
in all, the entire work to be used as a text-book 
for colleges and universities. It is a pity that 
European and American entomologists have 
such a slight knowledge of the Japanese lan- 
guage, for the book has a very attractive ap- 


pearance and many would like to consult it: 
L. O. Howarp 


HERB-GROWING IN THE BRITISH 
EMPIRE 

The British Medical Journal states that at 
the meeting of the Royal Society of Arts on 
May 2nd Mr. J. C. Shenstone, F.L.S., read a 
paper on herb-growing in the British empire. 
At the present time, he said, herbal remedies 
occupied a more important place in the med- 
ical and domestic practise in most European 
countries than they did with us. When the war 
broke out the discovery was made that we had 
become dependent upon the Central Empires 
not only for synthetic chemicals, but for the 
supply of herbal medicines formerly grown 
by us. Some of these plants, such as bella- 
donna, henbane, foxglove, colechicum, and per- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


haps valerian and male fern, were indispen- 
sable, but although they had belonged to our 
native flora, or at least had been cultivated 
in this country from very early times, their 
cultivation had fallen into neglect. The same 
was true of less valuable plants such as the 
dandelion, poppy capsules, and camomile 
flowers. As to belladonna and henbane, it 
was pretty certain that their alkaloidal value 
could be raised considerably without increas- 
ing the cost of production, but for this pur- 
pose the cooperation of the chemist would be 
required. It has also been stated that the 
wild foxglove of this country could supply the 
market for digitalis. A medical friend who 
collected his own digitalis and prepared his 
own tincture had told him that he found that 
foxglove growing on a hot sandy bank pro- 
tected by a wood gave him the best results. Ex- 
periments in producing the most active dan- 
delion juice would be worth consideration. 
Liquorice, most of which came from Spain 
and Italy, could be cultivated in Essex and 
Surry, and was already grown in Yorkshire. 
Many valuable drugs imported from the 
American continent were not unsuited to our 
climate; Podophyllum peltatum, Linn., im- 
ported from America, had figured in. our gar- 
den catalogues as a decorative plant. He 
begged medical men to give some attention, 
in conjunction with pharmacists and botan- 
ists, to investigating likely plants, for there 
could be no doubt that the varied and numer- 
ous flora of the British Empire would yield 
medicines of even greater value than those 
imported from foreign countries. Sir Robert 
Armstrong-Jones, who occupied the chair, 
said that there were eighty or one hundred 
medicinal herbs and plants of medicinal 
value; Mr. Shenstone had referred to about 
forty of them, but the remainder could also 
be grown practically within our empire. 
There were many reasons for the decay in 
the use of the medicinal herbs, but the chief 
was the insinuating tablet. If herb-growing 
were taken in hand, it should be done at once, 
for belladonna only paid in the second year 
and aconite in the third. He understood that 
the shortage of digitalis had now been just 


Avaust 3, 1917] 


overcome. Sir George Savage referred to the 
great amount of interest he found in the old 
herbals in his possession, although some of 
them were difficult to follow. He had spent 
four years in a very wide country practise in 
Cumberland, and he recalled his indebted- 
ness to a man who made a great many of the 
simpler remedies from dandelions and other 
plants, and saved a great deal of trouble. 
British bed-straw was a useful herb; in the 
British Medical Journal of forty years ago 
he found a note on its efficacy in certain 
eases. He concluded by quoting a remark of 
Rousseau to the effect that the field of botany 
had not been studied by scientists, but had 
been exploited by medical men who wished 
the public to have faith in their simples. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
THE CHEMICAL BASIS OF REGENERATION 
AND GEOTROPISM 

1. Iv is a well-known fact that in many 
plants after the removal of the apex some res- 
toration of the old form is accomplished by 
the growth of a hitherto dormant bud near the 
wound. This process has been called regener- 
ation. It is also well known that in certain 
fir trees the old form is restored in such a case 
in an apparently different way, namely by one 
or more of the horizontal branches next to the 
apex beginning to grow vertically upwards 
(negative geotropism). One may wonder how 
it can happen that the same result, namely the 
restoration of the old form, is accomplished 
in the organic world in such different ways; 
and it is quite natural that occurrences of this 
kind should suggest to one not a mechanist 
the conception of mystie forces acting inside 
or outside the living organism towards a 
definite purpose, in this case the restoration of 
the lost apex. The writer pointed out not 
long ago that both phenomena, the restoration 
of form of a mutilated organism by geotropic 
bending as well as by the growing out of 
hitherto dormant buds may be caused by one 
and the same agency; namely the collection 
of certain chemical substances near the 
wound.! New experiments which the writer 


1 Loeb, J., ScieNcE, 1916, XLIV., 210; Bot. Ga- 


SCIENCE 


115 


has since made seem to prove this idea to be 
correct. 

2. In a previous paper the writer had shown 
that when an isolated piece of stem of Bryo- 
phyllum calycinum, from 10 to 15 em. long, 
with one leaf attached to its apical end, is 
put in a horizontal position the stem will grad- 
ually bend and assume the shape of a U, with 
the concave side upwards and that this bending 
is due to the active growth of a certain layer 
of cells in the cortex on the lower side of the 
stem. When the same experiment is made with 
stems without a leaf attached some geotropic 
bending of the stem still occurs, but at a much 
slower rate. From this observation the writer 
drew the conclusion that the leaf furnishes 
material to the stem which causes the growth 
of the cortex of the lower side of the stem, re- 
sulting in the subsquent geotropic bending of 
the stem.2 The leaf forces this material into 
that part of the stem which is situated more 
basally than the leaf; since the part of the stem 
situated in front of a leaf does as a rule not 
show any geotropic bending. The fact that 
the growth leading to the geotropic curvature 
takes place in the cells of the lower side of a 
horizontally placed stem indicates that the 
material causing the growth collects on the 
lower side of the stem, which appears quite 
natural, since this material is a liquid, pos- 
sibly containing some solid particles in sus- 
pension. A slight leakage of sap from the 
conducting vessels might be sufficient to ac- 
count for such an accumulation of material 
on the under side of a horizontally placed 
stem. 

3. Since the publication of these observa- 
tions on geotropism in Bryophyllum the writer 
has been able to show that the mass of shoots 
which an isolated leaf can produce from its 
notches is a function of the mass of the leaf 
and that sister leaves of equal size when iso- 
lated from the stem produce equal masses of 
shoots under equal conditions and in equal 
time, even if the number of shoots produced 
differs considerably in the two leaves. When 
zette, 1917, LXIII., 25; ‘*The Organism as a 
Whole,’’ New York, 1916, p. 153. 

2 Loe. cit. 


116 


the mass of one set of isolated leaves is reduced 
by cutting out pieces from their center while 
their isolated sister leaves remain intact the 
mass of shoots produced by the two sets of 
sister leaves varies approximately in propor- 
tion with the mass of the leaves.* 

If it is true that the geotropic bending of a 
horizontally placed stem depends upon the 
mass of material furnished to the stem by the 
leaf we should expect that a reduction of the 
mass of the leaf would correspondingly retard 
the rate of geotropic bending in the stem. The 
writer has recently carried out such experi- 
ments and they corroborate this expectation. 
If two sets of stems of equal length are sus- 
pended in an aquarium, each with one leaf 
attached to its apical end, and if the size of 
the leaf is reduced in one set by cutting away 
pieces of the leaf, the geotropic bending takes 
place the more slowly the smaller the mass of 
the leaf. It is difficult to conceive of a more 
striking experiment. When the mass of the 
leaf is reduced to zero, the bending is ex- 
tremely slow. 

4, These experiments suggest that the 
growth of the cells of a horizontally placed 
stem which gives rise to the geotropic bending 
is accelerated by substances furnished to the 
stem by an apical leaf; and that these sub- 
stances might be the same as those which serve 
for the formation of roots and shoots in the 
isolated leaf. If this were true, a leaf attached 
to a piece of stem should form a smaller mass 
of shoots and roots than its sister leaf entirely 
detached from the stem, since in the former 
part of the material available for shoot forma- 
tion should go into the stem. 

It has been known for some time that a 
piece of stem inhibits the shoot formation in 
a leaf of Bryophyllum calycinum, but this in- 
hibition was attributed by former writers to 
an influence of roots formed on such a piece 
of stem. By suitable experiments it can be 
shown, however, that the inhibition takes place 
also when no roots are formed on the stem. 

It seemed to the writer that the inhibiting 
influence of the stem on the shoot production 

3 Loeb, J., Science, 1917, XLV., 436; Bot. Ga- 
zette, 1917 (in print). 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


in the leaf was due, as stated, to the absorp- 
tion of material from the leaf by the stem 
which would have served for the growth of 
roots and shoots in the leaf if the latter had 
been detached from the stem; and that the 
material flowing from the leaf into the stem 
was causing the growth of the cells in the lower 
side of a horizontally placed stem, thereby giv- 
ing rise to the geotropic bending of the stem 
(and incidentally also to the callus formation 
at the base of the stem). If this were true 
there should exist a simple quantitative rela- 
tion between the inhibiting power of the stem 
upon shoot formation in a leaf and the in- 
crease in the mass of the stem; namely, the 
two quantities should be approximately equal. 
The writer has carried out such experiments 
in large numbers and found that this relation 
holds true, namely that a piece of stem at- 
tached to a leaf increases its weight by ap- 
proximately the same amount by which the 
shoot production in the leaf is diminished. 
For these experiments the following method 
was adopted. 

5. A piece from the stem of Bryophyllum, 
containing one node with its two leaves, is cut 
out from a plant and the stem split longitudi- 
nally in the middle between the two leaves, 
leaving one half of the stem attached to each 
leaf. The half stem is removed from one leaf 
and weighed directly. The leaf whose half 
stem is cut off and the leaf with a half stem 
still attached to it serve for the experiment. 
After several weeks the amount of shoots in 
both leaves is determined by weight and it is 
found that the leaf without stem had produced 
a larger mass of shoots than the leaf with a 
piece of stem attached. The latter is then re- 
moved from the leaf and weighed. It is in- 
variably found that it has increased in weight 
and that this increase approximately equals 
the diminution in the mass of shoots in the 
leaf under the influence of the stem. The fol- 
lowing may serve as an example. 

Three sets of experiments were made simul- 
taneously on 6, 7 and 7 pairs of sister leaves 
prepared in the way described above; one leaf 
was without stem and the other with one half 
of the split stem. The three experiments dif- 


Aveust 3, 1917] 


fered in regard to the length of the stem, which 
was in the three experiments 2 (A), 1 (B) and 
0.5 em. (C), respectively. The leaves dipped 
with their apices in water. The results are 
given in Table I. In this table we call the dif- 
ference in the mass of shoots produced in the 


SCIENCE 


117 


It is almost impossible to split the living 
stem so perfectly that the two pieces are abso- 
lutely equal and in this way an error creeps in 
which can only be eliminated by a large num- 
ber of experiments. In 19 different sets of ex- 
periments the leaves without stems produced 


TABLE I 


DURATION OF EXPERIMENT 23 DAYS 


Shoots Produced by Leaves Shoots Produced by Stem Inhibiting Action 
of Stem 
Increase In 
pias Increase in Weight 
Number Weight, Gm. | Number | Weight, Gm. Neal SeIanESTraNoutae 
Produced by Stem) 
Experiment A, Length of 
stem 2 cm. 6 pairs of 
sister leaves from the 
same plant. 
Leaves without stems...... 17 1.396 
Leaves with stems.........-. 5 0.266 5 0.454 0.888 | pony 
1.342 
Experiment B. Length of 
stem 1 cm. 7 pairs of 
sister leaves from the 
same plant. 
Leaves without stems....... 19 1.606 
Leaves with stems........... 13 0.823 4 0.335 0.400 pie 
Experiment C. Length of 
stem 0.5cm. 7 pairs of 
sister leaves from the 
same plant. 
Leaves without stems...... 15 1.006 
Leaves with stems........... 12 0.464 4 0.105 0.289 pte 


leaves without and with stems the inhibiting 
action of the stem. This quantity should 
equal approximately the sum of the mass of 
shoots produced in the axil of the leaf at- 
tached to the stem plus the increase in weight 
of the stem attached to the leaf during the 
duration of the experiment. The ratio of the 
two values should therefore approximately 
equal 1 (Table I.). 

The experiments show that within the limit 
of error the mass of the stem increased in such 
a way as to approximately equal the inhibiting 
effect of the stem on shoot production in the 
notches of the leaf. The mass of roots pro- 
duced in the leaves is neglected since it is 
small compared with the mass of stems. 


27.898 grams of shoots and the leaves with 
stems 9.797 grams. The inhibiting action of 
the stems, 7. e., the difference in shoot produc- 
tion between the leaves without stems and 
their sister leaves with stems was therefore 
18.101 grams. According to our theory the 
weight of the stems which were left attached 
to the leaves should have increased by the 
same amount. The actual increase in the 
weight of the half stems attached to the one set 
of leaves was in the same time 16.695 grams. 
This includes the increase due to shoot pro- 
duction in the axil of the leaf, which was 
slight, amounting in all to less than 1.5 grams. 
The two values, 18.101 and 16.695 differ by 
8.5 per cent. 


118 


Tt seems, therefore, probable that the inhibit- 
ing effect of the stem upon the mass of shoots 
produced in the leaves is due to the absorption 
of a corresponding quantity of material from 
the leaves by the stem. 

6. Summary and Conclusions—() The 
writer had shown in a former note that the 
mass of shoots produced in isolated sister 
leaves of Bryophyllum calycinum is in direct 
proportion to the masses of the leaves and that 
this remains true if the mass of one leaf is re- 
duced by cutting out pieces from the center of 
the leaf, while the sister leaf remains intact. 
In this paper it is shown that the rate of geo- 
tropic bending of horizontally placed stems of 
Bryophyllum calycium, if one apical leaf is at- 
tached to the stem, occurs at a rate increasing 
with the mass of the leaf. When the mass of 
the leaf is diminished by cutting away pieces 
the rate of geotropic bending is diminished 
also. 

(2) It had been known for a long time that 
when a piece of stem is attached to a leaf of 
Bryophyllum calycinum the shoot production 
in the latter is diminished or completely inhib- 
ited. It is shown in this paper that the mass 
of a piece of stem attached to a leaf increases 
by approximately the same amount by which 
the shoot production in the leaf is diminished 
through the influence of the stem. The infer- 
ence is drawn that the inhibiting effect of the 
stem upon shoot production in the leaf is due 
to the fact that the same material which would 
have been available for shoot production in the 
leaf, had the latter been detached from the 
stem, is now absorbed by the stem. 

(8) This material gives rise in the stem to 
callus formation and to that growth of cer- 
tain cells of the cortex which causes the geo- 
tropic bending; and if the buds of the stem 
are not removed it causes also shoot produc- 
tion on the stem. The comparatively large 
masses involved indicate that this material 
must consist chiefly of the common material 
required for growth, 7. e., water, sugars, amino 
acids, salts; but the accessory substances and 
the hypothetical specific organ-forming sub- 
stances of Sachs may be included in this mass; 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


and this is suggested by the fact that on the 
lower side of a horizontally placed stem, roots 
grow out, while shoots grow out from the 
upper side. There must, therefore, be asso- 
ciated with the material which causes geo- 
tropic bending also something. which favors 
the growth of roots and this may be one of 
the hypothetical substances of Sachs. 

(4) These facts give a simple explanation 
of the “resourcefulness” of the organism re- 
ferred to in the beginning of this paper, 
namely that plants may restore their lost apex 
either by the growth of the hitherto dormant 
buds near the wound or by a geotropic bend- 
ing of former horizontal branches next to the 
wound (fir trees). Our experiments suggest 
that the cause is the same in both cases, 
namely, a mass action of the nutritive, and 
possibly also of some specific substances, upon 
the cells of dormant buds or upon the cells of 
the lower side of horizontal branches which 
leads to a rapid synthesis and growth in these 
cells. Without the removal of the old apex 
this growth would not have taken place, for 
the simple reason that the nutritive material 
would have had no chance to collect near the 
wound in masses sufficient for the growth. 

(5) The phenomena of geotropism thus turn 
out to be phenomena of mass action, probably 
of the common nutritive material circulating 
in the sap and they are apparently of the same 
nature as the growth of dormant buds, which 
is also due to a mass action of the same sub- 
stances. Gravity need play only a passive: 
réle, allowing masses of liquids to “ seek their 
level.” In the literature of geotropism this 
phenomenon is treated as a case of “ stimula- 
tion,” but this treatment misses the essential 
point, namely, the chemical mass action in- 
volved, and it substitutes a fictitious factor, 
the “stimulus” of gravitation, which in all 
probability does not exist. The case is similar 
to that of heliotropism when the orientation of 
animals to light is treated as a “reaction to a 
stimulus” instead of as an instance of the 
photochemical law of Bunsen and Roscoe. 


Jacques LorB 


Tue ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR 
MepicaL RESEARCH 


Aucust 3, 1917] 


THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 
II 
ORGANIC DIVISION 


J. R. Bailey, Chairman 
H. L. Fisher, Secretary 


Some oxidation reactions: H. D. Gipps and C. 
Conover. The investigation of the cause of colora- 
tion of some compounds begun some years ago by 
the writers while in the tropics was described. 
Since all of the reactions which were encountered 
were catalyzed by light, the studies were greatly 
facilitated by the intense sunlight of the tropies. 
These investigations are now being extended to 
other catalytic reactions which promise some com- 
mercial importance. 


The action of aluminum chloride upon aromatic 
hydrocarbons: Gustav Equorr and Rosert J. 
Moorr. Benzene, toluene, xylene, cumene and cy- 
mene were distilled over a period of twenty-four 
hours with ten per cent. by weight, of aluminum 
chloride in order to determine the percentage 
yields of reaction products. The results in terms 
of percentages, were as follows: 


Hydrocarbons Used |Benzene|Toluene | Xylene |Cumene|} Cymene 


Benzene............ 93.4 | 15.0 5.6 1.5 0.8 
Toluene... ide 60.0 | 19.0 2.7 | 14.3 
Xylene... 3.5 | 30.0 | 26.5 7.0 
Cumene............ 005 63.6 coo 
Cymene............ 60 B00 28.5 
Naphthene........ | re | 0.8 | 0.6 0.6 | 0.5 
Pars aectocdesstite. 6.8 | 20.0 | 44.0 4.0 | 49.4 


The naphthene formed during the above reactions 
proved to be hexahydrotoluene. Traces of phenol 
were noticed in all the reactions, the toluene, in 
particular, yielding one per cent. 


A study of the nitrogen distribution in different 
soil types: C. A. Morrow. The study was made 
on two peats, one muck, seven mineral surface 
soils and one subsoil, all from Minnesota. The 
method of Van Slyke’s protein analysis was used 
throughout the investigation because the nitrogen 
could be separated into a larger number of frac- 
tions than by the employment of earlier methods, 
The most significant fact brought out by this 
study is that the organic nitrogen distribution in 
different soil types is very uniform. This is to be 
expected, since the nitrogen distribution in soils is 
an average distribution of all the plant and ani- 
mal nitrogenous products that find their way to the 
soil. 


SCIENCE 


119 


New derivatives of arsanilic acid: OurveR KamM. 
A new series of acyl derivatives of arsanilie acid 
has been prepared; viz., the halogen-benzenesul- 
fonyl derivatives, and their physiological action 
has been studied. The introduction of halogens 
increases the toxicity of these arsenie compounds. 


Tetraphenylmethane: OutveR Kamm. The ac- 
tion of phenylmagnesium bromide upon various 
ethers of triphenyl carbinol has been studied. 
This reaction was found very convenient for the 
preparation of tetraphenylmethane, the yield in 
the case of the phenyl ether being 20 per cent. 


Oxidation products of alkaline copper sulphate 
on lactose: W. Ler Lewis. ‘The products are 
mainly galactasido acids whose hydrolysis yields 
galactose and acids containing from one to six 
carbon atoms. One hundred grams of anhydrous 
lactose gave 9.65 gms. of carbon dioxide, 3.06 
grams of formic acid and 97 grams of nonyolatile 
syrupy acids. The hydrolysis of these later gave 
29.30 gms. of galactose, 52.90 gms. syrupy acids 
and 0.486 gms. of oxalic acid. The analysis of 
these syrupy acids has so far yielded 14.26 gms. of 
mannonie lactone, 4 gms. of glycollie acid and the 
residue gives evidence of trioxy butyrie acid and 
d-1 glycerinic. The origin of these acids is found in 
the explanation of Nef. Intermediate galactasido 
hexose dienols are formed whose dissociation and 
oxidation logically account for the products. The 
presence of such large amounts of mannonie lactone, 
obtained also from maltose, must originate in a 
benzillic acid rearrangement of galactasido-gluco- 
sone, and sharply differentiates the oxidation of 
the simple hexoses from the reducing disaccharoses. 
The glucosido acids clearly explain the lesser re- 
ducing power of the latter. 


The oxidation of ethyl alcohol by means of alka- 
line potassium permanganate: Wm. LiuoyD EVANS 
and JessE E. Day. In neutral aqueous solutions 
of potassium permanganate at 25°, 50° and 75°, 
ethyl alcohol is oxidized exclusively to acetic acid; 
in alkaline solutions of the same reagent, acetic, 
oxalic and carbonic acids are the reaction prod- 
ucts. A continuous increase in the concentration 
of the potassium hydroxide produces a correspond- 
ing increase in the yield of oxalic and carbonic 
acids, and a diminution in the yield of acetic acid. 
An increase in the temperature of the reaction 
tends to increase the yield of oxalic and carbonic 
acids and a diminution in the yield of acetic acid. 


The oxidation of acetaldehyde by means of alka- 
line potassium permanganate: WM. Luoyp Evans 
and HoMeEr B. ADKINS. The same general results 


120 


were obtained in the oxidation of acetaldehyde in 
alkaline potassium permanganate solutions as are 
deseribed for ethyl alcohol in the previous ab- 
stract. 


DIVISION OF WATER, SEWAGE AND SANITATION 
E. H. S. Bailey, Chairman 
H. P. Corson, Secretary 


Seasonal distribution of soil and fecal strains of 
the colon-aerogenes group in surface waters: 
Myrtite GREENFIELD and W. N. Sxourur. A sur- 
vey was made of five surface water supplies, 
equipped with rapid sand filters, with the object of 
determining the variation of the organisms of the 
colon-aerogenes group during wet and dry weather, 
and their response to treatment. During rainy 
weather, the soil strains of the colon-aerogenes 
group predominated in raw water. During ex- 
tremely dry weather, fecal strains of the colon- 
aerogenes group predominated in raw water, par- 
ticularly if there was much sewage pollution. 
There seemed to be no difference between soil and 
fecal strains isolated from raw water in their re- 
sistence to treatment. 


Legal status and work of the water and sewage 
laboratory of the state board of health: C. C. 
Youne. The laboratory was for many years de- 
pendent for support upon direct appropriation to 
the university by the legislature and there never 
were adequate funds with which to do the work 
demanded. The 1915 legislature passed a law re- 
quiring annual analyses and inspections of water 
supplies and providing for rules and regulations 
to be drawn up by the State Board of Health and 
fees to cover the cost of the work. There has been 
practically no objection to the law, which has been 
in operation since July 1, 1915. Six thousand 
samples were examined last year and abundant data 
have been collected on the operation of the purifica- 
tion plants of the ground-water supplies. 


The problems of water supply of a great rail- 
road system: Orton T. Rers. Railroads have to 
deal with all sorts of water conditions, dependent 
upon the location of their lines. As the road de- 
yelops old sources of water supply become inade- 
quate or are found harmful. Water surveys be- 
come necessary in order to secure the best pos- 
sible supplies. The relatively small number of suit- 
able waters for boiler use make it necessary to 
treat the greater number of waters in order to 
render poor water supplies suitable for boiler use. 
The extent of water treatment as practised by the 
A. T. & S. F. Ry. system. The means employed 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1179 


to furnish pure drinking water to the traveling 
public and the employes of the railroad system. 


Well waters of Chicago: EDwaRD Bartow. An 
investigation was made of the source, quality and 
method of obtaining the thirty million gallons of 
well water used each day in Chicago and the effect 
of removing this quantity of water. Water can be 
obtained from wells in the Chicago area in suffi- 
cient quantities for many manufacturing purposes. 
Amounts of water up to 20 gallons per minute can 
be obtained from wells less than 500 feet deep. 
For larger amounts, wells should be sunk to a 
depth of 1,600 feet. Salt water is reached at 
about 1,700 feet. Water from less than 500 feet 
can be used satisfactorily in boilers, but the water 
from the deeper wells can not be used without 
softening. For cooling purposes water from 350 
feet having a temperature of 52° Fahrenheit and 
from 1,600 to 1,700 feet having a temperature of 
57° Fahrenheit is available. Hydrogen sulfide is 
found only in water from the Niagara limestone. 
Water free from hydrogen sulfide can be obtained 
by casing off the Niagara limestone, extending 
the casing through the Maquoketa shale. 

The vertical distribution of dissolved oxygen 
and the precipitation by salt water in certain tidal 
areas: J. W. SALE and W. W. SKINNER. It was 
shown that the lower layers of certain tidal waters 
under investigation contain less dissolved oxygen 
than the upper layers. Evidence is presented to 
show that this phenomenon is caused by the 
stratification of the water due to the specifie grav- 
ity of the under-run of sea water which cuts off 
vertical circulation, and to the subsequent de- 
pletion of the oxygen in the lower layers by nat- 
ural agencies. The depletion of oxygen is found 
to be greatest in September. The precipitation 
and sedimentation of matter in tidal areas by sea 
water is presented in graphic form. Those data 
are considered to be of particular interest from 
the viewpoint of fish and shell fish life. 


DIVISION OF PHARMACEUTICAL CHEMISTRY 


L. F. Kebler, Chairman 
George D. Beal, Secretary 


The volatile oil of Monarda fistulosa: EMER- 
son R. Minter. In addition to the compounds 
previously identified in this oil the presence of 
d-a-pinene (nitrol benzylamine, m.p. 123°-124°) 
has been proved and probably butyric and valeric 
aldehydes (p-nitrophenyl hydrazones). 

The volatile oil of Nepta cataria: EMERSON R. 
Miter. Two samples of this oil had the density 


Aveust 3, 1917] 


reported by Schimmel & Company, namely 1.04. 
It is very different from most volatile oils in that 
it dissolves to the extent of 90-92 per cent. in 5 
per cent. sodium carbonate solution. 


The action of phenol on tin containers: HARPER 
F. Zouuer. This investigation had its origin in 
the analysis of a precipitate occurring in the pre- 
servative used in connection with the hog-cholera 
serum prepared in the Serum Plant of the Kansas 
State Agricultural College. This preservative con- 
sisted of 5 per cent. C. P. phenol; 10 per cent. C. 
P. glycerol, and 85 per cent. distilled water by 
volume. 


Some constituents of the American grape-fruit 
(Citrus decumana): Harper F. ZOLLER. The ob- 
ject of the investigation was to determine the 
major constituents of the American-grown grape- 
fruit, and the possibilities of recovering valuable 
by-products from its culls. Citrie acid to 75 per 
cent. of the amount found in lemons—an oil, 
similar to orange-oil, in amounts larger than in 
lemons, and pectin in large quantities—can be ex- 
tracted from the culls in one process, as described. 
Glucoside can also be secured in the same process 
with slightly increased expense. 


A laboratory method for the preparation of ben- 
zoquinone from aniline: C. E. Boord and EH. H. 
Logs. <A detailed description of a method for the 
oxidation of aniline to quinone by manganese di- 
oxide and sulfurie acid. A cheaper and more con- 
venient method for the preparation of quinone. 


The preparation of a-acetyl arylhydrazines: C. 
E. Boorp and C. E. SENSEMANN. The preparation 
and properties of a-acetyl-p-tolylhydrazine, a-acetyl- 
o-tolylhydrazine and a-acetyl-a-(1 naphthyl) hy- 
drazine were described in detail. 

A study of the constitution of hydrazino-qui- 
nones: EDWARD ScHMiptT and C. E. Boorp. The 
condensation products of a-benzoyl phenylhydra- 
zine with trichlorquinone, 2, 6-dichlorquinone and 
2, 5-dichlorquinone and their derivatives are de- 
seribed in detail and their constitution is discussed. 
The evidence gained from four lines of attack 
seems to indicate that these substances are deriva- 
tives of orthobenzoquinone phenylhydrazone. 


A further study of chloro ethers: FRIEND E. 
CuarkK and E. Mack. Continuing the work of 
Clark, Cox and Mack (J. A. C. S., April, 1917) the 
action of chloro-dimethyl ether on salts of aromatic 
acids has been undertaken. Methyxymethyl ben- 
zoate is a colorless liquid, boiling at 140° under 
36 mm., decomposes when distilled under ordinary 
pressure. Molecular weight determinations and 


SCIENCE 


121 


decomposition reactions indicate its formula to be 
C6H,COOCH,-6-CH;. 


At — 35 it becomes viscous and at — 80 very vis- 
cous. Its density has been determined at 0, 18 
and 25. No actions with sulphonates. Physical 
constants have been obtained on ethyl methyl chloro 
ether and chloromethylbenzyl ether is being 
studied. 


The crisscross addition on conjugate systems: 
J. R. Batty, N. H. Moore and A. T. McPHERSON. 
This paper represents a continuation of the work 
of Bailey and Moore published in Jour. Am. Chem. 
Soc., 39, 279, 1917, under the title, ‘‘The use of 
eyanic acid in glacial acetic acid, II., The addition 
of eyanie acid on benzalazine.’’? The new work in- 
eludes an investigation of the action of sulfocyanic 
acid and phenyl isocyanate on benzalazine, and 
besides the investigation has been extended to other 
azines. The authors interpret these reactions, as 
exemplified by the action of cyanie acid on benza- 
lazine, as follows: 

NH NH 
| ee | 
Cco~ CO 
Yd 


v 
CcsH;CH=N — N = CHCéHs, 


and suggest for this new type of reaction for a 
conjugate system the name, ‘‘crisscross addition.’’ 
In the crisscross addition binuclear, five atom 
rings result. Cyanie acid and benzalazine, for ex- 
ample, yield, 


C:H; — CH 
LA 
NH N— ce 
| | 
CO—N NH 
ZA 
CH — CoH. 


DIVISION OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY 
T. J. Bryan, Chairman 
Glen. F. Mason, Secretary 


A study of the Reichert-Meissl process with a 
view to its modification: A. Hayes and W. F. 
Coover. Difficulty is usually experienced in ob- 
taining closely agreeing results in determining the 
Reichert-Meiss] number of butter fat by the pres- 
ent method. The authors have studied the factors 
which cause the variations such as method of 
saponification, amount of sulphuric acid used in 
excess, rate and temperature of distillation, shape 
and size of flask, temperature of condenser water 
and size and amount of pumice. The study has 
shown the influence of certain factors and that 


122 


closely agreeing results can be obtained by using 
the proper method. 

A method for estimating starch: W. 8. Lone. 
A method is proposed for the estimation of small 
quantities of starch in food products, and is based 
upon the precipitation of starch as the iodide. 
The method yields results of a fair degree of ac- 
curacy with weak starch solutions, and has been 
found applicable to the determination of small 
quantities of starch in jellies and jams. 


The use of alfalfa flour in human nutrition: 
EvizasetH C. Spracus. Alfalfa flour is the finely 
powdered leaves of the dried plant. It contains 
practically no starch and is not a flour within the 
meaning of the term as applied to cereal flours. 
It can, however, be blended with cereal flours. In 
its unpurified state it is rank in flavor and imparts 
to the mixture an undesirable dark green color. A 
method is deseribed by which the color is removed 
and the flavor materially modified. The propor- 
tions in which the purified product can be added 
to other flours are given. The blending of alfalfa 
and wheat flours increases considerably the nitro- 
gen and the mineral contents of the preparations 
in which it is used. Samples were shown of breads 
in which the blended flour was used. 


The effect of prolonged production of alfalfa on 
the nitrogen content of the soil: C. O. SWANSON. 
Kansas has a number of fields in which alfalfa has 
been growing continuously for twenty to thirty 
or more years. While most of the fields are found 
in the middle and western part of the state, a few 
old fields are also found in the eastern part. 
Near most of these fields is found soil of the same 
type which has been continuously cropped to grain, 
usually wheat and corn, for thirty to forty years 
or more, and soil in native sod, used either as pas- 
ture or hay land. By sampling such fields close to- 
gether and analyzing the soil, data are obtained 
that show the rate at which nitrogen disappears 
from the soil continuously cropped to grains; the 
nitrogen content of the soil which has never been 
broken; and by comparison it is possible to caleu- 
late the amount of increase or decrease in nitrogen 
in the soil on which alfalfa has been growing for 
a long time. 

Variations in the ether extract of silage: L. D. 
HaicH. The analysis of a sample of corn silage 
some months after the first analysis shows that 
the composition of the dry matter has changed. 
There has been a loss in the amount of ether sol- 
uble material and crude fiber, especially the 
former constituent. Also the percentage of mois- 
ture and ether extract of silage at any one time 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1179 


will vary according to the method of drying. The 
acidity of silage seems to be largely the cause of 
change of composition on standing and the vary- 
ing results on drying. The conclusions are that 
the corn silage should be analyzed promptly to ob- 
tain the composition of the silage as used. Also 
variations due to drying may be avoided by the use 
of the vacuum method throughout. 


The occurrence and action of molds in soils: P. 
E. Brown and W. V. Hatyersen. Attention is 
directed to the importance from the fertility 
standpoint of the occurrence and action of molds 
in soils. These organisms have been found to occur 
in practically all soils, not only in a spore state, but 
also in an active form. In general, the numbers 
present have amounted to about one tenth of the 
total number of bacteria present. Their action is 
varied, but they have been definitely shown to 
bring about the destruction of cellulose and the 
breaking down of protein, producing in the latter 
process much ammonia. Inorganic compounds in 
the soil are also affected by mold growth and 
available phosphorus and sulfur are both produced 
in considerable amounts by these organisms. 


Sulfofication in manures and its influence on the 
production of available phosphorus from floats: 
P. E. Brown and H. W. Warner. Mixtures of 
flowers of sulfur with compost, horse manure, or 
cow manure allowed to ferment for varying lengths 
of time showed a rapid oxidation of the sulfur 
with the production of sulfuric acid. These 
manures evidently possess a vigorous sulfofying 
flora. Rock phosphate when composted with horse 
manure and cow manure is reduced in availability, 
evidently due to an increased development of 
phosphorus-assimilating organisms. The reverse is 
true when the floats are mixed with compost. 
When sulfur and floats together are composted 
with the various manures there is an enormous in- 
erease in the production of available phosphorus, 
which continues up to fifteen weeks. A practical 
method for producing acid phosphate on the farm 
is suggested by composting sulfur, floats and 
manure in the proper proportions. 

Identification of added colors in butter and oleo- 
margarine: H. A. Luss. The various tests for the 
detection of added color in butter and oleomarga- 
rine are discussed and their limitations are de- 
seribed. Suggestions are made for the improve- 
ment of the various tests. A method is described 
for the isolation of o-toluene-azo-8-naphthylamine 
and benzene azo-8-naphthylamine from butter and 
oleomargarine and a method for their identification 
is given. 


SCIENCE 


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CONTENTS 
The Vertebrate Zoologist and National Eff- 
ciency: WALTER P. TAYLOR ............. 123 
The Status of the Graduate Degree in Medi- 
cine: DR. Louis B. WILSON’............-- 127 
Scientific Events :— 
The Research Corporation; Anthracite Coal 
mined in 1916; Animal Collections from 
PARUSTRGIUG rei etecck sic Biers) ais ofa syotereucus eis wi aielo als 131 
Scientific Notes and News .............2005 133 
University and Educational News .......... 139 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 


Climatic Index of Bonneville Lake Beds: 
Dr. CuartEs Keyes. Internal Telia of 
Rusts: PROFESSOR ErNest SHAW REYNOLDS. 139 


Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- 


CEE? “Sobnp CDOON 6b Ob OOOO OUON ACO nod AOcG 141 
Special Articles :— 

The Swelling of Gelatine and Agar Gels in 

Solutions of Sucrose and Dextrose: E. E. 

AMA BBC OSA Oe COP CH OOS OOOO OS TOR EU One 142 
The American Chemical Society ............ 143 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should besent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. Y- 


THE VERTEBRATE ZOOLOGIST AND 
NATIONAL EFFICIENCY 


THe American government having been 
forced into the war, it is the privilege of 
American scientific institutions and of the 
army of American scientific men to adapt 
themselves at once to the new conditions, 
and to hold themselves in readiness to serve 
wherever their contribution is most needed. 

At no time in the world’s history has the 
necessity of thoroughgoing scientific prep- 
aration been emphasized as it is at present. 
For some time it has been clear that the 
war is a war of physics and chemistry. 
The pressing agricultural and medical 
problems of to-day make it sharply appar- 
ent that the war is no less a war of biology. 
Other things being equal, those national 
groups win which are best prepared scien- 
tifieally. 

A moment’s consideration of certain 
problems, chiefly agricultural, which the 
war has thrown into strong relief serves to 
demonstrate the essentiality of knowledge 
of the complicated relations between man 
and his environment. By furnishing ag- 
gressive and intelligent leadership in this 
province the vertebrate zoologist can make 
a contribution of supreme and immediate 
importance to the national efficiency. 

We may now proceed to discuss five prop- 
ositions which stand out predominantly in 
this connection. 

First, the possibility of the development 
of new resources in food or clothing is in- 
dubitable; there is no great hope for the 
successful elaboration of plans looking to 
this end, however, without intimate knowl- 
edge of the wild stock which it is proposed 
to domesticate or otherwise develop. 


124 


The Biological Survey has on more than 
one occasion called attention to the vast 
possibilities in wild game mammals as a 
source of food. Of interest in connection 
with the present critical shortage in the 
food supply of the world are the following 
words of Lantz* written in 1910: 

It is believed that with proper encouragement 
much of the otherwise waste land in the United 
States may be made to yield profitable returns 
from the production of venison, and that this ex- 
cellent and nutritious meat, instead of being de- 
nied to 99 per cent. of the population of the coun- 
try, may become a common food product. 

The Honorable Franklin K. Lane, Secre- 
tary of the Interior, as reported by the 
daily press, recently called attention to the 
reindeer as a possible source of increased 
food supply. It has been lately suggested 
by J. B. Harkin, commissioner of parks for 
the Dominion of Canada,? that the barren- 
ground caribou, 20,000,000 strong, consti- 
tute a valuable potential meat supply. 
Some years ago Mr. Charles Goodnight, of 
Goodnight, Texas, conducted some most 
promising breeding experiments with the 
buffalo, crossing the animals principally 
with Polled Angus cattle, and securing fer- 
tile hybrids which ate less, put on more 
flesh with the same amount of food, cut 
more meat, and were subject to fewer dis- 
eases than the steer. Similar experiments 
have been carried forward by C. J. Jones, 
of Topeka, Kansas, and Mossom Boyd, of 
Bobeaygeon, Ontario, Canada, and are now 
being prosecuted by the Canadian Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. It is hoped that there 
may be produced an improved range ani- 
mal, having 100 pounds more meat than 
the steer, and in addition possessing the 
valuable robe and rustling ability of the 
buffalo. The American Breeder’s Associa- 
tion has gone on record as appreciative of 

1 Biol. Sury. Bull. 36, p. 59. 

2 Bull. Amer. Game Prot. Assn., May 1, 1917, 
Deno: 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


the possibilities of increasing our national 
food supply through fuller utilization by 
domestication of wild birds and mammals. 
A recent writer in Scmnce (Needham, 
April 20, 1917) wisely argues that the 
possibilities of undeveloped economic 
values in the wild species constitute an im- 
portant argument for their preservation. 

Second, since life is an active process, 
and new adaptations and adjustments are 
continually appearing in the complex of 
living things about us, man must be alert 
and on guard against new parasites and 
disease germs of one sort or another, which 
may be borne and distributed by animal 
hosts, either to valuable live stock or to 
man himself. 

While the réle of flies and mosquitoes as 
bearers of disease is well understood, that 
of certain mammals is not fully appreci- 
ated. In the Old World the rat is chiefly 
responsible for the spread of bubonic 
plague through its acting as host to the 
flea, which is the direct agent of transmis- 
sion of the disease to the human being. 
The introduction of plague into the United 
States has been threatened at least once, in 
Seattle in 1915, and has actually occurred 
twice, in San Francisco in 1907-08 and in 
New Orleans in 1914. The most serious of 
these introductions took place in San Fran- 
cisco and vicinity, where a part of the 
ground squirrel (Citellus beecheyr) popu- 
lation became infected from the rats, and 
threatened to disseminate the plague widely 
through the state. Attention has already 
been called to the fact that probably all 
kinds of rat fleas transmit plague. The 
susceptibility to the disease of the fleas of 
ground squirrels suggests the possibility 
that the fleas of other rodents also may be 
potential transmitters of plague. 

In addition to their plague-bearing pro- 
clivities, rats disseminate trichinosis among 


3 Biol. Surv. Bull. 33, 1909, p. 32. 


Auveust 10, 1917] 


swine; and a note in Nature* suggests that 
the causative organism of epidemic jaun- 
dice, which has occurred of late on the 
western front in Europe, probably has its 
natural habitat in the rat. Examples of 
other mammal-borne diseases are found in 
the Rocky Mountain spotted fever, trans- 
mitted through the ageney of ticks borne 
by rodents in Montana and Idaho, and 
rabies, carried by coyotes and dogs in Ne- 
vada and California. 

Third, the resources of nature are dis- 
tinetly limited in amount, and man should 
know what and where these resources are, 
that accurate determination may be made 
of the amount and kind of use which may 
be permitted as being compatible with a 
regard for the rights of all the people, and 
of future generations. 

In the matter of conservation of her nat- 
ural resources America has been perhaps 
the most backward of all civilized peoples. 
She has permitted undue exploitation of 
all of her resources by selfish commercial- 
ism. In no provinee is this more apparent 
than in that of the wild life, where it is 
well known that some of the most valuable 
and interesting mammals and birds have 
been exterminated, and others dangerously 
reduced. 

Fourth, the perpetuation of interesting 
and rejuvenating natural objects, includ- 
ing scenery, forests and wild life, demands 
detailed and accurate knowledge of all the 
objects to be preserved. 

Many signs indicate that the people are 
coming to realize, as never before, the 
recreative value of the preservation of na- 
ture. The hearty support given the De- 
partment of the Interior in its epoch-ma- 
king work for the national parks and that 
accorded the Department of Agriculture in 
its comprehensive forest, bird and game 
protective activities are full of meaning in 
this connection. 

4 January 18, 1917, p. 393. 


SCIENCE 


125 


Fifth, a more intensive agriculture brings 
man into more strenuous competition with 
certain insect and mammalian pests; for 
the suecessful maintenance of farming and 
horticulture man must know both his 
friends and enemies in the animal world; 
he must be prepared to perpetuate bene- 
ficial species, and he must be ready to con- 
trol or exterminate those which are detri- 
mental, 

Disturbance of the balance of nature, 
having to do with increased competition be- 
tween man and certain pests, is effected in 
several ways, of which the following are 
important: Destruction of carnivorous or 
predatory birds and mammals; reduction 
in numbers of game birds and mammals; 
introduction of useful domesticated species 
of plants and animals; involuntary or mis- 
taken introduction of harmful exotic spe- 
cies of plants and animals; cultivation of 
the soil and the raising of crops; removal of 
the natural cover of forest and brush. 

Some of these disturbing factors, notably 
the increase in the supply of rodent food 
provided by growing crops, and, all too 
often, the ill-advised destruction of natural 
checks on rodent increase, such as hawks, 
owls, badgers, skunks, weasels and other 
predatory animals, indicate that rodent out- 
breaks may be expected to occur more fre- 
quently in the future than they have in the 
past, and it is well known that plagues of 
rodents have harassed mankind at intervals 
since the dawn of history. 

In Nevada in 1907 and 1908 meadow 
mice of the genus Microtus overran four 
fifths of the cultivated area in the lower 
Humboldt valley leaving a ‘‘dismal scene 
of destruction,’’ and necessitating the com- 
plete replanting of much alfalfa land.‘ 
Depredations of cotton rats (Sigmodon) in 
certain sections of the middle west, notably 
southern Kansas and Oklahoma, in the 


5 Piper, Yearbook, U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture for 1908, 1909, p. 302. 


126 


spring of 1915-16, were so severe that in 
some instances no less than three plantings 
of corn had to be made.® A serious out- 
break occurred during 1916 in the province 
of Foggia in Apulia, Italy,” where the grain 
erop is reported to have been almost en- 
tirely destroyed by inordinate increase of 
voles of the genus Pitymys; and in the fer- 
tile Shenandoah valley, Virginia, where a 
thriving fruit industry is conducted, mice 
belonging to the same genus have become 
so abundant and so troublesome during the 
spring of 1917 that in some orchards they 
have girdled and killed seventy-five per 
cent. of the trees.’ 

That the steady drain upon our agricul- 
tural products caused by.various noxious 
rodents over a large part of the country 
when present in normal numbers is of even 
greater consequence to our agricultural 
welfare than the damage from plagues has 
already been emphasized by Lantz. Some 
idea of the extent of this damage may be 
gained from the following figures, gathered 
recently by the chief of the Biological Sur- 
vey. 

The annual loss to grain crops through 
the agency of ground squirrels in North 
Dakota on the basis of present prices is 
estimated by authorities at the State Hx- 
periment Station to aggregate more than 
$6,000,000. 

A. E. Bowman, director of the State 
Agricultural Extension Service, Wyoming, 
-states that 15 per cent. of the crops within 
that state are destroyed annually by 
rodents. 

The annual losses from rodents in the 
state of Kansas are placed at $12,000,000. 

The department of biology of the Mon- 
tana Agricultural College estimates that 
the crops in that state suffer annual losses 

6 Reported by Professor D. E. Lantz, Biological 
Survey. 


7 Nature, December 28, 1916, p. 338. 
8 Biol. Surv. Bull. 31, 1907, p. 8. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


through ravages of rodents amounting to 
$15,000,000 to $20,000,000. 

These are isolated reports concerning a 
situation which is general; a conservative 
estimate places the probable losses to agri- 
culture from noxious native rodents in the 
western and Pacific states alone at more 
than $100,000,000 annually. 

In 1909 fire losses and losses to grains 
and other merchandise due to European 
rats and mice were estimated to aggregate 
$59,917,000 annually.® Assuming that the 
amount of damage done by these rodents is 
approximately the same now as then, it is 
not improbable, at present prices of grain 
and other merchandise, that the annual 
losses will aggregate at least $100,000,000. 
Suggestions made by Creel!° and Forbush? 
indicate that even this figure may be far too 
low. The former estimates that each rat 
costs one half a cent per day, or $1.82 per 
year, to feed; and the latter calls attention 
to the fact that on the basis of Creel’s esti- 
mate, assuming that the rat population is 
the same as the human population, the an- 
nual cost to the country is $182,000,000; 
and both these suggestions were made when 
the price of wheat was less than half what it 
is at present. 

The cogency of these facts is more than 
ever apparent during the present growing 
season. Weather conditions have been un- 
favorable, labor is scarce and the winter 
wheat crop is reported to be the shortest 
in years. All practicable steps should be 
taken, not only to increase acreage, but to 
guard against local or general plagues of 
insects or rodents, and to cut down to the 
minimum the enormous losses which hereto- 
fore have occurred continuously. The sav- 
ing of grain which will be effected through 

9 C. Hart Merriam, Rept. Nat. Conservation Com- 
mission, Vol. 3, pp. 339-340. 

10 U. S. Public Health Reports, 28, 1913, p. 1405. 


11 Bull. No, 1, Econ. Biol., Mass. Board of Agri- 
culture, 1915, p. 25. 


Aveust 10, 1917] 


up-to-date and aggressive methods of rod- 
ent control will furnish an increased food 
supply for America and her Allies which 
will help to guarantee just that margin of 
advantage in the world struggle which will 
be necessary to victory. 

Essential to action regarding any of the 
problems discussed in this paper, whether 
the domestication of and development of 
new resources from wild stocks, the protec- 
tion or propagation of those which are bene- 
ficial, or the control or destruction of detri- 
mental species, is an intimate and accurate 
knowledge of nature. And this knowledge 
can only come, in any comprehensive and 
authoritative way, through the collection of 
series of specimens, with the associated 
study, in field and laboratory, of the dis- 
tribution, systematic relationships, habits, 
economic status and ecology of the animals 
concerned. 

The present-day organization of Ameri- 
can science delegates this task to the verte- 
brate zoologist in college or university, mu- 
seum of natural history, or government lab- 
oratory. 

It should ever be the obligation of the 
scientific man to labor for the public good. 
With a world to help feed, and a war to 
help win, it now becomes peculiarly the 
duty and privilege of the American scien- 
tific man to make increased practical appli- 
eation of technical information, in short, 
to furnish a large measure of cooperation 
and leadership in the struggle to make 
democracy efficient and so to secure the 
benefits of government by the people for 
the nations of to-day and the generations 


of the future. Water P. TAYLOR 
BIOLOGICAL SURVEY 


THE STATUS OF THE GRADUATE 
DEGREE IN MEDICINE}? 
Tue University of Minnesota is offering 
graduate work in the various fields of medi- 


1 Presented before the Minnesota Academy of 
Medicine, St. Paul, Minnesota, October 11, 1916. 


SCIENCE 


127 


cine and surgery in three-year courses open to 
students who already possess the bachelor’s 
degree, or its equivalent, the doctor’s degree 
in medicine from a Class “ A” medical school, 
and who have had at least one year’s intern- 
ship in a general hospital or a year’s service 
in an approved laboratory of the medical sci- 
ences. On the satisfactory completion of such 
a three-year course, the student is eligible for 
the degree of Doctor of Science in internal 
medicine, in surgery, in pathology, or in what- 
soever other branch of medicine he may have 
chosen his major subject. 

The status of this new degree of Doctor of 
Science in a medical specialty has not yet 
been determined; hence the following analysis 
and discussion. Since the conditions laid 
down regarding admission, residence, language 
requirements, thesis and examinations are 
those which have long been applied by gradu- 
ate schools of universities in the approval of 
candidates for the degrees of Doctor of Philos- 
ophy or Doctor of Science, it has been assumed 
by some that the new degree in medicine 
scholastically reaches only the level of these 
older degrees. This assumption would seem 
to be incorrect, first because of the longer time 
required to obtain the degree, and, second, be- 
cause of the scientific ability exhibited by men 
with only the formal schooling represented by 
the doctorate in medicine or the baccalaureate 
in arts or sciences. 

In the following diagram is shown the rela- 
tionship in point of time required for the at- 
tainment of the M.D. degree in schools with 
the “Minnesota standard” and the attain- 
ment of the Ph.D. degree in universities in 
general, as well as the additional time required 
for the attainment of the new degree of Doctor 
of Science in a medical specialty. 

It will be noted from the diagram that 
four students, A, B, C and D, who have had 
the necessary high-school or other preparatory 


training, enter the college of literature, sci- 


ence and the arts of the university at the same 
time and pursue regularly prescribed courses. 
At the end of two years in college, during 
which time he has taken a preponderance of 
prescribed physical, chemical and biological 
studies, A transfers to the medical school, and 


128 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1180 


DIAGRAM SHOWING RELATIONSHIPS OF DEGREES 


Year M.Sc.D. 


Instructor (!) Year 


3rd Yr. teaching 10 


eagv 


Students A, B, C and D,4 re 


j=) 
e 
on ooa8 
a 
i=] 


3rd Yr. Grad. Sch. 7 


om 
w 


wo 
un 
| 
i> 


peters ersleta tara eat 


High ‘School Course + 10 or 11] yrs. Univ. Courses. 


Diagram showing Relationships of Degrees 
Students 4, B, C and D, 4-year high-school course+ 10 or 11 yrs. university courses. 


takes therein two years more work, at the end 
of which time—a total period of four years— 
he receives his B.S. degree. B, taking a pre- 
ponderance of prescribed physical, chemical 
and biological sciences, at the end of four 
years, all spent in the college, also receives his 
B.S. degree. C, entering the same college, but 
in addition to the required physical, chemical 
and biological sciences, adding thereto the spe- 
cial study of literature and the arts, at the end 
of three years in the college transfers to the 
medical school and in one year more, or after 
a total period of four years, receives his A.B. 
degree. D, entering the college and not in- 
dulging in a preponderance of the physical, 
chemical and biological sciences, but giving 
special attention to literature and the arts, re- 
ceives his A.B. degree at the end of four 
years. Thus, each receives a bachelor’s de- 
gree at the end of four years. If all four 
continue in the schools in which they were 
working at the time they received their 
bachelor’s degree, B and D will-receive their 
master’s degrees at the end of another year and 
their doctorate degrees in science and philos- 
ophy, respectively, at the end of three years. 


Similarly A and C, after two and three more 
years respectively in the medical school and 
one year in an approved hospital or laboratory, 
will receive their doctor’s degrees in medicine. 
Therefore at the end of seven years in the 
eases of A, B and D, and of eight years in the 
case of (, all four have attained the doctorate 
degree. It would appear that men starting on 
the new three-year graduate courses in medi- 
cine offered by the University of Minnesota in 
the clinics and laboratories in the Medical 
School in Minneapolis and in the Mayo 
Foundation in Rochester, already have spent 
as much time in making their approach to the 
study of medical specialties as that required 
for obtaining the Ph.D. or D.Sc. degree in 
good institutions. 

It is improbable that the native ability, the 
preparatory school instruction, the habits of 
study or the skill of their university instruct 
ors, in the long run, is either better or worse 
in the group of doctors of medicine than in 
that of doctors of philosophy or science. Yet 
all will agree that, broadly speaking, there is 
a difference in the scientific attitude and 
habits of thought in the men of the three 


Avcust 10, 1917] 


groups. This difference is best explained by 
the fact that of the four students whose scho- 
lastie careers have been diagramed above, 
B and D have usually placed most intensive 
study on a very small field of science or art, 
while A and C have given less intensive study 
to a relatively much broader field. Inciden- 
tally also, A and C are apt to have come more 
closely in contact with living conditions, with 
science in the making as it were, than have 
Band D. The question is open to discussion 
whether B and D may not have concentrated 
too early and may not later suffer from lack of 
a broad knowledge of the science in the narrow 
field in which they have specialized and of 
other sciences related thereto. Some of the 
possibilities in this respect are pointed out by 
Stephen Leacock in one of his delightful 
“Essays and Literary Studies.” Be this as it 
may, certainly A and C at least should be 
well able to see the broader relationship of 
narrow lines of scientific investigation. The 
question of present concern, however, is not the 
breadth of their culture—which unfortunately 
is usually all too narrow to enable them to get 
the most real enjoyment out of life—but rather 
the amount of their scientific ability, 2 e., 
their ability to utilize in new ways old scien- 
tific truths and to discover, as well as to util- 
ize, new scientific truths. 


SCIENCE. 


129 


his native ability or the amount of his pre- 
medical and graduate study not represented by 
formal schooling. But in comparing large 
groups these factors may fairly be assumed to 
approximately cancel each other. 

Turning then to the question in hand— 
namely, the relative scientific ability of men 
who have ended their schooling with the at- 
tainment of the M.D. degree as compared with 
those who have obtained the Ph.D. degree, we 
may, I think, start with the premise that med- 
ical science in America has at least kept 
abreast with any other science during the last 
quarter of a century. We might indeed be 
within the truth in saying that it has led in 
development, but for the purpose of the pres- 
ent essay, it is but necessary to assume that 
it has been equal to any other. The second 
premise, which we may lay down without 
question, is that the progress in medical sci- 
ences has been made by the men who are in the 
medical profession. It may further be postu- 
lated that in the United States most of the 
men who are responsible for the progress of 
medical science are members of the various 
medical societies whose membership is limited 
to those who have attained some distinction in 
some special field of medicine. It is presum- 
able that there are instances of general prac- 
titioners who are not members of any society 


TABLE I 
Analysis of Scholastic Degrees of Members of Certain Clinical Medical Societies 


Name of Society 


American Surgical Association............-scee0seeeeeeeeerpeee 


Association of American Physicians 


American Orthopedic Association .......22 cecsssseeeeeeeeeee 


American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists........ 
American Pediatric Society. ............20cc0sssecoecesesceeceneeesceees 


American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society 


Total Percentages. 
Number 

Members M.D. and M.D 

Whose De- Total M.D. one : 
Ereeaters M.D. Only minice ae 

secntcees 169 100 55 43 2 

147 100 32 63 5 

oqnecbad 116 100 62 37 1 

167 100 73 24 3 

66 100 30 67 3 

196 100 66 33 1 

861 100 56 42 2 


The estimation of the relative scientific 
ability of members of the various groups is 
very difficult. Even if we could measure accu- 
rately each individual’s scientific accomplish- 
ments we still might be in the dark concerning 


of the kind herein analyzed, and who yet have 
added materially not only to the practise, but 
also to the science of medicine. Such indi- 
viduals, however, must be so few that their 
omission would have relatively little to do with 


130 


the figures or the question in hand. I have, 
therefore, taken the membership lists of the 
various medical specialists’ societies in the 
United States of which the data were obtain- 
able, and have analyzed the scholastic attain- 
ments of the members as a matter of compari- 
son. Elimination of duplicate memberships 
has not been attempted since it would have 
been both difficult and unfair. 

The results of the analysis of the scholastic 
degrees of certain clinical medical societies of 
limited membership are shown in Table I. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1180 


68 per cent. have the M.D. degree, 28 per cent. 
the M.D. only, 34 per cent. the M.D. with the 
bachelor’s degree, 6 per cent. the M.D. and the 
Ph.D., 22 per cent. the Ph.D. without the 
M.D. and 10 per cent. neither the M.D. nor 
the Ph.D. The percentage of those having 
the M.D. without the Ph.D. (62) is nearly 
three times that of those having the Ph.D. 
without the M.D. (22). When to the number 
of these members is added the number of men 
having similar attainments who are members 
of the clinical medical societies, we find that 


TABLE II 
Analysis of Scholastic Degrees of Members of Societies Covering the Fundamental Medical Sciences 


Percentages 
bers Whose 
Name of Society Derres M.D. | mw. 
lwere : Found see oni eae sano teh wane 
Equiv. 

American Association of Anatomists.........--...s:seeeeeeees 283 64 23 36 4 24 12 
American Physiological Society...-..-.------.++- 223 54 26 18 10 37 8 
American Society of Biological Chemistry. 153 41 13 16 12 50 9 
American Bacteriologists...........cseeee:cesseeeeceneeeresenerees 335 47 24 20 3 23 30 
American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists 316 95 | 40 52 3 2 3 
American Society for Experimental Pathology............-. 40 100 30 60 10 0 0 
American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental ‘ 

Therapeutics... ..-.-.-2+00) coooseccenene seeee- usgenehgtepanostaeees 74 87 49 26 12 13 0 
American Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine 283 68 24 38 6 28 4 
American Psychopathological Association............-.+--++ 44 84 39 36 9 16 0 
American Association for Cancer Research ...........2..00+ 89 94 40 49 4 3 2 

AYE] bcnaccnooad. pogsoononacooccaddaccogoBennaBscDodaoq9n00 Hdeds /0000C 1,840 68 28 34 6 22 10 
Compare with Analysis of Certain Clinical Medical So- 

cieties (Table I.).........s0scsecseseeseenene: seceneecetecenes eres 861 100 56 42 2 0 0 

73 
‘(Who's Who in America’’ (1915 edition, selected names 
of those engaged in physical, chemical or biological 
EIS GIVES) )oceotonoas ocesoaoce qotocnT0 SunDboTe To AEEcboaoesooE DEdaBEOCD 3,446 48 20 26 2 23 29 


Membership in these clinical medical soci- 
eties presupposes the possession of the M.D. 
degree. It is interesting to note that, taken 
as a whole, 56 per cent. of the 861 members 
have the M.D. degree only, while 44 per cent. 
have the M.D. with some other earned degree. 
It is also interesting to note that only 2 per 
cent. of the 861 members have the Ph.D. de- 
gree in addition to the M.D. degree. 

An analysis of the scholastic degrees of the 
societies covering the fundamental medical 
sciences is shown in Table II. In these, the 
possession of the M.D. degree is not obligatory 
for membership. Of the total 1,840 members 


73 per cent. of the total 2,701 have the M.D. 
degree, or the M.D. with the A.B. degree or its 
equivalent. Thus, it would seem that 73 per 
cent. of the men who have been responsible for 
the progress of American medicine started 
with only the scholastic equipment, at least 
so far as is indicated by their degrees, of the 
men now entering upon the study of specialties 
in medicine, while only 15 per cent. have the 
Ph.D. or B.Se. degree. 

Probably one third of the 2,701 members of 
the medical societies here studied are dupli- 
cates. In order to get a larger list and at the 
same time cover a broader field I have made 


Avcust 10, 1917] 


for comparison a similar analysis of the 
earned degrees of 3,446 persons engaged in 
any of the physical, chemical or biological 
sciences (including medicine), whose names 
appear in the 1915 edition of “ Who’s Who in 
’ America.” The inclusion of a name in this 
publication indicates that its holder has at- 
tained a certain amount of public eminence 
though not necessarily of a kind indicated by 
his degree. An analysis of the degrees of 
these 3,446 persons shows that 48 per cent. 
have the M.D. degree, 20 per cent. have the 
M.D. only, 26 per cent. have the M.D. plus 
the A.B. or its equivalent, 2 per cent. have 
the M.D. plus the Ph.D., 23 per cent. have the 
Ph.D. without the M.D. and 29 per cent. have 
degrees other than M.D. or Ph.D. It there- 
fore appears that in the field of physical, chem- 
ical and biological sciences the sort of emi- 
nence indicated by registry in “‘ Who’s Who” 
has been attained by twice as many with the 
degree of M.D. as with the degree of Ph.D. 

An analysis of similarly selected names in 
“ American Men of Science” was begun but 
abandoned since it was found that the latest 
(1910) edition does not include the names of 
many of the younger men who are largely re- 
sponsible for the present progress of American 
medicine. 

Until the later years of the last century the 
teaching of medicine in America, except in a 
very few schools, was a travesty on pedagogy. 
During the present century it has probably 
improved more than the teaching of any other 
science. To-day the man who obtains the 
M.D. degree from an institution with the 
equivalent of the “ Minnesota standard,” 2. e., 
including a final year’s hospital or laboratory 
work, probably has quite as much scientific 
ability as the man who obtains the Ph.D. or 
D.Se. degree from the same institution. This 
seems to be proved by the time he must study, 
by the character of the subject-matter of his 
studies, and by the probability of his accom- 
plishing something in science in after life. 
If this be true and the M.D., Ph.D. and D.Se. 
degrees from high-grade institutions represent 
an equivalent training, it must then appear 
that the three years of graduate training in a 


SCIENCE. 


131 


special branch of medicine now offered by the 
University of Minnesota should result in sci- 
entific ability just three years “to the good” 
of that represented by any one of the three 
doctorate degrees. 
Louis B. Winson 
Mayo CuInIic, 
RocuHeEster, MINN. 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
THE RESEARCH CORPORATION 

THE Research Corporation was incorporated 
in the State of New York in 1912 on the 
initiative of Dr. F. G. Cottrell, who gave to 
it his patents concerning the process known 
as the “electrical precipitation of suspended 
particles.” The objects of the corporation 
are: 


First: To build up a business organization which, 
so far as possible, should be a model of efficient 
administration, for the purpose of demonstrating 
the commercial value of the precipitation proc- 
esses included in the original gift and of such 
other inventions as the corporation might acquire 
by gift or otherwise, and of making such inyen- 
tions a source of profit. 

Second: From the profits so earned to accumulate 
an endowment fund to be used for the intensive 
study of scientific and industrial needs, and to 
provide the means, through the testing of new 
discoveries and through study, investigation and 
experimentation, of supplying such needs. 


During the year 1916 the pioneer period in 
the application and development of the elec- 
trical precipitation processes may be said to 
have been completed. The corporation, which 
began with a cash capital of ten thousand 
dollars, is now spending that amount every 
month and has in its service a staff of forty- 
five engineers and others engaged in field and 
office work. The assets of the corporation as 
reported by the auditors on February 16, 1917, 
in cash and securities, were $217,862.72. A 
laboratory has been established and experts 
have been employed to study the workings of 
the precipitation processes, and, if possible, 
to develop improvements and meet new prob- 
lems. Careful consideration has also been 
given to other patents and processes which 
have been offered to the corporation, and 


132 


although none have as yet been accepted, it is 
the purpose of the corporation to lend its 
aid to the utilization of any invention or dis- 
covery which offers sufficient promise of pro- 
moting the application of scientific discovery 
to the industrial arts. 

For the purpose of encouraging scientific 
research directed to the development of the 
industrial arts the research corporation offers 
a fellowship of the annual value of $2,500, to 
be awarded on competition under the follow- 
ing conditions: 

1. The competition will consist of the submis- 
sion of evidence of scientific attainments, discov- 
eries or inventions, and of special fitness for ad- 
vanced work. 

2. All persons desiring to compete must fill in a 
form of application, which will be furnished by 
the secretary of the corporation upon request, and 
file the same on or before October 1, 1917, to- 
gether with such letters of reference, scientific pub- 
lications and other documents or evidence as they 
may desire to submit, including a specifie state- 
ment of the particular field or object of the re- 
search or investigation which the competitor pro- 
poses to conduct and a pledge that he will devote 
himself faithfully to the prosecution of such re- 
search or investigation if awarded the fellowship, 

3. The competition shall be decided on or before 
December 1, 1917, by a jury consisting of the 
president of the National Academy of Sciences, 
the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the 
presidents of the American Chemical Society and 
Research Corporation, respectively, and the chair- 
man of the Engineering Foundation, or such per- 
sons as they may respectively designate to act for 
them. 

4. The term of the fellowship shall be one year 
from the date of the award, but the term may be 
extended by the corporation for two renewals of 
one year each in exceptional cases upon the recom- 
mendation of the jury. 

5. The stipend of each fellowship will be paid 
as follows: $300 on the award of the fellowship 
and $200 monthly thereafter for the remainder of 
the year. 

6. Fellows will be required to report in writing 
at the office of the corporation within twenty days 
from the date of the award (unless the time shall 
be extended) and to begin their research or in- 
vestigation at once. In case of their failure to do 
so, or in case they shall fail to prosecute the same 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


with proper attention, the fellowship may be ter- 
minated by the corporation. 

7. Any fellow who shall resign or retire before 
the conclusion of the term of his appointment, or 
who shall be dismissed by the directors of the cor- 
poration for cause, will forfeit all privileges and 
emoluments of his fellowship and have no claim to 
the further payment of his stipend. 

8. The corporation will endeavor to secure for 
fellows the privileges of laboratories specially 
adapted for their particular work. 

9. Each fellow shall make a written report to 
the corporation at the conclusion of his appoint- 
ment of the results of the research or investiga- 
tion which he has conducted. Any discovery or in- 
vention which he may make shall be deemed his 
personal property. 


ANTHRACITE COAL MINED IN 1916 
THE anthracite mined in 1916 amounted to ~ 
78,195,083 gross tons, valued at $202,009,561, a 
decrease in quantity of 1.6 per cent. and an 
increase in value of 9.4 per cent. compared 
with 1915. The shipments decreased 1.7 per 
cent.—from 68,666,456 gross tons in 1915 to 
67,501,363 tons in 1916. The shipments of 
prepared coal of sizes above pea in 1916 were 
40,747,215 tons, a decrease of 1.1 per cent.; 
the shipments of pea size were 7,520,804 tons, 
a decrease of 8.4 per cent.; and the shipments 
of steam sizes smaller than pea were 19,233,- 
344 tons, a decrease of but .05 per cent. com- 
pared with 1915. There was an increase of 
nearly 6 per cent. in the quantity of anthracite 
sold locally and used by employees and a de- 
crease of 2.4 per cent. in the quantity used 
for mine fuel. The compilation of these sta- 
tistics has just been completed by C. E. 
Lesher, of the United States Geological 
Survey, Department of the Interior. 

The effect of the extraordinary demand for 
steam sizes of anthracite that followed the in- 
dustrial activity in 1916 and the high price of 
bituminous coal is indicated in the figures 
showing the output of washery product and 
dredge coal. Although the freshly mined coal 
in the anthracite region, including Sullivan 
County, showed a decrease of 2.6 per cent. in 
1916 compared with 1915 there was an in- 
crease of 19.6 per cent. in the quantity of 
anthracite obtained from the washeries, which 


Avueust 10, 1917] 


operate mainly on old culm banks, and an in- 
crease of 16 per cent. in the quantity of coal 
dredged from rivers. 

The production in the Lehigh region was 
10,929,055 gross tons; in the Schuylkill region, 
23,659,448 tons; in the Wyoming region, 43,- 
111,732 tons; and in Sullivan County (Ber- 
nice Basin), 494,848 tons. 

There was a large decrease in the number 
of men employed in the production of anthra- 
cite in 1916, and the output was maintained 
only through an increase in the number of 
working days. The number of men employed 
in 1914 was 179,679; in 1915, 176,552; and 
in 1916, 159,869. The average number of days 
worked was 245 in 1914, 230 in 1915, and 253 
in 1916. The average output per man per 
day in 1914 was 1.84 gross tons; in 1915, 1.96 
tons, and in 1916, 1.93 tons. The average out- 
put per employee for the year was 451 tons 
in 1914; 450 tons in 1915; and 489 tons in 
1916. 


ANIMAL COLLECTIONS FROM AUSTRALIA 

THE animal collections of the Zoological 
Park have been enriched by the arrival of 
another great “caravan” from Australia. 
After six months of diligent effort, and gen- 
erous expenditures of money, Mr. Ellis S. 
Joseph brought together and _ successfully 
transported to New York the largest collection 
of rare species of mammals, birds and reptiles 
that ever came to America. The common spe- 
cies, such as for years have been coming to us 
through the regular European channels, are 
conspicuous by their well-nigh complete ab- 
sence. 

Naturally, the officers of the Zoological So- 
ciety feel measurably elated over this coup, at 
a period of great depression in the wild-animal 
supply from other sources. The receipts from 
England are very trifling, and from the con- 
tinent of Europe nothing whatever comes. In 
fact, in America the German wild-animal 
business is thoroughly dead. Our further 
operations in South Africa must be postponed 
until after the war. 

Encouraged through his previous reception 
by the Zoological Society, Mr. Joseph re- 


SCIENCE 


133 


doubled his former efforts to bring to America 
something worth while. The collection which 
he landed in Victoria, B. C., a month ago rep- 
resents a large outlay in money and effort, and 
great scientific value. Of that importation 
the Zoological Society has purchased mammals, ' 
birds and reptiles to a total cost of about 
$6,000. The Philadelphia Zoological Society 
has purchased $3,000 worth, and other pur- 
chases are proceeding. 

The following list shows the newly acquired 
mammals: 
thylacine, 
hyraxes, 
water mongooses, 
echidna, 
rabbit-eared bandicoots, 
West Australian rat kangaroos, 
tree kangaroo, 
yellow-footed rock wallabies, 
Woodward kangaroos and young, 
wallaroo, 
brush-tailed wallaby, 
short-tailed wallabies, 
Paddy Mellen wallaby, 
rufus-necked wallabies, 
Tasmanian black phalangers, 
spotted phalangers, 
dusky phalangers, 
gray phalangers, 
Papuan phalangers, 
Australian phalanger, 
marsupial mice, 
Australian water rats. 


WORE WWWOANNHFNPFRFPNwWHrFNNHNY WH 


The majority of our accessions will be found 
in the large bird house, the small deer house, 
the reptile house and the small mammal house, 
but the thylacine is in one of the small bear 
dens. Each new species is marked by a red 
label reading “Recent Accession.” Inci- 
dentally it is to be noted that our total kanga- 
roo collection is believed by Mr. Joseph to be 
the most extensive series ever brought to- 
gether. It will be found in the small deer 
house. W. T. Horwapay, 

Director 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 
Proressor Mino S. Kercuum, dean of the 
College of Engineering of the University of 
Colorado, was elected president of the Society 


134 


for the Promotion of Engineering Education 
at the annual meeting of the society held re- 
cently at Washington. 

Masor Pearce Bartey, M.R.C., chairman of 
the committee on furnishing hospital units 
for nervous and mental disorders to the 
United States Government, has been asked by 
the Surgeon-General to serve as adviser in all 
matters pertaining to psychiatry and neu- 
rology. 

The Electrical World states that Brigadier 
General George O. Squier, U. S. A., chief 
signal officer of the army, has been made a 
fellow of the Royal Society of England in 
recognition of his invention of a new system 
of ocean cabling which, it is believed, will be 
of the greatest service in the war. 


Dr. Ouartes J. Barrett, New Haven, 
director of the pathologic laboratory, Yale 
University, has been appointed director of the 
bureau of laboratories of the state department 
of health, succeeding the late Professor Her- 
bert W. Conn. P. E. Bransfield, Ira D. Joel, 
Ira V. Hiscock and George E. Stookey, who 
were assistants to Professor Conn, have been 
appointed to similar positions by the new 
director. It has been decided to remove the 
laboratory from Middlebury to the Agricul- 
tural Experiment Station, New Haven. 


Dr. Soca, professor at the University of 
Montevideo, former president of the republic 
of Uruguay, and Dr. Couto, professor of in- 
ternal medicine at the Faculté de Rio-de- 
Janeiro, the former president of the Academy 
of Medicine of Brazil, have been elected mem- 
bers of the Paris Academy of Medicine. 


Tue Russian Geographical Society at its 
annual meeting elected as honorary members 
Mr. Douglas Freshfield and Sir Aurel Stein, 
and as corresponding members Sir Ernest 


Shackleton and Mr. G. G. Chisholm. 


Ons hundred Japanese physicians are said 
to be on the way to Roumania in charge of 
Dr. Motegi, chief of the Saiseikai Hospital 
and head of the surgical department of the 
Keio University. 

Dr. Outver Fassig has gone to San Juan 
on a special mission to extend and reorganize 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1180 


the Weather Bureau service in the West 
Indies. In the Virgin Islands a station is to 
be established, two stations are to be started 
in Haiti and one at Puerto Plata, Santo Do- 
mingo. The station in San Juan will prob- 
ably be designated as the station in charge of 
the West Indies Service. 


Proressor E. W. Gupcer, of the State 
Normal College, Greensboro, N. C., spent June 
and July at the American Museum of Natural 
History, in work on the “Bibliography of 
Fishes,” of which Professor Bashford Dean 
and Dr. C. R. Eastman are editors. 


Dr. Burton J. Lemon, formerly instructor 
in the department of chemistry of Cornell 
University, and during the last two years a 
chemist with the United States Rubber Com- 
pany in New York, has received a commission 
as captain in the Quartermaster Officers’ Re- 
serve Corps. 


Dr. H. B. Norra has recently resigned his 
professorship in chemistry in Rutgers College 
in order to become director of the research 
laboratories of the York Metal Alloy Co., of 
York, Pa. 


Cuartes H. Tuck, professor of extension 
teaching in the New York State College of 
Agriculture, Cornell University since 1910, 
has resigned from the faculty. He has been 
absent on leave since January, 1916, when he 
went to Manchuria, and he is still there, en- 
gaged in agricultural investigations for an 
American syndicate. Maurice C. Burritt, ex- 
tension professor and state director of farm 
bureaus in the college, has been elected to suc- 
ceed Professor Tuck. 


O. C. CHarLTon, until recently a teacher of 


biology, has been appointed city forester for 
Dallas, Texas. 


Dr. Leon I. SHaw, of Northwestern Univer- 
sity, has been advanced to the position of as- 
sistant professor of chemistry on leave of ab- 
sence of one year for service with the United 
States government. He has received the ap- 
pointment of first lieutenant of the Ordnance 
Officers’ Reserve Corps. 

AccorDInG to the Cornell Alumni Bulletin, 
G. Harold Powell, general manager of the 


Aucust 10, 1917] 


California Fruit Growers’ Exchange, has ac- 
cepted an invitation from Herbert C. Hoover, 
to take charge of the distribution of all perish- 
able goods in the United States. Mr. Powell is 
now in Washington. For many years he has 
made his specialty the study of the problems of 
food storage and transportation. From 1901 
till 1911 he was in the bureau of plant indus- 
try of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. 


Dr. A. J. Cartson, professor of physiology 
in the University of Chicago, recently deliv- 
ered an address on “ The recent advances in 
the physiology and pathology of the alimentary 
tract,” before the faculty and students of the 
graduate summer quarter in medicine of the 
University of Illinois. 


Proressor ALBERT FREDERICK Ganz, of the 
Stevens Institute of Technology, known for 
his investigations on electricity, died by sui- 
cide on July 27, aged forty-five years. 


Dr. L. E. Russet, formerly president of 
the American Medical Association, a physi- 
cian and surgeon known nationally, died sud- 
denly at his home in Springfield, Ohio, on 
August 2, aged sixty-six years. 


WittiaM Watiace Tooker, an authority on 
Indian nomenclature and archeology, died on 
August 1, after a long illness at his home in 
Sag Harbor, L. I., at the age of sixty-nine 
years. 


Dr. Ropert Betz, F.R.S., formerly chief 
geologist of the Geological Survey of Canada, 
has died at the age of seventy-six years. 


Epwarp Sranrorp, F.R.G.S. (son of the 
founder of Edward Stanford, Limited, Lon- 
don, cartographers to the king) a well-known 
publisher and geographer of London, died on 
June 6. His life was one of continued ac- 
tivity in advancing the science of geography 
and map-making. He had charge of all the 
ordnance maps of the United Kingdom, and 
issued numerous atlases, monographs, and 
maps of all the countries of the world. 


WE learn from Nature of the death of Pro- 
fessor K. R. Birkeland, of Christiania, which 
occurred in Tokyo on June 18. Professor 
Birkeland was largely interested in the extrac- 


SCIENCE 


135 


tion of nitrogen from the atmosphere and 
other industrial work, and is known to scien- 
tific men for his observation and theories on 
cosmical phenomena. 


Tuer Fourth Annual Conference of the So- 
ciety for Practical Astronomy will be held 
August 16, 17 and 18, at the University of 
Chicago. Professor F. R. Moulton, of the 
university, and Professor W. D. MacMillan 
will lecture at the sessions and there will be 
papers presented by other members of the so- 
ciety. The sessions are open to the public, and 
visitors from other cities, whether members of 
the society or not, are invited to attend. 


SuRGEON GENERAL Goraas has issued a state- 
ment that medical students are not to be ex- 
empt from draft, but will be given conditional 
and limited furloughs to continue their med- 
ical studies. This furlough is intended to fur- 
nish an opportunity for the student to com- 
plete his studies and obtain his required year 
of hospital experience, so as to fit him for serv- 
ice in the medical department of the army. 
The Surgeon General, through the medical sec- 
tion of the Council of National Defense, is en- 
deavoring to prevent the undue depletion of 
the civilian hospital staffs for service at the 
front. 


A BILL has been introduced into the House 
of Representatives, providing that there shall 
be established one additional division each of 
mental hygiene and rural sanitation in the 
United States Public Health Service, and said 
divisions shall be in charge of commissioned 
medical officers of the United States Public 
Health Service, detailed by the Surgeon Gen- 
eral, which officers, while thus serving, shall be 
assistant surgeons general within the meaning 
of section three of the act approved July 1, 
1902, entitled “ An act to increase the efficiency 
and change the name of the United States Ma- 
rine Hospital Service.” Sec. 2. That the duties 
of the division of mental hygiene shall be to 
study and investigate mental disorders and 
their causes, care and prevention. The duty 
of the division of rural sanitation shall be to 
investigate improved methods of rural sanita- 
tion, and the prevention and suppression of 
communicable diseases. 


136 


THE Journal of the American Medical Asso- 
ciation states that the Academy of Medicine 
of Toronto has adopted a resolution calling for 
one united medical service in Canada to take 
the place of the present arrangements of a Ca- 
nadian Army Medical Corps and a Canadian 
Hospitals Commission. The academy urges 
that medical care of all soldiers be placed di- 
rectly under a surgeon general, to be known 
as Surgeon General of Canada, who should be 
directly responsible to the minister of militia, 
who should have a seat in the militia council. 
He will perform the duties of director of med- 
ical services, invalids and be chief medical 
officer of the hospitals commission and of its 
executive. The academy recommended Sur- 
geon-General John Taylor Fotheringham, 
C.M.G., Toronto, recently returned from over- 
seas, for this position. 


THE emperor of Austria, according to the 
Journal of the American Medical Association, 
has organized a new state department, the chief 
of which is to be known as the minister of 
hygiene and social welfare. 


THE yacht Anton Dohrn, of the department 
of marine biology of the Carnegie Institution 
of Washington, has been offered to and ac- 
cepted by the United States Navy for the 
period of the war. 


The board of managers of the New York 
Botanical Garden announces plans to expend 
$500,000 in developing the garden. Three of 
the largest works projected are the construc- 
tion of a museum laboratory wing which will 
cost $100,000, the building of a wing to the 
east museum to cost $100,000, and a central 
display greenhouse to cost $75,000. An orchid 
greenhouse will cost $24,000, and a like sum 
will be spent in building an economic plant 
greenhouse. Two tropic plant greenhouses, a 
garden school greenhouse, experimental and 
investigation greenhouses also are to be con- 
structed. In a report of the garden’s endow- 
ment committee it is announced that a con- 
tribution of $2,000 has been made by Mrs. 
Robert E. Westcott for the construction of the 
new rose garden stone stairway, and a gift of 
$4,000 has been made by Mrs. Frederick F. 
Thompson for the construction of the school 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


garden shelter on the eastern bank of the 
Long Lake at the southern end of the new 
school garden. 


Tue fourth meeting of the Conjoint Board of 
Scientific Societies of Great Britain was held 
on June 13 at the Royal Society, with Sir J. J. 
Thomson, F.R.S., in the chair. The report of 
the executive committee for the past half year 
showed that a number of questions of scientific 
and industrial importance have come before 
the board. Among these are the need for an 
anthropological survey of the British people, 
the maintenance of the international catalogue 
of scientific literature and the desirability or 
otherwise of adopting the metric system 
throughout the British Isles. 


AN opportunity for research work in sociol- 
ogy with some time for other graduate work if 
desired awaits a suitable applicant at the Uni- 
versity of Chicago and for this $1,200 has been 
set aside for each of the two years it is ex- 
pected the investigation will require. By this 
announcement it is hoped to secure some one 
already specializing in sociology. Inquiry for 
further details may be addressed to Professor 
Albion W. Small, University of Chicago, or to 
Dr. E. R. LeCount, Rush Medical College, 
Chicago. 


Tue Bureau of Economie Geology of the 
University of Texas has just issued a report 
on the Thrall Oil Field by J. A. Udden, H. P. 
Bybee, E. P. Schoch and W. T. Read. This 
field was discovered three years ago, in Wil- 
liamson County, and it proves to be unique for 
the United States, the greater part of the pro- 
duction coming from a metamorphic chlorite 
derived from an extremely basic igneous rock. 
This rock apparently represents a submarine 
eruption in the Cretaceous sea. 


Tue Medical Record states that the Rocke- 
feller Institute for Medical Research, through 
the research work of Dr. Carroll G. Bull and 
Miss Ida W. Pritchett, will undertake to 
supply the allied armies with a serum which 
is believed to be an effective antitoxin for the 
gas bacillus producing gangrene. Cultures of 
the gangrene bacillus were obtained in Europe 
last year and these investigators have experi- 


August 10, 1917] 


mented upon animals and produced the hoped- 
for results. 


Unper the direction of Dr. Roger Adams, of 
the division of organic chemistry of the Uni- 
versity of Illinois, a group of graduate stu- 
dents is engaged in preparing chemicals that 
are being sold to as many as fifteen different 
university laboratories, to the Bureau of 
Chemistry at Washington, to large distribu- 
ting houses, and commercial firms. One 
chemical, for which there has been a shortage 
ever since the work began, is now being sup- 
plied from this laboratory in sufficient quanti- 
ties to meet all demands of the country. 


THE annual meeting of the Incorporated So- 
ciety for Extending the Rothamsted Experi- 
ments in Agricultural Science was held on 
November 6. According to the report in the 
London Times Lord Crawford, president of 
the British Board of Agriculture, moved a 
resolution declaring that the work of the so- 
ciety was a matter of national importance de- 
serving wide public support. He said that 
much would be expected from agriculture after 
the war, and much more, therefore, would 
have to be drawn from the knowledge, experi- 
ence and guidance of such societies as that of 
Rothamsted. It would be really deplorable if 
any single branch of its activity had to be 
dropped during the war. It was at Rotham- 
sted that the first practical demonstration of 
the value of artificial manures was consum- 
mated. He was fully conscious of the urgent 
necessity for the comprehensive treatment of 
this great subject, but the time was not yet 
ripe for any public announcement. Mean- 
while, he trusted that the work of Rothamsted 
would continue and, in spite of the war, ex- 
tend in the sphere and scale of its operations. 
In any future scheme he was certain that 
Rothamsted would take a high and honorable 
place, and would contribute to the research 


which was essential to the future of British. 


agriculture. Dr. E. J. Russell, the honorable 
secretary and director of the Rothamsted Sta- 
tion, stated that the ordinary work at Rotham- 
sted had been curtailed, but it was not being 


SCIENCE 


137 


allowed to drop. Women had been brought in, 
and when peace came the men would come 
back to find the experiments a stage more de- 
veloped than when they left. They could see 
the possibility of using to the great advantage + 
of agriculture some of the machinery which 
was now being used for non-agricultural pur- 
poses. They hoped for some well-considered 
scheme for agricultural development in which 
the research stations, colleges, agricultural in- 
stitutes and similar organizations would play 
a definite part. 


Nature remarks: “ The science of economic 
aviculture has probably reached a _ higher 
standard in the United States than in any 
other part of the world. This work is carried 
on by the Department of Agriculture, which, 
for years past, has spared no pains to enact 
laws and formulate schemes for the conserva- 
tion of bird-life, whether for purely economic 
ends or for esthetic reasons. As a consequence, 
it has now available a mass of evidence as to 
the status and value of every species within 
its realms. The latest evidence of its enlight- 
ened policy takes the form of a bulletin—No. 
465—on the propagation of wild-duck foods. 
The haunts and food values of no fewer than 
nineteen groups of plants, comprising sixty 
species, are here described, together with in- 
structions as to stocking water in need of bait 
for these valuable birds. The characteristics 
of wild rice, wild celery, pondweeds, arrow- 
heads, chufa, wild millet and water-lilies are 
all carefully set forth, and this information is 
accompanied by carefully collected data as to 
their attractiveness in regard to particular 
species of wild ducks. Had we followed its 
lead years ago our own Board of Agriculture 
would now be able to speak with authority 
when called on to sift the value of the crudely 
formed opinions of local agricultural cham- 
bers as to the usefulness or otherwise of our 
native birds in relation to our food supply. 
The latter is of vital importance, and the 
clamor for legislation is sometimes insistent. 
This war has done much for us already; per- 
haps it may yet bring into being a bureau of 
ornithology, such as is to be found now in 


138 


many Continental states, as well as in Amer- 
ica.” 


Accorpinc to Nature the newly formed Rus- 
sian Botanical Society held its annual, and 
also a special, meeting at Moscow on Decem- 
ber 16-19, 1916, and its organization was then 
completed. The following officers were elected: 
Honorary President, A. S. Famineyn; Prest- 
dent, I. P. Borodin; Vice-presidents, V. I. 
Palladin and S. G. Navasin; Chief Secretary, 
N. A. Bus; Treasurer, V. N. Suchacev; Mem- 
bers of the Council in Petrograd, V. L. Koma- 
rov, S. P. Kostyéev and Y. A. Trangel. In ad- 
dition, the following were elected on the 
council as representing cities containing a min- 
imum of five members of the society: M. I. 
Golenkin (Moscow), E. F. Votéal (Kiev), V. 
M. Arnoldi (Charkov), B. B. Grineveckij 
(Odessa), V. V. Saponznikov (Tomsk), Ja. S. 
Medyédev (Tiflis) and V. M. Arcichoyskij 
(Novoéerkassk). The number of the acting 
members of the society now exceeds 280. Not- 
withstanding the present unfavorable condi- 
tions, more than eighty members attended the 
four days’ meeting in Moscow, and, in addition 
to the discussion and settlement of various 
questions of organization, sixteen scientific 
reports were read. The next extraordinary 
meeting is fixed for December, 1919, again in 
Moscow. Thanks to a subsidy of 3,000 roubles 
received from the Ministry of Public Instruc- 
tion, it was possible towards the end of the 
year 1916 to proceed with the publication of 
the Journal of the Russian Botanical Society, 
and the first issue was placed before, and ap- 
proved by, the Moscow meeting. The second 
issue is in the press and finishes the year 1916. 
- For this year a subsidy of 10,000 roubles is be- 
ing applied for, and it is intended to publish 
eight numbers of four to five sheets each. 
Thus the scientific amalgamation of Russian 
botanists, for which they have long striven, 
may be considered as achieved, and the forma- 
tion under the auspices of the Imperial Acad- 
emy of Sciences of the first all-Russian learned 
society is an accomplished fact. 


Nature states that under the title of “ Sci- 
ence in Russia” a new reference-book will be 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


published in the present year, composed of two 
parts: (a@) an index of all scientific institu- 
tions, societies, and higher schools in Russia; 
(6) an index of all persons working in these 
institutions and of private scientific workers. 
It will thus include in the first part the par- 
ticulars hitherto supplied (but very incom- 
pletely as to Russia) by the “‘ Minerva Jahr- 
buch ”; while the second part will be similar 
to “ Who’s who in science,” but will give, at 
least for 1916, not so much information about 
each individual. The difficult task of collect- 
ing the necessary material is already well in 
hand. The undertaking has been brought, 
through the Russian newspapers, to the knowl- 
edge of all those interested, and special forms 
are being supplied to the institutions and 
societies, many of which have already been re- 
turned with the necessary particulars. The 
work has been taken in hand by the Academy 
of Sciences of Petrograd and the scientific 
periodical Priroda (Nature) of Moscow. 
“Science in Russia” for 1916 will be edited 
by Professor V. N. BeneSevié, and published 
conjointly by the Academy and the -Journal 
Priroda in the latter part of this year. It will 
be issued annually. This publication will 
supply a long-felt need, as up to the present 
the only work of reference containing any in- 
formation about the scientific institutions of 
Russia as a whole has been “ Minerva.” “ Sci- 
ence in Russia” will help towards an exact 
evaluation of Russian scientific forces and 
activity, and will constitute an important step 
towards the promotion of closer scientific rela- 
tions with the Allied countries. 


AccorpDiInG to the Journal of the American 
Medical Association, plans have been taken up 
with the government for the establishment of 
an outpatient department at Camp Admiral 
by the officers of the Maryland Psychiatric 
Base Hospital Unit, of which Dr. A. P. 
Herring is chairman, and Dr. W. R. Dun- 
ton, secretary. The chief object of this de- 
partment will be to examine soldiers for mental 
and nervous disorders and to arrange for their 
treatment, but specialists of various sorts of 
physical disease will also volunteer their serv- 


ices. The purpose is to have volunteers go to 


Aveust 10, 1917] 


the cantonment at stated intervals and with 
army surgeons conduct thorough mental tests 
and physical examinations. The new psycho- 
pathic building at the Spring Grove State 
Hospital, designed for acute cases of mental 
disease, has been offered to the government, 
and if it is accepted, patients from Camp 
Admiral will be treated there. The psycho- 
pathic building will also be useful in treat- 
ing soldiers returned from the front, 18 to 20 
per cent. of whom, it has been found in Eng- 
land, are suffering from mental breakdown, 
temporary or permanent. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

Austin ©. DunHam, of Hartford, has offered 
as a gift to the Connecticut Agricultural Col- 
lege at Storrs, his Newington farm, which he 
has made into one of the best equipped farms 
in the state. Mr. Dunham has spent about 
$50,000 in improving the property and offers 
it to the college simply on the condition that 
it be used for school purposes. The farm con- 
sists of 130 acres and has at present forty head 
of cows and heifers and sixty-five pigs. Four 
silos have been built, housing 150 tons of 
silage, and eighty tons of hay have been 
gathered. 


AccorpInG to a decision handed down by the 
Supreme Court ofeConnecticut, Yale Univer- 
sity must pay to the state inheritance taxes 
amounting to about $34,000. The university 
inherited about $750,000 from the estate of 
Justus B. Hotchkiss. The Probate Court de- 
cided that it was not liable to taxation on the 
ground that Yale, being exempted by law from 
paying taxes on property in this city, was 
thereby constituted a public institution re- 
ceiving state aid. 


Two members of the faculty of Cornell Uni- 
versity who retired this year have been elected 
to emeritus professorships. They are George 
S. Moler, emeritus professor of physics, and 
R. C. Carpenter, emeritus professor of ex- 
perimental engineering. 


Dr. Victor C. ALpErson, consulting engi- 
neer of Boston, has been tendered the presi- 


SCIENCE 


139 


dency of the Colorado School of Mines at 
Golden, Colo. Dr. Alderson served as presi- 
dent of the school for four years, retiring 
three years ago. He has not yet indicated 
whether he will accept. 


Promotions in the faculty of the New York 
State College of Agriculture have been made 
as follows: Assistant professors promoted to 
the grade of professors: J. R. Schramm, bot- 
any; R. H. Wheeler, extension teaching; H. O. 
Buckman, soil technology. 


Proressor V. Ascot, of the chair of med- 
ical pathology of the University of Pavia, has 
been appointed professor of clinical medicine 
at Rome to succeed Bacelli. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 


CLIMATIC INDEX OF BONNEVILLE 
LAKE BEDS 


Because of the fact that they have been 
thought to furnish undoubtable stratigraphic 
testimony in support of the conception of the 
duality of the Glacial Epoch the lacustral 
deposits of the Great Salt Lake basin of Utah 
hold at this time an especial interest. Where 
best exposed these beds occupy a vertical space 
of about 100 feet; but their total thickness is 
without question considerably greater than this 
figure. The main body of the formation com- 
prises fine laminated calcareous materials, of 
uniform texture and yellow color. An upper 
section, of irregular thickness, from 2 to 20 
feet, is notably limy, white and more or less 
indurated in certain layers. The white marly 
upper capping is sharply separated from the 
yellow lower beds by an irregular line of junc- 
ture which has every appearance of being a 
marked plane of unconformity. 

The common historical interpretation of 
the general section is briefly this: The lower 
yellow beds are regarded as representing river 
silts deposited in the lake over a very long 


‘period of time when the early Bonneville 


water-level was nearly as high as the later 
Bonneville shore-line. The white marly beds 
are depositions of a shorter high-water stage 
of the lake. The irregular line between the 
white and yellow sections are viewed in the 


140 


light of an unconformity, the interval repre- 
sented being a stage between two high water 
marks when the old lake-waters completely 
dried up. Early Bonneville yellow beds are 
correlated in time with a first epoch of humid- 
ity superinduced by conditions of glaciation; 
while the white later Bonneville beds belong 
to the second Glacial epoch. The two parts of 
the section are thus represented as being sep- 
arated by an erosional interval of long dura- 
tion, occupying a time between two epochs of 
large rainfall and notable ice-forming. 

Two features in particular militate strongly 
against these deposits either being normal 
stream-silts or being laid down during two 
distinct epochs separated by a long epoch of 
excessive dryness. This simpler and very dif- 
ferent interpretation for the phenomena pre- 
sented does not postulate violent and frequent 
changes of climate. It appeals to no other 
than the ordinary climatic conditions and 
geologic processes that prevail to-day in the 
region. It takes into account only the famil- 
iar geological activities of the desert. 

Close examination of the deposits discloses 
the fact that they are not typical stream-silts, 
but that they have a grain very much coarser. 
In size the individual particles appear to be 
about midway between those of normal clay 
and fine sand. Although obscurely laminated 
the material in all physical aspects seems to 
be essentially loess or adobe. Thus, instead 
of being normal river-silts swept into still 
water these deposits really represent dusts, 
borne by the winds from the neighboring 
deserts, that have dropped on the surface of 
the lake waters and have settled to the bottom. 

Compared with desert deposits of other re- 
gions the white marly upper beds of the sec- 
tion which have such a variable thickness are 
essentially what the Mexicans call caliche. 
It is formed through ordinary soil tension by 
which lime salts of porous formations below 
are carried to the surface of the ground, where 
the water evaporates, leaving behind the solids. 
In some places there is sufficient lime de- 
posited interstitially to give the beds the as- 
pect of chalk. Upon further induration some 
layers passed into limestone. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


The juncture of the yellow and white beds 
is a sharp, irregular line that is easily mis- 
taken for an erosion uncomformity. That it 
is not at all probable that in the Bonneville 
basin this line actually represents uncomform- 
able relationships between the beds above and 
those below is clearly indicated by the fact 
that the phenomenon is a common one through- 
out arid lands where porous formations reach 
sky. 

The yellow Bonneville clays do not appear, 
therefore, to represent a deposit which was 
laid down during a high-water precursor of the 
high-stage Lake Bonneville; and the irregular 
line separating the yellow and white sections 
does not stand for a long interlacustrine epoch 
when the lake waters were completely desic- 
eated, during a dry interglacial time. The 
white marls seem to be very recent in forma- 
tion, produced directly from the yellow clays 
long after Bonneville waters had finally re- 
ceded. Their especial climatic significance 
is manifestly very different from that formerly 
postulated. The ascribed peculiarities are 
really every-day desert phenomena. 


Cartes Keyes 
Des MoINnEs, Ia. 


INTERNAL TELIA OF RUSTS 


To THE EprTor oF SCIENCE: A recent article? 
lists up the references in pathological litera- 
ture regarding the production of internal rust 
spores. The present writer in 1912? described 
such internal production of teliospores in the 
leaf of Xanthium Canadense, in the following 
words: i 


Within the mixture of parenchyma cells and 
mycelium, which replaces the normal tissue, there 
are cystlike bodies which are composed of masses 
of mycelium. These objects are hollow spheres, 
and from the inner surface arise telial spores ex- 
actly similar to those borne in the normal way 
upon the exterior of the leaf. 


1‘‘Diseovery of Internal Telia Produced by a 
Species of Cronartium,’’ by R. H. Colley, Jour. 
Agr. Research, VIII., No. 9, February 26, 1917, 
pp. 329-332. 

2¢¢Relations of Parasitic Fungi to their Host 
Plants,’’ Bot. Gazette, LIII., No. 5, May, p. 381. 


Auveusr 10, 1917} 


The writer is calling attention to this 
former note since it was included in an article 
upon a broader subject, which accounts for the 
oversight of the reviewer. 

Ernest SHAw REYNOLDS 

AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, N. D. 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL 
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 


Tue fifth number of Volume 3 of the Pro- 
ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 
contains the following articles: 

The laws of elestico-viscous flow; A. A. 
Michelson, department of physics, University 
of Chicago. A number of empirical formulas 
are given. 

A new equation of continuity: Frederick G. 
Keyes, Research Laboratory of Physical Chem- 
istry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
A comparison of a modification of van der 
Waals’ equation with experimental results ex- 
tended over wide ranges, showing satisfactory 
agreement between the equation and experi- 
ment. 

The classification of vascular plants: Ed- 
ward W. Berry, Geological Laboratory, Johns 
Hopkins University. 

Displacement interferometry in connection 
with U-tubes: C. Barus, department of phys- 
ics, Brown University. 

Attempt to separate the isotopic forms of 
lead by fractional crystallization: Theodore W. 
Richards and Norris F. Hall, Wolcott Gibbs 
Memorial Laboratory, Harvard University. 
One may infer that the molal solubilities of the 
nitrates are probably essentially identical, and 
that isotopes are really inseparable by any 
such process as crystallization. 

Hybrids of Zea tunicata and Zea ramosa: 
G. N. Collins, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. 
S. Department of Agriculture. 

Distribution of gall midges: E. P. Felt, New 
York State Museum, Albany, New York. A 
discussion of the existing distribution and of 
hypotheses concerning the way in which it may 
have been brought about. 

Fertility and age in the domestic fowl: Ray- 
mond Pearl, Biological Laboratory, Maine 
Agricultural Experiment Station. There is a 


SCIENCE 


141 


steady and progressive decline in fertility after 
the first breeding season. 

A kinetic hypothesis to explain the function 
of electrons in the chemical combination of 
atoms: William A. Noyes, department of chem- 
istry, University of Illinois. 

Transverse displacement interferometry: 
Carl Barus, department of physics, Brown Uni- 
versity. 

The proteins of the peanut, Arachis hypo- 
gea: Carl O. Johns and D. Breese Jones, Pro- 
tein Investigation Laboratory, Bureau of 
Chemistry, Department of Agriculture, Wash- 
ington. Peanut meal contains a high percent- 
age of lysine and could well be used to supple- 
ment a diet of corn and wheat. 

A design-sequence from New Mexico: A. V. 
Kidder, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. It 
has been possible to identify five successive 
steps in the modification of a design. 

The equilibrium between carbon monoxide, 
carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and free sul- 
phur: John B. Ferguson, Geophysical Labora- 
tory, Carnegie Institution of Washington. 

Physiological effect on growth and reproduc- 
tion of rations balanced from restricted 
sources: E. B. Hart, E. V. McCollum, H. 
Steenbock and G. C. Humphrey, departments 
of agricultural chemistry and animal hus- 
bandry, University of Wisconsin. Studies 
pointing to the necessity of the accumulation 
of further information on the physiological 
behavior of feeding stuffs. 

What determines the duration of life in 
metazoa? Jacques Loeb and J. H. Northrop, 
Laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for 
Medical Research, New York. Drosophila has 
a temperature coefficient for the duration of 
life of the order of magnitude of that of the 
chemical reaction. Since we know that the 
duration of the larval stage is determined by a 
specific hormone, we must consider the possi- 
bility that the duration of life is also primarily 
determined by the formation of a hormone in 
the body. 

The interrelation between diet and body 
condition and the energy production during 
mechanical work in the dog: R. J. Anderson 
and Graham Lusk, physiological laboratory, 


142 


Cornell University Medical College, New York 
City. The accomplishment of a given amount 
of mechanical work is always at the expense 
of a given amount of energy and the amount 
of energy required for the mechanical work is 
independent of the physical condition of the 
subject and of the quantity of carbohydrate 
present in the gastrointestinal tract. 
Report of the annual meeting: Award of 
medals, research grants from the trust funds. 
Epwin Bmwett WILson 
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, | 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


NOTE ON THE SWELLING OF GELATINE AND 
AGAR GELS IN SOLUTIONS OF 
SUCROSE AND DEXTROSE 


Tue tests reported in this note were made 
incidentally in connection with experiments 
by D. T. MacDougal? on the swelling of cactus 
tissues (Opuntia) and of certain artificial gels 
in water and in dilute solutions of acids and 
alkalis. The method was the same in all par- 
ticulars as that described by MacDougal. 
Small plates cut from thin, dried sheets of 
the various gelatine-agar mixtures were 
placed in the sugar solutions and the increases 
in thickness which occurred as these plates 
imbibed water and swelled were measured by 
the auxograph. The experiments were at room 
temperature, which ranged between 60° and 
70° F. (16° and 21° C.). In all cases the gels 
were the identical preparations used by Mac- 
Dougal. The sucrose was the usual “ec. p.” 
grade. The dextrose was Merck’s “highest 
purity.” The sugar solutions were tested for 
neutrality to phenolphthalein. and litmus. 
Sugar concentrations are in percentages by 
weight. 

The results are given in the following tables 
as percentage increases in thickness of the 
gel plates after approximately 12 hours in the 
respective solutions. The original thicknesses 
were measured by a micrometer gauge. Pre- 
liminary tests for longer time periods indi- 
cated that the swelling was always complete 
or very nearly so, in 12 hours. In the tables, 


1 Screncr, N. S., Vol. XLIV., pp. 502-505, 1916. 


SCIENCE 


LN. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1180 


figures on a single horizontal line represent 
tests made at the same time and under sub- 
stantially identical conditions, the only differ- 
ences being between the concentrations of the 
sugar solutions. 


EXPERIMENTS WITH SUCROSE 
Gelatine (without Agar) 


Distilled | 0.5% 2% 5% 25% 50% 
Water Sucrose | Sucrose | Sucrose | Sucrose | Sucrose 
250 315 
250 250 210 260 210 
Gelatine 100—Agar 1 
630 670 
620 710 550 520 330 
Gelatine 80—Agar 20 
300 350 
550 400 450 500 250 
Gelatine 50—Agar 50 
875 850 
600 525 500 450 275 
Gelatine 20—Agar 80 
1,150 | 1,050 
1,100 1,375 | 1,150 | 1,175 425 
Agar (without Gelatine) 
825 733 
1,000 1,175 900 700 350 
EXPERIMENTS WITH DEXTROSE 
Gelatine (without Agar) 
Distilled 2% 5% 25% 50% 
Water Dextrose Dextrose Dextrose Dextrose 
260 310 240 210 210 
Gelatine 80—Agar 20 
300 450 400 500 375 
Gelatine 50—Agar 50 
625 525 400 375 350 
Agar (without Gelatine) 
1,200 1,175 900 725 500 


Aveust 10, 1917] 


For the sugar solutions having concentra- 
tions less than 25 per cent. the results do not 
differ from the results for distilled water more 
than is explainable by the accidental variation 
normal to the method when the temperature is 
not controlled precisely. The effects of one 
hundredth normal acid and alkali found by 
MacDougal were many times the variations 
here observed and one may conclude that 
neither sucrose nor dextrose, in concentrations 
under 25 per cent., has any important effect 
on the swelling of gelatine-agar gels in water; 
important, that is, in comparison with the 
effects of acids or alkalis. With sugar con- 
centrations of 50 per cent. the data show a 
markedly lessened swelling of all the gels in 
sucrose and of the two low-gelatine gels in 
dextrose. It may be that the two high-gelatine 
gels also swell less in 50 per cent. dextrose but 
the decrease is not certainly determinable 
from the single test which was made. This 
decrease in swelling in concentrated sugar 
solutions is to be expected from analogy with 
the osmotic behavior of such solutions and 
does not indicate any specific effect of either 
sugar on the swelling or imbibition capacity 
of the gels themselves. 

E. E. FREE 


DESERT BoTANICAL LABORATORY 


THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 
III 
DIVISION OF INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTS AND CHEMICAL 
ENGINEERS 
H. E. Howe, Chairman 
S. H. Salisbury, Jr., Secretary 

A new'method of separating zinc from cadmium 
and the latter’s determination todometrically: 
Eric JOHN Ericson. The separation consists in 
erystallizing the zine out as zine sulphate or zine 
ammonium sulphate. It may be applied to the de- 
termination of cadmium in ore or in spelter (after 
Temoving and determining lead). In the latter 
ease, although a small trace of cadmium is en- 
trained in the crystals, only one crystallization is 
deemed necessary in view of the large sample 
taken. After removal of zine, the cadmium may be 
determined by any of the usual methods. An 
iodometric method is outlined. 

The determination of cadmium in brass: E. 
ScuramMM. Owing to the lack of any well-tried 


SCIENCE 


143 


method for the determination of cadmium in brass, 
a series of analyses was carried out on brasses and 
on mixtures of salts with and without additions of 
cadmium. A procedure was developed which gives 
fairly reliable results for the small amounts of 
cadmium concerned. The method consists essen- 
tially in removal of the copper electrolytically from 
nitric acid solution, followed by separation of the 
cadmium from zine with hydrogen sulphide, in so- 
lutions of regulated acidity and small volume. 
The cadmium is finally weighed as sulphate. 

The electrometric titration of zinc: F. RussELL 
v. BicHowsky. In the potassium ferrocyanide 
method for determining zine there are three prin- 
cipal sources of error: (1) Oxidation of the ferro- 
eyanide by any nitric acid, chlorine, or bromine 
present; (2) precipitation of other metals along 
with zine; (3) uncertainty of the end point. To 
remove the first source of error precautions such as 
the addition of SO, should be taken. To avoid the 
precipitation of other metals the rational proced- 
ure is to change the conditions of the ferrocyanide 
precipitation by carrying it out in solutions con- 
taining from 10 to 20 per cent. HCl. In these solu- 
tions zine ferrocyanide is only slightly soluble, but 
lead, manganese, iron and copper ferrocyanides 
are very soluble. Since the ordinary indicators can 
not be used at this concentration of acid, an elec- 
trometrie determination of the end point is 
adopted, which is found to be quicker and more 
accurate than the older methods. This consists in 
noting the point at which there is a sharp change 
in potential of the solutions against a platinum 
electrode. The apparatus is the same as that used 
in determining the end-point of oxidation and re- 
duction reactions in the analysis of iron, vanadium, 
ehromium, ete. Experiments on a number of salt 
mixtures show that the end point is not affected 
by the amount of acid or neutral salts present 
within reasonable limits, nor by the presence of 
iron, lead, manganese (up to 50 mg.), or by small 
amounts of copper and cadmium. The preliminary 
operations for the purification of the ore therefore 
lose their customary importance; comparative re- 
sults show that the electrometric method is more 
rapid than the usual procedure. 

The vapor pressure of zine and related metals: 
JoHN JOHNSTON. A review of the somewhat scat- 
tered observations on the vapor pressure of high-: 
boiling metals, and a reduction of the data yield- 
ing equations by means of which the vapor pressure 
at any temperature can be ascertained. Published 
observations on the volatility of metals, alone and 
from mixtures, are also summarized. 


144 


The new zine fields of Kansas and Oklahoma: W. 
P. Haynes. A visit to the new zine fields south of 
Baxter Springs, Kansas, and to Picher and Ad- 
miralty, Oklahoma, shows the great strides in pro- 
duction which this district is making. Small drill- 
ing rigs dotting the prairie mark the advance 
guard, prospecting to determine the value and ex- 
tent of the ore bodies. Concentrating mills follow 
closely and give the appearance of a large city. 
The ore minerals in this new district are chiefly 
sphalerite with some galena and variable amounts 
of pyrite and marcosite. This ore is much richer 
than in the older Galena-Joplin district and fre- 
quently contains over 20 per cent. of sphalerite. 
The origin of the ores of this district is still some- 
what in doubt, but the most recent researches by 
Siebenthal have led him to conclude that they have 
been produced from the disseminated sulphide min- 
erals scattered through the Cambro-Ordovician 
limestones, by artesian waters transporting them 
in solution and ascending and depositing them in 
the open spaces of the cherty members (Grand 
Falls chert) of the Boone formation (Burlington 
or Mississipian limestone), which is the productive 
horizon in this region. 

Recent investigations on the smelter smoke prob- 
lem: A. E. Weuts. At most smelters where large 
quantities of sulphide ores are being handled, seri- 
ous efforts are being made to utilize through the 
manufacture of sulphuric acid, liquid dioxide or 
elemental sulphur, the sulphur dioxide which re- 
sults from the roasting and smelting of these ores. 
However, at plants situated at a considerable dis- 
tance from markets for these products, only a 
comparatively small amount of the sulphur can be 
so utilized. It is recognized that although the 
amount of the smelter waste sulphur gases that 
will be utilized in commercial products will be in- 
creased steadily, yet, for many years to come, 
these smelters will be obliged to waste large vol- 
umes of sulphur dioxide daily into the atmosphere. 
Therefore, efforts are being made to determine 
how, under different climatie and topographic con- 
ditions, these large volumes of sulphur dioxide can 
be discharged into the atmosphere without doing 
injury to vegetation in the surrounding country. 

In this paper the development of the methods for 
conducting these investigations were discussed 
briefly. 

Notes upon the hydro-metallurgical and electro- 
lytic treatment of zine ore: E. E. Warts. After 
briefly discussing the treatment of zine ore, the 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


paper related the writer’s experimental work upon 
the ore of the Sullivan Mine of Kimberly, B. C. 
This work served to develop a process that involved 
a sulphurous acid leaching of the ore, and further 
experimental work developed the Watts Process. 
By this process, zine oxide obtained by any suit- 
able means is treated in specially constructed 
electrolytic tanks for the recovery of zine. The 
work done in the experimental plant of the Electro 
Zine Company at Welland, Ont., was discussed. 

Chemical examination of industrial brines: O. R. 
SWEENEY and James R. WitHrow. The value of 
chemical examination, from the manufacturer’s 
standpoint, was discussed. The errors resulting 
from improper sampling were shown, and a sugges- 
tion for a standard method given. The constituents 
which it was thought should be determined were 
given; together with the form in which they should 
be reported. A standard procedure for determin- 
ing the density was given and the best. tempera- 
ture to use was discussed. Suggestions for deter- 
mining total solids from the author’s experiences 
were given. Procedures for silica, iron and 
aluminum were given and shorter methods for eal- 
cium and magnesium in mineral waters. Barium, 
strontium, sodium, potassium and sulfuric acid 
procedures were given, also modifications of the 
methods for bromine determination. 

Contribution to the industrial chemistry of 
chicle and chewing gum: FREDERIC DANNERTH. 
The author presents methods for the valuation of 
commercial block chicle by determining moisture, 
viscosity, resins, proteins and carbohydrates and 
mineral matter. Twenty problems relating to the 
chewing gum industry are presented. The total 
exports of finished chewing gum, amounted in 
1916 to $574,400, equivalent to approximately 
718,000 pounds. This represents crude chicle 
equal to at least 179,000 pounds. The amount of 
chicle imported, manufactured and consumed in 
the United States in 1916 was approximately 
7,031,000 pounds equivalent to 28,124,000 pounds 
of chewing gum. Researches are at present being 
carried out on the constituent elements of chicle— 
alpha chicl-alban; beta chicl-alban; gamma chicl- 
alban; chicl-fluavil, and chicl-gutta. These sub- 
stances have been investigated by Tschirsch and 
later by Bosz and Cohen. The latter investigators 
have not entirely agreed with the results published 
by Tschirsch. 

Apparatus for determining the specific gravity of 
natural gas; Cuas. K. Francis. The apparatus 
is to be used according to the method proposed by 


AveusT 10, 1917] 


Bunsen, which is based on the fact that the specific 
gravity of two gases bear approximately the same 
ratios to each other as do the squares of their rate 
of flow when passing through a very small open- 
ing. The apparatus consists of a pipette or burette 
to which is sealed at right angles, just below the 
tip, a glass stopeock. To the tip of the burette 
another stopeock is sealed which is provided with a 
very small, practically invisible opening. The gas 
to be examined is admitted through the larger side 
opening and the time of escape is measured 
through the small opening. A sample of air is 
measured in the same manner. The following ex- 
ample will serve as an illustration: The time re- 
quired for the sample of gas to escape was 13.4 
seconds and for the same quantity of air, 11.8 sec- 
onds; these squared are equal to 190.4 and 129.9. 
As the specific gravity of natural gas is referred 
to air as unity, the specific gravity is obtained by 
dividing 129.9 by 179.5=0.723 the specifie gray- 
ity of the gas. 

Comparative results from experiments in the 
distillery with open and closed fermenters: NIELS 
C. Ortvep. A closed iron fermenter of the latest 
type with a capacity of 4,000 liters was brought 
from Germany in 1914 and a wooden open tub of 
the same capacity was constructed. Eleven experi- 
ments were made, fermenting simultaneously mash 
from the same batch in both vessels. The results 
obtained were in favor of the closed fermenter, 
viz., lower acidity in the finished beer, and in- 
creased yield, amounting to one per cent. of spirit. 
The yields from the open fermenter corresponded 

‘to the average yields obtained in the ordinary nor- 
mal runs of the distillery. 

The effects of exposure of some fluid bitumens: 
CHARLES 8. REEVE and RicHarp H. Lewis. The 
work described was a continuation of that begun 
by Hubbard and Reeve (Jour. of Indus. and Eng. 
Chem., 1913), and of later results published by 
Reeve and Anderton in the Journal of the Frank- 
lin Institute, October, 1916. Experiments were 
earried out along similar lines to those previously 
followed, using fluid types of products which had 
not been previously investigated. Exposure tests 
conducted for a period of one year show that cer- 
tain types of petroleum harden materially while 
others are relatively little changed in their phys- 
ieal character, although all are materially changed 
in their composition as shown by the change in 
percentage of bitumen insoluble in naphtha and 
free and fixed carbon values. The relation be- 
tween amounts volatilized upon heating for vari- 
ous periods in a laboratory oven at 163° C. and the 


SCIENCE 


145 


amounts lost upon atmospherie exposure were 
shown by tables, and relations between the charac- 
ters of the residues obtained by the two methods 
of volatilization were given, As in the previous 
work referred to, the changes which occur in bi- 
tumens upon exposure are notably greater than can 
be accounted for by mere loss of volatile constitu- 
ents, and are due to chemical changes in the con- 
stitution of the bitumen itself. 

The thermal and pressure decomposition of an 
absorbent oil: Gustav Eciorr. An absorbent oil 
derived from a Pennsylvania crude petroleum, 
specific gravity 0.828/15.5° C. and 95.3 per cent. 
boiling between 250° C. and 350° C. was subjected 
to temperature conditions of 550° C., 600° ©. and 
650° C. in the gas phase at one and eleven at- 
mospheres pressure. The above conditions of tem- 
perature and pressure gave the following per- 
centages of gasoline, benzene, toluene and zylenes 
on basis of oil used. 


Temperature Pressure in Atmospheres 


Basis of Oil Used 550° C. 600° C. 650° C 


Per cent. gasoline... wt. 16.4| 18.8 | 16.8 | 14.2 
‘¢ benzene...| 0.0] 0.0} 0.8] 3.4] 2.5] 5.5 
ce toluene...| 0.6) 1.7] 1.5] 4.4] 2.9] 4.4 
s xylenes...| 0.3! 1.7! 0.6! 2.8] 1.61 2.2 


The formation of benzene and toluene by the ac- 
tion of aluminum chloride on solvent naphtha: 
Gustav Ecutorr. Solvent naphtha derived from 
the thermal decomposition of coal, having a spe- 
cifie gravity of 0.867/15.5° C. and 93 per cent. dis- 
tilling between 135° and 160° C. with the dry 
point at 181° C. was treated with anhydrous 
aluminum chloride. Five per cent. by weight of 
AICl,, was added to one liter of solvent naphtha 
and distilled over in two hours from a Hempel 
flask until 78 per cent. came over. The distillate 
was neutralized with caustic, washed and dried 
over calcium chloride. The distillate upon analysis 
gave on the basis of solvent naphtha used 1.2 per 
cent. of benzene and 13.9 per cent. of toluene. 

The determination of available oxygen in ozi- 
dized manganese ores: O. L. BARNEBEY. The 
oxalic acid method is in common use in America 
for the determination of available oxygen in oxi- 
dized manganese ores and hence is the basis for the 
evaluation of such ores for certain industrial pur- 
poses. This method gives inconsistent results 
causing much difficulty in control work involving 
the use of pyrolusite and similar products. The 


146 


method is shown to be highly empirical, the errors 
being produced by decomposition of the oxalic 
acid by the action of the light in the presence of 
manganese salts. A modified ferrous sulfate 
method is accurate and is recommended for fac- 
tory control work. The latter method gives re- 
sults in close agreement with results obtained by 
Bunsen’s distillation. method and a new direct 
iodimetric method worked out by the author. 

Some relations of the effect of over-heating to 
certain physical and chemical properties of as- 
phalts: A. W. Hixson and Haro~p HE. Hanps. An 
oil asphaltic cement, a brick filler fluxed with an 
asphaltic oil residuum and a crude Trinidad 
asphalt were heated to various temperatures be- 
tween 163° C. and 350° C. under uniform condi- 
tions. Physical and chemical analyses were made 
on the products of the various heatings. The re- 
sults show that heating asphalts above certain 
temperatures change both the physical and chem- 
ical properties. The carbene content was not 
changed materially until the temperature of heat- 
ing was above 200° C. Above that temperature 
there was a decided increase in carbenes. The re- 
sults seem to indicate that carbenes are the result 
of cracking parafiine and asphaltic hydrocarbons 
into napthenes and unsaturated hydrocarbons. 
Moderate heating may so change the nature of the 
asphalts as to render them more soluble in carbon 
tetrachloride than in carbon disulphide. Over- 
heating causes marked changes in natural and oil 
asphalts which render them unfit for many struc- 
tural purposes. Two hundred and thirty-five de- 
grees Centigrade is probably the maximum tem- 
perature to which an asphalt may be heated with- 
out permanent injuries to its useful properties and 
for certain structural purposes they should not be 
heated above 200° C. It is believed that the fixed 
carbon content when corrected to the original 
weight before heating offers a means of tracing 
the changes in the molecular structure of the hy- 
drocarbons when they are subjected to the influ- 
ence of heat. There is a close relation between 
the carbene value and the physical and chemical 
properties of asphaltic materials. The carbene 
specification is important for asphaltic materials 
for construction purposes. 

Chemical Industry in Canada: H. E. Howe. 
The paper outlined something of the chemical in- 
dustry in Canada, with special reference to recent 
important developments and new processes which 
have been perfected under the stimulating influ- 
ence of war conditions, but which will become im- 
portant factors in the chemical business after the 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1180 


war. It also recounted something of the natural 
resources of Canada as indicating the raw mate- 
rials upon which chemical processes and industries 
may eventually be based, coneluding with the state- 
ment of the steps that are being taken by private 
corporations, educational institutions and the gov- 
ernment to apply scientific and industrial research 
looking toward the more economic utilization of 
natural resources and the establishment of chem- 
ical industries to serve a population which will 
undoubtedly increase at an abnormal rate follow- 
ing the declaration of peace. 

The availability of nitrogen in fertilizers. A 
new method based on the nitrogen rendered water- 
soluble by incubation with a fertile soil: J. P. 
SCHROEDER. Theoretical and practical considera- 
tions governing the availability of substances for 
plant nutrition in recent researches dealing with 
the assimilation of various forms of nitrogen and 
the merits of various methods for determining 
availability were discussed. A proposed method 
consists of incubating a small sample of fertilizer 
with a 100 gm. portion of fertile soil at 30° C., 
maintained just below its critical moisture con- 
tent and determining the total nitrogen that has 
been converted into the water-soluble form. It 
differs from the nitrification method and the am- 
monification method in that it takes into considera- 
tion both of those forms of nitrogen; also that in 
the form of nitrites and soluble protein compounds, 
all of which are assumed to be available or readily 
convertible into available form. It makes pos- 
sible a shorter incubation period than in the nitri- 
fication method and the use of the exact ammonia 
determination instead of the difficult nitrate esti- 
mation. 

The fertilizer value of city wastes—II., garbage 
tankage: J. P. SCHROEDER. The origin and compo- 
sition and principal methods of rendering garbage 
were briefly outlined. Complete analyses of twenty 
samples of garbage tankage, representing all the 
larger garbage reduction plants in operation in 
this country, show on the average 3.3 per cent. am- 
monia, 7.84 per cent. bone phosphate and 0.80 per 
cent. potash, after removal of the oil, which usually 
amounts to about 12 per cent, Calculations based 
on these analyses and on figures showing produc- 
tion in cities of 50,000 and over, call attention to 
the large source of ammonia available. The availa- 
bility of this ammonia for plant use is shown by 
experiments with different methods, and the gen- 
eral applicability of the material for fertilizer pur- 
poses based on its physical and chemical proper- 
ties was discussed. 


VoL. XLVI. No. 1181 


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SCIENCE 


Fray, Aucust 17, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Future of the Sigma Xi: PROFESSOR 
SAMUEL Wier WILLISTON, Jc)s:clstejeicleleieiels:ejeieieie\« 147 


The Work of Dean H. L. Russell ..........2. 152 


The Priestley Memorial of the American 


Chemical Society 154 


Scientific Events :— 
A Structure Possibly Favorable for Oil 
under the Central Great Plains; Medical 
Students and Conscription; Psychopatho- 
logical Examination of Recruits; The Third 
National Exposition of Chemical Industries. 155 


Scientific INOLESHONANICWS i atarciereleteishersteheieielsiove 158 
University and Educational News .......... 160 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Cost of Roast Pig: Dr. H. P. Armspy. 
A New Contribution to American Geology: 
Rosert W. Sayues. Botrytis and Sclero- 
timia: RED. J. SEAVER, ....0.6e0c0secebes 160 


Quotations :— 
A British Report on Industrial Research in 
VAIVETACO Ae ASN: 5 Tae occh NR Ne et TE 163 


Scientific Books :— 
Lester Jones on the Use of Mean Sea Level 
as the Datum for Elevations: Dr. WimLLIAM 
EB OWT) Pavein: cts iofel stro sisicpbie chs WON ol atecokalobiersicterhe 164 


Proceedings of the National Academy of 
I CLENCES 3 sere aici ts reenter ee ta tots 166 


Special Articles :— 
Intra-vitam Color Reactions: N. A. Coss. 167 


Societies and Academies :— 
The American Chemical Society .......... 169 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should besent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison 
On-Hudson, N. Y 


THE FUTURE OF THE SIGMA XI1 

In a few weeks it will be thirty-one 
years since some students of Cornell Uni- 
versity, feeling the injustice of the old- 
fashioned kind of education that gave all 
its honors, all its encouragement to the 
students of the liberal arts, planned an 
honor society in the sciences. They 
thought, as most of us now think, that 
not all of good was confined to Latin and 
Greek, that there was also merit in the nat- 
ural sciences, that the student of geology 
or of engineering was as deserving of hon- 
ors and of encouragement as the student of 
the classics. As they walked home from 
the commencement where the honors of Phi 
Beta Kappa had been liberally bestowed, 
they conceived a society that would recog- 
nize in an equal way the merits of the 
bachelor of science. And the Sigma Xi 
was born. 

But higher education in America, as in all 
nations, has developed much since those 
days, and that exponent of the liberal ed- 
ucation of those days has also changed. 
The Sigma Xi of 1886 would find little en- 
couragement in most of our universities 
to-day, and we of the Sigma Xi may justly 
claim some of the credit for that change. 
The classical education of fifty years ago 
has but few proponents to-day, for science 
is now recognized as an essential part of 
any liberal education. 

Perhaps some of us are claiming too much 
for science in education ; I half believe that 
we are. When I received my bachelor de- 
gree, a good many years ago, my commence- 
ment speech was a diatribe on Latin and 


1An address delivered to the initiates of the 
Yale chapter of the Sigma Xi, April 2, 1917. 


148 


Greek, which had exacted a full half of all 
my college work. But, I have frankly to 
admit that my debt to them is great, great 
because the science of those days was not a 


substitute for them, nor am I fully con-- 


vinced that it yet is. 

The Sigma Xi was founded, we may 
frankly admit, merely as a rival for the 
Phi Beta Kappa—perhaps there was a 
flavor of sour grapes in its origin! Has 
it justified its past? Is there justification 
for it to-day, and need for it in the future? 
Without reservation the answer to all these 
is yes. But, for the Sigma Xi of 1886 
the need was brief. Science has won recog- 
nition as an essential part, though not the 
whole part of any liberal education. There 
was a time, not so very long ago, when 
studies of immediate bread-and-butter in- 
terest were debarred from the curriculum 
for the bachelor of arts degree as contam- 
inators of a liberal education. JI can re- 
member a long and warm discussion in one 
of our large universities as to whether the 
study of human anatomy might safely be 
substituted for that of cat anatomy; not 
because the study of man was less worthy 
than the study of cats, but because the one 
was pursued for a practical purpose while 
the other was merely disciplinary. My col- 
leagues of the language side feared that it 
would be, as indeed it was, a wedge to make 
education practical as well as cultural. 
Similar discussions are not often heard now 
in our faculty meetings. To preserve the 
degree of bachelor of arts in all its pristine 
aristocratic purity, the degrees of bachelor 
of science and of philosophy, and of I know 
not what else, were widely introduced for 
the proletariat in science. For a long time 
they were the penumbra of classical learn- 
ing, and even yet in some places they have 
not won their full place in the sun. I hope 
that the time will soon be here when there 
shall be no distinctions anywhere between 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


the student of Greek and the student of 
botany or chemistry, or of psychology. 
One is as useful in its way as the others, 
and has an equal place in liberal educa- 
tion, but not to the exclusion of others. 
This is now so evident that the statement 
would be a mere platitude, were it not that 
the Sigma Xi was founded expressly to 
help break down the distinction. 

The Sigma Xi has long since ceased to 
look exclusively upon the other side of the 
Phi Beta Kappa shield. The ideals of our 
society are not those of its founders thirty 
years ago, when the simple recognition and 
encouragement of scientific studies were 
the most that it could do. Its higher ideal 
is now, as it has been for years, I can say 
with your unanimous approbation, the en- 
couragement of productive scientific schol- 
arship. The encouragement of scientific 
scholarship is but a part of its function. 
The student who, when he dons for the first 
time his academic gown, is able to talk 
learnedly of what his text-books and teach- 
ers have taught him about chromosomes, 
the mutations of @nothera, dominant and 
recessive characters, the location of Cam- 
brian rocks, the secret history of trilobites 
and dinosaurs, or the mysteries of ions and 
organic compounds, is a worthy candidate 
for membership with us, but he has not 
justified his right to full fellowship with 
the Spoudon Xunones until he has given 
evidence of his ability and desire to use 
that knowledge for the benefit of science. 
Our ultimate ideal, then, in a few words, 
is the encouragement of research. And the 
student may properly ask, what do you 
mean by research? 

The word is something of a fetish with 
us. Is counting the number of feathers in 
a bird’s wing, or the hairs in a mosquito’s 
antenna research. Yes, if it leads the stu- 
dent better to understand the structure of 
all birds and all flies. Otherwise it might 


Aveust 17, 1917] 


as well be done by a properly constructed 
machine. We have been told that the mere 
accumulation of simple scientific facts 
never makes a leader in science, that, for 
instance, the collection of birds and bugs 
and brachiopods and their discrimination 
into species and subspecies is an inferior 
kind of research in natural history. But, 
every scientific man of repute in the past or 
present has begun in just that way, by the 
discovery and discrimination of scientific 
facts, however simple they may appear to 
others. Lamarck was a mere collector and 
namer of mollusks; Charles Darwin wasted 
years of his brilliant life in classifying cir- 
riped crustaceans—I wonder how much 
those cirripeds had to do with natural se- 
lection, and I wonder how many of us 
would know a ecirriped if we should meet 
one? Agassiz gave years of his life to the 
collection and study of poissons fossiles, 
and it requires no more acumen to classify 
fossil fishes than living bugs, for I have 
tried both. The collection and discrimina- 
tion of mosquitoes was once a puerile pur- 
suit. But, had there been no collectors and 
classifiers of mosquitoes, yellow fever would 
still be ravaging our seaports, and perhaps 
the Panama Canal would not now be a real- 
ity, and the safety of our nation endangered. 
Can any one see any possible relation be- 
tween a mere entomological collector and 
the destruction of great cities by war? 
Had not Loewenhoek, in mere curiosity, 
found those organisms we call bacteria, and 
others wasted their time in studying and 
classifying them, there would have been no 
Pasteur, and antitoxins unknown. Is there 
no relation between such trivial pursuits, as 
some of our friends would call them, and 
typhoid fever? 

I say, and say with deep conviction, that 
the ability displayed in the observation 
and discrimination of what often appear to 
us to be trivial things may be as great as 
that required for the formulation of far- 


| SCIENCE 


149 


reaching laws in science. Even the tyro 
can draw conclusions, that is, recognize 
laws, when facts are numerous enough, and 
the best of us can do nothing without facts. 
And the discovery of natural laws is sure to 
come when facts are numerous enough. It 
is the trained student who anticipates them. 
How many great discoveries or great inven- 
tions have uncontested claimants? Who 
was the discoverer of electricity, photog- 
raphy, telegraphy, telephony, aviation, or 
even evolution ? 

Let us not, then, deride the student be- 
cause he is doing what we in our conceit 
think is unimportant. There are fashions 
in science as in everything else, and we are 
rather inclined to ridicule him who is not 
quite up to fashion. Shall we tell the candi- 
date for honors in Sigma Xi that he must 
be in fashion? That research is research 
only when it leads to worldly recognition? 
No, train him aright, and nothing will be 
too trivial to merit his study. It is not 
what he does but how he does it that makes 
the leader in science as in everything else, 
for there is nothing small in science. 

One of our noted chemists, not long ago, 
I have been told, after the publication of an 
important paper, when asked by the presi- 
dent of his college of what use his discover- 
ies were to the world, replied that he hoped 
they had none. We would not wholly agree 
with him, because the ultimate end of all 
our research is the benefit of mankind, and 
there surely must be some practical use of 
every fact in science. He did emphasize, 
however, the first essential of every true 
scientist, the desire to learn new truths for 
the sake of truth. 

Research ability I would define as the 
ability to observe, to discriminate, and to 
judge, coupled with an intelligence that is 
always asking the reason why. Given this 
ability to observe and to understand, and 
its possessor has the foundation for suc- 
cess, whether in science, in arts or in the 


150 


everyday affairs of life. Every day life is 
but a continual round of original research 
for every successful physician, lawyer, 
statesman or business man. And this is the 
highest aim of our society, to encourage the 
training of such students. As teachers our 
pupils look to us for inspiration and he 
only can give inspiration who knows the 
joy of research himself. 

As a society for the mere giving of hon- 
ors for scientific scholarship we have out- 
erown our past, and indeed that was our 
function only for a brief time. But we still 
have a duty to encourage scholarship, for 
without scholarship there can be no re- 
search. It is human nature to seek honors. 
Scientific men, like all others, from the 
humblest to the greatest, welcome them, 
whether it be membership in the Sigma Xi 
or in the National Academy of Sciences. 
When honors come as rewards for meri- 
torious work accomplished they cheer and 
encourage; and they stimulate ourselves 
and others to higher efforts. We would not, 
if we could, abolish honors for scholarship 
from our society, we would not restrict 
them to accomplished research. 

And our colleges and our nation need us 
for the higher work; never was there 
greater need for the work we can do, and 
these dangerous days are impressing us 
with that need. Until the millenium comes 
when we shall all live in peace and har- 
mony, and like the dinosaurs grow big, fat 
and vulnerable and like them become ex- 
tinct, the nation will need the utmost we 
can do in science. 

Ts it merely a coincidence that the life of 
the Sigma Xi has been nearly synchronous 
with the marvelous development of science 
in America? When this society was born 
there were but a few score of noted research 
men in science, and but one or two special 
societies in science. Now we number our 
alumni by the thousands, active research 
men by the hundreds, and scientific so- 


: SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


cieties by the score. Then it was necessary 
for young men who would do things in sci- 
ence to go abroad, and chiefly to Germany, 
for their training. Who is there now who 
finds it necessary to go abroad for lack of 
suitable instruction here? It was not many 
years ago that I heard the justly famous 
Dr. Koch, of Germany, say that America 
was becoming the leader in medical educa- 
tion and that soon it would be necessary 
for foreign students to come here for their 
best training. We have been told so many 
times by our scientific friends abroad that 
we are precocious but still undeveloped in 
science that we have been inclined to be- 
lieve them. But that time has passed. I 
say, not in boastfulness, but in conscious 
truth, that to-day America is doing more 
research work in nearly every branch of 
pure science than any other nation upon 
the globe. And the quality of our work 
suffers not in comparison. I have grown a 
little weary of the common assumption that 
we are still looking across the water for our 
inspiration and guidance in scientific re- 
search. 

We are doing more work, we are doing 
quite as good work in pure science, not be- 
cause we are any abler or better than other 
people, and especially Germany, but because 
ours is a democratic nation that gives to 
every one opportunity and stimulus; be- 
cause we are less bound by precedent, be- 
cause the teachers of our colleges and uni- 
versities are less creatures of control. In 
Frankfurt-on-the-Main I was told, a few 
years ago, that the national government 
would not permit the privately endowed 
university they were founding there to ap- 
point its own faculty. It reserved the 
privilege of making every professor a crea- 
ture of the controlling government. Fancy 
what our progress would have been in 
America had a self-perpetuating cabinet of 
the national government had the power to 


Aveust 17, 1917] 


nominate every teacher in every college of 
our land! 

These are some of the reasons, I am sure, 
for our remarkable development in pure 
science during the past forty years, some of 
the reasons why we may look forward to 
still greater progress in the coming years. 
Has our society had no part in this prog- 
ress? Shall its part in the future be 
greater, or less? Do our colleges and uni- 
versities still have need of us to strengthen, 
to sustain ? 

In one great side of science, however, for 
which our society stands, we, as a nation, 
have failed as compared with others, and 
especially Germany. Applied science, I 
mean, or at least some branches of it. Eng- 
land is awakening to its negligence in the 
past ; never in the history of the empire has 
the scientific man of Britain been more ap- 
preciated than he is at present. And there 
is a new epoch for America coming soon. 
We have our Langleys, our Maxims, our 
Bells, Edisons and Wrights of whom we are 
proud, but our colleges have not had much 
share in their production, and we in the 
pure sciences are still a little inclined to 
look askance at them as the antithesis of 
that supposed ideal of our famous chemist. 
Has the Sigma Xi done all that it should 
in the past to encourage the applied sci- 
ences? Shall we give greater encourage- 
ment to the student who counts the bristles 
in a mosquito’s proboscis or the plasmodia 
in its stomach than to him who applies that 
knowledge to the prevention of yellow 
fever? Does it require less ability, less re- 
search to observe, to discriminate, to judge 
in the construction of an airplane or a talk- 
ing machine than to trace the fibers of a 
cerebral ganglion, or reconstruct the back- 
bone of a dinosaur? Have we done what 
we should? Or shall we frankly restrict 
ourselves to the encouragement of research 
in pure science and leave its application 
for others to further, to encourage? I be- 


1 SCIENCE 


151 


lieve that the decision is now before us, and 
upon our answer depends much of the fu- 
ture of our society. Trained as a young 
man in two professions of applied science, 
and the most of my life given to research 
in science so pure that its application to 
things practical seems remote in the ex- 
treme, perhaps my sympathies with both 
are more pronounced than usual. I can see 
no difference in the quality of research that 
I gave to locating a railroad line, the treat- 
ment of a patient with measles, or the re- 
construction of a paleozoic reptile. It 
would be a misfortune for us, I earnestly 
believe, to restrict ourselves to the encour- 
agement of research in pure science. 

A great future, I am sure, for science in 
America is its application, and the greater 
efficiency we reach in making use of the 
many discoveries of pure science for the 
amelioration and improvement of our con- 
ditions as a nation, the higher will be the 
honors, the greater encouragement we shall 
receive in the discovery of new facts and 
of new laws; the more honorable, the more 
appreciated will be the profession of the 
research student in pure science. 

Because we as a society have not done all 
that I think we should have done in the 
encouragement of the applied sciences, nu- 
merous rival societies in our technological 
schools have come into existence. We are 
all working for the same objects, why 
should our efforts be weakened by rivalries? 
Why should we not all be united in a single 
great organization for the promotion of all 
branches and sides of science? I feel sure 
that the greater extension and the greater 
usefulness of the Sigma Xi has been hamp- 
ered by our lack of accord in our ideals. 
Some of our chapters grant membership 
almost wholly for high scholarship, others 
exclusively to graduate students who have 
accomplished or are accomplishing meri- 
torious research work. And this lack of 
unanimity has prevented, I am sure, the 


152 


greater extension of the society. We have 
but thirty chapters, an increase of but ten 
in the past ten years or more. There are at 
least a hundred institutions in America 
that need such encouragement as we can 
give. We have hesitated to extend our so- 
ciety, not because we are aristocratic, but 
because we earnestly desire to keep its 
ideals high, and know no way by which to 
ensure their preservation. 

A step has been taken, one that I have 
hoped for for years, to define more pre- 
cisely our ideals that we may entrust them 
fearlessly and safely to every institution 
where a few of us are gathered together. 
And I am still further encouraged to be- 
lieve that in the end, even though it be 
slowly, it will lead to the results I have 
long hoped for, the extension of our society 
throughout our nation. Other organizations 
are doing much for the promotion of scien- 
tific research; ours is the nobler duty to 
train men and women for research in sci- 
ence, both pure and applied, to sustain, to 
encourage the university in the develop- 
ment of the science of the nation. Yale has 
done very much in the past, I am sure it 
will take its full part in the advancement 
of the future. Its ideals have always been 
high and they have been reflected in the 
chapter of the Sigma Xi. I can say with 
assurance that in no chapter of the society 
is the honor of election to membership 
greater. } : 

In conclusion, I would say a few words 
to the initiates of this evening. You have 
pledged yourselves to uphold and sustain 
the ideals of the Sigma Xi. An honorable, 
a useful future lies before you. The world 
needs you as it has never needed such men 
as you before. Your vocation in life is 
more honorable than it ever has been be- 
fore in the estimation of the world. I am 
sure that when you shall have reached my 
age, science will have won far greater hon- 
ors yet for its earnest and sincere devotees, 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


even as it has changed marvelously since 
the time when I was as young as you are. 
New facts and new laws awaiting your 
discovery are as numerous as ever. Your 
work may be greater, but you are equipped 
to do that work more easily than we were a 
score or two years ago; your footsteps will 
be more direct, and the harvest that awaits 
your reaping is very, very great. And I 
would encourage you with the assurance 
that, no matter how humble that work may 
seem to you, if you have learned rightly to 
observe, to discriminate, and above all, to 
judge, there are no limits but your energy 
and your ambition to the heights you may 
climb. SamMuEL W. WILLISTON 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 


THE WORK OF DEAN H. L. RUSSELL 


During commencement week his colleagues, 
friends and former students celebrated the 
twenty-fifth anniversary of the doctorate of 
H. L. Russell, dean of the College of Agri- 
culture of the University of Wisconsin. In 
1892 Johns Hopkins University honored Pro- 
fessor Russell by conferring this degree upon 
him. This year (1917) also marks the com- 
pletion of twenty-four years of service to the 
University of Wisconsin. The last ten years 
of this period have been occupied in directing 
the activities of the College of Agriculture 
and the Experiment Station. 

At the anniversary last week bound records 
of the results of the work accomplished by 
Dean Russell were presented to him. Three 
sturdy volumes there were—nearly two thou- 
sand pages. 

“What Dean Russell has meant to Wis- 
consin and her farmers purely as an invest- 
ment cannot be estimated, so extensive have 
been his activities and so far-reaching their 
results,” said E. G. Hastings, professor of bac- 
teriology, in speaking of the relation of Dean 
Russell’s work to Wisconsin and her farming 
industry. Professor Hastings has been closely 
associated with Dr. Russell in his work as a 
bacteriologist, having worked with him when 
he was head of the department of bacteriology 


Aveust 17, 1917] 


and becoming head himself when the position 
was vacated by Dr. Russell. Professor Hast- 
ings said: 


At the time Dean Russell was graduated from 
the University of Wisconsin in 1888, bacteriology 
was just being developed at the university. The 
history of what bacteriology has done for the con- 
trol of many animal diseases, such as hog cholera, 
anthrax, black leg and bovine tubereulosis—dis- 
eases which formerly killed off thousands of head 
of live stock annually; of what it has done for the 
production of milk and the consequent lowering of 
the nation’s death rate, especially among infants; 
of what it has done for the control of plant dis- 
eases, thereby saving millions of dollars to the 
country annually by increased crop production; of 
how the cheese industry has grown with increasing 
knowledge of bacteria, of what has been learned 
about the power of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, to en- 
rich the soil and thus inerease the crop yields, of 
how it has brought about improved sanitary con- 
ditions, and how it has helped with the canning in- 
dustry and the preservation of food by other meth- 
ods—the history of all this, which is the history of 
agricultural bacteriology during the past twenty- 
five years, speaks for the wisdom of spending 
money and time on the study of bacteriology in 
any state, and especially in a state with the dairy 
and erop record of Wisconsin. 

The introduction of bacteriology at the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin was due to the efforts of Dr. Wm. 
Trelease, now of the University of Illinois, and to 
Dr. E. A. Birge, dean of the College of Letters and 
Science of the University of Wisconsin. The first 
announcement of courses in this subject was con- 
tained in the university catalogue issued in 1887— 
1888. It may seem strange that even before the 
science of ‘‘bacteriology’’ had received its name, 
it had found a place at this then far-western insti- 
tution. This was due to the fact that those per- 
sons in charge of the university were men with 
the spirit of the pioneer. A pioneer must be a 
progressive man, a man who is always on the job, 
aman of good judgment as to the road to follow. 
Such men Wisconsin had. 

Dean Russell became interested in bacteriology 
early in his career as a student, and under the in- 
fluence of his teacher, Dr. Birge, he decided to go 
to Europe for instruction under the masters of 
what was then a comparatively new subject. He 
studied at Berlin while Robert Koch, the great 
pioneer of medical bacteriology, was actively en- 
gaged in teaching and investigating, and at Paris 
while Louis Pasteur was still busy in his labora- 


SCIENCE 


153 


tory. He returned to America and spent one year 
under Dr, William Welch of the Johns Hopkins 
University, thus completing the eighth year of his 
preparation for work—a long time in getting ready 
to work but the wisdom of this is shown in the 
things accomplished in the next twenty-five years. 

About this time, in northern Germany and Den- 
mark, the relation of bacteria to dairying, espe- 
cially to the manufacture of butter and cheese, was 
beginning to attract attention. W. A. Henry, then 
dean of the College of Agriculture, with true 
pioneer spirit, realized that Wisconsin was destined 
to be a great dairy state if matters were rightly 
directed; it had great natural resources in lands, in 
climate and in men—for it had within its borders 
such men as Governor W. D. Hoard and Hiram 
Smith. Dean Henry’s task was to make his insti- 
tution do its share in the development of this in- 
dustry. Looking back upon his work from the 
present day, no one can question his success, 

Dean Henry decided that dairy bacteriology was 
something he must introduce in the work of the 
experiment and the college. It was most natural 
that his attention should be directed to the first 
student of the university to adopt it as a life 
work. Dean Russell came to the College of Agri- 
culture in 1893, and immediately began work on 
the relation of bacteria to dairying and to bovine 
tuberculosis. The tuberculin test was just being 
introduced into this country, the Experiment Sta- 
tion herd being the first one west of the Alle- 
ghenies to be thus examined. This test revealed a 
sorry state of affairs; twenty-five out of thirty 
animals were found diseased. The herd was 
slaughtered. The new herd, which was assembled 
has been kept practically free from tuberculosis 
for twenty years. Animals have been introduced 
that later have reacted to the test, but the consist- 
ent and persistent use of the test has prevented 
any spread in the herd. True, expense has been 
involved in this work, but returns have been 
brought, both in money to the state and satisfac- 
tion to those in charge of the herd. Back in 1894, 
if the breeders of Wisconsin had adopted the ad- 
vice given in Bulletin 40 of this station published 
that year, the state would have been in a far more 
enviable position as far as tuberculosis goes than 
at present. 

' Another subject which received much attention 
and which has accomplished an endless amount of 
good, was the study of the contamination of milk 
—the sources of such contamination and its pre- 
vention. The work done in pasteurization of milk 
outlined the method which is used so widely at the 


154 


present time for the treatment of market milk, a 
method that was not actually put into practice 
until ten or more years later because the industry 
was not ready for it. It is certain that the credit 
that should be given Dean Russell for his work on 
pasteurization of milk has not been bestowed be- 
cause it came at too early a period in the develop- 
ment of the industry. 

Various other fields of farming investigation 
have engaged Dean Russell’s attention, including 
the study of bacterial diseases of plants, especially 
the black rot of cabbage. One of the lines of 
effort in which study of bacteriology has yielded 
results of great practical value was the relation of 
bacteria to the ripening of cheddar cheese. The 
discovery that cheese could be ripened at much 
lower temperatures than was previously thought 
possible was a by-product of scientifie work, a 
by-product that adds hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to the income of the cheese industry in 
Wisconsin yearly, and will do so as long as cheese 
is made. 

The state of Wisconsin has invested much money 
in work that has been accomplished by Dean Rus- 
sell during these twenty-four years of service as a 
bacteriologist and director of the work of the Col- 
lege of Agriculture and Experiment Station. The 
question of importance to-day is the soundness of 
the investment and the returns it brings. Those 
who are best acquainted with the matter would 
cease to worry about the high cost of living and 
of dying if they could feel that their investments 
were one half as sound and would bring them one 
thousandth part of the returns that the state of 
Wisconsin receives from the money it has invested 
in this man, 


THE PRIESTLEY MEMORIAL OF THE 
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 

By resolution of the council of the Amer- 
ican Chemical Society adopted at its meeting 
in Urbana in April, 1916, the president was 
requested to appoint a committee to devise 
and earry out a plan for a suitable memorial 
to Joseph Priestley. After careful consider- 
ation of various plans, the members of the 
committee desire to present the following 
recommendations to the Society: 

1. That a bust portrait of Joseph Preistley 
be secured, to be a copy of the best available 
portrait; that this be retained as the property 
of the American Chemical Society, but be de- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


posited as a loan in the National Museum in 
Washington. Also, 

9. That a gold medal be awarded at inter- 
vals of probably more than one year for supe- 
rior achievement in chemical research; the 
award to carry with it the requirement that 
the recipient shall deliver an address before 
the general meeting of the society at the time 
of the presentation or at such other time and 
place as the council of the society may direct. 

Carful inquiry has convinced the committee 
that, in order to carry out these plans, a fund 
of at least $2,000 should be secured. It is 
requested that subscriptions be sent to the 
chairman or to any member of the committee. 
Contributions of sums from $1.00 upwards 
are asked. 

Joseph Priestley was born at Fieldhead in 
England in 1733. Although educated for the 
ministry, he became noted as a teacher and 
lecturer on natural science, and especially as 
an investigator in chemistry, devoting his at- 
tention largely to the study of gases. Perse- 
cuted and shunned as a result of popular 
prejudice for his theological views as a dis- 
senter from the Established Church, he mi- 
grated to America in 1794 and settled with his 
family in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. 
Here he established a laboratory and con- 
tinued his work as an investigator in chem- 
istry. 

While famous throughout Europe and in 
America for his historical and philosophical 
writings, for his important work on the His- 
tory of Electricity, and many other contribu- 
tions to scientific literature, he is more es- 
pecially known to modern chemists for his 
researches on the chemistry of gases, which 
culminated in 1774 in the discovery of oxygen, 
described in his treatise entitled “ Experi- 
ments and Observations on Different Kinds 
of Airs.” 

He continued in America to be a contributor 
to scientific and theological literature until 
his death in Northumberland in 1804. 

On July 31, 1874, many of the leading 
chemists of America met near the grave of 
Joseph Priestley at Northumberland to honor 


Avueust 17, 1917] 


the memory of the man who had discovered 
oxygen one hundred years before. In the 
account of the proceedings detailed in the 
American Chemist for 1874, we are told that 
a movement was there begun which led later 
to the establishment of the American Chem- 
ical Society. 

And as the foundation of the American 
Chemical Society has been thus linked with 
the name of Joseph Priestley, it would seem 
proper that we should seek in some lasting 
way to commemorate his work as an inyes- 
tigator and philosopher and tireless searcher 
after truth. 

It is earnestly hoped that the plans now 
proposed by the committee for a memorial will 
meet with approval and that we shall be able, 
by means of an adequate subscription fund, 
to render such honor as is due to the memory 
of John Priestley. 


F. C. Pumurrs, Chairman, University of 
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. 

M. T. Bogert, National Research Council, 
Munsey Bldg., Washington, D. C. 

E. D. CampBett, University of Michigan, 
Ann Arbor, Mich. 

C. F. Cuanpier, New Hartford, Conn. 

F,. W. Crarke, U. S. Geological Survey, 
Washington, D. C. 

E. C. Franxum, Leland Stanford Jr., 
University, Cal. 

J. L. Hows, Washington and Lee Uni- 
versity, Lexington, Va. 

J. H. Lone, Northwestern University, 
Chicago, Ill. 

Epwarp W. Mor ey, 
Conn. 

A. A. Noyvsrs, Mass. Institute of Tech- 
nology, Boston, Mass. 

W. A. Noyes, University of Illinois, Ur- 
bana, Il. 

Ira ReMsEN, Johns Hopkins University, 
Baltimore, Md. 

E. F. Sauru, University of Pennsylvania, 
Philadelphia, Pa. 

ALFRED SPRINGER, Cincinnati, O. 

F. P. Venasie, Chapel Hill, N. C. 

Committee 


West Hartford, 


SCIENCE 


155 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


A STRUCTURE POSSIBLY FAVORABLE FOR OIL 
UNDER THE CENTRAL GREAT PLAINS 


In consideration of the present great inter- 
est in oil prospects in the Great Plains region, 
the United States Geological Survey, Depart- 
ment of the Interior, has prepared a report 
giving all available information regarding the 
structure of that region. No oil or gas has 
been found in most of this wide area, but it 
contains several anticlines and domes like those 
which yield oil and gas in central Kansas, 
Oklahoma and Colorado, so that the conditions 
are encouraging for exploratory borings. 
Wells have been drilled at a number of places, 
but most of them have either been sunk where 
the structure was not favorable to the occur- 
rence of oil or gas or have not been drilled deep 
enough to test all the strata. 

The structure of the Central Great Plains 
north of latitude 37° has been investigated by 
geologist N. H. Darton, who has prepared a 
map showing by contour lines the location and 
configuration of a number of promising anti- 
clines and domes. One of these domes lies on 
the Nebraska-South Dakota line northeast of 
Chadron, its crest being on White River. It 
may continue southward under the great sand 
cover in Nebraska to join an anticline of mod- 
erate prominence which crosses the Republican 
Valley just above Cambridge, Nebr., and ex- 
tends into the western part of Norton county, 
Kans. 

A local dome of considerable height occurs 
in Hamilton county, Kans., its crest being 6 
or 8 miles southwest of Syracuse. It is on the 
flank of the largest dome in the Central Great 
Plains, which arches up the strata in Baca, 
Las Animas, and Bent counties, Colo., and ad- 
jacent parts of northern New Mexico. Its 
crest is under the Mesa del Mayo, on the state 
line. A dike of igneous rock not far west of 
this place contains petroleum, which undoubt- 
edly had its source in some of the uplifted 
strata. 

A dome east of Fort Collins, into which a 
drill has penetrated 3,900 feet, also presents 
structure favorable for oil, and when the drill 
reaches the beds that yield oil near Boulder it 
may find in them a possible reservoir. There 


156 


are some anticlines and domes in eastern South 
Dakota, but the strata above the granite and 
quartzite in that area are not thick enough to 
offer encouraging prospects. 

A prominent anticline in Converse county, 
Wyo., with its crest east of Old Woman Creek, 
lifts an extensive series of sedimentary rocks 
not far southwest of the Black Hills. Another 
arch occurs on the west slope of these hills a 
few miles northwest of Moorcroft, and on its 


sides are oil springs from some underground 
source. 


MEDICAL STUDENTS AND CONSCRIPTION 

THE Journal of the American Medical As- 
sociation has obtained information regarding 
the draft numbers and numerical order of call 
of medical students. There were all told 13,- 
764 medical students enrolled during the last 
session, of whom 3,379 graduated, leaving 10,- 
385, made up of 4,107 freshmen, 3,117 sopho- 
mores, 2,866 juniors, and 295 seniors who were 
not graduated. Tabulated statistics regard- 
ing 5,909 or 56.9 per cent. of all undergraduate 
medical students based on direct replies to a 
questionnaire are as follows: 


Ss 

3 | Total First | Second P| FI 3 

ss| tobe | call | Can | Calls | $| 2/8 

Class © | Drafted Alziz 

Be | 2 ; : | 4| 8 
$|%\e|a\2]%\2\%| § 


Freshmen.....|/2,016/1,579)78.3)412|26.0 283/20.3/884 


| 55.9) 384) 14) 39 

Sophomores. .|1,935|17697|87.7) 460|27.1)347|20.4|890/52.4| 204) 11) 23 
Juniors......... 1,458] 1,356|93.0|418|31.2 275|20.3 663 48.1| 77| 6| 19 
Seniors......... 201) '193|96.0| 77|39.8| 40|20.7| 76/39.3| 7| 1) ... 
Not stated....| 299] 228|72:9| 99143'8| 3414.9) 95/41.6, 57| ...| 14 

| pee i! 

Totals........|5,909| 5,053 | 1,466 | 979 | 2,608 | 729! 82! 95 
Percentages..|........ 85.5 | 29.0 | 19.4 | 51.6 |12.4/0.5|1.6 


While the table represents only a little more 
than 56 per cent. of the whole, it gives those 
interested an opportunity to estimate the effect 
of the draft on the different classes. As 
shown in the table, 5,058, or 85.5 per cent. of 
the students who have already replied, are sub- 
ject to the draft, and of these 29 per cent. are 
included in the first call; 19.4 per cent. in the 
second call and 51.6 per cent. in later calls; 
12.4 per cent. are exempt on account of age, 
0.5 per cent. are aliens, and 1.6 per cent. have 
already enlisted. As will be noticed, 729 are 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


exempt on account of age; of these 606 are 
under age, and 123 over the age limit. The 
Journal says that unless some arrangement is 
made, therefore, whereby these students are 
enabled to complete their medical training, 
classes in medical schools will be seriously de- 
pleted; the supply of physicians for the future 
will be seriously reduced, and this country 
will suffer from an error similar to that made 
in England and France where medical stu- 
dents were sent to the front. Furthermore, 
failure to exempt medical students from the 
draft will be a serious injustice to many, since 
a few months ago the Council of National 
Defense, with the apparent agreement of the 
War Department, urged medical students not 
to enlist in the Officers’? Reserve Corps but to 
remain in college and complete their medical 
training. Had not that request been, made, 
many students would have voluntarily enrolled 
in officers’ training corps, where many of them 
would doubtless have been successful. Even 
though less than a third of the medical stu- 
dents of draft age will be included in the first 
eall, a much larger proportion will be lost to 
the medical schools, since, in the absence of a 
definite understanding, many of the others 
will enlist voluntarily in the ranks, in ambu- 
lance corps or in officers’ training corps. A 
definite decision on the part of the War De- 
partment relative to medical students is im- 
perative. Unless such decision is made, not 
only will our civil hospitals lack adequate in- 
tern service, but the government will lose by 
the fact that those capable of skilled service 
will have been deflected to work which can be 
as well done by others. 


PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF 
RECRUITS 


Accorp1N¢ to a press bulletin men of the Na- 
tional Guards of the various states and of the 
new draft army will be subjected to thorough 
mental examinations by expert neurologists 
and psychopathologists at the concentration 
camps before sailing to France, to weed out 
the mentally and nervously unfit, whom the 
experience of France, Britain and Germany 
shows have proved useless and a burden at the 


Aveust 17, 1917] 


front. Not only are these examinations ex- 
pected to weed out those whose nervous sys- 
tems are broken down, and the feeble-minded 
or imbecile, but they will hinder the draft 
evaders from feigning nervousness or mental 
sickness. Not only will these expert neurolo- 
gists and psychopathologists examine the men 
at the cantonments, but they will go to the 
front with the men and establish base hos- 
pitals adjacent to the orthopedic base hos- 
pitals. 

Ten of the leading psychopathologists of the 
country have been selected for the starting of 
this branch of service. They are Dr. E. E. 
Southard, director of the psychopathic hospital 
of Boston; Dr. Robert M. Yerkes, professor of 
comparative psychology at Harvard Univer- 
sity; Dr. August Hoch, director of the 
psychiatric institute, New York City; Dr. 
Adolf Meyer, director of the Phipps Psychiat- 
ric Institute, Baltimore; Dr. Albert M. Bar- 
rett, director of the State Psychopathic Hos- 
pital, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Dr. William A. 
White, superintendent of the Government Hos- 
pital for the Insane, Washington, D. C.; Dr. 
William E. Fernald, superintendent of the 
State School for the Feeble Minded at Wa- 
verley, Mass.; Dr. Thomas W. Salmon, medical 
director of the National Committee for Men- 
tal Hygiene of New York City, who has gone 
to England for observation; Dr. Joseph P. 
Collins, of the New York Neurological Insti- 
tute, New York City, and Dr. T. H. Weisen- 
burg, president of the American Neurological 
Association of Philadelphia. 

There are five clinics where leading special- 
ists and doctors are preparing for the work. 
They have been assigned by the government 
for special teaching in neurology and pschi- 
atry for commissioned men in the Medical Re- 
serve Corps. The courses of six weeks’ dura- 
tion, the first course just being completed, are 
being given at the following clinics: The Psy- 
chopathie Hospital, Boston; Phipps Psychi- 
atric Clinic, Baltimore; State Psychopathic 
Hospital, Ann Arbor, Mich.; the Neurological 
Institute, New York City, and the Psychiatric 
Institute, Ward’s Island, New York. 


SCIENCE 


157 


THIRD NATIONAL EXPOSITION OF CHEMICAL 
INDUSTRIES 


Tue third national exhibition of chemical 
industries will be held in the Grand Central 
Palace, New York City, during the week of 
September 24. Many of the exhibits will have 
to do with the uses of chemistry in the making 
of war materials, and there will be a special 
section devoted to the South which will be 
known as the Southern Opportunity Section. 
Dr. Charles H. Herty, chairman of the ad- 
visory committee of the exposition, will de- 
liver the opening address on Monday, Sep- 
tember 24, at two o’clock. Professor Julius 
Stieglitz, president of the American Chemical 
Society; Dr. Colin G. Fink, president of the 
American Electro-Chemical Society, and Dr. 
G. W. Thompson, president of the American 
Institute of Chemical Engineers, will speak 
before different sections of the convention. 
Other speakers on the program include W. S. 
Kies, vice-president of the National City 
Bank, who will talk upon “ The Development 
of Export Trade with South America”; Pro- 
fessor Marston Taylor Bogert, chairman of the 
chemistry committee of the National Council, 
whose subject will be “The operation and 
work of the National Research Council for 
the national weal,” and Dr. L. H. Baekeland, 
of the Naval Counsulting Board, on “ The 
future of the American chemical industry.” 

One day will be devoted to a symposium 
upon the national resources as opportunities 
for chemical industries, and among the 
speakers will be: Mr. C. H. Crawford, as- 
sistant to president of Nashville, Chattanooga 
& St. Louis Ry.; Mr. V. V. Kelsey, chemist- 
industrial agent, Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio 
Ry.; Dr. E. A. Schubert, mineralogist-geolo- 
gist, Norfork & Western Railway; Dr. T. P. 
Maynard, mineralogist-geologist, Central of 
Georgia Ry. and Atlantic Coast Line Ry.; Dr. 
J. H. Watkins, geologist, Southern Railway. 

The motion-picture program will be one of 
wide interest. The American Cyanamid Com- 
pany and General Electric Company have 
already arranged to supply their films. The 
Bureau of Commercial Economics at Wash- 
ington will supply many toward completing 


158 


the range of industrial films. At the last ex- 
position two floors of the big building were 
occupied by 187 exhibitors. This year three 
floors, possibly more, will be occupied. Al- 
ready the list of exhibitors contains 250 names 
of companies entering every field of industry. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

Surcron-GeneraL Gorcas, Dr. Franklin H. 
Martin, head of the Medical Bureau of the 
Council of National Defense, and their staffs, 
and a large number of army and reserve med- 
ical officers visited on August 12 the Rocke- 
feller Institute for Medical Research, where 
they saw demonstrations of the medical and 
surgical practises which the institute has de- 
veloped. 

SurcEON-GENERAL GorGas, of the army, re- 
organizing the Veterinary Corps, has selected 
the following veterinary surgeons as an ad- 
visory board: Dr. C. J. Marshall, Pennsyl- 
vania; Dr. David S. White, dean of the col- 
lege of veterinary medicine, Ohio State Uni- 
versity, Columbus; Dr. Louis A. Klein, dean 
of the school of veterinary medicine, Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania; Dr. V. A. Moore, dean 
of the New York state veterinary college, Cor- 
nell University, and Dr. John R. Mohler, as- 
sistant chief of the Bureau of Animal Indus- 
try, Washington. 

A RESEARCH committee to cooperate with the 
National Research Council has been appointed 
at Brown University, including from the fac- 
ulty Professors Carl Barus, Albert D. Mead, 
Roland G. D. Richardson, John E. Bucher and 
Frederic P. Gorham; from the university 
corporation, Chancellor Arnold B. Chace and 
Edwin Farnham Greene, treasurer of the 
Pacific Mills; from the alumni, J. B. F. 
Herreshoff, of the Nichols Chemical Com- 
pany; Charles V. Chapin, M.D., of the Provi- 
dence Board of Health; John C. Hebden, of 
the Federal Dye Stuffs Corporation, and 
Frank E. Winsor, of Providence. The com- 
mittee will prepare a survey of research al- 
ready in progress at Brown University, and 
assist in a national census of research work in 
the United States. It will endeavor to 
broaden the conception of scientific research, 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No, 1181 


to cooperate with industrial corporations, and 
to establish research fellowships so as to train 
promising young men and women for impor- 
tant positions in manufacture and in the 
government service. 

ProFessor WILLIAM CAMPBELL, of Colum- 
bia University, New York, is serving as con- 
sulting metallographist at the New York navy 
yard. 

Dr. HarDEE CHAMBLISS, chemical director of 
the Commercial Acid Company of St. Louis, 
has been commissioned major in the ordnance 
section of the Officers’ Reserve Corps. 


Tue British Fuel Research Board, with the 
sanction of the Committee of the Privy Coun- 
cil for Scientific and Industrial Research, has 
appointed a committee of inquiry into the 
utilization of Irish peat deposits. The follow- 
ing appointments have been made to the com- 
mittee: Sir John Purser Griffith (chairman), 
Professor Hugh Ryan, Professor Sydney 
Young, Mr. George Fletcher and Professor 
Pierce Purcell (secretary). 

It is stated in Nature that grants have been 
made out of the Dixon fund of the University 
of London for the year 1917-18 as follows: 
£25, Mr. Nilratan Dhar, for research on tem- 
perature coefficients of chemical reactions; 
£30, Mr. H. R. Nettleton, for researches on 
the measurement of the Thomson effect in 
wires; £20, Dr. D. Ellis, towards the cost of 
publication of a book on “Iron Bacteria”; 
£100, Mr. Birbal Sahni, to enable him to 
carry out botanical investigations at Cam- 
bridge. 

Tue Asiatic Society of Bengal has awarded 
the Barclay memorial medal to Col. H. H. 
Godwin-Austen, for his work in biology. 

Dr. Epwarp G. BircE has resigned as di- 
rector of the state bacteriologic laboratory at 
Jacksonville, Fla., and has been succeeded by 
Dr. Burdett L. Arms, Montgomery, chief 
bacteriologist of the Alabama State Board of 
Health. 

Dr. Epwarp 8. Goprrey, Jr., has resigned 
as director of the Illinois Bureau of Com- 
municable Diseases of the State Board of 
Health, to accept a position in the sanitary de- 


Avueust 17, 1917] 


partment of the New York State Department 
of Health. He has been assigned to the dis- 
trict comprising Albany and Rensselaer 
counties. 


Tue Ellen H. Richards Memorial Fellow- 
ship, offered jointly by the trustees of the 
Memorial Fund and the University of Chi- 
cago, has been awarded to Minna C. Denton, 
B.S. and A.M. (Michigan). Miss Denton’s 
teaching experience at Milwaukee-Downer 
College, Lewis Institute and Ohio State Uni- 
versity has been supplemented with recent work 
as fellow in physiology of the University of 
Chicago. She is at present at work ‘on the 
alterations in nutritive value of vegetable 
foods due to boiling and canning. The fellow- 
ship carries a stipend of $500 and tuition fees 
for the year 1917-18. 


Assistant Proressor J. WENDELL BatLey, 
of the General Science School of the Missis- 
sippi Agricultural and Mechanical College, has 
accepted an appointment with the U. 8. De- 
partment of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomol- 
ogy, and is engaged in research work on insects 
affecting cereal and forage crops. He is now 
at Tempe, Arizona, in the irrigated section 
of the Salt River Valley. 


Dr. W. S. Mitier, professor of anatomy in 
the University of Wisconsin, recently de- 
livered an address on “The architecture of 
the lung,” before the faculty and students of 
the graduate summer quarter in medicine of 
the University of Illinois. 


We learn from the Journal of the American 
Medical Association that a large party of 
medical men and others who were delegates 
from the medical faculty of the University of 
Buenos Aires and other medical organizations 
of Argentina sailed to Rio de Janeiro recently 
to visit the profession at Rio. The party bore 
with them a large bronze tablet to be placed 
in the Bacteriologic Institute founded and 
directed by Oswaldo Cruz. It represents 
Argentine medical science, humanity and 
hygiene decorating with laurel the memorial 
inscription to the great hygienist who cleared 
Rio de Janeiro of yellow fever. The physi- 


SCIENCE 


159 


cians were welcomed by the authorities as 
guests of the nation during their stay. They 
also presented the Museum of Natural His- 
tory with plaster casts of the five skulls on 
which F. Ameghino based his anthropologic 
theory of the fossil American man. 


THE geology and paleontology committee of 
the National Research Council has passed the 
following resolution: 

We desire to record our keen sense of loss in the 
death of our colleague, Dr. William Bullock Clark. 

Since the organization of this committee, six 
months ago, Dr. Clark’s extraordinary executive 
ability has been devoted without reserve to its 
aims, and the work which he organized, as chair- 
man of the important subcommittee on roads and 
road materials, has proceeded with celerity and 
accuracy over the entire Atlantic seaboard from 
Maine to Florida. 

He gave an invaluable service to his country 
with intense devotion, and we feel that he has 
made the supreme sacrifice. 


Tue death is announced at the age of 
seventy-four years of Robert Helmert, pro- 
fessor in the University of Berlin and director 
of the Geodetic Institute. 


Dr. THEropor Kocuer, professor of surgery 
at the University of Berne, has died at the age 
of seventy-six years. Dr. Kocher was dis- 
tinguished for his work on goiter and in other 
directions. The Nobel prize which he re- 
ceived in 1909 he gave to the University of 
Berne for medical research. 


M. Paut Hariot, author of works on fungi 
and algae, and for many years in practical 
charge of the collections of the lower plants at 
the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle of Paris, 
died on July 5, from diabetic complications. 
The broad-minded liberality and tireless pa- 
tience with which M. Hariot always placed the 
treasures of his department of the museum at 
the service of the scientific men of the world 
will long be held in grateful remembrance by 
a considerable number of American botanists. 


Proressor J. H. Barnes, agricultural 
chemist to the government of India, and late 
principal of the Government College of Agri- 
culture, Lyallpur, Punjab, died in India on 
June 2. 


160 


Mr. Srantey Baupwin has stated in the 
House of Commons that the question of the 
suspension of the issue of the Kew Bulletin 
had been considered by the Select Committee 
on Publications and Debates’ Reports, and 
that it was decided to recommend that the 
Bulletin should be continued, but with due re- 
gard to economy. Certain classes of informa- 
tion, though doubtless of scientific interest, 
can, it is thought, be postponed without detri- 
ment to the welfare of the state. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS : 

ACCORDING to the Experiment Station Record 
appropriations made by the state legislature 
for the South Dakota College and Station in- 
clude $80,000 for an armory, $100,000 for the 
completion of Agricultural Hall, $10,000 for a 
health laboratory, $10,000 for the manufacture 
of hog cholera serum, $20,000 for a fireproof 
stock judging pavilion, $3,000 for a poultry de- 
partment, $10,000 for the purchase of pure 
bred live stock, and $5,000 for feeding experi- 
ments with live stock. This is the first appro- 
priation made by the state for experimental 
work. 


Proressor E. V. McCoititum has resigned 
his position as professor of agricultural chem- 
istry at the University of Wisconsin, to take 
charge of the department of chemistry of the 
new school of hygiene and public health, which 
the Rockefeller Foundation has established in 
connection with the medical school of the 
Johns Hopkins University. 


Proressork Frank C. Becut, assistant pro- 
fessor of pharmacology in the University of 
Chicago, has been appointed professor and 
head of the department of pharmacology in 
Northwestern University Medical School, suc- 
ceeding Professor Hugh McGuigan, who has 
become professor of pharmacology in the Uni- 
versity of Illinois. 


Dr. A. E. Lampert has been appointed pro- 
fessor of histology and embryology in the col- 
lege of medicine of the University of Vermont. 
Dr. M. W. Hunter, instructor in medicine, has 
resigned and Dr. Fred E. Clark, assistant pro- 


SCIENCE . 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


fessor of pathology, has received a year’s leave 
of absence. 


Proressor H. Haperin, of Vanderbilt Uni- 
versity, has been appointed assistant professor 
of mathematics at the University of Arkansas. 


Dr. Percy KenpaLtt Houmgs, of the Univer- 
sity of Cincinnati, has been appointed director 
of physical education in Ohio Wesleyan Uni- 
versity. 

Mr. G. Geratp Stoney has been appointed 
professor of mechanical engineering in the 
Manchester School of Technology. 


M. Luomn Porncars, director of higher edu- 
cation in France, has been appointed vice-rec- 


tor of the University of Paris, in succession to 
M. Liard. 


M. Movurrevu, member of the French Insti- 
tute, professor in the school of pharmacy and 
director of the editorial board of the Revue 
Scientifique, has been appointed professor of 
organic chemistry in the Collége de France. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
THE COST OF ROAST PIG 


CuarLes Lamp, in his “ Dissertation on 
Roast Pig” relates that, according to an 
ancient manuscript, the hut of a Chinese 
swineherd taking fire, a litter of newly far- 
rowed pigs perished in the conflagration. 
Seeking to find if life remained in any of 
them, the swineherd burned his fingers on the 
hot body of a pig. To alleviate the pain he 
naturally put his fingers into his mouth and 
so discovered the delicious flavor of roast 
pig. The taste spread rapidly and shortly 
all China was ablaze with burning pig pens 
sacrificed for the sake of producing the new 
delicacy. 

In the food crisis with which the world is 
apparently confronted, roast pig may stand 
for the supply of animal products in general, 
and our methods for producing them hitherto 
have not been altogether unlike that for 
roasting pigs attributed to the Chinese. At 
this juncture, it seems pertinent to inquire 
whether our practises in this respect do not 
need to be modified so as to contribute more 
effectively to the feeding of the nations. 


Aveust 17, 1917] 


Roast pig, to those who like it, is not only a 
delicacy but a valuable article of diet, but 
nevertheless, as the Chinese presumably came 
to realize, it is possible to pay too high a price 
for it, and while a proposal to restrict rather 
than to promote meat production in the 
present crisis may appear both irrational and 
unpatriotic it may nevertheless be in the in- 
terest of true food economy. 

This is because of one cardinal fact which 
the advocates of the multiplication of farm 
live stock, the prohibition of the slaughter 
of young animals, ete., overlook. That fact 
is that not only must the meat or milk pro- 
ducing animal be fed (and even this appears 
to be forgotten at times) but that the con- 
version of feed into animal products is a proc- 
ess of relatively low efficiency. 

Man needs food primarily as fuel to supply 
the energy for his activities and secondarily 
to furnish the repair material (protein) for 
the bodily machinery. An active adult re- 
quires daily some 4,000 calories of energy, 
the amount varying more or less according 
to the amount of physical work done. He 
can get this energy from either vegetable or 
animal products. He may make his wheat 
or corn into bread and use that bread as body 
fuel, or he may feed them to animals and 
consume the resulting meat or milk. The 
latter are excellent body fuels and are de- 
sirable ingredients of the dietary but their 
production from grains is a very wasteful 
process. It may be roughly estimated that 
about 24 per cent. of the energy of grain is 
recovered for human consumption in pork, 
about 18 per cent. in milk and only about 3.5 
per cent.in beef and mutton. In other words, 
the farmer who feeds bread grains to his 
stock is unconsciously imitating the Chinese 
method and is burning up 75 to 97 per cent. 
of them in order to produce for us a small 
residue of roast pig, and so is diminishing 
the total stock of human food. 

Now most of us like roast pig and its pro- 
duction in this way has doubtless been eco- 
nomically justifiable in years past when our 
food supply was vastly in excess of our needs. 
To-day the case is different. No longer can 


SCIENCE 


161 


we continue to take the children’s bread 
and cast it to the brutes. If our meat supply 
is to be maintained or increased it must be 
in some other way. All the edible products 
which the farmer’s acres can yield are needed 
for human consumption. The task of the stock 
feeder must be to utilize through his skill 
and knowledge the inedible products of the 
farm and factory such as hay, corn stalks, 
straw, bran, brewers’ and distillers’ grains, 
gluten feed, and the like, and to make at least 
a fraction of them available for man’s use. In 
so doing he will be really adding to the food sup- 
ply and will be rendering a great public sevice. 
Rather than seek to stimulate live stock hus- 
bandry the ideal should be to adjust it to the 
limits set by the available supply of forage 
crops and by-product feeding stuffs while, on 
the other hand, utilizing these to the greatest 
practicable extent, because in this way we save 
some of what would otherwise be a total loss. 
In particular the recommendation to raise 
more hogs seems to call for some qualification. 
It is indeed true, as several have pointed out, 
that the hog can make more pounds of edible 
meat from a given amount of concentrated 
feed than any other class of live stock. The 
point is that with the present demand for 
bread grains we can not afford the cost of the 
conversion. So far as hogs can be raised on 
forage and by-products the recommendation 
is sound, and this animal can play an impor- 
tant part in utilizing domestic and other 
wastes, but the hog is the great competitor 
of man for the higher grades of food and in 
swine husbandry as ordinarily conducted we 
are in danger of paying too much for our 
roast pig. Cattle and sheep, on the other 
hand, although less efficient as converters, can 
utilize products which man can not use and 
save some of their potential value as human 
food. From this point of view, as well as on 
account of the importance of milk to infants 
and invalids, the high economy of food pro- 
duction by the dairy cow deserves careful con- 
sideration, although of course the large labor 
requirement is a counter-balancing factor. 

At any rate, it is clear that at the present 
time enthusiastic but ill considered ‘“ boom- 


162 


ing” of live stock production may do more 
harm than good. If it is desirable to restrict 
or prohibit the production of alcohol from 
grain or potatoes on the ground that it in- 
volves a waste of food value, the same reason 
calls for restriction of the burning-up of these 
materials to produce roast pig. This means, 
of course, a limited meat supply. To some 
of us this may seem a hardship. Meat, how- 
ever, is by no means the essential that we 
have been wont to suppose and partial depriv- 
ation of it is not inconsistent with high 
bodily efficiency. Certainly no patriotic citi- 
zen would wish to insist on his customary 
allowance of roast pig at the cost of the food 
supply of his brothers in the trenches. 
H. P. ArMssy 
State COLLEGE, Pa., 
June, 1917 


A NEW CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN 
GEOLOGY 


Unper the heading “Work going on at 
Kilauea Volcano” there was published in Sct- 
ENCE of September 12, 1913, an account from 
Hawaii by Mr. Geo. Carroll Curtis, of the field 
work, cirkut and kite camera surveys being 
conducted in the great active crater, In con- 
nection with the construction of a natural- 
istic model for the geological department of 
Harvard University. 

After four years of continuous effort this 
work has been completed and installed in the 
university museum. While the size and time 
required distinguish it, the principles it in- 
volves of faithful and expressive reproduction 
of the earth surface is of special significance, 
as it seems to mark a distinct progress in the 
complex subject of representing our earth in 
true relief and character. A single glance at 
the great model is convincing, for in looking 
upon this vast collection of accurate data, one 
receives the impression that he is viewing the 
outdoor field itself! The model looks like the 
actual ground because it has been made lke 
it, an immense amount of information never 
before collected having been incorporated from 
the special surveys. This is a signal triumph 
in the truthful interpretation of a splendid 
type of geological structure such as Kilauea 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


presents. It clearly indicates the novel and 
broad interest which awaits the earth sciences 
in the reproduction of their museum natural 
history specimens through the medium of 
serious work in land relief. 

The longest time previously given to any 
work we haye had of this nature, was two 
years, in the naturalistic reproduction of the 
coral island Bora Bora, under the instigation 
of Alexander Agassiz. It was made to illus- 
trate the typical “high coral island.” This 
work, completed in 1907, was the first in the 
land where the necessary photographic survey 
and special field work were employed to truth- 
fully reproduce a land form type, and marked 
the introduction of the naturalistic or land- 
scape model in American exhibition. The 
character of the work was illustrated by the 
photographs made from it, bearing a surpris- 
ing resemblance to those taken on the actual 
ground, a thing previously unlooked for in 
our land reliefs. This unique contribution to 
the progress of earth science is still considered 
the most complete exposition of a coral island 
known, and as the pioneer in naturalistic land 
relief (the completest expression which science 
and art can give of the earth’s surface) will 
always remain a most significant piece of 
work. 

The Kilauea model represents the progress 
of the intervening decade, in the new and 
developing art of the accurate reproduction of 
the surface of the planet, and is the culmina- 
tion of the unique experience which has come 
through a training in both geology and in art, 
which Mr. Curtis has given to this profound 
though much misrepresented work of earth re- 
lief. Against precedent he has attempted to 
make a profession rather than a business of a 
work which calls for treatment adequate to 
the dignity of natural science. Valuable as 
may be the individual models to which Curtis 
has given so much time and study, it is in the 
establishment of a standard more in keeping 
with that called for by the natural sciences 
and by the meaning and interest of the face 
of our earth, that his most significant achieve- 


1 Darwin, ‘Structure and Distribution of Coral 
Reefs,’’ p. 4. 


Aveust 17, 1917] 


ment lies. That this standard is to-day prob- 
ably second to none is to be seen in the Kil- 
auea model which presents several important 
innovations in the development of land relief, 
including the application of cirkut panorama 
and aerial photography and the ecycloramic 
background. 

The Kilauea undertaking marks the advent 
of the American geologist into the work most 
complete and effective of any known for repre- 
sentation of the immense forms with which he 
deals. Some conception of what this subject, 
calling for the best that modern science and 
art can offer, has in store, may be had from 
statements of those who have visited the active 
voleano and maintain that a better compre- 
hension of the huge crater may be obtained 
from the model in Cambridge than in Hawaii 
itself, owing to the vast dimensions of the 
Kilauea region. What is yet in store for the 
earth sciences through the naturalistic repro- 
duction in relief of remaining great types of 
land form, should give some measure of the 
value of this contribution. 


Ropert W. SAYLes. 
GEOLOGICAL SECTION, 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY MUSEUM 


BOTRYTIS AND SCLEROTINIA 

ConnEcTION has recently been established 
between an apparently undescribed species of 
Sclerotinia occurring in woods in the upper 
end of Van Cortlandt Park on the rootstocks 
of wild geranium and a species of Botrytis oc- 
curring on the roots and rootstocks of the 
same host. The field observations were made 
by the writer and the culture work was con- 
ducted in the New York Botanical Garden by 
Professor W. T. Horne. A joint paper will 
be offered on the subject in connection with 
the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of 
the Torrey Botanical Club this fall. As it will 
be several months before this paper can appear 
in print, it was thought advisable to call at- 
tention to the facts at this time. While con- 
nection between Botrytis and Sclerotinia has 
been claimed by DeBary and predicted by more 
recent workers, this is one of the first and pos- 
sibly the first case in which the connection has 


SCIENCE 


163 


been definitely established by culture experi- 
ments. Frep J. SEAVER 
Tue New York BoranicaL GARDEN 


QUOTATIONS 


A BRITISH REPORT ON INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 
IN AMERICA 


Tue Advisory Council for Scientific and 
Industrial Research has issued the first of a 
series of papers in which, under the title of 
Seience and Industry, it intends publishing 
information of value to manufacturers. The 
intention was announced in the report of the 
Committee of the Privy Council, of which an 
account appeared in these columns; and the 
present instalment by Mr. A. P. M. Fleming, 
of the British Westinghouse Company, on in- 
dustrial research in the United States, is so 
full of information and practical suggestion 
that engineers will learn with regret that there 
is little prospect of further instalments ap- 
pearing during the war. 

The paper differs from much that issues 
from the Stationery Office in being essentially 
a practical work, not loaded with statistics and 
theoretical considerations. It is a plain state- 
ment of facts and practical suggestions very 
important to industry, set out for British 
manufacturers by one of their own body in 
such a way that what it describes and what it 
suggests can readily be understood; it is illus- 
trated by 85 half-page or full-page blocks, and * 
published—at the public cost—at the price of 
1s. No appreciable expense either of time or 
brain-stuff or money stands between the mes- 
sage of the volume and the public for whom 
it is meant; and while there is no point in 
summarizing what can be easily acquired and 
digested, some of its facts and the conse- 
quences that they suggest are worth consider- 
ation. 

The modern tendeney of American manu- 
facture to research may perhaps be seen most 
strikingly in what is being done by manufac- 
turing and similar corporations themselves. 
Examples are to be found alike in the mechan- 
ical, electrical, and chemical industries, aad 
are on every variety of scale, up to the £30,000 
per year to which the Eastman Kodak Com- 


164 


pany devotes something under 1 per cent. of 
its profits, and the £80,000 to £100,000 a year 
spent by the General Electric Company of 
Schenectady. Mr. Fleming gives particulars 
of what is being done by each of some twenty 
corporations, but the list could easily be made 
very much longer. Most of these laboratories 
have sprung up in quite recent years; and 
their number is constantly increasing. The 
increase is not merely in number. It is as 
remarkable in its growing breadth. The lab- 
oratories of these firms undertake not merely 
the routine of testing of materials and prod- 
ucts and the more or less empirical adventures 
after new products that was formerly the bus- 
iness of a works’ laboratory. At the one end 
of the scale they carry out experiments on the 
discovery of new products and the elaboration 
of new designs into the full manufacturing 
scale, and the laboratory supplies the needs 
of the market as if it were itself a works, until 
they outgrow the capacity of its plant and call 
for a new works of their own. At the other 
end of the scale they undertake inquiries into 
questions of pure science, of the solution of 
which no one can see any industrial applica- 
tion. They keep men investigating such prob- 
lems constantly and perseveringly, and give 
them admirably equipped laboratories for the 
purpose. This sort of thing is being done in 
works after works, and every year adds to their 
number and the elaboration of their equip- 
ment. All the time, in spite of the enormous 
sums that are being spent on what at first 
sight is not only unproductive work, but work 
which tends to subordinate the wholesome rule 
of practise to the fantastic and costly demands 
of laboratories, the thing pays. The fact that 
the habit has grown so far is good prima-facie 
evidence that it must pay, for American bus- 
iness houses do not fling good money after 
bad. But there is no need to depend on in- 
ference or prima-facie evidence. The indi- 
vidual experience of those who have tried it 
shows that in fact it has paid, and the air in 
America is thick with plans to extend the prac- 
tise of applying science to help industry; for 
great as is the extent of what has been done 
already, it is only a tiny fraction of what in 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


American industry there is still room and the 
intention to do. 

Side by side with these corporations and 
firms three groups of institutions are work- 
ing to the same ends. Mr. Fleming quotes a 
dozen or more separate industries with their 
trade associations, each of which is under- 
taking research for the common benefit of their 
members; sometimes in their own common 
research laboratories, sometimes in those of 
their members, sometimes through university 
or the Bureau of Standards staffs. An ex- 
cellent instance of an important trade of 
which all members, great as well as small, 
have gained greatly by research work com- 
municated to all alike, is that of the canners. 
The Canners’ Association spends some £6,000 
or £7,000 a year on its central laboratory, 
besides a good deal more on work done in the 
factories of individual members; and it is 
considered that the largest members have as 
much interest as the small in the results being 
made common to all, because the risk of the 
whole trade being discredited by imperfect 
production is thus minimized. Over a dozen 
universities and colleges, again, are now 


‘running laboratories devoted not only to 


investigations in pure science which may ulti- 
mately find a practical application, but to 
industrial researches for which the application 
is waiting as soon as the solution of the prob- 
lems is found. In many instances such work 
is done not on the strength of foundations, 
but at the request and expense and for the 
benefit of commercial firms and other indus- 
trial bodies, such as railway companies.—Lon- 
don Times. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


Use of Mean Sea Level as the Datum for Ele- 
vations. (Special Publication No. 41.) By 
E. Lester Jones, Superintendent, U. S. 
Coast and Geodetic Survey, Washington, 
Government Printing Office. 1917. 

This pamphlet presents a very strong case 
in favor of the adoption of a single datum for 
the elevations of the country in order to elimi- 
nate the confusion which results from the em- 
ployment of arbitrary planes of reference. 


Aveust 17, 1917] 


There is scarcely any surveying or civil 
engineering which does not require that dif- 
ferences in elevation be determined by spirit 
leveling and in nearly all cases the absolute 
elevation of the bench marks above some plane 
of reference or datum is determined. Effi- 
ciency in operation frequently depends upon 
the datum selected. There are many other 
branches of science besides that of engineering 
in which absolute elevations are needed. 

The selection of a fundamental datum is a 
matter of great importance. Only slight con- 
sideration leads one to conclude that the ideal 
datum for a nation is one which may be estab- 
lished at many places. The only one of this 
kind is mean sea level. 

Mean sea level may be established within a 
very small fraction of a foot by continuous 
tidal observations for at least a year. It has 
been found from precise leveling observations 
that mean sea level, as established at different 
points on the open coasts, is at all such points 
in the same equipotential surface; that is, if 
there were no resistance of the water and wind 
to the movement of an object floating on the 
ocean, the object could be moved from one 
point on the coast to another without perform- 
ing any work—there would be no lifting neces- 
sary. While this statement may not be abso- 
lutely true, yet it is so nearly the case that for 
all engineering and surveying purposes it may 
be accepted as rigidly true. 

Mean sea level is used exclusively in the 
work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey and 
the U. S. Geological Survey. It is used to a 
certain extent by many other engineering 
bureaus of the government. 

In December, 1916, the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey sent the following letter, or one similar 
to it, to the chief engineers of most of the 
large cities of the country, to the State Engi- 
neer of each state, and to the chief engineer of 
each of about 150 railroads in the United 
States: 


As you know, one of the important questions of 
the United States Coast and Geodetie Survey is 
the extension over the country of a network of 
precise leveling which will give elevations of great 
accuracy, based upon mean sea level. 


SCIENCE 


165 


We believe that this precise leveling is essential 
in the surveying and engineering work done in this 
country by various public and private agencies. 
The network will enable engineers to use the sea- 
level datum on new projects and to reduce to this 
datum existing elevations referred to arbitrary 
datums. We believe that this country should 
eventually have but one datum, in order that all 
engineering and surveying work may be easily 
coordinated. We believe also, that the presence 
of various datums leads to much confusion and 
waste. 

In order that we may get into closer touch with 
the needs of the engineering profession, I should 
be glad if you will let me know to what extent 
your state is basing the elevations of its road and 
other surveys and engineering works upon mean 
sea level; also whether the use of various arbitrary 
datums by counties, cities and private organiza- 
tions within your state is a serious matter in the 


industrial development of your state. 


Replies were received from many of the 
engineers to whom the above letter was written. 
The opinions expressed were almost unani- 
mously in favor of the adoption of mean sea 
level as the datum for elevations. 

The pamphlet under discussion contains 
quotations from many of the letters received 
by the Survey. One of the quotations, typical 
of most of them, reads: 


So far as our experience has taught us there can 
be no question as to the desirability of a universal 
datum plane, and I think there can be no doubt in 
the minds of engineers engaged in municipal work 
that mean sea level is the only logical datum to 
adopt. 

In your advocacy of an extension of such bench 
marks you deserve the support and cooperation of 
every engineer in the country. 


Another reads: 


We agree with you that it would be very valu- 
able to the state if a system of levels could be es- 
tablished, and believe that such will need to be 
done in the near future in order to correlate the 
drainage, highway and other engineering work in 
the state. 


It is realized by the members of the Coast 
and Geodetic Survey that much of the con- 
fusion in datums which now exist, is due to 
the fact that the precise level net of the United 
States was not extended in the past as rapidly 


166 


as it should have been. It, of course, was im- 
possible, or rather impracticable, to extend a 
precise level net into areas through which rail- 
roads had not been run, for the expense would 
have been prohibitive. It may be that the Sur- 
vey did not fully realize the necessity for hav- 
ing all engineering and surveying work on the 
same datum, but in recent years it has become 
fully alive to the necessity of having a single 
datum for the entire country, and it is conse- 
quently extending its precise leveling net as 
rapidly as funds available will permit. 

While it is of value to the nation for various 
organizations and individuals to adopt and use 
mean sea-level datum for their elevations, the 
country will benefit still more if each organi- 
zation doing extensive leveling will publish in 
pamphlet form the elevations and descriptions 
of the bench marks they may establish in order 
that other organizations and individuals may 
properly coordinate their levels. Engineers 
are urged also to use substantial bench marks 
in order that future work may be benefited by 
their preservation. 

The amount of precise leveling which should 
be done by the federal government can not be 
foretold. It must depend upon the needs of 
the various organizations and individuals 
using the results. After a certain development 
of the precise level net which appears now to 
be absolutely necessary, the rapidity with 
which further extensions are made should de- 
pend upon the development of the country. 
But such further extensions should precede 
rather than follow such development, as is 
proved by the unfortunate condition of affairs 
in much of our engineering and surveying 
work, due to lack of precise elevations in the 
past, when such work was inaugurated. 

This paper on mean sea level should, and no 
doubt will, do much good in furthering the 
universal adoption of mean sea level as the 
reference surface for all elevations. 

The publication of such pamphlets by goy- 
ernment organizations is to be commended, 
for they present facts to the public in an ef- 
fective way which may otherwise be buried 
for years in valuable but more cumbersome 
government reports with which all of us are 
more or less familiar. WituiAM Bowie 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL 
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 


THE sixth number of volume 8 of the Pro- 
ceedings of the National Academy of Sct- 
ences contains the following articles: 

The stark effect in helium and neon: Harry 
Nyquist, Sloane Laboratory, Yale University. 
An improvement of Lo Surdo’s method is 
applied. 

New analyses of echinoderms: F. W. 
CuarkE and R. M. Kamm, United States Ge- 
ological Survey, Washington. A progressive 
enrichment in magnesia, following increase 
of temperature, is unmistakable. 

On utilizing the facts of juvenile promise 
and family history in awarding naval com- 
missions to untried men: C. B. Davenport, 
Station for Experimental Evolution, Carnegie 
Institution of Washington. A study with 
family charts of a number of naval officers. 

The triplet series of radium: Guapys A. 
Anstow and Janet T. HoweEtit, Department 
of Physics, Smith College. 

The measurement of small angles by dis- 
placement interferometry: Cart Barus, De- 
partment of Physics, Brown University. 

Mechanisms that defend the body from 
poliomyelitic infection, (a) external or extra- 
nervous, (b) internal or nervous: Simon 
Fruexner, Rockefeller Institute for Medical 
Research. A report upon the results of re- 
cent experiments. 

The occurrence of harmonics in the infra- 
red absorption spectra of diatomic gases: 
James B. BrinsMADE and Epwin C. Kremste, 
Jefferson Physical Laboratory, Harvard Uni- 
versity. The discontinuities in the structure 
of these bands force the conclusion that the 
angular velocities are distributed among the 
molecules in the discontinuous manner pre- 
dicted by the older form of the quantum 
theory, and the proved existence of harmonics 
is almost equally good evidence that the vibra- 
tional energy of the molecules is distributed 
in the same manner. 

The loss in energy of Wehnelt cathodes 
by electron emission: W. Witson, Research 
Laboratories of the American Telephone and 
Telegraph Company and of the Western 
Electric Company. The emission of the elec- 


Avaust 17, 1917] 


trons from Wehnelt cathodes is due to a sim- 
ilar mechanism to that causing the emission 
from heated pure metals. 

Daily variations of water and dry matter 
in the leaves of corn and the sorghums: 
Epwin C. Minurr, Kansas Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station. Under the conditions of 
these experiments the sorghums, and more 
particularly milo, absorb water from the soil 
and transport it to the leaves more rapidly in 
proportion to the loss of water from the plant 
than does corn; and thus the sorghums can 
produce more dry matter for each unit of leaf 
area under severe climatic conditions than 
can the corn plant. 

Note on complementary fresnellian fringes: 
Cart Barus, Department of Physics, Brown 
University. 

The displacement interferometry of long 
distances: Cart Barus, Department of Phys- 
ics, Brown University. In preceding notes 
two methods for measuring small angles have 
been suggested. Application is here made to 
the determination of distances and is shown 
that an object at about a mile should be 
located to about thirty feet. 

National Research Council: Meetings of the 
Executive Committeee and the Joint Meeting 
of the Executive, Military, and Engineering 
Committees. Report of the Astronomy Com- 
mittee. Epwin Bmwetui Witson 

Mass. INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
INTRA-VITAM COLOR REACTIONS 


We have slowly come to have great confi- 
dence in the specificity of certain physiological 
actions. We introduce into an organism cer- 
tain substances, and definite results follow; but 
about the only thing we know in the matter is 
that the results follow with certainty. In such 
cases, if only we could see what it is that hap- 
pens while it is happening, it seems certain 
that important advances would be made in our 
knowledge of nutrition, growth and decay— 
of physiology, pathology and medicine. 

If substances giving color reactions in liv- 
ing tissues could be applied to small, trans- 
parent, varied and highly complex living or- 


SCIENCE 


167 


ganisms, under circumstances that would per- 
mit microscopic examination while the reac- 
tions are in progress, we might hope for more 
light on this exceedingly important subject. 
Experiments I have made lead to the belief 
that many of the conditions requisite for suc- 
cess in this line of investigation can be much 
more fully realized than hitherto by feeding 
colored substances, notably coal-tar dyes, to 
free-living nematodes. 

These minute, transparent animals are com- 
paratively highly organized; not only this, but 
also extremely varied in their mode of life. 
Some are exclusively vegetarian, others ex- 
clusively carnivorous, and others omnivorous. 
They constitute a group composed probably of 
hundreds of thousands of species, embodying 
an almost inconceivable number of kinds of 
physiological action. Their organs are en- 
closed in a thin transparent cuticle, and are 
strung out so as to make them unusually suit- 
able for intra-vitam examination. Under 
slight pressure the nema flattens out more or 
less without losing its vitality sufficiently to 
preclude satisfactory intra-vitam examination 
under the highest powers of the microscope. 

Observing certain precautions, I find that a 
great variety of coal-tar compounds and other 
colored compounds can be fed to nemas, ap- 
parently without interfering materially with 
their normal metabolism. I have had the best 
results by cumulative action, using small quan- 
tities of color dissolved in the medium in 
which the nema lived, and allowing the dye to 
act for days or weeks. 

Not infrequently the dyes prove to be highly 
specific in their action. Only certain cells, or 
only definite parts of certain cells, exhibit vis- 
ible reactions in the form of colorations. The 
results obtained by the use of any given dye 
may be quite varied. It is evident in many 
eases that the dye is digested and assimilated, 
thereby undergoing molecular changes by 
which it is converted into new compounds in a 
manner analogous to the processes exemplified 
in chemical laboratories devoted to the produc- 
tion of aniline dyes. Thus, a dye may give 
rise to several different colors, none of them 
like that of the dye itself, and all of them very 


168 


likely due to new compounds. Often I have 
seen considerable evidence pointing to the con- 
clusion that in some cases the dyes fed are 
converted into colorless compounds during the 
process of digestion (a reduction phenome- 
non), and these colorless compounds recon- 
verted into colored substances after they arrive 
at certain destinations or conditions. The 
number of changes these “ living laboratories ” 
can ring on the molecular structure of a given 
dye must in some cases be very considerable. 
Two or more dyes fed simultaneously some- 
times produce results more or less independent 
of each other. The spectacles are very bril- 
liant. 

Using these methods I have been able to 
demonstrate within the confines of a single cell 
the existence of an unsuspected number of 
kinds of “granules,” manifestly playing dif- 
ferent roles. After the differences among these 
bodies have been shown in this way, it is some- 
times possible to perceive corresponding morph- 
ological differences; but without the aid of the 
color reactions the differences would never 
have been suspected. 

The main thing to bear in mind is that on the 
basis of our present more complete knowledge 
of the chemical and physical properties of coal- 
tar-derivatives these color reactions in living 
nemas may be made the index of physiological 
characters possessed by cells and their com- 
ponents. In view of the great variety of the 
known coal-tar derivatives, and the great va- 
riety of physiological activities exemplified in 
the free-living nemas, it seems to me a very 
reasonable hope that researches directed along 
this line will lead to important results, and 
that the nemas may become classical objects in 
cell and general physiology, as they have al- 
ready become in sex physiology. 

A new and rather extensive nomenclature 
will become necessary. It will be needful to 
distinguish between the results of intra-vitam, 
intra-mortem and post-mortem staining; for 
these three terms represent as many different 
phases in the chemical reactions that take 
place during the course of the experiments. 
As the cells lose vitality, new color reactions 
occur, and the death of the cell is followed by 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1181 


further equally marked changes in the reac- 
tions. 

The cell elements I have mentioned vary in 
size, but most of them are exceedingly small, 
many so small that they are on the limits of 
visibility, using the very best instruments with 
the greatest skill and under the most favorable 
conditions. On the other hand, some of them 
are large enough so that they can be examined 
in considerable detail and their structures 
made out. Among them are the bodies cur- 
rently referred to under the name mitochon- 
dria and other more or less synonymous words. 

As it will be some time before we can estab- 
lish a rational nomenclature for these nu- 
merous intracellular structures, it is desirable 
meanwhile to adopt terms that will permit in- 
telligent discussion of our discoveries as they 
are made. While the principles underlying 
such a nomenclature are easily defined, it is by 
no means easy, in the present condition of 
things, to suggest suitable short and expres- 
sive roots to be used as a basis. There will be 
less liability of confusion if the names first 
employed relate to form, size and position 
rather than to function. 

Investigations of this character are not un- 
likely to stimulate further research in connec- 
tion with aniline derivatives. Present efforts 
are directed toward the discovery of dyes of 
greater or less permanency. Permanency, 
however, is of little moment in these investi- 
gations; what is of moment is the chemical 
composition and physical properties of the 
dyes. No doubt dyes of a greater range of 
composition can be produced if permanency be 
disregarded. Furthermore, as already hinted, 
colorless compounds may be used in intra- 
vitam work if in the course of the metabolism 
they are converted into colored compounds. 
The results of recent studies of dies as chem- 
ical indicators come into play, and give valu- 
able evidence in determining acidity and alka- 
linity. 

I am almost ready to express the opinion 
that a small army of investigators should be 
engaged on the problems opened up in this 
way. The equipment needed by the investi- 
gator is as follows: He must be a very good 


Aueust 17, 1917] 


microscopist, versed in physiology, cytology 
and histology. He should be conversant with 
the chemistry of the coal-tar compounds, not so 
much from the viewpoint of the maker of dyes 
. as from that of the broad-minded chemist, 
freed from the econorhic domination of the 
dye industry, for, as before remarked, fugi- 
tive dyes, and even colorless compounds, are 
possible factors in such investigations as are 
here under discussion. He should have a 
working knowledge of nemas. 


ILLUMINATION 


In order to distinguish with accuracy among 
intra-vitam color reactions it is necessary to 
be very particular about illumination. The 
most perfectly corrected lenses must be used, 
both as condenser and objective; and the light 
used must be as nearly white as possible. The 
best source of light known to me for these re- 
searches is bright sunlight reflected from a 
plane matte white reflector. The reflector 
should be several feet across, and placed at a 
distance from the microscope several times its 
own diameter. It should be universally ad- 
justable, so that it can be set to reflect a maxi- 
mum of light to the mirror of the microscope 
—all the better if heliostatic. A good surface 
for the screen is made by whitewashing a 
rather finely woven cotton cloth. 


objective 


Fig. 1. 


The best optical arrangement I have tried is 
the use of one apochromatic objective as a con- 
denser for another apochromatic objective. I 
have been using with success a 2 mm. apochro- 


SCIENCE 


169 


matic as a condenser for a 2 mm. or 1.5 mm. 
apochromatic objective. These precautions are 
necessary if fine color distinctions are to be 
made with the greatest possible accuracy. If 
these precautions are taken it will be found 
that fine distinctions can be made with such 
precision as to dispel all doubt as to the exist- 
ence, side by side, in the same cell of definite 
structures of varying character that it would 
otherwise be impossible or exceedingly diffi- 
cult to distinguish from each other. 


square CEES round: a 


Fig. oy 


The use of an ordinary apochromatic objec- 
tive as a condenser necessitates the use of a 
special object slide, consisting essentially of a 
carrier and two cover glasses. The object is 
mounted between the cover glasses. Such a 
slide is shown in the accompanying illustra- 
tion. The substage of the microscope should 
have a centering arrangement and a rack and 
pinion or screw focusing adjustment. A little 
experience with an apparatus of this sort, in 
which all known precautions are taken to re- 
move color from the optical system, leads one 
to distrust the ordinary Abbé substage conden- 
ser where fine distinctions are to be made be- 
tween colors, especially if the colors are of 
similar character. N. A. Coss 

U. S, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 


THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 
DIVISION OF PHYSICAL AND INORGANIC CHEMISTRY 
H. P. Talbot, Chairman 
E. B. Millard, Secretary 

The positive and negative specific heat of satu- 
rated vapors: F. P. Sreset. A vapor expanding 
from a temperature 7 to the temperature T—1 
reversibly, yields the maximal work W due to the 
latent heat of vaporization H introduced at the 
higher temperature in accordance with the second 
law expressible in equivalent calories as 

T— (T—1) 


W =. — L#! 


T r calories. 


This amount of work is in many cases greater than 


170 


the difference in the total heat of the vapor L be- 
tween the temperatures 7 and T—1 degrees abso- 
lute, viz., L—Z, and in this case an amount of 
heat equal to H/T =(L—L,) must be added to 
maintain the vapor in a saturated condition, and it 
is therefore called the ‘‘negative specific heat’’ at 
the temperature T. If L —L is greater than H/T 
the difference of heat must be added and it is then 
called ‘‘positive specific heat.’? The examples 
show that all the numerical values in this respect 
determined by Clausius on a somewhat different 
basis agree perfectly with those obtained after the 
above formula, which agreement, however, is not 
found with other results obtained by other authors 
on a similar basis, apparently due to errors of 
judgment so liable in the application of the cal- 
eulus. Moreover, it is argued that instead of the 
heat quantity H/T which represents the net work 
when the expansion takes place in a reversible 
eycle, the heat quantity We representing the maxi- 
max work in reversible expansion should be used, 
which changes the values of positive and negative 
heat slightly. 

The separation of erbium from yttrium: B. 8. 
Hoprins and Epwarp WicHErs. The erbium- 
yttrium material used in the investigation was ob- 
tained by fractional crystallization of the bro- 
mates. Methods recommended by Drossbach and 
Wirth could not be duplicated with the success ob- 
tained by these workers. Cobalticymide precipita- 
tion as recommended by James, was found to give 
a good separation, but offered practical difficulties. 
Precipitation with sodium nitrite as used by Hop- 
kins and Balke found to give a rapid separation 
when used with material which was predominantly 
yttrium. 


A study of the ratio of Er,03:2 ErCl,: C. W. 
BALKE and Epwarp WicHeErs. A brief discussion 
of other ratios used in determining the atomic 
weights of the rare earth elements was given and 
the constaney of composition of the rare earth 
sulphates questioned. The method of applying the 
oxide-chloride ratio to erbium was described and 
data given which give an atomic weight approxi- 
mately one unit higher than the present value. 


A thermal study of some members of the system 
PbO — SiO,: L. I. SHaw and B. H. Batt. Many 
mixtures of PbO and SiO, varying in composition 
from 40 per cent. to 90 per cent. PbO were melted 
jn an electric furnace and the records of their 
thermal conduct plotted on time-temperature dia- 
grams. (In some cases PbO, was used instead of 
PbO and its behavior is noted.) The significant 
temperatures of these graphs were then combined 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No, 1181 


into a composite temperature and it was concluded 
that the system is a case of solids in solid solution. 
Two maxima corresponding to the composition 
PbO — SiO, and 2 PhO—SiO, were found and 
another 2 PBO—-5 SiO, was clearly indicated. 
Two eutecties are indicated, though the lower one 
may be a transition point of the one of the higher 
melting point. As noted by previous investiga- 
tors, a transition point of SiO, was found at 540°- 
580° C. All mixes sintered at 690° + 10° C. 


A study of the change of conductivity with time 
in the system methyl alcohol-iodine-water: L. I. 
SHaw and Joun P. Trickery. Conductivities of 
solutions of iodine in methyl alcohol of various 
boiling points have been measured. It was found 
that the conductivity increased much more rapidly 
in the case of the solutions in alcohol of higher 
boiling points; also, that the conductivity reached 
a higher value in the case of the solutions from the 
higher boiling point alcohols. It was suggested 
that this was probably due to the water content of 
the alcohol. It was found that a smooth curve 
could be drawn through the points at which the 
conductivity of the various solutions became con- 
stant. Suggestions as to the probable reaction 
were given. 


The solubility of pure radium sulfate: S. C. 
Linp, C. F. WuHiITTEMoRE and J. HE. UNDERWOOD. 
The solubility of RaSO, in water and other solu- 
tions is of practical interest since all processes for 
the recovery of radium from its ores involve, at 
some stage, the precipitation of radium together 
with barium as sulfate. 


Studies in pseudo-isotopy—Part I: 8. C. Linn. 
Experiments of the author and others have shown 
that when radium and barium are partially precipi- 
tated from a solution containing a mixture of the 
two, no change in relative concentration takes 
place. This is true for sulfate, oxolate, carbonate, 
and perhaps all other difficulty soluble salts, and 
bears an exact analogy to the inseparability of the 
isotopic elements. The fact that radium and 
barium are only. pseudo-isotopic, however, is shown 
from the great divergence of their atomic num- 
bers, and their ready separation by recrystalliza- 
tion of the chlorides or bromides. It has been 
shown in the preceding paper that the assumption 
of identical solubility of RaSO, and BaSO, in 
analogy to their pseudo-isotopie action in precipi- 
tation reactions, is far from the truth. Conversely, 
this must raise the question, from the purely ex- 
perimental side, as to the truth of the assumption 
generally made of identical solubility of true iso- 
topes. 


SCIENCE | 


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The fine adjustment'is of our lever type, which 
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adjustment is provided with a stop to prevent 
the pinion from over-riding the rack. 

The ‘‘4” outfit includes 16 and 4 mm. objectives 
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SCIENCE Mew sue 


Fripay, Aueust 24, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Importance of Mold Action in Soils: Dr. 
PME PEROWIN cotrateversrorctstetclerdercterenelerelstelelsi cielo 


The U. S. Biological Station at Beaufort: Dr. 


SAMUEL F. HI“DEBRAND ...........02:.-- 775 
Philippe de Vilmorin: Dr. PAuL PopENOE.... 178 
Scientific Events :— 

Iron Ore and Pig Iron; Research in Aero- 

(OCT clobaaoe badonc natn cobs ole IEC ote 179 
Scientific Notes and News ..........00.00.- 182 
University and Educational News .......... 182 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 


Teaching Chemistry and Teaching Chemists : 
Harry A. Curtis. Another Phase of Aca- 
demic Freedom: Proressor Ernest SHAW 


FRNUN OUD Sueperaetees cee ieners navies ee he sais 182 
Quotations :— 
ZOTAR BT COC aN pera ave eifeli atop agetar hss pot ere ee 185 


Scientific Books :— 
Keyser on the Human Worth of Rigorous 


Thinking: Proressor G. A. MILLER ....... 186 
Equations as Statements about Things: Dr. 
(DAVID PWEBSOERM yelrecrprieb erent: 187 


Special Articles :— 
On the Swelling and ‘‘Solution’’ of Pro- 
tein in Polybasic Acids and their Salts: 
Proressor Martin H. FiscHer, Marian O. 
Hooker, Martin BENzINGER, Warp D. 
CorrMAN. Mites attacking Orchard and 
Field Crops in Utah: R. W. Doanz. The 
Occurrence of Mannite in Silage and its 
Possible Utilization in the Manufacture of 
Explosives: ArTHUR W. Dox, G. P. Puat- 
SAN Ob ieratcreletet-lsteitalaetareryaretcieiceyte cine ee 

The North Carolina Academy of Science: Dr. 
SFr VWiog CCUDGER, a. 3- 00) Pie eee ne 20 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should besent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE IMPORTANCE OF MOLD ACTION 
IN SOILS1 


Tue development of soil bacteriology 
during the last decade has been truly re- 
markable. Many fundamental problems 
connected with the occurrence and activi- 
ties of bacteria in soils have been attacked 
and considerable progress has been made 
toward their solution. While much work 
still remains to be done along this line, re- 
sults already secured show, in a rather defi- 
nite way, the importance of bacterial ac- 
tion in soils from the fertility standpoint. 

According to recent investigations, how- 
ever, bacteria are not the only microorgan- 
isms which exert an influence on soil fer- 
tility. Molds, protozoa and algz have been 
found quite commonly, and evidently their 
action, especially that of molds, must also 
be considered in determining the crop-pro- 
ducing power of soils. The subject of 
microorganic life in the soil has, therefore, 
been considerably broadened and compli- 
cated. 

The oceurrence of molds in soils has been 
noted many times in the past in connection 
with bacteriological and other studies and 
various investigations have dealt in a more 
or less general way with the action of these 
organisms. It is only within the last year, 
however, that an attempt has been made in 
a logical and comprehensive manner to 
study the occurrence, distribution and ac- 
tivities of molds in soils, and to solve some 
of the fundamental problems which arise in 
connection with the growth of these organ- 
isms. The results secured at the New Jer- 

1 Paper presented at the meeting of the Society 


of American Bacteriologists, at New Haven, Conn., 
December 27, 1916. 


172 


sey Agricultural Experiment Station,” ” ° 
not only furnish a basis upon which future 
experiments may rest, but they also indicate 
quite distinctly that the growth of molds 
in the soil may be of great significance. 

The transformation of organic and inor- 
ganic compounds in the soil has long been 
considered the particular function of soil 
bacteria, but molds may also play an im- 
portant réle in such processes, and indeed 
it is conceivable that in some instances they 
may prove largely responsible for the 
simplification of complex soil materials. 

It is not the purpose of this paper to re- 
view the previous studies on molds, for ex- 
cellent bibliographies have been presented 
in the work of Waksman‘ and Coleman? al- 
ready referred to. It is desired merely to 
eall attention in a brief way to the varied 
action of molds in soils, and to present a 
compilation of various published data and 
some of our own unpublished results along 
this line, with the idea of emphasizing the 
need of further study of these organisms. 

In the first place, the number of molds 
in soils should be considered, and while data 
along this line are far from conclusive, it 
has been shown that large numbers of these 
organisms are always present. Especially is 
this true for soils rich in humus, and acid in 
reaction. But the occurrence of fungi is 
not restricted to such abnormal soils. Neu- 
tral, well-aerated and well-fertilized soils 
are also found to contain rich mold floras. 
Furthermore, fungi are not limited merely 
to the surface soil, but occur in the deeper 


2Coleman, D. A., ‘‘Environmental Factors In- 
fluencing the Activity of Soil Fungi,’’ Soil Sci- 
ence, Vol. II., No. 1, p. 1. 

3Conn, H. J., ‘‘Relative Importance of Fungi 
and Bacteria in Soil,’’ Scimncr, N. 8., 44, p. 857. 

4 Waksman, 8. A., ‘‘Soil Fungi and Their Ac- 
tivities,’’ Soil Science, Vol. II., No. 2, p. 103. 

5 Waksman, S. A., ‘‘Do Fungi Actually Live in 
the Soil and Produce Mycelium?’’ Science, N. S., 
44, p. 320. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Von. XLVI. No. 1182 


soil layers. The well-known predilection of 
certain fungi for acid conditions has been 
confirmed and leads to interesting conclu- 
sions regarding the special importance of 
these forms in acid soils in which beneficial 
bacterial action is largely restricted. 

A very important point in connection 
with the occurrence of molds in soils has 
been studied recently by Waksman.® While 
the counting methods employed have shown 
the large numbers of molds in soils, consid- 
erable doubt existed as to whether these 
counts represented the actual number of 
active fungi or only the spores. If spores 
alone are present, the activity of molds in 
soils may be of less immediate importance 
although their presence would indicate pre- 
vious active growth as well as future activ- 
ity when the soil conditions become satis- 
factory for the development of active 
forms from the spores. Active mold 
growth on the other hand would undoubt- 
edly be of immediate importance in the 
chemical changes occurring in the soil. 
The value of definite information along this 
line is apparent. The careful experiments 
of Waksman show that many molds occur 
in soils in an active state as well as in the 
form of spores. While certain groups do 
not appear to be present in an active con- 
dition in the soils tested, although the plate 
method showed their occurrence as spores, 
studies of other soils may lead to different 
conclusions. 

Conn? has attempted to check Waksman’s 
results by the use of smaller quantities of 
soil, but was unsuccessful. Using 10 mg. 
of soil, he secured no growth of mold my- 
celia such as Waksman obtained with 
lumps of soil 1 em. in diameter. He de- 
seribes a direct microscopic examination of 
soils and finds no mold mycelia present. 
He concludes from these experiments that 
there is serious doubt whether molds exist 
in soils in an active form in sufficient num- 


Aveust 24, 1917] 


bers to be important compared with bac- 
teria. There seem to be two questions in- 
volved here: How large a proportion of the 
number of molds developing on plates rep- 
resent active forms and how many spores? 
What is the number of active mold forms 
which need be present in the soil for them 
to be considered important in the various 
soil chemical processes ? 

The first of these questions is rather diffi- 
cult to answer at the present time, but our 
experiments indicate that rather a large 
proportion of the total number of molds 
present in various soils oceur in the active 
state. We have found active mold growth 
occurring in all the soils thus far examined, 
and we have used both Waksman’s and 
Conn’s methods. Our results confirm 
Waksman’s observations, therefore, and 
Conn’s eriticism seems unwarranted, for 
active mold mycelia have developed in all 
our tests, using not only 10 mgs. but also 
smaller quantities of soils, as well as the 
larger lumps employed by Waksman. The 
soils tested are normal soils, many of them 
untreated and none extremely rich in 
humus. 

Further work along this line is certainly 
desirable, but from our observations thus 
far there seems no doubt but that fungi 
occur actively in soils, and hence we feel 
that their action must be important regard- 
less of their relative numbers compared 
with bacteria. Furthermore the presence 
of spores is likewise important for they 
may become active in the near future and 
bring about their characteristic reac- 
tions. The answer to the second ques- 
tion mentioned above can only come 
after long-continued experiments, but from 
the vigorous action of molds noted in so 
many cases, as will be pointed out later, it is 
evident that the problem of microorganic 
activity in relation to soil fertility can not 
be completely solved without a knowledge 


SCIENCE 


173 


of mold growth. Perhaps they are not as 
important as bacteria, there is no means yet 
of knowing, but even if of secondary signifi- 
cance they deserve recognition. Our pres- 
ent knowledge of soil fertility is too incom- 
plete to permit us to pass over hastily any 
possibly important factors without thor- 
ough study. 

We believe, therefore, that molds occur 


‘in most soils, both in the active and in the 


spore state, and hence they must pass 
through their various life cycles in the soil. 
Furthermore, different soils undoubtedly 
have different fungus floras. Species pres- 
ent under one combination of conditions 
may be absent under others. Organisms 
present only as spores in one case may occur 
actively in other instances. Finally, it 
seems perfectly possible that the relative 
occurrence of active and spore forms of va- 
rious organisms may vary in the same soil 
with varying conditions of moisture, tem- 
perature, aeration, reaction and food 
supply. 

Considering the occurrence of molds in 
an active state in all soils an established 
fact, the importance of these organisms in 
the decomposition of the soil organic mat- 
ter becomes evident. Many experiments 
have been conducted along this line and it 
has been very clearly demonstrated that 
molds are very efficient ammonifiers. Indi- 
cations have been secured that there exists 
a correlation between the biological stage 
of the organisms and the periods of am- 
monia accumulation. The largest amount 
seems to accompany the periods of spore 
germination and the smallest amount the 
time preparatory to actual spore formation. 
. All the nitrogenous organic materials 
which make up the humus content of soils 
are easily attacked by various fungus forms 
and ammonia is liberated in large amounts. 
Part of this ammonia may, of course, be 
utilized by them, but by far the larger part 


174 


is set free and may be subsequently nitrified 
for use by the higher plants. Various fertil- 
izing materials containing complex nitrog- 
enous compounds may be ammonified by 
soil fungi, and their decomposition consid- 
erably facilitated. For instance, experi- 
ments with cyanamide show its rapid trans- 
formation to ammonia by certain molds. 
Ammonia production from urea by molds 
has also been definitely proven. 

The non-nitrogenous portion of the soil 
organic matter is also attacked by many 
molds. Thus experiments have shown that 
cellulose is rapidly decomposed by many 
species, and other substances such as sugars, 
pectins, oils, fats, waxes, organic acids, etc., 
are likewise broken down by molds. Some 
recent results secured in our laboratories 
show the large carbon-dioxide production 
by molds. No doubt, therefore, remains but 
that these organisms play an extremely im- 
portant part in the decomposition of all soil 
organic matter and indeed certain results 
indicate that their action along this line 
may be much greater than that of bacteria, 
at least under certain soil conditions. 

No experiments have yet been reported 
which indicate that molds may bring about 
nitrification, and this process, therefore, 
still appears to be purely bacteriological. 
Further experiments may modify this con- 
clusion. 

Denitrification and deazotofication, how- 
ever, processes now known to be of slight 
significance in normal soils, but which may 
oceur in highly manured, specially treated 
greenhouse and market garden soils, may 
possibly be brought about by the action of 
molds. The introduction of these organ- 
isms with the manure used may be an im- 
portant factor here. Definite data along 
this line are lacking at the present time. 

Non-symbiotie nitrogen fixation, or azofi- 
cation by molds has been studied from time 
to time and indications have been secured 


SCIENCE . 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1182 


that certain species may be able to utilize 
the nitrogen of the atmosphere. The re- 
sults, as a whole, however, are far from sat- 
isfactory and indeed the conclusion has 
been drawn that at the present time the 
‘‘weight of the conclusions on the fixation 
of nitrogen by fungi seems to be on the 
negative side.’”’ Further experiments 
along this line are certainly desirable. 
The utilization of various nitrogen com- 
pounds by molds has been studied to some 
extent, and it has been found that ammonia 
and nitrate compounds are assimilated by 
these organisms in considerable amounts. 
Thus under extreme conditions of mold 
growth it is conceivable that molds may be 
actual competitors with the higher plants 
for nitrogenous food materials. It is not be- 
lieved, however, that such conditions would 
occur except very rarely. A knowledge of 
mold growth in soils may be of some signifi- 
cance, nevertheless, in connection with the 
questions involved in the fertilization of 
soils with nitrates and ammonium salts. 
The decomposition of mineral compounds 
in soils by molds has been studied only to 
a very slight extent. Data secured in our 
laboratories very largely in connection with 
certain chemical and bacteriological stud- 
ies indicate, however, that these organisms 
may play an extremely important role, not 
only in preparing nitrogenous food mate- 
rials for plants as has been indicated, but 
also in making other mineral constituents 
available. Complete data along the various 
lines indicated will be published later. 
Studies of the production of available 
phosphorus by bacteria and molds have 
shown the vigorous action of various fungi 
in this direction. Several experiments car- 
ried out by various methods have shown 
that rock phosphate is apparently trans- 
formed much more rapidly into a soluble 
form by many molds than by bacteria. The 
importance of further study along this line 


Avcust 24, 1917] 


in connection with the solution of the moot 
question regarding the relative merits of 
rock phosphate and acid phosphate can 
readily be seen. 

The oxidation of sulfur in the soil, or 
sulfofication, a process which has recently 
received some attention and which gives 
evidence of being of great importance from 
the soil fertility standpoint has been shown 
to be accomplished by several species of 
molds. The action of these organisms in 
this process may become of special impor- 
tance in connection with the recent sugges- 
tion for the production of available phos- 
phorus by composting rock phosphate, sul- 
fur and soil or manure. 

The process of ferrification, or iron oxi- 
dation in soils, while largely chemical in 
nature according to results thus far se- 
cured, is brought about partly by microor- 
ganisms and certain molds are apparently 
much more active in this action than any 
of the bacteria studied. 

Experiments on the production of avail- 
able potassium by molds should also yield 
interesting results. No data have yet been 
secured on this point. 

In fact, it seems evident that mold action 
in soils may be of far greater significance 
than has previously been supposed in pre- 
paring available food for plant growth. No 
longer should the study of microorganic ac- 
tivities in soils consider bacteria alone. 
Mold action must also be investigated, and 
in most cases it is undoubtedly true that 
only vague, incomplete results can be se- 
cured if such mold studies are not included. 
Many results secured in bacteriological in- 
vestigations might be explained and inter- 
preted much more clearly and definitely if 
the activities of molds were considered. 

If soil bacteriology is to be developed to 
the proper extent in the future and the re- 
lation of microorganisms to soil fertility is 
to be established with any degree of cer- 


SCIENCE 


175 


tainty, investigations must include not only 
bacterial action, but the activities of molds 
and possibly also the growth of protozoa — 
and alow. 

It is certainly desirable that the investi- 
gations of molds in soils and their activities 
and importance be carried out much more 
generally and on a larger scale than is the 
ease at present. Here is a field of study 
rich in possibilities and the importance of 
work along these lines can not be ques- 
tioned, P. E. Brown 

Iowa AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 


THE U. S. BIOLOGICAL STATION AT 
BEAUFORT, N. C., DURING 1916 

THE general appearance of the site of the 
station was materially enhanced during the 
year by enlarging the improved portion of the 
grounds, and by planting grass, sea oats, trees, 
and shrubbery. Through these improvements 
the comfortableness of the station was also 
increased. The laboratory, as usual, was open 
during the summer to special investigators. 
The investigators, with a single exception, had 
engaged in research at this station before and 
they continued during the past season lines 
of work previously undertaken. 

The present large series of experiments in 
diamond-black terrapin culture, which was 
started in 1909, has progressed with marked 
success. Several new experiments in addition 
to those already under way were undertaken. 
There are now approximately 1,600 terrapins, 
exclusive of the young of 1916, in the pounds 
which are being used for experimental pur- 
poses. This experimental work has shown 
quite conclusively that terrapins can be grown 
and kept in vigorous condition in captivity, 
for some of the earliest broods, hatched in the 
pounds at the station, have reached maturity 


and are very prolific in the production of eggs, 


and the offspring is equally as vigorous as 
that of the wild terrapins confined after ma- 
turity had been attained. 

A total of 2,611 terrapins hatched during 
the summer of 1916 has to date been taken 
from the egg beds. This number will be some- 


176 


what increased in the spring when terrapins 
appear that were overlooked in the fall. 
' Among these young removed from the egg 
beds there are 666 which are offspring of ter- 
rapins reared in captivity. The total number 
of young produced during the previous year, 
including those found in the spring, was 2,128; 
of these 50 were offspring of terrapins grown 
in captivity. It has been known for some 
time that a female terrapin may lay twice 
during a single season, but during the past 
season through the discovery of 12 nests, ave- 
raging 8 eggs to a nest, in a pen where only 
four females are confined, it is evident that a 
female may lay as often as three times during 
a single season. 

The most gratifying results of the past year 
are the unusually rapid growth of the young 
of one year and less of age and the very low 
mortality. The death rate among the 1915 
brood during the first year was about 8 per 
cent., while formerly it occasionally ran as 
high as 40 per cent. The death rate among 
the young after the age of one year or more 
is attained is negligible. 

The observations on the habits of fishes was 
continued by the director of the station. It 
is very noteworthy that food fishes generally 
were unusually scarce in the Beaufort region 
during the past year. The “gray trout” 
(Cynoscion regalis) which is normally, with 
perhaps a single exception, the most important 
food fish of the locality, was so scarce that the 
fishery was almost wholly abandoned. The 
almost total failure of a “run” of the two 
important fall species, the spot (Lezostomus 
zanthurus) and the jumping mullet (Mugil 
cephalus), is equally as noteworthy. 

The pig fish (Orthopristis chrysopterus) 
was found in spawning condition on the inner 
shore of Shackelford Banks during May and 
the early part of June, but the eggs of this 
species seem to be difficult to hatch artificially. 
Spawn taken in the field by stripping was 
brought to the laboratory for hatching, but 
these efforts failed. Then ripe or nearly ripe 
fish were confined in live cars and tanks. 
Those in the live ears were stripped when ap- 
parently very ripe, and those in the tanks were 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1182 


allowed to spawn naturally. At no time was 
fertilization obtained in eggs artificially 
spawned, but of those spawned naturally, a 
small percentage was successfully fertilized 
and cell division ensued, but all died before 
hatching. These experiments having failed, 
the eggs, which are semibuoyant in sea water, 
were taken by means of a tow-net and brought 
to the laboratory. These too died before hatch- 
ing. The methods of hatching employed were 
those which are usually successful with other 
species. 

The study of the life history of Gambusia 
was continued chiefly for the purpose of veri- 
fying observations of previous seasons. In 
connection with the study of fishes in relation 
to the mosquito problem, it was found that 
the common eel (Anguilla rostrata) may, at 
least under more or less abnormal conditions, 
be of value as an eradicator of mosquito lar- 
ve, for small specimens taken from reservoirs 
receiving the overflow of an artesian well were 
found to have subsisted chiefly on mosquito 
larvee, which in this instance constituted about 
the only food available. These eels were not 
confined in these reservoirs, but had come 
there through choice by passing from salt 
water through the overflow from the reser- 
voirs, a passage which remained open for an 
exit as well as an entrance. This then indi- 
cates that the common eel should not be over- 
looked in the study of fishes in relation to the 
destruction of the mosquito. Several collect- 
ing trips to fresh-water ponds and streams in 
the vicinity of the laboratory yielded the fol- 
lowing species of fishes which do not seem to 
have been recorded from this immediate vicin- 
ity; Ameiurus erebennus Jordan, Amewurus 
catus (Linneeus), Hrimyzon sucetta (Lacé- 
péde), Notemigonus crysoleucas (Mitchill), 
Notropis procne (Cope), Dorosoma cepedia- 
num (LeSueur), Hsox americanus Gmelin, 
Esox reticulatus LeSueur, Aphredoderus say- 
anus (Gilliams), Centrarchus macropterus 
(Lacépéde), Chenobryttus gulosus (Cuvier & 
Valenciennes), Enneacanthus gloriosus (Hol- 
brook), Lepomis gibbosus (Linneus), Lepomis 
incisor (Cuvier & Valenciennes), Microp- 
terus salmoides (Lacépéde), Perca flavescens 


Aveust 24, 1917] 


(Mitchill), Boleosoma olmstedi (Storer), Cope- 
landellus quiescens (Jordan). The two ma- 
rine species, Synodus intermedius (Agassiz) 
and Myrophis punctatus Liitken, appear to be 
new to the Beanfort fauna. 

Dr. Albert Kuntz, of the St. Louis University 
School of Medicine, continued the study of the 
embryological and larval development of fishes 
carried on during several seasons. Experi- 
ments in rearing larve gave only negative 
results. 

Dr. Kuntz also made a detailed study of the 
skin of flounders adapted to backgrounds of 
different colors for the purpose of determining 
the degree of distribution of melanin and 
xanthine pigment and the relationship of the 
guanophores with the chromatophores when a 
given shade or color is assimilated as nearly as 
possible. Shade was found to depend primar- 
ily on the degree of distribution of the me- 
lanin pigment and the relationship of the gua- 
nophores with the melanophore. Color depends 
on a complex group of factors including the 
relative degree of distribution of melanin and 
xanthine pigment and the optical effects due 
to the diffraction of light by the guanin crys- 
tals in the guanophores. 

Mr. Arthur Jacot, of Cornell University, 
continued for the second season the study of 
the life history of the mullets of the Beaufort 
region. It was definitely determined that the 
nominal genus Querimana comprises the 
young of the genus Mugil. At acertain period 
in their lives the young mullets pass through 
a gradual change which gives them the full 
adult characters. During this time the first 
soft ray of the anal fin is transformed into a 
spine, a change in the sculpture of the scales 
giving the appearance of a winter line also 
takes place, and the color is changed more 
nearly to that of the adult. The “jumping 
mullet” (Mugil cephalus) spawns in the fall, 
from October to December. The young grow 
rapidly and attain a length of 5 or 6 inches 
when one year of age. Then they appear to 
migrate southward by a slow and leisurely 
movement. In the spring they migrate north- 
ward, but by a more direct and apparently 
more continuous run. This migration causes 


SCIENCE 


Wee 


a cessation of feeding and therefore of growth 
which is so marked as to affect the scale, 
leaving a “migration line”? The jumping 
mullet, as shown from these studies, normally 
attains maturity when two years of age, but 
it may continue to grow until at least five 
years old. The “silverside mullet” (Mugil 
curema) spawns in the spring and the young 
grow rapidly. In the fall they leave the har- 
bor to return only in small numbers. <A care- 
ful search was made for the eggs and larvee 
within the harbor and along the outer shores 
of Shackelford and Bogue banks, but no eggs 
or young less than 20 mm. in length were 
found. Since the eggs and larve of the jump- 
ing mullet too have not been found by the use 
of similar methods in the same locality, it is 
inferred that these two species are pelagic in 
their spawning grounds. 

Mr. O. W. Hyman, of the University of 
Tennessee, continued his experiments and ob- 
servations on the larval development of crusta- 
ceans. The experiments in rearing zoe were 
unsuccessful, but the observational work 
yielded better results. The first zoea stages 
of Minippe and Callinectes were secured, but 
could not be reared beyond this stage. Scat- 
tered observations were made on the life his- 
tory and habits of Minippe. The megalops 
of Callinectes were taken in abundance and 
it was found that they were hardly in confine- 
ment and molted readily to the crab stage. 
The young crabs molted and grew rapidly. 
The entire life history of the common sand- 
fiddler (Uca pugilator) was worked out. Cam- 
era lucida drawings were prepared of each 
stage and of all appendages of each stage. 

Dr. James J. Wolfe, of Trinity College, 
Durham, N. C., continued his investigation 
of the diatom flora of the Beaufort region. 
This work has been greatly hampered by the 
difficulty encountered in securing the very 
scattered literature on the subject. It is pro- 
posed in the present work to give carefully 
revised citations and descriptions of every 
form occurring in the vicinity. It is also pro- 
posed to offer carefully prepared illustrations 
of the commoner forms. 

In addition to the above Dr. Wolfe, assisted 


178 


by Mr. Bert Cunningham, of the Durham, 
N. C., city schools, began an investigation of 
the plankton collections made by the U. 8S. 
Fisheries steamer Fish Hawk in the Chesa- 
peake Bay region. Some thirty-odd collec- 
tions were examined by the employment of 
methods which it is believed will furnish fairly 
accurate data concerning the numerical rela- 
tions of all the important species as they vary 
according to depth, season and locality. 

Dr. L. F. Shackell, of the University of 
Utah, continued his studies on the toxicities 
of various constituents of coal-tar creosote for 
the marine wood borer, Limnoria. Among the 
preparations tested were composite samples of 
tar bases of different boiling points, obtained 
through the courtesy of Mr. S. R. Church, of 
the Barrett Manufacturing Company. It was 
found that the bases were highly toxic for 
Limnoria; and that the toxicity increased with 
the rise of the boiling point—paralleling in 
this respect the results previously obtained for 
the tar acids. 

Professor H. V. Wilson, of the University 
of North Carolina, spent a short time at the 
laboratory, continuing the study and identifi- 
cation of the “ Albatross-Philippine Sponge 
Collection.” Since but little work had pre- 
viously been done on the sponges of the far 
east, it is not surprising that many of the 
forms proved to be undescribed. 

Mrs. E. Bennet Decker, of Washington, D. 
C., again served as station artist. She pre- 
pared a number of illustrations of diatoms 
for Dr. Wolfe and made drawings and sketches 
for Dr. Kuntz and for the director. 


SamuEL F, HinDEBRAND, 


Director 
BUREAU OF FISHERIES, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


PHILIPPE DE VILMORIN 


With the death of Philippe Levéque de 
Vilmorin on June 30, genetics and horticul- 
ture lost a remarkable friend. His published 
work in both fields is valuable, but perhaps 
surpassed by his personal influence, which he 
owed largely to his position as head of the 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1182 


large and wealthy de Vilmorin family, and of 
the firm of Vilmorin, Andrieux & Co., of 
Paris, one of the most celebrated seed-growing 
and seed-selling establishments in the world. 

The firm first appears in 1727 as a little 
seed store “ Aucoque de la bonne foy” on the 
bank of the Seine, kept by one Pierre Geoff- 
roy, whose daughter and heiress married the 
botanist Pierre d’Andrieux. A young botan- 
ist from Lorraine, Philippe-Victoire Levéque 
de Vilmorin, formed an intimacy with An- 
drieux, and in 1774 married his only daughter. 
Since then the firm has borne the name of the 
two families, although controlled wholly by 
the de Vilmorins. It has been handed on from 
father to son, and many of the family have 
contributed to agricultural science. The best 
known is Louis de Vilmorin (1816-1869), 
whose name is always connected with the sugar 
beet. 

Of the early French contributors to genetics 
some, like Victor Lemoine, are known only as 
practical hybridizers; others have done purely 
theoretical work, as Jordan with his study 
of the nature of species, and Naudin with his 
observations on the segregation of characters 
in hybrids. Louis de Vilmorin is conspicuous 
in both classes. To theory he contributed 
the centgener method of breeding; to prac- 
tical agriculture he contributed the sugar 
beet, whose saccharine content he raised from 
10 per cent. to 18 per cent. by a carefully 
planned series of selections. Little improve- 
ment has been made in this beet since it left 
his farm. 

He was succeeded by his son Henri, as head 
of the business and the family, and Philippe, 
who has just died, succeeded Henri in 1899. 
Philippe turned over the active management 
of the family business to his brother-in law, 
Comte d’Etienne, and gave the greater part 
of his own time to scientific research. 

In horticulture he published studies of the 
beet-sugar industry of the United States, the 
culture of ginseng in Korea and Manchuria, 
and the tobaccos of commerce. He likewise 
edited three important publications of the 
firm: Les Fleurs de Pleine Terre, Le Manuel 
de Floriculture, and the Hortus Vilmorin- 
ianus. 


Aucust 24, 1917] 


The most important of his published work 
in genetics deals with wheat, but he also car- 
ried on a long series of dog-breeding experi- 
ments and, through the firm, made possible 
the researches of Hagedoorn, Meunissier, 
Mottet and other geneticists. He was largely 
responsible for the Fourth International Con- 
ference on Genetics, held in Paris in 1911. 
As secretary, he did most of the work con- 
nected with it; as financial guarantor, he fur- 
nished most of the funds needed for it. The 
large volume of Proceedings, which he edited 
and published at his own expense, is a fitting 
memorial to his zeal in the promotion of sci- 
entifie research. Paut PorENnoE 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


THE PRODUCTION OF IRON ORE AND PIG IRON 
IN 1916 


THE iron ore mined in the United States in 
1916 reached a total of 75,167,672 gross tons, 
the greatest annual output ever made. The 
shipments from the mines in 1916 were 77,870,- 
553 gross tons, valued at $181,902,277. The 
quantity mined in 1916 was more than 19,600,- 
000 tons greater than that mined in 1915. The 
increases in quantity and in value of iron ore 
shipped in 1916 amounted to about 40 and 80 
per cent., respectively. The average value per 
ton at the mines in 1916 was $2.34, as against 
$1.83 in 1915. These figures, which were com- 
piled under the direction of E. F. Burchard, of 
the United States Geological Survey, Depart- 
ment of the Interior, include for 1916 only iron 
ore containing less than 5 per cent. of man- 
ganese. 

Tron ore was mined in 24 states in 1916 and 
23 in 1915. Minnesota, Michigan and Ala- 
bama, which have for many years produced the 
largest quantities of iron ore, occupied in 1916 
their accustomed places. 

The Lake Superior district mined nearly 85 
per cent. of the total ore in 1916 and the Bir- 
mingham district about 8 per cent. No other 
district except the Adirondack mined as much 
as 1,000,000 tons. The increase in production 
in 1916 was especially marked in the Adiron- 
dack and Chattanooga districts—54 and 55 per 


SCIENCE 


179 


cent. respectively—but every district showed 
an increased output over that of 1915. 

All the ranges in the Lake Superior district 
mined a larger quantity of iron ore in 1916 
than in 1915, and the largest increases were in 
the Gogebic and Menominee ranges—54 and 
43 per cent., respectively. The output of the 
Cuyuna range exceeded 1,500,000 tons for the 
first time. 

There were 12 mines in the United States 
that produced more than 1,000,000 tons of iron 
ore each in 1916, five more than in 1915. 
First place in 1916 was held by the Hull-Rust 
mine, at Hibbing, Minn.; second place by the 
Red Mountain group, near Bessemer, Ala.; 
third place by the Fayal mine, at Eveleth, 
Minn., and fourth place by the Mahoning 
mine, at Hibbing, Minn. The production of 
these mines in 1916 was, respectively, 7,658,- 
201, 2,899,588, 2,252,008 and 2,215,788 tons. 
The increase at the Hull-Rust was 232 per 
cent., making the production of this one mine 
more than one tenth of all the ore mined in 
the United States in 1916. These records illus- 
trate the rapidity with which the rate of out- 
put of mines in the Lake Superior district 
may be increased. None but open-pit mines 
could be made to respond to demand to such a 
degree. 

The production of pig iron, including ferro- 
alloys, was 39,434,797 gross tons in 1916, com- 
pared with 29,916,213 gross tons in 1915, an 
increase of 32 per cent., according to figures 
published by the American Iron and Steel In- 
stitute, February 24, 1917. The pig iron, ex- 
elusive of ferro-alloys, sold or used in 1915, 
according to reports of producers to the United 
States Geological Survey, amounted to 39,126,- 
324 gross tons, valued at $663,478,118, compared 
with 30,384,486 gross tons, valued at $401,409,- 
604 in 1915, a gain of 29 per cent. in quantity 
and 65 per cent. in value. The average price 
per ton at furnaces in 1916 as reported to the 
Survey was $16.96, compared with $13.21 in 
1915, an increase of 28 per cent. 


RESEARCH IN AERONAUTICS 
THE report of the British Advisory Com- 
mittee for Aeronautics for 1916-17 is sum- 


180 


marized in the Engineering Supplement of the 
London Times. 

It is said that owing to the numerous 
changes and development in the design and 
construction of aircraft an increasing number 
of special problems constantly presented them- 
selves for investigation, and these have closely 
occupied the attention of the staffs engaged in 
experimental work at both the National Phys- 
ical Laboratory and the Royal Aircraft 
Factory. In addition to aerodynamical re- 
search, much attention has been given to ques- 
tions relating to engines, materials of con- 
struction, strength of construction and design, 
instruments and accessories, as well as to 
methods of attack of aircraft from aircraft and 
other matters. 

In the new 7 ft. air channel at the National 
Physical Laboratory an air speed of 85 ft. 
per second can be reached with an expendi- 
ture of 160 hp. It is doubtful whether 
further increase in size of channel or speed of 
air current would advance existing knowledge 
to an extent sufficient to outweigh the greatly 
increased cost and other disadvantages in- 
volved. Should it prove necessary to conduct 
experiments on a larger scale and at higher 
speeds, it would appear necessary to employ a 
method in which the model is moved through 
the air. This procedure presents various diffi- 
culties, and the securing of even moderately 
accurate data in this manner is at the best 
extremely laborious. Probably the least 
troublesome way of applying this method is by 
installing measuring apparatus on the aero- 
plane itself, and it seems probable that only in 
this way can an accurate comparison be ob- 
tained between model and full-scale condi- 
tions. 

Improved methods of supporting the models 
under test have been devised for use in special 
eases. The effect on the measured resistance 
of the method of holding the model is often 
surprisingly large, and without the necessary 
care and experience in avoiding effects due to 
interference with the air flow very large errors 
may result. In general the difficulty is 
greatest in measurements on forms of small 
head resistance—e. g., aeroplane bodies and 
airship envelopes. Probably little reliance can 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1182 


be placed on the absolute values obtained in 
earlier measurements on airship models of 
stream line shape, which were made to deter- 
mine the form of least resistance, and were in 
the main comparative. With the new methods 
of support the possible error has been greatly 
reduced, and when full-scale values have been 
determined with accuracy the prediction of 
full-scale resistance from the models will be 
established on a satisfactory basis. 

At the Royal Aircraft Factory the measure- 
ment of the resistance of aeroplanes in flight 
has been continued with the object of confirm- 
ing the model experiments, and an instrument 
for measuring the resistance directly has been 
developed. The distribution of pressure over 
the wing of an aeroplane in flight has been 
measured, and further experiments on these 
lines are in progress. Experiments and also 
much theoretical work have been carried out 
on the longitudinal and lateral stability of 
aeroplanes in flight. Measurements have also 
been made of the disturbance of the air behind 
a propeller, to obtain data required in the 
design of new machines. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 
PRESIDENT Raymonp A. Prarson, of the Iowa 
State College, and Clarence Ousley, of the 
Texas State College, have been appointed to 
be assistant secretaries of agriculture. 


Dr. Ray L. Witsur, president of Stanford 
University and formerly professor of medi- 
cine, has been placed in charge of the conserva- 
tion department of the Food Administration. 

Tue Women’s Council of Defense announces 
the following advisory committees: Food Utili- 
zation.—Professor R. H. Chittenden, Pro- 
fessor Graham Lusk, Professor E. V. MeCol- 
lum, Professor L. B. Meadel, Dr. C. L. Als- 
burg, Dr. CO. F. Langworthy, Professor Vernon 
Kellogg, Dr. A. E. Taylor and President Ray 
L. Wilbur. Public Health—Professor W. H. 
Welch, chairman, Dr. L. P. Ayer, Dr. Her- 
mann M. Biggs, Dr. D. L. Edsall, Dr. Cary T. 
Grayson, Dr. A. W. Hewlett, Dr. A. C. Jane- 
way, Dr. F. G. Novy, Dr. R. M. Pearce and 
Professor H. G. Wells. 


Dr. Harriet L. Hartiry has been ap- 
pointed chief of the division of child hygiene, 


Avueust 24, 1917] 


of the Philadelphia department of health, suc- 
ceeding the late Dr. Henry H. Doan. 

Dr. J. B. Crevanp, of the Sydney depart- 
ment of public health, has been elected presi- 
dent of the Royal Society of New South Wales. 

Mr. Auan A. CAMPBELL Swinton has been 
elected chairman of the council of the Royal 
Society of Arts, London. 

We learn from Nature that early in July 
Mr. Erik Andersson, of Uppsala, again led to 
Spitsbergen a geological expedition, which in- 
eluded Messrs. Adam Reuterskidld, Sven 
Ydén and Karl Samuelsson. The main object 
was to continue the investigation of the Trias 
and to collect saurians and fishes. The occur- 
rence of phosphorite at Cape Thordsen was to 
be investigated, as well as the extent of the 
coal beds at Pyramid Hill and Biinsowland. 
Investigations in the Devonian rocks are to be 
continued and their vertebrate fossils col- 
lected. A large expedition of miners and min- 
ing engineers also left Sweden about midsum- 
mer to exploit the coal measures of Spits- 
bergen, and was accompanied by Dr. Anteus as 
geologist. 


THE Committee of the Privy Council for 
Scientific and Industrial Research has sanc- 
tioned the appointment of a committee to in- 
quire into the types of breathing apparatus 
used in coal mines, and by experiment to de- 
termine the advantages, limitations and de- 
fects of the several types of apparatus, what 
improvements in them are possible, whether 
it is advisable that the types used in mines 
should be standardized, and to collect evidence 
bearing on these points. The members of the 
committee are: Mr. W. Walker, acting chief 
inspector of mines under the Home Office 
(chairman), Dr. J. S. Haldane and Dr. H. 
Briggs. 

Dr. G. Cart Huser, professor of anatomy in 
the University of Michigan, recently delivered 
an address on “ Early Stages in Mammalian 
Development” before the faculty and students 
of the graduate summer quarter in medicine 
of the University of Illinois. 

Two courses of twelve lectures each on 
“The Designing and Computing of Telescope 


‘SCIENCE 


181 


Systems ” are being delivered at the Imperial 
College of Science, South Kensington, by Pro- 
fessor A. E. Conrady during this month and 
September. The lectures are given in con- 
nection with the newly formed department of 
technical optics under the direction of Pro- 
fessor F. J. Cheshire. 


Tue death is announced of M. Eduard 
Sarasin, of Geneva, editor of the Archives des 
sciences physiques et naturelles, and the 
author of numerous researches in physicial 
science. 


By an agreement between the executors of 
the estate of the late James Buchanan Brady 
and his heirs, the major part of his fortune, 
estimated at $3,000,000, becomes immediately 
available for the New York Hospital. This 
argeement enables the trustees and executors 
to carry out the testator’s plans for the estab- 
lishment of the James Buchanan Brady Foun- 
dation of Urology. Eventually a building will 
be erected for the foundation to cost about 


‘half a million dollars, which will include de- 


partments for investigation along chemical, 
bacteriological and pathological lines. The 
plans for the foundation are in the hands of 
Dr. Oswald 8. Lowsley, who was named by Mr. 
Brady as director. 


At the annual general meeting of the 
Medico-Legal Society of London, when the 
President, Sir Samuel Evans, was in the chair, 
a recommendation of the council that aliens 
of enemy nationality should cease to be either 
honorary or ordinary members of the society, 
was unanimously approved. 


Tue British Museums Association proposes 
to hold a conference in October to discuss, 
among other subjects, local war museums and 
the Board of Education and museums. 


Puans for the one hundred and fifteenth 
meeting of the American Institute of Mining 
Engineers which include an inspection of the 
coal resources of Illinois, the zine and other 
mining operations of Missouri, and the oil 
fields of Oklahoma have been announced. The 
meeting will be held during the week of Oc- 
tober 8 to 13. Methods will be discussed for 
conserving the present supply and increasing 


182 


the output of the country’s minerals which will 
prove of value in winning the war. The 
American Institute of Mining Engineers now 
numbers more than 6,000 members in every 
part of the country and in many parts of the 
world and representatives will be present of all 
the principal American mining centers. The 
program calls for several days’ sessions in and 
around St. Louis and an inspection tour to the 
rich mineral Joplin-Miami district and the oil 
fields of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The engineers will 
be guests of the St. Louis section of the in- 
stitute, the chairmen of committees including 
H. A. Buehler, state geologist of Missouri; F. 
W. De Wolf, Illinois, past president of the As- 
sociation of State Geologists; James E. Casel- 
ton, St. Louis; A. H. Wheeler, St. Louis; E. 
F. Goltra, St. Louis. Philip N. Moore, of St. 
Louis, is president of the American Institute 
of Mining Engineers. 

Tue Société de Chimie Industrielle has been 
founded in Paris to promote the science of 


chemistry as applied to industry. We learn. 


from a statement in Nature that local provin- 
cial branches will be formed which, while 
being self-governing, will keep in touch with 
the parent society. The society will institute 
research work with the view of assisting manu- 
facturers and agriculturists. An institute and 
library are in contemplation which will con- 
tain a complete collection of French and for- 
eign periodicals devoted to industrial chemis- 
try, and the society hopes to arrange for meet- 
ings, exhibitions, ete., to stimulate activity. A 
review—the first number of which is expected 
to be published shortly—will keep manufac- 
turers posted in the latest developments at 
home and abroad, describe inventions and 
processes, and, generally, fill a want that has 
been long felt in France. The first council of 
the society contains many names prominent in 
the scientific and industrial world. 

Tue War Council of the American Red 
Cross has established a Bureau of Sanitary 
Service under the direction of Dr. W. H. 
Frost. An appropriation of $800,000 has been 
made for the use of the bureau. This step has 
been taken in order to meet the new condi- 
tions which will arise as a consequence of 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1182 


bringing together so many men as will be mo- 
bilized throughout the country. The Bureau 
of Sanitary Service will supervise and aid in 
such operations as will tend to make health 
conditions about the camps as nearly ideal as 
possible. Increased forces will be provided for 
milk inspection, war will be made on malaria- 
carrying mosquitoes, and a radius of from 
fifteen to sixty square miles outside of the 
camps will be policed for the protection of the 
health of the men. Sanitary units will be 
furnished to the areas upon the request of the 
civil authorities. 

THE council of the British Medical Associa- 
tion has reported that the only possible method 
of placing the health administration of the 
country on a sound basis was by the creation 
of a Ministry of Health. Their recommenda- 
tions are as follows: 

That a ministry of health should be created to 
take over from existing government departments 
such duties as are concerned with the health of the 
community, and to deal with those duties only; 
that the administrative functions of the ministry 
should be carried out by a board presided over by 
a minister of Cabinet rank; that the country be 
divided into suitable administrative areas under 
local administrative health centers consisting of 
representatives (a) of the rating authorities; (6) 
of the education authorities; (c) of the persons 
contributing to a scheme of health insurance (in- 
eluding employers of labor); (d) the medical pro- 
fession; (e) public hospitals; (f) dentists; (g) 
pharmacists, and (h) nurses; that the principal 
medical officers of each center should be two, of 
equal status, one representing the clinical side 
(chief clinical officer) and the other the preventive 
side of medicine (medical officer of health); that 
for each area, hospitals, clinics, or treatment cen- 
ters should be recognized or established at which 
persons entitled to treatment under the public 
scheme should be able to obtain institutional, con- 
sultative or specialist services on the reeommenda- 
tion of their medical attendant. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


For the Oklahoma College and Station a 
science building to cost $100,000 was author- 
ized by the last legislature. 

By the will of the late Sir Charles Holeroft 
a bequest of £5,000 is made to the University 


AucustT 24, 1917] 


of Birmingham, to establish a Charles Hol- 
croft Research Fund. 

Funps for the new chemical laboratories at 
University College, London, have been raised 
by a committee, of which Prince Arthur of 
Connaught is president and Captain the Hon. 
Rupert Guinness chairman and _ treasurer. 
The cost of the site, building and equipment 
will be £120,000. £100,000 has already been 
raised, leaving £20,000 to be found. In order 
to facilitate the immediate provision of this, 
Sir Ralph C. Forster, who has already sub- 
seribed generously to the cost of the labora- 
tories, has promised £5,000 on condition that 
the remaining £15,000 is raised speedily. 

A ScxHoont of Mines has been organized at 
Washington State College at Pullman. Under 
the new plan, the department of mining be- 
comes one of the eight schools or colleges that 
comprise this state institution, and Professor 
Francis A. Thompson, head of the depart- 
ment, becomes dean of the School of Mines. 
Full facilities will be available for instruction 
in, and treating ores by, all standard forms of 
treatment, including leaching, amalgamation, 
concentration, roasting and smelting. A 
special laboratory will be devoted to the flota- 
tion process. 


A. B. McDantet, former assistant professor 
of civil engineering, University of Illinois, has 
been given administrative charge of the gen- 
eral engineering department of Union College, 
Schenectady, N. Y. 


H. B. Exvvenpercer, Ph.D. (Cornell), has 
been appointed associate professor of animal 
and dairy husbandry at the College of Agri- 
culture of the University of Vermont. 


Proressor Henri Rocer has been appointed 
dean of the school of medicine of the Uni- 
versity of Paris, to succeed the late Professor 
Landouzy. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
TEACHING CHEMISTRY AND TEACHING 
CHEMISTS 


LookryG over the lists of chemistry courses 
offered in the various colleges and universities, 
one is impressed by the thoroughness with 
which the field has been covered. To suggest 


SCIENCE 


183 


additions to the already long lists may seem, 
at first thought, uncalled for. There is a 
group of courses so obviously essential that we 
find them taught in every university, and 
there is a pretty clear understanding of what 
courses belong to this group. Supplementing 
this basic group are numerous courses extend- 
ing and amplifying it in various directions 
determined by local influences, traditions and 
training of the staff members. The scheme 
has one serious defect, which is that there is 
seldom to be found in the whole list of courses, 
a single one designed to give the would-be 
chemist an intelligent and comprehensive 
idea of the science of chemistry, its history, 
literature, and role in a modern civilized 
world. A man who diligently pursues the 
courses offered will undoubtedly attain to a 
considerable knowledge of the laws, facts and 
theories of chemistry. Will he then be a 
chemist ? 

The writer was recently called upon to 
grade the examination papers of contestants 
for the Alpha Chi Sigma Scholarship Medal. 
There were eighteen contestants, representing 
ten prominent universities or colleges. Con- 
testants were all in the second semester of the 
junior year and, since they undertook to com- 
pete in a scholarship examination, may be 
considered as somewhat more alert than their 
classmates. That grades attained would dif- 
for widely was to be expected. The sequence 
of courses is not the same in the schools repre- 
sented, and various other factors contribute 
to make it difficult to get an adequate measure 
of the relative standing of students; but, 
allowing for all these, there was clearly shown 
a striking lack of information and of view 
point whenever the questions of the examina- 
tion passed beyond the field of strictly chem- 
ical facts, laws and theories. A few examples 
will illustrate the point: Of the eighteen con- 
testants, eight were unable to name a single 


American journal of chemistry, eleven were 


unable to name an English journal, thirteen 
could not name a French journal, and eight 
could not name a German journal. Of the 
eighteen contestants, only five could name a 
general treatise on inorganic chemistry; only 
nine could name such a work on organic 


184 


chemistry. Twelve of the eighteen could not 
name the president of the American Chemical 
Society. Only six of them knew of the re- 
cent work on the atomic weight of lead; only 
two of the eighteen could name three impor- 
tant chemical discoveries of the last ten years. 
Bunsen, Scheele, Wohler, Ramsay, Mendeljeft 
were, to most of the contestants, just names 
of chemists who had done something or other. 
Required to name five prominent living chem- 
ists, most of them named three or four of the 
members of the local chemistry staff. Some of 
the men named are, indeed, prominent chem- 
ists, but when a student indicates that four out 
of five of the world’s prominent chemists are 
included amongst his instructors, he is showing 
a lack of viewpoint rather than an intelligent 
loyalty. 

It is far from the purpose of this note to 
belittle the knowledge of these students. 
They are, in all probability, more intelligent 
than the average. The point is that they 
should have, after three years of study in the 
field of chemistry, some knowledge of the use 
of a chemistry library, and more than a naive 
understanding of contemporary chemistry. 
Perhaps we have expected them to absorb 
general chemical information from the at- 
mosphere of a chemistry department. The 
actual situation is that their views of chem- 
istry are hedged in between the covers of some 
ten or twenty text-books. If this is the case, 
would it not be worth while to add to our 
chemistry curricula a few courses—call them 
what you will—aimed squarely at supplying 
that body of general chemical information 
not to be found in text-books? To teach 
chemistry is one thing; to teach men to be 
chemists is a greater task. 

Harry A. Curtis 

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, 

BovuLpER, Coo. 


ANOTHER PHASE OF “ ACADEMIC FREEDOM ” 

Durine the last few years there has been 
considerable agitation and many articles have 
been written upon the danger of loss of 
“academic freedom,” by which is meant the 
right of college and university teachers to 


‘ SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1182 


think and express their thoughts without fear 
of losing their positions through the possible 
unpopularity of their own opinions. All who 
are associated in any way with education re- 
alize the danger of political and financial 
overshadowing of independent thought, espe- 
cially when it is opposed to the established 
order of things. It is evident, however, that 
there are still some who do not grasp the es- 
sential difference between the clerical attitude 
toward education a hundred years ago and the 
scientific attitude toward education to-day. 
A hundred or more years ago the imparting 
of information and of established creed was 
believed to be the entire function of the insti- 
tutions of learning. To-day we advocate the 
stimulation of active, progressive thought 
which questions established ideas and is anx- 
ious to have before the mind all possible 
theories in order to further stimulate thought 
and investigation. A recent incident shows, 
however, that such is not by any means the 
attitude of all who should be leaders in free- 
dom of expression of thought, but who are 
not. 

In the December twenty-ninth issue of 
Science of last year a short item entitled 
“1916 or 18162” calls attention to the fact 
that a certain literary society in one of our 
universities was announcing a phrenological 
lecture with the title “ Brains—How to 
Know and Handle Them.” The author of 
the note says simply at the end of his quota- 
tion of the announcement: “ Comments would 
seem superfluous.” However, it seems that 
they were not to him “superfluous,” since in 
the January nineteenth issue of the same 
journal, under the caption “ Phrenology,” 
the same writer says, “It is gratifying to re- 
port the receipt of the following communica- 
tion,” which was signed by the dean of one 
of the colleges of the university. The letter 
quoted brings out the information that the 
author of the notes in SclENCE wrote twice to 
the university protesting against the giving 
of the announced lecture on “ Brains,” with 
the result that the university president re- 
quested the literary society to cancel the lec- 
ture, which was forthwith done. 


AvueGust 24, 1917] 


Now the fundamental consideration in the 
above-mentioned incident is not whether 
phrenology is a science, or whether it has any 
scientific basis, or even whether intelligent 
people should take note of it, but rather it 
is a question of the advisability of preventing, 
so far as possible, the expression before col- 
lege students of views not generally believed 
by scientists. This lecture, be it noted, had 
no special sanction of the university, but was 
a private venture by a group of students in 
one of their own organizations. Certain it 
is that a phrenologist has a:right to be heard 
and students not only have a right to hear, 
but they should be urged to, rather than hin- 
dered from, a careful investigation into the 
errors of any system. If the scientific facts 
opposed to phrenology are not strong enough 
to convince people of the fallacies of the 
subject, then surely no one has a right to pre- 
vent the expression of such ideas; and if the 
scientific facts are all opposed to the phreno- 
logical interpretation, then the artificial op- 
position on basis of authority is entirely use- 
less as well as entirely unscientific. It may 
be argued that phrenology is not a modern, 
scientific theory, but an outworn supersti- 
tion and hence should be discouraged. With- 
out doubt superstitions should be discour- 
aged, not by power of authority, but by 
scientific facts. Moreover, that which seems 
to be an outworn superstition may, in another 
form, appear later as a scientific theory, as 
for instance, the idea of the transmutation of 
metals. A few years ago a lecture on the 
“Transmutation of Elements” would no 
doubt have found many objectors who would 
have said that students should not have such 
foolish ideas placed before them. Now, how- 
ever, such a lecture would be listened to with 
great interest because some scientists of high 
Teputation vouch for the possibility of such 
transmutation. No idea should be smothered 
except by facts, for all the authority in the 
world, without good foundation of fact, may 
be as entirely wrong as the unauthorized idea 
expressed by the least known student. Fur- 
ther than this also we must go. Any idea, no 
matter how foolish it may appear, is worthy 


| SCIENCE 


185 


of attention as a means of stimulating 
thought and may even have a germ of truth 
which may develop into more truth by pa- 
tient investigation. Let us demolish all 
superstitions as rapidly as possibly by the ac- 
eumulation of scientific facts, but let us not 
hinder any propaganda by power of author- 
ity. College students should be encouraged 
to find out all the theories concerning any set 
of facts and then be led to a careful balancing 
of these by processes of logical thought. 


Ernest SuHaw Reynoups 


QUOTATIONS 
WAR BREAD 

Tue public has been led to feel some anxiety 
concerning the effects of the present war bread 
upon national health and efficiency. Sugges- 
tion plays an inevitable part in such a connec- 
tion. Certain untoward symptoms in individ- 
uals, for which some other tangible cause is not 
immediately evident, are liable just now to be 
ascribed on the slenderest evidence to the bread 
eaten. Once the belief in a deleterious influ- 
ence has arisen, it is easy to understand how 
widely it may spread by suggestion. In the 
opinion of those best qualified to know, there 
would seem to be little basis for any such con- 
demnation of the bread. It rests, nevertheless, 
with the food controller to obtain the best pos- 
sible evidence concerning the facts, and we are 
glad to know that Lord Rhondda and the wheat 
commissioners have empowered a committee of 
the Royal Society to make a full and thorough 
investigation. This committee comprises some 
eminent medical consultants, as well as the 
physiologists who have been serving on the 
main food committee of the society. Its task 
is to decide whether the higher extraction of 
the grain can in itself be held responsible for 
any disturbance of health, and whether the ad- 
mixture of other cereals with the wheat has 
produced a less digestible loaf, owing, for in- 
stance, to the associated difficulties in milling 
and baking. 

Among other matters which are also engaging 
the attention of the committee is a greater tend- 
ency to “rope” in the bread, alleged to be due 
to the higher extraction of the grain. The 


186 


habits of Bacillus mesentericus, which, in its 
various strains, is responsible for ropy bread, 
are already well known to bacteriologists, and, 
empirically at least, to all the better informed 
among practical bakers. There is no reason to 
doubt that with the increased knowledge now 
being acquired any outbreaks of rope will in 
the future be easily controlled. That the pres- 
ence in the loaf of cereals other than wheat 
can be directly harmful is most unlikely. A 
favorable effect should indeed be seen in a 
somewhat improved balance in the protein 
supplied. Maize, it is true, is said to be badly 
tolerated by certain individuals, though such 
cases must be rare. It is also stated that the 
starch of maize is not fully gelatinized when 
it is cooked in admixture with wheat under 
conditions suitable for the production of an 
all-wheat loaf. 

These and other points will doubtless receive 
the attention of the investigating committee. 
Its most important task, however, will be to 
decide, by a thorough sifting of the evidence, 
the more general question as to whether the 
war bread is, as a matter of fact, producing any 
ill effects at all upon the public health. The 
public will be glad to know that the food con- 
troller is in possession of the facts. 

Meanwhile, since it is of the utmost impor- 
tance to the nation that a full supply of bread 
shall be maintained, while the amount of wheat 
available is not sufficient for the purpose, we 
are glad to observe that the medical press is 
urging the profession to see that the privilege 
of obtaining high-grade wheat flour for cases 
supposed to have suffered from the war bread 
is at any rate not abused—WNature. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking. Es- 
says and Addresses. By Cassius J. Knyser, 
Ph.D., LL.D., Adrain Professor of Mathe- 
matics, Columbia University. The Colum- 
bia University Press. 1916. Pp. vi+ 314. 
Six of the fifteen chapters of this volume ap- 

peared in Scrmnce during recent years,} while 
1On page 220 it is stated that Chapter XII., on 

the ‘‘Principia Mathematica,’’? had been printed 
in Vol. XXV. of Science. It actually had ap- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1182 


the remaining nine chapters, together with re- 
prints of some of the six which had first ap- 
peared in SCIENCE, were published in various 
other periodicals or by the Columbia Univer- 
sity Press. Hence the volume contains noth- 
ing new. Its value is due to the convenient 
form in which these inspiring essays and ad- 
dresses are here presented. Unfortunately it 
contains no index and no table of contents be- 
sides the chapter or essay headings. 

The title of the volume is the same as that 
of the initial essay, but some of the other es- 
says contained therein could appropriately 
have appeared under the same heading, while 
the remaining ones represent somewhat more 
special developments along the same general 
line. Hence the title indicates truthfully the 
subject-matter of the entire collection. The 
volume might appropriately have appeared 
also with the following title: Inspiring 
thoughts relating to the history, bearing and 
educational value of mathematics with empha- 
sis on the philosophical elements. 

The pre-eminent ability of Professor Keyser 
along the line of presenting the fundamental 
elements of abstruse subjects in an elegant and 
popular manner is well known. His style ap- 
peals perhaps more strongly to non-mathema- 
ticians than to the majority of the mathema- 
ticians, who are often so exclusively interested 
in technical mathematical questions as to be 
but little concerned with elegance of language 
and the philosophical question of human 
worth. Teachers of mathematics should, how- 
ever, bear in mind that to many of their stu- 
dents technical mathematical questions have 
little charm, and that some of these students 
could doubtless be reached by the more subtle 
but no less real historical and philosophical 
questions connected with their subjects. 

Hence the volume before us can be highly 
recommended for the prospective teachers of 
mathematics, as well as for those who are in- 
terested in the general cultural values of vari- 
ous scientific subjects. The professional 
mathematician will, however, also find therein 
much that is presented from a somewhat new 


peared in Vol. XXXV., 1912, and Vol. XXXVILI., 
1913. 


August 24, 1917] 


point of view and that throws new light on the 
philosophical questions which permeate the 
various mathematical developments. Among 
the chapters which might appeal especially to 
such readers we may mention those bearing the 
following headings: “ The axiom of infinity,” 
“Mathematical productivity in the United 
States,” and “ Concerning multiple interpre- 
tations of postulate systems and the ‘ exist- 
ence’ of hyperspace.” 

In Chapter IX. Professor Keyser discusses 
“ Graduate mathematical instruction for grad- 
uate students not intending to become mathe- 
maticians,” arguing that such courses need not 
presuppose a first course in calculus, but could 
be based upon the mathematical preparation 
gained in a year of collegiate study. He would 
begin such a course “ with an exposition of the 
nature and function of postulate systems and 
of the great réle such systems have always 
played in the science, especially in the illus- 
trious period of Greek mathematics and even 
more consciously and elaborately in our own 
time.” 

The headings of the nine chapters which 
have not been mentioned in what precedes are 
as follows: “ The human significance of mathe- 
matics,” “The humanization of the teaching 
of mathematics,” “ The walls of the world; or 
concerning the figure and the dimensions of 
the universe of space,” “ Mathematical emanci- 
pation; dimensionality and hyperspace,” “ The 
universe and beyond; the existence of the 
hypercosmic,” “ The permanent basis of a lib- 
eral education,” “ The source and function of 
a university,” “Research in American uni- 
versities,” and “ Mathematics.” 

Some of these titles are the subjects of ad- 
dresses delivered by Professor Keyser before 
large audiences, and many of those who recall 
his stimulating language will doubtless wel- 
come the opportunity to secure a collection 
covering such a wide scope of interests which 
are common to all, but which should appeal 
especially to those devoted to the borderland 
between philosophy and mathematics. One 
finds here a mixture of the most modern theo- 
ries and the emotional descriptions of past 
generations, a charming flow of language il- 


SCIENCE 


187 


luminating most recent advances and, above 
all, an inspiring tableland of thought which is 
easily accessible to all but which is closely re- 
lated with fundamental questions of education. 

The mathematicians, as a class, are perhaps 
too much inclined to put off the historic, philo- 
sophie and didactic questions for later consid- 
eration, following the example of the great 
mathematical encyclopedias which are in 
course of publication. As a result the major- 
ity of them become so engrossed in the tech- 
nical developments of their subjects as to find 
little time for the postponed questions of the 
most fundamental importance—a fate which 
seemed to threaten the encyclopedias just men- 
tioned. A work in which some of these funda- 
mental questions are handled in an attractive 
manner is therefore a valuable and timely ad- 
dition to the mathematical literature. 


G. A. Miter 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


EQUATIONS AS STATEMENTS ABOUT 
THINGS 

In the teaching of elementary physics and 
mathematics, much trouble is often caused by 
the fact that students who can readily solve 
an equation given them are unable to formu- 
late in mathematical terms the data occur- 
ring in a practical problem. The purpose of 
this paper is to report briefly the results of 
several years’ experience with a plan designed 
to remove as much as possible of this trouble 
by making the equations show more readily 
their meanings as shorthand statements of the 
facts. While there is probably nothing about 
these ideas that has not been suggested before, 
such suggestions, when applied at all to teach- 
ing, seem to have been rather vague and in- 
complete, or else applied only to one branch 
of the subject. In this case the plan to be 
outlined has been used in a general course of 
physics and in a course in mechanies, with re- 
sults much more satisfactory than those ob- 
tained by the ordinary method. 

To illustrate the difference between the old 
plan and the new, let us consider a single 
equation, the falling body law 


Si NGtas 


188 


On the old plan, such an equation is merely 
a set of instructions for the computation of 
s. If the body has fallen three seconds, the 
student is expected on the old plan to write 


G2) >< SE >< er Sa 1H 


This process, simple as it appears to the 
teacher, is not so simple for the student, as it 
really involves identifying ¢ as the number of 
seconds the body has fallen, g as the number of 
ft./sec.2 in the gravity acceleration, perform- 
ing the computation and then interpreting the 
result as a number of feet. One obvious cause 
of trouble is the necessity for using certain 
definite units on each side, with the errors 
made by the use of the wrong units; and 
another, perhaps not so obvious, is the fact 
that the formula itself is not a statement 
about a real distance of so many feet, a real 
acceleration of so many ft./sec.” and a real 
time of so many seconds, but about pure num- 
bers, mere incomplete “so many s,” the most 
abstract things yet invented by man. Under 
these conditions is it surprising that a fresh- 
man fails to formulate his data into mathe- 
matical equations? 
On the new plan, the equation is taken as 
a statement about actual concrete things. In 
this particular case, the computation would 
take the form, 
ft. 


- X 3? sec.2 = 144 ft. 
sec? 


s=3X 32 


The interpretation of the formula is now that 
s is physically a result of the combination of 
the gravity acceleration g with the time ¢, 
which enters once in producing the final veloc- 
ity gt, and mean velocity 4g¢ and again in 
combination with this mean velocity to give 
the distance 3gt?. The essential feature in 
the application of this plan is the insertion of 
each quantity as a quantity, that is, as so 
many times another quantity of the same kind, 
and not as a mere “so many.” 

If in computation the boy should happen 
to forget to square t, he would get 


Re gnc 8 geo. ne ageeey, 
sec? sec. 
an obviously impossible kind of answer. But 


if he departs from the above method only in 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1182 


calling {= zy min., he gets 


ft. ibys 
seo eer 2 
sec x 202 Tens 


Aft. min? 
25 sec.” 


= 3X 32 


To reduce this to simpler terms he has only 
to substitute 60? sec? for min?, exactly as he 
would perform any other algebraic substitu- 
tion of equals, and then cancel the sec? and 
finish the computation. Or, if he lets 


min 
= 22 
Qe hr. sec.’ 
he gets 
s= 3X 22 =o X 3? sec.? 
=O eee X 3? sec.2 = 25 min., 


which is as correct an answer as the other. 
To reduce units the game is simply to substi- 
tute equals for equals and cancel. If this does 
not give the right kind of an answer, it is a 
sure indication of an error. 

Of course, to play the game fairly, we must 
abolish formulas with lost units, such as s= 
16¢#. Examples of these are found most fre- 
quently in electricity. The old plan would 
write such a formula as that for the force on 
a wire in a magnetic field, as F—JIH with 
a string of restrictions on units, or F¥ = =,11H 
with another string. By forgetting the re- 
strictions and using the simpler formula with 
the most familiar units, the students often 
achieve remarkable results. On the new plan 
this would be written # = KIIH where 


Sl te dyne 

~ 10 amp. em. gauss. 
and all restrictions are removed. It is of 
of course true that this form of the equation 
involves more writing than the others; indeed, 
it may be noted here that the process of treat- 
ing all equations as physical statements is 
not necessarily worth while for trained men 
doing routine computations, but it is extremely 
useful for all sorts of cases where the com- 
putations are not familiar enough to be clas- 
sified as routine work. For all such cases it 
is well worth while to write out the propor- 
tionality constant, especially if some one is 
likely to want 1, say, in inches or F in kilo- 
grams. 


Aucust 24, 1917] 


In the detailed application of this principle, 
there is one point where confusion might 
arise, though it can readily be avoided. It 
is the anomalous behavior of the unit, radian, 
which appears as a perfectly respectable unit 
when an angular velocity is converted from 
TeV to see 
min ra 


but does not appear when the 


Au Wk Vv ; 
same angular velocity is found from = . This 


anomaly is the only one of its kind, and is 
not nature’s fault, but our own. If we de- 
fine angle as degree of opening, to be meas- 
ured in units of the same kind, the substitu- 
tion method outlined above is the most nat- 


ural method of converting say ETD xed) Tf 
min sec 


on the other hand, we define angle as a mere 
ratio of are to radius it is necessarily a pure 
number (like a sine or a tangent). If we 
swap horses in midstream, we shall either 
miss this unit later or else see it floating up 
where we do not expect it. This means we 
must insert or rub out the unit radian when- 
eyer it is convenient to do so. Fortunately 
angle is the only quantity treated in such a 
way. 

For the sake of such mathematical purists as 
may not approve of the above on. philosoph- 
ical grounds, a few words should be inserted 
here on the meaning of the term “ multipli- 
cation.” In elementary arithmetic it means 
merely repeated addition, but with the intro- 
duction of irrational numbers the term is ex- 
tended by mathematicians to an operation 
that is not strictly repeated addition. The 
plan here advocated extends the notion of 
multiplication still further, to cover a physical 
combination of concrete quantities. In gen- 
eral the definition of multiplication in each 
individual case amounts to translating into 
algebra the ordinary verbal definition of the 
compound quantity involved (area, velocity, 
work, ete.). This extension is made practic- 
able by the fact that the operation thus de- 
fined obeys the same logical postulates as the 
corresponding algebraic operation on pure 
numbers. In other words, the machinery of 
mathematics can be applied not merely to 
numbers, but to any group of concepts and 


? 


SCIENCE 


189 


operations satisfying the same postulates. 


This fact is accepted intuitively by most stu- 


dents; and incidentally the emphasis it puts 
on the definitions prevents most of the well- 
Inown confusion between acceleration and 
velocity, power and work, and so on. 

To sum up, it seems to me after several 
years’ experience with this system, that it has 
the following important advantages: (1) It 
treats equations as neat shorthand statements 
about real physical things and emphasizes the 
esthetic side of mathematics in general; (2) 
It provides an enlarged principle of dimen- 
sions by which equations may be checked 
during computation; and (3) It removes com- 
pletely all restrictions on the units to be used 
and enables the student to concentrate his at- 
tention on the facts of nature without the dis- 
turbing influence of arbitrary rules. 


Davin L. WeEsstTER 


JEFFERSON PHysIcaL LABORATORY, 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


ON THE SWELLING AND “SOLUTION” OF 
PROTEIN IN POLYBASIC ACIDS 
AND THEIR SALTS 


THERE are available only scattered observa- 
tions on the absorption of water by proteins 
in the presence of various polybasic acids and 
their salts. In order to obtain further experi- 
mental data in this field, we undertook a 
rather detailed study of this problem during 
the past year: As examples of proteins, dried 
gelatin dises and powdered fibrin were used. 
For the polybasic acids we chose phosphoric, 
citric and carbonic. In connection with the 
swelling of gelatin, we studied also its “solu- 
tion.” The general results of our experiments 
may be summed up as follows. 


I 


The amounts of water absorbed by gelatin 
from equimolar solutions of monosodium, 
disodium and trisodium phosphate depend not 
only upon which of these salts are present, but 
upon their concentration. Gelatin absorbs 
but little more water in a solution of mono- 
sodium phosphate than it does in pure water. 


190 r 


In low concentrations of disodium phosphate, 
gelatin swells decidedly more than in pure 
water, but as these lower concentrations give 
‘way to higher ones, the gelatin swells less and 
less until, when sufficiently high concentrations 
are attained, the gelatin swells decidedly less 
than in pure water. 

These same general truths may be stated for 
trisodium phosphate, except that the absolute 
amounts of water absorbed in solutions of this 
salt are, at the same molar concentration, 
decidedly higher than in the case of the di- 
sodium salt. Low concentrations of trisodium 
phosphate bring about much greater swelling 
than higher ones. With progressive increase 
in the concentration of the trisodium salt, 
there is a progressive decrease in the amount 
of swelling until a concentration is finally 
reached in which the swelling is decidedly less 
than in pure water. 

Having studied in this fashion the relation 
of swelling to type of salt and its concentra- 
tion, we investigated next the amount of water 
absorbed by gelatin in phosphate mixtures of 
compositions varying from the extreme of 
pure phosphoric acid on the one hand through 
mono-, di- and trisodium phosphate to pure 
sodium hydroxid on the other. These mix- 
tures were made in different ways. Beginning 
with pure phosphoric acid, we added succes- 
sively greater quantities of sodium hydroxid, 
or beginning with sodium hydroxid, we added 
successively greater amounts of acid until the 
theoretical neutralization had been accom- 
plished; or we began with pure acid and re- 
placed this with more and more of the mono- 
di-, or trisodium phosphate until the opposite 
extreme of a pure alkali was reached; or we 
began with a definite concentration of any one 
of the phosphates and added progressively 
ereater amounts of either acid or alkali. The 
results in all these expriments were practically 
the same. In 24 to 48 hours the gelatin at- 
tained its maximal swelling (practically). 
When the amount of swelling is plotted on the 
vertical and the changes in the composition of 
the solutions from acid through the mixtures 
of the mono-, di- and trisodium salts to pure 
alkali on the horizontal, a curve, roughly V- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1182 


shaped, is obtained. Greatest swelling is ob- 
served in the pure acid solution and least in a 
solution consisting essentially of monosodium 
phosphate. From this point on, there is a 
gradual increase in the swelling of the gelatin 
until the disodium salt is passed, when there 
occurs a more abrupt rise until the trisodium 
salt is reached, beyond which the curve rises 
still more steeply until the sodium hydroxid 
end of the series is attained. 

The swelling of gelatin in monosodium, di- 
sodium and trisodium citrate follows the same 
general laws as its swelling in the correspond- 
ing salts of phosphoric acid. Monosodium 
citrate in all concentrations increases some- 
what the swelling of gelatin over the amount 
of swelling in pure water. The same is true 
of low concentrations of disodium citrate. 
But the higher concentrations of this salt de- 
press the swelling to below that attained in 
pure water. These statements also hold for the 
trisodium salt. As we succeed in getting 
more base into the citrate, there appears a 
distinctly greater tendency to depress the 
amount of water absorption. 

In studying the amounts of water absorbed 
in citrate mixtures varying between the ex- 
treme, on the one hand, of pure citric acid, 
through mono-, di- and trisodium citrate to 
pure sodium hydroxid, we observed that the re- 
sults (when amount of swelling is plotted on 
the vertical and progressive change in compo- 
sition of solution on the horizontal) yield a U- 
shaped curve. Greatest swelling is obtained 
in the pure acid, the amount of this swelling 
decreasing progressively as we approach the 
monosodium salt. From the monosodium to 
the disodium salt the curve falls more gently, 
until a minimal point is reached in a mixture 
of about equal parts of monosodium citrate 
and disodium citrate. From here on, the 
curve rises gradually to the trisodium salt, 
after which it ascends steeply as we pass 
toward the extreme of the pure alkali. 

We have also studied in this fashion the 
effects of carbonate mixtures. As the sodium 
bicarbonate in a pure solution of this salt is 
gradually displaced by a molecularly equiv- 
alent amount of sodium carbonate, and this 


AvucusT 24, 1917] 


in its turn by an equivalent of sodium hy- 
droxid, the amount of water absorbed gradu- 
ally increases in the form of the right arm of 
the letter U. Swelling is least in the pure so- 
dium bicarbonate, increases slowly in the so- 
dium carbonate and then more rapidly as this 
is replaced by sodium hydroxid. The swelling 
of gelatin in pure sodium bicarbonate is 
slightly higher, in the concentration employed 
by us, than in pure water. 


I 


Practically the same findings as have been 
detailed for gelatin in the paragraphs given 
above were encountered when the swelling of 
fibrin was studied in different concentrations 
of the pure salts or in mixtures of these, vary- 
ing between the extremes of acid on the one 
hand and alkali on the other. 


Il 


It has been pointed out in previous papers’ 
that the swelling of a protein and its lique- 
faction or “solution” are totally different 
processes. The “solution” of gelatin is, in 
other words, not merely the extreme or a con- 
tinuation of the swelling of a protein. We 
were able to verify these results in studying, 
in parallel with the swelling of gelatin in poly- 
basic acids and their salts, its “solution ” un- 
der the same circumstances. 

When gelatin containing a unit amount of 
water, and solid at ordinary room tempera- 
ture, has mixed with it phosphoric acid, phos- 
phate mixtures or sodium hydroxid in the 
concentrations already discussed above, it is 
found that the “solution” or liquefaction of 
the gelatin parallels its swelling. In other 
words, gelatin remains solid in phosphate mix- 
tures of various kinds, but tends to lose in 
viscosity, to liquefy and to remain fluid as we 
pass from the phosphates in the direction 
either toward acid or toward alkali. 


IV 
We hold these experiments to be corrobora- 
tive of, and to bear upon notions previously 
1 Martin H. Fischer, Science, N. §., Vol. XLIL., 


p. 223 (1915); Kolloid Zeitschr., Vol. XVII., p. 1 
(1915). 


SCIENCE 


191 


expressed regarding the importance of acids, 
of alkalies, of various salts and of these in 
mixture in determining the amount of water 
absorbed by protoplasm under physiological 
and pathological conditions. The well-estab- 
lished qualitative and quantitative analogy 
between the absorption of water by various 
hydrophilic colloids (like the proteins) and 
isolated cells, organs or organisms, whether of 
animal or vegetable origin, shows that proto- 
plasmie water absorption is essentially a 
colloid-chemical phenomenon. These studies 
with polybasie acids and their salts therefore 
bring further proof of the importance of an 
abnormal production or accumulation of acids 
within such colloid systems for increasing the 
amount of water thus held, and so of explain- 
ing the mechanism by which the abnormally 
high hydrations of living cells are brought 
about as observed in edema, excessive turgor 
and plasmoptysis, or in those various “ dis- 
eases” which are in essence only edemas of 
the involved organs like nephritis, glaucoma 
and “uremia.” These experiments also show 
how coincident with, but not synonymous with 
the increased swelling there also occur a “ soft- 
ening”? and an increased “solution” of the 
colloids of the involved tissues, thus explain- 
ing further the “softening” of organs after 
an initial swelling together with the appear- 
ance of increased amounts of colloid (like pro- 
tein) in the fluids bathing or expressed from 
the involved edematous tissues (albuminuria, 
excessive protein content of spinal fluid in ede- 
mas of the central nervous system, increased 
protein content of serous accumulations, etc.). 


Martin H. FIscHer, 
Marian O. Hooker, 
Martin BENzINGER, 
Warp D. CorrMan 
EICHBERG LABORATORY OF PHYSIOLOGY, 
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, 
May 30, 1917 


2For a discussion of tissue softening as due to 
the breaking of an emulsion see Martin H. 
Fischer and Marian O. Hooker, Science, N. S., 
Vol. XLIII, p. 468 (1916); ‘‘Fats and Fatty De- 
generation,’’ 76, New York, 1917. 


192 


NOTES ON MITES ATTACKING ORCHARD AND 
FIELD CROPS IN UTAH? 

Durine the summers of 1915 and 1916 while 
making investigations for the laboratory of 
the American Smelting & Refining Company, 
Department of Agricultural Investigations, I 
found certain mites to be particularly abun- 
dant and destructive to grains in Utah. 

The most important of these was the com- 
mon Tetranychus bimaculatus Harvey, which 
Ewing believes is the same as 7’. telarius Linn. 
The host list for this species, as Ewing has 
pointed out, is a long one, and it is an impor- 
tant pest on a surprisingly large number of 
crops. In 1916 it was so abundant in orchards 
that many cherry trees were completely de- 
foliated before the end of August, and apricot, 
pear, plum and apple trees were only a little 
less seriously affected. Raspberry and currant 
bushes suffered severely, some of them losing 
all of their leaves. Peas, beans, tomatoes and 
other kinds of garden truck showed more or 
less injury in all stages of their development, 
and in one field of sugar beets, I found many 
leaves drying and turning brown on account of 
the attacks of this mite. The loss of the 
foliage of many ornamental plants, while not 
of so much economic importance, was, of 
course, a very annoying thing. 

Corn probably suffered more than any other 
field crop. In many fields practically every 
plant suffered the loss of some of its leaves, 
and in other places all of the leaves turned 
brown and became thoroughly dry because of 
the presence of the myriads of mites that 
covered the undersides of the leaves. The 
parts of the fields where the soil was lighter 
and dryer usually suffered most, but no parts 
seemed to be immune from the attacks of this 
pest. The suckers and lower leaves were the 
first to be attacked and to show the brown 
spots or streaks where colonies of the mites 
were feeding. When the trouble went no fur- 
ther it was of but little economic importance, 
but when the upper leaves were attacked and 
practically all destroyed the plant withered and 
was not even good for fodder. 7 

1 Contribution from the laboratories of the 
American Smelting and Refining Co., Department 
of Agricultural Investigations. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No, 1182 


Many wheat fields also sustained consider- 
able losses due to the attacks of the same mite. 
The wheat plants would usually be attacked a 
short time before the head burst from the 
sheath and when the infestation was bad the 
leaves would become dry and brown at the 
point of attack and the portion of the leaf 
beyond this would droop down and dry out. 
Often all of the leaves would be affected in 
this way and the heads, if they developed at 
all, would be small and poorly filled. 

Earlier in the season, while the wheat plants 
were much smaller, they were often attacked 
by two other species of mites. One of these 
is the well-known clover mite, Bryobia pra- 
tensis. The other has been called the jumping 
mite on account of its habit of quickly fold- 
ing its legs and dropping from the plant when 
disturbed. Banks in Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash., 
Vol. 14, p. 97, named this species Tetranychus 
longipes. A letter dated June 29, 1915, says 
that he now places it with two others in a new 
genus, Tetranobia. He refers to this genus 
again in his bulletin on “The Acarina or 
Mites” (Rept. No. 108, U. S. Dept. Agric. 
Office of Sec., pp. 83 and 38) but the formal 
description of the genus has not yet been pub- 
lished. The common name, jumping mite, is 
somewhat misleading, for the mite does not 
actually jump, but, when alarmed, it folds its 
legs quickly and may thus be thrown a short 
distance from the spot where it was feeding. 
In fields where the mite is abundant the 
leaves turn distinctly gray and many of them 
become so dry that the growth of the plant is 
seriously affected. Both B. pratensis and 
Tetranobia longipes were found destructively 
abundant not only on wheat, but on barley, 
oats and many wild grasses. 

R. W. Doane 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY 


THE OCCURRENCE OF MANNITE IN SILAGE 
AND ITS POSSIBLE UTILIZATION IN THE 
MANUFACTURE OF EXPLOSIVES 


Durineé the course of our investigations on 
the fermentation processes that occur immedi- 
ately after the ensiling of corn, and the chem- 
ical products resulting therefrom, it was found 


August 24, 1917] 


that mannite could be isolated from practically 
every sample of normal corn silage. The alco- 
holie extract from dried silage yielded, on 
evaporation, considerable amounts of mannite, 
which after one recrystallization gave the 
characteristic crystals melting at 168-169°. 
That the presence of mannite can not be con- 
sidered a local phenomenon is shown by the 
fact that silage samples obtained from a num- 
ber of other states in the middle west all con- 
tained mannite. The only previous reference 
to the occurrence of mannite in silage is in 
a paper by Manns,! published a quarter of a 
century ago. In his work, however, only one 
sample of silage was examined and the ap- 
proximate amount of mannite found was not 
stated. 

The following table shows the amount of 
mannite actually isolated by us from samples 
of silage obtained from various sources: 


| 
Mannite. 


Date Source Material (Per Cent. 
on Air- 
dry Basis) 
Feb. 20 | Iowa Corn silage juice 1.30 
Mar. 14 | Wisconsin | Corn silage 1.70 
Mar. 20 | Nebraska | Corn silage 2.07 
Mar. 21 | Minnesota | Corn silage 2.51 
Mar. 27 | Minnesota | Corn silage 1.47 
Mar. 27 | Illinois Corn silage 2.15 
Mar. 23 | Missouri | Silage from immature | 0.52 
corn 
Mar. 20 | Kansas Cane silage. 3.30 
May 17} Montana | Sunflower silage 5.61 
Apr. 16} Arkansas | Cornandcowpeasilage| none 
Mar. 2 | Illinois Sweet clover silage none °* 
May 11 | Iowa Ensiled corn stover 3.04 
+ sucrose 30 days 
Feb. 21 | Iowa Ensiled corn stover 2.12 
+ sucrose 13 days 
May 27 | Iowa Ensiled green corn 1.72 
e 10 days 
Feb. 21 | Iowa Ensiled corn stover none 
+ glucose 30 days 


Tt will be noted that the highest percentages 
of mannite are to be found in the sunflower 
silage, the cane silage and the experimental 
corn silage to which sucrose had been added. 
Evidently the mother substance of the man- 
nite is sucrose, or more specifically its fructose 
moiety. 

The production of mannite no doubt reaches 

1Tllinois Ag. Exp. Sta. Bulletin, No. 7, pp. 190- 
193. 


SCIENCE 


193 


a maximum soon after filling the silo and then 
some loss probably occurs, owing to further 
bacterial activities. However, the amount of 
mannite is still considerable when the silage 
is several months old. 

If it is desired to prepare quantities of man- 
nite without reference to an approximately 
quantitative yield, the method may be much 
simplified. The silage is put in a powerful 
press, the juice filtered, evaporated to about 
one sixth of its volume and two or three vol- 
umes of alcohol added. The mannite then 
erystallizes out, and the alcohol can be recov- 
ered in the usual way. In this manner it 
should be possible to extract the mannite on a 
large scale at very little cost. The pressed 
residue and the mother liquor could be com- 
bined and used for feeding in place of the orig- 
inal silage, since practically nothing would be 
removed but the mannite and the volatile acids. 

Mannite yields a nitration product very 
similar in properties to nitroglycerin. Accord- 
ing to Sanford,? “ Nitromannite is more dan- 
gerous than nitroglycerin, as it is more sensi- 
tive to shock. It is intermediate in its shat- 
tering properties between nitroglycerin and 
fulminate of mercury. ... It is not manufac- 
tured upon the commercial scale.” 

The reason nitromannite is not made com- 
mercially is probably the prohibitive cost of 
mannite. Prepared by the above method from 
silage, mannite should be even cheaper than 
glycerin, especially if the residues are utilized 
as cattle feed. The thousands of tons of silage 
used every year by the farmers of this country 
could be made to yield a valuable by-product if 
treated by this simple process. 

ArtHur W. Dox, 
G. P. PuLaisance 
Iowa AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 


THE NORTH CAROLINA ACADEMY OF 
i SCIENCE 
THE sixteenth annual meeting of the North Caro- 
lina Academy of Science was held at the Univer- 
sity of North Carolina on Friday and Saturday, 
April 27 and 28, 1917. At 2:30 p.m. the executive 


2 Nitro-Explosives, p. 110, D. Van Nostrand Co., 
1906. 


194 


committee met, passed on the report of the secre- 
tary-treasurer, elected 10 new members, and se- 
lected the State Normal College, Greensboro, as 
the next place of meeting. At 3 P.M. the reading 
of papers was begun and continued until 5:30, 
when adjournment was had. MReconvening at 8 
P.M., the academy was welcomed to the university 
by Dean Andrew H. Patterson, after which Presi- 
dent F. P. Venable, of the academy, delivered his 
presidential address, ‘‘The structure of the 
atom.’’* Next Professor Collier Cobb gave a lee- 
ture on ‘‘ Typical early maps of North Carolina’’ 
illustrated by lantern slides of some of the maps 
in question. The academy then adjourned to the 
hospitable home of Professor W. C. Coker for a 
highly enjoyable smoker. 

The annual business meeting of the academy was 
held at 9:15 Saturday morning. Reports of the 
secretary-treasurer, the executive and other com- 
mittees were made. On motion a committee was 
appointed to cooperate with a similar committee 
from the Science Section of the North Carolina 
State Teachers’ Association in studying the sub- 
ject of the teaching of high-school sciences in the 
state with reference to its increased efficiency. 
The secretary reported on his visit to the meeting 
of the Southern Association of Colleges and Sec- 
ondary Schools and his appearance in behalf of 
the work in science before its committee on the 
curriculum of secondary schools. On motion, the 
secretary was again appointed as the representa- 
tive of the academy at the next meeting of this as- 
sociation. After some discussion it was declared 
the sense of the meeting that an increased effort 
be made in 1918 to bring into the membership of 
the academy as many as possible of the high-school 
teachers of science in the state. 

The following officers were elected for 1917-18: 

President—W. A. Withers, State Agricultural 
and Engineering College, West Raleigh. 

Vice-president—J. H. Pratt, University of North 
Carolina, Chapel Hill. 

Secretary-treasurer—E. W. Gudger, State Nor- 
mal College, Greensboro. 

Additional members executive committee—Bert 
Cunningham, High School, Durham; H. R. Totten, 
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; H. C. 
Beardslee, Asheville School, Asheville. 

At 10:50 a joint meeting was held of the acad- 
emy and the North Carolina Section of the Ameri- 
can Chemical Society for the reading of the papers 
of common interest to both bodies. Following 
this, papers were read before the academy until 
the program was finished at 1:40, when the mem- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1182 


bers were entertained by the university at 
luncheon in Swain Hall. Of the 20 papers on the 
program not one was read by title. Counting the 
10 new members, the total membership of the acad- 
emy is 84, of whom 37 were present at this meet- 
ing. Including the presidential address, which will 
be published in the current number of the Journal 
of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, the fol- 
lowing papers were read: 


Pliocene deposits in Orange county: JOHN E. 

SMITH. 

These occur on the divides and on the higher 
terraces in the plateau section of the county and 
generally over the Triassie area except on the 
floodplains and on the steeper slopes near the 
streams. 

On the upland (elevation, 500-600 feet) this ma- 
terial consists of smooth, rounded pebbles and 
eobbles (some of which are polished) of quartz and 
quartzose minerals up to six inches or more in 
diameter, together with fragments of the same and 
of other minerals down to the size of soil particles. 
In the Triassic area (elevation, 250-400 feet) the 
deposit comprises gravel, sand and soil (in addi- 
tion to the above) in some places reaching a thick- 
ness of a foot or more. This material has been 
transported from a distance and characterizes the 
Granville soils, distinguishing them from those of 
the Penn series, which are derived from the Tri- 
assic rocks in place. 

The thinly distributed pebbles on the higher di- 
vides of the county may be remnants of river de- 
posits on a peneplain, but the soils, ete., of the 
lower interstream areas are doubtless of Lafayette 
age. (Illustrated with lantern slides.) 


The pollination of Rotundifolia grapes: L. R. 

DETJEN. 

A close examination of the flowers of Vitis 
rotundifolia brings out the fact that this species of 
grape is not at all adapted to cross-pollination by 
means of the wind; on the contrary, it seems to in- 
dicate that insects alone are responsible for the 
transportation of the pollen. Bees of the family 
Andrenide and beetles of the species Chauliog- 
nathus marginatus were tested for their propensi- 
ties of transporting pollen and for the searching 
for flowers of the fruit-bearing varieties. 

The test was made by enclosing insects, newly 
captured on flowers of staminate vines, separately 
in spacious cloth bags together with clusters of 
open but unpollinated flowers. The results se- 
cured substantiate the hypothesis of insect pollina- 
tion. They further indicate that bees of the fam- 


Aueust 24, 1917] 


ily Andrenide are probably the most effective 
pollinators of the vine and that beetles are of only 
minor importance. Bees of the family Mega- 
chilidw are also active workers and undoubtedly: 
contribute considerably toward the production of 
fruit. 


Saprolegnia anisospora in America: W. C. CoKER. 
This species has not before been reported in 
America. We have found it twice in Chapel Hill, 
in marshy shaded places containing alge. It is dis- 
tinguished chiefly by the following characters: 

1. The presence of spores of two or three sizes, 
borne usually in separate sporangia without re- 
gard to the size of the latter; the small spores 
from 10.5-11 4 in diameter, the large ones from 
13.7-14.8 « in diameter. In nearly all cultures 
there are formed a few very large spores, at least 
twice the size of the ordinary large ones, these ap- 
pearing mixed in with the latter. 

2. The irregular shape of the sporangia, which 
are not evenly cylindrical, but more or less waved, 
bent and constricted, and which proliferate either 
laterally from below as in Achlya, or within the 
old ones, as is usual in Saprolegnia. 

3. In sexual reproduction numerous oogonia are 
formed, each with one or more antheridia of di- 
clinous origin. 

The jaws of the great barracuda, Sphyrena barra- 
cuda: E. W. GuDGER. 

A careful description, illustrated by photographs 
and a specimen, was given of the teeth and jaws of 
this fish. Their use was briefly described and 
some accounts of the ferocity of the fish narrated. 
In the waters of southern Florida it is generally 
more feared than the shark, being bold and in- 
quisitive where the shark is cowardly. The data 
presented are part of a paper now in press in a 
volume of memoirs from the Tortugas Laboratory 
of the Carnegie Institution at Washington. 


The status of the science work in the high schools 
of North Carolina (lantern): S. J. Marton. 
This survey and report will be published in full 

in the forthcoming issue of the North Carolina 

High School Bulletin. 


Armillaria mellea, Clitocybe cespitosa, Pleurotus 
sapidus and Claudopus nidulans in pure culture: 
H. R. Torren. 

The fact that the spores of Armillaria mellea 
and Clitocybe cespitosa (C. monodelpha) have two 
walls, while the spores of Plewrotus sapidus and 
Claudopus nidulans have only one wall is plainly 
shown in the sprouting spores. Mycelia of the 
four mushrooms were shown in pure culture on 


SCIENCE 


195 


several media, also drawings of the mycelial 
threads as seen under high power. Armillaria 
mellea forms a slow-growing, closely flocculent, 
cream-colored mat, and soon produces long, brown 
to black, root-like rhizomorphs. In agar these 
rhizomorphs are beautifully shown radiating from 
the mat-like central mass. The mycelium of 
Clitocybe cespitosa is much like that of Armillaria 
mellea, but the threads are not so closely woven 
and the rhizomorphs, or root-like bodies, are 
white. Itis shown that Armillaria mellea and Clito- 
cybe cespitosa, while very closely related, are not 
the same. The mycelium of Claudopus nidulans is 
silkier and is from white to pink in color. The 
mycelium of Plewrotus sapidus except in old cul- 
tures is loose and silky and is very fast growing, 
soon covering the medium with a mass of pure 
white threads. Fruiting bodies of both Pleurotus 
sapidus and Claudopus nidulans were shown de- 
veloping in pure cultures. 

Structural geology of Orange county, N. C.: JoHN 

E. Smiru. 

With few exceptions the rocks of this county 
occur in long, narrow belts and ‘‘islands’’ extend- 
ing north 65° east. Named in their order from the 
southeast these areas comprise the Triassic sedi- 
mentaries, granite, diorite, rhyolite, schists and 
greenstone, diorite, schists and phyllite, green- 
stone and schists, diorite, schists and greenstone, 
diorite, granite. 

The structure of these rocks is that of a syncline 
whose trough centers along the line of strike and 
passes near Cheek’s Siding about three miles east 
of Mebane. Measured along the dip this syncline 
is approximately twenty miles wide and probably 
contains folds of minor importance within it. The 
major joints, flow lines, ete., of the igneous rocks 
in many places parallel both the dip and the 
strike of the schists belts. Inclusions of the 
diorite in the granite attest the greater age of the 
former and the presence of belts of igneous rocks 
beneath the margins of the syncline certify their 
contribution to the structure and prove the greater 
age of the schists, ete. South of Chapel Hill be- 
yond Morgan Creek the strike is due east and west 
and the conglomerates, slates and rhyolites dip to 
the south at an angle of 65°. (Mlustrated with 
maps, charts and structure sections.) 

State regulation of the sale and manufacture of 
gas: C. W. EDwarps. 

In 1910, out of 228 cities in the United States 
of more than 25,000 population, only 47 had no 
requirements such as are in a bill proposed for 
North Carolina. Of these 228 cities, 103 are 


196 


under state laws and have no additional municipal 
regulations. A number of cities such as Baltimore, 
Buffalo, Los Angeles and Milwaukee have local 
provisions in addition to state laws. In 1910, six- 
teen states had laws providing for the state inspec- 
tion of meters and of the purity of gas—Connecti- 
eut, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, 
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, 
Ohio, Oklahoma, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, 
Wisconsin and California (B. of S. Cireular No. 
32). Doubtless the list is now larger. 

In 1910 the net income to the state of Massa- 
chusetts in meter-testing alone was over $5,000. 
The total cost of the tests on quality, purity, pres- 
sure, etc., was assessed on the operating companies 
according to their sales. Meter-testing is on the 
fee basis. There is no good reason why such a de- 
partment in North Carolina would not yield a 
revenue to the state. 

That the Corporation Commission in North Caro- 
lina should have the power and machinery at its 
command to protect the interests of citizens seems 
obvious for the following reasons: Under existing 
law it is the duty of the commission to regulate 
the rates to be charged by gas companies. The 
proper price is determined in a large measure by 
the quality of product sold and this is almost at 
the will of the producer. Gas in New York City 
furnishes 680 heat units per cubic foot and is sold 
at 80 cents. Gas in Durham furnishes at times less 
than 500 heat units and is sold at $1.50. In one 
city in this state gas furnishing 412 heat units sold 
for $1.60. The standard requirement in regulated 
states is around 600 heat units. The difference in 
quality means a loss of from five to twenty thou- 
sand dollars per year to consumers in various 
towns of this state and the loss would easily run 
into hundreds of thousands to the state at large. 
While it may be to the interest of certain com- 
munities to sell a cheap, poor gas it is safe to say 
that it is always against public interest to have a 
cheap, poor gas sold at a rich, high price. To 
fairly meet its responsibility the commission must 
know from its own tests the quality of the product 
sold. The consumer is entirely helpless. 

Aside from the question of rates, the public is 
vitally interested from the standpoint of health. 
In the method of manufacture used by one com- 
pany in this state, carbon monoxide and hydrogen 
are produced in equal quantities. Both of these 
gases are odorless and one is a deadly poison. 
Combined they give a cheap gas furnishing about 
300 heat units. This gas causes a meter to register 
just as fast as a 600 heat unit gas. It is the duty 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No, 1182 


of this company to carburet this gas with an oil 
which not only brings its heat value to standard, 
but gives it a very pungent odor that makes it 
noticeable in case of a leak. In this town a series 
of fatal accidents have occurred due solely to the 
neglect of the service company. In other methods 
other deleterious elements are introduced by eare- 
lessness so that in all cases public interest de- 
mands systematic testing under the authority of 
the state. 

It is just as reasonable to let manufacturers sell 
anything called fertilizer without tests as to com- 
position as it is to permit of the sale of untested 
gas. Our duty to test meters is just as obvious 
as our duty to test weights and measures. 

The advantages resulting from such an act 
would not even be principally with the citizen. 
An expert employed by the state to travel from 
plant to plant observing and testing, corrects ir- 
regularities and errors in manufacture that may 
mean thousands of dollars saved to the companies. 
If ammonia appears in the gas it means that a 
valuable by-product is being lost. So it is with 
other errors of manufacture. The fact that meters 
are tested by the state brings a feeling of confi- 
dence to the consumer that is worth much to the 
gas companies. Uniform, improved and econom- 
ical manufacture brings new and profitable business 
and this more than compensates for any costs in- 
volved. : 

No abstracts have been received for the follow- 
ing papers: : 

The relative toxicity of uranium nitrate in ani- 
mals of different ages, by Wm. DeB. MacNider. 

Trembles, by Frederick A. Wolf. 

Permanency in fleshy fungi, by H. C. Beardslee. 

Sound-wave photography (lantern), by Andrew 
H. Patterson. 

Evolution in sponges and changes in elassifica- 
tion, by H. V. Wilson. 

The revision of the atomic weight of zirconium, 
by F. P. Venable and J. M. Bell. 

Recent investigations about cottonseed meal, by 
W. A. Withers and F. E. Carruth. 

The physics of the shrapnel shell, by Andrew H. 
Patterson. 

Portolan charts (lantern), by Collier Cobb. 

The idea of force in mechanics, by Andrew H. 
Patterson. 

The times we think in, by George W. Lay. 

The life history of the pecan trunk borer, by R. 
W. Leiby. 

E. W. GUDGER, 
Secretary 


SCIENCE 


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This electrometer, of the quadrant type, somewhat 
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The instrument is highly sensitive (0-50,000 mm. per 
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SCIENCE” 


Fripay, Aueusr 31, 1917 


CONTENTS 
Liebig’s Law of the Minimum in relation to 
General Biological Problems: PROFESSOR 
BELEN EVID) PELOOKER wel Ray tstaralsyaaetetsconssetelersbe/ siete 


The Peck Testimonial Exhibit of Mushroom 
Models: H. D. House 


Scientific Hvents :— 
Farm Colonies for Tuberculous Soldiers; 
Research Work of the Red Cross in France ; 
War Demonstration Hospital of the Rocke- 
feller Institute; The Mathematical Asso- 
ciation of America; John Oren Reed and 


197 


204 


LEQUi PORS EDU a pb cee hoa too moon OT OeOOpO 205 
Seventific Notes and News... 0.52.6. 002 +s 208 
University and Educational News .......... 210 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Interpretation of the Results of Field 
Experiments with Different Phosphates: 
Proressor C. A. Moorrs. A Method for 
obtaining Ameba: C. E. Gordon. Crossing 
over in the Sex Chromosome of the Male 
Fowl: Dr. H. D. Goopatr. The Equal 
Parallax Curve for Frontal and Lateral 
Vision: Paut R. Riwer. A Predecessor of 


ETAESULEY |<, DRal Wie) WW a KEEN sie iet-seyoie les svereyer 210 
Scientific Books :— 

Kelsey on the Physical Basis of Society: 

ProFessor F. Stuart CHapiIn. Licks on 

Recreations in Mathematics: Prorressor 

TOUTS CAPRCARPING Klunsieys eiceiotereiateleioioheintciers 215 


Special Articles :— 
The Effects of Thyroid Removal upon the 
Development of the Gonads in the Larve 
of Rana Pipiens: Proressor BENNET M. 


ALLEN. The Stansiphon: Proressor P. B. 

IDEERKGINS cy ois csevaleerere sore petcree ote sista eicharetae cs 216 
The American Philosophical Society: Pro- 

FESSOR ARTHUR W. GOODSPEED ........... 219 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
on-Hudson, N. Y. 


LIEBIG’S LAW OF THE MINIMUM IN 
RELATION TO GENERAL BIOLOG- 
ICAL PROBLEMS1 

Tue Law of the Minimum has never been 
accurately defined, although the idea that it 
involves is relatively simple. Professor B. 
HK. Livingston says in a recent paper? that 
‘‘this principle is still quite incomplete log- 
ically and its statement will assuredly be- 
come much more complex as our science 
advaneces.’’ In order to get a clear under- 
standing of the law so that it may be stated 
accurately, we will begin with a simple 
application to chemical reactions. 

One molecule of KOH reacts with one 
molecule of HCl to form one molecule of 
KCl and one of H,O. If only one molecule 
of KOH is present, only one molecule of 
KCl can be formed, no matter how many 
molecules of HCl are present; and likewise 
if only one molecule of HCl is present, only 
one molecule of KCl can be formed, no mat- 
ter how many molecules of KOH are pres- 
ent. By considering the weights of the 
reacting substances, the situation is some- 
what complicated: 56.1 grams of KOH 
react with 36.5 grams of HCl to form 74.6 
grams of KCl and 18 grams of H,O. In 
round numbers 3 parts by weight of KOH 
and two of HCl give 4 parts by weight of 
KCl and one of H,O: 3/4 gr. of KOH and 
1/2 gr. of HCl are necessary to form a gram 
of KCl. Let us call these fractions, 3/4 and 
1/2, the specific reactive weights of KOH 
and HCl in respect to the formation of a 
unit quantity of KCl. Suppose « amount 
of KOH and y of HCl are given. If x and 

1 Paper read before the Biological Club of Yale 


University, April 19, 1917. 
2 Plant World, 20: 1-15, 1917. 


198 


y are divided by their respective specific 
reactive weights, we get 3% and 2y. The 


smaller of these quantities is a direct meas- 
ure of the weight of KCl that can be 
formed from « KOH and y HCl. If, for ex- 
ample, + and y are both equal to three 
grams, four grams of KCl can be obtained. 

These facts can be generalized. If A, B 
and C are substances which react to form S 
and u A, v B and w C are necessary for the 
formation of a unit amount of S, then u, v 
and w may be called the specific reactive val- 
ues of A, B and C, respectively. They may 
be weights, volumes, numbers of molecules 
or what not. In any particular case, where 
pA, qB and rC are reacting, the amount of 
S formed is the smallest of the fractions 
p/u, q/v, r/w. When the amounts of the 
reacting substances are divided by their 
specific reactive values, the smallest quan- 
tity so obtained is equal to the amount of 
the product formed. 

This conclusion is directly applicable to 
the problem of fertilizers. It is known that 
most of the higher plants must obtain 
seven elements in combined form from the 
soil. They are S, P, N, K, Ca, Mg and Fe. 
If aS, BP, yN, 5K, «Ca, (Mg and 7Fe are 
required for a unit amount of growth in 
some particular plant, say wheat, and if 
aS, bP, cN, dK, eCa, fMg and gF e are pres- 
ent in a particular soil in available form, 
the maximum amount of wheat that can be 
grown in that soil will be the smallest of 
the fractions a/a, b/B, c/y, 4/8, e/e, f/E, 
g/y. In this case a, B, y, ete., may be called 
specific growth values for the plant under 
consideration. When the available amounts 
of the essential inorganic food constituents 
are divided by their respective growth 
values, the smallest quantity obtained gives 
the maximum amount of growth possible. 

It was in this connection that Liebig® first 


8 Die Chemie in ihre Anwendung auf Agricul- 
tur und Physiologie,’’ 7*® Auflage, 2: 225, 1862. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


formulated the Law of the Minimum which, 
as commonly stated,* says that ‘‘the yield 
of any crop always depends on that nutri- 
tive constituent which is present in mini- 
mum amount.’’ The use of the term mini- 
mum is not strictly accurate, as can be seen 
from the example of KOH and HCl. If 
three grams of each are present, the amount 
of KOH determines the yield of KCl, al- 
though both HCl and KOH are present in 
equal amount. However, the above state- 
ment of the law is convenient because of its 
simplicity. 

A much broader application of the Law 
of the Minimum was indicated by the work 
of F. F. Blackman, whose conclusions are 
summarized in his paper on ‘‘Optima and 
limiting factors.’’> Blackman called atten- 
tion to the complexity of the process of car- 
bon assimilation, the rate of which depends 
on at least six factors— 

1. Temperature, 
. Light intensity, 
. Carbon-dioxide supply, 
. Water supply, 
. Chlorophyll, 
. Enzymes. 


Q oP ow bo 


Where it is possible to vary one of these 
factors independently of the rest, its effect 
on the rate of assimilation can be measured, 
under suitable conditions, and a curve 
plotted. In this way a temperature-as- 
similation curve, a light-assimilation curve 
and a carbon-dioxide-assimilation curve 
can be constructed. The other factors 
are more difficult to control. The fol- 
lowing curves were constructed by Black- 
man and Smith® from a study of the 
rate of assimilation in Elodea. 

The light curve and the carbon-dioxide 
curve are straight lines. The rate of as- 
similation varies directly with the inten- 

4 Cf. F. Ozapek, ‘‘Biochemie der Pflanzen,’’ 2: 
841, 1905. 


5 Annals of Botany, 19: 281-295, 1905. 
6 Proc. R. Soc., B., 83: 389-412, 1910. 


Aveust 31, 1917] 


sity of light and the supply of carbon di- 
oxide. The temperature curve shows that 
the rate of assimilation is an exponential 
function of the temperature. In fact the 
process of assimilation obeys van’t Hoff’s 


a 


040 


Jnoy 42d 795 wb :vorsejiwissy 
§ 3 : 
8 
° 


30.05%5-a10 SAR (OSMn 5 sim O° 

CO, Supply Temperature 
Fig. 1. 
in Elodea. 


Effect of external factors on assimilation 
(After Blackman and Smith.) 


law of reactions for temperatures under 
30° C. Above this, the rate of assimilation 
at first rises and then falls off, the process 
being complicated at high temperatures by 
a ‘‘time factor.’’ The same effect has been 
observed at high light intensities, and with 
strong concentrations of carbon-dioxide 
which have a narcotic effect. 

Disregarding these complications, we 
will confine our attention to the first parts 
of these curves. The ordinates of all three 
curves are the same, namely, rates of carbon 
assimilation, which can be measured in 
terms either of CO, absorbed or of sugar 
produced. The former happens to be the 
more convenient measure. At any given 
temperature, the rate of assimilation which 
is a function of that particular temperature 
can be determined directly by the curve and 
is equal to a certain distance measured off 
from the origin on the Y-axis. Similar dis- 
tances are given for any definite supply of 
carbon dioxide and for any degree of il- 
lumination. In any actual environmental 
complex, where the temperature, light and 
earbon-dioxide supply are known, the rate 


SCIENCE 


199 


of assimilation is equal to the shortest dis- 
tance measured on the Y-axis. This is 
stated as a general principle by Blackman 
as follows: ‘‘When a process is conditioned 
as to its rapidity by a number of separate 
factors, the rate of the process is limited 
by the pace of the ‘slowest’ factor.’’ The 
factor which gives the shortest distance on 
the Y-axis—that is, the ‘‘slowest’’ factor, 
he calls the limiting factor. 

As a matter of fact the carbon assimila- 
tion of green plants is usually limited by 
the seasonal variation in temperature and 
the diurnal variation in light, the CO, con- 
tent of the air being constant. Nothing has 
been said of the other factors that effect 
carbon assimilation—the water supply, 
chlorophyll and enzymes. These so-called 
‘“internal’’ factors, as well as the ‘‘exter- 
nal’’ factors, are governed by the Law of 
the Minimum. Of the internal factors, 
water and chlorophyll are present in ex- 
cess in healthy green plants, the amount of 
assimilatory enzymes being the only prob- 
able limiting factor. 

It is not necessary to adduce additional 
examples to show that the Law of the Mini- 
mum is a universal law, affecting not merely 
the concentration of reacting substances, 
but all factors that in any way influence a 
reaction or process. The law is applicable 
to physical, chemical and geological as well 
as biological problems.? An interesting in- 
stance of its application to a problem in 
physics is the determination of the magni- 
tude of a thermionic current. This varies 
with changes in temperature, and also with 
changes in the voltage applied. The tem- 
perature formula gives one value, the vol- 
tage formula may give another; the lesser 
value determines the current flowing. The 

7A timely application may be made which is 
worth bearing in mind. The efficiency of a nation 
at war is subject to the Law of the Minimum. 


Defeat, in the last analysis, may be attributed to 
the effect of some limiting factor. 


200 


application of the Law of the Minimum 
has been worked out in many cases and has 
been of great use in the interpretation of 
complicated relations; but it has been rec- 
ognized as a law and has been consciously 
applied by plant physiologists and physio- 
logical chemists only. Without doubt it 
can be used to advantage in many problems 
of the physiology, morphology and ecology 
of both plants and animals. 

The Law of the Minimum must be taken 
into account in all experimental work, for 
which it serves both as a precaution and a 
guide. When investigating the effect of 
an external factor such as temperature, 
light, ete., on any given process, it is neces- 
sary to keep all other variable factors con- 
stant, and then to determine the effect of 
‘changes in the factor under consideration. 
What results might be obtained when this 
method is used in studying carbon assimila- 
tion? Suppose the CO, supply and the 
light are kept constant, while the tempera- 
ture is varied. If the CO, supply is such 
that it becomes a limiting factor when the 
temperature rises above 10° C. then the 
rate of assimilation will rise with the tem- 
perature up to this point, but will remain 
constant at all higher temperatures, until 
the destructive effect of the high tempera- 
ture is manifested and the curve again falls 
off. Above 10° C. variations in the tem- 
perature have no apparent effect under 
these experimental conditions. But if the 
CO, supply is increased so as to permit 
more rapid assimilation, then the tempera- 
ture curve can be extended. Negative re- 
sults from such an experimental method 
are therefore without significance. It is not 
enough that the experiment be conducted 
under constant conditions; the constant 
factors must not interfere in any way with 
the carrying out of the process ; that is, they 

8 Cf. the work of L. B. Mendel, T. B. Osborne 


and their pupils. 
9 Cf. B. E. Livingston, loc. cit. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


must not be limiting factors. On the other 
hand, it is a simple matter to determine by 
the shape of the curve whether any other 
factor than the one under investigation is 
a limiting factor. Such is always the case 
when a break occurs in the curve; usually 
the curve rises at first and later runs paral- 
lel with X-axis. Such curves were obtained 
by Miss Matthaei?? in studying the 
carbon assimilation of cherry laurel at 
varying temperatures with unit light inten- 
sity. The problem is much more compli- 
cated, however, when variation of one factor 
is accompanied by changes in one or more 
other factors. This complication arises in 
plotting the temperature curve for enzyme | 
activity. The curve rises at first according 
to van’t Hoft’s law of reactions, but even- 
tually a maximum value is reached and the 
curve falls off. At some point near the end 
of the ascending portion of the curve a 


ace 
i Sec eooo RS eee 

aanee Jen eee 
fi 
oe co 


Pa 


=f 
7 eZ) eZ) J0 60 390 


Temperaiurl 


40 J0 ow 70 


Fie. 2. Effect of temperature on the activity of 
malt diastase. (After Kjeldahl.) 


break occurs: for all temperatures below 
this point, temperature is the limiting fac- 
tor and determines the activity of the 
enzyme; for all temperatures above this 
point, not temperature, but the amount of 
enzyme is the limiting factor. The higher 
temperatures cause a permanent inactiva- 
tion or decomposition of the enzyme so that 
its activity is conditioned only secondarily 
by the temperature. There is also a time 
factor involved here; the longer the tem- 
perature acts, the more the enzyme is de- 
composed, within certain limits. The study 


10 Phil. Trans., B, 196: 47-105, 1904. 


Auveust 31, 1917] 


of the action of salt solutions on permea- 
bility, growth, ete., involve even greater 
complications produced by the interrela- 
tion of conditioning factors. 

In order to get an accurate statement of 
the Law of Minimum, it is necessary to 
get away from the custom of discussing 
causes, however difficult this may be." 
The idea of causation invariably indicates 
incomplete analysis. A biological phenom- 
enon is dependent not on a single variable, 
but on a complex or constellation of factors, 
as we have seen in the case of carbon as- 
similation. It should be discussed there- 
fore in terms of all the conditioning fac- 
tors, not in terms of that one which tempo- 
rarily happens to be a limiting factor. The 
term ‘‘function’’ is valuable in this con- 
nection. The amount of carbon assimila- 
tion is a function of the temperature; it is 
another function of the illumination, ete. 
With this idea of function in mind, the Law 
of the Minimum may be stated in the fol- 
lowing form. When a quantity is depend- 
ent on a number of variable factors and 
must be a function of one of them, the 
quantity is that function which gives the 
minimum value. Expressed in plain Eng- 
lish this means that a chain is no stronger 
than its weakest link. The Law of the 
Minimum is only too obvious. Its applica- 
tion is often so self-evident that it is made 
as a matter of course. 

But the most interesting thing about the 
law is not how it works, but when it does 
not work. There is a fundamental discrep- 
aney between the Law of the Minimum and 
Galton’s Law of averages. In the current 
text-books on genetics and plant physiol- 
ogy’ the following ingenious explanation 
of Galton’s Law is given. Assume that the 

11 Cf. B. E. Livingston, loc. cit. 

12, Baur, ‘‘Einfiihrung in die experimentelle 
Vererbungslehre,’’ 2*¢ Auflage, 1914. L. Jost, 


**Vorlesungen iiber Pflanzenphysiologie,’’ 3t¢ Au- 
flage, 1913. 


SCIENCE 


201 


size of a bean is determined by only five 
variables, each of which must occur in one 
of two categories ; in one case the size of the 
bean will be increased by one unit of size, 
in the other it will be decreased by the same 
amount. Considering all the possible per- 
mutations of these five variables, we get the 
following arrangement: 


H 


rg 


Lot 
4 


Sum | I If I Iv v 
+5 


se 
+3) + 

+3/+ —- -— + 
+ 


Sum 


—1 
—1 
-1 
—1) 
= 
— i 
i! 
== il 
—1 
-—1 
10) 
8} 
=) 
= 8) 
—3 
=i) 


| 
ae 

| 

| 


+3 


| 
| 
lest 


+3 + 
He@i|fia  = 
+ 


Jarre ae th ae |S 


+1] - 

+1] - 

+1/- - 
+1]-— - 
+1]+ - - 
+1]- + - - 
+1/- - + - 
+1J- - - + - 
+1{- - - = 
+1J- - - - - 


bitte i ttt 
L+++ +++ 
[+++ 


b+++te+14¢4+44++ 


| 
b+++1 


+ 


oe 


+ 


oe ee ee 


tet tti ti 


The beans will be of six sizes, + 5, + 3, 
+ 1,—1,—8,—5, and out of a very large 
number (n), 2/32 will be + 5, 5n/32 will 
be + 8, 10n/32 will be +1, 10/32 will be 
—1, 5n/32 will be —38, and n/32 will be 
—5. The six sizes are in the ratio 
1:5:10:10:5:1. If we plot the sizes of 
the various classes of beans against the fre- 
quency of their occurrence, we get an ap- 
proximation to the familiar curve of nor- 
mal error. For the sake of simplicity, the 
number of variable factors was made five 
and the number of categories in which each 
might occur was limited to two. If the 
variables and the categories are made suffi- 
ciently numerous, the curve of normal error 
can be approximated within any desired 
degree of exactitude. It is unnecessary to 
point out the empirical fact that when the 
sizes, weights, ete., of organisms or their 
parts are divided into classes and the 


202 


classes are plotted against the number of 
individuals in each class, the resulting 
curve approaches the normal curve of error, 
if a sufficiently large number of individ- 
uals are used. Exceptional instances of 
curves with more than one maximum, or 
only parts of curves, are easily. accounted 
for and for convenience will be left out of 
consideration. Since the empirical data 
bear out the conclusions arrived at by the 
above procedure, the explanation may be 
considered valid. 

However, the explanation involves the 
addition of the values of the various fac- 
tors, which is in reality averaging them, 
since their value is measured in terms of 
net gain or loss. Although this process of 
averaging the various factors involved is 
borne out by comparing the results with em- 
pirical data, it is done, nevertheless, in con- 
tradiction to the Law of the Minimum. Ac- 
cording to this law n/32 should be +1 and 
31n/32 should be —1, because all the fac- 
tors are + 1 in only one permutation, and 
—1 oceurs in all the others and would be 
a limiting factor. The curve that would 
result if the Law of Minimum held would 
start from one at the upper end of the 
seale of sizes, weights-or what not and 
would rise with great rapidity toward the 
lower end, where it would reach its maxi- 
mum. This kind of curve is not the rule. 

Every case where Galton’s Law holds is 
a case where the Law of the Minimum does 
not hold. The resultant size or weight of 
an organism, which is a measure of its 
growth, shows that this is not determined 
by the limiting factor of its environment, 
but represents some sort of average between 
all the factors involved. In other words, a 
process of compensation or integration has 
taken place, the factors giving the largest 
values being utilized to some extent at 
least to alleviate the influence of the limit- 
ing factor—a utilization of surplus to cover 
deficit. Individual processes obey the Law 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


of the Minimum; but the grand total is 
governed by what may be termed a prin- 
ciple of integration. 

The means by which this integration is 
brought about are not hard to find. At 
least four important processes are at work 
in living organisms to this effect, namely— 

1. Responses to stimuli, 

2. Development, 

3. Evolution, 

4. Biotic succession. 
A few examples will illustrate the way in 
which integration is effected by each of 
these. A seedling placed upside down is in 
the wrong position with respect to the cen- 
ter of the earth, its source of light, and mois- 
ture. Position with respect to gravity may 
be considered to be the limiting factor 
here; but the germinating rootlet is posi- 
tively geotropic and bends toward the 
earth; the young shoot is negatively geo- 
tropic and bends away from the earth. In 
this way these responses to the geotropic 
stimulus counteract the influence of the 
limiting factor. Roots behave similarly in 
response to moisture content of the soil; 
stems and leaves in response to light. 

In plants it is hard to draw a line be- 
tween simple responses to stimuli and 
morphogenic responses which involve per- 
manent changes of form and structure. 
The difference between sun leaves and 
shade leaves is a familiar example of a 
morphogenic response. The shape, size and 
structure of the leaf here counteract the 
limiting factor light. Again, plants which 
are shaded by others so that they receive 
insufficient light usually become etiolated, 
that is, the stems and leaf-petioles in many 
cases increase in length until some portion 
of the plant is brought to a position where 
it receives adequate illumination. Here 
again the limiting factor is light, and the 
result of etiolation is to overcome its effect. 

Evolution is likewise an integrating 
process. Its results are not accomplished 


Aveust 31, 1917] 


in the individual, but in the race, and are 
called adaptations. Adaptations are means 
of avoiding the effects of limiting factors. 

Another means of integration is seen in 
biotic succession. Here the integration ex- 
tends over a considerable period of time 
and its benefits do not accrue to the individ- 
ual or the race, but to succeeding genera- 
tions and different species. The integra- 
tive effect in succession may be largely pro- 
duced by the death and decay of an asso- 
ciation resulting in the accumulation of 
humus. Thus both xerophytie and hydro- 
phytic plants prepare the way for a meso- 
phytie flora. The limiting factor here is 
water, which is too scarce in the one case 
and too abundant in the other. By the ac- 
cumulation of humus, the properties of the 
soil are so altered that a more favorable 
water supply is offered to later generations, 
and in this way the effect of the limiting 
factor is counteracted. 

All these processes which bring about 
integration between the relations of living 
organisms to the factors of the environment 
that determine their growth and activity 
are evidently based on a single fundamental 
principle, to which Professor L. J. Hen- 
derson has applied the appropriate mis- 
nomer teleology. Wherever integration 
is found in the factors influencing the indi- 
vidual, the race or the association, it is pos- 
sible to define a closed system. Such a sys- 
tem includes all the factors which can be 
integrated, that is, all the possible limiting 
factors for any given process. These sys- 
tems may focus about a single cell, an 
organ, an organism or a group of organ- 
isms. They are inclusive. The life of a 
plant, for example, is determined by a 
complex of factors between which integra- 
tion is found to occur. At the same time 
the functional activity of the root system 
is determined by another complex of inte- 
erated factors, and the functional activity 

13 The order of nature, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


203 


of the leaves by still a different set. Since 
the life of the root system is dependent on 
the products of the activity of the leaves, 
these represent members of the complex 
which conditions the growth and function 
of the root system. Such internal factors 
as enter into the complex of factors cen- 
tering about the life of a portion of an or- 
ganism are likewise subject to integration. 
In this way the condition of the root sys- 
tem affects the leaves and the condition of 
the leaves affects the root system. Correla- 
tions are therefore manifestations of the 
principle of integration. 

The organic world can be analyzed into 
systems of various orders, those of a higher 
order being inclusive of, or divisible into, 
systems of a lower order. These systems 
are invariably overcoming the effects of 
limiting factors. The limiting factor is the 
stimulus to which the system reacts. The 
reaction places the organism in a more effi- 
cient relation with its environment, but no 
matter how many reactions are carried out, 
there is always some limiting factor left, 
and so the organism is kept constantly 
busy. The end result is to approximate 
more or less closely some kind of average 
of all the resources at its disposal. 

I think it might be possible to go even 
further and get a quantitative measure of 
the degree to which the process of integra- 
tion has been carried, by considering the 
number of factors integrated and how close 
an approximation to the normal curve of 
error had been obtained. Such a quantita- 
tive measure would likewise be an index of 
the stage of evolution that an organism had 
reached.1* At the very least, the Law of 
the Minimum or the principle of limiting 
factors offers a sound basis from which such 
intangible processes as behavior, correla- 

14 Our criterion of ‘‘degeneracy’’ in a living or- 
ganism is based essentially on a decrease in the 


number or range of factors between which inte- 
gration is possible. 


204 


tions, evolution and ecological succession’ 
can be viewed with a clear perspective, if 
it is not the only scientifically accurate 
point of view from which to attack such 
problems. Henry D. Hooxsr, JR. 


OsBorN BoTaNicaL LABORATORY, 
YALE UNIVERSITY 


THE PECK TESTIMONIAL EXHIBIT OF 
MUSHROOM MODELS 

It is peculiarly fitting at this time to de- 
scribe rather briefly the exhibit of mushroom 
models, recently installed in the State Museum 
at Albany, N. Y., as a memorial to the life 
and service of the late Charles Horton Peck, 
state botanist of New York from 1867 to 1915, 
a period of forty-eight years, all except the last 
two.years having been spent in active service. 

The final installation of these remarkable 
mushroom models was completed only a few 
days prior to his death, which occurred on July 
10, 1917. The models, fifty-seven in number 
and representing fifty-five species of edible 
and poisonous mushrooms, are the work of Mr. 
Henri Marchand, an artist and sculptor of rare 
ability. The models are made of wax from 
casts in the field and reproduce with perfect 
fidelity to nature, the form, coloring and habi- 
tat of each species. 

Space need not be taken to enumerate the 
entire list of species represented by the mod- 
els, but the variety of form and color may be 
suggested by the following species which are 
represented in the collection. 


Poisonous: 
Amanita phalloides 
Amanita muscaria 
Clitocybe illudens 
Russula emetica 
Inocybe asterospora 

Edible or Harmless: 
Amanita caesarea 
Tricholoma sejunctum 
Tricholoma personatum 
Russula cyanoxantha 
Lepiota procera 
Lepiota naucina 


15 For an application of the principles enunci- 
ated in this paper to plant ecology see G. EH. Nich- 
ols, Plant World, Sept., 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


Agaricus campester 
Agaricus arvensis 
Coprinus comatus 
Morchella deliciosa 
Gyromitra esculenta 
Russula virescens 
Strobilomyces strobilaceus 
Pleurotus ostreatus 
Fistulina hepatica 
Armillaria mellea 
Boletus cyanescens 
Polyporus sulphureus 


The services of Dr. Peck in the field of my- 
cology are surpassed by no other American 
student of fungi. His work, although not con- 
fined to the fleshy fungi, is best known from 
the hundreds of species which he has described 
in the fleshy and woody groups of fungi (Agari- 
cacee, Boletacee, Polyporacee, Hydnacee and 
Clavariacez). 

Without the advantages of European travel 
and study and frequently working without ac- 
cess to the older European literature upon 
fungi, his work stands out with conspicuous 
individuality. That he has apparently de- 
scribed in some eases, species already described 
by the older mycologists of Europe is no reflec- 
tion upon his remarkable ability in the dis- 
cernment of specific and generic characters of 
our native species. 

His work will stand for all time as the 
foundation upon which later students of the 
fungi may build with safety a more elaborate 
morphological and systematic revision of the 
fleshy and woody groups of fungi. 

Those friends, admirers and fellow botanists, 
who have contributed toward bringing into 
existence this testimonial exhibit of mush- 
room models may well feel that there is no 
more suitable memorial possible. There are 
few pages of modern literature dealing with 
the fleshy and woody fungi that do not reflect 
in some degree the individuality of Dr. Peck’s 
work, and looking at these models in the State 
Museum, with their exquisite variety of form 
and color, one may imagine with what pleasure 
and appreciation they would be viewed by him 
whom they memorialize. H. D. House 


State Museum, 
Aupany, N. Y. 


Aveust 31, 1917] 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


FARM COLONIES FOR TUBERCULOUS 
SOLDIERS 


Ir is stated in the British Medical Journal 
that during the past year the National Asso- 
ciation for the Prevention of Consumption has 
urged the formation of farm or garden 
colonies where discharged tuberculous soldiers, 
while regaining their health, may be trained in 
open-air occupations At the annual meeting 
of the association on July 16, Professor Sims 
Woodhead sketched his own idea of a model 
farm colony. It should consist of a large 
enough tract of land to allow variety in the 
forms of cultivation introduced. The aim was 
not only to provide the patient with suitable 
and congenial work, but also to give him an 
occupation which should serve him as a means 
of livelihood, and a part of the farm colony, 
therefore, should be laid out on a generous 
allotment system. The colony should serve as 
an educational center and show how much 
could be done to improve the conditions of 
farm workers and the hygiene of farm build- 
ings. To that end every farm colony should 
be a microcosm in which the maintenance of 
health and the prevention of infection should 
be absolutely secured. He thought also that 
accommodation should be provided for ad- 
vanced eases. As far as possible, the patients 
should do the whole work of the colony them- 
selves, and even the overseers should be tuber- 
culous patients who were coming to the end 
of their term. The patient should help to con- 
tribute to the cost by his own labor. The state 
must provide the land, and it might also con- 
tribute towards preparation of the land and 
erection of the general buildings. But the 
special buildings, particularly the hospital 
buildings, should be jointly provided by local 
taxation, Treasury loan, and voluntary sub- 
scription. As the patient got stronger a cer- 
tain portion of his earnings should be set aside 


as a bonus for him when he made a new start . 


in life. In the subsequent discussion Sir R. 
W. Philip suggested that there was some risk 
of opening the door of the farm colony too 
wide. If the colony was to be a dumping 
ground for all grades of tuberculosis, its pur- 


SCIENCE 


205 


pose would be defeated. There must be a clear 
separation between early and presumably 
curable cases and dying cases; for the latter, 
of course, humane provision must be made, but 
not that of a farm colony. The class of cases 
to be taken were those which lasted a much 
longer time than the sanatorium could afford 
to keep them. Sir William Osler said that the 
essence of success in the treatment of the con- 
sumptive soldier was that he must remain a 
soldier—that is, he must be under control. 
Discipline was a very necessary factor in the 
life of a farm colony. Sir A. Griffith-Bos- 
cawen, M.P., parliamentary secretary to the 
Ministry of Pensions, said that his department 
had been faced with the difficulty that medical 
boards had generally assumed that when a man 
was discharged for tuberculosis the condition 
was not attributable to military service, and 
the result was that until lately the man had 
been turned adrift without pension or other 
provision. In France in such eases the benefit 
of the doubt was given to the man. The con- 
ditions of the service might at least have 
brought out the disease earlier than it would 
otherwise have manifested itself. The policy 
now was to assume in all cases that the disease 
was the result of military service unless the 
contrary was clearly proved. 


RESEARCH WORK OF THE RED CROSS IN 
FRANCE 

ANNOUNCEMENT has been made by the Red 
Cross that its War Council has appropriated 
$100,000 for medical research work in France. 
This action follows a report from Major 
Murphy, Red Cross Commissioner to Europe, 
who cabled the following from Paris to the 
National Headquarters at Washington: 


An extraordinary opportunity presents itself 
here for medical research work. We have, serving 
with various American units, some of the ablest 
doctors and surgeons in the United States. Many 
of these men are already conducting courses of 
investigation which, if carried to successful eon- 
clusions, will result in the discovery of treatments 
and methods of operation which will be of great 
use not only in this war, but, possibly, for years 
afterwards. To carry on their work they need 
certain special laboratory equipment, suitable 


206 


buildings, and animals for experimental purposes. 
At present, equipment and personnel can not be 
obtained through ordinary government sources 
without delay, which makes this source of supply 
quite impracticable. 


Cooperation with Major Murphy in his 
plans is pledged by Dr. George W. Crile, of 
Cleveland, who headed the first Red Cross unit 
to reach France; Dr. Lambert, Dr. J. A. Blake, 
Colonels Ireland and Bradley, of General 
Pershing’s staff, and various American ex- 
perts on the ground. 


A group of specialists in infant welfare 
has been sent to France by the American Red 
Cross. At its head is Dr. William P. Lucas, 
professor of pediatrics in the University of 
California. 

He reports that there is need for doctors 
and nurses for work with mothers and chil- 
dren, and the Infant Welfare Unit will be 
prepared to give such immediate relief as it 
can. With him in the unit, which was financed 
by Mrs. William Lowell Putnam, of Boston, 
are Dr. J. Morris Slemons, of the Yale Med- 
ieal School; Dr. Julius Parker Sedgwick, 
physiological chemist, professor at the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota; Dr. John C. Baldwin, 
specialist in diseases of children; Dr. Clain F. 
Gelston, Dr. Lucas’s assistant at the Univer- 
sity of California; Dr. N. O. Pearce, another 
specialist, and the following experts in sociol- 
ogy and child-welfare work: Mrs. J. Morris 
Slemons, Mrs. William P. Lucas, Miss Eliza- 
beth Ashe and Miss Rosamond Gilder, daughter 
of the poet. These specialists will survey the 
situation and study the work already being 
done by the French, and will practice without 
receiving compensation from patients. The 
task before the Red Cross, which will be car- 
ried on by this and succeeding units, is not 
only to cooperate with French specialists, but 
also to carry on a general educational cam- 
paign among French mothers in the interest of 
better prenatal hygiene and scientific feeding 
and care of the babies. Special efforts will be 
made to protect children from tubercular in- 
fection, which is particularly threatening 
France to-day as a result of trench warfare. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


WAR DEMONSTRATION HOSPITAL OF THE 
ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE 

As has been noted in Scrmence the Rocke- 
feller Institute for Medical Research has re- 
cently opened a War Demonstration Hospital, 
on the grounds of the Institute, at Avenue A 
and 64th Street, New York, the funds for this 
purpose having been provided by a special ap- 
propriation of the foundation. 

The purposes of this hospital are to treat 
patients suffering from infected wounds by 
methods which have been developed in Euro- 
pean army hospitals, especially the methods 
developed by Dr. Alexis Carrel and Dr. H. D. 
Dakin, in the Military Hospital at Compiégne, 
France, and to demonstrate these methods in a 
practical way to American surgeons. The 
hospital will make no charge for treatment or 
care. 

As a contribution to assist in solving the 
problem of cantonment, hospital and other tem- 
porary construction, the institute has housed 
the demonstration hospital in a series of porta- 
ble buildings such as are used in the most 
improved base hospitals on the western front. 
In this way the conditions under which hos- 
pital work is carried on in France are imi- 
tated; at the same time there is demonstrated 
a method of knock-down construction which is 
used to a large extent at the front. 

The War Demonstration Hospital is a 
double-walled construction with a double roof. 
It is thus well protected against both heat and 
cold; it is heated by steam, experience having 
demonstrated the desirability of steam in 
laundries, kitchens and wards, where more than 
300 beds are installed. 

The plan of the temporary hospital at the 
Rockefeller Institute was made by Mr. Charles 
Butler, a New York architect, who has for a 
year and a half studied French and British 
hospital construction in France; he collabo- 
rated with the French war department in de- 
signing hospitals. 

On the basis of this experiment, it is prob- 
able that such hospitals could be erected and 
equipped in almost any part of the country at 
the rate of $700 a bed for a 500-bed installa- 
tion. 


August 31, 1917] 


Dr. Carrel has been granted leave of ab- 
sence by the French government to come to 
New York to give personal supervision of the 
work of the temporary hospital. He is assisted 
in his work by Dr. Adrian V. S. Lambert, of 
the College of Physicians and Surgeons. 

The war demonstration hospital has been or- 
ganized with the approval and active coopera- 
tion of the war and navy departments. In ad- 
mitting surgeons to follow the demonstrations 
and cases that are treated, preference will be 
given to members of the army and navy med- 
ical corps. 


THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF 
AMERICA 


The second summer meeting of the associa- 
tion will be held by invitation of Western Re- 
serve University and Case School of Applied 
Seience at Cleveland, Ohio, in conjunction 
with the summer meeting of the American 
Mathematical Society, beginning with a joint 
dinner at 6:30 o’clock Wednesday evening, 
September 5, and a joint session at nine o’clock 
Thursday morning, September 6, and continu- 
ing Thursday and Friday. The meeting of 
the American Mathematical Society begins 
Tuesday morning, September 4. The meet- 
ings will be held in the lecture room of the 
Physics Building of Case School of Applied 
Science. 

The program committee consists of C. S. 
Slichter, Chairman; L. S. Hulburt, and E. J. 
Wilezynski. The program is as follows: 


THURSDAY, 9:00 A.M. 

Joint session of the Mathematical Association of 
America with the American Mathematical So- 
ciety. Address by Professor L. P. Eisenhart, of 
Princeton University—‘‘Darboux’s contribution to 
geometry.’’ 

10:30 A.M. 

*‘Undergraduate mathematical clubs’’—Pro- 
fessor H. E. Hawkes, Columbia University. Dis- 
cussion, led by Professor R. C. Archibald, Brown 
University, and Professor D, A. Rothrock, Indiana 
University. 

2:00 P.M. 

Presidential Retiring Address: ‘‘The signifi- 
eance of mathematics’’—Professor E. R. Hedrick, 
University of Missouri. ‘‘Geometry for juniors 


SCIENCE 


207 


and seniors’’—Professor E. B. Stouffer, Univer- 
sity of Kansas. Diseusston, led by Professor 
Arnold Emch, University of Illinois, and Professor 
L. W. Dowling, University of Wisconsin. 


FRIDAY, 9:30 A.M. 

‘“The treatment of the applications in college 
courses in mathematies’’—Professor L. C. Plant, 
Michigan Agricultural College. Discussion, led by 
Professor W. B. Carver, Cornell University, Pro- 
fessor G. H. Ling, University of Saskatchewan. 


The committee on arrangements consists of 
T. M. Focke, Chairman; F. N. Cole, W. D. 
Cairns, E. V. Huntington, A. D. Pitcher, and 
D. T. Wilson. Members and visitors are re- 
quested to register as early as possible; this 
will be a distinct aid in helping those in at- 
tendance to become acquainted with one 
another and thus further one of the chief aims 
of the meetings. Registration will be held in 
the library of the Physics Building of Case 
School of Applied Science. It is hoped that, 
as at the meeting last year in Cambridge, 
members may wish to bring their wives to 
share in this sojourn in Cleveland and in the 
social hours which always accompany the 
meetings. 

Hotel Statler has been selected as the official 
headquarters for the summer meetings of the 
American Mathematical Society and the 
Mathematical Association of America. Lunch- 
eon will be served each day, to those attending 
the meetings, at the Case Club. This build- 
ing will be at the disposal of members and their 
friends for the afternoons and evenings dur- 
ing the meetings. The joint dinner of the As- 
sociation with the American Mathematical 
Society will be held at the Hotel Statler, Wed- 
nesday evening, September 5. 


W. D. Carns, 


Secretary-Treasurer 
OBERLIN, OHIO, 
August 18, 1917 


JOHN OREN REED AND KARL EUGEN GUTHE 

TABLETS to the memory of John Oren Reed 
and Karl Eugen Guthe were unveiled in the 
physies building of the University of Mich- 
igan at commencement. Following a short ad- 
dress by Professor Harrison McA. Randall, of 


208 


the Department of Physics, they were accepted 
in behalf of the university by Regent J. E. 
Beal. The tablets were the gifts of former 
students and colleagues and were inscribed as 
follows: 


THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY 
FRIENDS AND FORMER STUDENTS OF 
JOHN OREN REED 
1856-1916 
PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND DEAN OF THE 
DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE AND 
THE ARTS, IN MEMORY OF HIS TWENTY-FOUR 
YEARS OF FAITHFUL SERVICE AS A TEACHER 
AND IN GRATITUDE FOR THE INSPIRATION GIVEN 
THEM BY HIS STAUNCHNESS OF CHARACTER 
AND BY HIS UNSWERVING DEVOTION 
TO TRUTH AND TO PROGRESS. 
MDCCCCXVII 


TO 
KARL EUGEN GUTHE, PH.D., 
BORN MARCH 5, 1866. 
DIED SEPTEMBER 10, 1915. 
AN EMINENT PHYSICIST, A BELOVED TEACHER, 
PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND DEAN OF THE 
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THIS UNIVERSITY 
THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY 
HIS STUDENTS AND COLLEAGUES 
IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE 
MDCCCCXVIL 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

ADOLF von Bakryer, professor of chemistry 
at Munich, distinguished for his work on syn- 
thetic indigo and in other directions, has died 
at the age of eighty-two years. 

Tue death is also announced of Eduard 
Buchner, professor of chemistry at Wiirzburg, 
who died from wounds while serving as major 
at the front. Dr. Buchner was distinguished 
for his work on the chemistry of fermentation, 
and was the recipient of the Nobel prize for 
chemistry in 1907. 

Dr. G. Muxuer has been appointed director 
of the astrophysical observatory at Potsdam, 
in succession to the late Professor K. Schwarz- 
schild. 


Tue Paris Academy of Sciences has elected 
the following eight members as a committee on 
scientific research: MM. A. Laveran, from the 
section of medicine and surgery; Th. Schloes- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1183 


ing, from the section of rural economy; Edm. 
Perrier, from the section of anatomy and zool- 
ogy; J. L. Guignard, from the section of bot- 
any, and MM. G. Lipmann, E. Picard, A. 
Gautier, A. Lacroix, from the academy at 
large. 

Tuer Paris Academy of Sciences has awarded 
prizes in mechanics and mathematics as fol- 
lows: The Bordin prize of 3,000 frs. has been 
awarded to M. Gaston Julia, now lieutenant 
in the army; the Francoeur prize of 1,000 frs. 
to M. Henri Villat, lecturer at Montpellier for 
his publications on hydrodynamics; the Mont- 
yon prize of 700 frs. to M. René de Sausseure, 
docent at Geneva, for his work in mechanics; 
the Poncelet prize of 200 frs. to M. Jules 
Andrade, professor at Besancon, for his work 
in applied mechanics, especially chronometry. 

Dr. Henry J. Waters, Manhattan, Kans.; 
Leon S. Merrill, Orono, Me.; Dr. Edwin F. 
Ladd, Fargo, N. D.; and David R. Coker, 
Hartsville, S. C., have been appointed state 
food administrators by the federal government. 

Fioyp R. Harrison, connected with the De- 
partment of Agriculture since 1906 in various 
capacities, has been appointed an assistant to 
the Secretary of Agriculture during the pres- 
ent emergency. 

Mr. F. F. Loncuey, a member of the firm of 
sanitary engineers of Hazen and Whipple, has 
been made a major and sent to France to as- 
sume complete charge of the water supply for 
the American forces. , 

Dr. Huco Diemer, professor of industrial 
engineering in the Pennsylvania State College, 
has accepted a commission as major in the 
Ordnance Section of the Officers’ Reserve 
Corps. 

Tue American Red Cross has appropriated 
$800,000 to meet sanitary emergencies in the 
civilian areas surrounding army cantonments. 
A bureau under the direction of Dr. W. H. 
Frost, of the Public Health Service, will have 
charge of the work. The Red Cross will 
undertake such sanitary management only by 
request of the local organization in charge. 

Dr. Vicror G. Heiser, director of the De- 
partment of the East of the International 


Aveust 31, 1917] 


Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, 
is a member of the commission of the Red 
Cross which is making a survey of conditions 
in Italy, preliminary to a possible appropria- 
tion for relief by the Red Cross. Dr. Heiser 
has also consented, if the matter is undertaken, 
to head the work of establishing Red Cross 
relief stations in seaports haying military 
significance for the United States and its 
Allies. 


Proressor Water T. FisHieicn, of the Uni- 
versity of Michigan, has been commissioned as 
major, to act as automobile engineer to the U. 
S. Medical Corps in charge of the engineer- 
ing, testing, inspection, maintenance and re- 
pairs of all American ambulances in the army, 
both in this country and abroad. Professor 
Felix W. Pawlowski, also of the University 
of Michigan, is in the government service as 
aeronautical engineer in the signal corps with 
headquarters at the War Department at Wash- 
ington. 


Dr. Epcar T. Wuerry, for the past four 
years assistant curator of the division of 
mineralogy and petrology of the U. 8S. Na- 
tional Museum, has been transferred to the 
position of crystallographer in the Bureau of 
Chemistry of the U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture. 


Dr. L. E. Dickson, professor of mathematics 
in the University of California, has accepted 
an invitation to be a visiting professor at the 
University of California for the first half of 
the coming academic year. He will return to 
the University of Chicago on December 20. 


Dr. E. O. Hovey, curator of geology in the 
American Museum of Natural History, has 
reached home safely after an absence of over 
two years with the Crocker relief expedition. 


Dr. A. W. Ginpert, professor of plant breed- 
ing at Cornell University, who has been on 
leave of absence for graduate work in rural 
economics at Harvard University, has resigned 
to accept an appointment with the Boston 
Chamber of Commerce. Donald K. Tressler, 
assistant in agricultural chemistry at the uni- 
versity, has also resigned to accept a position 


SCIENCE 


209 


with the Bureau of Soils of the U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 


Dr. Mark Francis, of the Agricultural and 
Mechanical College of Texas, recently secured 
the vertebre of some dinosaurs from the vi- 
cinity of Riesel near Waco. He has added 
these to the collection of Texas vertebrate 
fossils which he has been accumulating for 
some years and which includes the type speci- 
mens of Hquus Francisii, named by Dr. O. P. 
Hay, of the National Museum, from material 
found near Eagle Lake, Texas. 


THE surgeon-general’s office desires the 
names, addresses and ages of men in each class 
of every reputable medical school who have 
been drawn and accepted for military service 
under the provisions of the selective draft, 
these names to be vouched for by the deans of 
the respective medical colleges. 


Tue board of health of Akron, Ohio, is seek- 
ing a health officer to take charge of the board 
of health, the salary of the position being 
$3,500. 

Tue National Bureau of Standards has not 
yet obtained all the men needed to fill metal- 
lurgical positions with salaries varying from 
$1,200 to $2,000, depending upon the training 
and experience of the candidate. Men are de- 
sired with experience either in ferrous or non- 
ferrous metallurgy. The duties in such posi- 
tions will be almost entirely of an investiga- 
tional nature, in connection with problems of 
military importance. Qualified men are urged 
to communicate to the Bureau of Standards at 
once a statement of training and experience, 
names of references, and minimum salary 
which would be accepted, so that they may be 
advised of appropriate civil service examina- 
tion for which to file papers. Until further 
notice such papers are received by the Civil 
Service Commission at any time and rated 
promptly. 


The Experiment Station Record states that 
as a result of experiments conducted by the 
department of chemistry of the South Dakota 
Agricultural College during the past twenty 
years, it is expected that sugar-beet factories 
will soon be established in both the eastern and 


210 


the western part of the state. Information 
from western South Dakota, where sugar 
beets are being raised on a large scale, shows 
that the price of land has greatly increased. 
The loss of so many sugar factories in Belgium 
and France is reported as stimulating efforts 
to produce more sugar in this country. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


Dr. Henry FREEMAN WALKER has bequeathed 
$100,000 to Middlebury College, to provide 
full salary for a professor on Sabbatical leave, 
any balance is to be used as an emergency fund 
for members of the faculty. 


Tue Hxperiment Station Record states that 
provision has been made by the Texas legis- 
lature for establishing a third junior agricul- 
tural college, to be known as the Northeast 
Texas Agricultural College. An appropria- 
tion of $250,000 has been made for its estab- 
lishment and maintenance. The board of 
directors of the State Agricultural and Me- 
chanical College is given control over the in- 
stitution. State appropriations have also been 
made for the station and substations aggrega- 
ting $225,095 for the year beginning Septem- 
ber 1, and $181,270 for the following year. 

A cHair of aviation has been founded in the 
London University by M. Basel Zaharoff, who 
before the war had established similar pro- 
fessorships in the universities of Paris and of 
Petrograd. 

Ross Arken Gortner, Ph.D. (Columbia), 
associate professor of agricultural biochemis- 
try in the University of Minnesota, has been 
appointed professor and head of the division of 
agricultural biochemistry in the university and 
chief of the division of agricultural biochemis- 
try in the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment 
Station, succeeding R. W. Thatcher who be- 
comes dean and director of the department of 
agriculture in the same institution. R. Adams 
Dutcher, assistant professor of agricultural 
chemistry in the Oregon Agricultural College, 
and Clarence A. Morrow, professor and head of 
the department of chemistry in Nebraska Wes- 
leyan University, have been appointed assist- 
ant professors of agricultural biochemistry in 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1183 


the University of Minnesota. Clyde H. 
Bailey, cereal technologist and assistant pro- 
fessor of agricultural chemistry in the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota, who for the past year 
has been on leave of absence and has been em- 
ployed as chemist for the Minnesota State 
Board of Grain Appeals, Minneapolis, has re- 
sumed his duties in the university and has 
been promoted to an associate professorship in 
the division of agricultural biochemistry. 

C. W. Howarp, associate professor of ento- 
mology and parasitology of the University of 
Minnesota, has accepted the position of pro- 
fessor of biology in Canton Christian College, 
Canton, China. Professor Howard will sail 
from San Francisco the middle of October, 
visiting Hawaiian Islands, Manila and Japan 
en route. Canton Christian College is the only 
institution of collegiate rank in South China. 
The rapid growth of the agricultural and med- 
ical departments has made necessary the or- 
ganization of a department of biology. 


Dr. L. B. Arty has been promoted from in- 
structor to associate professor of anatomy in 
the Northwestern University Medical School. 

Dr. RaymMonp Freas has been appointed ad- 
junct professor of chemistry in the University 
of Virginia. 

Dr. J. Arce has been appointed to a newly 
established chair of tropical pathology in the 
University of Lima, Peru. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 


THE INTERPRETATION OF THE RESULTS OF 
FIELD EXPERIMENTS WITH DIFFERENT 
PHOSPHATES 


THE interpretation of results of field experi- 
ments with different phosphates is of present 
interest, especially as the conclusions reached 
by several investigators are being challenged 
by Dr. C. G. Hopkins, of the Illinois Agricul- 
tural Experiment Station? As is well known, 
Dr. Hopkins has for several years been the 
ardent champion of raw rock phosphate as a 
fertilizer. He has been largely dependent, 
however, on data secured by others. In fact, 
not until very recently had he published re- 

1 Hopkins, C. G., ‘‘Phosphates and Honesty,’’ 
Ill. Agri. Exp. Sta., Circular 186. 


Aveust 31, 1917] 


sults of his own experiments in which differ- 
ent phosphates were compared. 

Statements? recently made by him in regard 
to the conclusions drawn in Bulletin 90 of the 
Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station 
even go so far as to impugn the ability of an 
author who would draw the conclusion that 
bone meal proved to be, in those experiments, 
superior to rock phosphate. In view of the 
detailed data contained in Bulletin 90, the 
writer is surprised that there should be any 
serious differences of opinion in the matter. 
Careful consideration has convinced him that 
Dr. Hopkins has laid unwarranted stress on 
a single table (XIII.), which gives some av- 
erages from the three longest-continued ex- 
periments, and that he has failed to give due 
weight to the results of the individual series. 
This raises a question as to the value of such 
a table, especially to the casual reader, for it 
is evident that if a short number of series be 
averaged a preponderance of a single series 
may distort or mask the true findings. Such 
a table, therefore, is open to criticism, and 
evidently should be used with discretion, but 
is justified as one way of presenting a sum- 
mary. 

Table XIII. of Bulletin 90 gives as stated, 
a summary from three series of experiments 
each conducted on a different type of soil. 
Series 1, as is pointed out on pages 69 and 70 
and again on page 87 of the bulletin, was con- 
ducted on a soil which proved to be naturally 
too well supplied with phosphoric acid to be 
at all well adapted to the comparison desired, 
so much so that rock phosphate in the last 
four years of the five-year period proved un- 
profitable in three of the eight experimental 
conditions. Excessive growth with lodging 
reduced the yields of wheat on one half the 
bone-meal plots, and even acid phosphate was 
used with only a narrow margin of profit. 
The soils of the other two series proved, how- 
ever, to be poor in phosphoric acid and hence 
well suited to a comparison of phosphates. 

In series 2 the evidence is unsatisfactory 
because of the lack of agreement between the 
results of the two rock phosphate plots, one of 


2 Science, November 3, 1916, p. 652. 


SCIENCE 


211 


which shows a slight loss and the other a good 
profit from the use of rock phosphate. If the 
latter be compared with the near-by bone-meal 
plots the rock phosphate shows more profit. 
In series 3, which was conducted on a soil 
especially poor in phosphorie acid, the ev- 
idence is decidedly in favor of bone meal as 
compared with rock phosphate. Under every 
one of the four experimental conditions of this 
series bone meal made a large increase in 
yield—equal, in fact, to the best obtained from 
acid phosphate and averaged 5.6 bu. of wheat 
per acre more than that obtained from rock 
phosphate. Even when calculated on the dol- 
lar-investment basis used by Dr. Hopkins, the 
average acre profit from $1.00 invested in bone 
meal was $3.05 as compared with $2.79 for 
rock phosphate. In this connection it should 
be mentioned that a comparison between bone 
meal and rock phosphate where the cowpeas 
were removed for hay was omitted in Table 
XIII. because only in series 3 was such a 
comparison made, the results being especially 
favorable to bone meal. : 

Series 4, which was not included in Table 
XIII., is also worthy of consideration. This 
series was conducted on a greatly impover- 
ished type of soil, well known to be naturally 
poor in phosphoric acid. As measured by the 
yields of wheat, acid phosphate proved highly 
profitable, but both bone meal and rock phos- 
phate were used at a loss. However, the 
writer’s records and observations of these ex- 
periments, during the two years of their con- 
tinuance, convinced him that bone meal could 
be used profitably in the reclamation of land 
of this character. On the other hand, rock 
phosphate appeared next to worthless. By 
way of confirmation, bone meal plots 9 and 11 
produced in the second year an average of 
1.41 ton of cowpea hay to an acre. The near- 
by rock phosphate plots 7 and 8 produced only 
0.80 ton. The value of the difference between 
the two yields of hay would pay for the bone 
meal used and leave a good profit. The hay 
data were not given in Bulletin 90, but serve 
as a good illustration of the advantage in the 
interpretation of results that rests with the 
person conducting the experiments. 


212 


In drawing his conclusions with regard to 
the showing made by the different phosphates, 
the writer was governed chiefly by a consid- 
eration of the soil conditions and results of 
the individual series and, as he thinks, very 
naturally placed acid phosphate first, bone 
meal second, and rock phosphate third in 
profitableness. 

With all the individual series in view, let 
us see the kind of formula Dr. Hopkins must 
use in order to arrive at his conclusion with 
regard to the relative standing made by bone 
meal and rock phosphate. The formula and 
his conclusions may be stated as follows: 

Disregard series 4, omit one half the bone- 
meal data of series 3, include series 1 (con- 
ducted on a soil not poor in phosphate), and 
with the acid of series 2 obtain averages which 
show that, as used, the bone meal returned 
more profit than the rock phosphate. Now, 
make the unwarranted assumption that the 
profit from bone meal would decrease in di- 
rect proportion to the quantity used, and ob- 
tain the result that a dollar invested in rock 
phosphate made a profit of 39 cents more than 
a dollar invested in bone meal, or, the rock 
phosphate was superior to the bone meal. 


Q. E. D. 


In Science, March 2, 1917, page 214, Dr. 
Hopkins says: “The calculated profits men- 
tioned in Professor Mooers’s Science article* 
are evidently based upon different valuations 
than those reported in the bulletin.” The 
writer finds that the calculated profits for 
both acid phosphate and rock phosphate, as 
given in the Science article referred to, 
should be divided by 2. This, of course, does 
not affect the relative standing of the two 
materials. One dollar invested in acid phos- 
phate shows an average profit of $2.14 per 
acre where the cowpea crops were turned un- 
der, and of $2.71 where removed, but one 
dollar invested in rock phosphate gave an ay- 
erage return of only $1.29 under either con- 
dition. The writer has assumed that Dr. Hop- 
kins could give a simple explanation for his 
conflicting estimates, as given in SCIENCE, 
November 8, 1916, p. 652, and in Scrence, 


3 Science, January 5, 1917, pp. 18 and 19. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1183 


March 2, 1917, p. 214. In the former article 
he says, “ For each dollar invested rock phos- 
phate paid back $2.29,” but in the latter ar- 
ticle he says, with regard to the same data, 
“Easy computations show profits per $1.00 
invested of . . . $1.29 from phosphate rock.” 

From correspondence with dealers in rock 
phosphate, the writer is informed that until 
about six years ago the usual guarantee of 
fineness for the rock phosphate sold to farmers 
for fertilizer purposes was that 90 per cent. 
would pass through a 60-mesh sieve, but that 
the present guarantee is for 90 per cent. to 
pass through a 100-mesh sieve. Dr. Hopkins 
seems to have this in mind when he says, 
“Raw rock phosphate is now procurable in 
very much better mechanical condition than 
when these experiments were conducted.” 4 
That he was in error with regard to the rock 
phosphate used in the experiments referred to 
may be seen by reference to page 59 of 
Bulletin 90, where the following statement is 
made: “90 per cent. was found to pass 
through a 100-mesh sieve.” 

In conclusion, the writer will add, that on 
page 60 of Bulletin 90, the content of total 
phosphoric acid in the rock phosphate was 
stated to be 33.9 per cent. The usual guar- 
antee and expectancy for this material, as 
sold to farmers for fertilizer purposes, is a 
little under 30 per cent. With perfect fair- 
ness the calculations for phosphate rock used 
in the experiments might have been placed 
on the latter basis, and an increase of 13 per 
cent. can be properly allowed—as was referred 
to on page 59 of the bulletin—to the estimated 
cost of the applications made. This change 
would appreciably increase the unfavorable 
showing made by the phosphate rock. 

C. A. Moorrs 

AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, 

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE 


A METHOD FOR OBTAINING AMG@BA 


In common with many teachers I have found 
it necessary, at the opening of college in the 
fall, to provide large numbers of the indis- 
pensable ameba. I venture to set down a 
method which I have found successful during 


4 Science, March 2, 1917, p. 214. 


August 31, 1917] 


several years. Publication of other methods 
for obtaining a large and more or less con- 
tinuous supply of these animals has not been 
infrequent and many are familiar with use of 
Elodea (Philotria, Michx.-Britton), Cerato- 
phyllum and other aquatic plants. 

The ditch-moss is not readily found in many 
localities. My personal experience with sev- 
eral aquatic plants yielded indifferent results 
and failed to give sufficient numbers until, by 
chance one season, I tried the marsh plant, 
Elodes campanulata (Triadenum virginicum 
(1...) Raf., see Britton and Brown) and was 
rewarded with large numbers of amcbz. Al- 
though absence from town in some seasons 
occasioned a too long interval between the 
times of collection and the use of the material, 
or made it impossible to provide the proper 
sequence of cultures, I have seldom been dis- 
appointed in finding the animals, though they 
may not have come just when wanted. 

The usual custom was followed in making 
up the cultures. Crystallizing dishes or bat- 
tery jars—the shallower dishes gave the better 
results—were crowded not too densely with 
the stems of the plants. The stems were 
usually cut two or three times. Tap water 
and water from the pond or marsh where the 
plants were collected were used, separately, 
but no difference in results was noted. The 
dishes were covered with plates of window 
glass, placed in a room of moderate temper- 
ature and there allowed to remain in diffuse 
light for a period of three weeks or more. 
When pains were taken to collect the plants 
at intervals and provide a sequence of cul- 
ures the results were most gratifying. 

I have used the plant from four different 
localities, collecting from the water and from 
banks where the plants could only have been 
submerged at high water and mixing, with 
success in all cases. Since the locality seems 
not to be a controlling factor, and since the 
cultures of tap as well as pond water yield 
the animals, I assume that the Hlodes is favor- 
able for the original lodgment of amebe and 
their later multiplication. 


: C. E. Gorpon 
AMHERST, Mass. 


SCIENCE 


213 


CROSSING-OVER IN THE SEX CHROMOSOME 
OF THE MALE FOWL 


SEVERAL years ago an experiment was begun 
with the object of studying ‘the inheritance 
of several sex-linked characters associated in 
the same individual, but the experiment had 
to be laid aside until last. year. The second 
generation chicks are now at hand and prove 
beyond doubt that crossing-over takes place be- 
tween the sex chromosomes of the male fowl. 

In this preliminary report attention will be 
confined to the factors themselves, without 
regard to the somatic appearances of the in- 
dividuals. Three dominant sex-linked char- 
acters, viz., B, I, and S were employed. B 
and I were introduced on one side; §, on the 
other. Hence the F, males were all BI, S,; 
B and I being in paternal (or maternal) sex 
chromosome, S in the maternal (or paternal). 
These males have been tested by mating them 
back to females of the composition b Is, b is. 

If there were no crossing-over, offspring of 
this back cross showing the combination of 
somatic characters found in the F, male, 
would not occur. Actually, however, they do 
occur, thus demonstrating that crossing-over 
has occurred, a chromosome having the com- 
position B I §S, having been formed. Other 
cross-over classes have appeared, but the one 
cited is the one at the present age of the 
chicks, most easily recognized. 

No crossing in the female is to be expected 
on theoretical grounds. None was observed 
in the original cross. Partly because of prac- 
tical reasons and partly because no new com- 
binations were available in F,, it seemed wise 
to defer a test of this point until next season, 
when the new combination B I §S should be 
available in the mature female. 


H. D. GoopaLe 
MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL 
EXPERIMENT STATION 


THE EQUAL PARALLAX CURVE FOR FRONTAL 
AND LATERAL VISION 


Ty the article by Mr. C. C. Trowbridge on 
“The importance of lateral vision in its rela- 
tion to orientation”? is given an equal paral- 
lax curve showing the distances that a man 


1 Science, N.S., Vol. XLIV., No. 1135, pp. 470- 
474, September 29, 1916. 


214 


and a bird must move forward to give the 
same apparent displacement of objects against 
the horizon. It is the purpose of the follow- 
ing note to derive an analytic expression for 
this curve. 

Consider first the case of lateral vision. Let 
A be the starting point of the bird, and let the 
two objects, A: and A: in the original axis of 
vision be at the distances a, and a,, respectively, 
from A. Let y be the distance that the bird 
moves forward, and a the angle that is sub- 


tended at its eye by the distance A:A2 (See 
Fig. 1.) Then 

(a) tan (a+6)=", tame ="), 

where f is defined in the figure. Using the 


trigonometric formula for the tangent of the 
sum of two angles, and replacing tan 8 by its 
value from the second equation of (1), we get 


ytanea+a _ 


y—-atane y 


(2) 


Solving this for y gives 


(3) 2y tana =@—a+t N (ae = a)? = 4aja2 tan? a. 


In taking up the case of frontal vision, it is 
necessary, as Mr. Trowbridge states, to have 
a deflection between the line connecting the 
observed objects and the direction of the man’s 
motion. Designating the angle of deflection 
by 5, and the distance that the man moves from 
A by «x (see Fig. 2), we have by the law of sines 
_ sin (y +8) 


D i 
SS a = cos 6 + co sin 6 
ah sin + co} y 5) 


(4) 


where again AAi1—=«a:, AA: =a, and @ is the 
angle subtended at the eye of the observer by 
AA:. The angle ¥ is defined in the figure. 
Also 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


xz sin (a+y7+4) 
@  sn(e@+y) 


(5) 


By using the value of cot Y obtained from (4), 
we can easily eliminate Y and reduce (5) to 


xz xsin (2+6) —asna 


6 = = ° 
(6) ad xsina—a,sin (a — 4) 
Solving for x gives 

(7) Qe tan a = a + Va? — 4aja tan? a, 
where 


a@ = (a2 + a) cos 6 tan a + (a2 — a) sin 6. 


Equations (3) and (7) then are parametric 
equations of the equal parallax curve. 


Fie 2. 


In plotting the curve of the practical prob- 
lem we assign the values s=0, y=0O for 
a=0. To a value of a slightly greater than 
zero will correspond two values of « from (7) 
and two values of y from (8). It is easily seen 
that for the practical problem the smaller of 
these must be chosen in each case; that is, we 
must use the negative sign before the radicals 
in (8) and (7). For Mr. Trowbridge’s curve 
the special values a1 1,000, az = 2,000 must 
be assigned, and in all instances ® must of 
course be known. Pau. R. Rwer 

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, 

St. Louis, Mo. 


A PREDECESSOR OF PRIESTLEY 


To THE Epiror or ScreNcE: The notice of 
the Priestley Memorial in the issue of ScIENcE 
for August 17, 1917, reminds me of the best 
chemical joke I have ever heard. I can hardly 
forgive the “new chemistry” for having 
spoiled it. At our Brown University club 
dinners in Philadelphia we never have any 
wine. Many years ago when water was “HO” 
the late Rev. Dr. H. Lincoln Wayland, the 
best wit I ever have known, after a very happy 
eulogy of water, ended his after-dinner speech 


August 31, 1917] 


in the following manner: “ Our chemists tell 
us, forsooth, that the composition of water was 
unknown until Priestley discovered oxygen in 
1774. Neyer was there a greater mistake, for 
did not the prophet ery out, ages ago, ‘HO! 
Everyone that thirsteth.’ ” W. W. Keen 
PHILADELPHIA, Pa., 
August 20 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


The Physical Basis of Society. By Caru 
Ketsry, Professor of Sociology in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania. New York. D. 
Appleton & Co. 1916. Pp. xvi-+ 406. 
As its name indicates, this book deals 

chiefly with the physical basis of human so- 
ciety. The following subjects are considered 
in sequence: the earth and man, mutual aid 
and the struggle for existence, the control of 
nature, the evolution of man, heredity, hered- 
ity and society, race differences, sex differ- 
ences, the influences of society upon popula- 
tion, social institutions, and the nature of 
progress. 

In the chapter on the earth and man, the 
author introduces too much detail for an 
elementary sociological work, especially on 
pages 1 to 28. Moreover, the real social 
significance of much of the material is not 
clearly shown. It would have been much 
better if the author had developed such a topic 
as the size and customs of the social group as 
influenced by the prevailing method of food 
getting, which is conditioned by physical en- 
vironment.t Pages 28 and following give a 
fairly satisfactory summary of geographic in- 
fluences. 

In the chapter on mutual aid and the 
struggle for existence, the author again loses 
himself in a mass of ill-digested detail about 
the chemical and bacteriological aspects of 
plant life, and devotes to this subject space 
out of all proportion to its sociological sig- 
nificance. 

The chapter on the control of nature is done 
more successfully, but the chapter on the 
evolution of man is very unsatisfactory. In 


1See Ellen Semple’s ‘‘Influence of Geographic 
Environment,’’ pp. 54 to 65. 


SCIENCE 


215 


this latter chapter the author launches into a 
discussion of the old controversy about the 
evolution of man. He has reduced state- 
ments and quotations from authorities to 
such small compass that their real meaning 
and spirit are largely lost. At present, when 
students are generally open-minded in regard 
to the doctrine of evolution, it is a waste of 
time to revive this theological controversy in 
a book that is non-historical. The real sub- 
ject-matter of this chapter, if the title is any 
indication of its aim, is treated in a few 
scant pages at the end. 

The chapter on heredity is superior to any 
of the preceding and is a good treatment of 
the subject. The clarity of presentation might 
have been improved by better selection of 
diagrams. The chart on page 236 illustrating 
the inheritance of polydactylism, although 
taken from such a reliable source as Guyer, 
is not well selected to illustrate the inheritance 
of a dominant trait. An analysis of this 
chart reveals the fact that the transmission of 
polydactylism as a Mendelian trait in the fam- 
ily shown, is explicable only on the assump- 
tion that it is a recessive—and this contra- 
dicts the caption. But explanation of the 
chart in terms of the sex-limited hypothesis 
does, however, permit its interpretation in 
terms of dominance. Yet the author has not 
introduced this qualification, hence the ex- 
ample is not satisfactory. The remaining 


.chapters are superior to the earlier ones. 


In general, the book gives all appearances 
of having been too hastily written, and thus 
furnishes grounds for the criticism that the 
work of sociologists is superficial. This is all 
the more deplorable because the general plan 
and logic of arrangement of the book are ex- 
cellent. F. Stuart CHapix 

SmitrH COLLEGE, 

NortTHAaMPTon, MAss. 


By H. E. Licks. 
1917. 


Recreations in Mathematics. 
‘New York, D. Van Nostrand Co. 
Pp. v. +155, $1.25. 

This is an amusing little book with various 
problems of more or less interest, particularly 
to the teacher of elementary mathematics. 
Unfortunately the historical notes are largely 


216 


incorrect. In addition to mathematical 
problems and random notes on elementary 
mathematics through the caleulus there are 
similar notes on astronomy and the calendar, 
and on mechanics and physics. 


Louis C. Karpinski 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


THE EFFECTS OF THYROID REMOVAL UPON 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GONADS IN 
THE LARVZ OF RANA PIPIENS 


In a paper published in Scmencz, November 
24, 1916, a general account was given of my 
experiments performed in the spring of 1916 
upon the removal of the anlagen of the anterior 
lobe of the hypophysis and of the thyroid gland 
in early tadpoles of Rana pipiens. It was 
shown that in each case this operation pre- 
vented metamorphosis. A full account of the 
results of the removal of the anterior lobe of 
the hypophysis has been published.* 

Now the effect of thyroid removal upon the 
development of the gonads has been largely 
worked out. <A full account of this latter phase 
of the work will be published in due time, to- 
gether with papers by students of mine who 
have worked along correlated lines. It seems 
desirable in the meantime to give a brief ac- 
count of the most interesting theoretical re- 
sults of my investigations. 

It was shown in my earlier paper that in the 
absence of the thyroid gland the tadpoles 
failed to undergo metamorphosis. Development 
went on normally up to the time when the 
hind limbs reached a length of 4-5 mm. At 
this stage the limbs entirely ceased to develop 
while the body as a whole failed to undergo 
further differentiation. While the tadpoles 
increased very greatly in size they at no time 
showed any further evidences of metamor- 
phosis. This was true in spite of the fact that 
they eventually attained a length of body— 
exclusive of tail—varying from 30 to 43 mm. 
These figures are far in excess of any length 
normally attained by tadpoles of this species. 
From time to time specimens were killed and 
studied. At the date of writing, March 20, 
two of these tadpoles still remain alive and are 


1 Biological Bulletin, March, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1183 


in the same stage of bodily differentiation that 
they had reached the last of June. 

This not only involves leg length, the failure 
of the tail to decrease in length and the failure 
of the mouth to change in form, but it involves 
the retention by the intestine of the original 
relative length characteristic of tadpoles. The 
lateral line organs became more highly devel- 
oped than ever. In short a strictly larval form 
is maintained for months. 

Now it is true that failure to metamorphose 
may likewise be attained by insufficient feed- 
ing if brought about at a sufficiently early 
stage of development. One larval tadpole with 
hind legs 5.5 mm. in length was kept in its lar- 
val condition by feeding very meagerly to No- 
vember 15. At that time an effort was made 
to cause it to increase in size and to attain 
metamorphosis. Although it ate food it re- 
mained quite small, not showing any marked 
increase in size, nor did it show any strong 
tendency toward metamorphosis. When killed 
Febaruary 22 the testes were found to be quite 
small, they showed spermatogonia but no 
tendencies toward spermatogenesis. This 
was in strong contrast to the condition in a 
thyroidless tadpole with a body length of 43 
mm. killed February 7. In this tadpole the 
testes were well developed, spermatogenesis 
was most active and thousands of completely 
formed spermatozoa were found in the testes, 
although the tadpole had remained in a strictly 
larval form with hind limbs only 5.5 mm. long 
and with a stomach and intestine length of 
426 mm.—over 12 times the length of the cor- 
responding organs in normal frogs at the time 
of metamorphosis. 

The above cases are compared in order to 
show that although starvation may serve as 
one means of retarding metamorphosis, it also 
retards the development of the gonads and of 
the contained germ cells. This has been thor- 
oughly established in an unpublished paper 
by Mr. Wilbur Swingle, one of my graduate 
students who carried out a series of experi- 
ments upon this same species. This case is 
cited to obviate the objection that the condi- 
tions here set forth might have been produced 
by starvation and not in thyroidless tadpoles 


August 31, 1917] 


properly fed. The continued development of 
their gonads and germ cells, and the normal 
metamorphosis of the similarly fed controls 
all show conclusively that we are here dealing 
with conditions resulting from the removal of 
the thyroid glands. 

It must be kept in mind that the thyroid 
anlagen were removed at their very inception. 
It is fair to say that in these tadpoles there 
has never at any time been any thyroid secre- 
tion. <A careful study of serial sections has 
demonstrated with certainty the total absence 
of these glands in the crucial cases used as a 
basis for this work. 

The germ glands of the thyroidless tadpoles 
develop quite normally throughout, both as 
to structure and rate of development. When 
the operated tadpoles begin to lag behind the 
controls in general bodily differentiation, the 
gonads have already undergone sexual differ- 
entiation but have not yet shown any tend- 
encies toward spermatogenesis. The remark- 
able feature of these experiments is seen in 
the fact that although differentiation of the 
soma halts completely at this early stage, the 
gonads continue to develop normally, keeping 
pace at every stage with the development of 
the gonads in control specimens. This applies 
both to the development of the gonads as a 
whole and to the development of sperm and 
ova. 

At the time of metamorphosis the testes of 
both controls and _ thyroidless specimens 
showed similar dimensions. In no cases were 
there evidences of spermatogenesis. A thy- 
roidless tadpole killed September 14 showed 
very active stages of spermatogenesis termin- 
ating in the production of many spermatids; 
but as yet no spermatozoa. Ripe spermatozoa 
were, however, found in a thyroidless tadpole 
killed December 15. In this case they were 
few in number, but in a thyroidless tadpole 
killed February 7, to which reference was 
made above, they were very numerous. This 
latter specimen had testes nearly twice as large 
as those of young frogs at the time of meta- 
morphosis and of course very far beyond the 
condition found in tadpoles of a similar stage 
of body differentiation. 


SCIENCE 


217 


No less striking were the conditions in fe- 
male specimens. At the time of metamor- 
phosis, the central cavity of the ovary had 
formed, but the organ had not yet become 
folded as was later to be the case. All but a 
few scattered germ cells had become converted 
into large oocytes. An average of 12 of the 
largest. measured showed dimensions of .2025 
mm. X< .2502 mm. As time passed, the thy- 
roidless tadpoles showed continued growth of 
the ovaries. On February 14 they reached a 
size twice as great as at the time of metamor- 
phosis. During all this time the oocytes of 
the thyroidless tadpoles steadily increased in 
size, as seen in specimens killed from time to 
time. In a thyroidless tadpole killed Febru- 
ary 14 the average dimensions of the oocytes 
were .4027 mm. & .5207 mm. It is quite inter- 
esting to compare with this the conditions 
found in a normal young frog that metamor- 
phosed last summer, living in theopen and 
reaching a length of 48 mm. When it was 
killed March 13 the larger ova were seen to 
have reached an average size a trifle below that 
of the case just given, namely, 4123 mm. x 
.4540 mm., although the ovaries as a whole were 
somewhat larger, 8.05 mm. * 99.2 mm. as com- 
pared with 6.6 mm. < 7.2 mm. in the thyroid- 
less tadpole killed March 15. This is prob- 
ably due to the difference in bodily nutrition 
and is about proportional to the length of 
body of the two specimens compared. 

From all this evidence I feel that we are 
justified in stating that the absence of the 
thyroid gland does not affect the development 
of the gonads or germ cells up to the time of 
sexual maturity in the male nor does it hinder 
the development of the ovary and ova, at least 
up to the period when the ova are visible with 
the naked eye. It is, of course, possible that the 
astonishing modifications of the soma may 
later secondarily affect the nutrition of the 
developing ova, but this is beyond the point. 

These results are in line with some unpub- 
lished work by Mr. Wilbur W. Swingle, who 
at my suggestion studied the effects of thyroid 
feeding upon the germ glands and germ cells 
of Rana pipiens tadpoles. He shows that 
while this brought about the well-known 


218 


result of hastening metamorphosis with all of 
the attendant modifications, as had been known 
from the work of Gudernatsch, it did not in 
any wise modify the rate of development of 
the germ glands and germ cells. 

The most striking result of all is the evi- 
dence brought forth to show that germ cells 
and soma are different in their nature, that 
the germ cells are unaffected by the thyroid, 
while the soma is so profoundly influenced by 
it. It is possible that further work may show 
that there are other structures that continue 
their development unhindered in the absence 
of the thyroid gland, but the work thus far has 
failed to demonstrate them. 

This investigation throws light upon the 
problem of neoteny. We can with perfect 
justice say that we are here dealing with a 
case of artificially produced neoteny in a form 
which does not show it in nature. Here we 
can point to a very specific cause for this 
phenomenon, about which there has been so 
much conflicting speculation. 


Bennet M. ALLEN 
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 


THE STANSIPHON 

Amonest the many interesting and useful 
pieces of apparatus shown in the scientific ex- 
hibit during the Christmas meetings of the 
American Association for the Advancement of 
Science was a self-starting siphon, the trade 
name for which is the Stansiphon. 

For the information of those members of the 
society who did not see the model shown at 
that time and in the general interest of sci- 
ence, I am giving a brief description of its 
construction and operation followed by a 
statement of some of its more practical appli- 
cations as well as inherent limitations as at 
present constructed. 

The self-starting device is shown in Fig. 1 
and consists of a bulb (4) sealed into the lower 
end of the tube (2) and an inner tube (5) 
sealed into the base of the bulb and reaching 
into the opening of the bulb at the top. Here 
the end is somewhat constricted and its size 
and position with respect to the top of the 
bulb is so adjusted that an “air trap” is 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


produced at (6). A small opening (7) is made 
at the lower part of the bulb. 


If the bulb be inserted to a considerable 
depth into the liquid to be siphoned, the liquid 
flows into the bulb through (7) and displaces 
the air which with the water passing through 
the inner tube (5) rises in a broken column in 
tube (2) and flows out through the delivery 
tube. 

The height to which the given liquid may be 
raised will depend on the size of the bulb, the 
depth to which it is immersed, the construc- 
tion of the “air trap,” the material of which 
the siphon is made, the rate at which the bulb 
is inserted, etc. To operate successfully on 
ordinary liquids the Stansiphon should be im- 
mersed to a depth at least two or three times 
the length of the bulb. 

Preliminary experiments were made by the 
inventor on water and the present design has 
greatly increased the efficiency of the siphon, 
both as to height lifted, and the rate of flow. 
A design of larger size has been made which 
successfully siphons acids from carboys, but 
owing to the heavy density of these acids it 
works relatively slowly as compared with 
water. Light oils such as kerosene and gaso- 
line are readily siphoned by this method, but 
as yet a suitable design depending on this 
principle has not been found for the heavier 
oils. 

The wide application of the Stansiphon is 


August 31, 1917] 


apparent especially in chemical laboratories, 
drug stores, manufacturing and other estab- 
lishments where liquids and various solutions 
are in constant use. In transferring corrosive 
poisons or valuable liquids it obviates liability 
to accident or waste. It should also have a 
wide application in the filling and emptying 
of all sizes of storage-battery jars. It is at 
present being used for siphoning beer from 
kegs and wine from barrels. When a solution 
is to be kept “on tap” for instant use a stop- 
cock may be provided. These siphons in addi- 
tion to glass are being made of brass, copper, 
zine, lead, iron, hard rubber, ete. 

When the self-starting attachment is sealed 
to a straight tube ending in a capillary, a very 
efficient intermittent Hero’s Fountain is ob- 
tained, as shown in Fig. 2. 


Application for patent rights has been made 
in the name of the inventor, Gustavus A. 
Storm, but all rights, title and interest in the 
same has been assigned to the Standard Scien- 
tifie Company of New York. 


P. B. Perkins 
Brown UNIVERSITY 


SCIENCE 


219 


THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL 
SOCIETY 

Av the annual general meeting of the society 
held in Philadelphia from April 13 to 15, the ad- 
dress of welcome was made by the President, Dr. 
W. W. Keen, who, with Vice-presidents W. B. Scott, 
George E. Hale and Albert A. Michelson, pre- 
sided. This meeting is a notable event among 
scholars and over forty papers were presented in 
the sciences and in the humanities. The national 
crisis also received some attention, Dr. M. T. 
Bogert, of Columbia University, outlining the work 
chemists may do to aid the National Research 
Council in the solution of certain war problems. 
Proper insignia to identify ‘‘members of the in- 
dustrial army’’ so they may not be called slackers 
was urged. Attention was called to England’s 
sad mistake in permitting general enlistment for 
“‘the front’’ when in many cases men with special 
ability could have been of so much more value 
using their brains in the laboratory. A  well- 
trained industrial army is just as important as 
the army of fighters. The program with a number 
of abstracts follows. 


APRIL 12 

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the 

chair 

The trial of animals—a little known chapter of 
medieval jurisprudence: HamMpron L. CARSON, 
LL.D., Philadelphia. 

Medieval sermon-books and stories and their study 
since 1888: THOMAS FREDERICK CRANE, Ph.D., 
Litt.D., professor emeritus of the Romance lan- 
guages and literature, Cornell University. 

Some recent acquisitions to the Yale collection: 
ALBERT T, Cuay, LL.D., professor of Assyriol- 
ogy and Babylonian literature, Yale University. 

Vision as a physical process: HERBERT E. IVEs, 
Philadelphia. (Introduced by Dr. A. W. Good- 
speed.) 

The diagnostic method of training intelligence: an 
education for the fortunate few: LIGHTNER 
Witmer, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory of 
Psychology, University of Pennsylvania. 

Historical notes on ‘‘the armament of Igor’’: J. 
DYNELEY PRINCE, Ph.D., professor of Slavonic 
languages, Columbia University. 

A new translation of the Hebrew Bible: Cyrus 
ADLER, Ph.D., president of Dropsie College for 
Hebrew and Cognate Learning, Philadelphia. 


220 


APRIL 13 
George Ellery Hale, Ph.D., Se.D., LL.D., F.RB.S., 
Vice-president, in the chair 
Lighting in its relation to the eye: CLARENCE E. 

FerrreE, Ph.D., professor of psychology, Bryn 

Mawr College. (Introduced by Dr. W. W. 

Keen.) 

The work of which this paper is a brief outline 
was done under the auspices of the American Med- 
ical Association’s subcommittee on the hygiene of 
the eye, of which Dr. William Campbell Posey, of 
this city, is chairman. The object of the work has 
been to compare the effect of different lighting 
conditions on the eye and to find the factors in a 
given lighting situation which cause the eye to lose 
in efficiency and to experience discomfort. In all, 
forty-two different lighting situations have been 
investigated, selected with special reference to the 
problem in hand. Also a number of miscellaneous 
experiments have been conducted pertaining to the 
hygienic employment of the eye. Tests were made 
to determine the eye’s aggregate loss in func- 
tional activity and to analyze this effect. In all 
seven different types of tests were used. 


Factors influencing the sex ratio in the domestic 
fowl: RAYMOND PEARL, Ph.D., biologist, Maine 
Agricultural Experiment Station, Orono, Maine. 
The problem of the sex ratio is one of the most 

important of biology from the theoretical stand- 

point as well as from that of the practical breeder 
or farmer. The desire to control the proportions 
of the sexes produced is one which has excited 
mankind through the ages. Thanks primarily to 
the work of certain American biologists, notably 

Professor C. E. McClung, of the University of 

Pennsylvania, and Professor E. B. Wilson, of Co- 

lumbia University, the key to the riddle of sex has 

at last been found. It is well known that in a wide 
range of animals there is a definite hereditary 
mechanism which irrevocably determines the sex 
of the individual. While it is true that a definite 
mechanism controls the determination of sex, yet 
there has appeared a great deal of evidence re- 
cently, of varying degrees of trustworthiness, that 
sex ratios may be experimentally modified and con- 
trolled. It is the purpose of this paper to examine 
the sex production question in the common fowl, 
and see to what conclusions it leads. In the pres- 
ent war conditions any information which would 
make it possible for the poultryman or farmer to 
produce a larger number of pullets to lay eggs 
without producing so many cockerels to eat up 
costly food, would be of very great value. This 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


study, which is based on eight years’ experiments, 
and over 22,000 individuals, demonstrates first 
that the determination of sex in poultry is pri- 
marily a matter of a definite, hereditary mechan- 
ism, just as it is in insects and other forms which 
have been studied. At the same time, it is dem- 
onstrated that under certain physiological cireum- 
stances the operation of this mechanism may be 
modified in such a way as to lead to the produc- 
tion of more females, in proportion to the number 
of males. The chief factor in bringing about the 
modification in the direction of a larger produc- 
tion of females is the fecundity or laying ability 
of the hens used as breeders. The larger the num- 
ber of eggs which a hen lays before being put into 
the breeding pen, the larger will be the proportion 
of females and the smaller the proportion of 
males produced by her eggs. Some years ago it 
was shown by the speaker that the ability to lay 
eggs (fecundity) in poultry is a matter of definite 
Mendelian inheritance. As a result of this knowl- 
edge, it is possible to breed strains of hens in 
which high productivity is a definitely fixed char- 
acteristic. The present results taken in connec- 
tion with the earlier ones show that when the 
poultryman breeds along the right lines for in- 
creased egg production, he will at the same time 
be producing a strain in which profit making 
pullets preponderate in place of the less profitable 
cockerels. 


Significant results of scientific investigations ap- 
plied to fishery problems: HucH M. Smiru, 
M.D., LL.D., commissioner of fisheries, Wash- 
ington, D. C. (Introduced by Dr. Clarence E. 
McClung.) 

A description of a new photographic transit instru- 
ment: FRANK SCHLESINGER, Ph.D., director of 
the Allegheny Observatory, University of Pitts- 
burgh. 

In many departments of astronomy it has been 
found that visual methods can advantageously be 
replaced by photographic. This experiment is an 
attempt to make a similar substitution in the case 
of the determination of star places. The experi- 
ment is a timely one, since astronomers are con- 
fronted with the necessity for observing the places 
of many stars, this necessity arising out of the 
recent striking developments in the matter of star- 
streaming. 

Probable masses of comets: Hrnry Norris Rus- 
SELL, Ph.D., professor of astronomy, Princeton 
University. 

The relationship of stellar motions to absolute mag- 
nitudes: WALTER S, ADAMS, A.M., Se.D., assist- 


Avueust 31, 1917] 


ant director of Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory, 

Pasadena, Calif., and G. STROMBERG. 
' The spectroscopic method of deriving the abso- 
lute magnitudes of stars and a new formula con- 
necting parallax and proper motion have been 
utilized to study the relationship between the mo- 
tions of stars and their true or absolute magni- 
tudes. About one thousand stars have been used 
in the investigation. The results establish almost 
certainly a definite increase of velocity with de- 
crease in brightness. In radial velocity this is of 
the order of 1.5 kilometers for each magnitude for 
stars of the F, G, K and M types of spectrum. 
This is to be interpreted, probably in part at 
least, as an effect of mass: that is, the smaller 
stars move more rapidly than the larger stars. 
This increase of velocity with decrease in bright- 
ness is found to persist among the groups of stars 
arranged according to their distance from the sun. 
Accordingly the evidence does not indicate that 
the nearer stars are moving more rapidly than the 
distant stars. 


Nebule: V. M. Strpuer, Ph.D., director of the 
Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona. (In- 
troduced by Professor C. L. Doolittle.) 

Early man in America: Epwix Swirt Batcu, 
A.B., Philadelphia. 

The present status of knowledge about early 
man in America may be summed up as follows. 
Early man was here. He lived during at least a 
part of the Pleistocene period for tens of thou- 
sands of years south of the glacial moraines. He 
probably went through an Eolithie period and cer- 
tainly through a Chelleen period in some places 
and therefore was truly a Paleolithic man. He 
may have made rudimentary fine art. Paleolithie 
American man was the ancestor of the Neolithic 
historie Indian and although less advanced in eul- 
ture much like his descendant in anthropological 
characteristics. Whether he was an autochthone 
in America or whether he came from some other 
place and if so when, we do not as yet know posi- 
tively, although his affiliations seem to be to the 
west. And it is to four men above all others that 
we owe our knowledge: Abbott, the discoverer of 
paleolithie implements and horizons; Volk, the 
corroborator; Lund, the first finder of probably 
Paleolithic bones, and Winchell, the investigator 
of patination. 


The influence of the admixture of present immi- 
grant races upon the more original stock: 
CHARLES B. Davenport, 8.B., Ph.D., director, 
Station for Experiment Evolution, Cold Spring 
Harbor, Long Island. 


SCIENCE 


221 


A new Babylonian account of the creation of man: 
Grorce A. Barton, Ph.D., LL.D., professor of 
biblical literature, Bryn Mawr College. 

The waters of death: Pau Haupt, professor of 
Semitic philology, Johns Hopkins University. 


APRIL 13 
Albert A. Michelson, Ph.D., Se.D., LL.D., F.R.S., 
Vice-president, in the Chair 
Crushing of crystals: Prroy W. BRIDGMAN, as- 
sistant professor of physics, Harvard Univer- 
sity. 

Hollow cylinders cut from single erystals have 
been subjected to unique tests by applying large 
hydrostatic pressures to the external surface. The 
crushing strength under these conditions is much 
higher than that found by ordinary tests, and the 
manner of failure is different. This has an in- 
teresting geological significance in suggesting that 
open cavities may persist in the earth’s crust at 
greater depths than could be expected from the 
usual methods of measurement. 


Structure of the spectra of the phosphorescent 
sulphides (describing measurements by Drs. H. 
E. Howe, H. L. Howes and Perey Hodge): Ep- 
warD L. Nicuous, Ph.D., D.Se., LL.D., pro- 
fessor of physics, Cornell University. 

The Corbino effect in liquid mercury: Epwin 
Puimupron Apams, Ph.D., professor of physics, 
Princeton University. 


Spontaneous generation of heat in recently hard- 
ened steel: CHARLES FRANCIS BrusH, Ph.D., 
Se.D., LL.D., Cleveland. 


I., Condensation and evaporation of metal films; 
II., The minimum potential for excitation of the 
“*D”” lines of sodium: Ropert WILLIAMS Woop, 
A.B., LL.D., professor of experimental physics, 
Johns Hopkins University. 


Growth and imbibition: D. T. MacDoueat, Ph.D., 
LL.D., director of department of botanical re- 
search, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and 
H. A. SPornr. 


The mechanism of overgrowth in plants: ERwin F. 
SmirH, B.S., Se.D., Bureau of Plant Industry, 
Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 


The. behavior of self-sterile plants: Epwarp M. 
East, Ph.D., professor of experimental plant 
morphology, Harvard University. 

There are really two problems connected with 
the inheritance of self-sterility in plants. One is 
the relation between self-sterile and self-fertile 
plants, the other is the behavior of self-sterile 


222 


plants when crossed together. They should not be 
confused. The Nicotiana self-fertility is com- 
pletely dominant over self-sterility. Hither of the 
self-sterile species Nicotiana alata or Nicotiana 
forgetiana may be crossed with the self-fertile 
species Nicotiana langsdorffii. The result in each 
case is an F, generation that is completely self- 
fertile. The F, plants show the usual monohybrid 
ratio of 3 self-fertile to 1 self-sterile. Given the 
basie factor for self-sterility in the homozygous 
condition as in the case in Nicotiana forgetiana 
and Nicotiana alata, two plants may be either 
cross-fertile or cross-sterile with each other. 
Reciprocal crosses always give the same result. 
Thus the character behaves as if it were sporo- 
phytic rather than gametie. In other words, the 
constitution of the mother plants and not the con- 
stitution of the gametes which they produce de- 
termines whether a combination shall be fertile or 
sterile. This fact indicates very strongly that 
gametes have no other function than fusion with 
their complements, that the potential characters 
which they carry are wholly latent until the de- 
velopment of the zygote begins. The cross-steril- 
ity shown is of such a nature that if plant A is 
sterile with plants B and C, plant B must be ster- 
jle with plant C. Generalizing upon the basis of 
the behavior of self-sterile plants in intercrosses 
one may say that a self-sterile population con- 
sists of a small number of groups of plants each 
plant being cross-sterile with all plants belonging 
to the same group and ecross-fertile with all plants 
of all other groups. These facts naturally lead to 
the conclusions that the behavior of self-sterile 
plants in inter-crosses is regulated by several 
transmissible factors all of which are distinct 
from the single basie factor for self-sterility and 
which presumably may be carried by self-sterile 
plants. A plant homozygous for self-sterility can 
neither be fertilized by its own gametes nor by 
the gametes of any other self-sterile plant of like 
constitution as regards these regulation factors, 
but any two plants differing in these regulatory 
factors are cross-fertile. 


Twin hybrids from Qnothera lamarckiana and 
franciscana when crossed with Ginothera pycno- 
carpa: GEORGE F, ATKINSON, head of the de- 
partment of botany, Cornell University. 
Gnothera lamarckiana X Gi. pycnocarpa. ‘There 

is a splitting in the F, with production of twin 

hybrids. One of the twins (pycnocarpa type) has 
rosette leaves narrow and deeply cut over the basal 
half as in @. pycnocarpa, but the leaves are 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1183 


strongly crinkled as in @. lamarckiana. The other 
twin (lamarckiana type) has rosette leaves, nar- 
row furrowed, not crinkled as in @. pycnocarpa, 
but with plain edge as in @. lamarckiana. The ro- 
settes of the pycnocarpa type strongly resemble 
those of @. pycnocarpa because of narrowness and 
cutness, while at the same time they resemble @. 
lamarckiana in convexity and ecrinkledness. The 
general appearance of the rosettes of the lamarcki- 
ana type suggests neither parent, since the factors 
selected represent the less striking character of 
each. These two twin types are fixed in the first 
generation, since they are repeated in the F, and 
probably in the following generations in accord 
with the usual behavior of twin hybrids deter- 
mined by de Vries. The progeny is remarkably 
uniform, in that respect following the feature of 
uniformity in the progeny of the parents, except 
for an occasional mutant from the pycnocarpa 
type. This mutation factor is probably inherited 
from lamarckiana. énothera franciscana X G. 
pycnocarpa. There is a splitting in the F, with 
production of twin hybrids. One of the twin hy- 
brids (pycnocarpa type) has rosette leaves with 
the narrowness and cutness of @. pycnocarpa, but 
otherwise modified by G. franciscana. The other 
twin has rosettes very similar to those of @. fran- 
ciscana, somewhat modified by @. pycnocarpa, 
and showing considerable fluctuating variations, 
parallel with those of @. franciscana. In the F, 
generation there is a one-sided splitting similar to 
that which oceurs in the F, of twins from @. 
hookeri < Gi. lamarckiana described by de Vries. 
The pycnocarpa type twin has a hybrid constitu- 
tion and in the F, splits into two types, the 
pycnocarpa type and the franciscana type, the lat- 
ter presenting fluctuating variations parallel with 
those in the parent franciscana. The other twin 
(franciscana type) is fixed in, the F, since it re- 
peats itself in the F, and probably in the succeed- 
ing generations, but it presents the fluctuating 
variations characteristic of the parent franciscana. 
The franciscana twin probably carries the pycno- 
carpa factors also, but in a subordinate or per- 
manently latent condition. If so, it is a physio- 
logical homozygote. If it is possible to introduce 
a splitting factor into the franciscana twin by an 
appropriate cross, and cause the pycnocarpa char- 
acter to reappear in some of the progeny, the 
fundamental heterozygotic constitution of the 
franciscana twin would be demonstrated. 


ARTHUR W. GOODSPEED, 
Secretary 
(To be continued) 


CIENCE 


SEXY [Be FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1917 BEES 


Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 A squaniatos 'g5,00. 
7,’ 


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SCIENCE 


Fripay, SEPTEMBER 7, 1917 


CONTENTS 

Plant Ecology and its Relation to Agricul- 

ture: DR. WARREN G. WATERMAN ......... 223 
Fish Names, Ancient and Modern, and Early 

Illustrations of Fishes: Dr. CHARLES R. 

IAS TUMUAIN evreitys) i evesatelevetetsieVstelctstehercicrarererelelevele 228 
Scientific Events :— 

California Petroleum; The States Relations 

Service and Agricultural Instruction; Med- 

ical Students and the Draft; Scientific Men 

and ‘National Service. oi. 02 cc. ewe ewe ee 
Scientific Notes and News ............e000+ 233 
University and Educational News .......... 237 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

The Publication of Scientific Research: Dr. 

C. E. K. Mrrs. Popular Science: Dr. R. S. 

BreeD. Man and the Anthropoids: Dr. W. 

PSMA TTITE Wr wererWclereletctnelelssctelaverersl cvclelcistsicie 237 
Scientific Books :— 

Burket’s Bibliography of William 4H. 

Welch: Dr. F. H. GARRISON .............. 240 
Special Articles :— 

What Substance is the Source of the Light 

of the Firefly? Proressor E. Newton Har- 

vey. Inoculation on Ribes with Cronartium 

ribicola Fischer: PERLEY SPAULDING AND 

GAPEIPPOLGRAVATI spe repeteretatcla cle elel okelavelersicte 241 
The American Philosophical Society: Pro- 

FESSOR ARTHUR W. GOODSPEED ........... 244 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
oOn-Hudson, N. Y- 


PLANT ECOLOGY AND ITS RELATION 
TO AGRICULTURE! 


I. CONTENT OF ECOLOGY 

A. Nature and Scope—In beginning 
this discussion, a brief statement as to the 
nature and scope of ecology seems to be de- 
sirable on account of the hazy popular no- 
tions on the subject. Outside of a rather 
narrow circle one usually finds a total ig- 
norance of the meaning of the word itself, 
and even among biologists, some are fa- 
miliar only with the observational side, due 
probably to the early prominence of the 
“‘ear-window’’ school of ecologists, while 
others consider that the subject-matter of 
ecology might better be divided between 
morphology and physiology, and frankly 
state their opinion that there is no such 
subject as ecology. 

However, there seems to be a mass of 
subject-matter belonging to neither depart- 
ment exclusively, but partly to each, which 
would fairly warrant the formation of 
another department. This has been named 
ecology, and may be defined as the science 
of organisms as affected by the factors of 
their environment. The connection with 
physiology is the closer of the two, and in 
fact, the two subjects overlap to a certain 
extent, but whether we call this overlapping 
segment ecological physiology or physiolog- 
ical ecology, the character of its subject- 
matter is sufficiently different to warrant a 
separate category and different treatment. 

The methods of ecology have been, of 
course, largely descriptive, but they are 
also becoming increasingly quantitative, 
employing in many cases elaborate and deli- 


1 Delivered before the Illineis Academy of Sci- 
ence, February 23, 1917. 


224 


eate instruments. The work is pursued 
both in the field and in the laboratory, and 
under experimentally controlled conditions, 
as well as under natural. The great task of 
ecology and the purpose of its observation 
and experimentation lies in the interpreta- 
tion of the phenomena and the deduction 
from these data of the general principles 
underlying the reaction of plants to their 
environmental factors. 

B. Content of General Ecology. 1. Aut- 
ecology.—This branch of ecology studies 
the plant as an individual, and is largely 
physiological in nature. It considers the 
general results of the relation of the plant 
to its environmental factors, as shown in 
the division of plants into great classes ac- 
cording to their reaction to each of the lead- 
ing factors. 

These reactions come under three heads: 
First, the reactions in the activity only of 
the plant, as the increase of activity under 
favorable conditions and its diminution and 
even stoppage under adverse conditions. 
This group really belongs under the head 
of physiology, but when considered in the 
field under natural conditions it may be re- 
garded as within the scope of ecology. Sec- 
ond, the effects on plastic tissues or organs 
of the plant. These may also be produced 
experimentally and frequently have an im- 
portant bearing on the economic value of 
cultures. Third, the effects on permanent 
structure and function of plant organs. 

Whatever may be our belief as to the 
method by which variations are produced 
and fixed in plants, it is evident that struc- 
tures correspond more or less to function 
and are conditioned directly or indirectly 
by the environment. A comparative study 
of plants in different habitats leads us to 
identify or construct from the imagination 
certain ‘‘normal’’ or original types of or- 
gans. We find also modifications of these 
types, which are either temporary, where 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1184 


the plant tissues are plastic; or permanent, 
constituting variations. In tracing the 
correspondence of these changes to environ- 
mental differences we look for and fre- 
quently think we find what may be called 
ecological causes. 

Plants are classified according to these 
modifications, both plastic and permanent, 
on the basis of the factor which seems to be 
chiefly responsible for the change. Chief 
among these is the moisture relation, ex- 
pressed in the more or less familiar division 
into hydrophytes or water lovers, xero- 
phytes or dry-climate plants, and meso- 
phytes inhabiting an intermediate habitat. 
A similar relation to light and temperature 
divides plants into sun-tolerant and shade- 
tolerant, heat-tolerant and cold-tolerant, 
groups. The relation to the chemical ele- 
ments in the soil is not so marked as was 
once thought to be the case, yet we still hear 
such words as ‘‘ealciphiles’’ and ‘‘ealci- 
phobes,’’ and the terms probably represent 
to a certain extent a real situation. The 
best illustration of this is shown in a com- 
parison of organs, especially leaves, of hy- 
drophytic as compared with xerophytic and 
mesophytic plants. Here there seems to be 
a very distinct correspondence between 
structure and the markedly different en- 
vironments of these different habitats. 

2. Synecology, which studies plants in 
the mass, is largely concerned with distri- 
bution of plants, and may be regarded as 
an application of autecology in the group- 
ing of plants within greater or smaller 
areas of the earth’s surface. It may be di- 
vided into (a) ‘‘Phytogeography,’’ in 
which the groupings are regional and the 
result of climatic factors, and (b) ‘‘Physio- 
graphic Eeology,’’ in which the groupings 
are local, as the result of physiography 
with attendant climatic modifications. 
These groupings are called plant associa- 
tions and the fact that different associations 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


follow each other successively is expressed 
in the term ‘‘Plant Succession.’’ 

C. Special Ecology of Structural Groups. 
—While all ecological groups have more or 
less specific reactions which are considered 
under their appropriate heads, there is one 
grouping which demands separate treat- 
ment because it is based on the most strik- 
ing structural feature—the presence or ab- 
sence of woody tissue, and also because of 
its practical relation to man’s activities. 
Although verging more closely on agricul- 
ture, it may still be classed as ecology be- 
cause the point of approach is from the 
side of the environmental relations. On the 
basis of woody structure we classify plants 
as trees and herbaceous plants with shrubs 
and lianas occupying an intermediate posi- 
tion, and it is at once evident that these 
two groups have decidedly different ecolog- 
ical reactions. 

1. Ecology of Trees and Shrubs—This 
study would involve (a) description of 
leading species with their habits of growth, 
characteristic structures, and ecological in- 
terpretation of the same. This would be 
the autecology of the group. (b) The syne- 
cology would involve the distribution and 
range of the leading species and their rela- 
tion to ecological causes. (c) We might 
notice also the influence of the species on 
their environment as illustrated in the in- 
fluence of forests on soil moisture content 
through their control of run-off; and the 
influence of individual trees, as for ex- 
ample, the eucalyptus in the reduction of 
soil water; also the influence of forests on 
soil in the formation of humus and the 
effect of trees on wind, as in protection by 
windbreaks. (d) It could include also a 
classification of trees according to the char- 
acter of their wood, including distribution 
of the different woods and methods of uti- 
lizing. Also a similar classification accord- 
ing to the character of their fruits, their 


SCIENCE 


225 


chemical products and their value for orna- 
ment. 

2. Ecology of Herbs.—Here should be 
studied (a) the general characteristics of 
herbs as distinguishing them from trees, 
with the ecological differences involved, 
under the heads of shoot, root, flower and 
fruit, with the characteristic differences be- 
tween perennials and annuals; (b) a study 
of herbs as classified according to their 
value to man, as: valueless or ‘‘wild,’’ those 
of economic value or ‘‘cultivated,’’ and 
those undesirable or injurious, which we 
eall ‘‘weeds.’’ Unceultivated herbs are of 
interest chiefly synecologically as the asso- 
ciates of trees in their different groupings 
and as indicators of the characteristics of 
the environment, as hydrophytic, xero- 
phytic, ete. As the subject of taxonomy has 
to do chiefly with the wild herbs it is fre- 
quently included under ecology to-day. 

Cultivated herbs and their attendant, 
though undesirable forms, are considered 
more from the autecological side. Their 
reactions to and tolerance of extremes of 
temperature and moisture and chemical 
conditions, are of course of chief impor- 
tance. Original habitat and distribution 
and to some extent taxonomic relations, are 
also important as indicating suitability for 
certain environments. This value is testi- 
fied to by the systematic search for new 
varieties carried on by the United States 
Department of Agriculture. Herbs vary 
greatly in their reactions to environmental 
factors, and should be grouped as far as 
possible along the lines of similar behavior. 
Knowledge of these groups should be as 
complete as possible, but a thorough study 
of the ecological reactions of a few type 
genera and species should be included in 
any comprehensive course in ecology. 

3. The ecology of lower types of plants 
is not treated separately, but on account of 


226 


economic importance under the special sub- 
ject of bacteriology, mycology, etc. 


II. RELATION OF ECOLOGY TO AGRICULTURE 


A. Purpose and Scope of Agriculture.— 
The subject of agriculture is extremely 
complex and even the terminology is not 
uniform in usage. Even the word agricul- 
ture itself is employed in a general and a 
special manner. It is used here in the gen- 
eral sense of the cultivation of plant prod- 
ucts from the soil. Its complexity is made 
evident by consideration of the varied ends 
sought, which include size, strength, water 
content, and chemical contents of stem, 
leaves, roots, flowers, fruit and special 
parts such as fibers, cork, ete. 

The resulting subdivisions of the subject 
following largely the usage of Bailey’s 
“‘Cyclopedia of Horticulture,’’ are: Agri- 
culture (in its special sense), which in- 
cludes the culture of grain, forage crops, 
bread stuffs, textiles, ete.; horticulture, 
which includes fruits, vegetables, flowers 
and ornamental plants; and forestry, which 
is the complete treatment of other trees, 
and includes subjects of sylviculture, men- 
suration and harvesting. Through all this 
complexity runs a general unity of purpose, 
namely, the preparing and maintaining of 
optimum conditions for the production of 
maximum returns. Therefore the proc- 
esses and principles are in the main the 
same, being varied in practise for the dif- 
ferent ends. 

B. Agricultural Processes with their 
ecological significance. 

1. The preparation of optimum condi- 
tions. The preparation of the soil is the 
first condition, but as the principles are the 
same as those in the preservation of opti- 
mum conditions it will be considered under 
that heading. The second important fac- 
tor is the securing of suitable stock, either 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 


seed or vegetative, for which the criteria 
are the taxonomic relations and the reac- 
tions to the environment. The choosing of 
this stock is a question of balancing specific 
reactions of the desired plant with the fac- 
tors of the necessary location, or vice versa. 
The securing of this stock is brought about 
either through breeding, by pollination, or 
by grafting; and by choice, through the 
testing of known varieties, the selecting of 
the results of breeding, or the discovery of 
new varieties. Of course through all these 
methods runs the question of reaction to 
the desired environment. A third ecolog- 
ical factor in preparation of conditions con- 
sists in the choice of a suitable time and lo- 
cation for the culture. 

2. The preservation of optimum condi- 
tions. (a) The condition of first impor- 
tance is the soil. In its moisture content the 
maintenance of optimum moisture condi- 
tions is of course extremely important. The 
maintenance of its physical condition is 
popularly called tillage. The chemical com- 
position is shown by analysis and experi- 
ments with plants, and is modified by the 
use of fertilizers and of other chemicals. 
The temperature of the soil is less consid- 
ered, but may be determined by the use of 
soil thermometers. (6b) Optimum condi- 
tions of light, wind and temperature de- 
pend upon exposure, and may be controlled 
by modifications of this exposure. Light is 
studied by light intensity experiments and 
controlled by screening or by thinning. 
The effect of wind is shown largely by 
transpiration, measured by the atmometer, 
controlled by thinning or by windbreaks. 
Temperature is observed by the thermom- 
eter and controlled by shelters and by pro- 
tective covering. (c) The importance of 
disease as a factor has been recognized by 
the great development of the subject of 
plant pathology. 

8. The third agricultural process is the 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


harvesting of crops, in which ecology does 
not function very largely, except in so far 
as it may assist in the determining of the 
time of maximum returns. 

C. Nature of Contributions of Ecology. 
—It is admitted by all, that agriculture is 
largely an art, and that its processes until 
rather recently were developed almost en- 
tirely by empirical methods. Evidences of 
this are still shown in many agricultural 
texts and farmers’ bulletins, where proc- 
esses are recommended because of success in 
certain localities or condemned because of 
failure. 

As scientific knowledge and methods ad- 
vanced, the agrieulturists began to take ad- 
vantage of these methods and we find many 
agricultural practises based on truly scien- 
tifie work. This is especially true of the 
agricultural chemists from the days of Lie- 
big down, although their claim to the title 
agriculturalists in the ordinary sense of the 
word might be questioned by some. 

It must be recognized that many of the 
methods of agriculture are still empirical, 
and in some eases necessarily so on account 
of the lack of equipment of the constit- 
uenecy, but it is admitted that the scientific 
are better where possible. Even in experi- 
ment station work, there is a danger pres- 
ent, through the tendency to accumulate 
masses of data with too little correlation 
and generalization. The purpose of experi- 
mentation is to determine causes and to 
draw general principles whose application 
will avoid the necessity of further experi- 
ments. Failure to generalize nullifies this 
purpose; in fact, unlimited experimenta- 
tion is empiricism. 

The methods of ecology are scientific, its 
materials are largely the same as those of 
agriculture and its practical applications 
are found chiefly in the field of agriculture. 
For these reasons it is evident that ecology 
belongs both to botany and to agriculture, 


SCIENCE 


227 


and in fact covers the debatable ground be- 
tween the two subjects. Instead of this 
being, as is too often the case under such 
circumstances, the cause of rivalry and 
even conflict, it should furnish a common 
ground for cooperation and both parties 
should endeavor to maintain a high stand- 
ard in investigation and generalization of 
the condition of plant responses to environ- 
mental factors. 

The services of ecology to agriculture 
then are twofold, first in the developing of 
the principles on which agricultural prac- 
tices are to be based, and second in furnish- 
ing a comprehensive source of information 
for the handling of specific cases and the 
answering of specific questions of agricul- 
tural policy. 

D. Illustrations from Definite Contribu- 
tions of Ecology.—Atmospheric moisture is 
observed quantitatively by means of the 
atmometer, which may be used as a meas- 
ure of plant transpiration. Recent results 
show a most remarkable detailed corre- 
spondence between the curve of an open- 
pan atmometer and that of a controlled 
plant of alfalfa. In soil moisture content 
the mechanical determining of the wilting 
coefficient by the centrifugal method is a 
valuable achievement, and is having an in- 
creasing application in the determining of 
the quantity of water to be applied in irri- 
gation. The study of the extension of root 
systems is having an increasing influence 
in determining the relation of plants to the 
soil moisture content. 

In light we have both the measure of the 
intensity of light by Wiesner and Clements, 
and recently the measurement of photolytic 
ability of light by a delicate apparatus de- 
vised by MacDougal. Under chemical con- 
tent the recent work of Coville with blue- 
berries is widely known on account of its 
publication in the National Geographic 
Magazine. One of the difficulties of this 


228 


quantitative work lies in the fact that the 
factors all work together on the plant, and 
measurement taken of individual factors 
may not indicate the true effect of the same 
factor working with others. Livingston’s 
suggestion of using the living plant as an 
index is aimed at overcoming this difficulty. 

Along physiographic lines, Cowles’s re- 
cent work on so-called lakes of the Missis- 
sippi valley has applied the principles of 
plant succession in a very practical way. 
The control of moving sand is best acecom- 
plished by application of ecological prin- 
ciples in the choice of plants for that ex- 
tremely xerophytic habitat. 

E. Place of Ecology in an Agricultural 
Course of Study—Up to the present the 
method in agricultural texts and courses 
has been to teach a little plant morphology, 
a chapter on plant activities, and then nine 
tenths of the work on agricultural practise. 
In addition to that we would recommend 
the insertion of a section on ecological prin- 
ciples, covering the content of ecology as 
outlined above. This should be general and 
theoretical, yet so related to agricultural 
practise as to form a suitable foundation 
for an agricultural course. A knowledge of 
these principles is fundamental to any real 
grasp of the subject. 

In conclusion, emphasis should be laid on 
the fact that this discussion does not aim to 
criticize present agricultural activities, but 
to emphasize what is now being done along 
scientific lines for the development of the 
general principles underlying the practise 
of agriculture, and the importance of its 
extension as far as possible. Secondly, to 
point out the opportunities in this growing 
branch of science and to urge the teaching 
of some brief but comprehensive study of 
the principles of ecology in all agricultural 
courses. 

W. G. WATERMAN 


NorTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, 
Evanston, ILL. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1184 


FISH NAMES, ANCIENT AND MODERN, 
AND EARLY ILLUSTRATIONS 
OF FISHES 

A FAVORITE topic which has engaged the 
attention of naturalists in all ages has been 
the identification of the names bestowed on 
plants and animals by ancient authors, par- 
ticularly those of classical antiquity. 

Probably no’ living naturalist has made 
more profound study of this subject than 
Professor D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, of 
Dundee. whose “Glossary of Greek Birds” 
(1895) and new translation of Aristotle’s 
“ History of Animals” (1910) are monuments 
of patient industry and vast erudition, both 
philological and zoological. So able a critic 
as the late Dr. T. N. Gill has recorded’ in 
glowing terms his appreciation of the merits 
of Professor Thompson’s researches. 

Dr Gill’s own labors in the same field have 
illumined many an obscure point in the in- 
terpretation of ancient Greek and Roman 
writers on natural history. We may recall 
here an article of his in the American Nat- 
uralist for 1873 (vol. 7, pp. 458-463) “On the 
Status of Aristotle in Systematic Zoology”; 
also his address before the American Associ- 
ation in 1896 on “ Some Questions 6n Nomen- 
clature.” His scientific papers and reviews 
fairly teem with discussions of fish etymol- 
ogies, and his article on the Glanis of Aris- 
totle is a fine presentation of the results of 
scholarly research.” 

Dr. D. S. Jordan also, to mention only one 
other contemporary ichthyologist, has per- 
formed, in association with H. A. Hoffmann, a 
valuable service in investigating vernacular 
names, ancient and modern, as applied to the 
fishes of the Greek peninsula and archipelago. 
A joint paper by Jordan and Hoffmann, em- 
bodying a catalogue of the fishes of Greece, 
was published in the Proceedings of the Amer- 
ican Philosophical Society for 1892. 

Among ichthyologists of the last century, 
Georges Cuvier was probably at more pains 
than any other author to determine what spe- 
cies of fish were referred to under the appel- 


1 Science, Vol. 33, 1911, pp. 730-738. 
2 Bull. George Washington Univ., Vol. 5, 1906. 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


lations of early writers. After him A. Koraes 
(or Coray), Johannes Miiller, Louis Agassiz, 
Erhard, Lowe, and the various editors and 
translators of Aristotle (Strack, Barthélemy, 
J. G. Meyer, Ogle, Aubert and Wimmer) and 
other ancient writers also rendered notable 
services. Other commentaries of value re- 
lating to the Greek fauna and its nomencla- 
ture were made during the last century by 
President Felton and Professor Sophocles of 
Harvard, and by several native Greek students, 
such as Nicolaos Christo Apostolides, D. 
Bikélas and Ioannos Bouros. The last-named 
was a professor at Athens, and published an 
essay in Greek of which an abstract appeared 
in Oken’s Isis for 1841. Apostolides is author 
of a catalogue of the fishes of Greece and also 
of a list of the freshwater fishes of Thessaly. 

Johannes Miiller, in his elaborate memoir® 
“Ueber den glatten Hai des Aristotelis,” de- 
votes a separate section to the attempts of 
16th century ichthyologists to identify the 
species of shark (Galeus levis) referred to by 
the “father of natural history.” 

In point of fact nearly all of the 16th to 
18th century writers on fishes—Belon, Ron- 
delet, Salviani, Gesner, Willoughby, Aldro- 
vandi, Artedi, Linnzus, Bloch and Schneider, 
together with lesser lights, and not forgetting 
Charles Estienne*—filled their works with 
copious references to and annotations on the 
numerous observations on fishes that have 
come down from classical antiquity. Among 
these “ fathers of modern ichthyology ” Aldro- 
vandi is credited by Sundevall, in his intro- 


8 Abhandl. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, 1840 (1842), pp. 
187-258. 

4Charles Estienne (Lat. Stephanus, b. 1504, d. 
1564), a physician at Paris, was author of ‘‘La 
maison rustique,’’? which passed through thirty 
editions. In 1537, and again in 1544 and 1546, he 
published a commentary on classical names of 
plants and animals entitled as follows: De Latinis 
et Greecis nominibus arborum, fruticum, herbarum, 
piscium et avium liber; ex Aristotele, Theo- 
phrasto, Dioscoride, Galeno, Nicandro, Atheneo, 
Oppiano, A®liano, Plinio, Hermolao Barbaro et 
Johanne Ruellio, cum gallica eorum nominum ap- 
pellatione. Lutetie, 1544. 84 p. 8°. 


SCIENCE 


229 


duction to the “ Thierarten des Aristoteles,” 
with having “fast alles gesammelt, was die 
Alten iiber die Thiere gesagt haben.” But 
with respect to Aristotelian writings alone we 
cannot do better than quote Professor Thomp- 
son’s remark, that “to annotate, illustrate, 
and criticize Aristotle’s knowledge of natural 
history is a task without end.” 

It will thus be seen that there has been a 
steady succession of commentators upon the 
etymology of ancient fish names from the be- 
ginning of the modern science of ichthyology 
down to the present day; nor are comment- 
aries wanting upon early patristic and med- 
izeval authors who have left memorials of the 
knowledge of the times respecting natural his- 
tory topics. Thus, there was published a 
score of years ago, by Hosius, an annotated 
edition of Decius Magnus Ausonius, a Roman 
consul of the 4th century whose idyll on the 
Moselle contains recognizable descriptions of 
sixteen species of fish. Modern editions have 
been published® also of Konrad von Megen- 
berg’s “ Buch der Natur,” written about the 
middle of the 14th century, a work which in 
itself is but a free rendering in the German 
vernacular of “De Natura Rerum,” by 
Thomas of Cantimpre (b. 1201, d. 1272). A 
similar service has been performed by H. 
Stadler for the “ Historia Animalium” of 
Albertus Magnus (b. 1193, d. 1280). As an 
illustration of Konrad’s style of description 
the following extract may be quoted from his 
chapter on Fishes. It relates to the Remora 
or Echeneis: 


Echeneis haizt ain ech. Der visch ist halpfuezig, 
sam Jacobus und Isidorus sprechent, und ist sé 
kreftig, daz er ain schef stil helt, daz ez sich nindert 
wegt, ez slahen die wind in daz mer oder ez slahen 
die iinden, und wie sér die wazzerfliizz diezzen, 
sO mag daz schef weder fiir sich noch hinder sich, 
reht als ob ez da gruntvest hab und da gewurzelt 
sei, niht dar umb, daz ez daz vischel wider ziehe, 
neur dar umb, daz daz vischel dar an hanget. Daz 
sprechent auch Ambrosius, Jacobus [sic] Aquinas, 
Aristotelis, Isidorus und der groz Basilius. Nu 
spricht Albertus . . . Plinius, Rabannus, Alex- 


5 One by F. Pfeiffer in 1861, and another by H. 
Schulz in 1897. 


230 


ander, Solinus, Jeronymus, Augustinus, Adelinus, 
Haimo, Ambrosius, Maister Jorach.’’ 6 


Although Konrad von Megenberg’s “ Buch 
der Natur” has been properly recognized as 
the earliest natural history compendium in 
the German language, we must go back two 
centuries earlier before meeting the first Ger- 
man naturalist. This distinction belongs to 
the remarkable personage known as Saint 
Hildegard (in Latin Hildegarde de Pinguia, 
b. 1098, d. 1179), abbess of Bingen. Her orig- 
inal observations on natural history are con- 
tained in nine books called the “ Physica,” the 
first printed edition of which appeared in 1533, 
and the second in 1536. Book V. of this 
work, in 87 chapters, treats of fishes, and the 
descriptions of them are given in such terms 
that all of the species are identifiable.” 

Concerning medizval fish names it will be 
sufiicient to refer to but two or three cther 
publications, all by German _philologists. 
One is an essay of 35 pages by Friedrich 
Schmidt, entitled “Die mittelenglische Ver- 
sion des Elucidarius des Honorius Augusto- 
dunensis,” published in 1909. Another is J. 
J. Koehler’s work of 87 pages devoted exclus- 
ively to old English fish names, published as 
Heft 21 of Anglistische Forschungen, Heidel- 
berg, 1906. Lastly, mention should be made 
of Professor Karl Krumbacher’s publication 
of “Das mittelgriechisches Fischbuch,” a 


6 Concerning the last-named authority, ‘‘Jorach’’ 
or Jorath, little is known except that he was an 
eastern, perhaps Persian writer, whose work ‘‘De 
Animalibus’’ is quoted by the thirteenth century 
encyclopedists, Vincent de Beauvais, Albertus Mag- 
nus and Bartholomeus Anglicus. Bartholomew’s 
encyclopedia, ‘‘On the Properties of Things,’’ was 
written originally in Latin some years prior to 
1260, and was translated into English by John 
Trevisa in 1397. An epitome of it, under the title 
of ‘‘Mediswval Lore,’’ was published by Robert 
Steele in 1893. 

7 See in particular L. Geisenheyner, ‘‘Ueber die 
Physica der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen, ete.’’ 
Sitzber. Naturh. Ver. Preussen, Rheinlande u. West- 
falens, 1911 (1912), HE, pp. 49-72. Also E. Was- 
mann, Hildegard von Bingen als ilteste deutsche 
Naturforscherin. Biol. Centralbl., Vol. 33, 1913, 
pp. 278-288. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 


Byzantine work dating from about the twelfth 
century. 

Returning to our own times, a long list 
might be given of articles dealing with the 
vernacular names of fishes in nearly all mod- 
ern languages, including Chinese and Japan- 
ese. We will, however, content ourselves with 
citing but two useful works, the first of which 
contains a bibliography of 31 pages. These 
are, first, Emile Belloc, “ Noms scientifiques et 
vulgaires des principaux poissons, etc.,” Paris, 
1899, 200 p. 8°. And second, P. P. C. Hoek, 
“ Catalogue des poissons du Nord de l’Europe 
avee les nems vulgaires dont on se sert dans 
les langues de cette region” (Conseil Perm. 
Int. Explor. Mer, Pub. de Circonstance, no. 
12, 1904). 


EARLY PORTRAYALS OF FISHES 

A special bibliography would be required 
to enumerate all of the articles that have been 
written on such subjects as prehistoric effigies 
of fishes, their representation in Egyptian 
monuments, ancient Greek vase paintings, 
Pompeian frescoes, the catacombs of Rome, 
and in the plastic and textile arts of pre-Co- 
lumbian inhabitants of the western world. 
There is even a special group of articles deal- 
ing with the fish as a religious symbol in the 
early church, and with the fish motive in 
Christian art. But in the present note we 
wish to consider a more modern phase of fish 
portrayals. 

Fishes and “sea-monsters” figured fre- 
quently in popular medieval legends and 
bestiaries, and grotesque drawings of them 
were taken .over into printed books from 
manuscript works which had been in circula- 
tion prior to the invention of printing. 
Among the various Herbals, or household 
recipe-books for medicines, which contained 
accounts of animals as well as plants and 
their uses in medicine, one that passed 
through numerous editions and translations 
was the “Hortus Sanitatis” of an author or 
compiler who styles himself Johannes von 
Cube. This soubriquet has been supposed by 
some to be a punning pseudonym for Dr. 
Johann Wonnecken, town physician of Frank- 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


fort. The “Hortus,” or “ Ortus,” was first 
issued at Metz about 1475, and other editions 
appeared at Strasburg about 1590 and later. 
The part entitled “ Tractatus de piscibus” is 
divided into many short chapters, and has 
numerous woodcuts of fish and fishing, all of 
very singular character. 

Those who are familiar with ancient ang- 
ling literature will recall in this connection 
the earliest known book on fowling and fish- 
ing, written in Flemish and printed at Ant- 
werp in 1492. It is usually referred to as the 
“ Boeexken,” or in German as “ Buechlin” or 
“ Fischbuchlin ” (editions of 1552 and 1578), 
and contains woodcuts of angling scenes. As 
a treatise on fishing, this tract has priority in 
date over “ The Book of St. Albans,” ascribed 
to Dame Juliana Barnes, Bernes or Berners. 
The first edition of this work was printed by 
the school-master printer of St. Albans in 
1486, but did not contain the “ Treatyse of 
fysshynge wyth an angle” with its accom- 
panying woodcut. The second edition, from 
the press of Wynkyn de Worde at Westmin- 
ster in 1496, does contain it, however, and 
it appears also to have been published as a 
“lytyll plaunflet” in London about 1500. 
There are excellent modern facsimile editions 
of both the “Book of St. Albans” (M. G. 
Watkins, 1880) and the early Flemish tract 
known as “Boecxken” (Alfred Denison, 
1872). <A still earlier facsimile edition of 
Dame Barnes’ book is that by Mr. Joseph 
Haslewood, in 1810; and in 1816 the same 
bibliographer brought out the second English 
edition of “The Dialogues of Creatures 
Moralysed.” The edition was limited to 100 
copies, and of these 56 were destroyed by fire. 
A Dutch version was printed in 1480, and a 
French in 1482, both of them containing illus- 
trations of fish and fishing scenes. 

Modern reproductions haye also been pub- 
lished of the remarkably fine animal drawings 
in the “Album de Villard de Honnecourt” 
(Lassus, 1858), dating from the thirteenth 
century in France, and in “ Das Tierbuch des 
Petrus Candidus, geschrieben 1460” (Killer- 
mann, 1914). It is to be hoped that before 
very long we may have at our disposal fac- 


SCIENCE 


231 


simile reprints of the wonderful animal fig- 
ures, including fishes, which embellish four 
valuable codices preserved in the Landesbib- 
liothek at Stuttgart. Two of these manu- 
scripts happen to be translations of the “ Liber 
de Natura Rerum,” by Thomas of Cantimpré, 
who spent fifteen years in its preparation prior 
to 1240. Strangely enough, although trans- 
lations of this work have been published (one 
of them by Konrad yon Megenberg, noticed 
above), the original text has never been 
printed. Large portions of it were, however, 
incorporated by Vincent de Beauvais in his 
various works, especially his the “ Speculum 
Naturale.” Besides the Stuttgart codex of 
Thomas Cantipratensis, others are preserved 
in the libraries of Paris and Cracow. In 
Book VII., the author treats of freshwater and 
marine fishes. 

For the benefit of those interested in the 
history of early prints and book illustrations 
we may refer finally to the recently published 
“List of works in the New York Public Li- 
brary relating to prints and their production,” 
compiled by F. Weitenkampf (1915), and also 
to Dr. Ludwig Choulant’s articles on illus- 
trated incunabula relating to natural history 


and medicine. C. R. Eastman 
AMERICAN MusEUM or NatuRau History, 
New York 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
CALIFORNIA PETROLEUM 
Wirnin a few days there will be issued the 
Report of the Committee on Petroleum of the 
California State Council of Defense. The 
members of the Committee on Petroleum are: 
Max Thelen, president California Railroad Com- 
mission, chairman, 
Eliot Blackwelder, professor of geology, Univer- 
sity of Illinois, 
David M. Folsom, professor of mining, Stanford 
University. b 
The committee was appointed by Governor 
Wm. D. Stephens on May 9, 1917, for the pur- 
pose of ascertaining and reporting to him the 
facts with reference to the production, distri- 
bution and utilization of California petroleum 
and its products. The report has been ap- 


232 


proved by Governor Stephens and has been 
forwarded by him to President Wilson with an 
urgent plea for action by the federal govern- 
ment to solve California’s and the nation’s pe- 
troleum problem. 

The report consists of 12 chapters, as fol- 
lows: 


Chapter I. Letter of Transmittal. 

Chapter II. World Petroleum Situation. 
Chapter III. California Petroleum Fields. 
Chapter IV. Production of California Petroleum. 
Chapter V. Storage of California Petroleum. 


Chapter VI. Transportation of California Pe- 
troleum. 
Refining of California Petroleum. 


Utilization of California Petroleum. 


Chapter VII. 
Chapter VIII. 


Chapter IX. General Review—Production and 
Consumption. 

Chapter X. Production—Maintenance and In- 
crease. 

Chapter XI. Conservation. 


Chapter XII. 


Chapter XII. contains the committee’s con- 
clusions and recommendations, and the two 
preceding chapters deal with the possibilities, 
respectively, of increasing the supply and of 
decreasing the consumption of California pe- 
troleum and its products. 


Conclusions and Recommendations. 


THE STATES RELATIONS SERVICE AND AGRI- 
CULTURAL INSTRUCTION 


RESOLUTIONS were passed at a conference in 
Washington on May 5, 1917, by representa- 
tives of the National Association of State Uni- 
versities, the Association of American Agri- 
cultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, the 
Association of American Universities, the As- 
sociation of American Colleges, and the insti- 
tutional committee of the Society for the Pro- 
motion of Engineering Education, requesting 
the advisory commission to recommend to the 
Council of National Defense that it approve 
the plan of developing and issuing at once 
through the States Relations Service of the U. 
S. Department of Agriculture a statement of a 
comprehensive policy of cooperation between 
the government and the universities, colleges 
and other schools which will make for the most 
effective use of these institutions along agricul- 
tural lines throughout the duration of the war. 
In order to carry out this program the States 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 


Relations Service has appointed the following 

committee: 

Professor G. A. Works, Cornell University. 

Mr. L. H. Dennis, director of vocational agricul- 
tural instruction. 

Professor H. F. Cotterman, Maryland State Col- 
lege of Agriculture. 

Dr. C. H. Winkler, University of West Virginia. 

Professor F. B. Jenks, University of Vermont, sec- 
retary. 

Mr. C. H. Lane, States Relations Service, chair- 
man. 

The States Relations Service will bring this 
committee together in Washington from time 
to time, as may seem expedient, with the com- 
mittee on education of the advisory commis- 
sion for the consideration of the best methods 
of maintaining, adjusting and strengthening 
the agricultural instruction of the country in 
order to meet the emergencies of the war and 
to plan for the period following the war. 


MEDICAL STUDENTS AND THE DRAFT 

Tue Provost Marshall General has sent the 
following to governors of all states: 

The President prescribes the following sup- 
plemental regulations governing the execution 
of the selective-service law. 

First. Hospital internes who are graduates 
of well-recognized medical schools or medical 
students in their fourth, third, or second year 
in any well-recognized medical school who 
have not been ealled by a local board may 
enlist in the Enlisted Reserve Corps provided 
for by section 55 of the national defense act 
under regulations to be issued by the Surgeon 
General, and if they are thereafter called by a 
local board they may be discharged on proper 
claim presented on the ground that they are in 
the military service of the United States. 

Second. A hospital interne who is a gradu- 
ate of a well-recognized medical school or a 
medical student in his fourth, third, or second 
year in any well-recognized medical school, 
who has been called by a local board and phys- 
ically examined and accepted and by or in be- 
half of whom no claim for exemption or dis- 
charge is pending, and who has not been 
ordered to military duty, may apply to the 
Surgeon General of the Army to be ordered to 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


report at once to a local board for military 
duty and thus be inducted into the military 
service of the United States, immediately 
thereupon to be discharged from the National 
Army for the purpose of enlisting in the En- 
listed Reserve Corps of the Medical Depart- 
ment. With every such request must be in- 
closed a copy of the order of the local board 
ealling him to report for physical examination 
(Form 103), affidavit evidence of the status of 
the applicant as a medical student or interne 
and an engagement to enlist in the Enlisted 
Reserve Corps of the Medical Department. 

Upon receipt of such application with the 
named inclosures the Surgeon General will 
forward the case to the Adjutant General with 
his recommendations. Thereupon the Adju- 
tant General may issue an order to such in- 
terne or medical student to report to his local 
board for military duty on a specified date, in 
person or by mail or telegraph, as seems most 
desirable. This order may issue regardless of 
the person’s order of liability for military 
service. From and after the date so specified 
such person shall be in the military service of 
the United States. He shall not be sent by 
the local board to a mobilization camp, but 
shall remain awaiting the orders of the Ad- 
jutant General of the Army. The Adjutant 
General may forthwith issue an order dis- 
charging such person from the military service 
for the convenience of the government. 

Three official copies of the discharge order 
should be sent at once by the Adjutant Gen- 
eral to the local board. Upon receipt of these 
orders the local board should enter the name of 
the man discharged on Form 164A and for- 
ward Form 164A, together with two of the 
certified copies of the order of discharge, to 
the mobilization camp to which it furnishes 
men. The authorities at the mobilization 
camp will make the necessary entries to com- 
plete Form 164A, and will thereupon give the 
local board credit on its net quota for one 
drafted man. 


SCIENTIFIC MEN AND NATIONAL SERVICE 

On August 15, the Editor of Scmnce ad- 
dressed the following letter to the Surgeon 
General of the Army: 


SCIENCE 


233 


I shall be under obligations to you if you are 
able to tell me what steps are being taken to make 
use in the medical service of the army of men who 
are conscripted who are not physicians but have 
scientific training that would enable them to render 
greater national service than by serving in the reg- 
ular army. If you are willing to make a statement 
that could be printed in Scrmncg, it would assist 
many scientific men who are at present doubtful as 
to what they should do. 


The following reply, dated August 29, has 
been received: 

In reply to your communication of August 15 
requesting information relating to drafted men who 
possess scientific training, I beg to advise you that 
the Sanitary Corps of the United States Army, at- 
tached to the Medical Department, will accept a 
number of selected men who are not physicians but 
who have attained professional standing in bac- 
teriology, chemistry and the several branches of 
engineering pertaining to sanitation. The Corps 
was organized specially to secure the services of 
skilled sanitarians having experience in both prac- 
tical field work as well as those specially qualified 
in the several scientific branches having a correla- 
tion to the sanitary sciences. 

By order of the Surgeon General: 

C. L. Fursusa, 
Major, Medical Reserve Corps, 
United States Army 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Proressor THropore Lyman, of the depart- 
ment of physics at Harvard University, has 
received from the War Department a commis- 
sion as captain in the aviation department of 
the United States Signal Corps, and has been 
ordered to report for active service in France. 
Profesor Lyman has been since 1910 director 
of the Jefferson Physical Laboratory at Har- 
vard. 


Proressor H. Gmron WELLS, of the depart- 
ment of pathology of the University of Chi- 
eago, and head of the Otho S. A. Sprague 
Memorial Institute, has been appointed a 
member of the commission on behalf of the 
American Red Cross to go to Roumania for 
the purpose of investigating the conditions 
there and planning for Red Cross assistance 
in that field. He has been granted leave of 
absence by the trustees until January, 1918. 


234 


Proressor Basin C. H. Harvey, of the de- 
partment of anatomy of the University of 
Chicago, who has been appointed to the Med- 
ical Department of the United States Army, 
with the rank of captain, has been granted one 
year’s leave of absence by the board of trustees. 
Assistant Professor Norman MacLeod Harris, 
of the department of hygiene and bacteriology, 
who has been serving abroad in the Canadian 
Medical Corps for the past year, has had his 
leave of absence extended for another year. 


Proressor ALFRED ATKINSON, of the depart- 
ment of agronomy, at the Montana State Col- 
lege, has been appointed by Mr. Herbert C. 
Hoover food commissioner of the state of 
Montana. 


Proressor Hrrsert W. Mumrorp, of the 
University of Illinois, is now associated with 
the Bureau of Markets of the United States 
Department of Agriculture as consulting spe- 
cialist in live-stock marketing. 

Dr. A. C. Trowprince, of the department of 
geology of the Iowa State University, has been 
made director of the Y. M. C. A.’s educational 
work at the Des Moines cantonment. 


Rosert A. Hatt, Ph.D. (Chicago), formerly 
assistant professor in physiological chemistry 
at the University of Minnesota, has been ap- 
pointed to a lieutenancy in the army and is 
now on his way to France for immediate 
service. 


Dr. Bennet M. Aen, professor of zoology 
in the University of Kansas, recently delivered 
an address on “ Experiments upon the glands 
of internal secretion in amphibian larve ” be- 
fore the faculty and students of the graduate 
summer quarter in medicine of the University 
of Illinois. 


Dr. Atonzo E. Tayior, of the University of 
Pennsylvania, member of the advisory board 
of food division of the surgeon-general’s 
office, will visit the several medical officers’ 
training camps and deliver a series of lectures 
on food values, food needs, and preparation 
and conservation of food. 

THE board of regents of the University of 
Michigan have approved a plan of Professor 
Henderson, director of the extension service, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 


for the giving of about fifty extension lectures 
before the troops to be gathered at the Battle 
Creek Cantonment. These lectures are to be 
given by members of the faculty without com- 
pensation, and with the reimbursement by the 
university to them of their actual traveling 
and hotel expenses, for which the university 
extension fund already provides. 

Tue Paris Academy of Sciences has received 
a gift from Mme. Beauregard to found a me- 
morial to M. Clément Félix, the well-known 
electrical engineer. 

Dr. C. O. TrecHMANN, of Hartlepool, Eng- 
land, who, while engaged in the manufacture 
of Portland cement, made contributions to 
mineralogy, crystallography and entomology, 
died on June 29. 

GerorcE WILBER HARTWELL, professor of 
mathematics and registrar in Hamline Uni- 
versity, St. Paul, died on July 23 of appendi- 
citis. Dr. Hartwell was born in New Jersey in 
1881 and was graduated from Wesleyan Uni- 
versity in 1903. After two years spent in 
teaching in the Michigan Agricultural Col- 
lege, he went to Columbia University on a 
fellowship, and there took the Ph.D degree in 
1908. After filling a one-year vacancy in the 
University of Kansas, where he was elected to 
Sigma XI, he went to Hamline University as 
professor. The year following he became regis- 
trar, and continued in these positions until his 
death. He was a member of the American 
Mathematical Society and several similar for- 
eign societies. The correspondent who sends 
us this information writes that Dr. Hartwell 
was not only a scholar of brilliant powers, but 
he was an executive officer of such tact and 
ability and a man of such decision and force 
that his loss to the college and his associates 
can hardly be estimated. 

Av Liverpool University an advisory com- 
mittee of ten members has been formed in 
order to develop the chemical industry after 
the war; it consists of four members of the 
chemical staff of the university and six others 
representing the chemical industries. 

THE annual meeting of the American Public 
Health Association, which was to have been 
held in New Orleans in December, will be held 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


in Washington by direction of the executive 
committee. War hygiene will be the central 
theme of discussion, and Washington is the 
city where information regarding the sanitary 
problems of armies is being concentrated. 


THE installation of a new aquarium at 
Woods Hole Station of the Bureau of Fisheries 
was completed on July 5, under the direction 
of Superintendent Harron, of the central sta- 
tion. The aquarium consists of 10 tanks, 
which are arranged along the western and 
northern sides of the exhibition room of the 
hatchery building. The old grotto is entirely 
displaced. The front of the aquarium is 
stained to represent Spanish oak. The in- 
teriors of the tanks are decorated with beach 
rocks of various sizes secured in the vicinity. 
The tanks were those used at the San Fran- 
cisco exposition for the bureau’s exhibit, but 
it was necessary to alter them in order to 
adapt them to the space allotted at Woods Hole. 
The aquarium makes a very pleasing exhibit 
and will be appreciated by the thousands of 
people who annually visit the station, in addi- 
tion to serving a useful purpose in the scien- 
tific and fish-cultural work. 


Dr. MacNamara, a member for North Cam- 
berwell, in answering a question put in the Brit- 
ish House of Commons, defined the functions 
of the Board of Invention and Research as fol- 
lows: (a) To concentrate expert scientific in- 
quiry on certain definite problems, the solution 
of which is of importance to the naval service; 
(6) to encourage research in directions in 
which it is probable that results of value to the 
navy may be obtained by organized scientific 
effort; (c) to consider schemes or suggestions 
put forward by inventors and other members 
of the general public. The board considers all 
inventions relating to naval warfare and acts 
in an advisory capacity to the Admirality. It 
has funds at its disposal for carrying out trials 
and experiments and possesses full facilities 
for arriving at a decision whether an invention 
is worthy of adoption or not; but the adoption 
of an invention is subject to the approval of 
the Board of Admiralty. The general superin- 
tendence of the Board of Invention and Re- 


SCIENCE 


235 


search is reserved to the First Lord, to whom 
it has direct access. The Central Committee 
meets once a week; the panel once every six 
weeks, and the subeommittees hold meetings at 
frequent intervals as the circumstances re- 
quire. The president has attended 54 sittings 
during the last 12 months. Dr. MacNamara 
also stated that the members of the board who 
received remuneration for their services were 
the president, £1,350 a year, in addition to re- 
tired pay; Vice-admiral Sir Richard H. 
Peirse (naval member of Central Committee), 
£1,530 a year; Professor W. H. Bragg (mem- 
ber of Panel), whilst occupying the post of 
resident director of research at an Admiralty 
experiment station, professorial salary of 
£1,000 a year at the University of London is 
refunded by the Admiralty to the university 
authorities; Dr. Dugald Clerk (member of 
Panel), as director of engineering research at 
the Admiralty Engineering Laboratory, City 
and Guilds (Engineering) College, South Ken- 
sington, is entitled to repayment of out-of- 
pocket expenses to an amount not exceeding 
£600 a year. 


WE learn from the Journal of Industrial 
and Engineering Chemistry that through a co- 
operative agreement with Cornell University, 
representatives of the Bureau of Mines have 
been stationed at Morse Hall, where the elec- 
tric furnace equipment of the department of 
chemistry has been utilized in some metallurg- 
ical work of the bureau. Experiments on the 
electric melting of brass have indicated that 
a suitable electric furnace might materially re- 
duce the metal losses from volatilization and 
avoid the use of costly crucibles. The bureau 
is now testing a commercial-size furnace with 
special attention to its suitability for use on 
brasses for cartridges and shrapnel cases. 
Another electric furnace problem studied by 
the bureau has been the production of ferro- 
uranium from the uranium oxide obtained as 
a by-product in the extraction of radium from 
its ores. Ferro-uranium is used in making 
uranium steel, which is said to be used by Ger- 
many for the lining of big guns which will 
stand up at a rate of fire so rapid that other 
steels fail. It is undecided whether the work 


236 


on gun steel will be done at Cornell or some 
other university. 

It is reported in Nature that in order to 
promote the further development of the dye- 
making industry in the United Kingdom, the 
president of the Board of Trade has decided to 
establish a special temporary department of 
the board to deal with matters relating to the 
encouragement, organization, and, so far as 
necessary, the regulation of that industry. 
The department will be under the direction of 
Sir Evan Jones, Bart., who has placed his 
services at the disposal of the president, and 
will have the official title of commissioner for 
dyes. The commissioner will act in close con- 
sultation with the various dye-making and 
dye-using interests concerned. 


Tue United States Geological Survey, De- 
partment of the Interior, has issued as Bulletin 
645 its “Bibliography of North American 
Geology for 1915,” by J. M. Nickles. This 
bulletin is a list of the books, papers and maps 
bearing on the geology (including the paleon- 
tology, petrology and mineralogy) of North 
America and adjacent islands, and of Panama 
and Hawaii, issued in 1915. The papers are 
arranged alphabetically by names of authors 
and the bulletin contains a full alphabetical 
subject index by which any paper relating to 
any particular subject or area may be readily 
found. This bibliography is one of a series, 
the volume for 1911 forming Bulletin 524, that 
for 1912 Bulletin 545, that for 1913 Bulletin 
584 and that for 1914 Bulletin 617. From 
time to time these bibliographies are combined 
in a single volume covering several years. The 
series now covers the literature of American 
geology from 1732 to the end of 1915. 


THE annual report on the Science Museum, 
and on the Geological Survey of Great Britain 
and Museum of Practical Geology, has been 
published as a White Paper for the Board of 
Education. According to an abstract in the 
London Times both museums have been closed 
to the public since March 6, 1916, but the scien- 
tifie work has been continued so far as was pos- 
sible under present conditions. The Science 
Museum remained open to students and for 
special purposes, the daily average of visitors 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1184 


after March being 132, as against 986 formerly. 
To the horology section Mr. Evan Roberts con- 
tributed over 200 watches and watch move- 
ments, of much historical and technical in- 
terest. The library of the London Mathe- 
matical Society was transferred and deposited 
on loan in the Science Library, and is being 
catalogued. The number of readers was 6,832, 
of whom two thirds were science teachers or 
students of the various colleges. The Geolog- 
ical Survey has also suffered from the war, 
which in turn has made special demands on 
the staff. Consultations and correspondence 
relating to military establishments at home 
and abroad have been frequent. Progress has 
been made with the “Series of special reports 
on the mineral resources of Great Britain,” 
and with the standardizing of six-inch maps. 
The petrographical department has helped the 
Admiralty in the matter of aeroplane com- 
passes, and the photographic work included 
the copying of maps and diagrams for military 
purposes and the making of microphotographs 
for the Admiralty. The Museum of Practical 
Geology was visited by 7,227 persons between 
January 1 and March 6, when it was closed to 
the public except for special inquiries. Dona- 
tions during the year include a series of speci- 
mens, mainly rocks, from the western front, 
and igneous rocks from Imbros and Lemnos. 


THE Research Defense Society of Great 
Britain, owing to the continuance of the war, 
has again decided to postpone its annual gen- 
eral meeting. The committee’s report of the 
work of the society during the past two years, 
as reported in The British Medical Journal, 
states that the inaction of the opponents of re- 
search had necessarily made the society less 
active. There had hardly been any contro- 
versy in the newspapers, and all through the 
country the great advances made in protective 
medicine due to research were being appreci- 
ated and better understood. The lectures given 
had been concerned more with the general in- 
fluence of scientific medicine on the health and 
efficiency of the army than with experiments 
on animals. The Association for the Advance- 
ment of Medicine by Research decided last 
year in favor of amalgamation with the Re- 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


search Defense Society, and the president and 
honorary treasurer of the association, Sir 
Thomas Barlow and Dr. Hale White, have 
joined the committee of the society. It is 
hoped that in the coming years there will 
hardly be any need for disputes with antivivi- 
section societies, and that the society’s best 
opportunities for usefulness will be found in 
wide, non-aggressive educational work. 


We learn from Nature that the pen- 
sions granted during the past year by 
the British government include the follow- 
ing: Mrs. Charlton Bastian, in consideration 
of the services to science of her late husband, 
Dr. Charlton Bastian, and of her straitened 
circumstances, £100; Mrs. Minchin, in con- 
sideration of the scientific work of her late 
husband, Professor E. A. Minchin, and of her 
straitened circumstances, £75; Mrs. Albert 
Giinther, in consideration of the scientific work 
of her late husband, Dr. Albert Giinther, and 
of his distinguished services to the British 
Museum as keeper of zoology, £70; and Mrs. 
Roland Trimen, in consideration of the emi- 
nent services of her late husband to biological 
science, and of her straitened circumstances, 
£75. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

Tue will of Mrs. Robert W. Bingham, wife 
of Judge Robert Bingham, of Louisville, Ky., 
a graduate of the University of North Caro- 
lina, gives to the University of North Caro- 
lina $75,000 a year for the establishment of 
professorships and ultimately a capital sum 
producing this amount. The professorships are 
to be known as Kenan professorships, in memo- 
riam of Mrs. Bingham’s father, William R. 
Kenan, and her uncles, Thomas S. Kenan and 
James Graham Kenan, graduates of the uni- 
versity. The value of this bequest to the Uni- 
versity of North Carolina is more than a mil- 
lion and a half dollars. 

Francis A. THomson has resigned from the 
faculty of the State College of Washington to 
accept the deanship of the school of mines at 
the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. 


Dr. WaLtace Burrrick, member of the ex- 
ecutive committee of the Rockefeller Founda- 


SCIENCE 


237 


tion and director of its China Medical Board, 
is in England on the invitation of a depart- 
ment of the British government to confer with 
educators and officials in Great Britain con- 
cerning public education. 


At the University of Chicago the following 
promotions from associate professorships to 
professorships have been made: Basil OC. H. 
Harvey, of the department of anatomy; Ho- 
ratio Hackett Newman, of the department of 
zoology; J. Paul Goode, of the department of 
geography; Walter Sheldon Tower, of the de- 
partment of geography. From an assistant 
professorship to an associate professorship: Ar- 
thur C. Lunn, of the department of mathe- 
matics. 


At the New Hampshire College A. W. Rich- 
ardson, of the University of Maine, has been 
appointed assistant professor in charge of the 
poultry department to succeed R. V. Mitchell, 
and G. A. Minges, of Iowa State College, has 
been appointed instructor in chemistry. The 
chemistry department has lost two members 
owing to the war: Professor G. A. Perley has 
been granted leave of absence for the period of 
the war and is serving as first lieutenant in 
the division of chemical engineering, U. S. 
Army, and Arnold J. Grant has gone to the 
second Plattsburg Camp. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 


THE PUBLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC 
RESEARCH 


To tHe Epitor or Scrmnce: A matter in 
which there is a considerable divergence be- 
tween the practise of different laboratories is 
that of the method of publication of their 
results. A number of laboratories publish 
their own bulletins, either as separate papers 
or as periodical volumes. Others publish in 
the scientific and technical press, either in one 
or two journals or in a number of different 
journals according to the subjects dealt with. 

Naturally, the best method of publication 
will depend to some extent on the nature of 
the work published and the character of the 
laboratory. In the case of a purely technical 
laboratory publishing a large number of papers 
dealing with one special, technical subject, 


238 


the method of publishing separate bulletins 
mailed directly to a selected list of those in- 
terested may be quite satisfactory, but if the 
publications of a laboratory cover a large range 
of subjects it would seem to be preferable to 
publish each paper in the journal which deals 
with the department of science most akin to 
that of the subject dealt with. If this is not 
done, there is a grave danger that the paper 
may be missed by the abstract journals and 
may fall out of sight altogether, while in any 
case the publication of single bulletins throws 
a heavy burden on any investigator engaged 
in compiling a bibliography of a subject. 

In this laboratory we have confined the pub- 
lication of our scientific communications to 
the recognized technical and scientific jour- 
nals, and I find that our first fifty communica- 
tions have been published in no less than sev- 
enteen different journals, twenty-eight being 
published in journals relating to some branch 
of physics, five in chemical journals, and sev- 
enteen in photographic publications. 

Since it is an advantage for all the papers 
issued from one laboratory, which, naturally, 
have a common interest, to be available in 
some collected form, we issue periodically 
bulletins containing abridgments of all our 
scientific papers, the second volume of these 
bulletins containing the papers published dur- 
ing 1915 and 1916 being now ready. 

It would be of interest to learn the views 
of others interested in this question as to the 
relative advantages of the issue of separate 
bulletins as compared with publication in 
the current press. C. E. K. Mees 

RESEARCH LABORATORY, 

EastMAN Kopak CoMPANy 


POPULAR SCIENCE 


UnwaRRANTED deductions have been drawn 
ina recent popularization of science by one of 
our eminent paleontologists, Dr. H. F. Os- 
born, not however in his own field, but in a 
special field apparently unfamiliar to him. 
Lest others may be misled into thinking that 
the deductions are based on good evidence, 
may I be permitted space to call attention to 
them. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1184 


Dr. C. D. Walcott has recently reported! the 
discovery in an Algonkian limestone of fossils 
having appearances and associations which 
give valid reasons, though not positive proof, 
for thinking them to be bacteria. The finding 
of these fossils in a limestone rock in associa- 
tion with fossil alge as well as other related 
facts lends support to his previous suggestion? 
that this limestone was probably partially de- 
posited by bacterial action in a manner similar 
to that described by G. H. Drew? as taking place 
to-day in the tropical waters about the Bahamas. 
A reference back to the article by Drew shows 
that the bacterium which he found causing the 
depositation of CaCO, is a denitrifier which 
he has named Bacterium calcis. It is an or- 
ganism similar to other denitrifiers, possessing 
the power to reduce nitrates to nitrites with 
the later disappearance of the nitrite accom- 
panied by the formation of ammonia and a 
gas which, from the few simple tests made, 
was in all probability free nitrogen. Like 
other denitrifiers, this organism was found to 
possess the power of utilizing organic carbon 
in the form of sugars and even possessed the 
power of secreting ectoenzymes capable of 
liquefying organic nitrogen compounds like 
gelatin. The precipitation of the calcium car- 
bonate is explained as due to the increase in 
the concentration of CO, ions caused by the 
advent of (NH,),CO,, which is partially ion- 
ized into NH, and CO, ions. 

If the validity of the evidence that the fos- 
sils found are bacterial in nature is admitted, 
and it is assumed that the particular fossils in 
question are of the organisms which were in- 
strumental in having caused the deposit of 
limestone, then the deduction might be drawn 
that these fossils are those of denitrifying bac- 
teria. The fact that Dr. Walcott refrained 
from making this deduction is quite probably 
due to the fact that he had a feeling that it 
would be based on too many “ifs.” 

Turning now to the article by Dr. Osborn* 


1 Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 1: 256-257, 1915. 

2 Smiths. Misc. Coll., 64: 76-156, 1914. 

3 Papers from Tortugas Lab., 5: 8-45, 1914, Pub. 
182, Carn. Inst. Wash. 

4 Sci. Monthly, 3: 289-307, 1916. 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


we find that he has not been as cautious and 
that he sees in Dr. Walecott’s fossil bacteria 
certain resemblances in appearance and struc- 
ture to nitrogen-fixing bacteria from soil (by 
context the bacteria referred to appear to be 
Azotobacter and related forms). He is not 
dismayed by the fact that the metabolism of 
marine, denitrifying, lime-depositing bacteria, 
and that of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in soil 
which utilize both atmospheric nitrogen and 
organic carbon, are in a sense opposed to each 
other. Still less is he troubled by the very 
great difference between the metabolism of 
nitrogen-fixing bacteria and the autotrophic, 
nitrifying bacteria like Nitrosococcus and 
Nitrosomonas organisms which do not utilize 
organic food and derive their nitrogen from 
ammonium salts’ instead of free nitrogen). 
In fact, he apparently thinks of the nitrifying 
and the nitrogen-fixing bacteria as essentially 
identical, as appears in the following state- 
ment (p. 292): 


The great antiquity of even higher forms of bac- 
teria feeding on atmospheric nitrogen is proved by 
the discovery, announced by Walcott in 1915, of a 
species of pre-Paleozoie fossil bacteria attributed 
to ‘‘ Micrococcus’’ but probably related rather to 
the existing Nitrosecoccus which derives its nitro- 
gen from ammonium salts. 


The illogical nature of this statement may 
be brought out by substituting groups more 
familiar to paleontologists than are bacteria. 
Thus we have: 


The great antiquity of Carnivores feeding on 
flesh is proved by the discovery of a species of 
pre-Paleozoic mammal attributed to Herbivores, 
but probably related rather to Rodents who de- 
tive their food largely from grain and nuts. 


Needless to say that Dr. Osborn would be 
the first to see the weakness in such a state- 
ment. In reality this. paraphrase does not 
exaggerate the illogical nature of the origi- 
nal statement, though it may appear to do so 
to the layman unfamiliar with the fact that 
great differences in these tiny organisms are 
very frequently hidden behind superficial re- 
semblences in appearance. 

The almost universal uniformity in proto- 
plasmic structure of living species of bacteria 


SCIENCE 


239 


and their universal possession of a definite 
membrane which gives them definite form 
will cause bacteriologists to wonder at the 
statements on the following page of Dr. Os- 
born’s article where he says: 

The cell structure of the Algonkian and of the 
recent Nitrosococcus bacteria is very primitive and 
uniform in appearance, the protoplasm being naked 
or unprotected. 


Any one who looks at the uniform black of 
the fossil organisms in the microphotographs 
given and who realizes that these are pictures 
of fossils and not of living organisms will be 
skeptical in regard to the evidence on which 
this statement is based. 

Statements based on evidence of the sort 
furnished which claim that the presence in the 
Algonkian of nitrifying, denitrifying or nitro- 
gen-fixing bacteria has been shown appear 
like a pyramid of speculation supported on an 
apex of fact. They have, however, already 
misled a bacteriologist into an acceptance of 
one of these claims, for I. J. Kligler® says in a 
recent paper (p. 166): 

Finally Waleott’s discovery of bacteria closely 
resembling our nitrogen fixers of the soil is added 
proof of the primitiveness of these microbes. 


It is because of the great interest of the 
findings by Drew and Walcott, that this word 
of warning has been uttered to protect science 
from conclusions which others have drawn 
from them. If this is not done there is 
danger that the next time reference is made to 
their work it will be in some textbook as a 
positive statement that nitrifying, denitri- 
fying or nitrogen-fixing bacteria, or all three, 
have been shown to exist as far back as the 


Algonkian. R. S. Breep 
N. Y. AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, 
Geneva, N. Y. 


MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID 
To tHe Epiror or Scrence: In the July 27 


number of Scmncoe Prof. Mattoon M. Curtis 


devotes a column and a half to a criticism of 

the “common error” that man is a lineal 

descendant of the anthropoid apes. “ The ey- 

ident implication,” he tells us, “is that the 
5 Jour. Bact., 165-176, 1917. 


240 


extant anthropoids, orang, gibbon, gorilla and 
chimpanzee are intended.” He proceeds to 
cite Duckworth to prove that this is an error, 
and concludes, so far as one can judge of his 
meaning, that man and the anthropoids are 
“not genetically related”—an amazing non 
sequitur. 

One may parallel his argument in some such 
form as this: The existing Nordic peoples are 
currently asserted to be descendants of prim- 
itive races of man. The evident implication 
is that the extant primitive races, negroes, 
Australians, Red Indians, and Polynesians 
are intended. But Professor Ripley has re- 
cently shown that none of these races, consti- 
tuted as they now are, figured in the ancestral 
history of the Nordic race. This may relieve 
our anxieties lest we might be descended from 
savages. While we do not know as much 
about such creatures as we might, it is per- 
fectly clear that there is nothing to the absurd 
tradition that we Nordics are descended from 
them or they from us. It appears to be a 
sound principle that groups showing inverse 
developments are not genetically related, and 
it is well known that the Nordies are un- 
usually light-colored while the savage races 
are remarkably dark; that the high and 
straight nose of the Nordic and his blue eyes 
are not to be found in these so-called inferior 
races of mankind; while most of them display 
thick lips which do not appear in the Nordic 
race. 

And so on—but this surely is a sufficient 
reductio ad absurdum. Who believes that the 
human race is descended from the existing 
anthropoid apes? Whoever did that knew 
anything about it? How could it be so? 
How could prehistoric human beings be de- 
scended from anthropoids still living, unless, 
like Rider Haggard’s “She,” they were en- 
dowed with eternal life to outlive their de- 
scendants? Surely the writer can not but 
know that the current assertion means and 
can mean only that man is descended from the 
same ancestral stock as the anthropoid apes. 
What that ancestral stock was like, and how 
far and in what directions its living descend- 
ants have departed from it, is the problem 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 


which the “scientists”? (whom he puts in 
“ quotes ” apparently intended in some obscure 
derogatory sense) are trying to find out, by 
the inferential evidence of anatomy, physiol- 
ogy, and kindred sciences, and by the direct 
but as yet scanty evidence of paleontology and 
archeology. 

The final paragraph opens with a curious 
sentence which I quote: 

Whether ‘‘scientists’’? are entitled to believe 
what they please or are to be guided by observa- 
tions and verifications is perhaps an open ques- 
tion. 

Possibly I am mistaken and Mr. Curtis 
means by “scientists” the followers of Mrs. 
Eddy. I don’t know their principles very well, 
but very possibly they do consider them- 
selves entitled to “believe what they please” 
irrespective of evidence other than the asser- 
tions of “Science and Health.” But surely 
no scientific man—without quotes—thinks 
himself entitled to believe anything regarding 
science save upon the evidence of observations 
and conclusions made and verified by himself 
and others. Nor does anybody else. The 
attitude is not peculiar to science. It is the 
ordinary man’s attitude towards the common 
world about us; and science has no other atti- 


' tude than that. 


It is difficult to see in this letter anything 
save an attempt to discredit theories which 
the writer, without knowing much about them, 
does not wish to believe. I can hardly suppose 
that many readers of ScrmeNcE will take the 
argument seriously, in spite of a not incon- 
siderable dialectic skill. But however appro- 
priate in some theological journal it appears 
somewhat in the category of ‘ eccentric liter- 
ature” in its present surroundings. 

W. D. Marrupw 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

Bibliography of William Henry Welch, M.D., 

LL.D., 1875-1917. Prepared by Watrter C. 

Burxet, M.D., with foreword by Henry M. 

Hurp, M.D. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins 

Press. 47 pp. 4°. 

This is a notable contribution to medical 
bibliography, in the special sense of the term, 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


which implies an exhaustive and accurate in- 
dex of all the books and periodical papers under 
a given subject or author, as distinguished 
from the bibliophilic sense, in which a book, 
incunabula or manuscript is described, like an 
object in natural history, in such a complete 
and unmistakable manner that its identification 
is always possible from the description. The 
scattered scientific papers and the varied public 
activities of Professor Welch are here set 
forth, for the first time, in a strict chrono- 
logical order, which will be most useful to 
future medical historians and biographers. 
No one, for instance, could gain any just con- 
ception of the versatile and genial scientific 
work of Virchow or Weir Mitchell who has 
not gone over the “ Virchow-Bibliographie ” 
of 1901 or the catalogue which Mitchell him- 
self prepared in 1894. As much of the best 
scientific literature of medicine is buried in 
the endless files of medical periodicals, medical 
bibliography, as standardized by Billings and 
Fletcher, enjoys the status of firearms in the 
early days of the far West—“sadly missed 
when badly wanted.” The Welch bibliography, 
as Dr. Hurd tells us in the preface, has re- 
quired the investigation of years, and is now 
printed because the interruptions of the pres- 
ent war have prevented the publication of the 
collective writings. In the first half of Dr. 
Burket’s list (1875-1900), we find the larger 
scientific contributions of Welch, the great 
laboratory physician, his early investigations 
of the pathology of pulmonary edema (1875), 
glomerulonephritis (1886), the structure 
of white thrombi (1887), his Cartwright lec- 
tures on the pathology of fever (1888), his 
discoveries of the staphylococcus which in- 
fects the edges of wounds (1891), and (with 
Nuttall) of the bacillus aerogenes capsulatus 
(1892), now of immense moment in Europe 
as the cause of gas infection in gunshot 
wounds, his synthesis of the many nondescript 
diseases caused by this bacillus (1900), his ex- 
periments (with Flexner) on the effects of in- 
jection of diphtheritic toxins (1891-2) and 
his monographs on thrombosis and embolism 
(1899). In his later period, Welch has been 
content to see his pupils carry out investiga- 


SCIENCE 


241 


tions inspired by him, so that the latter half 
of the bibliography, while replete with con- 
tributions on purely medical themes, is char- 
acterized by those addresses on public occa- 
sions in which Welch always acquits himself 
with the grace and charm of some distingué 
French academician. 

As one who has had latterly to devote 
much of his time to the public good, Welch, 
like Dr. Johnson’s Mead, has “lived more 
in the broad sunshine of life than any man.” 
Many of the papers listed in this bibliog- 
raphy are described as “ unpublished,” which 
perhaps accounts for the appearance of 
the bibliography before the actual collected 
writings. Among, these, it is to be hoped that 
the many charming extempore talks at the 
Johns Hopkins Historical Club will be in- 
eluded. On such occasions, Welch, when the hu- 
mor strikes him, improvises delightfully upon 
a set theme, like some genial musician of the 
past. The well-known “Ether Day Address ” 
on “The Influence of Anzsthesia upon Med- 
ical Science” (1896) was written out without 
preparation in a railroad car, as he traveled to 
Boston, a fair example of his habit of im- 
provisation. The two addresses on the eyolu- 
tion of scientific laboratories (1896) and the 
interdependence of medicine and_ science 
(1907), the latter also written out en route for 
Chicago, are perhaps the most interesting of 
Welch’s contributions to medical history. 
Here, as everywhere, he has furnished young 
and old with food for thought, and often with 
new ideas. Dr. Burket is to be congratulated 
on the excellence and accuracy of his work, 
which follows the bibliographic norms set by 
the Surgeon General’s Library. It is a most 
timely contribution. In the present emergen- 
cies, no man has labored more zealously and 
faithfully for the welfare of his country than 
William H. Welch. F. H. Garrison 

Army MepicaL Musrum 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
WHAT SUBSTANCE IS THE SOURCE OF THE 
LIGHT IN THE FIREFLY? 
In at least three groups of luminous animals 
(fireflies, ostracod crustacea and mollusks), 


242 


two distinct chemical substances, besides water 
and oxygen, are necessary for light production. 
One of these is not destroyed by heat and is 
easily dialyzable; it can be prepared by ex- 
tracting luminous animals with hot water. 
This substance has been termed luciferin by 
Dubois! and photophelein by myself.2 The 
second substance is destroyed by heat and does 
not dialyze; it can be prepared by allowing a 
water extract of the luminous organ to stand 
until the light disappears. This has been 
called luciferase by Dubois! and photogenin 
by myself.2 Whenever solutions (non-lumi- 
nous) of these two substances are mixed, light 
immediately appears and is brighter the 
greater the conéentration of the solutions. 

According to Dubois, the thermolabile sub- 
stance, luciferase (photogenin) is an oxidizing 
enzyme (hence the terminatidn ase), which 
oxidizes’the thermostable substance, luciferin 
(photophelein), which is therefore the source 
of the light. My own work has led me to be- 
live that the thermolabile substance is not an 
enzyme, but is itself the source of the light 
and I have indicated this by calling it photo- 

“genin (phos, light; gennao, produce). The 
thermostable substance is, according to my 
view, a material which assists in the produc- 
tion of light and I have indicated this by eall- 
ing it photophelein (phos, light; opheleo, as- 
sist). 

Which is the source of the light, photo- 
genin (luciferase) or photophelein (luciferin) ? 
Fortunately the question can be answered 
by a simple crucial experiment. The two 
common eastern genera of fireflies produce 
light of different colors. Photinus emits an 
orange light, while Photuris emits a green- 
ish yellow light. The difference in color is 
especially noticeable when the luminous or- 
gans of the two species are ground up in sep- 
arate mortars. As shown by Ooblentz,®? the 


1 Dubois, R., C. R. Soc. Biol., 1885, XXXVIL., 
559, and Ann. de la Soc. Linn. de Lyons, 1913, LX., 
and 1914, LXTI., 161. 

2 Harvey, E. N., Scimncr, N. S., 1916, XLIV., 
652, and Amer. Jour. Physiol., XLII., 318, 1917. 

8 Coblentz, W. W., Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 
164, 1912. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 


difference in color is real; the spectrum of 
Photinus extending further into the red than 
that of Photuris. The two light-producing 
substances can be prepared from each of the 
two species, and the photogenin of Photinus 
mixed with its own photophelein gives an 
orange light, while the photogenin of Photuris 
mixed with its own photophelein gives a green- 
ish-yellow light, the color characteristic of the 
species. The two genera may also be “ inter- 
crossed” with respect to the two light-pro- 
ducing substances, 7. e., the photogenin of 
Photinus gives light with the photophelein of 
Photuris and vice versa. If the source of 
light is photophelein (luciferin) as Dubois 
believes, the light produced by Photinus photo- 
phelein (luciferin) & Photurts photogenin (lu- 
ciferase) should be orange, the color char- 
acteristic of Photinus. I have found, on the 
contrary, that the light from this “cross” is 
greenish yellow. Conversely, the light from a 
mixture of Photinus photogenin (luciferase) 
and Photuris photophelein (luciferin) is or- 
ange. The color of the light in these “ crosses ” 
is that characteristic of the animal supplying 
photogenin (luciferase). The photogenin (lu- 
ciferase) must, therefore, be the oxidizable 
substance and the source of the light. 

How does photophelein assist in the pro- 
duction of light? The process is best studied 
in the marine ostracod crustacean, Cypridina 
hilgendorfit. The photogenin and photophe- 
lein of this animal are secreted into the sea 
water together, and in time the photophelein 
is used up and a perfectly clear colorless non- 
luminous sohition of photogenin remains. If 
we add to such a concentrated solution, photo- 
phelein or certain specific substances in ex- 
tracts of non-luminous forms, or fat solvents 
such as ether, chloroform and higher alcohols, 
or thymol, saponins, soaps, bile salts, or erys- 
tals of inorganic salts, such as NaCl, light 
appears. Many of these substances are not 
oxidizable (another proof of the inadequacy of 
Dubois’s theory), but all of them are cytolytic 
agents. The cytolytic action of these sub- 
stances on cells is the result of a dissolving 
action on the cell surface involving an in- 
creased dispersion of the colloids which results 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


in the complete solution and dissolution of 
the cell. Photogenin is a colloid and I would 
suggest that these substances have a similar 
action on the colloidal particles of photogenin. 
We are not dealing here with a cytolysis of 
cell fragments present in the secretion, since 
these cytolytic agents (salts, thymol, etc.) 
cause light production even in solutions of 
photogenin filtered through porcelain or sili- 
ceous filters which remove all granules and 
cell fragments. I would suggest, therefore, as 
a working hypothesis rather than a formal 
theory, that photophelein acts by changing the 
ageregation state of the colloidal particles of 
photogenin toward that of greater dispersion, 
thus increasing the surface of the particles. 
It is known that oxidation occurs at the sur- 
face of many colloidal particles, and light pro- 
duction might easily result from auto-oxida- 
tion accompanying the dispersion of the col- 
loidal particles. 

Photopheleins from different species of ani- 
mals have different chemical properties and, 
like the cytolysins, they are also specific to a 
considerable degree. Firefly photophelein will 
produce light on mixing with photogenin of 
other insects (Pyrophorus), but none or very 
faint light on mixing with photogenin from 
Cypridina. A non-luminous species of Cyp- 
ridina contains a photophelein with marked 
light-producing action on the photogenin of the 
luminous Cypridina, but none with firefly 
photogenin. Photophelein, therefore, is to be 
compared with the specific cytolytic substances 
of blood sera, with this exception, that it is 
the photophelein of the same species which 
has the greatest light producing action whereas 
the blood of the foreign species is the one 
possessing the greatest cytolytic (hemolytic) 
power. 


E. Newton Harvey 


PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 


INOCULATIONS ON RIBES WITH CRONAR- 
TIUM RIBICOLA FISCHER? 


THE white pine blister rust is established 
in the native white pine growth of many parts 


1 Published by permission of the Secretary of 
Agriculture. 


SCIENCE 


243 


of New England. Since, in most sections of 
New England, the pine far outvalues the cul- 
tivated currants and gooseberries, the latter, 
together with the wild Ribes, are being re- 
moved to hold the disease under control. A 
cultivated currant or gooseberry, not suscep- 
tible to the disease and possessing commercial 
qualities, would be of much practical impor- 
tance for future planting within the diseased 
area. Even a wild species of Ribes immune 
to the disease might be of value for breeding 
new resistant commercial varieties to replace 
those now being removed. For the purpose 
of discovering such resistant varieties or spe- 
cies of Ribes, inoculations under controlled 
conditions have been made during the past 
three years on 82 varieties of cultivated red, 
black and white currants, 23 varieties of culti- 
vated gooseberries, and 48 species and hybrids 
of Ribes from various parts of the world. 
Field tests are also being made with many of 
the above varieties and species. 

"The varieties of a cultivated species show 
considerable variation in the degree of their 
susceptibility to the disease. The cultivated 
species of Ribes also vary decidedly in sus- 
ceptibility. Some varieties and some species, 
notably Ribes nigrum, are very. congenial 
hosts for the rust, very abundant uredinia and 
telia being produced thereon. In other vari- 
eties and species the rust spreads rapidly over 
the leaf surface and produces abundant ure- 
dinia, but the leaf tissue often dies before 
many telia are formed. In other cases a 
few uredinia form, at which time irregular 
areas of the leaf tissue die quickly, with or 
without further spread of the fungus around 
the dead area. Sometimes, instead of a defi- 
nite area being killed, small streaks or flecks 
are killed. These dead spots often enlarge 
slowly, producing occasionally a few uredinia 
or telia. All intergradations are found be- 
tween R. nigrum, upon which the maximum 
number of fruiting bodies form, and R. leptan- 
thum, on which small dead areas and flecks 
are formed, on less than 10 per cent. of which 
rust spores are produced. The vigor of the 
plant and the age of the leaves have an in- 
fluence on the development of the disease. The 


244 


size of the leaves has little influence, if they 
are relatively old, those less than one tenth 
normal size having taken the disease in a 
manner characteristic for the host species. 

In many cases inoculations have been made 
with sciospores as well as with uredospores, 
similar results being obtained upon the same 
host. In most cases both uredinia and telia 
were produced. It has been impossible thus 
far to have all the species authoritatively 
identified, that being done as fast as the devel- 
opment of the plants will permit. Therefore 
this list is subject to such changes as further 
study of the plants may cause. The syn- 
onymy of the group is based, for the North 
American species, on Coyville’s treatment in 
“North American Flora,” issued by the New 
York Botanical Garden, and for the species 
of the rest of the world on Janezewski’s “ Mono- 
graphie des Grosseilliers, Ribes L.” and sup- 
plements to that work. 

Successful inoculations have been made 
upon the following species: Ribes alpestre 
Dec., R. alpinum L., R. americanum Mill, 
R. aureum Pursh, R. bracteosum Douglas, 
R. carrieret hybrid, R. cerewm Douglas, R. 
coloradense Coville, R. cruentum Greene, R. 
culverwellit hybrid, R. curvatum Small, R. 
cynosbati L., R. diacantha Pallas, R. divari- 
catum Douglas, R. erythrocarpum Coville & 
Leiberg, R. fasciculatum Seib. & Zuce., R. 
fontenayense hybrid, R. futurwm hybrid, R. 
giraldii Janczewski, R. glandulosum Grauer, 
R. glutinosum Bentham, R. gordomanum hy- 
brid, R. hesperium McClatchie, R. hirtellum 
Michaux, R. holosericeum hybrid, R. inebrians 
Lindley, R. inerme Rydberg, R. trriguum 
Douglas, R. lacustre (Persoon) Poir., R. lep- 
tanthum Gray, R. lobbii, Gray, R. menziesit 
Pursh, R. missouriense Nuttall, R. monti- 
genum McClatchie, R. nevadense Kellogg, 
R. nigrum L., R. nigrum var. aconitifolium, 
R. odoratum Wendl., R. oxyacanthoides L., 
R. petraeum Wulf., R. reclinatum L., R. 
rotundifolium Michaux, R. sanguineum Pursh, 
R. setosum Lindley, R. speciosum Pursh, RP. 
succirubrum hybrid, R. triste Pallas, R. vis- 
cosissimum Pursh, R. vulgare Lam. 

Successful inoculations have been made on 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1184 


numerous unidentified Ribes from all parts of 
the United States, including over one hundred 
collections made by R. K. Beattie in the 
Northwest ‘and Pacific Coast States. Thus 
far no species has proved to be entirely resist- 
ant to the rust. 

The writers acknowledge the aid of the fol- 
lowing in carrying on these experiments and 
thank them for so kindly furthering the work: 
Mr. R. K. Beattie, Dr. G. R. Lyman, The 
Arnold Arboretum, The Forest Service and 
The Office of Horticultural and Pomological 
Investigations, Bureau of Plant Industry, 
United States Department of Agriculture. 


PrrtEy SPAULDING, 
G. Furpo Gravatt 
OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS IN 
Forest PATHOLOGY, 
BuREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL 
‘ SOCIETY. II . 

Naming American hybrid oaks: WiLLIAM TRE- 
LEASE, Se.D., LL.D., professor of botany, Uni- 
versity of Illinois, Urbana. 

Thirty-eight known or probable hybrids among 
the oaks of the United States have been brought 
together from various and much scattered publi- 
cations. No eases are believed to exist in which a 
species of the white oak group (Leucobalanus) has 
intercrossed with a species of the red oak group 
(Erythrobalanus). To the 38 accepted hybrids al- 
ready recorded, two are added in this paper— 
< Quercus paleolithicola (a eross between Q. 
ellipsoidalis and Q. velutina), and Q. Schuettei (a 
eross between Q. bicolor and Q. macrocarpa). Of 
the 40 recognized hybrids, 15 have been given 
binomials by earlier writers: the remaining 25 are 
here named for the first time, in accordance with 
international rules of procedure. 

The wild relatives of our cultivated plants and their 
possible utilization: W. T. SWINGLE, Ph.D., U.S. 
Department of Agriculture. (Introduced by 
Dr. William P. Wilson.) 

An annotated translation of de Schweinitz’s two 
papers on the rusts of North America: JOSEPH 
C. ArtTHuUR, professor emeritus of botany, Pur- 
due University, Lafayette, Indiana, and G. R. 
Bissy. (Introduced by Professor. John M. 
Coulter.) 


SEPTEMBER 7, 1917] 


The most illustrious botanist of the first half of 
the last century to give attention to fungous 
plants was L. D. von Schweinitz, of Salem, N. C., 
and later of Bethlehem, Pa. He became a member 
of the American Philosophical Society just one 
hundred years ago, and some time later published 
in the Transactions of the society the earliest list 
of ‘‘North American Fungi.’’ This attempt at a 
comprehensive list for the whole country was not 
again made until the present time, but now the 
work is in progress, divided among a number of 
men. The rusts are being listed by Professor J. 
C. Arthur, LL.D., of Purdue University, Lafayette, 
Ind, He now presents to the society an estimate of 
von Schweinitz’s notable achievement with this 
group of fungous plants. Of the four thousand spe- 
cies of fungi on Schweinitz’s list 135 were rusts, a 
class of parasitic fungi of the greatest economic im- 
portance. All of Schweinitz’s collection, now de- 
posited at the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, 
has been critically examined and identified, and a 
record made of the present knowledge relating to 
each form. Dr. Arthur pays a high tribute to the 
remarkable showing made by Schweinitz, to his 
great accuracy and industry, and to the eminent 
services which he rendered to American botany. 


Ecology and physiology of the red mangrove: H. 
H. Bowman, fellow in botany, University of 
Pennsylvania. (Introduced by Professor Harsh- 
berger.) 

The mangroves have been noted by the ancient 
Greeks in early classic literature. Nearchus, the 
admiral of Alexander the Great, mentioned them 
as being observed on Alexander’s expedition into 
Asia. They were found by the Greeks growing 
along the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Red 
Sea. Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, wrote 
concerning them as well as Pliny, and many 
medieval and later travelers and explorers. An 
examination has been made of the microscopic 
structure of the various tissues of these trees from 
material collected in the Gulf of Mexico, along the 
lower Florida Keys. Particular attention has 
been paid to the presence of intercellular stone 
cells and to the oceurrence of tannin cells. The 
physiological relations of transpiration and ab- 
sorption of these plants growing in sea water and 
all dilutions of it, as well as fresh water, have been 
studied, and the law deduced that the rate of 
transpiration varies directly with the concentra- 
tion of the medium. Biochemically, it has been 
shown that there is a definite relation between the 
amounts of sugar and tannin in the hypocotyls at 
different stages of growth of the plants. Ecolog- 


SCIENCE 


245 


ical factors show their effect on various tissues, 
particularly those of the leaves, e. g., the variation 
in leaf thickness and structure in off-shore, in- 
shore, salt-water and fresh-water plants. Geolog- 
ically, the mangroves are of importance in build- 
ing up land and increasing the area of dry land on 
islands and continents in the tropics. Under eco- 
nomic considerations it may be stated that the 
tannin contained in the tissues is used for tanning 
leather. The wood is the souree of an excellent 
chareoal, but chiefly the plants have been used in 
keeping up embankments along the seashores and 
in building dams and dykes. The distribution of 
these trees along the Florida peninsula and keys is 
plotted in a series of maps. 

Reception from eight to eleven o’clock at the 
hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 
when George Ellery Hale, Ph.D., Se.D., LL.D., 
F.R.S., director of the Solar Observatory of the 
Carnegie Institution of Washington, at Mt. Wilson, 
Calif., gave an illustrated lecture on ‘‘The work of 
the Mt. Wilson Observatory.’’ 


APRIL 14 
William B. Scott, Se.D., LL.D., Vice-president, in 
the chair 
Biochemical studies of the pitcher liquid of Ne- 
penthes: JosrPpH 8, HEeppurn, M.S., Ph.D. (In- 
troduced by Professor Harry F. Keller.) 


The National Research Council and its opportuni- 
ties in the field of chemistry: Marston T. 
Bogert, Ph.B., LL.D., professor of organic 
chemistry, Columbia University. 


The South American Indian in his relation to geo- 
graphic environment: WILLIAM CURTIS FARABEE, 
A.M., Ph.D., curator of American Section of 
Museum, University of Pennsylvania. (Intro- 
duced by Mr. Henry G. Bryant.) 


Interrelations of the fossil fuels: J. J. STEVENSON, 
Ph.D., LL.D., emeritus professor of geology, 
New York University. 

This paper deals with the Cretaceous coals, which 
are vastly more important in the United States 
than in all the rest of the world. After descrip- 
tion of stratigraphical and chemical conditions ob- 
served in the typical areas, an effort is made to 
present the characteristic features in such fashion 
that the relations to peat and the Tertiary coals 
may be made clear. 


The distribution of land and water on the earth: 
Harry Fievpine Rem, Ph.D., professor of dy- 
namie geology and geography, Johns Hopkins 
University. 


246 


Uplifted and dissected atolls in Fiji (illustrated) : 
WititiAmM Morris Davis, Ph.D., emeritus pro- 
fessor of geology, Harvard University. 

In the southeastern part of the Fiji group a 
number of atolls uplifted several hundred feet 
above sea level, are now in various stages of dis- 
section. In no ease do they reveal a truncated 
voleanie platform; hence they discredit those 
theories of atoll formation which explain atolls or 
upgrowths of moderate -thickness around the 
border of former voleanic islands that were re- 
duced to submarine platforms by manual abrasion. 


The slides on the Panama Canal: GEorGE W. 
GorTHALs, LL.D., Maj.-Gen. U. 8S. A., late chief 
engineer, Panama Canal. 


Application of polarized light to study of ores and 
metals: FREDERICK E. WricHT, Ph.D., of Geo- 
physical Laboratory of Carnegie Institution of 
Washington. 

In this paper the principles underlying the 
application of polarized light to the study of ores 
and metals are outlined. The possibilities and 
also the limitations of the different methods, new 
or old, now available, are indicated and the adapta- 
tion of these methods to metallographic and min- 
eralographie work with the microscope is consid- 
ered briefly. 


Astrapotheria: WiLuIAM B. Scorr, Se.D., LL.D., 
professor of geology, Princeton University. 


Diatryma, a gigantic Eocene Bird: WILLIAM DILLER 
MatrHew, A.M., Ph.D., curator of vertebrate 


paleontology, American Museum of Natural 
History, New York. (Introduced by Professor 
W. B. Scott.) 


The skeleton of a gigantic extinct bird was 
found last summer in the Bighorn basin of Wy- 
oming by an expedition from the American Mu- 
seum of Natural History. It is of Lower Eocene 
age, a contemporary of the little four-toed horse 
whose fossil remains are found in the same re- 
gion. The bird was about as large as the extinct 
moas of New Zealand, much bulkier than any liv- 
ing bird, although not so tall as an ostrich. It 
stood nearly seven feet high. The head was enor- 
mous, eighteen inches long with huge compressed 
beak like the extinct Phororhachos of Patagonia, 
but unlike any living bird. The neck too was very 
massive and rather short, and it was quite unable 
to fly, the wings about as large as in the cassowary. 
Although it resembled the modern ostrich group 
in some ways, it was not related to them and only 
remotely related to any other known birds, the 
nearest perhaps being the Seriema of South 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1184 


America. A few fragments of this gigantic bird 
were found by the late Professor Cope over forty 
years ago, and named Diatryma, but it remained 
practically unknown until the discovery of this 
nearly complete skeleton. A description of this 
specimen by W. D. Matthew and Walter Granger, 
with photographs and a reconstruction, is now in 
press for the Bulletin of the American Museum. 


AFTERNOON SESSION 


William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the 

chair 

Presentation of a portrait of I. Minis Hays, M.D., 
dean of the Wistar Association: JOSEPH G. 
ROSENGARTEN, LL.D., on behalf of the Wistar 
Association, on the Centennial Anniversary of 
its organization and in the twenty-first year of 
Dr. Hays’s Secretaryship of the Society. 

Symposium on Aeronauties— 

Dynamical aspects: ARTHUR GORDON WEBSTER, 
Ph.D., LL.D., member of Naval Advisory Board. 

Physical aspects: BRIGADIER-GENERAL GEORGE O. 
Squier, Ph.D., chief of Signal Corps, U. S. Army. 
(Introduced by Dr. Keen.) 

Mechanical aspects: WILLIAM FREDERICK DURAND, 
Ph.D., chairman of National Advisory Com- 
ymittee for Aeronautics. (Introduced by Dr. 
Walcott.) 

Aerology in aid of aeronautics: W. R. Buatr, 
Ph.D., assistant, United States Weather Bureau. 

Discussion— 

Mathematical aspects: EDwIN BIDWELL WILSON, 
Ph.D., professor of mathematics, Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology. (Introduced by Dr. E. 
W. Brown.) 

Engineering aspects: JEROME C. UHUNSAKER, 
Eng.D., assistant naval constructor, U. S. Navy. 
(Introduced by Dr. Bauer.) 

On Saturday evening the usual banquet was held 
at the Bellevue-Stratford, about sixty-five mem- 
bers and guests being present. 

The following toasts were responded to: 

‘¢The memory of Franklin,’? by President 
Hibben, of Princeton. 

‘¢Qur sister societies,’’? by Wm. H. Welch, M.D., 
of Johns Hopkins. 

‘¢OQur universities,’’ by Professor T. F. Crane, 
of Cornell. 

‘¢The American Philosophical Society,’’ by Mr. 
John Cadwalader, of Philadelphia. 


ARTHUR W. GOODSPEED, 
Secretary 


NEw SERIES SINGLE CopiEs, 15 CTs. 
VoL. XLVI. No. 1185 Fripay, SEPTEMBER 14, 1917 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00 


For Botanists 


HARSHBERGER— 
TEXTBOOK OF MYCOLOGY AND PLANT PATHOLOGY 


By Joun Witt1am Harsupercer, Professor of Botany, University of Penn- 
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are stated succinctly. Here and there the author reaches over into borderland 
subjects and picks out matter in related fields which is interesting and valuable 
pedagogically. It includes complete and accurate citations from the world’s 
literature and many interesting facts from the author’s intimate knowledge of the 
historical developments of the science in America. He gives first hand many facts 
that are but little known. 271 Illustrations, xiii+779 pp. Cloth $3.00 Postpaid. 


ROBBINS—THE BOTANY OF CROP PLANTS 


A Text and Reference Book by Witrrep W. Rossins, Professor of Botany, 
Colorado Agricultural College. It will give the student a knowledge of the botany 
of common orchard, garden and field crops. Most of the material has been used 
in mimeographed form as a text from which to make assignments and reference 
guide in the laboratory. Illustrated. S8vo. Ready. 


STEVENS—PLANT ANATOMY 


By Won. C. Stevens, Professor of Botany, University of Kansas. 3d Edition 
revised and enlarged. From the standpoint of development and functions of 
tissue, and Handbook of Microtechnic. 155 Illustrations. 8vo. xvii+399 pp. 
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GAGER—FUNDAMENTALS OF BOTANY 


By C. Stuart Gacer, Director of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
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PALLADIN-LIVINGSTON— 
A TEXT BOOK OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 
By Prorressor Dr. W. Patuaprin, Botanic Institute (Petrograd). Translated 
and edited by Burton E. Livineston, Pu.D., Professor of Plant Physiology 
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illustrated textbook aiming to give the student a complete and thorough knowledge 
of all the phenomena occurring in plants. Nearly ready. 


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SCLENCE | 


Fripay, SepremMBer 14, 1917 


CONTENTS 


Organized Knowledge and National Welfare: 
Dr. P. G. Nurrine 


The Proof of Microbial Agency in the Chem- 
tical Transformations of Soil: Dr. JOEL 


GONNA ae sere tateie haste mils cle eae odoateTae ala Westone ate 252 


The First Pueblo Ruin in Colorado mentioned 
in Spanish Documents: Dr. J. WALTER 
REUSE WKS Marcy cet cece eor bare: sus ey cere eatin avec «(ale 


Scientific Events :— 
The Production of Nitrates by the Govern- 
ment; The Army Aviation School at the 
University of California; Appointments in 
the Ordnance Department of the Army .... 


Scientific Notes and News 


University and Educational News 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Tests of Radiator Humidifiers: Dr. E. P. 
Lyon. A New Meteorite: Henry L. Warp. 
Filing Pamphlets: W. R. Micuer 


Quotations :— 


Financial Support for the National Research 


Council 264 


Scientific Books :— 
McAdie on The Principles of Aerography: 
Dr. Cuartes F, Brooks. Bulkley on Can- 
cer, its Cause and Treatment: Dr. LEO LOEB. 


The Vanishing Indian: Dr. ALES HrpuiéKa. 


On a Sudden Outbreak of Cotton Rust in 
Texas: J. J. TAUBENHAUS 


Special Articles :— 
The Effects of Acids and Salts on ‘‘Bio- 


colloids’’: Dr. D. T. MacDouagan anp H. 
A. SPOEHR 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
On-Hudson, N. Y. 


ORGANIZED KNOWLEDGE AND 
NATIONAL WELFARE 


THE future of any nation is secure if it 
lives up to its possibilities. The nation 
which does this is bound to be a leader 
among nations and to command world-wide 
respect. Its national problems will be 
solved and solved intelligently and thor- 
oughly. The greatness of a man is in part 
born in him and in part the product of his 
environment. According to eminent biolo- 
gists, he is about two fifths born and three 
fifths made. Similarly, a nation is great 
according to its resources and according to 
its development of these resources. And 
the development of those resources may be 
accomplished only through organized 
knowledge. 

I, The Function of Organized Knowl- 
edge.—Consider for a moment two manu- 
facturing concerns on an equal footing as 
regards output, but of which one is con- 
tinually making progress through improve- 
ments in manufacturing processes, develop- 
ing new and valuable products and in- 
vestigating the fundamental principles 
underlying all these processes. This firm 
will in time outstrip the other in every 
way; the balance, in fact, isa very delicate 
one, since the results are cumulative. In 
quite a similar manner, that nation will 
advance to leadership in which the increase 
in organized knowledge and the application 
of that knowledge are greatest. For this 
reason, interest in research should be as 
wide as the nation and should cover the 


1 Abstract of an address given April 9, 1917, to 
the Associated Engineering Societies of Worcester. 


PT 
PAA nian ingz; 
oe st ly ‘3 


4 


onal M users 


\ 


248 


whole gamut of problems from administra- 
tion to agriculture, from medicine to manu- 
facture. For it is only through the solu- 
tion of individual problems that general 
principles can be arrived at and the sum 
total of useful organized knowledge in- 
creased. 

It is essential that the wide field to be 
covered be kept in mind, extending over 
not only physics, chemistry, engineering 
and all their branches, but all the biological 
and mental sciences as well. In the last 
analysis an increase in knowledge in the 
field of the biological sciences means more 
and better food, improved racial stock and 
improved public health as well as increased 
material welfare in all having to do with 
plants and animals. Increased knowledge 
of the fundamental principles of the mental 
sciences means increased efficiency in ad- 
ministration, legislation, education, opera- 
tion and research. I do not mean mere 
book learning in psychology, but such a 
command of the fundamental principles as 
will assist in the solution of all practical 
problems. Increased knowledge of chem- 
istry means increased ability to utilize raw 
materials and an improvement in general 
health and living conditions. One may 
almost say that the generalized problem of 
chemistry is to convert the less expensive 
raw materials such as cellulose, petroleum, 
glucose, various minerals and oils, starch, 
nitrogen of the air and the like into food, 
clothing, tools for our use and means for 
national defense. An application of the 
fundamental principles of physics in the 
way of various engineering problems leads 
to a fuller utilization of resources, new 
products useful to man, makes inventions 
possible and effective and adds to the gen- 
eral increase in operating efficiency in 
every way. 

The utilization of organized knowledge 
in national welfare comes about both 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185 


through knowledge itself and the incentive 
to apply that knowledge. Both ability and 
incentive are essential to utilization. So 
far as knowledge went, we might have 
made dyes and optical glass many years 
ago in this country, but since they could be 
bought so cheaply there was no incentive 
to develop the manufacture of such articles. 
These are cases of ability without incentive. 
On the other hand, there has long been an 
incentive for the fixation of nitrogen and 
for various mechanical devices, but these 
have not been forthcoming for lack of suffi- 
cient knowledge. 

The incentive to do our best, to live up 
to our possibilities as a nation or as indi- 
viduals may be classed as either psychic or 
commercial. In the last analysis, the tend- 
ency towards doing our best is hardly more 
than a rudimentary instinct. The com- 
mercial incentive is a matter of either 
supplying our direct needs or supplying 
some one else’s needs for a consideration. 
The psychic incentives to put forth our best 
efforts may be classed under the heads of 
emulation, contact, contract and struggle 
for existence. A great many students 
enter research because their favorite pro- 
fessors have made reputations in research 
or because their friends and colleagues are 
doing such work. Incentive by contact 
covers the psychology of getting started at 
the line of work you wish to become inter- 
ested in. It is well known that the work 
itself produces a reaction on one’s mind 
which makes it much easier to continue the 
work. Exactly, this form of stimulus is 
experienced in writing a scientific paper, 
for example. Incentive by contract to put 
forth our best efforts comes from putting 
ourselves under obligation to produce cer- 
tain results. The substance of this lecture 
has been in my mind for many years, but 
it would never have been prepared but for 
my having undertaken to talk on this sub- 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917} 


ject. This is a typical example of polar- 
ization by contract. Finally, the incentive 
of stern necessity or what we consider 
necessity is perhaps the most powerful of 
all in both research and application. All 
who have families to support and needs to 
be suppled know full well the stimulus 
which comes from them. 

In general, in normal times it is perhaps 
no exaggeration to say that neither the 
average individual nor the average nation 
approaches within fifty per cent. of its 
possibilities. Nothing short of a war 
threatening the national existence can 
shake a nation out of its lethargy. Simi- 
larly, the average individual can not be in- 
duced to put forth his best efforts without 
the strongest of incentives. It is unfortu- 
nate that this is the case. However, with 
sufficient attention given to the problem 
by trained experts in mental science, it is 
quite possible that at some future date as 
high as sixty or eighty per cent. of the 
possibilites may be realized without any ap- 
peal to arms for the nation or any unusual 
incentive for the individual. 

Il. The Increase of Organized Knowl- 
edge——The research by which organized 
knowledge is increased will doubtless 
always be carried on chiefly by three dis- 
tinet types of research organizations: re- 
search by the government in national 
laboratories, research by the universities 
in connection with the work of instruction 
and research by industrial laboratories in 
connection with the interests of manu- 
facturing concerns. Aside from these 
three main classes of laboratories there will 
always be large, privately endowed re- 
search organizations, dealing with neglected 
fields of remote commercial interest, private 
industrial laboratories supported by con- 
sulting fees and cooperative testing labora- 
tories also self sustaining. 

National, industrial and university re- 


SCIENCE 


249 


search follow three essentially different 
lines. There is considerable overlap in 
field, it is true, but each is centered on a 
different kind of research. The proper 
function of national research is the solu- 
tion of such problems as concern the na- 
tion as a whole, affect the general interests 
of all classes of individuals; it is the cus- 
todian of standards, it develops methods of 
precise measurements and investigation, 
it is trouble engineer for the solution of 
very difficult problems or the problems of 
producing units so small as not to be able 
to have their own research laboratories. 
It is the proper guardian of the public 
health. It solves problems connected with 
contagious and vocational diseases. It 
develops methods of making good roads, 
increasing the fertility of the soil and 
stocking ‘waters with fish. National re- 
search is of all grades from that dealing 
with fundamental principles up to that re- 
lating merely to lessening the costs of pro- 
duction... 

University research must always, in the 
very nature of things, be concerned chiefly 
with the advancement of the various sci- 
ences as such, and with the development of 
the fundamental principles of each science. 
The best university instruction is along ~ 
these lines and investigators and students 
in close touch with them will naturally 
have most new ideas in close connection 
with fundamental principles. University 
research is necessarily one of small jobs and 
the best minds and is without very much 
continuity. The advanced student is in- 
terested in a research just long enough to 
make it acceptable as a doctor’s thesis. The 
instructor is too burdened with teaching to 
give more than a margin of time to re- 
search. But a very small part of the uni- 
versity research is extended year after year 
covering a wide field. This is quite as it 
should be, the university looking after those 


250 


fields of research of little commercial value, 
on the one hand, and not directly affecting 
the interests of the nation as a whole, on 
the other, but of fundamental and far 
reaching importance to all. 

Industrial research takes the middle 
eround and has already become a distinct 
profession. It is in close touch with prac- 
tical commercial application, on the one 
hand, and with fundamental principles, on 
the other. Its proper field is anything be- 
tween elimination of works troubles and 
the investigation of fundamental principles. 
The staff of the ideal industrial research 
laboratory is composed of experts of wide 
experience who ean serve the manufactur- 
ing departments in a consulting capacity 
without sacrifice of time. We may perhaps 
best summarize the preceding statements by 
describing the ideal research man and the 
ideal research laboratory. 

Some writers have spoken of the investi- 
gator as a rare individual to be sifted out 
from educational institutions with great 
care for a particular line of work. My per- 
sonal opinion is that a large percentage of 
the men students are fitted for research 
work if properly started along the right 
line. The investigator should have a mind 
at once fertile and) well trained. His mind 
should be teeming with new ideas, but he 
should possess unerring judgment to reject 
those which are not logical or promising. 
We are often asked what sort of prepara- 
tion in physics would be best for men in- 
tending to take up research as a life work. 
It has even been proposed to give courses 
in ‘‘applied physics’’ for the benefit of 
those intending to take up industrial re- 
search. Our invariable reply is that the 
best preparation for a research man is a 
thorough grounding in the fundamental 
principles of his science: physics, chemistry 
or whatever it may be. If he has this thor- 
ough knowledge of fundamental principles 
it is safe to say that In any properly organ- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1185 


ized research laboratory with the proper 
leadership and companions, such a student 
will have many times as many useful ideas 
as he can himself possibly follow up with 
research. Hardly any one who has com- 
pleted advanced work in a science can read, 
say an abstract journal, without thinking 
of many problems which he would like to 
investigate. Fertility of mind is not so 
much an inborn quality of the mind itself 
as of the training and association which 
that mind has had. 

The ideal industrial research organiza- 
tion may perhaps be outlined with a knowl- 
edge of its development during the last fif- 
teen years. I shall give, frankly, my per- 
sonal views in the matter, based on an inti- 
mate knowledge of four universities, three 
professional research laboratories and a 
visiting acquaintance, so to speak, with 
quite a number of others. The ideal in- 
dustrial laboratory, in my mind, consists 
of two quite distinct divisions: one taking 
the brunt of works troubles and testing or 
making analyses of the material used. The 
other wing is complementary to this and 
deals with the larger fundamental problems 
encountered, problems requiring skilled 
specialists and considerable time for their 
solution. The alternative organization with 
a single research laboratory covering both 
works troubles and fundamental problems 
is not so successful. The plan in this case 
is to have considerable research in progress 
of very little interest to the company, but 
engaging a staff much larger than required 
to take care of ordinary works troubles. In 
this case, when works troubles are many 
and insistent, as they are wont to be at 
times, the staff engaged upon fundamental 
research forms a reserve to be called out 
occasionally to deal with works troubles. 
The disadvantages of this are that the fun- 
damental work is subject to more or less 
frequent interruption and can not be so effi- _ 
ciently carried on. On the other hand, 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


when the research is in two quite distinct 
divisions, fundamental work is not subject 
to interruption by works troubles. 

Industrial research is preeminently 
fitted to be carried on by team work. This 
we have developed to a high degree in Pitts- 
burgh and consider very much more effi- 
cient than the alternative cell system where 
each leading man has a room or suite of 
rooms to himself and keeps his work to him- 
self. In the ideal organization, two or 
three men work together on the same large 
problem or group of problems, the aim be- 
ing to have a good theoretical man and a 
good experimentalist working together as 
much as possible or even a physicist and 
chemist in some cases. The characteristic 
of the team work plan, however, is the con- 
ference system. The five or six men most 
interested in each line of research meet for 
an hour each week to discuss the problem in 
its various aspects, to plan new work and 
to consider various interpretations and 
applications of the results obtained. The 
ideal conference is not less than four and 
not more than eight men and includes an 
efficient stenographer. To one experienced 
in such team work, the results of getting 
together are surprising. A good suggestion 
is no sooner made than capped by a better 
and the saving in time and effort is almost 
incalculable. 

The conference system also aids in put- 
ting useful results before the other wing of 
the research division and before the patent 
department. At each of our conferences 
are representatives of the other wing of 
the research division, charged with taking 
up any results immediately applicable, and 
a member of the legal department who 
takes care of any ideas worth patenting. 
This plan of conferences relieves the scien- 
tific men from responsibility for calling the 
attention of the works or of the patent de- 
partment to useful patentable results. 

So far as national welfare is concerned, 


SCIENCE 


251 


in order to increase our stock of organized 
knowledge, we need more teaching by pro- 
fessors and instructors in closer touch with 
industrial problems. So far as developing 
research men goes, the ideal instructor is 
probably an ex-professional research man 
and, in many cases, one who has made a 
reputation or a fortune by his work along 
industrial lines. Another need is, of 
course, more research laboratories all along 
the line. The increase would naturally be 
among industrial organizations and the ex- 
pense borne largely by manufacturing con- 
cerns, since it is they who reap the chief 
direct financial benefit. 

Another great need is cooperation among 
the various branches of research: univer- 
sity, national and industrial. There should 
be a free interchange of men between such 
laboratories, and each should be thor- 
oughly familiar with the needs and prob- 
lems of the other. One great benefit from 
this war, if it lasts sufficiently long, will be 
to force cooperation between different 
branches of research. 

Ill. The Application of Organized 
Knowledge-—tThe present national crisis 
brings home to us the crying needs of the 
nation in availing itself of the knowledge 
and ability at its command. Fifty thou- 
sand specialists in applying scientific 
knowledge to practical problems as well as 
seores of research laboratories have offered 
their services to the nation. But problems 
requiring investigation are slow in being 
developed. Once they are formulated and 
given to the engineers of the country, few 
will remain unsolved very long. 

It is for the engineer to apply the results 
of research to practical problems and to 
carry practical problems demanding gen- 
eral research back to the research labora- 
tories. To the engineer, every special prob- 
lem requires a special application of funda- 
mental principles. Is it too much to hope 
that the day is rapidly approaching when 


252 


all great problems, particularly those of 
our national and state governments, will 
be automatically placed in the hands of 
trained specialists? Not self-seeking polli- 
ticians, nor yet men with mere theories, but 
engineers with a real command of funda- 
mental principles, men with an unbroken 
record of big achievements and no failures, 
men ever ready to stake their all on their 
ability to handle problems in their spe- 
cialty. 

Professor Joseph Le Conte, in an ad- 
dress years ago, remarked that each of the 
great professions first attained high stand- 
ing when it was taught as such in universi- 
ties. When so taught, the professional 
men turned out are no longer quacks, but 
each has a real command of the funda- 
mental principles in his chosen field of 
action. The ‘basic relation is that any pro- 
fession has standing in so far as its funda- 
mental principles have been developed and 
applied. To retain standing, a profession 
must be continually increasing its stock of 
knowledge of fundamental principles 
through research. The engineer of stand- 
ing in his profession must not be content 
with a mere working knowledge of rules of 
thumb, but must have a real command of 
basic principles in his chosen field and in 
related fields. The illuminating engineer, 
for example, should know not only lighting, 
but should possess a working knowledge of 
the laws of vision and of geometrical and 
physical optics. So the great physician or 
construction engineer has a command of 
his own field and an intimate acquaintance 
with related fields. 

So also with research as a profession, the 
leaders have not only a taste for research 
and logical minds to clearly analyze and 
attack problems with thorough scientific 
knowledge, but have a knowledge of the 
principles of research; getting the most out 
of their own minds, avoiding side issues, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185 


cooperating with their colleageus and put- 
ting their most valuable results in perma- 
nent, readily available form. Research is 
one of the youngest of the professions and 
one with a promising future, but let no 
one enter it without thorough knowledge 
or a full understanding of its aims and 
methods. With sufficient attention given 
to research and to its application, this na- 
tion with its great national resources 
should at once attain and retain a perma- 
nent lead among the nations of the earth. 


P. G. Nurtine 


THE PROOF OF MICROBIAL AGENCY 
IN THE CHEMICAL TRANSFORMA- 
TIONS OF SOIL 

Every now and then in the development of 
a science it is well to stop and consider how 
many of the current statements are based on 
established fact and how many have arisen from 
assumptions repeated so often that they have 
come to be generally believed. Certain com- 
mon statements in regard to the bacteriology 
of soil may well bear such scrutiny. Has it, 
for instance, been definitely proved that any 
particular microorganisms cause any of the 
well-known biological activities in soil? This 
question is quite pertinent at present because 
of statements frequently found in the liter- 
ature that certain bacteria or groups of bac- 
teria are responsible for certain chemical 
transformations in soil, although complete 
proof of the causal relation has never been 
obtained. 

The cause of these loose statements is easy 
to understand when it is considered that it is 
practically impossible to obtain direct evi- 
dence as to what actually goes on within the 
soil. Laboratory experiments show what the 
microorganisms do under laboratory condi- 
tions, but not what they do in the soil. Even 
though the activity of an organism be tested 
in soil itself, its true activity in the field may 
still remain unknown, because such laboratory 
tests have to be carried out in pure culture, 
and pure cultures do not occur in the field. 
The activities of bacteria in soil are associ- 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


ative actions; and an organism capable of vig- 
orous activity in pure culture may be almost 
inactive in the presence of its natural rivals. 
Laboratory tests, therefore, give but indirect 
evidence at their best. Indirect evidence has 
its value; but it is futile to draw conclusions 
from it unless results obtained by one method 
are confirmed by those obtained in some other 
way. 

Similar difficulties in regard to pathogenic 
bacteria caused the literature of the early nine- 
teenth century to abound in misstatements as 
to the relation of certain bacteria to certain 
diseases. Gradually, however, it came to be 
recognized that neither the constant presence 
of a given microorganism in a certain disease, 
nor its ability to produce a similar disease in 
lower animals proves it to be the causal agent 
of a human disease. These ideas were put in 
concise form by Koch when he restated and 
emphasized the requirements originally sug- 
gested by Henle as necessary steps in proving 
a given organism to be the cause of a given 
disease. These postulates, as stated by Koch, 
are as follows: (1) The organism must be 
shown to be present in abundance in the tis- 
sues, blood, or discharges of animals suffering 
from the disease; (2) it must be isolated and 
studied in pure culture; (3) it must be shown 
capable of producing the same disease in 
healthy animals; (4) it must subsequently be 
found again in abundance in the experiment- 
ally inoculated animals. 

Really the case of bacterial activities in 
soil is analogous. The constant presence of 
a certain organism in manured soil, for in- 
stance, does not prove that it decomposes the 
manure any more than the constant presence 
of an organism in a given disease proves its 
causal relation. Neither does the fact that 
an organism ammonifies laboratory media prove 
that it ammonifies organic matter in soil, any 
more than the fact that an organism produces 
a certain disease in a lower animal proves that 
it produces a similar disease in man. Al- 
though this fact may be recognized in a gen- 
eral way by soil bacteriologists, a little 
thought will show that no rules as strict as 
Koch’s postulates have ever been followed in 


SCIENCE 


253 


establishing the agency of bacteria in any soil 
activity—with the exception of the bacteria of 
legume nodules. Even in regard to the nitri- 
fiers—certain as we may be of their agency in 
converting ammonium salts into nitrates—we 
do not have the complete proof. This thought 
is somewhat disconcerting and shows the need 
of drawing up strict rules to apply to the 
activities of soil microorganisms. Koch’s pos- 
tulates can not be applied directly to soil 
microorganisms, because the latter operate 
under quite different conditions from patho- 
genic bacteria; but it is possible to modify 
his rules to fit soil conditions. 

The first postulate is that the organism must 
be shown to be present in abundance in an- 
imals suffering from the disease in question. 
It is equally necessary to show that an organ- 
ism is present in abundance in soil in which a 
certain biological activity is going on—in 
fact that it is more abundant in such soil 
than in similar soil in which the activity is 
not taking place—before asserting that the or- 
ganism in question is the causal agent. It is 
also necessary to show that the organism is 
present in such soil in active form. This 
is necessary because at least three groups of 
soil microorganisms have inactive as well as 
active forms: namely, protozoa, molds and 
spore-bearing bacteria. If the organism in 
question belongs to one of these three groups, 
the mere demonstration of its presence is not 
enough, but it must be shown to be present in 
active form. In other words, Koch’s first pos- 
tulate must be expanded as follows when ap- 
plied to soil conditions: The organism in ques- 
tion must be shown to be present in active 
form when the chemical transformation under 
investigation is taking place; and must also be 
shown to be present in larger numbers in such 
soil than in similar soil in which the chemical 
change is not taking place. These two steps 
have seldom been carried out in investigating 
the: cause of any biological activity in soil, 
but they are. nevertheless as important as 
Koch’s first postulate in regard to pathogenic 
bacteria. They are perhaps a little more 
stringent than the first postulate of Koch’s; 
but special stringency is necessary here in view 


254 


of the difficulty in applying Koch’s last two 
postulates to soil conditions. 

The second postulate of Koch’s is that the 
organism be isolated and cultivated in pure 
culture. This can be applied without modi- 
fication to soil conditions, and indeed is gen- 
erally carried out by soil investigators. 

The third postulate is that the organism be 
shown capable of producing the same disease 
in healthy animals. The corresponding re- 
quirement in regard to soil bacteria is ex- 
tremely difficult to meet. It is possible to in- 
oculate the organism in question into sterile 
soil and study its activity under such condi- 
tions—a test which is quite commonly made. 
Such a test, however, does not furnish con- 
clusive proof. Sterilized soil is always differ- 
ent from natural soil; but worse still, activi- 
ties in pure culture may be very different 
from activities in mixed culture. To obtain 
eomplete proof, the organism in question 
should be inoculated into unsterilized soil, and 
then if the activity under investigation occurs 
the organism should be shown to be present 
in large numbers. Such a procedure, how- 
ever, is generally impossible, because of the 
difficulty of getting an organism to grow vig- 
orously in soil already stocked with a bacter- 
jal flora of its own; and the interpretation of 
results is difficult, because—in distinct con- 
trast to the specific agency of microorganisms 
in disease—the same chemical transformation 
in soil may be caused by distinctly different 
organisms. For this reason the best that can 
ordinarily be done is to inoculate the organ- 
ism in question into sterilized soil. To do so 
furnishes better proof than to inoculate it 
into any laboratory medium, but the unsatis- 
factory nature of the test must be fully recog- 
nized. Perhaps it is not overstating the case 
to say that much of the past confusion in re- 
gard to the activities of soil bacteria has 
arisen from the fact that they have been 
studied in pure culture while pure cultures 
never occur naturally in soil. The inocula- 
tion of sterilized soil is ordinarily the only 
practical course, however, and has its value 
as a means of confirming the tests carried 
out in connection with the requirements al- 
ready mentioned. 


_ SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185 


Koch’s last postulate is that the organism 
be found in the tissues, blood or discharges 
of the experimentally inoculated animals. 
The corresponding requirement in regard to 
soil activities is superfluous, provided sterile 
soil is used for inoculation and contamination 
is prevented during the experiment. If un- 
sterilized soil is used, the presence of the or- 
ganism in question should be demonstrated ; 
but the impractibility of using unsterilized 
soil makes this last requirement of little value 
as applied to soil conditions. 

Summing up, it may be said that to show 
conclusively the agency of any microorganism 
in any chemical transformation occurring in 
soil, the following steps are necessary: (1) The 
organism must be shown to be present in ac- 
tive form when the chemical transformation 
under investigation is taking place; (2) it 
must be shown to occur in larger numbers 
under such conditions than in the same soil 
in which the chemical change is not occur- 
ring; (3) it must be isolated from the soil 
and studied in pure culture; (4) the same 
chemical change must be produced by the or- 
ganism in experimentally imoculated soil, 
making the test, if possible, in unsterilized 
soil. The fourth reqiurement, however, can 
ordinarily be carried out only by inoculating 
sterilized soil, a procedure which does not 
give rigid proof, but which is fairly conclusive 
if carried out in connection with the other 
three requirements. 

Sometimes these facts can be brought out 
wholly by cultural methods, such as used in 
the past. It must be remembered, however, 
that cultural methods, at their best, are open 
to serious error, as organisms that are nat- 
urally inactive may become active under cul- 
tural conditions, while under similar condi- 
tions naturally active organisms may lose their 
activity. This fact will make it necessary to 
check up cultural methods with methods of 
other sorts. Possibly the use of the micro- 
scope! will help solve some of the problems, 

1 See Conn, H. J., 1917, ‘‘ The Direct Microscopie 
Examination of Bacteria in Soil.’’ (Paper pre- 
sented at New Haven meeting of the Society of 
American Bacteriologists.) Abstract in ‘‘Ab- 
stracts of Bact.,’’ Vol. 1, p. 40. 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


or perhaps methods of an entirely new sort 
will be needed. At all events, more attention 
must be given to the steps involved in proving 
the causal relation of definite microorganisms 
to definite biological activities in the soil in 
order to avoid making loose statements in re- 
gard to the functions of these organisms, such 
as have often been made in the past. 


H. Jorn Conn 
N. Y. AcRIcuLTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, 
GENEVA, N. Y., 
July 25, 1917 


THE FIRST PUEBLO RUIN IN COLO- 
RADO MENTIONED IN SPANISH 
DOCUMENTS 

THERE is in the Congressional Library, 
among the documents collected by Peter Force, 
a manuscript diary of early exploration in 
New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, dated 1776, 
written by two Catholic priests, Father Sil- 
vester Velez Escalante and Father Francisco 
Atanacio Dominguez. This diary is valuable 
to students of archeology, as it contains the 
first reference to a prehistoric ruin in the con- 
fines of the present state of Colorado, although 
the mention is too brief for positive identifi- 
cation of the ruin.2?. While the context indi- 
cates its approximate site, there are at this 
place at least two large ruins, either of which 
might be that referred to. I have no doubt 
which one of these two ruins was indicated 
by these early explorers, but my interest 
in this ruin is both archeological and histor- 
ical. Our knowledge of the structure of these 
ruins is at the present day almost as imperfect 
as it was a century and a half ago. 

The route followed by the writers of the 
diary was possibly an Indian pathway, and is 
now called the old Spanish Trail. After enter- 
ing Colorado it ran from near the present 
site of Mancos to the Dolores. On the four- 


1 Published by permission of the Secretary of 
the Smithsonian Institution. 

2Diario y Dereotero de las neuvas descubri- 
mientos de tierras 4 los r’bos N.N.OE.OB. del 
Nuevo Mexico por los R.R.P.P.Fr. Silvester Valez 
Escalante, Fr. Francisco Atanacio Dominguez, 
1776. (Vide Sen. Ex. Doe. 33d Congress, No. 78, 
pt. 3, pp. 119-127.) 


SCIENCE 


255 


teenth day from Santa Fe, we find the follow- 
ing entry: “En la vanda austral del Vio [Rio] 
sobre un alto, huvo antiquam (te) una Pobla- 
cion pequefia, de la misma forma q° las de los 
Indios el Nuevo Mexico, segun manifieran las 
Ruinas q° de invento registramos.” 

By tracing the trip day by day, up to that 
time, it appears that the ruin referred to by 
these early fathers was situated somewhere 
near the bend of the Dolores River, or not far 
from the present town of Dolores, Colorado. 
The above quotation indicates that the ruin 
was a small settlement, and situated on a hill, 
on the south side of the river or trail, but it 
did not differ greatly from the ruined settle- 
ments of the Indians of New Mexico with 
which the writers were familiar, and had 
already described. 

A century later, 1876, we find a published 
reference to a ruin near the bend of the Do- 
lores, which suggests the above mentioned. 
An exploring expedition of the engineer de- 
partment of the United States Army from 
Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the junction of the 
Grand and Green Rivers of the Great Colo- 
rado of the west, under command of Capt. 
J. M. Macomb, U. S. A., in 1859, followed the 
old Spanish Trail. Professor J. S. Newberry, 
of the expedition, in a geological report de- 
scribed a ruin not many miles from the bend 
of the Dolores: “ Surouaro is the name of a 
ruined town which must have contained a pop- 
ulation of several thousands [sic]. The same 
is said to be of Indian (Utah) origin, and to 
signify desolation, and certainly no better 
could have been selected. . . . The houses are, 
many of them, large, and all built of stone, 
hammer-dressed on the exposed faces. Frag- 
ments of pottery are exceedingly common, 
though, like the buildings, showing great age. 
The remains of metates (corn mills) are 
abundant about the ruins. The ruins of sey- 
eral large reservoirs* built of masonry may be 
seen at Surouaro, and there are traces of 
acequias which led to them through which 
water was brought perhaps from a great 
distance.” 


8 Probably kivas, but impossible to identify with- 
out excavations. J. W. F. 


256 


On several maps, as that accompanying a 
report of another survey across the continent, 
by William J. Palmer, published in 1867 and 
1868, sites of ruins are indicated in south- 
western Colorado. Printed references to Su- 
rouaro are made by Jackson, Holmes, Prudden, 
and other writers, but aside from the statement 
of the last mentioned, that it is a cluster of 
mounds indicating pueblos of the unit type, 
we know little regarding their size and archi- 
tectural peculiarities. The arrangement of 
mounds in a cluster, like many others in the 
cedar clearings, suggests the Mummy Lake 
group on the Mesa Verde, and it is probable 
that each member of the group if excavated 
will be found to resemble Far View House. 

My attention was called to a ruin near Do- 
lores by Mr. R. W. Williamson, of that city, 
and not being able to visit the site I urged 
him and others to collect more details, from 
which my belief was confirmed that the ruin 
mentioned by the Spanish fathers is the same 
as Newberry’s Surouaro. 

As one fruit of my inquiries for corrobo- 
ratory evidences bearing on the identification 
of the oldest mentioned ruin, I obtained unex- 
pected information from Mr. J. W. Emerson, 
a ranger on the Montezuma Forest Reserve, 
who is well acquainted with the region near 
Dolores. In a letter received a short time ago 
from Mr. Gordon Parker, supervisor of the re- 
serve, who has always shown great interest in 
my work at the Mesa Verde, there was en- 
closed a copy of a report made by Mr. Emerson 
to the Forest Service, on a remarkable ruin 
near Dolores which, although not corroborat- 
ing the above identification, greatly intensified 
the desire of several years to visit the area in 
which lies the supposed first ruin in Colorado 
mentioned in writings by white men. Mr. 
Emerson’s report is accompanied by a rude 
ground plan, indicating a ruin as unusual in 
form as the mysterious Sun Temple of the 
Mesa Verde Park, which it somewhat re- 
sembles. 

It does not answer the description of Surou- 
aro by Newberry, and its exceptional character 
would not have impressed the Spanish fathers, 
if they noticed it at all. In fact, judging from 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vout. XLVI. No. 1185 


the “ground plan” furnished by Mr. Emer- 
son, its form is remarkable even in a region 
where many different forms exist. 

I will not occupy the reader’s time with the 
details of the building revealed in this report, 
as they would be more appropriate in a formal 
article and can be greatly augmented by ex- 
cayations, but will point out that its form is 
roughly semicircular, the plan showing con- 
centric walls bounding rooms separated by 
partitions, the outer straight wall on the 
south side being like the south wall of Sun 
Temple. The building measures 100 by 80 
feet, exhibiting masonry characteristic of the 
purest pueblo type. A complete excavation 
promises to reveal data on the connection be- 
tween the prehistoric towers of the southwest, 
circular ruins, and the problematical Sun 
Temple. 

It is evident that the southwestern corner of 
Colorado, from which locality not a single 
ruin had been recorded a century and a half 
ago, contains some of the largest, best con- 
structed, and most mysterious pueblo ruins 
and cliff dwellings in the United States, and 
offers unusual data bearing on the history of 
aboriginal American culture. 

J. Waiter FEWKES 


Burravu or AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY, 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


PRODUCTION OF NITRATES BY THE 
GOVERNMENT 


ANNOUNCEMENT is made by the War Depart- 
ment of its preparations for the production of 
nitrates in accordance with a report filed by the 
Nitrate Supply Committee. This report is 
given in part below. It is further stated that 
for the present the location of the proposed ni- 
trate plant is withheld, but information con- 
cerning its location will be given as soon as a 
definite decision is reached. The work of sup- 
plying the machinery and materials needed 
for the plant has begun. 

The Nitrate Supply Committee, appointed 
by the Secretary of War, was under authority 
of a provision in the national defense act for 


an investigation “to determine the best, 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


cheapest and most available means for the pro- 
duction of nitrates and other products for 
munitions of war and useful in the manufac- 
ture of fertilizers and other products.” 

The general recommendations and report of 
the Nitrate Supply Committee are announced 
as follows: 

After a deliberate and careful consideration 
of all the matter and information at the dis- 
posal of the committee, it submits the follow- 
ing as its action: 

1. The committee, appreciating the offer of 
the General Chemical Company, recommends 
that the government enter into negotiations 
to acquire the rights to use the synthetic am- 
monia process of that company. 

2. That contingent upon satisfactory ar- 
rangements with the General Chemical Com- 
pany, out of the $20,000,000 nitrate supply ap- 
propriation such sum as may be needed, now 
estimated at $3,000,000, be placed at the dis- 
posal of the War Department to be used in 
building a synthetic ammonia plant, employ- 
ing the said process of the General Chemical 
Company, and of a capacity of 60,000 pounds 
of ammonia per twenty-four-hour day, said 
plant to be located in a region where land, 
water, coal and sulphuric acid are cheaply 
available, where good transportation facilities 
exist, and where the proposed new powder plant 
of the government can be properly located. In 
the opinion of this committee all of these con- 
ditions just enumerated are best fulfilled by a 
location in southwest Virginia or contiguous 
region. 

3. That out of the $20,000,000 nitrate sup- 
ply appropriation an amount now estimated at 
$600,000, or as much as may be needed, be 
placed at the disposal of the War Department 
to be used in building a plant for the oxidation 
of ammonia to nitrie acid and the concentra- 
tion of nitric acid, of a capacity equivalent to 
24,000 pounds of 100 per cent. nitric acid in a 
twenty-four-hour day, said plant to be located 
in the neighborhood of the aforesaid synthetic 
ammonia plant and the proposed new powder 
plant of the government. 

4. That the War Department proceed at the 
earliest practical date with the construction of 


SCIENCE 


257 


the oxidation plant and contingent upon a sat- 
isfactory arrangement with the General Chem- 
ical Company, also with the synthetic am- 
monia plant, and that the government give 
such priority orders as will secure from con- 
tractors prompt delivery of the materials and 
rapid construction of the structure and ma- 
chinery needed for those plants. 

5. The committee, appreciating the offer of 
the Nitrogen Products Company granting, in 
this country, to the government, under certain 
conditions, the right to use the so-called 
Bucher process for the production of sodium 
cyanide and ammonia, recommends that a 
form of contract, drawn with the advice of 
the legal authorities of the government, such 
as to give that company no guaranty or ex- 
clusive rights in the process, or in its future 
development, beyond those which the com- 
pany’s own patents give to it, be entered into 
with the Nitrogen Products Company, and 
that experimentation looking toward the in- 
dustrial development of the Bucher process for 
the production of ammonia be at once pro- 
ceeded with. And, further, that contingent 
upon a satisfactory arrangement with the 
Nitrogen Products Company, a sum not to 
exceed $200,000 be allotted for this purpose 
out of the $20,000,000 nitrate supply appro- 
priation. 

6. That out of the $20,000,000 nitrate 
supply appropriation $100,000 be made avail- 
able for the active prosecution of investiga- 
tions of processes for the industrial produc- 
tion of nitrogen compounds useful in the 
manufacture of explosives or of fertilizers, and 
that these investigations be planned and super- 
vised by the War Department. 

7. That in order to increase the production 
of ammonia and toluol the government pro- 
mote the installation of by-product coke ovens 
by directing that priority be given in the pro- 
duction, delivery, and transportation of the 
materials and parts needed in their construc- 
tion. 

8. That the decision as to more extensive 
installation of nitrogen fixation processes and 
water power development in connection with 
them be postponed until the plants above rec- 


258 


ommended are in operation or until further 
need arises. 

9. While the preceding recommendations in- 
clude all the measures that can now judiciously 
be taken for the fixation of nitrogen and the 
oxidation of ammonia, it is the opinion of 
the committee that the immediate accumula- 
tion and the permanent maintenance of an 
ample reserve, not less than 500,000 tons of 
Chile saltpeter, is the measure most urgently 
necessary. 

The Nitrate Supply Committee comprised 
the following Army and Navy officers, scien- 
tific men and engineers: 

Brig. Gen. William Crozier, Chief of 
Ordnance, War Department; Rear Admiral 
Ralph Earle, Chief of the Bureau of Ord- 
nance, Navy Department; Brig. Gen. William 
M. Black, Chief of Engineers U. S. A.; F. W. 
Brown, Bureau of Soils, Department of Agri- 
culture; Leo H. Baekeland, Yonkers, N. Y.; 
Gano Dunn, New York City; Charles H. 
Herty, New York City; William F. Hille- 
brand, Bureau of Standards, Department of 
Commerce; Arthur A. Noyes, Institute of 
Technology, Boston, Mass.; Charles L. Par- 
sons, Bureau of Mines, Interior Department; 
and Willis R. Whitney, Schenectady, N. Y. 


THE ARMY AVIATION SCHOOL AT THE UNI- 
VERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
In the United States Army School of Mili- 
tary Aeronautics at the University of Cali- 
fornia the following appointments have been 
made: : 


Major Arnold N. Krogstad, J.M.A., Signal Corps, 
commandant, quartermaster, ordnance officer, sum- 
mary court, president of examining board. 

Dr. B. M. Woods, president of academic board. 

First Lieutenant Bruno F. Sandow, Medical Re- 
serve Corps, post surgeon, member of examining 
board. 

First Lieutenant Gerald F. Stoodly, Dental Re- 
serve Corps, dental surgeon. 

M. S. E. Herman H. Walker, Signal Corps, re- 
tired, clerk, commandant’s office. 

M. 8. E. Milton N. Williams, Signal Corps, re- 
tired, acting quartermaster sergeant. 

Private Joseph L. Walker, A.S., Signal Corps, 
assistant instructor in rigging. 

Professor B. F. Raber, associate professor of 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185' 


mechanical engineering and professor of aeronaut- 
ical engines. 

D. J. Conant, professor of aeronautical engines. 

Donald B. McFarlane, instructor in gas-engine 
practise. 

F. H. Bachman, instructor in internal-combus- 
tion engines. 

Collier Raber, mechanic and tool-room keeper. 

J. A. Polhemus, instructor in theoretical me- 
chanies, 

H. M. Jeffers, instructor in astronomy and 
meteorology. 

W. D. Waterman, instructor in rigging, structure 
and care of aeroplane. 

R. J. Heffner, instructor in maps and reconnais- 
sance. 

EH. N. D’Oyly, instructor in artillery observation 
and use of miniature artillery range. 

Dr. L. T. Jones, instructor in physics and pro- 
fessor of machine guns. 

F. 8. Stockton, G. R. McDonald and Herbert G. 
Russell, instructors in machine guns. 

R. B. McPherson, instructor in wireless and sig- 
naling. 

Harold Fielder, instructor in wireless. 

E. 8. Pillsbury and E. F. Steen, instructors in 
military tactics and lecturers. 

Clifton R. Gordon, J. C. Moses and G. G. 
Mitchell, instructors in military tactics. 

F. W. Cozens, instructor in physical education. 

Grandison Gardner, instructor. 


APPOINTMENTS IN THE ORDNANCE DEPART- 
MENT OF THE ARMY 

Tue United States Civil Service Commis- 
sion announces the following open competi- 
tive examinations for positions in the several 
ordnance establishments of the War Depart- 
ment or in-or under the office of the Chief of 
Ordnance, War Department, Washington, 
D. C. The salaries named are for entrance. 


Mechanical engineer, artillery ammunition, $3,000 
to $3,600 a year. 

Mechanical engineer, experimental work, $2,500 to 
$3,000 a year. 

Mechanical draftsman, $1,000 to $1,400 a year. 

Apprentice draftsman, $480 a year. 

Inspector of artillery ammunition, $1,500 to $2,400 
a year. 

Inspector of field artillery ammunition steel, $1,500 
to $2,400 a year. 

Assistant inspector of field artillery ammunition 
steel, $3.50 to $5 a day. 


SerptemBer 14, 1917] 


Inspector of ammunition packing boxes $3.52 a day 
to $1,800 year. 

Inspector and assistant inspector of powder and 
explosives, $1,400 to $2,400 a year. 

Inspector of ordnance equipment, $1,500 to $2,400 
a year. 

Assistant inspector of cloth equipment, $80 to $125 
a month, 

Assistant inspector of leather, $100 to $125 a 
month, 

Assistant inspector of small hardware, $80 to $125 
a month. 

Assistant inspector of textiles, $80 to $125 a 
month. 

Assistant inspector of leather equipment, $100 to 
$125 a month. 

Clerk qualified in business administration, $1,200 
to $1,500 a year. 

Index and eatalogue clerk, $1,000 to $1,200 a year. 


The examination for index and catalogue 
clerk is open to both men and women; the 
other examinations are open only to men. 

The president of the commission writes that 
the government urgently needs men for the 
work above indicated, and qualified persons 
are urged, as a patriotic duty, to apply for ex- 
amination. Until further notice applications 
for the positions named will be received at any 
time by the United States Civil Service Com- 
mission, Washington, D. C. Papers will be 
rated promptly. Applicants will not be re- 
quired to appear at any place for examination, 
but will be rated principally upon the elements 
of education, training and experience, as shown 
by their applications and by corroborative evi- 
dence. 

Full information concerning examinations, 
application blanks, etc., may be obtained by 
calling in person upon the secretary of the 
local board of civil service examiners at the 
post office in any city in which city delivery 
of mail has been established, or by communi- 
eating with the United States Civil Service 
Commission, Washington, D. C. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Sm Currorp ALLBuTT has been continued 
in the office of president of the British Med- 
ical Association for the coming year. It is 


SCIENCE 


259 


hoped that a meeting will be held at Cambridge 
next year. 


Proressors Gouc1, Novaro AnD Roster, hay- 
ing reached the age of seventy-five years, auto- 
matically retired from their chairs in Italian 
universities. Professors Golgi and Novaro are 
both senators of the realm. The former is 
professor of general pathology at Pavia, and 
Novaro of surgery at Genoa. Roster is pro- 
fessor of hygiene at Florence. 


THE Secretary of War announces the ap- 
pointment of the following to investigate the 
matter of defective ammunition sent to the 
American expeditionary force in France: Dr. 
H. P. Talbot, professor of chemistry at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. C. 
L. Parsons, chief chemist of the Bureau of 
Mines; an army officer to be named by Major 
General Hugh L. Scott, Chief of Staff. 


Tue United States Food Administration an- 
nounces that Professor H. A. Morgan, of Knox- 
ville, Tenn., has been appointed federal food 
administrator for Tennessee. 


Dr. ArtHur M. Surpiey, of Baltimore, pro- 
fessor of surgery at the University of Mary- 
land, who had received his commission as chief 
of the surgical staff of the University of Mary- 
land Base Hospital Unit, has been detached 
from the unit by order of the War Department, 
and ordered to report immediately to Camp 
Meade as chief surgeon and surgical instructor 
at the camp. 


E. N. WentworrH, professor of animal 
breeding at the Kansas State Agricultural Col- 
lege, has received a commission of captain in 
field artillery. For the present he will be sta- 
tioned at Fort Riley. 


Rogert A. Parrerson, Ph.D., instructor in 
physics in Yale College, has been commis- 
sioned captain in the field artillery section of 
the Reserve Officers’ Corps, and assigned to 
the camp at Ayer, Mass. 


Dr. Leon I. Suaw, of the department of 
chemistry of Northwestern University, has 
been advanced to the position of assistant 
professor of chemistry on leave of absence for 
one year for service with the government. He 


260 


has received the appointment of first lieutenant 
in the Ordnance Officers’ Reserve Corps. 


D. W. Buaxesuee, electrical engineer and 
assistant superintendent, Penn Electrical and 
Manufacturing Co., Irwin, Pa. has been 
ordered to report at Washington for active 
duty as first lieutenant in the Engineer Sec- 
tion, Officers’ Reserve Corps, United States 
Army. 


Dr. Epwarp G. Birce, director of the State 
Bacteriological Laboratory, Jacksonville, Flor- 
ida, has been given an indefinite leave of ab- 
sence by the Florida State Board of Health. 
Dr. Birge has received a commission as cap- 
tain with the Medical Reserve Corps of the 
United States army. 


Tue Journal of the American Medical Asso- 
ciation states that Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, 
U. S. Public Health Service, has discovered 
forty-seven cases of hookworm in seventy-five 
recruits mobilized for war service, and these 
findings have caused the United States Public 
Health Service to recommend the prompt ex- 
amination for hookworm of all units of the 
national guard and national army, especially 
those from the south. 


Surcron Frencu Simpson, U. S. Public 
Health Service, has been ordered to Columbia, 
S. C., to take charge of the campaign against 
malaria. 


Dr. B. Frank Knauss, of Brooklyn, N. Y., 
has been appointed deputy commissioner and 
sanitary superintendent at a salary of $6,000 
a year. The appointment is also announced 
of Dr. Herman Tapley Peck, also of Brook- 
lyn, as assistant sanitary superintendent at 
$5,500 a year. 


E. W. JauNKE has been appointed superin- 
tendent of the state grain and seed laboratory 
at Bozeman in connection with the State Col- 
lege of Montana, to succeed B. Whitlock, who 
resigned to accept a position with the federal 
department of agriculture in the administra- 
tion of the grain standardization act. Mr. 
Whitlock will have his headquarters at Salt 
Lake, and will superintend the administration 
of the law over a large part of the northwest. 
Mr. Jahnke who becomes superintendent at 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185 


Bozeman has been an assistant to Mr. Whit- 
lock for the past two years. 


Mr. ArtHur T. Botton has been appointed 
curator of Sir John Soane’s Museum, Lin- 


coln’s Inn Fields, in succession to the late Mr. 
W. L. Spiers. 


A Reuter despatch to the daily papers 
states that Professor Kenzo Futaki claims to 
have discovered, after three years’ original re- 
search work in the Japanese Imperial Govern- 
ment Laboratory, the specific cause of typhus 
fever. He calls this new germ the Spirochete 
exanthematotyphis. 


Dr. Couin G. Fink, for the past ten years 
in the Research Laboratories of the General 
Electric Company, has been appointed head 
of the new Chile Exploration Company labora- 
tories, located at 202d Street and 10th Ave., 
New York City. The work in the new labora- 
tories will be largely research along metal- 
lurgical and electrochemical lines. 


Dr. L. F. Nickett, formerly assistant pro- 
fessor of chemistry at Washington Univer- 
sity, has resigned to become chemist in the 
research department of the Monsanto Chemi- 
eal Works in St. Louis. 

Dr. Cuartes K. Francis, for the past seven 
years chemist and professor of petroleum 
technology in the Oklahoma Agricultural and 
Mechanical College, has resigned to become 
chief chemist for the Cosden Oil Company, 
Tulsa, Okla. 


Proressor Francis RaMALEY, who has been 
making vegetation studies in California since 
February, has returned to his work at the 
University of Colorado. 


Proressor ©. E. CLEWELL, of the University 
of Pennsylvania, delivered on September 10 
his fourth annual lecture on the fundamental 
principles of natural and artificial factory 
lighting before the junior students in elec- 
trical and mechanical engineering in the sum- 
mer term of mechanical technology at the 
Sheftield Scientific School of Yale University. 


Tue death is announced of Major-General 
T. Rosati, surgeon-general of the Italian 
navy, at the age of fifty-seven years. He was 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


formerly professor of ear and throat diseases 
at the University of Naples. 


Dr. Exior R. Crark, professor of anatomy 
in the University of Missouri, recently de- 
livered an address on “ Some aspects of the 
problem of endothelium,” and Dr. Frederick 
G. Novy, professor of bacteriology in the Uni- 
versity of Michigan, an address on “ Anaphy- 
laxis” before the faculty and students of the 
graduate summer quarter in medicine of the 
University of Illinois. 


Tue Cavendish lecture of the West London 
Medico-Chirurgical Society was delivered by 
Captain Andrew Macphail, Canadian Army 
Medical Corps, who is professor of the history 
of medicine at McGill University, Montreal, 
who took as his subject “ A Day’s Work.” 


A NEW pedestal for the bust of John Muir, 
naturalist and explorer, is now being made at 
the University of Wisconsin to be placed in 
the Building for Biology, where the bust of 
Muir now stands. The pedestal will bear this 
inscription: 

JoHN Muir, 1838-1913 
AUTHOR, EXPLORER, NATURALIST 
A PRIEST AT NATURE’S SHRINE. 


Cuartes Howarp Parmuy, professor of 
physics of the College of the City of New 
York, died at Ashland, N. H., from cerebral 
hemorrhage on September 8, aged forty-nine 
years. 


Dr. G. STANCULEANU, professor of ophthal- 
mology at the University of Bucharest until 
the German invasion, who has been lecturing 
in this country in the interest of the Rouma- 
nian government, died recently of pneumonia 
at a sanatorium at Stamford, Conn. 


THE death is announced of Dr. Charles 
Mongour, professor of internal pathology and 
medical jurisprudence at the Bordeaux Medi- 
cal School. 


Ir is stated in Nature that the mycological 
collection of the late Dr. J. W. Ellis has been 
acquired by purchase by the herbarium at 
Kew. It comprises nearly 1,600 dried speci- 
mens, is especially rich in micro-fungi, and 
includes a series of mounted specimens of 


SCIENCE 


261 


those of economic importance. There are also 


330 microscopic slides. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


AS a war measure a limited number of 
women may be admitted this year to the 
courses of the Harvard Medical School. They 
will not receive or be eligible to receive the 
university degree. Formal action has not 
been taken by the corporation, but tentative 
arrangements are being made and will prob- 
ably become effective by the time college opens 
for the new session. 


Tue department of forestry of the Uni- 
versity of Idaho has recently been segregated 
from the College of Arts and Science as an 
independent school. Professor F. G. Miller, 
formerly head of the department of forestry 
at Washington State College, has been elected 
dean of the school, and professor of forestry. 


Dr. Henry Kraemer, for twenty years pro- 
fessor of botany and pharmacognosy at the 
Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, will suc- 
ceed the late Dr. Julius O. Schlotterbeck as 
professor of pharmacognosy of the college of 
pharmacy of the University of Michigan. 


Aumon H. Futter, dean of the school of 
engineering at the University of Washington, 
Seattle, has accepted the appointment to the 
head of the department of civil engineering at 
Lafayette College to succeed Professor J. 
Madison Porter. Donald B. Prentice, of the 
Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, 
has been appointed assistant professor of me- 
chanical engineering. He will take charge of 
the work in boilers and heat engineering 
hitherto cared for by Professor Fitch. 


Dr. H. B. Suaw, former dean of the School 
of Engineering of the University of Missouri, 
has been appointed supervisor of the Doherty 
cadet school. Dr. Shaw’s duties will include 
the selection of men from the universities of 
the country to become Doherty cadets, to 
supervise the courses and to recommend cadets 
for regular posts in the organization. He will 
make his headquarters, it is expected, in 
Toledo, Ohio. 


262 


Dr. TruMAN Lee Kewey, of the University 
of Texas, has been elected assistant professor 
of education at Teachers College, Columbia 
University. Dr. Kelley is to devote a large 
part of his time to research on psychological 
measurements in secondary education. 


NorTHWESTERN Utversity MerpicaL ScHoon 
announces the following faculty appointments 
for 1917-1918: Drs. Frederick G. Harris, pro- 
fessor of dermatology and syphilology, suc- 
ceeding Professor Joseph Zeisler, who becomes 
professor emeritus of dermatology; Frank C. 
Becht, professor of pharmacology, succeeding 
Professor Hugh McGuigan; John Ridlon, hon- 
orary professor of orthopedic surgery; John L. 
Porter, professor of orthopedic surgery; Her- 
bert A. Potts, professor of oral surgery; Frank 
E. Simpson, adjunct clinical professor of 
dermatology; Charles P. Caldwell, adjunct 
clinical professor of medicine; Edward L. 
Moorhead, adjunct clinical professor of 
surgery. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
TESTS OF RADIATOR HUMIDIFIERS 

By request of physicians I have tested four 
types of radiator humidifiers on the market 
in Minneapolis. The experiments were per- 
formed at my house, which is heated by hot 
water. For the first three types mentioned 
the tests were made at the same time on the 
same radiator. The results are therefore 
strictly comparable. The results for the 
“Flobun” were obtained at a later date. All 
results have been calculated to indicate evap- 
oration, per twenty-four hours, for each hori- 
zontal foot of radiator occupied by the appa- 
ratus. 


RESULTS 
““Speco,’’? av. of 3 tests, zero weather, 
demapeiad Il St osososodoomeebusoas 294 g. 
‘¢Savo,’? av. of 3 tests, zero weather, 
denmebay, ICs eoponoscnsdodoogooudoS 230 g. 
‘«Buddington,’’ av. 3 tests, zero weather, 
AMMA eel Olaeteyerapevoleheretereterareleratshetatael= 1,116 g. 
‘<Flobun,’’? av. of 2 tests, zero weather, 
IDYNeEae, WIG: Gooadouaespaccocauoce 1,248 g. 


These results for the “ Buddington” and 
“Flobun” were obtained using wicks which 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1185 


were new or nearly new. But the efficiency 
of both instruments rapidly falls if tap water 
is used, owing to clogging of the wicks. In 
two days the loss of efficiency in one series of 
experiments with the “ Flobun” was 25 per 
cent. 

Inasmuch as 10 to 30 gallons of water 
(Bryce, of Ottawa, says 75 gallons) must be 
evaporated daily in an ordinary-sized house to 
maintain reasonable humidity under the con- 
ditions of our northern winters, it will be seen 
that these radiator devices are practically 
worthless. Using the sling psychrometer I 
was never able to detect an increase of humid- 
ity from the use of any of them. Indeed, the 
best of them is no more efficient as an air 
moistener than one human being. The ay- 
erage evaporation from lungs and skin of a 
large laboratory class in subzero weather, and 
about 70° inside temperature, was nearly two 
ounces per hour per person, or about 1,200 
erams a day. 


: E. P. Lyon 
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 


A NEW METEORITE 


Axout 6:20 p.M., July 4, 1917, there fell 
within the corporate limits of Colby, Wis., in 
the western part of the city, which is in the 
county of Clark, an achondritic aerolite, the 
fall of which was witnessed by a considerable 
number of people. 

Unfortunately, knowledge of this fall did 
not come to me until two weeks later and a 
visit to the locality was made on July 24, at 
which time the stones had become considerably 
broken up and dispersed. 

Two pieces fell, the smaller about one half 
mile NNE. from the other. The larger stone 
fell in a pasture, striking a granite rock, at 
least two inches in thickness, lying upon or 
near the surface, breaking this rock into many 
fragments and itself breaking into twenty-seven 
or more pieces. The larger mass, weigh- 
ing 2234 pounds, penetrated the stiff Colby 
clay to a depth of five feet. Some of the 
smaller pieces are said to have distributed 
themselves laterally in the soil to the extent 
of about four feet. 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


The smaller stone fell in a cultivated field 
without breaking and is said to have pene- 
trated the soil about two feet. This stone is 
variously described as about 10x14x3 or 4 
inches, 17 or 18 inches by 9x9 inches and 
21x11x11 inches at larger end, sloping in 
two directions to a wedge shape with rounded 
corners. This piece was said to be entirely 
covered with crust and to have weighed from 
75 to 85 pounds. 

The man who extracted it from the earth 
informs me that it was so cold that frost im- 
mediately formed on its surface when exposed 
to the air. 

The Public Museum of the City of Mil- 
waukee has obtained the bulk of the larger 
mass which will be analyzed and duly pub- 
lished. It probably will be distributed in ex- 
change with several museums. 

The stone is of a light gray groundmass, 
apparently largely feldspathic, containing very 
few chondrules and thickly shot with pyr- 
rhotite varying from specks a fraction of a 
millimeter to more or less globular masses 
5 mm. in diameter. It exhibits sundry black 
veins and armored surfaces. Its crust shows 
considerable variation on different pieces, 
some of which are deeply pitted and others 
comparatively smooth. 

This is, I believe, the sixth meteorite known 
from the state of Wisconsin and will be known 
as the Colby meteorite. 

Henry L. Warp 

PousBLic MUSEUM OF THE 

Ciry or MILWAUKEE, 
July 31, 1917 


FILING PAMPHLETS 


THE communications relative to filing re- 
prints, bulletins and other pamphlets have 
been read with considerable interest by the 
writer and further suggestions are offered. 

Having been in experiment station work 
for a number of years and being on the mail- 
ing lists of a large number of stations, the 
literature, particularly bulletins and circulars, 
has been accumulating rapidly. Of these, 
there may be many which may be of no im- 
mediate interest and attempts have been made 


SCIENCE 


265 


repeatedly to find some system for filing and 
indexing them, which will give a maximum 
of usefulness with a minimum of work in 
arranging and filing. Many of the various 
systems have been tried with the result that 
owing to the time required for arranging, one 
becomes confronted with an almost hopeless 
stack of publications if the work be neglected 
even for a short time. 

Numbering in the order of acquisition was 
early abandoned, on account of the time nec- 
essary for preparing index cards and the 
cross refernces which sooner or later become 
inevitable, and the resulting jumbled mass of 
publications on the shelves. Filing according 
to origin, as by experiment station in the 
case of such publications, was tried, but this, 
too, required a card index and, as in the for- 
mer system, the necessary picking over of the 
entire shelves when a number of publications 
on one subject were desired. Filing by author 
led to the same results. It was finally con- 
cluded that in order to obtain a higher degree 
of efficiency it would be necessary to combine 
indexing with filing, thus doing away with a 
large number of indexing cards, and at the 
same time some of the deficiencies of the other 
systems of filing. This conclusion led to a 
search for a fairly complete scheme of classi- 
fication. The Dewey system was consulted 
and was found wanting, particularly because 
the division agriculture was not classified 
finely enough. The solution of the problem 
was found in the scheme of classification of 
the Library of Congress. This may be pro- 
cured from the Superintendent of Documents 
at a small price and answers the purpose very 
well. 

In using this scheme, the publications are 
numbered according to the class number of 
the subject and placed in the proper filing 
boxes for each particular subject or subjects. 
Where a pamphlet contains information on 
more than one subject it is only necessary 
to prepare a cross reference card of fairly 
large size and file it in its proper place among 
the publications. To prevent “burying” of 
a publication, a register is used in which the 
publications are listed according to their origin 


264 


with their class numbers. With this arrange- 
ment it is possible to locate immediately any 
publication, even if only its origin is known. 
The chief ‘advantage of the scheme lies in the 
fact that all material with cross references 
on any given subject are immediately avail- 
able. 

For agricultural workers in special lines 
the classification may not be complete enough 
but this may be easily remedied by preparing 
an outline for more minute classification. 
For the purposes of the writer the heading 
insecticides and fungicides was further sub- 
divided and this has been very satisfactory so 
far. As the worker in insecticides and fungi- 
cides is often called upon for chemical in- 
formation in other closely related lines such 
as parasiticides, germicides, weed killers, 
poisons for vertebrate pests and the like, it 
has often been debated whether the classi- 
fication should belong under economic entomol- 
ogy, where it now is, or agricultural chem- 
istry, or whether there should not be a special 
heading under agriculture for the entire sub- 
ject or group of subjects. In such a case, the 
entire branch might be included under the 
heading “economic toxicology.” This name 
the writer believes to be original and it ap- 
pears to fill the need for a name for such a 
diversified and yet closely related group of 
subjects. 

As to the actual storage of pamphlets, any 
of the suggestions found in the various com- 
munications are of value, provided the unit 
holder be not too large to facilitate the loca- 
tion of any particular publication. 

M. R. Minier 

INSECTICIDE AND FUNGICIDE LABORATORY, 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


QUOTATIONS 


FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR THE NATIONAL 
RESEARCH COUNCIL 


Art the request of the President of the United 
States, the National Research Council has been 
engaged during the past year in mobilizing the 
research forces of the nation. It has been an 
enormous task, to which many of the most 
brilliant workers of the country have given 
their undivided time. The work has gradually 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1185 


and logically centered at Washington, and the 
research forces of the country are now quickly 
available to any department of the government. 
Development has proceeded to the point where 
this organization can be truly considered a 
going machine, forming a connection between 
the research workers of the country-at-large 
and the government, and serving as a valuable 
coordinating influence. With the preliminary 
work now accomplished, its full value will be 
more and more nearly attained with each suc- 
ceeding day. 

For the continuance of the work, however, 
funds will be necessary. Up to the present its 
operations have cost the government absolutely 
nothing: office rent, stationery, postage, clerical 
assistance, etc., have been provided by private 
contributions, and the time of members of uni- 
versity staffs has been contributed by the re- 
spective institutions. For so important a body 
such an existence is too precarious. If the 
government needs war material it pays for it 
and a willing citizenry furnishes the funds 
through taxation. Are the brains of our scien- 
tific men less valuable in this crisis than coal 
or cotton? As an American citizen we hope 
that Congress before adjournment will supply 
adequate funds for the carrying on of the 
work of the National Research Council on the 
most intensive and extensive scale possible. 
We are unwilling to believe that the govern- 
ment of the United States is so pauperized that 
it must depend on “the passing of the hat” or 
that it is willing to continue to draw further 
upon the seriously impaired incomes of our 
universities in order that the salaries of the 
men engaged in this work may be met.—Jour- 
nal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


The Principles of Aerography. By ALEXANDER 
McApm. Rand McNally & Co., Chicago. 
1917. 318 pp., 8vo, 51 ills., 59 charts and 
diagrams. 

“The Principles of Aerography ” deals with 
the most recent advances in meteorology. As 
to its title, turning to Murray’s Dictionary 

1‘¢A New English Dictionary,’’ 1888, Vol. 1, 
p. 146. 


SrpremMBer 14, 1917] 


we find the following: “Aerography, descrip- 
tion of the atmosphere. 1753 Chambers Cycl. 
Supp., ‘Aerography, a description of the air, 
or atmosphere, its limits, dimensions, proper- 
ties, ete.’ 1818 in Todd.” This long-forgotten 
synonym for “ meteorology ” Professor McAdie 
seeks to restore as a title for the study of the 
atmosphere particularly in relation to human 
safety and progress. The word “ meteorology ” 
is so well-intrenched, however, and so com- 
prehensive, that it is not likely, in our gen- 
eration at least, to be replaced by “ aero- 
graphy.” 

The purpose and scope of the book are sum- 
marized in the opening sentence of the pref- 
ace, “... to present this new knowledge [of 
about the last ten years] in a convenient form 
even if considerably condensed.” There is 
much direct quotation. Thus we have here a 
useful supplement to American text-books in 
meteorology, of which the last’ comprehensive 
one was published in 1912. The points em- 
phasized are necessarily not the well-known 
tenets of the science, but its recent develop- 
ments. “Stress is laid on modern methods 
of attack and the practical application of what- 
ever knowledge is already available.” The 
most noteworthy feature is the exclusive use 
of metric and absolute units. 

Unfortunately, coherence and clearness seem 
to have been sacrificed to brevity in the 
attempt to make the book a college text; with 
short chapters, numbered sections, and para- 
graph headings. The successive chapters are: 
“A brief history of meteorology; units and 
symbols; temperature scales; thermodynamics 
of the atmosphere; stratosphere and tropo- 
sphere; the circulation of the atmosphere; 
the major circulations; the minor circula- 
tions; forecasting storms; the winds; the 
water vapor of the atmosphere; condensation ; 
dust and microbes; atmospheric electricity ; 
precipitation; floods and notable storms; 
frosts; [and] solar influences.” The lack of 
a more systematic arrangement of the material 
probably will be a serious obstacle in the way 
of the use of the book as a text-book. 

The subjects included are, for the most 
part, well chosen, though many are too briefly 


SCIENCE 


265 


discussed. The consistent use of metric units 
of measurement and weight, and the absolute 
scale of centigrade temperature and of atmos- 
pheric pressure is highly commendable. The 
author’s tables in these units, and his inter- 
pretations of aerodynamics place these com- 
plexities within reach of the well-taught stu- 
dent. The student, however, may be confused 
in having absolute pressure units presented as 
“ilobars”? when they are commonly known 
as “millibars.” “ Kilobar” has historic prec- 
edence over “ millibar,” it is true; but “ milli- 
bar” is the internationally accepted term. 
On account of omissions or the tantalizing 
shortness in the treatment of many interesting 
subjects, the reader may wish that Professor 
McAdie’s book were twice as long. For ex- 
ample, few students probably can understand 
the brief explanation of energy used in expan- 
sion (p. 48); and some may search in vain 
for an explanation of the prevailing westerly 
winds. Seeming contradictions are confusing: 
thus, a statement of the presence of great polar 
low pressures is followed by a mention of polar 
high pressures (pp. 54 and 56). It is hard to 
reconcile the following statement with all 
other mentions of the temperatures of the 
upper air: “10° A. Effective temperature 
of space. At an elevation of 80 kilometers 
(50 miles) the temperature ranges from 
5° to 10° A.” (p. 287). This is contrary 
to the radiation theory of the tempera- 
tures of the stratosphere (pp. 50 and 51); 
and up to 30 kilometers, at least, there is no 
observational basis for this assumption. 
Again, some one might ask why the tempera- 
ture of the atmosphere is below the effective 
temperature of space. In some places the dis- 
cussion hinges on quantities depending on per- 
haps three variables, of which only one is 
stated: on p. 43, the weight of a cubic centi- 
meter of dry air is stated without mention of 
temperature and pressure; on p. 58, deflecting 
force is evaluated without specification of the 
latitude. Many of the erroneous or weak 
places in the book are ascribable to brevity. 
An error may be noted here (p. 139): “ [In 
the atmosphere] if there should be no gradient 
[of temperature], we should have the density 


266 


the same throughout, and the temperature at 
the highest level would be the same as below.” 
Density could not be the same, for the air is 
compressible. Finally, a student may wonder 
at the apparent accuracy with which down- 
pours of rain are measured in all kinds of 
places, when he sees, for instance, that in a 
rainstorm lasting “0.0083” hours it rained 
at a rate of 480 mm. per hour (p. 216). 

The volume will probably be of greatest 
value as a reference accompaniment to a well- 
ordered course in meteorology. As a reference 
book for the advanced student, however, it is 
lacking in footnotes or bibliography; but it 
offsets this with its wealth of tables computed 
only with difficulty, and of illustrations and 
diagrams drawn from valuable, inaccessible 
sources. CuarLes F. Brooxs 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 


Cancer, Its Cause and Treatment. II. Vol- 
ume. By L. Duncan BuntKiEy. New York, 
Paul B. Hoeber. 1917. 

The author believes, as he explained in his 
preceding book and as he further elaborates 
in the second volume, that cancer is essentially 
excessive intake of animal proteid which is 
a constitutional disease, due to a faulty nitro- 
gen metabolism. He maintains that it is an 
excessive intake of animal proteid which is 
responsible for the great prevalence of cancer. 
There are additional factors in the etiology of 
cancer, but they are of relatively minor im- 
portance. In the second volume the author 
records in greater detail his investigations 
into urinary and blood changes in cancer and 
some results of his treatment which consists 
essentially in a vegetarian diet aided by a 
certain cathartic. In addition the author ac- 
cepts the views of Ross, according to which 
cancer is due to a lack of balance in partic- 
ular mineral salts of the body, especially in 
the salts of potassium. Dr. Bulkley finds the 
conclusions of Ross confirmed in his own prac- 
tise, in which he noticed that a prescription 
containing potassium acetate gave eminently 
satisfactory results in the treatment of cancer. 


Leo Lor, 
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Von, XLVI. No. 1185 


THE VANISHING INDIAN 


THE progress of miscegenation among many 
of the Indian tribes has progressed to a degree 
that is surprising even to those who for many 
years have been studying the Indian. While 
the total number of “Indians” as recorded 
by the census increases from decade to decade, 
the fact is that this increase is due wholly to 
that of mixed bloods; the full-bloods of pure 
strain are in most localities rapidly disappear- 
ing and in a considerable proportion of the 
tribes have become actually extinct or are on 
the point of extinction. 

Two remarkable examples of this fact have 
just been experienced by the writer. For 
years a growing necessity in American Anthro- 
pology has been to determine the physical type 
of the Shawnee, once a large tribe and one of 
considerable historic importance. No great 
difficulty was apprehended in this task, as the 
tribe is still well represented. The most 
promising part of the tribe was that of the so- 
called “absentee” Shawnee, on the Shawnee 
Agency in eastern Oklahoma. They count 
569 individuals, quite a few of whom are gen- 
erally regarded as “ full-bloods.” 

Due to a grant of $100 from the Committee 
of One Hundred on Research of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, 
the writer was able to visit the tribe during 
the early part of August of this year. To his 
great disappointment the task of finding 
some pure-bloods became exceedingly diffi- 
cult. Quite a few of the Indians were found 
to be “full-bloods,” but on inquiry into the 
family history it was generally learned that 
the subject was a mixture of Shawnee with the 
Oneida, Delaware, Creeks, or some other tribe. 
In conclusion, there were found but three in- 
dividuals who so far as they or their friends 
knew were full-blood Shawnee. Two of these 
were old women and one an old man, all near 
or over 70 years of age, and two of the three 
were sister and brother. 

The next tribe visited were the Kickapoo, 
the main body of which to the number of 211 
is settled about McLoud, Oklahoma. They 
were said by the old Shawnee to be practically 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


the same people with themselves, having at 
some time in the past had but one camp-fire, 
and it was generally believed that they would 
show some full-bloods of pure strain. This 
proved to be a vain hope. On close inquiry 
all sorts of mixtures were discovered, even 
among the oldest men and women of the tribe, 
but no pure-bloods. Only one single woman 
of middle age was believed to be possibly a full 
Kickapoo, but there was no real certainty. 
Some visiting Kickapoo from Mexico proved 
no better than the rest, and no hope was given 
that any pure strain Kickapoo could be found 
anywhere else. 

Thus two tribes, one of which was of 
considerable importance, may be regarded as 
lost to science, so far as pure-bloods are con- 
cerned. Only a few years ago according to 
local information there were still a number of 
old men and women living in both tribes who 
represented the pure strain. The genuine 
Indian is rapidly passing away and the work 
of the anthropologist who endeavors to record 
the physical type of the various tribes is be- 
coming increasingly difficult. 

Aves HrpuicKa 

Unitep States National Museum 


ON A SUDDEN OUTBREAK OF COTTON 
RUST IN TEXAS 


In June 10, 1917, the attention of the writer 
was called to an outbreak of cotton rust. The 
specimens were first collected at Mercedes and 
Edinberg, Texas. A review of the literature 
seemingly showed that in the United States, 
the cotton was supposed to be free from rust. 
The Experiment Station Literature however 
refers to cotton rust which is not a true rust, 
but various leaf spots caused by Pseudomonas 
malvacearum E. S. and Glomerella gossypit 
(South.) Edg. 

Symptoms.—The disease is characterized by 
circular spots which vary from one tenth to 
one quarter of an inch in diameter. The 
spots, however, are often much larger in size 
when they appear singly and become consider- 
ably smaller when many of them occur on the 
same leaf. The ecia are found to be thickly 
studded on the spots of the upper part of the 


SCIENCE 


267 


leaf. The wxcia are typical of all rusts of this 
type, and when mature the spores are liberated 
by the least wind or touch, forming a yellow 
powder on the leaf. The spores readily ger- 
minate in water, showing that the rust is a 
heterecious species. This same observation 
was also substantiated by Dr. J. C. Arthur, 
under correspondence dated July 2, 1917. The 
disease seems to attack the lower leaves first 
and especially plants which are well developed 
and on which cotton bolls have attained con- 
siderable size. The area of the present in- 
fection was found to begin at about four miles 
west of San Fordyce on the Rio Grande, run- 
ning east about thirty-five miles and extend- 
ing north and south about fifteen miles. In 
the Mission Sharyland district the approxi- 
mate acres devoted to cotton are about 500, 
while further East several thousands of acres 
have been put to cotton this season. There 
were few patches in that area which were not 
affected with rust. About two or three miles 
north of Mission the first outbreak was re- 
ported from the ranch of Mr. Charles Brodgen. 
Soon other ranchmen reported similar out- 
breaks of cotton rust. The first infection was 
noticed immediately after a long rainy spell 
which lasted about three weeks. The rain 
consisted of short showers, which kept the air 
very humid. The disease was more serious on 
older patches and where irrigation was re- 
sorted to. Where irrigation and cultivation 
was slightly neglected infection was found to 
be very mild. In the same field in those plants 
which were most protected from either wind 
or by a top growth infection was heaviest on 
the lower leaves. Cotton which was planted 
very close and those plants in the field which 
made the heaviest growth were also found to 
be most affected. While infection is confined 
to the lower leaves, the disease may also be 
found on the bracts of the bolls. Careful ob- 
servation so far has not disclosed it on the stem 
of the cotton plant. ~ 

It does not seem probable that this rust has 
prevailed to any serious extent in the Cotton 
States before. Some of the oldest cotton 
growers of Hidalgo County of Texas claim 
that from their experience of nearly fifty years 


268 


with cotton, they have never seen this rust. 
Many Mexican cotton growers on the Texas 
border too make similar statements, while 
one or two others insist that they have seen it 
before. It seems therefore a puzzle how this 
rust has escaped the general attention of 
cotton growers. There is this point which 
might be of value in considering the source of 
the present outbreak. The Rio Grande valley 
receives its irrigation water, not from the Rio 
Grande, as is commonly supposed, but from 
the San Juan river and other Mexican rivers. 
The waters from these rivers empty in a basin 
or valley in which cotton grows. It is there- 
fore very probable that the waters of the San 
Juan river have introduced weeds which act 
as a host to the possible Puccinia stage of this 
rust. It is also probable-that the waters of 
these rivers have carried sporidia from Mexi- 
ean sources, which were now responsible for 
the infection of the cotton; all this however is 
problematical. 

Cause—The disease here reported is a true 
rust. The ecial stage occurs on the cotton 
while the Puccinia stage undoubtedly occurs on 
some other host, unknown as yet. In submit- 
ing specimens of this cotton rust to Dr. J. C. 
Arthur, he pronounced it Afcidium gossypw 
E. & E. suggesting also that this rust might 
come from some grass form, probably Muhlen- 
bergia, or Sporobolus; Dr. Arthur has spec- 
imens of this rust in his herbarium, which was 
collected by Heald and Wolf at Falfurrias, 
Texas, September 2, 1909, and two Mexican 
collections, one from San Jose del Cabos, Sep- 
tember 2, 1893, the other from Tlahualilo, 
collected about 1907, probably by Herrera. 
Dr. W. A. Orthon? states that he has spec- 
imens of this rust in his herbarium which 
were collected in Florida found one year in 
an experimental plat at Miami. His other 
specimens came from Falfurrias and other 
points of the Rio Grande valley, collected 
seven years ago. From this it is evident that 
the cotton rust must have been present in 
Texas and elsewhere, though it did not at- 
tract the attention of cotton growers or pathol- 
ogists. Mcidium gossypii E. & E. was first 

1 Correspondence dated July 25, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185 


described in Hrythea, 5:6, 1897. Unfortu- 
nately the writer was unable to secure a copy of 
this publication. There seems no doubt how- 
ever that the present cotton rust is the same 
as that which was originally described as 
Ascidium gossypi E. & E. Uredo gossypit 
Lagh. is another but inconspicuous rust which 
attacks cotton. This is prevalent in Cuba, 
Porto Rico and southern Florida, twenty- 
seven collections of which are found in Dr. 
Arthur’s herbarium. It is very likely that the 
same rust may be. found to be more wide- 
spread in the cotton states, although it may be 
easily overlooked because of its inconspicuous 
nature. Uredo gossypii resembles very much 
any other ordinary Uredo. 

A careful search of Heidium gossypii in the 
affected district in Texas has as yet failed to 
reveal the presence in cotton fields of any 
grasses belonging to the genus Muhlenbergia 
or Sporobolus. On the other hand there are 
numerous grasses in that locality which are 
found to be affected by various rusts. More 
recent investigations have disclosed the fact 
that there are no new infections found on the 
cotton since the last outbreak was observed. 
Moreover the excidial stage on the previously 
affected cotton leaves is now found to have 
dried, leaving no traces of viable spores. The 
original spots as well as the old cluster cups 
are overrun by a varied mycological flora. 
Just what became of the excidial stage is hard 
to explain. It is not likely that new infections 
will start again on the cotton this year. The 
problem on hand therefore is to determine if 
possible the alternate host which hibernates 
the Puccinia stage. Drs. Olive and Arthur, 
as well as the writer, are now working on this 
phase, and it is hoped that the Puccinia stage 
will be found so that the host which hiber- 
nates it will be destroyed, thereby preventing 
the further spread of cotton rust. 

In conclusion the writer wishes to expres3 
his indebtedness to Dr. J. C. Arthur for help- 
ful suggestions and for identifications of spec- 
imens. Grateful acknowledgments are also 
due Dr. J. J. Marton, agricultural agent of the 
Texas State Department of Agriculture, for 
the hearty cooperation and for information on 


SepreMBeER 14, 1917] 


the spread of cotton rust in the Rio Grande 
valley of Texas. J. J. TAUBENHAUS 
Division oF PLANT PATHOLOGY 
AND PHYSIOLOGY, 
Texas AGRICULTURAL Exp. STATION, 
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
THE EFFECTS OF ACIDS AND SALTS 
ON “BIO-COLLOIDS” 

Mixtures of agar with gelatine, albumen, 
protein, urea or amino-acids in which the 
agar forms seventy-five per cent. or more of 
the whole, show a similarity of imbibitional 
behavior to that of sections of plants and 
hence for convenience in the present studies 
may be termed “ bio-colloids.” The results 
of a series of tests with a wide variety of 
nitrogenous substances from urea to albumen 
were in general agreement to the effect that 
such substances mixed in proportions of one 
to ten, more or less, with agar, when made 
into thin dried plates, swelled enormously; 
2,000 to 3,000 per cent. in distilled water, one 
half to one tenth this amount in hundredth- 
molar hydrochloric acid, and more or less in 
hundredth-molar sodium hydrate. 

An extension of the tests of the effects of 
nitrogenous substances upon the swelling of 
the amorphous carbohydrates was made to 
include a mixture of agar and peptone the 
swelling measurements of which were as fol- 


lows: 
AGAR 90—PEPTONE 10 


Water HC! 4/100 NaOH 1/100 
BLGO!GZomeciclerereiers 500% (20 hours) 633% 
EAE 566.6 (20 hours) 800 
Sune 633.3 (48 hours) 1,666.6 
The chief feature of interest in these 


results is the uniform swelling in alkali in 
excess of that in hydrochloric acid, in a man- 
ner slightly different to that of similar mix- 
tures in which other nitrogenous substances 
were used. 

1See ‘‘Growth and Imbibition’’ presented be- 
fore the American Philosophical Society, April, 
1917, and now in press in the Transactions of the 
society; also ‘‘ The Behavior of Certain Gels Useful 
in the Interpretation of the Action of Plants,’’ 
ScIENCE, 43, p. 484, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


269 


The chief purpose of the entire series of 
studies has been to ascertain what conditions 
of growth and development might be iden- 
tical with the factors affecting imbibition. The 
fact that plant protoplasts usually consist of a 
large proportion of carbohydrate gels with a 
smaller proportion of nitrogenous material 
has already been discussed. The resulting 
colloidal mixture may be acidified as a result 
of certain respiratory processes, or this acid 
may be broken up as fast as formed, in which 
ease the protoplast might be in a deacidified 
or neutral condition and from this might vary 
to alkaline under conditions which we are not 
yet ready to describe. Acidification and de- 
acidification of the cell may take place at a 
rapid rate and be complete within a short 
time, according to the bulk of the cell-mass, 
temperature and other conditions. 

Hydrochloric acid had been used in nearly 
all of the earlier work for acidification of 
colloids, since most of the known facts as to 
the swelling of gels are referable to it. The 
acids of the plant are organic, and a mod- 
ification of the technique to heighten the 
similarity between the experiments and the 
action of the plant was to substitute citric 
for hydrochloric acid in the series. 

Preliminary to this substitution, series of 
swellings were carried out to test the relative 
action of the two acids, with the following 
results from dried plates of mixtures of 90 
parts agar and 10 parts bean protein: 


Hydrochloric Acid Citric Acid Sodium Hydrate 
M/100 M/100 4 
541.6% 916.6% 916.6% 
875 
875 
300 402 400 


The effect of this organic acid in this initial 
series of tests was to produce an imbibitional 
swelling fairly equivalent to that of sodium 
hydrate and to cause such colloidal mixtures 
to take up more water than in hydrochloric 
acid. An extended series of measurements 
will be necessary before any serious conclu- 
sion can be formulated, however. 

Another set of factors arising from the 
presence and concentration of salts is next to 


270 


be considered. Certain of these compounds 
are invariably present, although in varying 
concentration, and any attempt to apply 
studies of imbibition to swelling and growth 
problems must take into consideration the 
fact that the various reactions due to the 
presence or proportion of nitrogenous com- 
pounds, alkalinity or acidity, invariably ensue 
in saline solutions, attenuated as they may 
be in young protoplasts. Tests were there- 
fore planned to determine the action of the 
common bases and acids on bio-colloids. 

Agar which has been used to represent the 
carbohydrate constituent of living matter 
gave the following results when dried plates 
.28 mm. in thickness were tested: 


Potassium Nitrate 


Water 
M/100 M/50 M/10 
DB O5 ona. 1,535.7% | 910.7% 607.1% 
Calcium Nitrate 
eae 2 eS ano 


The amount of swelling as compared with 
distilled water was decreased by both salts 
and the inhibiting action increased with the 
concentration. 

A mixture of 90 parts agar and 10 parts 
of glycocoll gave the following swellings: 


Potassium Nitrate 
Water 
_ Af/100 M/50 M/10 
3,266.6%...:..| 1,800% 1,733.3% |-1,333.3% 

Potassium Chloride 

1,733.3 1,666.6 900 
Calcium Nitrate 

1,333.3 1,200 800 


From which may be seen that an inhibiting 
effect on imbibition in the bio-colloid similar 
to that of agar was exerted by these salts, the 
effect increasing with the concentration and 
the least swelling taking place in the calcium 
compounds. 

A mixture of 90 parts agar and 10 parts of 
peptone gave the following swelling measure- 
ment. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185 


Potassium Chloride, 
Potassium Chloride Hydrochloric Acid 
M/100 


Water M/100 
2076% 1230.8% 500% 
Potassium Nitrate 
Water 
M/100 ™M/50 M/10 
3,166.6%...... 1,600% 1,300% 866.6% 
Calcium Nitrate 
1,183.3 1,183.3 733.3 
Potassium Chloride 
1,266.6 — 1,000.0 


The lessening or inhibitory effect is seen 
to inerease with the concentration, and less 
swelling takes place in equivalent calcium 
solutions than in potassium. The irregular- 
ities, however, suggest that peptone mixtures 
present some special characters which will 
need further analysis. 

Dried plates of a mixture of 90° parts agar 
and 10 parts urea gave the following swelling 
measurements: 


Potassium Nitrate 


Water 
M/100 M/50 M/10 
2933.3%...... 1533.8% 1233.3% 766.6% 
OATES} apace 1133.3 813.3 | 700 
Calcium Nitrate 
3133. | 8133 | 500 


These results are in general accord with 
those obtained from other nitrogenous mix- 
tures. 

A mixture consisting of 10 parts of gelatine 
and one part of mucilage from Opuntia might 
be considered as equivalent to the colloids 
consisting of 90 parts gelatine and 10 parts 
agar, and gave the following swelling meas- 
urements. 


Potassium Nitrate 
Water Lifes 
M/100 | M/50 M/10 
589.4 %....-++ -| 485.5% | 455.3% 698.2% 
Potassium Chloride 
(iivars oN iearslome laos 
| Calcium Chloride. 
473.2) Sf 348.2 


SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] 


The swelling increases within the range of 
concentration of potassium nitrate used, and 
appears to decrease slightly within similar 
concentrations of potassium chloride, and is 
checked to a greater extent by calcium chlo- 
ride, although the last named solution would 
have a slightly alkaline reaction due to the 
hydrolysis of the salt. 

The effect of salts alone on the bio-col- 
loid in which gelatine forms the nitrogenous 
constituent is shown by the following meas- 
urements of the swelling of a series of dried 
plates of 90 parts agar and 10 of gelatine, 
-22 mm. in thickness: 


Potassium Nitrate 
Water 


SCIENCE 


M100 Miso | —-BL/A0 

1,136.4%....-. 940.9% | 772.7% | 613.7% 
Calcium Nitrate 

1,454.5 %e..--. 840.9 | 7045 | 409.1 
Potassium Chloride 

34/100 miso =| —agfio 

1,000 772.8 | 590.9 
Calcium Chloride 

704.5 | 545.4 | 386.4 


Sodium Chloride 


| 939 (average of 3 tests) | 


The next step to be taken was one in which 
the effect of the universally present salts were 
tested in various concentrations in connection 
with conditions of acidity and of deacidity. 

As an example of such tests the results ob- 
tained by a study of the action of dried plates 
of a mixture of 90 parts agar and 10 parts 
bean protein are given below: 


Calcium Chloride 
Calcium Chloride Hydrochloric Acid 
M/100 M/100 


769.2 538.5 


It is apparent from these results that acid- 
ity decreases the amount of imbibition in the 
presence of the salts tested. 

A few tests made to determine the limits of 
imbibition in concentrated solutions revealed 
the fact that dried plates of 90 parts agar and 


271 


10 parts of bean protein swelled 576.9 per 
cent. in a saturated solution of potassium 
nitrate which has an osmotic coefficient of 
about 60 atmospheres. The same material 
swelled 730.9 per cent. in a solution of 50 g. 
of calcium nitrate in 100 ce. of water (2-molar 
solution) which has an osmotic coefficient of 
about 44 atmospheres. A swelling of 100 per 
cent. was shown in a 8-molar solution of 
calcium chloride and if hundredth molar 
hydrochlorie acid was added the swelling was 
increased to as much as 200 per cent. These 
facts illustrate very forcibly the possibilities 
of imbibitional absorption against osmotic 
action. The significance of such action in 
parasitism and nutritive couples has been 
discussed elsewhere.” 

All tests in which the samples of colloid 
are presented to the action of the reagent in a 
neutral and dried condition are of course 
widely different in hydratation conditions from 
those prevalent in the protoplast. The col- 
loids of the living material are continuously 
subject to interaction and to modifications 
resulting from the action of salts, acids, al- 
kalies and their combinations. 

A few tests in which plates of bio-colloid 
swelling from. the action of one solution 
are subjected to another have already been 
described. The possibilities presented, how- 
ever, are such as to justify the minutest exam- 
ination. 

In one series dried plates of 90 parts agar 
and 10 parts bean protein were first subjected 
to the action of alkali, to hydrochloric acid 
and to citric acid separately for eighteen 
hours, at the end of which time their full im- 
bibitional capacity had been reached under 
the separate influence of each of these rea- 
gents. The solutions were then pipetted off 
and a second reagent introduced. The initial 
and the secondary action are indicated below. 


First Swelling 


Hydrochloric Acid .W/100 Citric Acid 17/100 Sodium Hydrate J//100 
300% 402% 400% 


2See MacDougal, D. T., ‘‘The Beginning and 
Physical Basis of Parasitism,’’? Plant World, 1917 
in press. 


272 


A number of tests were made in which the 
same bio-colloid was successively subjected to 
a series of reagents with exposures of two 
hours or more to each one in succession as 
follows: : 


Sodium Hydrate 
M/100 


360 


Sodium Hydrate 
M/100 


300 


Hydrochloric Acid 
I/100 


Slight and irreg- 
ular shrinkage. 
Plates of agar 90 parts gelatine 10 parts, 
.07 mm. in thickness swelled 1,148 per cent. 
in 45 minutes in distilled water, then 213 
HC! M 


TO, | é 
KCl 100 2 hours, then 480 per 


cent. in KCI(M/100) in the next 4 hours, 
after which it stood in the acidified potassium 
chloride solution without measurable change 
for 11 hours. The replacement of this solu- 
tion by a hundredth molar sodium-hydrate 
solution was followed by an increased imbibi- 
tion equivalent to 643 per cent. of the original 
plate in two hours, at the end of which period 
it had swelled altogether about 2,400 per cent. 
of its original thickness. 

A similar plate swelled initially 3,357 per 
cent. in 14 hours in water, then shrank about 
300 per cent. in a hundredth molar acidified 
potassium chloride solution in 11 hours, after 
which it swelled about the same amount in 
hundredth molar hydrate. 

Some very striking results were obtained by 
plates .12 mm. thick of 90 parts agar and 10 
parts bean protein. A trio of samples swelled 
1,416.5 per cent. in 4 hours in distilled water, 
then shrank 208 per cent. in hundredth molar 
acidified potassium chloride in 3.5 hours, then 
swelled 643 per cent. in hundred molar sodium 
hydrate in 13 hours and 1,250 per cent. in 
distilled water in 14 hours. At the end of 
this time a total increase of about a hundred 
per cent. in hundredth molar hydrochloric acid 
took place. A second trio of same material 
swelled about 400 per cent. in less than an hour 
in water, then 200 per cent. in 3 hours in hun- 
dredth molar acidified potassium chloride so- 
lution, then 750 per cent. in 3.5 hours in 
hundredth molar sodium hydrate, 1,583 per 
cent. in water in 10 hours. After this total 
imbibition of about 2,500 per cent. had been 


per cent. in 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1185 


reached immersion in hundredth molar acidi- 
fied potassium chloride for 3 hours produced a 
dehydration of only 167 per cent., not all of 
which was regained when the acidified salt so- 
lution was replaced with water. 

These two series serve to illustrate changes 
in imbibition capacity which might take place 
in the protoplast. It would be highly unwise 
to generalize upon the basis of the meager re- 
sults available, yet the records described sug- 
gest certain reasonable assumptions. Among 
those may be included the inference that after 
a plate of bio-colloid is in a swelling stage 
the addition of an acidified salt solution checks 
the rate of swelling if the total amount is still 
below that possible in the solution. If the 
swelling is already beyond the total possible 
in the acidified salt solution some dehydration 
occurs, but by no means enough to reduce the 
swelling to the acidified salt total. Dehydra- 
tion effects from hydrochloric or citric acid 
were very slight. The application of alkalies 
in advanced stages of swelling after acidified 
salt solutions seemed to increase swelling be- 
yond the total possible in a simple immersion 
in alkali. 

Analyses of modifications of growth rates 
must therefore take into account not the 
simple total effect of any solution upon the col- 
loids of the enlarging protoplast, but upon 
these bodies as already modified by previously 
acting solutions. 

The chief interest in all of the experimenta- 
tion on imbibition described in this and in 
previous papers has been directed to various 
effects simulating growth by acids, alkalies, 
salts and combinations upon bio-colloids as 
illustrated by the mixtures described. The 
differential action which might ensue from the 
addition or subtraction of a nitrogenous com- 
pound from the carbohydrate body of proto- 
plasts in special tracts, changing the imbibition 
capacity of chromosomes, of spindles or cell 
plates, ete., may well play an important part 
in the mechanics of mitosis and cell division. 

D. T. MacDouaat, 
H. A. Spornr, 
DESERT LABORATORY, 
Tucson, ARIZONA, 
June 4, 1917 


owe NCE... 


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VoL. XLVI. No. 1186 FRipay, SEPTEMBER 21, 1917 ANNUAL SUBSORIPTION, $5.00 


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THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 
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SCIENCE 


Fray, SEPTEMBER 21, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Magnetic Field of an Atom: Dr. W. J. 
HUMPHREYS 


Kentucky as-an Oil State: JAMES H. GARDNER. 279 


Overwintering of the Apple-scab Fungus: Dr. 
W. P. FRASER 


Scientific Events :— 
Baron Dairoku Kikuchi; The Production of 
Potash in the United States; The Museum 
of the Royal College of Surgeons of Eng- 
land; The Mayo Foundation and the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota 


Scientific Notes and News 


University and Educational News 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 


On the Rawness of Subsoils: Dr. CHas. B. 
LipMAN. Northern Lights: THomas Byrp 
Macatu. The New Moon: Dr. Orro Kuorz. 
Erasmus Darwin and Benjamin Franklin: 


Proressor LoraANDE Loss WoopRuFr 288 


Scientific Books :— 


MacNutt on the Modern 
Proressor LEO F, Rerrcer 


Milk Problem: 


Special Articles :— 

Gravitational Repulsion: PROFESSOR FRANCIS 
The Catalase Content of Lumi- 
nous and Non-luminous Insects compared: 
Dr. W. E. Buree. The Effect of Smelter 
Gas on Insects: R. W. DoaNr 


EF. NIPHER. 


MSS. Intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should besent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
on-Hudson, N. ¥ 


THE MAGNETIC FIELD OF AN ATOM! 


THE substance and structure of the atom, 
the movements of its parts, and its proper- 
ties, are, perhaps, the most fundamental 
subjects of modern physical investigation. 
And although the structure and even the 
substance of the atom can as yet only be 
inferred, nevertheless its numerous and 
varied phenomena not only challenge the 
theorist, but also, through their manifold 
checks, afford him at every turn the very 
best guidance to an approximately correct 
inference. Among the more important of 
these phenomena are the actions of atoms 
in respect to absorption and emission of 
radiation under various conditions of tem- 
perature, pressure, magnetic and electric 
fields. Crystal forms, chemical reactions 
and magnetic properties offer additional 
suggestions and valuable tests. 

One of the most interesting inferences 
concerning the atom is this: that it has a 
very powerful magnetic field. This infer- 
ence is supported by a number of investiga- 
tions of entirely different character which 

*it is proposed in what follows to outline 
briefly and in approximately their chrono- 
logical order. 

1. The electromagnetic theory of ether 
vibrations so satisfactorily accounted for 
many known phenomena ‘and so success- 
fully predicted others, including wireless 
telegraphy, that it was long ago generally 
believed that all radiation, including light, 


1 Presented at the symposium on ‘‘The Strue- 
ture of Matter’’ at a joint meeting of the Sections 
of Physies and Chemistry of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, The Amer- 
ican Physical Society and the American Chemical 
Society, New York, December 27, 1916. 


274 


must have its origin in rapidly oscillating 
or orbitally moving electric charges whose 
periods are the same as the periods of the 
emitted radiation. Further, since spectral 
lines, except those belonging to bands, were 
found always to be characteristic of the 
elements and never of their compounds, it 
soon became evident that the correspond- 
ing radiations are of atomic and not molec- 
ular origin. Hence the natural conclusion 
that the atoms of all elements, for all give 
line spectra, are either associated with or 
consist, in part at least, of electric charges 
undergoing complete periodic changes of 
distribution or position ‘at the rate ob- 
viously found by dividing the velocity of 
any given radiation by the corresponding 
wave-length, changes, therefore, in the 
ease of green light, at the rate of some six 
thousand million million per second. Such 
numbers, of course, are appalling, but the 
logic is inexorable. 

2. In 1885 Balmer? announced his re- 
markable though empirical series formula 
as applied to the visible hydrogen lines H | 


H,,H. and; that is 
B Y 6 
1 Dey ail ; 
x N(g-2) n = 3, 4, 5, etc., 


a formula that has since been found to 
give with great accuracy the wave fre- 
quencies of the whole hydrogen series of at® 
least 35 lines. The same general formula, 
or some modification of it, such as Ryd- 
berg’s, 

1 1 1 

an (uaa. 
gives with equal accuracy the wave fre- 
quencies of the lines of many other series 
of various elements. 

Here, then, was a further important hint 
in regard to the structure of the atom, but 
for a long while no one interpreted what it 
meant. 

1 Ann. der Phys., 25, 80, 1885. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1186 


3. In 1897 Lord Rayleigh? emphasized 
the fact that the vibrations producing spec- 
tral series hardly could result from ordi- 
nary elastic or electric forces of restitu- 
tion since each of these gives equations in- 
volving squares of the frequencies—the 
displacement being expressed in terms of 
sin ¢t/d its acceleration involves the factor 
1/\?—while the Balmer and similar for- 
mule that so closely follow the lines as they 
actually occur contain only first powers of 
this term. 

Although Lord Rayleigh’s paper was es- 
sentially negative in respect to atomic 
structure, it nevertheless was an important 
contribution to this difficult subject in that 
it rendered well nigh untenable certain 
theories that appeared then to be more or 
less generally held, namely, all that com- 
pared the atom to an elastic sphere, paral- 
lelopiped, or other solid, and those alike 
that assumed it to be some unknown type 
of Hertzian oscillator. 

4. In the meantime two other important 
spectroscopic phenomena were announced 
that at first seemed to render far more diffi- 
cult any satisfactory interpretation of the 
atom and its structure. These were, a, the 
pressure displacement of spectrum lines, 
discovered by Mohler and the author® in 
1895, and, b, the magnetic resolution and 
dispersion of such lines, discovered by Zee- 
man‘ in 1896. 

5. About this same time investigations 
on electric discharges through gases, and 
analogous phenomena, became world wide, 
initiated mainly by the wonders of the X- 
rays and largely sustained by the frequent 
stimuli of new discoveries by Thomson, 
Rutherford, Madame Curie, and their bril- 
liant associates. 

Among the many important results of 

2 Phil. Mag., 44, 356, 1897. 

3 Astrophys. Jr., 3, 114, 1896. 

4 Phil. Mag., 43, 226, 1897. 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


these numerous investigations are the dis- 
coveries that negative electricity occurs in 
multiples of a perfectly definite and accu- 
rately measurable unit; that this unit, the 
negative electron, perhaps in large num- 
bers, is at least an integral part of all 
atoms; that electrons often are ejected 
from an atom; that when ejected they leave 
with enormous velocities; that when in mo- 
tion they possess inertia; and that this in- 
ertia increases with the velocity. 

Naturally such discoveries suggested the 
Saturnian and other similar atomic mod- 
els, several of which have been elaborately 
discussed. 

6. In 1906 the author® computed the pos- 
sible magnetic field of a Saturnian atom 
and found in this field a vera causa, per- 
haps an adequate cause, of the hitherto un- 
explained pressure shift of spectral lines. 
A simple presentation of the argument is 
as follows: 

Assuming Thomson’s Saturnian atom of 
revolving rings of electrons, it seems prob- 
able that the wave frequency of the radia- 
tion emitted by any one of the rings of a 
given atom may be a simple multiple of its 
orbital frequency. Any bunching, for in- 
stance, of the electrons, however tempo- 
rary, would produce radiation whose fre- 
queney was the same as that of the com- 
plete orbital revolutions. But this revolu- 
tion of rings of electrons, presumably 
around a common axis, constitutes so many 
circular electric currents which obviously 
produce solenoidal magnetic fields, and 
themselves are subject to inductive effects. 

Now it has been shown by Langevin® that 
in the case of a ring of electrons any forced 
change in the magnetic flux merely alters 
the orbital speed without changing the 
radius. Hence the self induction remains 
constant and if # be the induced electro- 
motive force, then 


5 Astrophys. Jr., 23, 233, 1906. 
6 Journal de Physique, 4, 678, 1905. 


SCIENCE 


275 


ane 
H=L5+Ri, 


in which Z is the self-induction, R the 
ohmie resistance and 7 the strength of the 
current. But in the case of an atomic ring 
of electrons H —dN/dt—rate of change 
of magnetic flux through the ring, and 
k=O, presumably. 


Hence 
dN di 
reba auc 
and 
as oY, 


That is, the induced current in the ring is 
directly proportional to the change in the 
magnetic flux through it. Furthermore, 
the induced current is permanent instead 
of momentary as in ordinary circuits, so 
long as the change in N is permanent. 

In this connection it is interesting to note 
that Kamerlingh Onnes’ has recently shown 
by a series of brilliant experiments that an 
induced current may last for hours with 
but little reduction (less than 1 per cent. 
per hour) in a lead wire solenoid at very 
low temperatures. 

Now, from the Zeeman effect it is obvious 
that radiating atoms are acted upon by an 
external magnetic field, and, therefore the 
inference is immediate that these atoms 
themselves possess magnetic fields of their 
own—they could not otherwise be acted 
upon by a magnetic force. Also, since the 
the kind and magnitude of the Zeeman 
effect is independent of temperature, as 
shown by both radiation and absorption, it 
follows that the atomic field must also be 
independent of temperature. 

Further, as magnetic fields are known 
always to exist in connection with electric 
currents, and not certainly known ever to 
be due to any other cause, and as moving 
electrons constitute the only known electric 


7 Nature, 93, 481, 1914. 


276 


current, it therefore will be assumed that 
the atom’s magnetic field is due to orbitally 
revolving rings of electrons, subject to tem- 
porary bunchings or other disturbances, 
possibly the shift of an electron from one 
ring to another, that render the ring so dis- 
turbed, or the shifting electron, radiative 
during the brief interval in which equilib- 
rium is ‘being regained. 

Let v be the velocity of light, A the wave- 
length of the emitted radiation, w the angu- 
lar velocity of the electrons as seen from 
the center of the orbit, S the average 
strength of the enclosed magnetic field, K 
a constant and n a whole number, perhaps 
unity. Then 


=—° = KS. (1) 
Hence 


But dS is added to the fields of some atoms 
and subtracted from the fields of others by 
the application of an external magnetic 
field of strength H to any mass of gas. 
Hence 


CBN eel 
oS d mS . 
By substituting H for dS in (2) we get 
ad. _K 


He? constant. 

But this is the well-known Zeeman law, 
and therefore it appears that the assumed 
simple structure of the atom must at least 
erudely resemble its actual structure. 

From the known values of H, dX and da 
the computed value of S, the average 
strength of the atomic magnetic field, is of 
the order of 10° gauss. 

Similarly from the probable size of the 
atom, radius 10° em., and the charge of 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1186 


the electron it is easy to calculate the mag- 
netic field at the center of the ring system 
on any definite assumption of the speed of 
rotation and number of electrons. 

If it is assumed that the period of rota- 
tion is the same as that of the emitted radi- 
ation, and that N, the number of electrons 


in the atom, is of the order 


N=A 10° 


in which A is the atomic weight, a number 
many investigators regard as probable, then 
the computed intensity of the magnetic 
field at the center of an iron, titanium, or 
other such atom is of the order of 10%, 
roughly 2,000 times the most intense field 
yet produced between the poles of electro- 
magnets. 

Whatever the strengths of these fields, 
each atom must act inductively on all its 
neighbors and in turn be acted upon by 
them, to an extent that for each couple 
varies approximately as the cube of the dis- 
tance between their centers. If two atoms 
in the turmoil of the electric are, for in- 
stance, chance closely to approach with 
similar poles facing each other their mutual 
induction will be such as to increase the 
speed of their electrons, and thus for the 
instant slightly to shift their spectrum lines 
to the violet. If, however, they approach 
with opposite poles facing each other the 
shift will be to the red. But in the second 
case the atoms clearly will come closer to- 
gether, thus producing stronger inductions 
and greater shifts, than in the first. Hence 
the net result is a displacement of the maxi- 
mum intensity of the line to the red. 

When the gas pressure about the light 
source, an electric arc, suppose, is low the 
distance between neighboring atoms is rela- 
tively large and therefore during only a 
correspondingly small fraction of the time is 
any given atom under the strong inductive 
influence of others. During the rest of the 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


time the frequency of its vibration is un- 
disturbed. Hence the spectrum lines given 
out by rarefied gases, in which an atom is 
only ‘‘ occasionally ’’ close to another, are 
comparatively clean and sharp. With in- 
crease of pressure the free path is decreased 
and the total interval of disturbance length- 
ened to practically the same fractional ex- 
tent. If, for instance, the pressure is 
doubled, temperature remaining constant, 
the free path is halved, atomic ‘‘collisions,”’’ 
total duration of an atom’s close proximity 
to others, and, therefore, quantity of shifted 
light all are at least doubled. Hence with 
increase of pressure a spectral line must 
spread (independent of the Doppler effect) 
and its maximum intensity shift to the red. 

Under very heavy pressures the atoms 
are always within mutually disturbing dis- 
tances, and therefore under such conditions 
their lines gradually merge into a contin- 
uous spectrum. 

Tt might seem that atoms with such 
strong magnetic fields necessarily would 
cluster into rods and rings, like iron filings 
in a magnetic field. In short, that at any 
attainable temperature, a gas consisting of 
such atoms would collapse into—who knows 
what? 

To test this point consider an extreme 
case. Let two atoms, each consisting of a 
single circular ring of 510+ electrons 
and an equivalent positive nucleus at its 
center, face each other on a common axis, 
and let the orbital revolution of their rings 
have the frequency of yellow light of wave- 
length .61: Find the electric and magnetic 
forces between them. 

The magnetic flux through either ring 
due to the presence of the other is given by 
the expression 

2airt 


N= 2 + 22)372? 


in which 7 is the strength of the current, 
r the radius of the ring, and z the distance 


SCIENCE 


277 


between the centers. Hence the magnetic 
force between the rings is found by the 
equation 


2: 
Paagnaic = 2a2itrt 2 a aH eee 

Assume the electronic charge to be 4.774 
x 10-*°, Millikan’s value, and let r—=10% 
em. Then when 

= Pe 
Fragnetic = 1.6561 dynes, 
10r 100r 
91.39 X 10-Sdyne, 9.37 X 10-8 dyne. 

The electric force between the two atom 
models consists of four parts; namely, 
attraction between each nucleus and its 
neighbor’s ring, repulsion between the 
nuclei and repulsion beween the rings. 
The problem of computing this force is 
not so simple as, at first sight, it is 
likely to appear. However, a general solu- 
tion of the problem of the rings (rings 
of different radii and linear densities) in the 
form of a converging series has been kindly 
furnished by Professor R. S. Woodward. 
A similar solution of the somewhat simpler 
problem presented by duplicate atom mod- 
els gives the following total electric forces 
(repulsions) ‘between them: 

cG=T, 
Faectric = 8578 X 10° dynes, 


10r 100r 
34.186 dynes, 6.45 X 1078 dyne. 


Of course it is not assumed that any such 
force as that computed for =r, about 
3.65 kilograms, actually exists between any 
two atoms. Neither does it seem probable 
that atoms can get so close that their cen- 
ters are separated by only a single atomic 
radius. However, the calculations appear 
to prove that the electric forces between any 
atomic models of the kind here assumed 
would be more than sufficient to prevent 
collapse through the interaction of their 
powerful magnetic fields. 


278 


7. In 1907 and again in 1908 Weiss® 
reached the conclusion, through a series of 
magnetic determinations at various temper- 
atures, that the atomic magnetic field of 
ferro-magnetie substances is of the order 
107 gauss. 

8. At about the same time, that is, in 
1908, Ritz® gave an elaborate discussion of 
a molecular model designed to account for 
the occurrence of series among spectral 
lines. He recognized the force of Lord 
Rayleigh’s objection to the assumption of 
a model in which the electrons vibrated 
under either mechanical (elastic) or elec- 
trical forces, since such forces give- equa- 
tions involving squares of the frequencies. 
He therefore assumed the electrons to vi- 
brate or describe orbits in planes at right 
angles to the lines of magnetic fields, under 
which conditions the reciprocal of the 
wave-length, 1/A, is given by the equation 

er 

» mv 
in which e is the electronic charge, m the 
electronic mass, H the magnetic field, and 
v the velocity of light. Hence for this 
equation to apply to the spectral region of 
the average Balmer series H must be of the 
order of 10° gauss. 

At the distance r from the adjacent pole 
of a magnet whose pole strength is p, and 
length 1, 


1 1 
B11 a Go 


;- fe - 1 } 
» mir (*r+)?s° 


If l=ns and r—=as 


I eae |pal 1 = 
oe eel n =1, 2, 3. 


iaj— 2) 


and 


beh aoa 
LEB 2 (2+-n)? 


8 Jour. de Phys., 6, p. 661, 1907; 7, p. 249, 1908. 
9 Ann. der Phys., 25, 660, 1908. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou, XLVI. No. 1186 


which is identical with Balmer’s equation 
for the hydrogen series. 

Hence an electron vibrating at the dis- 
tance 2s from such an elementary magnet 
of length s and proper strength will give 
the spectrum line H,. If 2, 3, etc., of these 
elementary magnets should be placed end 
on, the electron would emit H , H,,, ete., 
respectively. 

Ritz does not state what he considers the 
probable origin of the elementary mag- 
netic field. As above explained, however, 
it conceivably may be due to the orbital 
revolution of the electrons themselves. 
Further, the different magnetic fields de- 
manded by a Balmer series may, perhaps, 
be provided by a number of. concentric 
rings of electrons, the field abruptly chang- 
ing on crossing each ring from one to 
another interspace. This conception ob- 
viates the necessity of assuming the mag- 
nets to be placed end on, an arrangement 
that is impossible if the magnetic fields are 
of electric origin. 

In speaking of Ritz’s theory, Zeeman? 
says: ‘‘Though there is something artificial 
about this explanation, it is the best we 
have at the present moment.’’ 

9. Within the past year or two Oxley" 
has shown that the change of magnetic sus- 
ceptibility on crystallization of some 40 
diamagnetic substances examined can be 
satisfactorily explained on the assumption 
of molecular magnetic fields of the order 
of 107 gauss. He says in part: 

1. The change of susceptibility observed on erys- 
tallization demands a local molecular field of this 
order of intensity [107 gauss]. 

2. The natural double refraction of a erystal- 
line substance as compared with the artificial 
double refraction which can be induced in a liquid 
by the strongest magnetic field at our disposal is 
consistent with the value of the local molecular 
field implied by (1) for diamagnetic crystalline 
media. 

10 ‘‘ Magneto-opties,’’ p. 182, 1913. 

11 Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., 215, p. 95, 1915. 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


3. (1) and (2) together imply that the aggre- 
gate of the local intensity of magnetization per 
unit volume of a diamagnetic substance is com- 
parable with the saturation intensity of magnetiza- 
tion of a ferro-magnetie substance. 

4. The above results lead to a correct estimate 
of the energy (potential) associated with the crys- 
talline structure, in virtue of the molecular group- 
ing, as tested by the magnitude of the latent heat. 

5. Lastly, unless the forces binding the diamag- 
netic molecules together were of the order of mag- 
nitude stated, we should not be able to detect a 
departure of the experimental value of the spe- 
cific heat near the fusion point from the value 
ealeulated on Debye’s12 theory [of specific heat]. 
Every substance investigated by Nernst and 
Lindemann discloses such a departure. 

The above evidence is sufficient to establish the 
existence of an intense local molecular field of the 
order 107 gauss, if interpreted magnetically, in 
those diamagnetic crystalline substances (about 40 
of which have been investigated) which show a 
measurable change of x [specific magnetic suscepti- 
bility] on crystallization. 


10. Finally, Professor Ernest Merritt, 
in an address to the American Physica] So- 
ciety in 1915, showed, through the fluores- 
cence bands of uranium salts, interesting 
evidence of the existence of atomic mag- 
netic fields of the order 10° gauss. 

Hence, from all the foregoing, which 
could be greatly elaborated, it seems that 
there is much and varied evidence in favor 
of the assumption that atoms have very 
powerful magnetic fields, due, presumably, 
to orbital revolutions of electrons. 

Of course no one claims that more than 
a mere beginning has been made in the so- 
lution of the problem of the atom, but 
there is abundant evidence from many 
sources that this beginning is real. 


W. J. Humpureys 
U. S. WEATHER BUREAU, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


KENTUCKY AS AN OIL STATE 
At the present writing (June, 1917) Ken- 
tucky stands in the limelight as a prospective 
oil state. Due to the fact that the Irvine Dis- 
12 Ann. der Phys., 39, 789, 1912. 


SCIENCE 


279 


trict of Estill County has been extended over 
a large area together with the greatly renewed 
activity in the older Kentucky fields, operators 
are now turning their attention to the state 
as a whole. This is particularly true of oil 
men from the Mid-continent Field. So it ap- 
pears that the latter part of this year and the 
early months of 1918 will forever settle the 
question as to the state’s potential rank in the 
production of petroleum and natural gas. 
Test wells are to be drilled in nearly every 
county in the state and the most modern ap- 
plications of petroleum geology are being 
freely used. Up to the present time most of 
the “wild eat” work has progressed only to 
the mapping or leasing state, but the high 
standing of the companies interested is a good 
indicator of the developments that undoubtedly 
will follow. 

There are four important geological factors 
that are always met in the search for new oil 
fields. When all of them are found to work in 
harmony great fields, like those of Oklahoma, 
Kansas and Texas or those of Pennsylvania, 
Ohio and West Virginia, are the result. Geo- 
logical “ structure,” such as anticlines, domes, 
ete., constitute only one of these factors. A 
large number of structures do not produce oil 
or gas. They may or may not produce salt 
water. Furthermore, they may lie in what 
would be considered favorable regions. In 
such cases the detail which may have been ex- 
pended in mapping them is of no avail. 
Such conditions result from failure of one or 
more of the three other factors, namely either 
(1) there is no open “sand” or other porous 
medium under the structure to serve as a re- 
tainer for oil and gas; or (2) there has never 
been present any salt water or other water in 
the sand to serve as a concentrating factor; 
that is, no gathering of oil and gas from a 
disseminated state to a commercial body; or 
(3) there is an absence of petroliferous shale 
or other fossil-bearing rocks that produce oil 
in a disseminated form. 

Now the future of Kentucky as an oil state 
depends on the four factors above mentioned: 
(1) structure, (2) sand, (3) water, (4) original 
oil. There can be no question about the state 


280 


having three of the above points in its favor, 
namely, (1) structure, (2) water, (3) original 
oil. There are numerous favorable structural 
conditions in various counties of the state. 
The rocks contain plenty of water and there 
are some good beds of oil-bearing shale. The 
Devonian Black Shale is particularly a splendid 
carrier of original oil. The fourth factor is, 
however, as yet to be proved of sufficient im- 
portance to place Kentucky in high rank as an 
oil state; namely, “sand.” In great oil fields 
there are large bodies of sand or retaining 
reservoirs in close proximity to beds of oil- 
bearing shale. There are frequently several 
such “ sands” in the geological column in close 
relationships to oil-shale beds. 

In Kentucky the “sands” or “ porous beds” 
near the Devonian Oil Shale are carrying most 
of the oil so far discovered. In Wayne County 
these sands lie in the Waverly series above the 
Black Shale, but in other districts the oil is 
held below the shale in porous beds of lime- 
stone. This is true of the oil fields at Irvine, 
Cannel City, Campton, Menefee County and 
other districts of eastern Kentucky. In the 
coal basins of eastern Kentucky and western 
Kentucky there are a large number of beds of 
porous quartz sandstone; they lie in the 
Chester and Pennsylvania series, but in con- 
nection with these sandstone beds, oil shales 
must be proved to exist in order that any par- 
ticular structure may be found productive. 
If, for instance, a bed of oil shale like the 
Devonian Black Shale could be found just 
above or below the Big Clifty Sandstone at the 
base of the Chester, then an anticline contain- 
ing these beds at sufficient depth would most 
certainly make a big oil and gas field like those 
of Oklahoma; but it so happens that in a great 
many cases in Kentucky the oil shales do not 
lie near dependable porous reservoir rocks or 
else the porous sandstones in the higher por- 
tion of the geological column, such as those 
above enumerated, do not have near them any 
great amount of typical oil shale. 

In conclusion the writer desires to state it 
as his opinion that Kentucky is not to rank 
high as an oil state in comparison with many 
other areas in the United States where the 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1186 


four factors work in harmony and there are 
numerous porous sands near beds of oil shale; 
however, the writer wishes to emphasize the 
probability that a-number of structures in 
Kentucky will find the four factors working 
together and will furnish new oil pools that 
will be highly valuable to those who are for- 
tunate enough to discover them. 

Careful studies by geologists working in the 
state will serve to gather a great deal of im- 
portant information in addition to merely 
mapping suitable structural conditions in any 
particular locality. 

James H. GARDNER 

Tusa, OKLA. 


OVERWINTERING OF THE APPLE- 
SCAB FUNGUS 


THOUGH it is generally known that the scab 
disease of the apple, caused by the fungus Ven- 
turia inequalis, sometimes attacks the young 
twigs of susceptible varieties of the apple, yet 
not much has been published on this phase of : 
the disease in North America. 

Morse and Darrows! show that the conidia 
of this fungus survived the winter on apple 
twigs and germinated readily in the spring. 
They found no evidence, however, that the 
mycelium exists during the winter as a living 
stroma and produces conidia in the spring. 

A review of the literature of this subject is 
given by Morse and Darrows. Wallace? also 
reviews the literature of the persistence of the 
stroma on the twigs and the hibernation of 
conidia and is convinced that twig infection 
is not of common occurrence and that conidia 
can not withstand winter temperatures. 

The writer’s attention was first called to scab 
disease on the young shoots of the apple in the 
fall of 1915, when a number of badly diseased 
twigs of a McIntosh apple tree were sent to 
the college for determination. They were 
forwarded by Dr. E. W. Henderson, of Man- 
sonville, in this province. The twigs were de- 
foliated for several inches from the tips, and 
the leaves that remained below showed a very 
severe attack of scab. The twigs were severely 

1 Phytopath., 3: 265, October, 1913. 

2 Bull. Cornell, 335, 193. 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


injured, many of them being in a dying condi- 
tion. The bark was studded with the pustules 
of the scab disease and abundant conidia were 
present. Another collection was sent by Dr. 
Henderson on request a’ few weeks later. 
Many of the twigs were now dead and few 
conidia remained. 

Another collection of diseased twigs was re- 
ceived about the first of April from Professor 
Shaw, collected at Truro Agricultural College, 
N. S., also from a McIntosh tree. Many of 
these twigs were killed back several inches and 
in the dead and also in the living bark abun- 
dant pustules of the scab were present. The 
affected twigs showed the characteristics de- 
scribed by Morse and Darrows. The bark was 
more or less thickly studded with light brown 
spots which examination showed to be blister- 
like areas due to the death and pushing out of 
the epidermis of the twigs. Many of these 
light-brown areas were roundish or oval with 
a dark center. A number, however, lacked the 
dark central area. Pieces of the diseased bark 
were removed, embedded in paraffin and sec- 
tioned, and the sections and diseased twigs ex- 
amined. <A well-developed stroma was present, 
and many conidia beneath the raised epider- 
mis. The dark center was composed chiefly of 
the conidiophores of the fungus, the exposed 
conidia having fallen away. 

Dr. Henderson and Professor Shaw were 
asked to forward diseased twigs collected about 
blossoming time, and both generously re- 
sponded. The collection from Professor Shaw 
was received about the first of June. A 
few inches of the tips of some of these twigs 
were dead, but the bark of the living parts and 
of the living twigs contained many scattered 
postules of the apple scab actively producing 
conidia, the pustules being olive green from 
the abundant conidia. The dead parts of the 
twigs were thickly covered with scab pustules 
of the previous season, but the stroma was 
dead or not producing conidia. 

The fresh conidia were placed in hanging 
drops of distillated water and they germinated 
as freely and vigorously as conidia obtained a 
short time later from the young leaves of an 
apple in the orchard. 


SCIENCE 


281 


Pieces of the bark containing living pus- 
tules were fixed, embedded in paraffin and sec- 
tioned. The stroma was very well developed, 
reaching a maximum thickness of 200 microns, 


_while the maximum thickness of the stroma on 


the fruit was about 55 microns. It was also 
evident that the stroma was actively produc- 
ing conidia at the time of fixation. 

Mr. A. G. Turney® describes the scab as 
being troublesome in the twigs of susceptible 
varieties and states that in one orchard all the 
twigs of the previous year’s growth of the 
Fameuse were covered with scab spots. He 
also found the amount of scab on the fruit was 
much reduced by trimming off the diseased 
twigs early in the spring. He had previously 
failed to control scab in this orchard by spray- 
ing alone. However, he does not claim the re- 
sults were entirely due to the spraying. He 
states in a letter to the writer that the scab is 
quite common in the coastal regions as a twig 
infestation, and it may be found also in al- 
most any orchard inland, but rarely so bad as 
to be a serious hindrance to growth. 


Professor Shaw in a letter to the writer 
states that he found severe twig injury from 
scab in several different regions in Nova 
Scotia. The twigs collected at Mansonville, 
Quebec, at blossoming time by Dr. Henderson 
did not show any living pustules, but as not 
many of them had been cut back into the living 
wood the negative evidence was not satisfac- 
tory. 

The twigs that had been received from 
Truro, N. S., about the first of April were left 
about eight weeks in the laboratory under ordi- 
nary conditions. Conidia were then taken 
from the scabbed areas and were tested in 
hanging drops of distilled water for germina- 
tion. A small percentage was found to germi- 
nate. A second test gave the same result. The 
spores were taken from beneath the blistered 
bark, so that they had a certain amount of pro- 
tection from the cold and from drying. 

The writer is convinced from these experi- 
ments and observations that in certain regions 


8 Report of the Horticulturist, Province of New 
Brunswick, p. 100, 1915. 


282 . 


near the coast apple scab may winter on the 
twigs of susceptible varieties such as Fameuse 
and McIntosh as a dormant stroma and pro- 
duce abundant conidia in the spring. It also 
confirms Morse and Darrow’s conclusion that 
under certain conditions and with certain 
varieties of apples diseased twigs and water 
sprouts may be an important factor in the 
propagation and spread of the disease. 

Mr. J. S. Dash when a senior student at 
Macdonald College devoted some time to the 
study of apple scab and the results of his 
studies were embodied in an unpublished paper 
now in the college library. He collected scabby 
apples early in the spring that had lain under 
the snow all winter and found that about five 
to ten per cent. of the conidia germinated. 

On November 27 of the present year the 
writer collected scabby apples that had lain 
under the trees after their fall without protec- 
tion of any kind. During late fall and early 
winter the temperature fell below the freezing 
point fifteen times, rising above during the 
day. There were two periods of severe frost 
followed by mild weather, the minimum tem- 
perature of the first being 11° F. and of the 
second on November 26 being 1° F. Conidia 
were abundant on the scab spots and these 
were placed in hanging drops of distilled 
water. The spores germinated freely and vig- 
orously and in twenty-four hours showed 
many germ tubes over 100 microns in length. 
By count of the spores present in a number of 
microscopic fields in several hanging drops it 
was found that over 26 per cent. had germi- 
nated. Only those with well-developed germ 
tubes were counted. The conidia were ex- 
amined immediately after being placed in the 
distilled water, and there could be no doubt 
whatever that the germ tubes had developed 
while in the water. 

It would seem from these observations that 
the conidia are more resistant to low tempera- 
tures than is generally supposed. As material 
is available it is hoped to carry on further ex- 
periments along this line during the winter 
and spring. W. P. FRASER 
MACDONALD COLLEGE, 

QUEBEO 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1186 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
BARON DAIROKU KIKUCHI 

Baron Dairoxu Kixucui died suddenly at 
his villa at Chigasaki, Japan, on August 19. 
Baron Kikuchi was graduated from the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, England, with the rank 
of “wrangler.” He became professor of mathe- 
matics in the Imperial University at Tokyo 
and later its president. He was for a time the 
Imperial Minister of Education and a member 
of the Emperor’s Privy Council at the time of 
his death. : 

He was active and influential in the organi- 
zation of the Japanese National Academy of 
Sciences, the National Educational Associa- 
tion and in the development of all the scien- 
tific and educational interests of the empire. 
He was the author of many contributions to 
scientific journals and several books, including 
a notable volume on “Japanese Education,” 
consisting of a series of lectures delivered at 
the University of London in 1907. Baron 
Kikuchi made several visits to the United 
States, lecturing in our principal cities and at 
several of our leading institutions of learning. 
He was looking forward to another visit to 
America in the very near future, and his many 
friends in this country will learn of his death 
with profound regret. 


THE PRODUCTION OF POTASH IN THE UNITED 
STATES 


More potash has been produced during the 
first six months of 1917 than was made during 
the entire year 1916. The reports received by 
the United States Geological Survey, Depart- 
ment of the Interior, have been reduced to 
terms of the commercial unit commonly used 
to measure the available or water-soluble pot- 
ash (K,O) in the product, and only material 
actually sold by the producer during this 
period is included. The weight of the mate- 
rials handled was therefore much greater than 
represented by these figures. 

This table includes practically all potash 
produced. 

The Nebraska alkali lakes still lead, having 
yielded about one third the entire production. 
There are now at least four important opera- 
tors in this field. 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


SUMMARY OF THE PRODUCTION OF POTASH IN THE 
UNITED STATES, JANUARY TO JUNE 
(INCLUSIVE), 1917 

Available Potash Value at Point 


Source (K20) of Shipment 
Natural salts or brines ... 7,749 $2,808,240 
Alunite and dust from ce- 

ment mills and blast fur- 

HEE SoGobo coos DDDODON 1,867 746,576 
UG) Gaogaoscadcaudcoudan 2,143 1,348,095 
Distillery slop, wool wash- 

ings and miscellaneous 

industrial wastes ...... 2,153 876,714 
Wood ashes ............. 1111 84,414 

14,023 $5,864,039 


The production from Searles Lake, Calif., 
would undoubtedly be materially assisted by 
passage of the legislation now before the House 
of Representatives dealing with the leasing of 
potash-bearing lands. Continued uncertainty 
as to the status of titles to this property has 
hampered development of this important de- 
posit. 

No production is reported from feldspar or 
other silicate rocks, but considerable quanti- 
ties of potash salts and potash-bearing fertiliz- 
ers were obtained from the dusts in cement 
mills and blast furnaces. 

The production from kelp was about 15 per 
cent. of the total, as it was in 1916. 

Potash from distillery slop and other organic 
sources made 15 per cent. or more of the total. 

The production of potash from wood ashes, 
including “first sorts,” “pearlash” and other 
grades, is supposed to have been much greater 
than it was in 1916, but reports from these 
producers have been much delayed and the fig- 
ures obtained thus far are probably not rep- 
resentative. The potash made from wood ashes 
thus far reported amounted to 222 tons, which 
is assumed to average at least 50 per cent. 
K,O. This is perhaps too low, but definite in- 
formation as to the grade of this material is 
dificult to obtain. 

The prices quoted range from $3.50 to $6 a 
unit, a unit meaning 1 per cent. of potash 
(0) in a ton of the material as marketed— 


1 Only 25 reports of production from wood ashes 
have come in, some of the larger producers not hay- 
ing made returns. 


SCIENCE 


283 


that is, a product carrying 25 per cent. K,O 
may be sold at $4 a unit, which would be $100 
a ton for the material marketed. 

The figures given seem to indicate that the 
production for 1917 will exceed 25,000 tons of 
potash (K,O) or two and one half times that 
made in 1916. This is about 10 per cent. of the 
average normal yearly consumption of the 
country before the war, showing the need of 
further stimulating domestic production of 
potash. 


THE MUSEUM OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF 
SURGEONS OF ENGLAND 

THE annual report of the Conservator of the 
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of 
England, as abstracted in the British Medical 
Journal, contains a review of work done in the 
museum. Professor Keith states that besides 
routine investigations carried on by the staff, 
Dr. Colin Mackenzie had not only continued 
his inquiries into the anatomy and physiology 
of Australian mammals, but acting also as a 
member of the honorary staff at the Military 
Orthopedic Hospital, Shepherd’s Bush, had 
found it advantageous to combine his work at 
the hospital with a research, bearing on his 
cases, in the workrooms of the College. The 
comparative anatomy of the muscles of the 
forearm appears to throw much light on their 
exact significance in man which may prove of 
value in surgery. The specimens of bone 
grafts which accompanied Major E. W. Hey 
Groves’s Jacksonian Prize Essay are distin- 
guished in the report as of particular merit. 
Many preparations of value have been added 
to the pathological, teratological, and particu- 
larly to the anthropological series; the latter 
include prehistoric human bones unearthed 
during trenching operations, not only in home 
drill but also at the front. The four complete 
skeletons of gorillas, each representing a dif- 
ferent stage of growth, collected in the German 
Cameroons, and generously purchased and pre- 
sented to the museum by Sir John Bland- 
Sutton, will provide an opportunity of illus- 
trating various stages in the growth of that 
anthropoid which, in a structural sense, is 
man’s nearest relation. Among drawings ac- 


284 


quired by the museum is a sketch made for 
John Hunter representing a duck which had 
partially assumed the plumage of a drake, a 
subject in which he was greatly interested. 
Lastly, we may add that the executors of Dr. 
Robert Roxburgh have presented the original 
mechanical spray apparatus which Lord Lister 
employed in the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, 
and exhibited at the Plymouth meeting of the 
British Medical Association in 1871 during the 
course of his address in surgery. It had two 
nozzles attached to independent caoutechouc 
tubes, furnishing large clouds of spray, that 
could be directed, if necessary, to opposite 
sides of the part operated on. Dr Roxburgh 
was Lister’s last house-surgeon at the Royal 
Infirmary. Lister went to King’s College, 
London, to fill the chair of clinical surgery in 
succession to Sir William Fergusson in 1877. 


THE MAYO FOUNDATION AND THE UNIVER- 
SITY OF MINNESOTA 


TuE board of regents of the University of 
Minnesota have ratified by unanimous vote the 
permanent agreement making the Mayo Foun- 
dation at Rochester the absolute property of 
the university, to be used perpetually for 
higher medical education and research. Se- 
curities totaling $1,650,345, representing the 
fortunes of Drs. William J. and Charles Mayo, 
were turned over to the university. 

“ We turn over to the regents the bulk of our 
savings of a generation as an outright gift,” 
said Dr. William J. Mayo, who is a member of 
the board of regents, but who did not vote on 
the proposal. “The money came from the 
people, and we feel it should return to the 
people—a continuing fund that shall serve this 
state for generations to come.” 

Expenses of the foundation will be paid by 
the Drs. Mayo until a fund of $2,000,000 has 
accumulated. Thereafter the income from the 
fund will maintain it. 

The foundation has been affiliated with the 
university for two years, which was agreed 
upon as a trial period. Under the final agree- 
ment the headquarters of the foundation can 
be moved from Rochester to another point in 
the state after twenty-eight years. Ten per 
cent. of the yearly income may be expended 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1186 


outside the state and another ten per cent. may 
be used to investigate epidemics inside and 
outside the state. 

It was announced that one of the Mayos 
would go to France with recruits next year and 
that they would take turns there until the end 
of the war. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


M. Paut Parntevé has been chosen to be 
premier of the French Republic. M. Painlevé 
has been professor of mathematics in the Uni- 
versity of Paris and of mechanics at the Paris 
Polytechnie School. 


M. G. Fayet, assistant director of the Nice 
Observatory, has been appointed director in 
succession to the late General Bassot. 


Dr. R. W. Woop, professor of physics in 
the Johns» Hopkins University, is now in 
France engaged in scientific research in co- 
operation with members of the Paris Acad- 
emy of Sciences. Dr. Wood left about three 
weeks ago, following the receipt of a cable- 
gram from Premier Ribot offering him the 
tentative ranking of major in the French army. 


Dr. Raymonp Peart, biologist and head of 
the department of biology of the Maine Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station, has been granted 
leave of absence from that institution for the 
duration of the’ war, to take charge of the sta- 
tistical department of the United States Food 
Administration. He left the experiment sta- 
tion for Washington early in June, accom- 
panied by Dr. Frank M. Surface, biologist of 
the Maine Station, who was also granted leave 
of absence for the same work. The following 
are associated, for the duration of the war, 
with Dr. Pearl in the statistical work of the 
Food Administration: 

Dr. H. 8. Jennings, The Johns Hopkins University. 

Dr. W. E. Kellicott, Goucher College. 

Dr. H. R. Willard, University of Maine. 

Mr. John Rice Miner, Maine Agricultural Experi- 
ment Station. 


Dr. A. W. Dox, for the past seven years 
chief of the section of chemistry of the Iowa 
Agricultural Experiment Station, has been 
granted leave of absence to accept a commis- 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


sion as captain in the food division of the 
Sanitary Corps of the National Army. 


Dr. FRANK C. GepHaArtT, chemist of the Rus- 
sell Sage Institute of Pathology, has received 
a commission as captain in the Sanitary Corps, 
United States National Army, with headquar- 
ters at the Surgeon General’s office, Washing- 
ton, D. C. 

Dr. H. R. Guascock has resigned from the 
professorship of biology at De Pauw Univer- 
sity and will engage in service with the Med- 
ical Corps. 


Tue War Department has refused to ac- 
cept the resignation of Dr. James W. Inches, 
health officer of Detroit, from the Detroit Col- 
lege of Medicine and Surgery Base Hospital 
No. 36, in order to allow him to accept an ap- 
pointment by the American Red Cross as one 
of the fifteen commissioned specialists to study 
conditions abroad. 


B. K. Cocuuan has resigned as associate pro- 
fessor of highway engineering at the Agricul- 
tural and Mechanical College of Texas. He is 
captain in the Engineer Officers’ Reserve 
Corps and has been ordered to Ft. Leaven- 
worth. E. O. Francisco, who was assistant pro- 
fessor of civil engineering at the college dur- 
ing the last session, has been commissioned a 
second lieutenant in the Engineer Officers’ Re- 
serve Corps and has also been ordered to Ft. 
Leavenworth. 


Dr. James D. Manppritz, of the Travelers 
Insurance Company, has become actuary of 
the bureau of efficiency and economy at Wash- 
ington. Dr. Maddrill has been in charge of 
the International Geodetic Observatory at 
Ukiah, Calif., and instructor in insurance 
mathematics at the University of California. 
His position at Washington will call for the 
preparation of a plan for pensioning all 
the civil employees of the government, num- 
bering more than 300,000, and for other eal- 
culations of an actuarial and statistical na- 
ture. 

Dr. Lewis R. Harris has been appointed di- 
rector of the Bureau of Preventable Diseases 
of the New York City Health Department to 
succeed Dr. Bertram Waters, who has resigned 


SCIENCE 


285 


from the Department of Health to resume his 
private practise. 

Mr. L. E. Warren, for eight years associate 
chemist in the chemical laboratory of the 
American Medical Association, has resigned 
his position to take charge of the research lab- 
oratories of the New York plant of Wm. R. 
Warner & Co. 


Dr. Maurice G. Ment, former head of the 
department of geology and director of the 
school of engineering and geology at the Uni- 
versity of Oklahoma, has given up his work in 
that institution and will for the present give 
his time to a study of the oil and gas condi- 
tions of Oklahoma and Kansas. 


Proressor Junius Henperson, of the Uni- 
versity of Colorado, has recently returned from 
an expedition to northern Wyoming. The col- 
lections obtained consist principally of land 
shells and fossils. 


Proressor C. C. Nurrine has recently re- 
turned from Barbados and other West Indian 
Islands, where he has been looking over the 
ground in preparation for a party of zoologists 
who propose to visit that region next spring. 
This expedition will be under the auspices of 
the graduate college of the State University 
of Iowa, and will consist of instructors and 
graduate students in zoology; and the plan is 
to select some suitable point as a base of 
operations for the exploration and study of 
typical coral reefs. Dredging will be carried 
on, probably to a depth of two hundred fath- 
oms, and a zoological laboratory will be estab- 
lished on shore. In his preliminary trip Pro- 
fessor Nutting visited the Islands of St. 
Thomas, St. Croix,. St. Kitts, Antigua, 
Dominica, Martinique, St. Lucia and Barba- 
dos. The proposed expedition will probably 
make either Barbados or Antigua the base for 
their operations. 


Tue Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, 
is at present preparing an Arctic expedition, 
which will start next March or April. A new 
expedition ship has been built, replete with 
every modern requirement in the way of tech- 
nical equipment. Amundsen intends to take 
an aeroplane on board to be used for recon- 
noitering in the Arctic regions. 


286 


Lecturers before the graduate summer quar- 
ter in medicine of the University of Illinois in- 
cluded Dr. Sidney I. Kornhauser, assistant 
professor of zoology in the: Northwestern 
University, on “Sex determination and the 
nature of secondary sexual characteristics” ; 
Dr. Reuben M. Strong, associate professor 
of anatomy in the Vanderbilt University, 
on “ Adaptation in bone architecture”; Dr. 
Orville H. Brown, of Phenix, Arizona, on 
“ Asthma,” and Dr. Addison Gulick, assistant 
professor of physiology in the University of 
Missouri, on “ Over-feeding and the calorie 
problem in human metabolism.” 


We learn from Nature that the fifth annual 
meeting of the Indian Science Congress will 
be held in Lahore on January 9 to 12 next, 
under the presidency of Dr. G. T. Walker, 
F.R.S., Director-General of Observatories. 
The sectional presidents will be: Dr. L. Cole- 
man (Agriculture), Dr. Wali Mahomed 
(Physics and Mathematics), Dr. G. J. Fowler 
(Chemistry), Dr. Choudhuri (Zoology and 
Ethnology), Mr. R. S. Hole (Botany), Mr. E. 
S. Pinfold (Geology). Dr. J. L. Simonsen, of 
the Presidency College, Madras, is the hono- 
rary secretary for the meeting. 


Seconp Lirut. Epwarp Oster, R.A., only 
son of Sir William Osler, died in England on 
August 31. He was wounded recently while 
on active duty in France, and had been taken 
to England for treatment. 


Proressor S. B. KeLitener, Erasmus Smith 
professor of mathematics in the University of 
Dublin, died on August 18. 


It is reported from London that A. Chester 
Beatty, a Columbia alumnus, has offered his 
London house as an American Officers’ Hos- 
pital under the supervision of the Columbia 
Hospital Unit. The Columbia Unit is under 
the direction of Dr. George E. Brewer, of the 
College of Physicians and Surgeons and the 
Presbyterian Hospital. The unit is now in 
England. It is also stated that American 
medical officers will take charge of the mili- 
tary hospitals at Manchester, Salford, Liver- 
pool, Leeds, Birmingham, and Cardiff, and the 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1186 


civil medical practitioners at present in charge 
of those hospitals will be informed that their 
services are no longer required. It is‘under- 
stood that the reason for the change is that 
the services of the civilian doctors are required 
for the needs of the population, who have been 
inadequately served, owing to the attendance 
of so many physicians at the military hos- 
pitals. 


A CuHeEmicaL INDUSTRIES BurEAU is in course 
of formation in Sweden, the object of which 
will be to bring together the Swedish chemical 
industrial interests. 


Tue Tootal Broadhurst Lee Company of 
Great Britain announces that “assured of the 
importance of research and education in the 
struggle for the world’s trade, the directors 
have decided to set aside £10,000 a year for 
five years for this purpose.” The provisional 
committee on research and education for the 
cotton industry will, at the close of the cur- 
rent holiday season, issue a prospectus of the 
new government-incepted and aided organiza- 
tion. This definite industrial research federa- 
tion of the cotton trade will be followed by 
the establishment of institutes and labora- 
tories. A provisional committee to organize 
textile research associations in the woollen 
trade has been formed. 


Tur Proceedings of the Nineteenth Inter- 
national Congress of Americanists, held at 
Washington, December 27-31, 1915, has just 
made its appearance. It is a handsome royal 
octavo volume of 717 pages, with many illus- 
trations, and in addition to the proceedings of 
the congress includes ninety articles on Amer- 
ican archeology, ethnology, folklore and tradi- 
tion, history, linguistics, and physical anthro- 
pology. The work was prepared by Dr. A. 
Hrdlicka, of the United States National 
Museum, who was general secretary of the con- 
gress, and edited by Mr. F. W. Hodge, of the 
Bureau of American Ethnology. 


By the will of Julian A. Hellman, a residu- 
ary fund, which may amount to $100,000, is 
created to be used by Mount Sinai Hospital 
for the purpose of cancer research work. 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


FREE public lectures of the New York 
Botanical Garden are being delivered in the 
Lecture Hall of the Museum Building of the 
Garden, Bronx Park, on Saturday afternoons, 
at four o’clock, as follows: 


September 1. ‘‘Collecting fungi in the Cats- 
kills,’? by Dr. W. A. Murrill. 

September 8. ‘‘The origin and history of 
soils,’’ by Dr. A. Hollick. 

September 15. ‘‘Growing fresh vegetables in 
the back yard,’’ by Mr. H. G. Parsons. 

September 22. ‘‘Some botanical features of 
northern Cape Breton,’’ by Dr. G. HE. Nichols. 

(Exhibition of Dahlias, September 22 and 23) 

September 29. ‘‘Growing nut trees,’’ by Dr. 


W. C. Deming. 

October 6. ‘‘Autumn coloration,’’ by Dr. A. B. 
Stout. 

October 13. ‘‘The relation of forests to water 


supply,’’ by Dr. G. C. Fisher. 
(Catskill Aqueduct Celebration Lecture) 
October 20. ‘‘Fall planting and winter protec- 
tion,’’ by Mr. G. V. Nash. 


THE Paris Academy of Sciences has decided 
to establish a National Physical and Mechan- 
ical Laboratory for the purpose of scientific re- 
search, directed in a marked degree to the 
benefit and use of the industries. The labora- 
tory will be controlled by a council, of which 
half the members will be nominated by the 
academy, one fourth by the state department, 
and the remainder by the chief industrial as- 
sociations. The executive control will be in 
the hands of a small technical committee. 
Existing laboratories engaged in similar work 
will be affiliated with the National Laboratory, 
and will work in close relationship with it. 
Substantial funds are to be provided for work- 
ing expenses and for the assistance of the 
affiliated institutions. 


At the request of the government, the coun- 
cil of the British Medical Association has sub- 
mitted the following plan for the creation of 
the Ministry of Health: “That a ministry of 
health should be created to take over from ex- 
isting government departments such duties as 
are concerned with the health of the com- 
munity, and to deal with those duties only; 
that the administrative functions of the min- 


SCIENCE 


287 


istry should be carried out by a board presided 
over by a minister of cabinet rank; that the 
country be divided into suitable administra- 
tive areas under local administrative health 
centers consisting of representatives (a) of 
the rating authorities; (b) of the education 
authorities; (c) of the persons contributing to 
a scheme of health insurance (including em- 
ployers of labor); (d) the medical profession; 
(e) public hospitals; (f) dentists; (g) pharma- 
cists, and (h) nurses; that the principal med- 
ical officers of each center should be two, of 
equal status, one representing the clinical side 
(chief clinical officer) and the other the pre- 
ventive side of medicine (medical officer of 
health) ; that for each area, hospitals, clinics or 
treatment centers should be recognized or es- 
tablished at which persons entitled to treat- 
ment under the public scheme should be able 
to obtain institutional, consultative or spe- 
cialist services on the recommendation of their 
medical attendant.” The meeting passed a 
resolution by an overwhelming majority in 


favor of the appointment of a ministry of 
health. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

Brown University receives $100,000 for a 
teachers’ fund and $4,000 for the purchase of 
volumes of American poetry by the will of the 
late Samuel C. Eastman, of Concord, N. H. 
The Concord Public Library is given $2,000, 
the New Hampshire Historical Society $4,000, 
and $3,000 will go to charity. One half the 
residue of the estate is willed to Brown Uni- 
versity, one fourth to the Concord Public 
Library, and one fourth to the New Hampshire 
Historical Society. 


Tue University of Maine and Bates and 
Colby Colleges have postponed their opening 
for about a month to allow students to con- 


tinue their work on farms and in industries. 


Proressor Winiiam A. Scuaper, of the de- 
partment of political science of the University 
of Minnesota, has been dismissed, following an 
investigation of the attitude on the war of 


288 


members of the faculty. Professor Schaper 
denies that he has been disloyal. 

Dr. Witrtiam Auten Nerson, professor of 
English at Harvard University, has been 
elected president of Smith College. He suc- 
ceeds Dr. Marion L. Burton, who has become 
president of the University of Minnesota. 


James O. Nacuz has been appointed dean of 
engineering and professor of civil engineering 
in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of 
Texas, succeeding D. W. Spence whose death 
occurred in June. 


Proressor W. 8S. FRANKLIN, formerly of Le- 
high University, has accepted a position as 
special lecturer and teacher at the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, partly in the 
department of physics and partly in the de- 
partment of electrical engineering. Pro- 
fessor Franklin requests his correspondents to 
note his new address. 


Dr. C. H. Suatrtuck, for the past eight 
years head of the department of forestry, Uni- 
versity of Idaho, has accepted the position as 
professor of forestry with the University of 
California. 


Dr. Wricut A. GarDNER, formerly associate 
professor of plant physiology in the Univer- 
sity of Idaho, has been appointed professor of 
plant physiology and head of the department 
of botany in the Alabama Polytechnic In- 
stitute. 

Dr. Aurrep H. W. Povau, formerly in- 
structor in botany in the University of Michi- 
gan, has been appointed special lecturer in 
forest mycology in The New York State Col- 
lege of Forestry at Syracuse University. 

Mr. Raph Hupparp, formerly of Cornell 
University, has been appointed assistant in the 
museum and zoological department of the Uni- 
versity of Colorado. 

Mr. SamueL Woop Geiser, formerly pro- 
fessor of biology and geology in Guilford Col- 
lege, has been appointed professor of biology in 
Upper Iowa University. 

Ar the University of Oregon, Charles H. 
Edmondson, Ph.D. (Iowa, 706), assistant pro- 
fessor of zoology, and Albert E. Caswell, Ph.D., 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vor. XLVI. No. 1186 


(Stanford, 711), assistant professor of physics, 
have been promoted to full professorships, and 
Raymond H. Wheeler, Ph.D. (Clark, 715), in- 
structor in psychology, has been made an as- 
sistant professor. During the present summer 
Dr. Edmondson has been studying the clams 
of the North Pacific Coast with a view to their 
conservation for food purposes. 


Dr. Luoyp BaLperston, of Ridgway, Pa., has 
been appointed professor of leather chemistry 
and technology in the college of agriculture of 
the Tohoku Imperial University, at Sapporo, 
Japan. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
ON THE “RAWNESS” OF SUBSOILS 

In the interest of accuracy the writer feels 
impelled to call the attention of investigators 
of soils to some facts with reference to the in- 
fertility of subsoils which do not seem to be 
generally appreciated. This statement is 
called forth at this time by the recent paper 
of Alway, McDole and Rost’; the observations 
upon which it is based are of long standing 
but have not been described because of mat- 
ters of greater importance which have inter- 
vened to prevent such description. The 
authors just cited call attention to the char- 
acteristic sterility of subsoils of humid’ re- 
gions with which every: student of soils is of 
course familiar. No one can deny that fact. 
They go on, however, to cite Hilgard, and 
Wohltmann who had visited California, to the 
effect that subsoils of arid regions are not 
sterile, but serve just as well or better than 
surface soils in that region for the support of 
plant life whether the latter be of legume or 
non-legume order. 

Neither Hilgard’s nor Wohltmann’s obser- 
vations are in full accord with mine except 
in certain cases which I shall refer to below. 
In studying the soil conditions of the Great 
Valley of California and particularly those of 
the citrus and alfalfa growing districts, I 
have repeatedly observed the vegetation, nat- 
ural or planted, which is to be found on the 
freshly graded fields. Grading is done, of 


1 Soil Sctence, Vol. 3, p. 9, January, 1917. 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


course, in preparation of soils for irrigation 
and may result frequently in the removal of 
several inches to two, three or even more feet 
of surface soil in order that a level field may 
be produced. This is particularly striking in 
the case of the well-known and, on genetic 
grounds, highly interesting “hog wallow” 
lands which comprise very large areas of the 
Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. On 
the citrus lands either barley or alfalfa may 
be grown for a year or more in the preparation 
of the soil for the citrus trees. Wherever 
barley is sown, it is always possible to distin- 
guish between the spots in the field from 
which the surface soil has been removed and 
those which still consist of surface soil. On 
the latter the barley looks as nearly normal as 
the given soil type will permit it, whereas on 
the former the barley growth, if it is at all vis- 
ible, is stunted and yellow and frequently does 
not live though the growing season. Only in 
places where considerable surface soil has in 
the process of grading become admixed with 
the subsoil, have I ever noted an approach to 
good barley growth. 

In the ease of alfalfa, however, I can only 
recall one or two instances of failure to grow 
as well on the raw subsoil as on the surface 
soil. The difference between the behavior of 
barley and alfalfa on the subsoil in question 
is probably to be ascribed to the paucity in 
available nitrogen which is known to char- 
acterize subsoils. Under such conditions, bar- 
ley can, at best, only make very poor growth, 
whereas the alfalfa, if inoculated, is independ- 
ent of the available nitrogen supply in the 
soil. It should be added that with the ad- 
mixture to some extent of surface soil with 
the subsoil in the process of grading a large 
enough number of B. radicicola is introduced 
all through the graded land to insure to alfalfa 
the necessary nitrogen for its growth, an ad- 
vantage which that lesume in common with 
others does not share with non-legumes. The 
ease noted in Berkeley by Hilgard regarding 
which the latter is quoted by Alway, McDole 
and Rost, is undoubtedly that of an observa- 
tion on the campus of the University of Cali- 
fornia, on the surface of which there has been 


SCIENCE 


289 


so much filling and cutting for a number of 
years as to render questionable in any instance 
the real origin of the soil or subsoil observed. 
In my knowledge of the campus, I have known 
the excavation of subsoil material which had 
not long before been surface soil to result in 
bringing it back to its original condition again. 
We should not expect such material to be as 
inert and as unresponsive in growing non- 
legumes as real subsoil material. Arguing, 
however, from direct observation, I should like 
to add that I have frequently observed on the 
same campus, in places in which deep excava- 
tions were accomplished, that very little 
vegetation appeared for a year or more after 
the true subsoil material had been opened to 
air, light and the sun’s warmth, as well as to 
the effects of inoculation by dust from surface 
soils. Such vegetation as did establish itself 
consisted almost invariably of bur clover. 
Medicago denticulata. When other plants 
were present, they were usually found to be 
alfilaria, Hrodium cicutarium, a plant which is 
most commonly associated with bur clover on 
California soils and*which probably profits by 
the nitrogen fixed by the clover. The bur 
clover plants found on such sterile subsoil ma- 
terial as is above described have always been 
found to be abundantly supplied with nodules. 

The writer’s observations lead him to believe, 
therefore, that subsoils of arid regions are 
nearly if not quite as raw as those of humid 
regions and that despite the great differences 
between the two in many respects, the first 
will not support plant growth to a much 
greater extent than the latter. The close re- 
semblance which obtains between our subsoils 
and our surface soils, and which does not char- 
acterize the soils and subsoils of humid re- 
gions, appears, therefore, to be no index to the 
productivity of our subsoils. I should judge, 
in fact, from the statements of Alway, MeDole 
and Rost, that the California subsoils are not 
superior to the Nebraska subsoils in any re- 
spect from the point of view here under con- 
sideration. As above pointed out, it seems 
fairly certain that the chief cause of the raw- 
ness of subsoils is the lack of available nitro- 
gen in them for the support of the non-legume. 


290 


This deduction seems to be supported by the 
fact that legumes when inoculated will grow 
in the raw subsoils, whereas the non-legumes 
will not. That legumes will not grow on sub- 
soils of humid regions as is claimed by Alway, 
McDole and Rost is not, so far as I am aware, 
proved. In any case their claim that the 
failure of such inoculated legumes to develop 
on humid subsoils “is to be attributed to a 
lack of availability of the phosphoric acid or 
of the potash or of both,” appears to be an 
assumption which is unsupported by fact. 
Data on the content of water-soluble phos- 
phoric acid and potash in subsoils of humid 
regions give no indication, so far as the writer 
is aware, of a paucity in those respects which 
would at all account for the total failure to 
develop manifested by the inoculated legume 
plants mentioned above. If inoculated le- 
gume seeds do fail to develop on humid sub- 
soils, such failure must be accounted for, it 
would seem, on other grounds than those pro- 
posed by Alway, McDole and Rost. 

It may also be added here that Hilgard’s 
explanation for the “rawness” of subsoils is 
probably neither correct nor necessary. One 
is not obliged to assume a washing down of 
fine clay and silt particles from the soil into 
the subsoil to account for very imperfect 
aeration in the latter. Indeed, the sands of 
nearly uniform texture for several feet in 
depth, which are common in California, ex- 
hibit similar rawness in the subsoil, to that of 
the loams and clays which are underlaid by 
almost impenetrable silty clays. 


SUMMARY 

1. Subsoils of arid regions are certainly no 
less “raw” than those of semi-arid regions, 
and probably only slightly less so than those 
of humid regions. 

9. If, as seems as yet unproved, inoculated 
legume seeds fail to develop on humid subsoil 
material, such failure can not justifiably be 
attributed as is done by Alway, McDole and 
Rost, to a lack of available phosphoric acid 
and potash. 

3. A lack of available nitrogen probably is 
sufficient to account for rawness of subsoils. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1186 


4. The poor aeration of subsoils which in- 
directly results in their rawness, may be ac- 
counted for more simply than by Hilgard’s 
explanation of the washing down of fine par- 
ticles into the subsoil, which prevents proper 
aeration. Cuas. B. Lipman 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


NORTHERN LIGHTS 


To THE Eprror or Science: Readers of Sct- 
ENCE will be interested to note the following 
observation of the northern lights. We noted 
them here on the evening of August 9 at about 
8:45. They extended across the sky from 
northwest to east by northeast. They ap- 
peared as streaks, not very wide, and there 
was little or no flickering. A diffuse glow in 
the sky was more evident than the streaks. 
The night was clear and bright, so that this 
may account for the fact that they were not 
very prominent. They seemed to extend from 
40° to 70° in height. At 9:35 p.m. they were 
still visible, but shortly after 10 there was no 
trace of them. 

The northern lights, of which so many ac- 
counts were published in Science about this 
time last year, were observed here also, al- 
though I do not recall that any one reported 
the fact. Tuomas Byrp MacatH 

U. S. BurEav or FISHERIES 

BroLocicaL STATION, 
Farrport, lows 


THE NEW MOON 


To THE Eprtor oF ScreNcE: In making some 
computations last March about the occurrence 
of New Moon, an error of statement was dis- 
covered in the 9th edition of the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica under “Calendar,” Vol. IV., 
p. 594, and repeated in the 11th edition, Vol. 
IV., p. 993; it is also given in Barlow & 
Bryan’s “ Mathematical Astronomy,” p. 215. 
The erroneous statement is that New Moon oc- 
curred on January 1 in 1 B.c. New Moon in 
January, 1 B.c., occurred on January 25, 12" 
96™ Jerusalem Mean Civil Time. 

Orto Kuiotz 

DoMINION OBSERVATORY, 

July 31, 1917 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


ERASMUS DARWIN AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 


Extracts from two previously unpublished 
letters from Erasmus Darwin to Benjamin 
Franklin appeared in Screncn, June 2, 1916. 
Concerning one of these letters, Dr. L. Hussa- 
kof, the author of the article in which they ap- 
peared, wrote: 


It is addressed simply: ‘‘Dr. Franklin, Amer- 
ica,’’? and opens in the grandiloquent style of the 
time (1787) as follows: 

‘*Dear Sir, Whilst I am writing to a Philosopher 
& a Friend, I can searcely forget that I am also 
writing to the greatest Statesman of the present, 
or perhaps of any century... .’’ 


The following paragraph from Anna Sew- 
ard’s “ Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin,” 
which appeared in 1804, throws an interesting 
sidelight on this letter: 


In allusion to (his) perpetual travelling, a gentle- 
man once humorously directed a letter, ‘‘Dr, Dar- 
win, upon the road.’’ When himself wrote to Dr. 
Franklin, complimenting him on having united phil- 
osophy to modern science, he directed his letter 
merely thus, ‘‘Dr. Franklin, America’’; and said 
he felt inclined to make a still more flattering 
superseription. ‘‘Dr. Franklin, the World.’’ His 
letter reached the sage, who first disarmed the 
lightning of its fatal power, for the answer to it 
arrived, and was shown in the Darwinian circles; in 
which had been questioned the likelihood of Dr. 
Franklin ever receiving a letter of such general 
superseription as the whole western empire. Its 
safe arrival was amongst the triumphs of genius 
combined with exertion, ‘‘they make the world 
their country.’ 


The other hitherto unpublished letter Dr. 
Hussakof says is “remarkable chiefly for one 
sentence near the end, which.contains the 
amazing information that even as far back as 
that (1772), someone was puzzling over the 
idea of making a phonograph. ‘I have heard,’ 
writes Dr. Darwin, ‘of somebody that at- 
tempted to make a speaking machine, pray 
was there any Truth in any such Reports?’ ” 

Charles Darwin in Krause’s “ Life of Eras- 
mus Darwin” (p. 120), says that a speaking 
machine was a favorite idea of his grandfather 
and for this end he invented a phonetic alpha- 
bet. Erasmus Darwin himself says in his 
“Temple of Nature” (1802), note No. 15: 


SCIENCE 


291 


I have treated with greater confidence on the 
formation of articulate sounds, as I many years 
ago gave considerable attention to this subject for 
the purpose of improving shorthand; at that time 
I contrived a wooden mouth with lips of soft 
leather, and with a valve over the back part of it 
for nostrils, both which could be quickly opened or 
closed by the pressure of the fingers, the vocality 
was given by a silk ribbon about an inch long and 
a quarter of an inch wide stretched between two 
bits of smooth wood a little hollowed; so that 
when a gentle current of air from bellows was 
blown on the edge of the ribbon, it gave an agree- 
able tone, as it vibrated between the wooden sides, 
much like a human voice. This head pronounced 
the p, b, m, and the vowel a, with so great nicety 
as to deceive all who heard it unseen, when it pro- 
nounced mama, papa, map and pam; and had a 
most plaintive tone, when the lips were gradually 
closed. 

All the other scientific subjects referred to 
by Darwin in these letters to Franklin are to 
be found discussed in one or more of Darwin’s 
published works. 

Dr. Darwin’s prophetic insight along biolog- 
ical lines is well paralleled in another sphere in 
the following verses from his “ Economy of 
Vegetation,” Canto I.: 


Soon shall thy arm, UNCONQUER’D STEAM! afar 
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; 
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear 

The flying-chariot through the fields of air. 


And again in a footnote: 


There is reason to believe it (steam) may in 
time be applied to the rowing of barges, and the 
moving of carriages along the road. As the spe- 
cifie levity of air is too great for the support of 
great burdens by balloons, there seems no probable 
method of flying conveniently but by the power of 
steam, or some other explosive material, which 
another half century may probably discover. 


Finally, the following lines from the “ Econ- 
omy of Vegetation,’ Canto II., may have 
added interest to-day: 


So, borne on sounding pinions to the WEsT, 

When Tyrant-Power had built his eagle nest; 

While from his eyry shriek’d the famish’d brood, 

Clenched their sharp claws, and champ’d their 
beaks for blood, 

Immortal FRANKLIN watch’d the callow crew, 

And stabb’d the struggling Vampires, ere they flew. 


292 


—tThe patriot-flame with quick contagion ran, 
Hill lighted hill, and man electrified man; 
Her heroes slain awhile CoLUMBIA mourn’d, 
And ecrown’d with laurels Lisrrty return’d. 


LoranvE Loss WoopRUFF 


OsBoRN ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY, 
YALE UNIVERSITY 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


The Modern Milk Problem. By J. Scorr 
MacNutt, Lecturer on Public Health Sery- 
ice, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
Maemillan Co., New York. 253 pages. 
Price $2.00 
It would seem as if little that is new and 

interesting could be added to the multitu- 
dinous papers, circulars and books on milk 
that have appeared in recent years. The 
present book is a distinct acquisition, how- 
ever, to the literature on the subject. It is 
written in a clear style, and presented in such 
a way as to command the reader’s attention 
throughout. While the various important 
phases of milk production are dealt with at 
some length, with due emphasis on the neces- 
sity of producing clean and safe milk, its 
most distinctive feature is its illuminating 
treatment of the economic factors which enter 
into the present-day milk problem. 

Like Rosenau, the author believes that the 
producer is the victim of unfortunate cireum- 
stances, that he is little understood, and that 
as a rule he does not receive sufficient com- 
pensation for the capital which he has in- 
vested, the risks which he assumes, and the 
efforts and long hours which he devotes to 
his work. On the other hand, milk is milk 
to the consumer, and he will, with some ex- 
ceptions of course, not protect himself against 
possible infection, but relies upon health au- 
thorities and medical or civic organizations 
to stand vigil for him. 

One of the chief obstacles to a satisfactory 
solution of the milk problem is the lack of 
understanding and cooperation between the 
producer and those who are entrusted with the 
enactment and the enforcement of rules and 
regulations to protect the public. The State 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von, XLVI. No. 1186 


Agricultural Experiment Station is to-day 
doing much to instruct the farmer in the ways 
of economic milk production, a duty which 
no other agency can better perform. 

Good and pure milk is a necessity. Aside 
from an inconsiderable amount of certified 
milk, milk is either good or bad, according 
to the author. So long as the ordinary pro- 
ducer stays within the minimum requirements 
of the law he has no incentive to increase 
the quality of his products. A premium paid 
on quality is one of the solutions of the good 
milk problem. Few producers are paid for 
the extra effort, and hence are content if 
they remain unmolested by the prosecutor. 

The laboratory method of determining the 
quality of milk is, in the author’s judgment, 
the most important, while inspection is of 
little merit, aside from the instruction to the 
producer in rational methods of clean milk 
production. The dairy score card also is of 
relatively little value, as it does not furnish 
a true index of the real quality of milk. 
Pasteurization, except for the highest grade, 
is necessary to protect the consumer. Grad- 
ing and the laboratory examination are the 
most important single means of sanitary con- 
trol, grading being the most important single 
factor in economic adjustment. Fair milk 
prices should be paid to both farmer and 
dealer on the basis: of quality. 

Several pages of well-chosen references are 
given, and the last 68 pages of the book are 
devoted to a comprehensive appendix in which 
valuable technical and statistical information 
is contained, as shown in the titles: Milk 
Statistics in the United States, Grading Sys- 
tems of the Commission on Milk Standards, 
the North System, Costs and Prices, and 
Local Experiences and Investigations. 

The book is designed to furnish informa- 
tion, in the author’s words—“ not merely for 
health officials and milk inspectors, but also 
for dairymen and city milk dealers, agricul- 
tural authorities, legislators charged with the 
framing of milk laws, inquiring consumers 
and members of organizations engaged in 
efforts to secure better milk supplies, physi- 
cians, and all others who are interested in the 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


understanding and solution of the milk prob- 
lem.” Leo F. Retrrcer 
SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, 
YALE UNIVERSITY 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
GRAVITATIONAL REPULSION?! 


In a paper entitled “ Gravitation and Elec- 
trical Action” published by The Academy of 
Science of St. Louis, on July 28, 1916,2 the 
following passage may be found: 

These results seem to indicate clearly that gravi- 
tational attraction between masses of matter de- 
pends upon their electrical potential due to elec- 
trical charges upon them, 


Every working day of the present college 
year has been devoted to testing the validity 
of the above statement. All of the experi- 
mental results confirm this conclusion. No 
discordant results have been obtained. Not 
only was gravitational attraction diminished 
by charges of electricity upon the attracting 
bodies, when direct electrical action was wholly 
cut off by a metal shield, but gravitational 
attraction was converted into a repulsion 
which was greater than the normal attraction. 
On two days, when the influence machine, 
driven by a single-phase motor, was most 
highly efficient, the value of the gravitation 
constant was reduced by 250 and 300 per cent. 
of its maximum value. The maximum value 
of the gravitational attraction was evidently 
exerted when the potential of the attracting 
masses was zero absolute. The suspended 
masses were two spheres of lead, having a di- 
ameter of one inch, and distant from each 
other 91.5 em. They were suspended on two 
untwisted threads of silk fibers, about 3.4 
millimeters apart, and having a length of 179 
em. These silk threads were tied together at 
the top and hung around a pulley one inch 
in diameter. Below were two movable pul- 
leys by means of which the distance between 
the silk threads could be adjusted to a par- 
allel position. The large masses were spheres 


1 Abstract of a paper to be published by the 
Academy of Science of St. Louis. 

2 Trans. Acad. of Sc. of St. Louis, XXIII, 4, p. 
173. 


SCIENCE 


293 


of lead having a diameter of 10 inches. They 
were mounted on blocks of wood having caster- 
wheels provided with roller bearings, which 
rested upon heavy sheets of hard rubber. The 
screen around the suspended masses was in 
part composed of wood, forming the top, bot- 
tom, and ends. The sides which faced the 
large masses each consisted of two sheets of 
heavy cardboard, outside of which was a sheet 
of metal. They were securely clamped to the 
top, bottom and ends of the enclosing shield 
by means of bars of wood and the joints were 
sealed by means of bees-wax, which was melted 
and run into the joints by means of a hot iron. 
The entire screen was then surrounded by 
another shield of metal. A layer of air about 
1.5 cm. in thickness was thus formed between 
the two metal sheets on either side. A sheet 
of glass was also placed between each of the 
large masses and the metal sides of the shield. 
A box of metal filled with loose cotton-batting 
was placed in contact with the metal shield, 
alternating in position with the large masses. 
This was done in order to prevent as far as 
possible radiation from the northern sky from 
producing unbalanced convection currents in 
the air within the screen. 

The large masses, the metal boxes contain- 
the cotton, and the metal screen were all in 
metallic connection with each other. All heat 
from the heating system of the building was 
cut off. The change in the position of the 
suspended masses was determined by means 
of a mirror, telescope and scale, observation 
being made through a narrow slit in the screen 
which was covered by a plate of photographic 
glass, sealed to the inner sheet of metal. 

Three feet distant from the ends of the 
screen and the side opposite to the observing 
telescope was a line of insulated metal rods 
upon which was hung metal strips armed with 
800 pins. At one end of this line of rods was 
a metal disc armed with 150 pins. Facing 
this dise was a duplicate dise attached to a 
line of rods hung upon silk cords, and leading 
to the influence machine in an adjoining room. 
There was no gap in the line of rods excepting 
between the two dises having 150 pins soldered 
to them. The rods carrying the 800 pins were 


294 


directly connected with the shield and the 
large masses if a rapid change was desired. 

When either the positive or the negative 
terminal of the machine was applied, the 
attraction of the large masses for the sus- 
pended masses was diminished. It sometimes 
happened that a slight increase was shown at 
first, until a condition of zero potential was 
reached. This was only observed when direct 
contact of the masses with the 800 pins was 
not made. It then required several hours for 
the decrease in gravitational attraction to 
reach a limit. Then when the other terminal 
was applied the masses slowly returned to 
the original position. If this deflection were 
due to heat effects causing convection cur- 
rents of air within the shield, this return mo- 
tion due to change in terminals would not 
occur. 

On the occasion when the most marked 
effects were obtained, the decreasing effect 
took place very slowly, requiring five hours. 
There was no direct contact between the large 
masses and the 800 pins. The positive ter- 
minal had been applied. Negative electrons 
were being drained from the air surroundiing 
the large masses and from the outer surface 
of these masses. Gravitational attraction had 
been reduced to zero. The negative terminal 
was then applied, and the masses were directly 
connected with the pin conductors by means 
of a metal rod. In five minutes (the time of 
a semi-vibration) the suspended masses had 
swayed back about half the angle over which 
they had slowly moved in the previous five 
hours. They then swayed back and oscillated 
to and fro, the mean of the extreme readings 
representing a decrease of 250 per cent. in the 
normal value of gravitational attraction be- 
tween the masses. The are of vibration 
during the next forty minutes was about equal 
to that due to normal attraction between the 
masses. 

On the next morning the suspended masses 
were at rest, in a position which indicated that 
the large masses still repelled the suspended 
masses with a force about 2.5 times that of 
gravitational attraction. This position re- 
mained constant for two hours. The positive 
terminal was then applied and direct contact 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1186 


was made between the masses and the 800 pin 
conductors. During the next eighteen min- 
utes the suspended masses swayed_over an arc 
very nearly equal to that due to normal attrac- 
tion. The attraction between the masses was 
increased. During the next twelve minutes 
they swayed backward over an are about twice 
as great. The condition of zero potential had 
been passed. The force steadily decreased 
during the following ninety minutes. The 
gravitational attraction had then decreased to 
more than 300 per cent. of its maximum value. 
The negative terminal was then applied, and 
in two hours the reading was that at the be- 
ginning of the work of the previous day. 

It is not necessary to continue an experi- 
ment of this kind throughout an entire day. 
Either terminal may be applied when the sus- 
pended masses are at rest, until an appreci- 
able decrease in the gravitational attraction 
has become evident. A reversal of contacts 
of the machine may then be made and the 
masses will slowly sway back to their original 
position. This operation requires less than 
one hour. The evidence is as convincing as 
that produced by a feeble current of electricity 
upon a magnet suspended above it. 

No attempt has been made in this work to 
obtain precise results. The aim has been to 
determine whether it would be proper to con- 
struct the much more expensive apparatus 
which will be needed, and which will permit 
the independent electrification of the sus- 
pended masses. Some results which have been 
obtained have aroused the suspicion that the 
“ charges’? on these masses varies from day 
to day, and that when their potential due to 
these charges is zero absolute, the electrifica- 
tion of the large masses will have no effect 
upon gravitational attraction. A modifica- 
tion of the apparatus used by Boys will be re- 
quired. 

The work here described has been done in 
a private laboratory in the second story of 
Ead’s Hall, now occupied by the physics de- 
partment of Washington University. 

My thanks are due to the Carnegie Institu- 
tion of Washington, for financial aid in this 
work. 

Francis E. NipHer 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


THE CATALASE CONTENT OF LUMINOUS AND 
NON-LUMINOUS INSECTS COMPARED? 


AccorpiIng to Dubois? and others the 
production of light by luminous organisms is 
an oxidative process. If this is true then 
it would seem that oxidation should be cor- 
respondingly more intense in luminous insects 
than in non-luminous insects. It has been 
shown that the catalase content of the dif- 
ferent muscles of animals is proportional to 
the amount of oxidation in these muscles and 
that the catalase is increased or decreased 
under the same conditions under which ox- 
idation is increased or decreased. This and 
similar evidence would seem to indicate a 
close relationship between the catalase content 
of a tissue and the amount of oxidation in 
that tissue If oxidation is more intense in lu- 
minous than in non-luminous insects then 
the catalase content per unit of weight of 
luminous insects should be greater than that 
of non-luminous insects. The object of this 
investigation was to determine if the catalase 
content per unit of weight is greater in a lu- 
minous insect, such as the firefly (Photinus), 
than it is in non-luminous insects, such as 
moths, butterflies, honey-bees and bumble- 
bees. 

Method—After the insect was weighed it 
was ground up with sand in a mortar. This 
ground material was added to 50 e.c. of hy- 
drogen peroxide in a bottle“And as the oxygen 
gas was liberated from the hydrogen peroxide 
by the catalase it was conducted through a 
rubber tube into an inverted burette previously 
filled with water. In this way the amount of 
oxygen liberated in ten minutes from 50 e.c. 
of hydrogen peroxide was collected. The vol- 
ume of oxygen was read off directly from the 
burette, where it had displaced the water. 
After this volume had been reduced to stand- 
ard atmospheric pressure the resulting volume 


1 From the Physiological Laboratory of the Uni- 
versity of Illinois. From experiments carried out 
at Nela Research Laboratory. 

2 Dubois, ‘‘Mécanisme intime de la production 
de la lumiére chez les organismes vivants,’’ Soc. 
Linneenne de Lyon, Imprimerie A. Rey. 

8 Burge, The American Journal of Physiology, 
Vol. XLI., No. 2, August, 1916. 


SCIENCE 


295 


was taken as a measure of the catalase content 
of the insect. Knowing the weight of the 
insect, the amount of catalase per 30 milli- 
grammes of material was calculated. The 
calculation was made on the basis of 30 
milligrammes of material, because it was 
found that three of the fireflies used weighed 
approximately 380 milligrammes. The hy- 
drogen peroxide was prepared by diluting 
commercial hydrogen peroxide with an equal 
volume of distilled water. A full description 
of the method may be found in a previous 
publication. ; 

EHxperiments—T hree fireflies previously 
ground up in a mortar with sand were intro- 
duced into a bottle containing 50 ¢.c. of hydro- 
gen peroxide andthe amount of oxygen liber- 
ated in 10 minutes was determined. Tensuch 
determinations were made with an average 
of 118 cc. of oxygen per 30 milligrammes 
of firefly. Similarly a moth ground up in 
sand was introduced into 50 c.e. of hydro- 
gen peroxide and the amount of oxygen liber- 
ated determined, The average amount of 
oxygen liberated by moths was 8 c.c. of oxygen 
per 30 milligrammes of material. Determin- 
ations were also made using honey-bees, bum- 
ble-bees, and butterflies. The amount of oxy- 
gen liberated in none of these determinations 
exceeded 25 c.c. of oxygen per 30 milligrams 
of material. , 

Conclusions—The catalase content of a lu- 
minous insect where oxidation is presumably 
more intense is greater than that of a non- 
luminous insect where oxidation is less 
intense. 


W. E. Burce 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


EFFECT OF SMELTER GASES ON INSECTS! 

Ir is often claimed that the waste gases, 
particularly sulphur dioxide, thrown off dur- 
ing the process of smelting copper, lead and 
some other ores, have a very decided influence 
on the number of insects in the vicinity of 
the smelters. Some believe that few if any 

1 Contribution from the laboratories of the 


American Smelting and Refining Co., department 
of agricultural investigations. 


296 


insects can live in such regions because of the 
baneful effect of the gases, others believe that 
insects are unusually abundant there, partic- 
ularly in regions where more or less injury has 
been done to vegetation under conditions that 
formerly existed in some of the smelters. Bees 
are thought to be particularly susceptible to 
these gases and it is often claimed that their 
numbers are so reduced in smelter regions as 
to seriously affect the fruit crops because the 
flowers are not properly fertilized. There is 
no basis whatever for any such claims or 
beliefs. For several years I have spent all 
or part of each summer in studying the insects 
in regions where smelters are located and, for 
purposes of comparison, in similar adjacent 
regions, and in no instance have I been able 
to detect any differences in the number of in- 
sects or in the extent of insect injury, due to 
the presence of smelter gases. 

During the last three years the Department 
of Agricultural investigations of the American 
Smelting & Refining Co. has carried on exten- 
sive series of experiments to test the effect of 
sulphur dioxide on various kinds of vegeta- 
tion. As insects are often covered over by the 
cabinets when they are placed over the plots 
of grain or other vegetation for fumigating, I 
have had many opportunities to watch their 
behavior when subjected to known quantities 
of sulphur dioxide. 

The cabinets used in these experiments were 
about six feet square and five feet high and 
were made of celluloid with a light framework 
of wood. Through these cabinets a current of 
air carrying a known quantity of sulphur diox- 
ide was driven by means of electric fans. 
Every precaution was taken to see that the 
concentration of the gas was constant in all 
parts of the cabinet throughout the experi- 
ment. The time of fumigation varied from 
half an hour to two or three hours. In every 
experiment a check cabinet where conditions 
were exactly similar, except for the absence 
of the sulphur dioxide, was used. The follow- 
ing sets of definite experiments and observa- 
tions were made in 1916. 

A number of honey bees were placed in a 
cabinet where SO, was being introduced, the 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1186 


strength being 1 part of SO, to 1 million parts 
of air. During the half hour that they were 
submitted to the fumigation the bees behaved 
in the same way as did other bees placed in 
the check cabinet where no gas was being in- 
troduced. 

In another experiment bees, butterflies, 
grasshoppers and mosquitoes were placed in 
the cabinet where 5 parts of SO, to 1 million 
parts of air was being introduced. The ex- 
periment was continued for one hour during 
which time the insects behaved in a normal 
way, some of the grasshoppers feeding during 
much of the time as contentedly as they would 
have fed outside of the cabinet. When the 
cabinet was removed the insects flew or hopped 
away and none showed any ill effects due to 
the confinement for one hour in this concen- 
tration of the gas. 

At another time while fumigating some 
alfalfa plants with a very high percentage of 
SO,, 25 parts of the gas to 1 million parts of 
air, I watched a number of insects that were 
on the plants in the cabinet. The alfalfa wee- 
vils, adults and larve, went on with their 
work undisturbed. Flies, mosquitoes, leaf- 
hoppers, grasshoppers and ladybird beetles, 
behaved in a perfectly normal way and at the 
end of the hour over which the experiment ex- 
tended, it could not be seen that the fumiga- 
tion had had any effect on them. 

As the concentration of gas in the last ex- 
periment was several times as high as we should 
ever find in the field even quite near the 
smelters, it is safe to say that the sulphur 
dioxide given off by the smelters has no effect 
whatever on the insects in that region. 

It is true that SO, generated by burning 
sulphur in a room or other enclosed spaces is 
sometimes recommended for killing insects. 
But this is used at the rate of 2 lbs. of sulphur 
for every 1,000 cubic ft. of space. At sea level 
and at 20° C. or 68° F. this would give a 
concentration of gas equal to 24,009 parts of 
gas to one million parts of air. Even at this 
rate with prolonged fumigations the insects 
are not always all killed! 

R. W. Doane 


STANFORD UNIVERSITY 


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Fripay, SEPTEMBER 28, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Static Atom: Proressor GILBERT N. 
lin) cocodoonedeoopuonoGocoGoondedcoGd 


Zoological Research: Proressor C. H. EIGEN- 
RUAN Np aeteveiielerisckecirsteriis triers dcieietars 802 

Scientific Events :— 
Reconstruction Hospitals and Orthopedic 
Surgery; Forest Battalions for Service in 
France; Occupational Census of the Army; 
Opportunity for Physiologists and Biochem- 
ists; Physiological Examination of Recruits ; 
Section of Zoology of the American Associa- 


ULE GOH ROHS OOURIOR AD PCA CEO? Go RECO Oman 306 
Scientific Notes and News ............-++4+- 308 
University and Educational News .......... 311 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Colors of Letters: Dr. DAvip STARR JoR- 
DAN. A Simple Demonstration for Euler’s 
Dynamical Equations: ARTHUR TABER JONES, 
A Unique Hornet’s Nest: H. A. ALLARD. 
Synchronism in the Flashing of Fireflies: 
FRANK C, Gates. Uredinia of Chronartium 
ribicola on Ribes Stems: G. B. Posey, G. F. 
GravatT, R. H. Cottey 


311 


Scientific Books :— 


Australian Aboriginal Crania: Dr. ALES 


HrpuitKka. Taubenhaus on the Culture and 

Diseases of the Sweet Pea: F. A. WotF .... 315 
Field Conference of Cereal Pathologists: C. W. 

HLUNGERFORD Meet terctel-tet-veisterietciieracieieicie ciate 316 
Special Articles :— 

The Possible Origin of the Toxicity of Ultra- 

violet Light: Drs. F. I. Harris anp H. 8. 

MED OW Megareiece avalevarss ars sist charebarporeevete tere iekeversverctes 318 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 
Ou-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE STATIC ATOM? 

I HAVE been asked to present in this sym- 
posium the relation between atomic struc- 
ture and the ‘‘valence bonds’’ by which the 
atoms are regarded as tied together, to form 
the more complicated structure of the mole- 
cule. Now the whole theory of molecular 
constitution which I have developed rests 
upon the fundamental postulate that the 
atom is internally at rest or nearly so. On 
the other hand, Bohr, who has given spe- 
cial attention to the phenomena of spectral 
series, has been led to the view that the 
electrons in the atom are revolving rapidly 
about a central positive nucleus. Because 
of the wide acceptance by physicists of 
Bohr’s theory of the atom and its orbital 
electrons, and especially in view of the 
very lucid arguments in favor of this 
theory which Professor Millikan has just 
presented to us, I am going to ask your 
permission to modify the subject of my 
paper, and to discuss not the specific meth- 
ods of combination among the atoms, but 
rather the question as to whether the elec- 
trons in the atom and the molecule are in 
rapid motion or are essentially at rest; for 
upon our answer to this question any theory 
of molecular structure must depend. 

Now assuming that the electron plays 
some kind of essential role in the linking 
together of the atoms within the molecule, 
and, as far as I am aware, no one conver- 
sant with the main facts of chemistry 


1 Presented at the symposium on ‘‘The Strue- 
ture of Matter’’ at a joint meeting of the Sections 
of Physies and Chemistry of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, The Amer- 
ican Physical Society and the American Chemical 
Society, New York, December 27, 1916. 


298 


would deny the validity of this assumption, 
let us consider the typical compounds of 
old-fashioned organic chemistry in regard 
to whose molecular structure we already 
know much—at the very least we may 
speak definitely of the relative positions of 
the atoms within their molecules. Among 
such compounds we find the striking phe- 
nomenon of isomerism. Numerous isomers, 
substances of precisely the same chemical 
constituents and differing only in the rela- 
tive order in which the atoms are placed 
in the molecule, have been prepared. In 
the case of complex substances, if it were 
worth while, millions of such isomers 
could be prepared. Yet these isomers will 
keep for years, and probably would for 
centuries, without changing into one 
another. In these inert organic compounds 
the atoms are so persistently retained in 
definite positions in the molecule that in 
one part of the molecule atoms may be 
substituted for other atoms and groups for 
groups, sometimes through reactions of 
great violence, without disturbing the ar- 
rangement of the atoms in some other part 
of the molecule. It seems inconceivable 
that electrons which have any part in de- 
termining the structure of such a molecule 
could possess proper motion, whether or- 
bital or chaotic, of any appreciable ampli- 
tude. We must assume rather that these 
electrons are held in the atom in fixed equi- 
librium positions, about which they may 
experience minute oscillations under the 
influence of high temperature or electric 
discharge, but from which they can not de- 
part very far without altering the struc- 
ture of any molecule in which the atom is 
held. 

Let us therefore consider whether the 
physicists on their part offer any irre- 
futable arguments in favor of an atomic 
model of the type of Bohr’s. In an atom 
of the simplest type, composed of a single 
positive particle and a single electron, if 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


these fail to merge with one another until 
their centers are coincident—and it is uni- 
versally assumed that they do not so merge 
—only two explanations are possible: 
either the ordinary law of attraction be- 
tween unlike charges (Coulomb’s law) 
ceases to be valid at very small distances, 
or the electron must be in sufficiently rapid 
motion about the atom to offset the force 
of electric attraction. The first of these 
explanations is the one which I have 
adopted. The second, which has been 
adopted largely because it appears to save 
Coulomb’s law, is the one which has led to 
Bohr’s atomic model, in which the electron 
revolves in definite orbits about the central 
positive particle. Now it has frequently 
been pointed out, and indeed it was well 
recognized by Bohr himself, that this model 
is not consistent with the established prin- 
ciples of the electromagnetic theory, since 
in the classical theory a charged particle 
subjected to any kind of acceleration must 
radiate energy, while, according to the 
Bohr hypothesis, radiation oceurs only 
when an electron falls from one stable orbit 
into another. Since, however, the equa- 
tion for electromagnetic radiation is one 
of the more abstruse and less immediate 
deductions of the classical theory, it might 
be possible by slight modifications of the 
fundamental electromagnetic equations to 
reconcile them with the non-radiation of 
the orbital electron. J wish therefore to 
point out a far more fundamental objec- 
tion to the theory of the revolving electron, 
due to the fact that Bohr has been forced 
to assume that this revolution must con- 
tinue even down to the absolute zero of 
temperature.” 

If, in Fig. 1, the circle represents the 
orbit of an electron B revolving about the 
positive center A, and if C represents a 
charged particle in the neighborhood, then 
if the electron exerts any influence what- 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


Fig. 1. 


soever upon the particle C, the latter will 
be set into sympathetic motion, and a part 
of the energy of the atom at the absolute 
zero will be contributed to the particle C, 
contrary to the most fundamental prin- 
ciples of thermodynamics. Therefore, un- 
less we are willing, under the onslaught of 
quantum theories, to throw overboard all 
of the basie principles of physical science, 
we must conclude that the electron in the 
Bohr atom not only ceases to obey Cou- 
lomb’s law, but exerts no influence what- 
soever upon another charged particle at 
any distance. Yet it is on the basis of 
Coulomb’s law that the equations of Bohr 
were derived. 

In spite of this and other similar seri- 
ous objections to Bohr’s atomic model, I 
should not wish to minimize the importance 
of his work. He has been the first to pre- 
sent any sort of acceptable picture of the 
mechanism by which spectral series are pro- 
duced, and especially he has traced a rela- 
tion between two important constants of 
nature, Rydberg’s fundamental frequency, 
and the Planck constant h which plays so 
important a part in modern physical 
theory. I should therefore be loath to sug- 
gest an abandonment of the extremely in- 
teresting leads which Bohr’s theory has 
suggested, nor do I think this necessary, 

2It will be noted that this objection applies 


with equal force to the Planck oscillator which 
maintains energy even at the absolute zero. 


SCIENCE 


299 


for I believe that relationships similar to 
those obtained in Bohr’s theory may be ob- 
tained, even if we substitute for the orbital 
atom of Bohr a static atom, and, moreover, 
I believe that by making this substitution 
we may not only obtain a model of the 
atom which is consistent with known chem- 
ical facts, but also one which does not re- 
quire the abandonment of the principal 
laws of mechanics and electromagnetics. I 
should state at once, however, that I do not 
elaim for the atomic model, which I am 
about to sketch in rough outline, the same 
finality that I would claim, for example, 
for the molecular model of methane which 
I have previously offered.? It is rather a 
suggestion of the direction in which we 
may work towards the solution of a prob- 
lem of extraordinary difficulty with the 
most hope of ultimate success. It is evi- 
dent to any one familiar with the extreme 
complexity of the spectra of some sub- 
stances that many years must elapse before 
anything approaching to a final explana- 
tion of such baffling phenomena can be ex- 
pected. All we can do at present is to sug- 
gest certain directions of investigation 
which may lead ultimately towards the de- 
sired end. With this understanding, you 
will not consider it too presumptuous if I 
start by discussing not the structure of the 
complicated system that we call the atom, 
but rather the structure of the electron 
itself, or, if you prefer, the structure of 
the field of force about the electron. 

If we postulate, at small distances, the 
nonvalidity of Coulomb’s law of force 
between the centers of two charged 
particles, we are doing nothing that is 
really new. In the older conception of the 
electron as a charged sphere of definite 
radius, the sphere being itself held together 

3I refer here and elsewhere to my paper ‘‘The 
Atom and the Molecule,’’ J. Am. Chem. Soc., 38: 


762, 1916. See also Proc. Nat. Acad., 2: 586, 
1916. 


300 


by forces of an admittedly mysterious 
character, Coulomb’s law, in the ordinary 
sense, would fail when two electron centers 
approach within one electron diameter of 
each other. If, on the other hand, we 
abandon the rather artificial spherical model 
of the electron, and if we assume that the 
electron has all its charge concentrated at 
its center, then also it has been well recog- 
nized that Coulomb’s law must fail, for 
otherwise we could not account for the finite 
mass of the electron. In this case also we 
might, if we chose, speak of the size of the 
electron, meaning thereby the distance from 
the center at which the electric force differs 
by a certain amount from that calculated 
by Coulomb’s law. Now in either sense 
of the word we must agree with Ruther- 
ford that the positive nucleus of an atom 
is far smaller than the electron. In other 
words, two such positive nuclei will repel 
each other according to Coulomb’s law 
even at distances so small that the law 
would have quite lost its validity for two 
electrons or for a positive particle and an 
electron. In other words, an atom com- 
posed of a single positive particle and an 
electron is to be regarded as though the 
positive particle were imbedded in the elec- 
tron and not the electron in the positive 
nucleus, as in the older theory of J. J. 
Thomson, 

Some years ago I was led, through con- 
sideration of electron theory alone, and by 
the aid of plausible assumptions, to an 
equation for the field of force about an 
electron, which, at that time, seemed to me 
a reasonable first approximation to the 
equation which we must substitute for 
Coulomb’s law. If f is the force acting on 
an equal positive charge at the distance r 
from the point charge electron, if e ig the 
charge of the electron, e the base of natural 
logarithms, and 7, a characteristic distance 
which does not differ much numerically 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


from the radius which is ascribed to the 
spherical electron, the equation reads 


2 
i © erlro, 
72 


At large values of r this obviously re- 
duces to Coulomb’s law; at small values 
it would correspond to a curve such as that 
given in Fig. 2, where f is the ordinate 
and r the abcissa. 


f, 


Fig. 2. 


If now we assume that this is only a sug- 
gestion of the true equation and that the 
exponential term should be replaced by a 
similar function of periodic character, say 
a trigonometrical function of 1/r, we might 
obtain an equation roughly represented by 
the curve given in Fig. 3. Any ordinary 


f 


Fig. 3. 


periodicity with respect to 1/r will make 
the curve which is plotted with respect to 
r intersect the axis of abscisse an infinite 
number of times as r approaches zero. A 
positive particle (which we may regard: as 
negligible in size but greatly preponder- 
ating in mass) situated at any of the inter- 
sections r,, r., ete., where with diminishing 
r the force of attraction goes over into one 
of repulsion, isin a state of equilibrium with 
respect to the electron. Let us assume that 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


the slope of the curve at each intersection 
increases towards a finite limit as r ap- 
proaches zero. This slope df/dr is the re- 
storing force per unit displacement, and 
its square root determines the natural fre- 
quency of oscillation of the electron.2 We 
thus have a picture of a system which, con- 
sistently with recognized principles of me- 
chanics and electromagnetics, would give 
a series of spectral lines analogous to the 
series which are known for various elements, 
The limiting value of df/dr as r approaches 
zere determines the limiting frequency of 
the series. In the case of Balmer’s hydro- 
gen series this limiting frequency is equal to 
one fourth of the fundamental frequency 
which Rydberg has found associated with 
the series of a large number of elements. 
It has been argued that the existence of 
this fundamental frequency speaks for sim- 
ilarity of constitution of different atoms. 
Is it not simpler to assume that it is char- 
acteristic of the one thing which is common 
to all atoms emitting light, namely, the elec- 
tron? 

The condition which we have imposed 
regarding the slope of our curve at its in- 
tersections does not determine the area 
which will lie under any section of it. As 
the curve is drawn, the area under the r 
axis between r, and r,, r, and 713, ete., is 
greater than the area above the axis. In 
other words, the potential energy of the 


3It ‘will of course be understood that, owing to 
its much smaller mass, it is the electron that os- 
cillates and not the positive particle. I am refer- 
ring above to oscillations in the line of centers. 
In general] the oscillations of an object which is 
held in space in a fixed position by constraints 
which differ in different directions will be re- 
solved by either mathematical or physical analysis 
to give three frequencies corresponding to the 
three axes of constraint. If the constraint along 
two of these axes is the same the corresponding 
two frequencies will be identical. I venture to 
offer this as an explanation of the well-known fact 
that the lines of a series spectrum occur often as 
pairs or triplets. 


SCIENCE 


301 


system increases as the positive particle 
is brought from 7, to r,, from r, to r,, and 
soon. If now we fix the form of the curve 


so that a fdr is proportional to the differ- 


ence between the values for T, and rm of 
(df/dr)'/*, the potential energy of our sys- 
tem at any point of equilibrium is a linear 
function of the frequency which is char- 
acteristic of that position of equilibrium. 
We then have what is, to my mind, a very 
suggestive explanation of the THinstein 
photo-electrie equation. If an electron 
moving with a given velocity meet a posi- 
tive particle, the latter would penetrate 
the electron field to one of the positions 
of equilibrium, and the electron would os- 
cillate with a frequency depending solely 
upon the equilibrium position it reaches 
and therefore upon its original kinetic en- 
ergy. The higher the original velocity, the 
higher the frequency it is capable of excit- 
ing. On the other hand, if we assume the 
presence of atoms in which the electrons 
are in various positions of equilibrium 
with respect to the positive particle, and 
these atoms are subjected to light of a given 
frequency, the electron which possesses this 
as its natural frequency will oscillate with 
greater and greater amplitude until it is 
able to leave its position of unstable equi- 
librium and will then be ejected from the 
atom, acquiring a kinetic energy equal to 
the potential energy of its original position. 
On our assumptions the relation between 
frequency and velocity will be quantita- 
tively that given by the Einstein equation. 

In the time which has been allotted to me 
I can not further elaborate these points, 
but I hope that I have succeeded in ma- 
king it seem plausible that some model of 
a static atom, perhaps only roughly re- 
sembling the one that I have outlined to 
you, may be expected to give at least as 
satisfactory an explanation of the phe- 
nomena of spectroscopy, and of the rela- 


302 


tionships between the natural constants 
which have been found in the study of 
radiation, as can be afforded by the orbital 
atom. If this is granted we may proceed 
with greater confidence to the further 
study of the group of atoms which we call 
the molecule, and to the nature of valence. 
I can not repeat here the reasons which I 
have given in another place for believing 
that it is these very electrons held in rigid 
positions in the outer shell of the atom 
which may, in case of chemical combina- 
tion, become the joint property of two 
atoms, thus linking together the mutually 
repellant positive atomic kernels and them- 
selves constituting the bond which has 
proved so serviceable in the interpretation 
of chemical phenomena. In some mole- 
cules, such as those of nitrogen, the link- 
ing electrons are held by powerful con- 
straints. The molecule is inert and incapa- 
ble of taking part readily in chemical reac- 
tion. In others, like those of iodine, in 
which the bond is said to be weak, the con- 
necting electrons are held by loose con- 
straints and the molecules are extremely 
reactive. But whether the bond be weak 
or strong, we may feel pretty sure that it 
solely consists of those electrons which are 
held as the joint property of two atomic 
shells and constrained to definite positions 
by forces which we do not at present under- 
stand, but which do not obey the simple 
law of inverse squares which character- 
izes the attraction or repulsion of charged 
bodies at relatively large distances from 


one another. GILBERT N. Lewis 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


ZOOLOGICAL RESEARCH?" 


I spEAK with mixed emotions. I long ago 
planned to attend this spring meeting of the 

1 Remarks at the dedication of Stanley Coulter 
Hall, the new biological building at Purdue Uni- 
versity, during a meeting of the Indiana Academy 
of Science. } 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1187 


Indiana Academy of Science, the first I have 
been able to attend in several years. I was 
asked to assist at the dedication of a new bio- 
logical building, and find I am one of the ora- 
tors on the rare occasion of the unveiling of a 
monument to a man still alive and present. It 
is not possible to speak in the presence of so 
lively a corpse of the appropriateness of having 
your newest and best building named in honor 
of Stanley Coulter. If he were not present 
and listening with such apparent anxiety, I 
should like to recall his many good qualities 
and my good fortune in being associated with 
him for a third of a century. In these years 
we have traveled together, played together, 
worked together, fought together and against 
each other, and I think I am beginning to 
know him in part. It would make him too vain 
were I to say all of the nice things I should 
feel more than justified in saying, if his family 
were in mourning. As it is, I can only com- 
mend the authorities in honoring the teacher, 
the director of the Indiana Biological Survey, 
the charter member of the Indiana Academy of 
Science, the leader in nature study, the in- 
vestigator, the dean of the school of science of 
Purdue University, and over and above all, the 
teal human being. 

It will not detract from his merits if I tell 
you in confidence that he deserves but part of 
the credit for what he has done. The poet 
truly said: “There is a Divinity that shapes 
our ends.” At least half the credit should go 
to his wife, who has made him possible, and 
whom those of us who know her love even more 
than we do Stanley. I hope, I am sure the 
Academy as well as Purdue University hope, 
that they will long be able to work in the build- 
ing so well named. The best of it is that the 
building was not needed to perpetuate the 
memory and influence of our friends. 

The dedication of this, your best building, 
in part to zoology is a just recognition of the 
importance of the subject. It is quite proper, 
therefore, that we should consider what we 
mean by zoology, for our interpretation de- 
termines the nature of the work to be done 
within the walls of Stanley Coulter Hall. 

Zoology is a study of animals. The study of 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


zoology as an intellectual pursuit gives liberal 
cultural training as well as a fuller apprecia- 
tion of our fellow mortals. This fact in itself 
is a full justification of its study. But, in ad- 
dition, zoology may be and is studied for the 
grounding preliminary training of certain of 
the professions, notably medicine and agricul- 
ture. The premedical man finds in zoology the 
basis for his future appreciation of the anat- 
omy of man. Man carries many reminiscences 
of his lowlier ancestors. Even the over-devout 
believers of special creation seem to have had 
an inkling of this fact. On the walls of the 
sacred cemetery in Pisa a painter has repre- 
sented the creation of man. On the left is the 
Lord, in the center is the man partly formed. 
To fill a gap in his canvas the painter placed a 
palm tree on the extreme right of the picture. 
A monkey is climbing the palm. Thus while 
the Lord is creating man “in His own image” 
a monkey is gamboling before his eyes—the re- 
sult is only what might have been expected. 

Zoology has an additional importance to the 
doctor of medicine. Man, himself a zoological 
garden, is involuntarily harboring within, and 
frequently without, many of his zoologically 
more humble contemporaries. It must fre- 
quently be a question whether the malady is 
due to the anatomy and physiology of the pa- 
tient himself, or to the depredation of the in- 
vaders. 

Here at Purdue University it is quite proper 
that another phase of zoology should receive 
full recognition. The firing line in the most 
important struggle for existence on the globe 
is not along the Marne, but in man, in his 
flocks, his cultivated fields and forests. The 
supreme struggle is not between autocracy 
and democracy, but between man and insects 
and still lower creatures. Insects keep many 
large parts of the globe as free from man as 
No Man’s Land, much freer than the subma- 
rine zone. Insects and still lower animals levy 
their enormous tribute at the source. Some 
day we may issue liberty bonds to open the 
lanes of travel in other parts of South Amer- 
ica as we have opened those of Panama, and to 
free us from the tribute we are compelled to 
pay to the Hessian fly, the gypsy moth, the 


SCIENCE 


303 


San José scale, the Mexican cotton-boll weevil, 
the English sparrow, the Colorado beetle, the 
German carp, and a host of other invading and 
native marauders. 

A few years ago I had the pleasure of sail- 
ing to St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. Kitts, Santa 
Lucia and other West India Islands as holy as 
these, though not yet sainted. Some had elabo- 
rate barracks, but fortifications were being 
abandoned and attention lavished on botanic 
gardens and experiment stations. The change 
was a recognition of this ancient, but only re- 
cently fully recognized, firing line. We cer- 
tainly have abundant excuse, if excuse is 
needed for this new biological building. 

But there is another use for this building. 
It is no merit to call the doctor when the stom- 
ach aches. It zs a supreme merit to investi- 
gate causes and prevent future stomach aches 
while we are enjoying our daily overabundant 
meals. 

We must investigate zoology from its pure 
and abstract side, developing as a by-product 
of our investigations the future Pasteurs, 
Kochs and Darwins; we must extend human 
knowledge. All institutions must cooperate in 
this, must grow at the tip. Investigation is the 
truest preparedness, and the democracies ought 
at least to encourage research as much as the 
autocracies, known for their noble contribu- 
tions in this direction. 

In this connection I would like to quote 
(with slight modifications) from a letter to 
President Stanley Hall, of Clark University, 
written in answer to a questionnaire on the 
general subject of what can be done to increase 
research in American universities. 


BioomineTon, InD., Oct. 25, 1916 

My dear Dr. Hall: It would be very easy to 
point out why the American universities do not do 
more for research, why you must ask the first of 
your questions. But, my dear President Hall, a 
candid statement would be sure to be resented by 
one or another university active in the councils of 
the Association of American Universities. To call 
attention to self-evident facts would seem like in- 
terference on the part of one institution with the 
internal policy of another. In criticism of the 
policy of American universities in regard to re- 
search, the head of one of the great research en- 


304 


dowments remarked that his institution was ap- 
propriating more money to carry on research in 
one of the great universities than the university 
itself is devoting to this purpose. In visiting 
alumni associations the ambassador of another 
great institution bragged about the millions that 
were going into new buildings. At the same time 
there was internal complaint that research was 
being hampered by the lack of funds! Instances 
where research is eking out its hampered existence 
by the side of a great athletic plant or by the side 
of splendid costly halls, if not between the two, 
are not unique. As I am not permitted to stir up 
the animals—the very expression so unacademic— 
I will, in as academic and wooden a way as pos- 
sible, discuss some of your questions, and point out 
in a mild way how the Nirvana of the research 
man may be approached, if not attained. 

The first point in your cireular letter raises the 
question of the function of the university, and of 
the university professor. Minot said that the 
function of the professor is ‘‘to carry on research 
and to teach others to do the same.’’ If research 
is the function of the professor, ipso facto, it 
must be the function of the university. I think 
Minot’s definition should include the central idea 
on which a prominent research institution was 
founded, if not conducted; to find the exceptional 
man and enable him to do the work for which he is 
best fitted. We will grant for the time, then, that 
it is the function of the university to find the ex- 
ceptional man to carry on research, to enable him 
to make the most of his ability, and in his turn, to 
find exceptional men and enable them to do their 
utmost. 

To this, the primary function of the university, 
as a close second comes the function of finding the 
other exceptional man, who can appreciate pure 
research and who is willing to let the university 
be the mediary between his own dollars and the 
university ’s research man. 

If we grant all of the above, the answer to your 
first question becomes easy. If it is the function 
of the university to earry on research, there is evi- 
dently no reason why it should not engage men to 
earry on this function. Whether such men, or such 
a man, should devote part of his time, all of his 
time, or sporadically all of his time during leave 
of absence, are subsidiary questions, once it is 
granted that it is the function of the university to 
carry on research. University presidents, I fear, 
are usually too prone to believe in the efficacy of 
devotion, only so long as it is offered within hear- 
ing of the college bells. . . . The Carnegie Foun- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


dation has been criticized because it no longer pen- 
sions university professors with research proclivi- 
ties at the end of twenty-five years of teaching. 
But, if it is the function of the university to carry © 
on research, why should such men be pensioned? 
If the man is so wrapped up in research that he is 
willing to retire on decreased pay, that he may be 
able to devote himself exclusively to research, why 
not let him continue in one of the chief functions 
of the university on full, if not increased pay? 
The universities are trying to shirk when they - 
eriticize the Carnegie Foundation, because it re- 
fuses to help them carry on one branch of their 
work. 

It goes without saying that the research man 
needs appropriations for apparatus or collections, 
or assistants or traveling expenses, and for publi- 
cation. He can get some, if not all of these things, 
by cooperation with other institutions, the Car- 
negie Institution, the Elizabeth Thompson Science 
Fund, the Bache Fund, the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, not to mention 
some others which help with money, or which co- 
operate in the matter of publication. The neces- 
sity for and existence of these research funds and 
institutions lies in the fact that the universities 
themselves failed to appreciate the necessity for 
research, failed to make adequate provision for it. 
The research funds stand in the same relation to 
the universities and to the public, that the inter- 
urban railways stand to the steam railways and 
the public. Frequently the time of the research 
man consumed in diplomacy, in getting the co- 
operation of people and institutions inclined for 
the most part to pull in different directions, could 
have been spent to better advantage in other ways. 
Digging the bait is more laborious, and always 
more tiresome, than fishing. 

If it is the function of the university to carry 
on research and to teach others to do so, then of 
course, the university should discriminate between 
those gifted in teaching and those gifted in in- 
vestigation. Your very question, ‘‘Must the many 
other research institutions outside the universi- 
ties be mainly relied upon for this work?’’ is sin 
against the Holy Ghost. 

The centers of some lines of pure research, cytol- 
ogy and genetics for example, had shifted to 
America before the great war. With the un- 
tempered democracy of high explosive shells of 
both contestants, which kill the most highly 
trained specialist by the side of the day laborer, 
it will naturally become the duty as well as the 
privilege of America, to still further enter into 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


friendly rivalry with Europe—for it is to be hoped 
that in the field of scientific research, there will be 
no trace of any but friendly attitude toward any 
of the European countries.2 America will ulti- 
mately lead in idealistic endeavors. It would have 
done so, war or no war. The thing that will help 
more than any other to give leadership, is to have 
the universities make a special effort to gather the 
funds needed, to enable the men specially gifted in 
research to do their utmost. 


Having secured the building, Mr. President, 
I hope you will provide the money to enable 
the men who are to be housed in it to do their 


Bask C. H. EicenMann 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


RECONSTRUCTION HOSPITALS AND ORTHO- 
PEDIC SURGERY 


THE Surgeon General of the Army, Major 
General William C. Gorgas, authorizes the 
publication of the statement that the whole 
conception of governmental and national re- 
sponsibility for caring for the wounded has 
undergone radical change during the months 
of study given the subject by experts serving 
with the Medical Officers’ Reserve Corps and 
others consulting with them. Instead of the 
old idea that responsibility ended with the re- 
turn of the soldier to private life with his 
wounds healed and such pension as he might 
be given, it is now considered that it is the 
duty of the government to equip and reeducate 
the wounded man, after healing his wounds, 
and to return him to civil life ready to be as 
useful to himself and his country as possible. 

To carry out this idea plans are well under 
way for building “ reconstruction hospitals” in 
large centers of population. Sites have been 
chosen, though not all finally approved, in the 
following cities: Boston, New York, Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore, Washington, Buffalo, Cin- 
cinnati, Chicago, St. Paul, Seattle, San Fran- 
cisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Kansas City, St. 
Louis, Memphis, Richmond, Atlanta, and New 
Orleans. Those in Boston, New York, Wash- 
ington, and Chicago will probably be con- 
structed first. Each will be built as a 500-bed 


2 This letter was written before the United States 
entered the war. 


SCIENCE 


305 


hospital, but with provision for enlargement 
to 1,000 beds if needed. 

These hospitals will not be the last step in 
the return of the wounded soldiers to civil life. 
When the soldiers are able to take up indus- 
trial training, further provision will be ready. 
The injured man may be retrained to his 
previous occupation to conform with his handi- 
capped condition or retrained for a new in- 
dustry compatible with that condition. Addi- 
tional education will be given to those fitted 
for it, and men may in some cases be returned 
to more valuable work than that from which 
they were called to war. Workshops will be 
provided at the hospitals, but arrangements 
will also be made with outside industries 
whereby more elaborate methods of training 
may be carried on. An employment bureau 
will be established to place men so trained in 
different parts of the United States. 

This whole matter comes under the depart- 
ment of military orthopedic surgery recently 
organized in the Medical Department of the 
Army. The following officers of the Medical 
Reserve Corps are in charge of the work: 
Major Elliott G. Brackett, of Boston, director 
of the department of military orthopedics to 
the Surgeon General; Major Joel E. Gold- 
thwait, of Boston, director of military ortho- 
pedics for the expeditionary forces; Major 
David Silver, of Pittsburgh, assistant director 
of military orthopedics to the Surgeon Gen- 
eral. The following, in conjunction with the 
above staff, compose the orthopedic council: 
Dr. Fred H. Albee, of New York; Dr. G. 
Gwilym Davis, of Philadelphia; Dr. Albert H. 
Freiberg, of Cincinnati; Dr. Robert W. Lovett, 
of Boston; and Dr. John L. Porter, of Chicago. 

Arrangements have been made by the de- 
partment of military orthopedics to care for 
soldiers, so far as orthopedics (the prevention 
of deformity) is concerned, continuously until 
they are returned either to active service or 
civil life. Orthopedie surgeons will be at- 
tached to the medical force near the firing line 
and to the different hospitals back to the base 
orthopedic hospital, which will be established 
within 100 miles of the firing line. In this 
hospital, in addition to orthopedic surgical 


306 


care, there will be equipment for surgical re- 
construction work and “curative workshops ” 
in which men will acquire ability to use in- 
jured members while doing work interesting 
and useful in itself. This method has sup- 
planted the old and tiresome one of prescribing 
a set of motions for a man to go through with 
no other purpose than to reacquire use of his 
injured part. 

In addition to the American orthopedic 
surgeons now working abroad under Col. 
Jones, of England, others will soon go over- 
seas. Experienced surgeons, and a large num- 
ber of younger surgeons who will work under 
competent directors, will go abroad for this 
work, all to be under the direction of Major 
Goldthwait. These orthopedic surgeons will 
work in England among the British force and 
when needed will be transferred to France to 
work among American soldiers. 

It is not the intention that men able to 
go back to the firing line shall be returned 
to this country unless their convalescence will 
extend over a period of a considerable number 
of months. Soldiers unable to return to duty 
will be sent to the reconstruction hospitals in 
the United States. 

Instructors and examiners for all the camps 
are also being furnished by the department of 
military orthopedic surgery. A number of 
older and more experienced surgeons will act 
as instructors and supervisors for each of the 
groups into which the camps will be divided; a 
number of orthopedic surgeons will be detailed 
as attending surgeons at each camp to act as 
examiners and as consultants to the camp’s 
other surgeons. 


FOREST BATTALIONS FOR SERVICE IN FRANCE 

THE formation of a second “ Forest” regi- 
ment comprising ten battalions and composed 
of lumbermen and woodworkers, who will go 
to France and get out of the forests materials 
for the use of the American, French and Brit- 
ish armies, has been authorized by the War 
Department. 

Two battalions are to be raised at once 
with the active aid of the Forest Service of 
the Department of Agriculture. It is expected 
that the remaining eight battalions will be 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


called for in a short time. Nine “service” 
battalions, made up of laborers who will be 
used in connection with the Forest regiment, 
have also been authorized and two battalions 
have been ordered raised at once. 

In order to provide for future contingencies 
it has been decided to commission at the pres- 
ent time enough officers for other battalions 
yet to be raised. Those men not needed now 
will be placed on the reserve, and will be called 
as the other units are formed. According to 
the present plan, fifty per cent. of the officers 
will be sawmill and logging operators, twenty- 
five per cent. will be technical foresters, and 
twenty-five per cent. will be men with military 
tenants will be selected in the immediate 
future. The minimum age limit for com- 
missioned officers has been set at thirty-one. 

A considerable number of captains and lieu- 
tenants to be selected in the immediate future. 
The minimum age limit for commissioned offi- 
cers has been set at thirty-one. 

A first regiment of woodsmen numbering 
about 1,200 men and designated as the Tenth 
Engineers (Forest) has already been recruited 
and assembled and is now being trained at 
American University, D. OC. This regiment 
was raised at the request of the British gov- 
ernment to undertake the production in 
France of crossties, bridge, trench and con- 
struction timbers, mine props, lumber, and 
other forms of wood required in connection 
with its military operations. The landing of 
the American expeditionary forces has made 
necessary similar provision for their needs, 
while the French military authorities have 
indicated that some of the work incidental to 
their operations might be taken over by woods- 
men from this country. Decision to raise the 
new and much larger force has followed a 
study of the field of possible usefulness to the 
Allied cause, made by American foresters at- 
tached to General Pershing’s staff. 

Each of the ten battalions of the second 
regiment will comprise three companies of 250 
men each, and will be under the command of 
its own major. The regiment will be made up 
of volunteers. Applicants must be white and 
between the ages of eighteen and forty. 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


Skilled lumberjacks, portable mill operators, tie 
cutters, logging teamsters, camp cooks, mill- 
wrights and charcoal burners are among the 
classes of men desired. For the “ service ” bat- 
talions both negro and white laborers will be 
enlisted. 


OCCUPATIONAL CENSUS OF THE ARMY 

Tue War Department has authorized the 
following statement: 

There is now being made under the direction 
of the Adjutant General a comprehensive occu- 
pational and educational census of the men of 
the National Army. 

The object is to carry the selective service 
law to its logical conclusion and to increase the 
efficiency of the army by putting the right man 
in the right place. 

With this in view, a personnel organization 
has been established in each of the 16 canton- 
ments. The previous occupation, education 
and preference for service of every man are re- 
corded on individual cards, which are then filed 
and analyzed at the divisional personnel office 
in each cantonment. An analysis as to the en- 
tire 687,000 men of the first increment can 
readily be made from these records. 

In this work the War Department is having 
the assistance of a body of civilian experts or- 
ganized under the name “ Committee on classi- 
fication of personnel in the Army” and in- 
cluding a number of professional employment 
managers loaned to the government by large 
industrial and business concerns. The data 
collected will be used within the divisional or- 
ganizations to assist division commanders in 
making the best possible assignment of their 
men. It will also be of importance in locating 
men fitted for special branches of the service, 
such as Aviation, the Ordnance Corps, etc., for 
which it may be necessary to assign men from 
the cantonments. 

It must not be assumed that men can con- 
tinue their old occupations in the army. The 
function of an army is to fight and most of the 
men irrespective of previous occupations, will 
be in the infantry and artillery. Nevertheless, 
the specialization of modern war requires large 
numbers of skilled men adapted for technical 
units and special branches of the service. The 


SCIENCE 


307 


locating and placing of such men to the best 
advantage is of vital importance. 


OPPORTUNITY FOR PHYSIOLOGISTS AND 
BIOCHEMISTS 


THE Surgeon General of the army is organiz- 
ing a Food Division of his office, the object of 
which is to safeguard the nutritional interests 
of the army by means of competent inspection 
of food from the standpoint of nutritive value, 
the supervision of mess conditions, including 
the economical utilization of food, and a study 
of the suitability of the army ration for troops 
in the camp and in the field. Well-trained 
physiologists and biochemists are needed to di- 
rect this work. These men are being commis- 
sioned, according to age and experience, as first 
lieutenants and captains in the Sanitary Corps, 
Medical Department; or, if they have medical 
degrees, in the Medical Reserve Corps. 

It is probable there will be as many commis- 
sioned officers as there are camps and canton- 
ments. Nutritional surveys will be conducted 
at the camps by surveying parties composed of 
these commissioned officers, and of drafted 
men, who have had scientific training, acting 
as assistants and clerks. It is estimated that 
such a survey can be completed in from ten 
days to two weeks for each camp. 

It is hoped by means of these surveying par- 
ties also to instruct the company mess sergeants 
and company cooks in improved methods of se- 
lecting and preparing the foods. A school for 
the finished training of the scientists employed 
in this work is now being organized. The or- 
ganization of the army, the army methods of 
handling and cooking foods, the latest methods 
of food examination and analysis, the conduct 
of the food survey and kindred topics will be 
covered by competent instructors from ‘various 
departments of the army and other departments 
of the national government. 

The facilities of the Bureau of Chemistry, 
including its analytical laboratories scattered 
over the country, have been placed at the dis- 
posal of the Food Division for this work. 
Analyses of the garbage will be made and of all 
foods whose composition is not already known, 
and the actual distribution of nutrients and of 
total calories consumed by the men will be com- 


308 


puted. Any alteration of the army ration in 
the future will be based only upon the facts as 
thus gathered. There is every promise that 
this service will prove to be of strategic im- 
portance in the control of the health and wel- 
fare of the troops from the place of their 
mobilization to the battle front. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF RECRUITS 

AppointMENTS for psychological examiners 
in the National Army Cantonments, Camp 
Lee, Petersburg, Va.; Camp Dix, Wrights- 
town, N. J.; Camp Devens, Ayer, Mass.; Camp 
Taylor, Louisville, Ky., have been made as 
follows: 

Major, Robert M. Yerkes, Surgeon General’s 
Office, in charge of psychological work. Lieu- 
tenant Arthur S. Otis in charge of statistical 
work in the Surgeon General’s Office, Section 
of Psychology. 

Lieutenants Clarence S. Yoakum, Marion R. 
Trabue, Jos. W. Hayes, and Wm. 8. Foster to 
serve as chief psychological examiners. 

Lieutenants Geo. O. Ferguson, Jr., Walter 
S. Hunter, Edw. S. Jones, Karl T. Waugh, 
Heber B. Cummings, Edgar A. Doll, John 
T. Metcalf, Herschel T. Manuel, Carl C. 
Brigham, John E. Anderson, Horace B. Eng- 
ish and Harold A. Richmond to serve as psy- 
chological examiners. 

In addition to the above commissioned ex- 
aminers, the following have been given civil 
appointment for psychological examining: 
Doctors Leo J. Brueckner, Donald G. Pater- 
son, A. S. Edwards, Rudolph Pintner, Benj. 
F. Pittenger, Ben. D. Wood, John W. Bridges, 
J. Crosby Chapman, John K. Norton, Edward 
C. Rowe, J. David Houser, C. P. Stone, Thos. 
H. Haines, Norbert J. Melville, H. P. Shum- 
way, Chas. H. Toll, Thos. M. Stokes, C. C. 
Stech, John J. B. Morgan, Raymond H. 
Wheeler, Harold C. Bingham, Carl R. Brown, 
Chester E. Kellogg, Ralph S. Roberts, and D. 
L. Hoppinginer. 


SECTION OF ZOOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN 
ASSOCIATION : 


THE annual meeting of Section F (Zoology) 
of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science will be held at Pittsburgh, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


Pa., during Convocation Week on Saturday, 
Monday and Tuesday, December 29, 31 and 
January 1, under the presidency of Professor 
Herbert Osborn, of the Ohio State University. 
The opening sessions on Saturday will be de- 
voted to the reading of technical papers, the 
titles of which together with brief abstracts 
of not over three hundred words must be in 
the hands of the secretary not later than De- 
cember 10 in order to dppear on the printed 
program. A joint smoker with the American 
Society of Naturalists is planned for Satur- 
day evening. 

The address of the retiring vice-president 
will be read by Professor George Howard 
Parker, of Harvard University, at the morn- 
ing session on Monday, December 31. The 
“General Interest Session” will be held on 
Monday afternoon and will consist of a sym- 
posium on “The Contribution of Zoology to 
Human Welfare.” Papers on this important 
subject will be read by Doctor Hugh M. Smith, 
U. S. Commissioner of Fisheries; Dr. L. O. 
Howard, chief entomologist of the U. 8. De- 
partment of Agriculture; Dr. Charles Ward- 
ell Stiles, U. S. Public Health Service; and 
Professor Maurice A. Bigelow, director of the 
School of Practical Arts of Columbia Uni- 
versity. The sessions of Tuesday, January 1, 
will be held in conjunction with the American 
Society of Naturalists and will close with the 
Naturalists’ dinner on Tuesday evening. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

Tue Surgeon General of the army, Major 
General William ©. Gorgas, has established a 
board to collect material for the medical and 
surgical history of American participation in 
the European War. This board is composed 
of Colonel C. C. McCulloch, librarian of the 
Army Medical Library; Major F. H. Garrison, 
assistant librarian in direct charge of work on 
the history, and Captain John S. Fulton, sec- 
retary of the Maryland State Board of Health, 
who will have charge of the statistical work. 

Dr. Veranus A. Moore, dean of the veteri- 
nary college of Cornell University, has been in 
Washington, serving as an adviser of Surgeon 
General Gorgas in the organization of the 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


Veterinary Officers’ Reserve Corps. Dr. Moore 
is a member of the committee on military serv- 
ice of the American Veterinary Medical Asso- 
ciation. That committee had been serving as 
a board advisory to the Surgeon General and 
Dr. Moore was elected to represent it in the 
Surgeon General’s office. 

Dr. A. R. Davis, assistant professor of agri- 
cultural botany, the University of Nebraska, 
has been commissioned captain in the Coast 
Artillery, U. S. R. He is at present assistant 
ordnance officer, Fort Howard, Maryland. 


Cart H. ButMan, who has been editorial as- 
sistant at the Smithsonian Institution for the 
last seven years, has resigned to become Wash- 
ington editor of a new aviation magazine, Air 
Service Journal. 

Proressor ARTHUR D. BuTTERFIELD, head of 
the department of mathematics of the Wor- 
eester Polytechnic Institute, has resigned, as 
he expects to be called for service as captain 
in the aviation branch of the signal corps. 
Professor David L. Gallup, head of the gas 
engineering department, will also resign on 
October 1, having accepted a position as head 
of the research laboratories of the Nordyke & 
Marmon Company. 


Proressor A. M. Buck, who for the last six 
years has been in charge of electric railway 
courses at the University of Illinois, has re- 
signed to join Mr. John A. Beeler, of New 
York, in the consulting field. His new work 
will consist largely of investigations dealing 
with the construction, operation and manage- 
ment of electric railway properties. 


Dr. Max Kaun has resigned his position as 
biochemist to the Western Pennsylvania Hos- 
pital, Pittsburgh, Pa., to accept the appoint- 
ment of director of the laboratories, Beth Is- 
rael Hospital, New York City. 

Grorce H. Stickney, of Montclair, N. J., has 
been elected president of the Iluminating 
Engineering Society. 


THE recently established Engineering Coun- 
cil has appointed the following standing com- 
mittees: On Public Affairs—C. W. Baker, G. 
F. Swain, S. J. Jennings and E. W. Rice, Jr. 
On Rules—J. P. Channing, Clemens Herschel, 


SCIENCE 


309 


N. A. Carle and D. S. Jacobus. On Finance— 
B. B. Thayer, I. E. Moultrop, Calvert Town- 
ley and Alexander C. Humphreys. The coun- 
cil has also created a war inventions com- 
mittee, comprising H. W. Buck, A. M. Greene, 
Jr. and E. B. Kirkby, to cooperate with the 
Naval Advisory Board and other departments 
at Washington. It also created a committee, 
comprising George J. Foran, E. B. Sturgis, A. 
S. McAllister and A. D. Flinn, which is to col- 
lect and compile such information regarding 
engineers of the country as will enable it to 
cooperate with the different departments of 
the federal government. 


Ir is stated in Nature that a committee to 
inquire into various matters connected with 
the personnel and administration of the army 
medical services has been appointed by the 
British Secretary of State for War. The com- 
mittee is composed of Major-General Sir F. 
Howard (chairman), Sir Rickman J. Godlee, 
Bart., Sir Frederick Taylor, Bart., Sir W. Wat- 
son-Cheyne, Bart., Dr. Norman Walker, Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel A. J. Stiles, Dr. Buttar and Dr. 
J. B. Christopherson (secretary). It will be- 
gin its work in France, and afterwards carry 
out similar investigations in England. 


Two new orders have been instituted by the 
British king in recognition of services rend- 
ered by British subjects and their Allies in con- 
nection with the war, viz., the Order of the 
British Empire and the Order of the Compan- 
ions of Honor. The Order of the British Em- 
pire has five classes, viz.: Men: (1) Knights 
Grand Cross (G.B.E.); (2) Knights Com- 
manders (K.B.E.) ; (3) Commanders (C.B.E.) ; 
(4) Officers (O.B.E.); (5) Members (M.B.E.). 
Women: (1) Dames Grand Cross (G.B.E.); 
(2) Dames Commanders (D.B.E.); (8) Com- 
manders (C.B.E.); (4) Officers (O.B.E.); (5) 
Members (M.B.E.). The first two classes, in 
the case of men, carry the honor of knighthood, 
and in the case of women the privilege of pre- 
fixing the title “Dame” to their names. The 
first lists of appointments to the orders have 
been issued. Nature selects the following as 
those known for contributions to science: To 
the Order of the British Empire: Lord Moul- 
ton and Lord Sydenham (G.B.E.); Mr. Dugald 


310 


Clerk, Professor H. S. Jackson and Mr. R. 
Threlfall (K.B.E.); Dr. Garrett Anderson, 
Professor H. B. Baker, Mr. L. Bairstow, Pro- 
fessor W. H. Bragg, Professor S. J. Chapman, 
Mr. W. Duddell, Mr. F. W. Harbord, Pro- 
fessor F. W. Keeble, Dr. Mary A. D. Scharlieb 
and Professor J. F. Thorpe (O.B.E.); Pro- 
fessor J. C. McLennan (O.B.E.). The follow- 
ing have, among others, been appointed Com- 
panions of Honor: The Hon. E. Strutt and 
Professor Ripper. 


Accorpinc to the London Times the pro- 
gram for the autumn meeting of the Iron and 
Steel Institute, held at the Institution of Civil 
Engineers on September 20 and 21, included 
the following papers: “Present practise in 
briquetting of iron ores,” by G. Barrett and T. 
B. Rogerson; “ Microstructure of commer- 
cially pure iron between Ar, and Ar,,” by W. 
J. Brooke and F. F. Hunting; “ The influence 
of heat treatment on the electrical and thermal 
resistivity and thermo-electriec potential of 
some steels,” by E. D. Campbell and W. C. 
Dowd; “ New impact testing experiments,” by 
G. Charpy and A. Cornu-Thénard; “ Heat 
treatment of gray cast iron,” by J. E. Hurst; 
“ Effect of mass on heat treatment,” by E. F. 
Law; “ Investigation upon a cast of acid open- 
hearth steel,” by T. D. Morgans and F. Rogers; 
“ The acid open-hearth process,” by F. Rogers; 
“The Eggertz test for combined carbon in 
steel,” by J. H. Whiteley, and “Failure of 
boiler plates in service, and investigation of 
stresses occurring in riveted joints,” by E. B. 


Wolff. 


THE autumn meeting of the Institute of 
Metals was held in the rooms of the Chemical 
Society, London, in Burlington House, on Sep- 
tember 19. The papers presented were: “ Ex- 
periments on the fatigue of brasses,” by Dr. B. 
Parker Haigh; “ Hardness and hardening,” by 
Professor T. Turner; “ The effects of heat at 
various temperatures on the rate of softening 
of cold-rolled aluminium sheet,” by Professor 
H. C. H. Carpenter and L. Taverner; “A 
comparison screen for brass,” by O. W. Ellis; 
“Further notes on a high temperature thermo- 
stat,’ by J. L. Haughton and D. Hanson; 
“Principles and methods of a new system of 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


gas-firing,” by A. C. Tonides; “Fuel economy 
in brass-melting furnaces,” by L. C. Harvey, 
with additional notes by H. J. Yates; “ The 
effect of great hydrostatic pressure on the 
physical properties of metals,” by Professor 
Zay Jeffries, and the “ Use of chromic acid and 
hydrogen peroxide as an etching agent,” by S. 
W. Miller. 

WE learn from Nature that donations and 
promises towards the Ramsay Memorial Fund 
received by the treasurers amount so far to 
£21,352, including £835 from members of the 
British Science Guild; £500 from Sir George 
Beilby, and £100 each from Lord Rosebery, the 
Company of Clothworkers, and the Salt Union, 
Ltd. Professor Orme Masson, of the Univer- 
sity of Melbourne, has undertaken to act as 
the representative and corresponding member 
of the committee for Australia. As already 
announced, Professor C. Baskerville, of the 
College of the City of New York, is acting in 
a similar capacity for the United States. 


Cuartes LEE CRANDALL, emeritus professor 
of railway engineering and geodesy in Cornell 
University, died at his home in Ithaca on 
August 25, aged sixty-seven years. 


Dr. Lewis ATTERBURY STIMSON, professor of 
surgery in Cornell Medical College, died on 
September 17, in his seventy-fifth year. 

Mr. Water E. Arcuer, known for his work 
on English sea fisheries, died on August 19 
at Sand, Norway, at the age of sixty-two years. 

Masor A. N. Leeps, the English paleontolo- 
gist, died on August 25 at the age of seventy 
years. 

Tue first of the four volumes of the 
Decennial index to Chemical Abstracts was 
issued September 20. This first volume, which 
contains a little over 1,000 pages, is devoted to 
authors, A to K. The completed index will be 
virtually a complete record of the world’s ac- 
complishments in chemistry during the period 
1907 to 1916. 

Tue War Industries Board has requested 
the subcommittee on fertilizers to make an 
immediate survey of the nitrate of soda con- 
sumption and requirements in the fertilizer 
industry. Blanks are being mailed to the en- 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


tire fertilizer industry. It is requested that 
this information be placed in the hands of the 
War Industries Board at the earliest possible 
moment. 


By decree of September 12, the president of 
Cuba has modified the Commission of Plant 
Sanitation to an Office of Plant Sanitation 
with Mr. John R. Johnston, former president 
of the commission, remaining as chief of the 
office. The duties of this new office are the 
same as of the former commission, it being the 
sole office to issue certificates for the exporta- 
tion of plants, in charge of all plant-quarantine 
problems, and entrusted with the eradication 
of the “ black fly,” Aleurocanthus woglumi, the 
control of the coconut budrot, the banana 
blight and other insect pests and plant 
diseases. 


THE report of the Education Branch of the 
British Board of Agriculture and Fisheries for 
the year 1915-16 is summarized in Nature. 
The report is said to afford evidence that, de- 
spite the severe restrictions imposed by the 
war upon the development of agricultural edu- 
cation and research, much useful work was 
accomplished during the year under review. 
There was a great decrease in the numbers of 
students taking long courses of instruction, 
whereas the numbers taking short courses were 
more than maintained. The Royal Agricul- 
tural College, Cirencester, and the Agricul- 
tural College, Uckfield, Sussex, were closed 
and the grants were withdrawn from two other 
institutions as a measure of war economy. 
Research work suffered severely owing to the 
heavy drain upon the staffs for army or muni- 
tion purposes, but much useful work on prob- 
lems of immediate technical importance was 
accomplished, of which the investigations at 
Cambridge on wheat-breeding and at Rotham- 
sted on soil and manurial problems may be 
singled out for special mention. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 
Governor JAMES E. Fercuson, of Texas, has 
been impeached by the legislature. The 
charges against him were financial irregulari- 
ties and improper interference with the board 
of regents of the state university. The bill 


SCIENCE 


311 


providing for the financial support of the uni- 
versity for the next biennium, which was ve- 
toed by Governor Ferguson, has been re-passed 
by the legislature and signed by the acting goy- 
ernor. The professors who were dismissed at 
the instigation of Governor Ferguson have 
been reinstated. 

Yate University has received since com- 
Mencement gifts amounting to $362,393.05. 
The largest was $100,000 from Mrs. Edward 
H. Harriman for the Harriman Fund for Ob- 
stetrics in the Medical School. Another gift 
was that of $50,000 from Charles F. Brooker, 
of Ansonia, also for the Medical School. 


Ir is now announced that the offer of the 
opening of the Harvard Medical School will be 
withdrawn, only one woman having replied, 
who was regarded as a desirable student. 

Proressor WALTER E. OnarK, head of the 
department of political science in the New 
York City College, has been elected president 
of the University of Nevada. 

Gerorce F. Kay, B.A., M.A. (Toronto), Ph.D. 
(Chicago), has been elected dean of the college 
of liberal arts of the University of Iowa. Dr. 
Kay will continue to be head of the department 
of geology in the university, and state geologist 
of Iowa. 

Mr. Srmon Marcovircs, assistant entomolo- 
gist for the past three years at the University 
of Minnesota, has resigned his position to ac- 
cept the position of head of the department of 
biology at the National Farm School, Bucks 
county, Pennsylvania. 

Eucene Deatrick, Ph.D. (Cornell), has been 
appointed professor of soils at the Pennsyl- 
vania State School of Forestry, Mont Alto, Pa. 

Mr. Harry B. Yocom, who recently received 
his Ph.D. from the University of California, 
has been appointed to the professorship of zool- 
ogy in Washburn College, Topeka, Kansas, to 
succeed the late Johnathan Risser. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
THE COLORS OF LETTERS 

SoME twenty-five years ago or more I pub- 

lished in The Popular Science Monthly, a little 

paper on “ The Color of Letters.” In it I re- 

ferred to a curious form of association of 


312 SCIENCE [N. 8. Vor. XLVI. No. 1187 
Eric Jordan, 1912 Eric Jordan, 1917 David Starr Jordan Majorie Edwards | Edith Snow 

A red red bright brown red colorless golden 
B bluish gray green brown dark blue 
Cc white white yellowish white pink pale yellow 
D bluish gray blue purple dark green 
E pale green yellow red colorless blue silver 
F red brown brown pale scarlet scarlet silver 
G pale brown yellow pale yellow dark blue pale brown 
H green yellow brown red heliotrope pale green 
I black black leaden black red silver 
J dark blue greenish leaden dull green red 
K brown brown lead violet pink plum color 
L pale green green green yellow dark green 
M red brown lead blue dull rose dark brown . 
N pale greenish light brown brown red pale green brick red A 
O light blue black white orange white 
12 yellow yellow lead color lavender lemon yellow 
Q pale red red brown bluish white yellow drab 
R dark green dark red bright green red black 
S) silvery gold silver bright yellow green pale red 
T white silver green yellow pale bluish green 
U yellow yellow brown yellowish colorless drab 
W, silver white violet blue black blue green 
W red brown brown lead blue white blue black 
x silver silver scarlet blue red 
xe silver white blue colorless aark yellow 
Z reddish dark brown scarlet green dark red 

color with the letters of the alphabet. This innate color between red A and yellow E. 


faculty has been called ‘ Pseudo-chromes- 
thesia,” which, I take it, means sensitiveness to 
false colors. It has been misunderstood by 
writers, who have imagined that the peculiar 
individuals having this trait actually see the 
color on the letter, which is not the fact. It is 
a mental association, not a false vision. Some 
have attributed it to a recollection of color 
blocks from which letters have been learned. 
To the “ pseudochromesthetic” this explana- 
tion is nonsense. It is, however, a fact that 
the tendency of this association of letters with 
colors is hereditary, and that it goes with a cer- 
tain interest in word-using and in the use of 
color, features capable in each case of devel- 
opment. 

When my son Eric was eight years old, no 
one ever having spoken of it to him before, I 
asked him what is the color of A? He re- 
sponded at once that it is red. At that time, 
1912, I made out a list of the alphabet with 
the colors assigned to each. Quite recently 
(1917) I repeated the question, never having 
mentioned the matter since. He said at once 
that A was red and seemed slightly surprised 
that any one should not see the difference in 


A few changes appeared, however, in his 
chromatic scale. These seem, however, to indi- 
cate vagueness of color, as the same impres- 
sion might be described as bluish in one case 
and greenish or gray in another. For the sake 
of those this note may interest, I append my 
own chromatic scale which has not changed 
appreciably since I first thought of it, with 
those of two former students, the one my own 
niece, Marjorie Edwards (now Mrs. Frank 
Blake), and Edith Snow, daughter of the late 
Dr. Frank Snow, former president of the Uni- 


versity of Kansas. Davin Starr JORDAN 


A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION FOR EULER’S DY- 
NAMICAL EQUATIONS 


TEACHERS of analytic mechanics may per- 
haps be interested in a demonstration which I 
have used for the past two years and which 
seems to illuminate Euler’s equations for the 
rotation of a rigid body. The experiment is so 
simple that it has doubtless been used before, 
but I do not recall ever seeing it described. 

GH is an ordinary support rod some 70 cm. 
long. IJ is a suspending cord. The ring J is 
set at such a point that when the rod is at rest 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


the angle GIJ is somewhat less than 45°. The 
center of gravity of the system then lies ver- 
tically below the cord. Choose axes fixed in the 
body as follows: For the axis 7 take a horizon- 
tal line through the center of gravity and per- 
pendicular to the plane GIJ, for axis 2 take 
the axis of the rod, and for axis 3 take a line 


J 


Fig. 1. 


through the center of gravity and perpendicu- 
lar to the plane of 7 and 2. $3 will then lie in 
the plane GIJ. These axes are represented in 
the figure, where the axis 1 is supposed to pro- 
ject directly towards us, and the coordinate 
system is consequently right handed. Take 


right-handed rotation as positive. Then 
Euler’s first equation may be written 
41 __ (BC) ay, =L, (1) 


dt 


where A, B, and C stand, respectively, for the 
moments of inertia about the axes 7, 2, 3; w,, 
w. w, for the angular velocities about those 
same axes; and LZ for any external torque 


SCIENCE 


313 


which may be acting about axis 7. In the 
present case we have very nearly B—0O and 
C= A, so that equation (1) becomes 


dw, ely, 
Fit ois =F- (2) 


Now give to the system a right-handed rota- 
tion about JJ. We then have w,>0 and 
o, > 0. If the center of gravity were to stay 
immediately below the cord we should have 
L£=0 and therefore dw,/dt<0. But this 
would increase the angle 9 and so throw the 
center of gravity out from underneath IJ. The 
weight of the system and the tension in IJ 
would then supply a positive torque LD. It is 
possible to have this torque of such magnitude 
as to make dw,/dt = 0, in which case the torque 
is entirely non-momental. The reason for the 
necessity of this non-momental torque is easily 
seen by considering an element of the rod near 
G or H. When the rod is rotating there must 
act upon this element a centripetal force di- 
rected toward the axis JJ. This force is sup- 
plied by means of the torque L. 

A rotation of sufficient magnitude to make 6 
very evidently greater than it is when the sys- 
tem is at rest is easily imparted by hand. 


ArtTHUR TABER JONES 
SmitTH COLLEGE 


A UNIQUE HORNET’S NEST 


In the magazine, The Guide to Nature, Vol. 
10, No. 1, June, 1917, Earl A. Newhall, of 
Shelburne, Mass., under the title “ The nest of 
an unknown hornet,” mentions a hornet’s nest 
of peculiar form which he found hanging un- 
der the eaves of an old shop. An excellent 
photograph of this strange nest accompanies 
the article. Newhall wrote to Dr. L. O. 
Howard, of the Bureau of Entomology, send- 
ing a photograph of the nest. Dr. Howard 
states : 


I never saw a hornet’s nest like the one in the 
photograph and I have referred your letter to Mr. 
S. A. Rohwer, of this bureau, who has studied these 
creatures for many years and he replies as fol- 
lows: ‘‘I have never seen a nest like this before 
and do not know if it is an abnormal one or not. 
If possible, I should like to have some of the ma- 


314 


kers so that it would be possible to determine the 
species and thus know if it is abnormal habit. 

The nest in question consisted of a globular 
portion which was abruptly contracted below 
into a long, slender, vertical neck of practically 
uniform diameter. This slender neck served 
as the only means of entrance into the struc- 
ture. 

The writer wishes to state that he once 
found one of these unique nests at Oxford, 
Mass., many years ago. This nest was kept 
as a curiosity in the writer’s collections for 
many years and did not fail to excite the 
wonder and admiration of those who saw it. 
In size and shape this nest was similar to the 
one found by Newhall at Shelburne, Mass. 
Newhall states that he found his specimen 
under the eaves of a building. As well as the 
writer can remember, the nest which he found 
at Oxford, Mass., was suspended from a small 
branch of a tree not far from the ground. The 
maker of the nest was never seen. Although 
the writer has always kept a sharp eye open 
since for other specimens of this kind, none 
has ever been seen. It would be of consider- 
able interest to know whether the two unique 
nests in question really represent abnormal 
deviations of habit for some well-known spe- 
cies, or the normal habit of nest-construction 
for a very rare and little known, or even un- 


known, species. H. A. Auuarp 
Wasuineton, D. C. 


SYNCHRONISM IN THE FLASHING OF 
FIREFLIES 

TuE articles on the flashing of fireflies which 
have appeared from time to time in SCIENCE 
have aroused my desire to experiment upon 
the subject. The presence of two individuals 
of the firefly, Photuris pennsylvanica DeG., 
in my tent at the University of Michigan 
Biological Station at Douglas Lake, Mich., on 
the evening of July 17, 1917, gave me my first 
opportunity. With the tent dark, I watched 
the two fireflies for about ten minutes. For a 
while they flashed alternately, but it soon be- 
came apparent that one was flashing a trifle 
more frequently than the other. Consequently, 
once in every two and one half to three min- 
utes flashing was simultaneous. Then for 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


about twenty minutes I experimented with a 
three-celled vest pocket flashlight with the fol- 
lowing results. I could easily get in rhythm 
with the firefly, but I could not make the fire- 
fly change its rhythm and keep with me. Some- 
times the fireflies would stop while I was flash- 
ing the light and again they would continue 
to flash after I stopped flashing. At no time 
could I control their flashings. The flashlight 
and the two fireflies flashed simultaneously 
when I synchronized with one of the fireflies 
until its time interval brought it into coin- 
cidence with the other. 

On the evenings of July 19 and 25, 1917, 
I had opportunity to carry the experimenta- 
tion further—on each occasion with a single 
firefly. The same kind of results were ob- 
tained from these experiments. However, I 
discovered that when I brought the flashlight 
within 25 centimeters of the firefly it ceased 
flashing and did not recommence until after 
I had ceased flashing or until I had moved 
the flashlight back a meter or more. 

On many evenings at the College of Agri- 
culture of the University of the Philippines, 


_ at Los Bajios, I have watched splendid fire- 


flies, of which there are large numbers in the 
immediate vicinity. I frequently noticed that 
small trees and shrubs would be more aglow 
at certain times than at others, but I never 
happened to observe a time when a small tree 
or shrub was all alight one instant and dark 
the next. In my experience there were al- 
ways some fireflies flashing in the “dark” 
periods. The times of greatest light occurred 
when the greatest number of varying flashes 
coincided. 

From these observations and experiments 
it seems to me that complete synchronism in 
the flashing of a group of fireflies is simply 
a very rare accident, occurring when the 
flashes of the individuals chance to come at 


the same time. Frank C. Gates 
CARTHAGE COLLEGE, 
CarTHAGE, ILL. 


UREDINIA OF CRONARTIUM RIBICOLA ON 
RIBES STEMS 


Durinc the past season uredinia of Cronar- 
tium ribicola Fischer have been discovered for 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


the first time on Ribes stems. Three natural 
stem infections were observed on a plant of 
Ribes hirtellum Michx. (Grossularia hirtella 
(Michx.) Spach) growing in a pine woodlot at 
Kittery Point, Maine. In this same woodlot 
two other isolated plants of the same species, 
inoculated with wciospores by applying the 
moistened sciospores to the unwounded green 
stems, developed respectively one and seven- 
teen stem infections. Of the seventeen infec- 
tions some were very evidently natural in- 
fections since they occurred at points on the 
stems where no exciospores had been applied. 

Uredinia were produced on some of the stem 
infections from the middle of June until Au- 
gust 20. The urediniospores which were 
formed in these sori were apparently normal in 
every way. In the case of the other stem in- 
fections, where no uredinia appeared, study of 
sectioned material showed an abundance of 
mycelium and numerous well-formed internal 
uredinia in the cortex. 

The discovery of sporulating uredinia on 
Ribes stems complicates the already difficult 
problem of detecting the disease on Ribes. In 
view of the observations recorded above, it 
must be concluded that no Ribes from infected 
regions can be declared absolutely free from 
the rust even when completely defoliated. 
Moreover, the presence of the mycelium and 
internal uredinia in the stem tissue is strong 
evidence that the disease does in some cases 
winter over on Ribes. 

G. B. Posey, 
G. F. Gravatt, 
R. H. Cottey 
OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS IN 
Forrest PATHOLOGY, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


Dioptrographic Tracings in Three Norme of 
Ninety Australian Aboriginal Crania. By 
Drs. Ricuarp J. A. Berry and A. W. D. 
Rosertson. Transactions of the Royal So- 
ciety of Victoria, Vol. VI., 1914. 

The volume at hand contains 270 “ life-size ” 
tracings of crania of Australian natives. The 
number of skulls dealt with is ninety, each 


SCIENCE 


315 


one being represented uniformly from the 
front, side and top. The publication follows 
one of a similar nature in which tracings were 
given of 52 Tasmanian skulls, by the same 
authors, and reviewed by the writer in SclENCE 
of December 16, 1910. 

As to derivations, the skulls utilized with 
six exceptions are all from the southeast part 
of Australia, 2. e., from the region south of 
the Murray River; the six exceptions are from 
Queensland. 

‘The authors accompany the publication with 
the statement: 


We are solely desirous of making available to 
our scientific colleagues elsewhere, material of a 
valuable character, and which is otherwise inacces- 
sible, and which runs the further risk of being lost 
in the process of time unless so collected. We do 
not desire to impose our own deductions derived 
from a study of this material upon those who may 
hold different opinions from ourselves, and hence 
we do not incorporate here, nor did we do so with 
the Tasmanian tracings, the result of our own ob- 
servations on highly debatable questions, with the 
material itself. The conclusions which we our- 
selves drew from the Tasmanian material have 
been published in the Proceedings of the Royal 
Society of Edinburgh, Volume 31, 1910, and simi- 
larly the conclusions which it is our intention to 
deduce from the present material will be made 
available elsewhere, and in due course. Thus those 
who desire to make use of the present material for 
other purposes will have a free hand both now and 
for the future. 


As in the ease of the tracings of the Tas- 
manian crania, anthropologists are thankful 
to Drs. Berry and Robertson for their pains- 
taking work; but as the Tasmanian volume so 
the one at hand presents certain serious defi- 
ciencies which are badly felt and which can 
scarcely be compensated for by any subsequent 
publication on the series. 

In the first place there is no identification 
and subdivision of the specimens according to 
sex. They are evidently all of adults, yet 
even this is not certain. But the most serious 
deficiency is the omission of all measurements. 
An illustration without at least two or three 
of the principal measurements does not convey, 
a full measure of confidence. It is probable 


316 


that the dimensions of the illustrations are 
perfectly true, but had a few measurements 
been given with each illustration this prob- 
ability might have become a certainty. 

The work incites, but does not satisfy ; which 
should not be taken as criticism, but rather as 
a stimulus for the future. We need more than 
tracings. We need, in a most precise form, 
every possible detail concerning the cranium 
as well as the rest of the skeletal and physical 
make-up of the Australian; and may Drs. 
Berry and Robertson be soon in a position to 
give us this information. 

AEs HrpuicKa 


The Culture and Diseases of the Sweet Pea. 
By J. J. Taupennaus. New York, E. P. 
Dutton & Co. Pp. xx + 282. 

In the preface the announcement is made 
that this book is primarily intended to be a 
practical treatise for use by both growers of 
sweet peas and investigators. Those inter- 
ested in the culture of this plant will no doubt 
find this book a very useful and helpful guide. 
It is among the few books which deal with 
both the culture and diseases of one particular 
crop. The author’s reason for including both 
phases in the same treatise is naive in that 
“the attack of most plant diseases depends 
on some weak point in the cultural methods 
which has weakened the host at some phase 
of its life history.” 

The first eighty-nine pages are devoted to 
explicit cultural directions which have been 
prepared for the author by specialists. The 
following ninety-five pages are given to a con- 
sideration of greenhouse and field troubles, 
including nine diseases of fungous origin, one 
of bacterial origin and a brief summary of 
the several insect pests. Due space is given 
in the closing chapters, in a clear, concise 
manner, to methods of prevention and con- 
trol of these maladies. 

The essential facts in the author’s several 
important investigations on the diseases of 
sweet peas are summarized in this book, yet 
it is believed that the investigator would pre- 
fer to consult the original reports. The 
grower, himself, can best judge of the author’s 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


success in avoiding the use of technical terms. 
This same difficulty which confronts every 
teacher of elementary plant pathology has 
been encountered, and if one were to put him- 
self in the position of the average reader he 
would find himself at times in a maze of mean- 
ingless terms. Certainly the person of less 
than collegiate training would find himself 
hopelessly lost if he attempted to wade through 
certain paragraphs in this book and at such 
points, one is even disposed to wonder what 
verbiage the author would have chosen had 
he purposed to use technical terms. 

The binomial Ascochyta pisi Lib. was prob- 
ably employed because it is better known than 
is the name for the ascigerous stage. 

The book is well and amply illustrated, is 
unusually free from typographical errors and 
gives the impression of being condensed yet 
complete. It should have a place in the refer- 
ence library of plant pathologists and of grow- 
ers of sweet peas. F. A. WoLrF 

NortH Carouina Acric. Exprr. Sra., 

West RateicH, N. C. 


FIELD CONFERENCE OF CEREAL 
PATHOLOGISTS 

Tue Third Annual Field Conference of 
Cereal Pathologists of the American Phyto- 
pathological Society was held at Madison, 
Wisconsin, on July 9,10 and 11. About forty 
were in attendance at the various meetings. 
The following program was presented : 


MONDAY, JULY 9 


The forenoon was spent in visiting the plant 
pathology laboratories of the University of 
Wisconsin. In the afternoon, after a discus- 
sion by Dr. A. G. Johnson upon “ Imperfect 
Fungi causing Cereal Diseases,” the session 
was continued in the field, where Dr. John- 
son’s experimental plots were examined. In 
the evening a supper and smoker were given 
at the University Club, and in the round-table 
discussion which followed, the following dis- 
cussions were given: 

1. Grass rusts and their réle in cereal con- 
servation; Leaders, Dr. J. C. Arthur, Dr. E. 
C. Stakman. Dr. Arthur gave a historical dis- 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


cussion of rust work, with especial reference 
to his work in preparation of the rust section 
of the North American flora. Dr. Stakman 
pointed out five problems in the study of grass 
rust: (1) Biological specialization; (2) accu- 
rate knowledge of distribution of biologic 
forms in relation to rust epidemics; (3) the 
role of grass rusts in over-wintering uredinia ; 
(4) the réle of grass rusts in passing epidemics 
from the barberry to grain; (5) grasses acting 
as agencies for passing epidemics from one 
grain field to another. 

2. The relation of the barberry to rust ept- 
demics; Leaders, Dr. FE. M. Freeman, Dr. E. 
M. Wilcox. In the absence of both of the 
above, Dr. Stakman led the discussion upon 
this topic also, Mr. Frank Piemeizel, who 
has charge of the Rust Survey now in progres3 
in the Mississippi Valley, stated that the sur- 
vey so far had indicated that stem rust over- 
winters in the extreme South in the uredinial 
stage, and that the amount of infection upon 
grain was found to decrease in passing from the 
south to the north. South of Ames, Iowa, no 
infection upon barberry was found, but north 
of that point no infection was found upon 
grain up to that time, except in the vicinity of 
affected barberry bushes. 

3. State and Federal legislation against the 
barberry ; Leaders, Professor L. H. Bolley, Dr. 
L. R. Jones. Professor Bolley reviewed the 
methods used in securing eradiction of barberry 
in North Dakota, which is the only state having 
a law declaring the barberry bush a nuisance. 
The work of eradicating the barberry bushes 
in North Dakota has almost been completed. 
Dr. Jones was unable to be present at the 
session. 

TUESDAY, JULY 10 


The forenoon was spent in visiting the farm 
near Madison operated by the Agronomy De- 
partment of the University of Wisconsin. In 
the afternoon the party went by auto from 
Madison, Wisconsin, to Watertown, Wiscon- 
sin, inspecting various grain fields on the 
way. In the evening a supper, smoker and 
round-table was held at the Commercial Hotel 
at Watertown. The following discussions 
were given: 


SCIENCE 


317 


1. State and Federal cooperation in fighting 
cereal diseases during our food emergency; 
Leaders, Dr. H. B. Humphrey, Dr. F. L. 
Stevens, Dr. 8S. G. Kern. Dr. Humphrey out- 
lined a plan for campaign for eradication of 
preventable cereal smuts. This work, depend- 
ent upon the passage of the Food Bill, is to be 
done in cooperation with the Extension Service, 
and is to consist of two phases: first, publicity 
campaign, by means of the press, posters, etc.; 
second, men to be sent into the field to co- 
operate with the Extension Service in secur- 
ing seed treatment. The subject of com- 
munity seed treatment plans was also brought 
up for discussion. Dr. Kern spoke for the 
need of closer cooperation between the Fed- 
eral and State Departments, and between states 
in their work, and of the value in correlating 
work upon general problems with local ones. 
Dr. Stevens was not present at the meeting. 

2. Recent investigations on yellow stripe 
rust; Charles W. Hungerford. An account 
was given of work being carried on at Cor- 
vallis, Oregon, upon this disease. 


WEDNESDAY, JULY 11 


The day was spent in Juneau, Wisconsin, 
Beaverdam, Wisconsin, and on the farm of 
Mr. Kruger near Beaverdam. Meetings were 
held at the Court House in Juneau, and at 
the Mealy Hotel at Beaverdam. These meet- 
ings were open for general discussion and 
transaction of business. 

The following business was transacted at 
the various meetings: 

It was voted to have the secretary com- 
municate with the Secretary of the Interstate 
Cereal Conference to arrange, if possible, to 
have the next meeting of Cereal Pathologists 
held at the same place as the Cereal Con- 
ference, with one day overlapping for joint 
meeting. 

A committee consisting of Dr. L. R. Jones, 
Dr. H. B. Humphrey, drew up the following 
resolution, which was unanimously adopted: 


To THE HONORABLE, 

THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 

We, the plant pathologists representing the 
chief grain-growing states in conference 


318 


assembled, in recognition of the following 
facts: 

1. The national and international need of 
the maximum production of all food grains 
for the immediate future. 

2. The preventable losses resulting from 
smuts and other seed-borne diseases. 

3. Practical and simple methods of seed 
treatment known to prevent such losses. 

4, The Office of Cereal Investigations has 
already instigated a movement looking to the 
more universal treatment of seed for the pre- 
vention of these losses. 

Resolve: (1) That it is our conviction that 
this. work should be pushed with all possible 
diligence. (2) That we as representatives of 
these grain-growing states pledge to this work 
our hearty cooperation and support. 


A committee consisting of Professor H. L. 
Bolley, Professor M. A. Carleton, and Dr. L. 
R. Jones, appointed to draft resolutions for 
the extermination of the barberry bushes, 
made the following report, which was ac- 
cepted : 


In view of the vital importance of the 
wheat crop, and as a national emergency meas- 
ure likely to prove an effective aid in increas- 
ing and insuring a better wheat crop in 1918, 
be it resolved: 

That we, the cereal pathologists of the 
American Phytopathological Society, in sum- 
mer session assembled at Madison, Wisconsin, 
respectfully ask the President of the United 
States to appoint a commission to consider 
the relation of the barberry to outbreaks of 
black stem rust of wheat, barley, other cereals 
and grasses with a view of deciding upon the 
desirability of eradiction of all cereal rust- 
bearing strains of the barberry in the United 
States in order that this source of rust epi- 
demics may be removed. 

Be it further resolved that the Secretary be 
instructed to send a copy of this resolution 
to the President of the United States. 


The following resolutions were also adopted 
by the Conference: 


That the chairman of this body appoint a 
committee to take up with federal authorities 
the matter of securing some definite action 
to insure an adequate supply of fungicides 
and insecticides, particularly those containing 
copper, for the protection of important crops 
against the destruction of fungous diseases 
and insect pests and to insure a reasonable 
price for the same such as shall not be pro- 
hibitory to their use by the farmers and fruit 
growers of the United States. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


To THE DEPARTMENT OF PLanT PaTHOLOGY 
AND OTHER FRIENDS AND MEMBERS OF THE UNI- 
VERSITY OF WISCONSIN: 

WHEREAS, the cereal pathologists in meeting 
convened at Madison, Wisconsin, from July 
9 to 11, were most hospitably entertained and 
assisted at their third annual meeting; 

Resolved, that we extend our hearty thanks 
and express our due appreciation for your 
efforts in our behalf. 

The following officers were elected for the 
ensuing year: Chairman, H. P. Barss. Secre- 
tary, C. W. Hungerford. 

C. W. Huncerrorp, 
Secretary 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


THE POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE TOXICITY OF 
ULTRA-VIOLET LIGHT? 


It is a general law of photochemical action 
that only those rays are effective which are ab- 
sorbed by the system in which the reaction oc- 
curs.? Visible light-rays are not, as a general 
tule, selectively absorbed by protoplasm and 
hence their action is usually confined to spe- 
cialized pigmented areas which constitute the 
receptive elements of optical sense-organs. 
Ultra-violet light, on the contrary, is generally 
highly toxic, even for colorless organisms, and 
since this toxicity presumably depends upon 
and is attributable to photochemical reactions 
the question presents itself to which constitu- 
ent of the protoplasm are we to attribute the 
selective absorption of these rays which is the 
necessary precedent of their photochemical ac- 
tivity ? 

It was pointed out nearly forty years ago by 
Soret? that the majority of proteins exhibit a 
well-marked absorption-band in the ultra-vio- 
let spectrum. In seeking for the origin of this 
absorption-band Soret found that it is espe- 
cially well exhibited by solutions of tyrosin, 


1From the department of biochemistry and 
pharmacology, Rudolph Spreckels Physiological 
Laboratory, University of California. 

2Eder, ‘‘Handbuch der photographie,’’ Halle, 
1884, p. 28. 

8J. L. Soret, Arch. d. Sc. phys. et nat. Geneva, 
1878, pp. 322, 359; 1883, pp. 194, 204. A. d’Arson- 
val, Arch. de Physiol. Norm et Path. Paris, 1890, 
Sér. 5, T. 2, p. 340. 


SEPTEMBER 28, 1917] 


and therefore referred it to the tyrosin radical 
in the protein molecule. These observations 
have recently been greatly extended by Kober,* 
who has carried out a spectrographic examina- 
tion of solutions of the various amino-acids 
which are the end-results of protein hydrolysis 
and of certain polypeptids. Kober has con- 
firmed the existence of an absorption-band in 
the ultra-violet in solutions of tyrosin and also 
finds that a similar band is exhibited by solu- 
tions of phenylalanin. The other amino-acid 
constituents of the protein molecule exhibit 
only general (7. e., non-selective) absorption in 
the ultra-violet spectrum. 

The possibility is thus indicated that the 
tyrosin and phenylalanin radicals of the pro- 
teins constitute the optical sensitizers which 
render living cells susceptible to the toxic ac- 
tion of ultra-violet light. If this were the case 
then passage of the light through solutions of 
proteins or the aromatic amino-acids should, 
by absorption of the toxic rays, to a greater or 
less extent deprive the light of its toxicity for 
protoplasm. With this possibility in view the 
following experiments were undertaken: 

Definite volumes of a densely inhabited cul- 
ture of paramecia were washed by suspending 
the organisms in tap-water and concentrating 
them by moderate centrifugalizations until a 
thick suspension of uninjured organisms in a 
colorless liquid was obtained. All of the sus- 
pensions used were prepared in exactly the 
same manner and were derived from the same 
culture. 

Our first step was to determine what we have 
called the “normal extermination period,” 
that is to say the duration of time in seconds 
of exposure to the direct rays of a Cooper-Hew- 
itt Ultra-violet Light Type Z at a distance of 
12 cm. from the quartz tube. For this pur- 
pose 0.5 ¢.c. of paramecium suspension was 
placed in a flat-bottomed (Syracuse) watch- 
glass and 0.5 ec.c. of tap-water was added. 
Trials were made with varying times of ex- 
posure and the percentage of organisms killed 
was estimated by counting the individuals of 
which the cilia had ceased moving. The nor- 


4P. A. Kober, Journ. Biol. Chem., 22 (1915) 
p. 433, 


SCIENCE 


319 


mal extermination-period was found, under 
these conditions, to be about 100 seconds. To 
determine whether the gases formed during the 
exposure to the ultra-violet light (ozone and 
nitric-oxide) hastened the killing of the organ- 
isms appreciably, a trial was made with a sus- 
pension protected from the ultra-violet rays by 
a thick glass plate, but still exposed to the 
gases. In this way it was determined that this 
factor could be overlooked, since after 900 sec- 
onds exposure no noticeable effect was ob- 
served. 

After determining the normal extermina- 
tion-period with the above procedure, trials 
were made with similar suspensions in solu- 
tios of Witte-peptone, gelatin, amino-acids, 
etc., the results of 160 such trials being sum- 
marized in the table below. Thus a 1 per cent. 
alanin suspension of paramecia was prepared 
by adding 0.5 c.c. of a 2 per cent. solution of 
alanin to 0.5 c.c. of washed paramecium sus- 
pension. 

The extermination-periods enumerated in 
the tables are meant to indicate that immedi- 
ately after the stated period of exposure 100 
per cent. of the organisms were dead. For it 
was found that even after an exposure as brief 
as 40 seconds in a water-suspension the organ- 
isms were affected and ultimately all died. 


AVERAGE EXTERMINATION PERIODS 
(Paramecia immersed in Test Solution) 


Water suspension .................00. 100 secs. 
1 per cent. cane sugar suspension ...... ahi), Gb 
1 per cent. urea suspension ............ TONES 
1 per cent. alanin suspension .......... nO RS 
1 per cent. leucin suspension ........... 215) 36 


1 per cent. gelatin suspension .......... 220 < 
1 per cent. peptone suspension ......... 300 


Glutamic acid, amino-benzoie acid and as- 
partie acid all proved to be themselves toxic 
for the organisms and could not therefore be 
tested by this method. Tyrosin is very spar- 
ingly soluble in cold neutral water. A satu- 
rated solution, although exceedingly dilute, 
conferred marked protection, the extermina- 
tion-period being lengthened to 180 seconds. 
An alkaline solution proved to be toxic and 
therefore could not be employed in this way. 


320 


In order to rule out the possibility that the 
protective action might be indirect, 2. e., not 
attributable to mere absorption of the toxic 
rays, and also to permit the employment of 
toxie acids the following modified procedure 
was employed: 

In a quartz beaker with a diameter of 32 
mm. 2 c.c. of the given acid were placed, this 
amount being just sufficient to completely 
cover the bottom of the beaker. A square 
piece of cardboard was placed on the Syracuse 
dish containing the paramecium suspension. 
The quartz beaker was then placed over a cir- 
cular opening in the cardboard, having a diam- 
eter of 25 mm. By this means the organisms 
were shielded from all ultra-violet rays except- 
ing those which passed through the solution in 
the quartz beaker. In order to fully expose all 
of the organisms and to standardize the depth 
of suspension, a paraffine mould was made in 
the Syracuse dish by holding a No. 3 rubber 
stopper in the center of the dish and pouring 
melted paraffine around it. On cooling, the 
stopper was withdrawn, leaving a depression 
20 mm. in diameter in which 0.5 ¢e.c. of para- 
Imecium suspension was placed. 

Somewhat over 100 exposures were made, 
using this method with the following results: 


AVERAGE EXTERMINATION PERIODS 
(Paramecia not immersed in Test Solution) 


WENGE? GoosadooaobosuoscoboobodsouaCE 130 secs. 
1 per cent. alanin ...............----- 130 <‘ 
1 per cent. glycocoll ...........------- T3OMCS 
1 per cent. aspartic acid .............-- UE) So 
1 per cent. glutamic acid ............. Ub E 9 3G 
aper cent. leucin’.... 0... 5. i. 2 - 250 <<‘ 
0.5 per cent. tyrosin ................- 420 ‘ 
1 per cent. amino benzoic acid ......... 2400 <* 


Tt will be noted that the results obtained by 
this procedure confirm those previously ob- 
tained by the method of immersion. 

In order to obtain 1 per cent. solutions of 
tyrosin and cystin, which are very sparingly 
soluble in water, slight amounts of alkali were 
added to the test solution in the beaker and the 
extermination-periods after passage of the rays 
through alkaline solutions of these acids and 
of certain of the acids enumerated above were 
determined, with the following results: 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1187 


AVERAGE EXTERMINATION PERIODS 
(Paramecia not immersed in Test Solution) 


0.5 per cent. NaOH ......5......2.... 150 secs. 
1 per cent. NaOH ..........-........ ZO ioe 
1 per cent. glutamic acid in 1 per cent. 

WEI Ssosetauasosvbooscadooo0dd 200 <* 


1 per cent. cystin in 0.5 per cent. NaOH. 1200 ‘‘ 

1 per cent. tyrosin in 0.2 per cent. NaOH unaffected 
after 40 
minutes 
exposure. 


We may infer that solutions of gelatine, pep- 
tone, amino-benzoic acid, cystin, tyrosin and 
leucin detoxicate ultra-violet rays which pass 
through them, while solutions of the other sub- 
stances investigated do not appreciably do so. 
The protective action of tyrosin in alkaline so- 
lutions is exceptionally marked, and in this 
connection it is of especial interest to note 
that Kober has found that an alkaline reaction 
markedly increases the absorption of ultra- 
violet rays by tyrosin solutions. 

The protective action of leucin, which does 
not exhibit a selective absorption in the ultra- 
violet, is at first sight somewhat puzzling. It 
was noticed, however, that both tyrosin and 
leucin solutions underwent a change of color 
upon continued exposure to the ultra-violet 
light. This change was especially marked in 
the leucin solutions resulting after 40 minutes 
exposure in closed quartz vessels in the pro- 
duction of a dark brown fluid having a dis- 
tinctly intensified odor. This solution had a 
much greater protective power when tested in 
the above manner than leucin solutions which 
had not been previously exposed to the light. 
We may infer that ultra-violet light induces 
chemical changes in a leucin solution resulting 
in the production of substances having an en- 
hanced power of absorbing ultra-violet rays. 

Our results are therefore decidedly in har- 
mony with the view that the susceptibility of 
protoplasm to ultra-violet light is conditioned 
by the selective absorption of the toxic rays by 
the aromatic amino-acid radicals of the pro- 
teins. 

F. I. Harris, 
H. S. Horr 


UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


_sCIENCE 


New SERIES = SINGLE Copixs, 15 CTs. 
Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 FRipay, OcTOBER 2; 1917 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00 


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SCIENCE \.. 


Frmay, Ocroser 5, 1917 


CONTENTS 
The American Chemical Society :— 
The Outlook in Chemistry in the United 
States: PROFESSOR JULIUS STIEGLITZ ...... 321 


Scientific Events :— 
The Lane Medical Lectures; The Anthro- 
pological Society of Washington; Effect of 
the War on Technical Education; The Work 


of the National Research Council ........ 333 
Scientific Notes and News ...............-: 335 
University and Educational News .......... 339 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
When is a Force not a Force? Dr. E. A. 
Ecxuarpt. The Third Law of Motion and 
“‘Tnertia Reaction’’: EvizaperH R. Latrp. 
The Oolitic and Pisolitic Barite from the 


Saratoga Oil Field, Texas: Dr. E. S. Moore. 340 


Scientific Books :— 
Bauer’s Ocean Magnetic Observations: Pro- 


FESSOR H. A. BUMSTEAD .«.............2-< 342 


The Relation of the Malpighian Tubules to the 
Hind Intestine in the Honeybee Larva: 
JAS PASUNELSON? seers en sates ok ee 343 

Special Articles :— 

The Effect of Ingested Placenta on the 
Growth-promoting Properties of Human 
Milk: Dr. Freperick S. HAMMETT AND 
Lyte G. McNeme. The Effect of Drain- 


age on Soil Acidity: S. D. Conner ........ 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
teview should be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


THE OUTLOOK IN CHEMISTRY IN THE 
UNITED STATES}? 


Ir is the highest privilege of the presi- 
dent of the American Chemical Society to 
express to you, citizens of Boston, the so- 
ciety’s deep appreciation of your interest 
in our science and of your courtesy in pro- 
viding entertainment for our numerous 
membership. In token of the reality of this 
appreciation, no less than in recognition of 
the honor bestowed upon me by you, my 
fellow members in the society, it is my 
pleasant duty to address you on some sub- 
ject which might interest you as an impor- 
tant phase of chemistry or which might 
bring home to you as thoughtful citizens of 
this great country of ours some of the im- 
portant functions which our science may 
be expected to fulfil in the life of the na- 
tion. It is the president’s happy privilege 
also to select his own subject. In normal 
times, I confess, I should have enjoyed the 
pleasure the scientific man finds in riding 
his own hobby before a large and friendly 
publie and I should have been tempted to 
try to present to you some phase of those 
wonderfully intricate worlds of atoms and 
molecules and of the forces controlling 
them, on which the peculiar power of our 
science rests. But the spirit of complete 
preoccupation in the great test to which our 
country is being put, which I know per- 
vades the minds and souls of all of you, has 
led me rather to the choice of a subject of 
more immediate relation to our present 
situation. I have thought you might be in- 
terested in a discussion of the outlook in 

1 President’s address delivered before the Ameri- 


can Chemical Society, September 12, 1917, at Bos- 
ton, 2 


322 


chemistry in the United States, with spe- 
cial reference to the resources of chemis- 
try in the nation’s service in war and in 
peace, as seen from the point of view both 
of chemical industry and of universities 
and colleges, the sources from which our 
chemists and our chemical lore are derived. 

The great European war and now our 
own entry into the world struggle of free 
democracies against the organized military 
power of the last strongholds of feudal 
privilege in western civilization have 
brought home to the public as never before 
in the history of the world the vital place 
which chemistry occupies in the life of na- 
tions. What is it, indeed, that is so funda- 
mental in this science that a country’s very 
existence in times of great emergencies and 
its prosperity at any time may depend on 
its master minds in chemistry? It is the 
fact, summed up in the fewest possible 
words, that chemistry is the science of the 
transformation of matter. Since every 
phase of our existence is bound up with 
matter, from our birth to our return to 
dust, we find at every turn in life that 
chemistry is in demand to aid man in his 
effort to assure to himself a safe, scientific 
control in the supplying of his own needs, 
where nature, from time immemorial, has 
shown the same impersonal indifference as 
to his wants, his survival or destruction, 
that she has for every other form of life! 
From the transformation of our raw ores 
into finished metals of almost any conceiy- 
able quality and application, to the trans- 
formation of rocks and salts and the gases 
of our atmosphere into nourishing foods, 
from the transformation of the yield of our 
peaceful cotton fields and rich coal depos- 
its into death-dealing explosives, to the 
preparation of blessed life-saving medica- 
ments from the same crude sources—to 
mention only a few instances of the trans- 
formation of matter that I have in mind— 
it is chemistry that is giving us the power 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


to satisfy our needs, whether it be for wise 
and beneficent purposes or for the fulfil- 
ment of our more baneful desires. 

The crisis of the war has put this great 
controlling science, as it has put all other 
human agencies, to the fire test in every 
great country on the face of the earth. 
Acknowledgedly, chemistry has thus far 
staved off defeat for Germany after Joffre 
on the Marne had killed her hopes for a 
swift, crushing victory through the viola- 
tion of Belgium, and had taught her that 
she must face a long struggle, in which, cut 
off from the world’s supplies, she must 
make shift with what her own territories 


could yield and her chemists could produce. 


In the wonderful organization of power in 
France and in England in the midst of 
war, the French and English chemists have 
stepped in and brought their supplies of 


munitions of every variety, of remedies, of 


their new weapons of defense and offense 
in poison gas and liquid fire warfare up 
to the point of meeting now on more than 
equal terms an enemy prepared years in 
advance. And in our country too our 
chemists have stood the ordeal of an un- 
precedented time. I have in mind our 
splendid achievement of having solved in 
these three years of warfare such tremen- 
dous problems which these years have 
brought to us as were involved in the 
speeding up of the production of thousands 
and thousands of tons of fundamental 
chemical products needed by our allies and 
now for our own purposes—steel and iron 
alloys of every variety of toughness, hard- 
ness or elasticity, purified copper by the 
millions of pounds, aluminium for airships 
and motor ears, abrasives on which the 
trueness of every great and every small gun 
depends, sulphuric acid and alcohol for the 
preparation of explosives—foods, oils and 
scores of other essential products prepared 
on a scale never seen before—I think we 
may say with justifiable pride that our 


OcroseEr 5, 1917] 


great basic chemical industries have suc- 
cessfully risen to the demands of a situa- 
tion unparalleled in its scope and urgency. 
There have been times of delay and times of 
worry, but the few failures have been due 
rather to financial difficulties than to a 
breakdown in scientific efficiency. To those 
of us who know that the chemist is the final 
controlling mind, guiding in safety for the 
financier these vast undertakings and ex- 
pansions, the record of these years is truly 
a wonderfully satisfactory response to the 
first crucial test of the efficiency of chemis- 
try in America. 

And this result justifies the faith that we 
will win out just as surely in the hundreds 
of newer problems brought to us by our 
own participation in the war. Some of 
these problems have been brought to the at- 
tention of our members by the chairman of 
the two chief chemistry committees, which 
are cooperating with the government—Dr. 
W. H. Nichols, chairman of the committee 
on chemistry of the National Defense 
Council, an industrial committee, and by 
Dr. M. T. Bogert, chairman of the chemis- 
try committee of the National Research 
Council, a research committee. From San 
Francisco to Boston, from Minnesota to 
Texas, our chemists have shown the all- 
pervading desire to bring to the immediate 
practical assistance of our country every 
ounce of our strength and every grain of 
our intelligence, and have stepped into line 
for service not only with splendid enthusi- 
asm, but still better, with the grim deter- 
mination of purposeful men, who know well 
our enemies’ strength, but who will do our 
share to eliminate, effectively, unscrupu- 
lous militarism from the politics of the 
world! The immediate response to the 
tender of the services of our membership to 
the President of the United States and of 
the organization of the members for such 
service through a census of chemists has 
been an increase in our membership from 


SCIENCE 


323 


a total of some 8,000 to 10,500, an unprece- 
dented growth, which shows unequivocally 
that the chemists of the United States are 
of one mind in ranging themselves on the 
side of organized, whole-hearted and force- 
ful support of our government in this war! 
Indeed, one of our chief difficulties has 
been to restrain our men in their eagerness 
until proper organization would enable the 
central committees to designate to each 
man the field in which he could serve best. 
To the impatient chemists, waiting for 
their ‘‘marching orders’’ it may have ap- 
peared that invaluable time has been wasted 
and that progress even now is all too slow. 
But work on all the most important prob- 
lems really was quickly organized and al- 
ready important results are available. As 
an illustration of this fact we have the 
brilliant and speedy success of Dr. Day and 
his collaborators in producing optical glass, 
so much needed for range-finders, which 
will bring our shots home to the enemy. 

The very nature of most of the problems 
makes it impossible to name them here, but 
I may say that improvements in explosives, 
multiplication of the sources of supply 
from which to manufacture explosives, in- 
cluding the utilization of the atmospheric 
nitrogen for the production of nitric acid, 
providing protection for our soldiers and 
sailors against poisonous gases, the ma- 
king of chemicals for which we have 
hitherto been dependent on importations, 
these are some of the problems on which 
many of our ablest chemists have been 
working with all the power and concentra- 
tion that the occasion demands. I may be 
more explicit in regard to the problem of 
the home manufacture of so-called syn- 
thetic remedies, for the supplies of which 
up to the present time we have turned to 
our present enemies. We need large sup- 
ples of salvarsan for our hospitals and 
for our armies, we need local anesthetics, 
substitutes for cocaine, for our surgeons, 


324 


we need safe hypnotics to insure blessed 
sleep to sufferers in home or hospital, we 
need a long list of products to relieve the 
numberless ailments to which man is sub- 
ject. Many of the best of these products 
are protected by patents, but the Adamson 
law will make it possible for American 
manufacturers to prepare these remedies 
in this country. There is nothing wonder- 
ful about their preparation—the scientific 
skill and experience of American chemists 
is coping with them as easily as an expert 
chess-player solves his problem in chess— 
and indeed with much the same kind of en- 
joyment. For instance, the obstacles in the 
way of the preparation of some drugs, most 
meeded but prepared with considerable 
difficulty, such as salvarsan and atophan, 
have already been overcome in a way that 
leaves no doubt, if any ever existed, as to 
our ability to stand on our own feet, once 
Congress has removed the legal disabilities. 
University men and industrial firms have 
united in the vigorous attack on this prob- 
lem. 

This question brings me to another phase 
of my subject. Looking beyond the im- 
mediate future to the years ahead, why 
should we ever again be dependent on any 
foreign country for such fundamental 
needs of a nation as the best remedies for 
its stricken people—or, enlarging the ques- 
tion—for such fundamental industrial 
needs as dyes and dozens of finer chemicals, 
the need of which has seriously handi- 
capped manufacturers and to a certain ex- 
tent is still interfering with normal activ- 
ity? It has been publicly urged in Ger- 
many—lI am quoting from an excellent ar- 
ticle by our friend Dr. Baekeland—that 
German dye manufacturers after the war 
should allow only a limited and conditional 
quantity of dyes to go to foreign countries, 
including the United States, in order to 
give her home industries a great lead in 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


recovering the commerce of the world in 
textiles. Even if this suggestion should 
not be put into effect, for Germany has 
more to lose than to gain by a policy of 
trade-war after the reestablishment of 
peace, we may be sure that her own manu- 
facturers will get the best of her supplies 
and every possible advantage. Our textile 
manufacturers and many other branches 
of industry will be at the mercy of com- 
petitors, assisted by government direction, 
unless we have a declaration of chemical 
independence in this country! Every 
thoughtful chemist, I am convinced, and I 
trust that every other thoughtful citizen, 
will acquiesce in the policy that henceforth 
in our basic needs, at least, we be independ- 
ent of the friendship or enmity of foreign 
nations! And that conclusion brings me to 
one of the most important points in my 
discussion this evening: What are some of 
the main conditions, from a chemist’s point 
of view, that must be fufilled, if we are to 
look forward to successful industrial and 
scientific development and independence, 
when the tremendous competition of peace 
must be met. These conditions are to be 
sought not only in the field of applied chem- 
istry—and applied chemistry includes 
every great national industry, from agri- 
culture to the manufacture of steel—but 
they involve also our universities, technical 
schools and colleges, the great sources from 
which our chemists come, not only equipped 
technically for their work, but carrying 
also the inspiration, the orientation, which 
will make or mar them and with them will 
make or mar that part of the nation’s life 
which will be dependent on chemistry. 
Turning first to the field of applied 
chemistry, I would like to emphasize that 
in my opinion the most important. single 
factor which would lead to a tremendous 
increase in power in our industrial devel- 
opment is not immediately a question of 


Octoser 5, 1917] 


scientific achievement, but a factor found 
in a simple psychological analysis of our 
industrial situation. Let our manufactur- 
ers but awaken to the great significance, to 
the full meaning of the simple old behest 
that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and 
they will be astounded at the results. 
American manufacturers at present on the 
whole do not treat their chemists, and es- 
pecially their research and directing chem- 
ists, fairly. The tendency is to exploit the 
chemist as an employee, instead of treating 
him as a partner, who brings scientific ex- 
perience, skill and acumen to the aid of 
capital and commercial experience and 
standing. Manufacturers are willing to 
cooperate essentially on the footing of part- 
ners with great lawyers, who solve their 
legal difficulties—usually a wholly sterile 
performance as far as the welfare of the 
mation as a whole is concerned—but they 
have not yet learned to cooperate in the 
same fashion with men of our profession, 
who solve their technical difficulties to the 
direct enhancement of the nation’s wealth 
and welfare! Our chemists know and feel 
that they are being exploited and in con- 
scious or unconscious resentment, after one 
bitter disappointment or the other in their 
employers’ fairness, they lose their fresh 
enthusiasm and their capacity for the 
whole-hearted, unstinting effort that goes 
with the work in which the heart and soul 
support the mind! All this is wrong. Re- 
search and managing chemists should be 
sure that success means partnership in the 
fruits of their success, that success will 
yield immediately and not in some hazy 
future of a soon-forgotten promise, an 
equitable share in the actual benefits of the 
work done. This is one of the real but un- 
recognized sources of the unquestioned 
leadership of Germany in fields chemical: 
Dr. Bernthsen, director of the Badische 
Anilin-Fabrik, probably the greatest of the 


SCIENCE 


325 


many great German firms, told me some 
fifteen years ago that from the lowliest 
workman up to the highest chemist in his 
employ, every individual is guaranteed by 
contract a royalty, a definite share in the 
money earned or saved by any suggestion 
or discovery on the part of the individual. 
Contrast this wise policy with what is com- 
mon knowledge concerning the situation 
in the great majority of American plants. 
Any chemist can multiply indefinitely the 
single specific illustration of this attitude 
that I will give. One of our doctors of 
philosophy of the University of Chicago, as 
chief chemist for one of the very largest 
manufacturing concerns in the country— 
a unit in a “‘ trust ’’—perfected a device, 
simple in itself, that saved the corporation 
perhaps $80,000 a year: his reward was a 
princely increase of $200 or $300 a year in 
salary! Incidentally, let me say that I 
promptly took him away from this corpor- 
ation—we can not afford to waste good men 
in such places. In case after case that has 
come to my notice from some of our lead- 
ing men, chemists have been cuddled and 
patronized until their improvements have 
been completed and then recognition has 
come munificently in the form of a few 
hundred dollars a year and—oblivion. 
These men, leading men, let me remind you, 
have acknowledged to me that this treat- 
ment killed outright all the fire of enthusi- 
asm with which they had been wont to 
work! There are a few noteworthy excep- 
tions among corporations, but their 
strength and prosperity confirm the validity 
of the appeal I am making, for they have 
recognized that in large measure their con- 
tinued prosperity has been the result of the 
brain-work of their chemists, cooperating 
with the brain-work of their directors and 
the capital of their corporations. There 
are also prominent exceptions among in- 
dividual chemists: we have men in our So- 


326 


ciety who have worked their way to posi- 
tions and incomes on a par with those of 
successful lawyers and physicians—but 
manufacturers should heed well that almost 
invariably these are men who withdrew 
from their original direct employment by 
corporations and have developed their own 
independent establishments, either as con- 
sulting chemists or as independent, com- 
peting manufacturers! How much wiser 
it would have been for the manufacturers 
—I am not saying, for the chemists—if 
these brilliant, forceful men had been kept 
in their establishments, as they would have 
been abroad, by fair treatment as partners 
im success as well as in effort. 

I have dwelt long on this plea because 
I consider this message to our manufactur- 
ers from an outside observer, a university 
man without any industrial affiliations, to 
be perhaps the most important service I 
can try to render our country in this privi- 
leged address. Let me summarize my point 
with the aid of an analogy which I owe to 
my friend Dr. Hisenschiml’s remarks after 
a presentation of this subject to our local 
section in Chicago: Just as Napoleon let 
every soldier feel that he carried a mar- 
shal’s baton in his knapsack and thus se- 
cured the enthusiastic and self-sacrificing 
support of his hundreds of thousands, so 
our manufacturers should let their chem- 
ists feel that each one carries in his brains a 
contract of partnership—and all that is in- 
volved therein! If this is done, we will 
witness through the tremendous power 
of the combination of psychological mo- 
mentum and trained, scientific minds, the 
dawn of an era of power and prosperity in 
our industries, in which no one need fear 
the after-the-war competition for which all 
Europe is now preparing. Enlightened 
self-interest is slowly revolutionizing and 
improving our whole social fabric by a 
fairer, more honest conception of the rela- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1188 


tion of capital to workers—with harm to 
no one, least of all, and to their own sur- 
prise, to those who have blindly been op- 
posing the movement. And my plea for 
fairer treatment of productive chemists is 
the point at which the great world move- 
ment touches our scientifie body. 

Another vitally important factor in the 
outlook for chemistry in the United States 
is the adoption by our legislative bodies 
of a definite national policy looking toward 
the establishment of that independence of 
our country in the matter of chemical sup- 
plies to which reference was made before. 
Action in this direction has been happily 
inaugurated in the fundamental matter of 
the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen for the 
manufacture of explosives in war times, of 
fertilizers in peace and war. The fixation 
of nitrogen plants in Germany have un- 
questionably saved her thus far both from 
a military collapse and from starvation. 
As has been indicated before, it is impor- 
tant too that we become independent in as 
large a measure as possible also in regard 
to all manufactured chemicals and particu- 
larly also the finer organic chemicals, in- 
cluding the dyes and the synthetic drugs. 
The most important measure necessary to 
this end is protection by duties such as a 
non-partisan commission of experts may 
find necessary. American textile manu- 
facturers, who have opposed this action in 
the past as far as dyes are concerned, have, 
I trust, learned their lesson, and will not, 
I hope, need a second more sharply pointed 
one. And other manufacturers, having 
found their supplies of needed chemicals 
cut off or enormously increased in cost, will 
also, I imagine, favor the establishment of 
conditions making home production pos- 
sible. It is a source of gratification to 
me to state that the United States Tariff 
Commission, which is making a scientific 
study of the vexed tariff problem, most 


OcrosEr 5, 1917] 


courteously asked for, and received, the co- 
operation of this society in the choice of 
an unprejudiced expert on the chemical 
schedules. 

Wise patent legislation is another fun- 
damental consideration in a declaration of 
chemical independence. The public—that 
is, their representatives in Washington— 
should understand what is obvious to any 
professional student of the problem, 
namely, that independence is altogether a 
question of capital, not of science—of dol- 
lars, not of chemists. Our unqualified suc- 
cess in every line of applied chemistry in 
which investment of capital has been an 
attractive proposition is positive evidence 
that we have the chemists and the knowl- 
edge to achieve this independence, if wise 
legislation by tariff and patent laws will 
insure to capital a return sufficiently at- 
tractive and stable to have it enter these 
needed fields. 

To illustrate concretely what this policy 
would mean for the nation let us consider 
the following: Much more than a question 
of coloring materials is concerned in a con- 
scious policy to have our dye industries 
established on a permanent basis. It has 
often been emphasized that the manufac- 
ture of dyes is so closely related to the 
preparation of explosives that a flourishing 
dye industry in times of peace means ample 
facilities for explosives in times of war. 
No American would care to contemplate 
what our position would be in the matter 
of large scale production of explosives if 
we had become engaged in a struggle with 
a first class power without the benefit of 
the great expansion in our dye and ex- 
plosives factories which our commerce with 
England and France brought about after 
1914! When peace comes, let no American 
forget this lesson! One way of insuring 
ourselves against a lack of facilities for 
a sudden expansion in the production of ex- 


SCIENCE 


° 


327 


plosives is to keep capital invested in dye 
factories. 

Independence in the preparation of me- 
dicinal remedies, especially also of the 
finer modern products which we call syn- 
thetic drugs, should be as conscious an aim 
of the United States as independence in the 
manufacture of dyes. It is worth noting 
that the two aims support each other, for 
nearly all of the basic products needed for 
the large scale preparation of synthetic 
remedies are either prepared in aniline dye 
factories as intermediate steps toward the 
dyes or are so closely related to such com- 
pounds that it would be a mere detail to in- 
clude these products in the normal output 
of a dye factory. As an instance pointing 
in this direction, recent correspondence 
with a prominent American firm, which has 
invented and is manufacturing what prom- 
ises to be a valuable substitute for cocaine 
in producing local anesthesia, brought out 
the fact that the chief difficulty in the way 
of the production of the drug on the large 
seale which the situation demands, lies in 
the securing of sufficient quantities of the 
chemicals diethylaniline and cinnamic acid. 
Now, the former could and should be manu- 
factured in dye factories with the greatest 
of ease, side by side with dimethylaniline, 
which is a common intermediate in the 
manufacture of many dyes, and cinnamic 
acid could be prepared from benzaldehyde, 
another intermediate. Furthermore, large 
research departments in well-organized dye 
factories will be centers of research in ap- 
plied organic chemistry and practically all 
of our valuable synthetic drugs are such 
organic compounds. Indeed, it will be a 
matter of time only—and I should like to 
see that time shortened as much as possible 
—when some of our best equipped and most 
progressive dye factories will turn to the 
problem of these remedies as a question of 
the economic utilization of their equipment. 


328 


That has been the history abroad and it 
will be the same here. In fact, together 
with our long-established great pharma- 
ceutical houses, they should find even 
richer, unexploited fields of effort in the 
problems of synthetic drugs than in those 
of dyes. Without question the average 
man spends on necessary drugs for his 
family at least a thousandfold the value of 
the dyes in the wardrobes of his whole 
family—the ladies, of course, included. 
The twitchings of rheumatism or gout, 
sleepless nights or a cantankerous cold are 
most urgent and persuasive drawers on a 
family purse. My professional friends in 
the audience know well how the modern 
dye industry has been built up on an accu- 
rate scientific knowledge of the connection 
between color and what we call the strue- 
ture of the molecules, those minute worlds 
on the knowledge of which our power to re- 
construct matter rests. We know too that 
the dye industry has reached, or almost 
reached, its full maturity and capacity. 
But we are only on the threshold of exactly 
the same kind of development in the dis- 
covery of improved remedies for curing 
human ills because the connection between 
the structure of our molecular worlds and 
their medicinal effect is just beginning to 
be systematically elaborated. Great indus- 
trial establishments founded on organic 
chemistry, like the dye manufacturing and 
the great pharmaceutical houses, collabo- 
rating with research laboratories in uni- 
versities and in medical institutes, would 
hold out to this country the promise of a 
share in realizing a duplication of the con- 
quest of the world of color, which has oc- 
curred in the last fifty years, by the greater 
conquest of the world of scientific medicine! 
A brilliant beginning has been made in 
this campaign by the preparation of excel- 
lent substitutes for cocaine, less toxic than 
cocaine itself—by the elaboration of sal- 
varsan, by the isolation in our own country, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


and the artificial production, of adrenalin, 
a vital regulating principle produced by an 
organ, the suprarenal capsule, in our bod- 
ies. The isolation and exhaustive study by 
Kendall of the active principle of the thy- 
roid gland, which no doubt will be followed 
by its artificial preparation, is a second 
brilliant instance of American success in 
this great field! When we consider the 
countless number of animal preparations— 
gland extracts, serums and antitoxins—the 
pure active principles of which are all we 
really want, but which are injected into us 
or fed to us, with an extraordinary amount 
of unnecessary and often harmful animal 
matter, we can realize what a boon to hu- 
manity this line of effort really means. Let 
me emphasize again, it is chiefly a matter 
of wise and foresighted legislation to make 
our independence and perhaps our leader- 
ship in this great field possible—we have 
proved that we have the scientific ability 
—it is a question only of putting this work 
on the basis of an established industry ! 
There are other important considera- 
tions bearing on the outlook for chemistry 
in the United States from the point of view 
of industrial chemistry—such as a law ma- 
king possible commercial agreements and 
divisions of labor among competing houses, 
which exist abroad—but I must neglect no 
longer to turn to the third important 
theme embraced in my subject, the outlook 
for chemistry from the point of view of our 
universities and colleges, in which I will 
include the outlook for the development of 
the theory of our science in this country. 
One can not well overestimate the im- 
portance of the standing of chemistry in 
our universities and colleges: they are not 
only the main sourees of supply of chem- 
ists in the United States, but they are also 
the fountain-heads for the knowledge which 
keeps us in touch with the progress of 
chemistry the world over and which makes 
available for rapid absorption in any field 


Ooroser 5, 1917] 


of pure or applied chemistry new discover- 
ies, new methods of attack, new, clarifying 
points of view. Let me remind you that 
applied chemistry includes not only indus- 
trial chemistry, but also fundamental and 
most promising fields of effort in other 
major sciences. Botany through the in- 
spiration of Liebig was probably the first 
of our sister sciences to apply chemistry to 
the solution of many of its problems. 
Physiology followed and now we see even 
zoology awakening under the stimulus of 
chemistry from its long morphological 
trance to a live science of animal life. In 
fulfilment of the promise contained in the 
life of our great fellow-chemist Pasteur, 
chemistry is now at last guiding not only 
the physiologists, but also the bacteriolo- 
gists, pathologists and laboratory clinicians 
toward the raising of medicine from the un- 
certain realm of art to the safer one of 
science. All life is indeed but a transfor- 
mation of matter in its loftiest phase and 
the world is at last realizing that the 
fundamental science of the transforma- 
tion of matter holds the key which should 
unlock the secrets of all aspects of life, of 
birth, health, disease and death, and prob- 
ably even of such subtler manifestations as 
heredity and character. 

I have outlined some of these far reach- 
ing applications of chemistry in order to 
emphasize the fact that if we are to meet 
all of these demands on chemistry, if the 
outlook not for chemistry alone, but for all 
of these lines of human progress which are 
dependent on our science is to be one of 
sure promise in the United States, it be- 
hooves our people to see that the depart- 
ments of chemistry in our universities and 
colleges be kept not only prolific as to the 
output of men—the vast expansion in lab- 
oratories and attendance bears witness to 
quantity being insured if the war does not 
affect us too severely—but that they also 
bé maintained on such a high level of scien- 


SCIENCE 


329 


tifie quality that the product will consist 
of the very best type of men! We have re- 
ceived from the period from which we are 
now passing a magnificent heritage of world 
standing and ideals in our university life. 
The last twenty-five years witnessed an era 
of expansion of our resources for research 
and instruction, of the raising of standards 
of scholarship and productivity of such 
moment that many years before the war 
began the migration of our students, espe- 
cially also of our chemistry students, to 
Europe for the pursuit of graduate work 
and the securing of the highest type of pro- 
fessional training had practically ceased. 
It has no longer been a question of Berlin 
or Munich, of Goettingen or Heidelberg ; 
for the prospective chemistry student it has 
been a choice of Harvard or John Hopkins, 
of Chicago or Columbia, of Illinois or Cali- 
fornia, the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology or Cornell—I could extend the list 
much longer, but fear it would tire you. 
And it has been so because our young men 
have felt that they could secure just as 
thorough an education here as there, just 
as inspiring guidance from men whose re- 
search had made them masters in their own 
fields. Our Remsens and Michaels, our 
Richardses and Nefs, our Noyeses and Gom- 
bergs, Lewises and Morses—to mention only 
a few of our leaders of this period— 
founded that independence in university 
education in chemistry which our country 
has the right to demand that we maintain. 

Now, thoughtful men in our society, 
looking ahead, see that this great uplift in 
our scientific life is facing dangers which 
unless they are met frankly and effectively, 
will bring on a period of depression which 
will be a grave menace to all the varied 
fundamental interests in the life of the na- 
tion that depend on chemistry. 

The first and greatest of these menacing 
developments has its root in the recent un- 
precedented demand of our industries on 


330 


our schools for research men. From uni- 
versity after university, from college after 
college, the combined lure of great research 
opportunities and of much larger financial 
returns has taken from our academic life 
far too many of our most promising young 
men, the very men on whom the country 
has been depending for the filling of our 
great university chairs as the older men 
now holding them gradually will age and 
retire. Unless prompt measures are taken 
we shall witness in a few years such a 
dearth of first-class tried material for pro- 
fessorships that second-rate men will be 
placed where the national welfare needs 
the best we have, and third- and fourth- 
rate men will be occupying positions in 
which we should have young men of the 
highest promise in the period in which 
they are reaching full maturity. Indeed, 
it is greatly to be feared that even now we 
are witnessing a gradual lowering of stand- 
ards. It would be futile to appeal to our 
industries not to call the men they need, al- 
though in the not distant future they will 
suffer most severely from the situation 
which is developing, if the present tenden- 
cies remain unchecked. The only possible 
source of relief lies, I believe, with the 
presidents and trustees of our great uni- 
versities, and to these the second main plea 
of this privileged discussion is addressed. 
These authorities should recognize the fact 
that their institutions have now entered a 
period of severe competition between the 


industries and academic life for chemists: 


of the highest type and greatest promise. 
They have already learned the only method 
of meeting this kind of competition suc- 
cessfully, for they have faced the same 
problem in two other professions, medicine 
and law: in the face of the tremendous 
financial attractions of the practise of 
either of these professions our most pro- 
gressive universities have simply put their 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


law and their medical faculties on a higher, 
more nearly professional scale of endow- 
ment of professorships than obtains for 
their other faculties. They must, it seems 
to me, take the same measures with their 
chemistry staffs: it is primarily a question 
whether they can be awakened to that need 
now or whether they will let the country 
suffer from their lack of foresight and let 
us learn from the most efficient of our 
teachers, bitter experience. Wise provis- 
ion now would not only safeguard our pres- 
ent standing in a critical period of our his- 
tory, but in this time when the importance 
of chemistry has been brought home to our 
young men as never before, the new atti- 
tude, properly announced, would attract a 
large proportion of the men of brains, tal- 
ent and ambition who enter professional 
life, but tend to study law or medicine as 
holding out much greater opportunities for 
the satisfying of their ambitions. 
Adequate compensation is important for 
a research man—and to his type in uni- 
versity and college I must restrict my re- 
marks—it is important both from the point 
of view of his self-respect and also espe- 
cially for the sake of comparative freedom 
from worry concerning a fair provision for 
his family. But inadequate compensation 
is not the only danger seriously threaten- 
ing the outlook for chemistry in our uni- 
versities. Let us remember that healthy 
progress in our science is dependent pri- 
marily on university men pursuing great 
lines of original investigation. It is true 
that we now have well-endowed national 
institutions of research, such as the Rocke- 
feller Institute and the Carnegie Institu- 
tion, but universities can not afford to sur- 
render to these the main burden of insur- 
ing progress in the theory of our science, 
because these are not teaching institutions. 
To take from our universities the choicest 
of our research men would deprive our 


Octoser 5, 1917] 


young men of that inspiration and fertiliza- 
tion of their minds in the period of their 
greatest acceptiveness which early intimate 
association with great investigators alone 
can give. To my mind it is clear that if 
universities would fulfil their highest mis- 
sion they must remain the seats of the best 
type of research. But such research is the 
product of an extraordinarily sensitive 
state of mind. Only the greatest powers 
of concentration of thought make it pos- 
sible. The investigator is groping for truth 
in unexplored regions, wary of every pit- 
fall, most fearful indeed of possible illu- 
sions of his own highly excited imagina- 
tion. Let any one imagine himself groping 
in a dark and unfamiliar room and he will 
easily realize that the undisturbed concen- 
tration of his every faculty is the only way 
for him to attain his goal! Let the rush 
of an automobile or the screech of a loco- 
motive detract his attention but for an in- 
stant and he may well have to rue a stubbed 
toe or a grazed shin! Now, figuratively 
speaking, there are too many noisy auto- 
mobiles and screeching locomotives in the 
lives of our distracted investigators. Amer- 
ican universities, in general, have the un- 
fortunate custom of loading down their 
best investigators as heads of departments 
with administrative duties of all varieties, 
ranging from clerical functions to com- 
mittee work, important for the institution, 
but always a grave obstacle in the path 
of successful research. Younger men, even 
when they show marked research ability, 
are too often worn out with excessive duties 
of instruction and laboratory detail, when 
their minds need their keenest edge to cut 
their path to the elusive truth! Men in 
whom the research instinct is inborn and 
overpoweringly intense, will break through 
these difficulties—usually at the cost of the 
neglect of other duties—but our system is 
one that means an extraordinary waste of 


SCIENCE 


331 


talent for the highest type of work on 
duties that minds of lesser fineness could 
do just as well or better. On top of these 
older defects, which we have been only 
slowly recognizing and removing, have come 
in the last few years the further distract- 
ing duties of necessary public service. Let 
me repeat what I stated earlier in the eve- 
ning: every one of our great chemists, as 
well as of our less well known ones, is eager 
to devote every particle of his knowledge and 
strength to the sacred duty of the moment. 
Theoretical work has been set aside except 
as it contributes directly to the cause of na- 
tional defense. But let us begin to realize 
now that when peace comes we must let our 
investigators return to the service of pure 
science, we must leave them severely alone, 
free from committee work of any kind, so 
that they may recover that opportunity for 
concentration which is needed for produc- 
tive research of permanent value! Some 
of our research men, I dare say, are being 
spoiled forever for this service, exactly as 
many a returning soldier will have lost in 
a craving for adventure his fitness for ordi- 
nary civic responsibilities. 

There is a strong movement too in our 
society to bring universities and industries 
into closer relations, a laudable movement 
with which I am in heartiest sympathy, but 
which can bring unmixed benefits only if 
it is most wisely guided. It would be fatal 
if it were allowed for the sake of temporary 
advantage to injure in any way that search 
for truth for the sake of the truth itself on 
which, after all, the great structure of our 
science as of all sciences rests. Let the 
large proportion of members in our society 
who are primarily interested in applied 
chemistry, recall as a typical illustration of 
a very general truth that chemists had 
tried for fifty years to manufacture sul- 
phuriec acid by the contact process and had 
utterly failed, and that success finally 


332 


came only when the laws of physical chem- 
istry, products of the research of guileless 
university professors, were available and 
were applied to the problem! Who can 
doubt that we still need the efforts of new 
Faradays, van’t Hoffs, Roozebooms, Bertho- 
lets, Kekules! The question has impressed 
me as so vital a one for the outlook for 
chemistry in this country that as president 
of our society I have put on the committee 
charged with the development of relations 
between industries and the universities pri- 
marily university research men, with the 
understanding that they will give to pure 
research in our universities the benefit of 
every doubt in their recommendations. I 
trust that our society, as a whole, will 
realize that it were better that our indus- 
tries suffer somewhat temporarily than that 
our national strength in chemistry be 
crippled at the source. My personal opin- 
ion is that we can attain both of our objec- 
tives—to use a war phrase. Thus, our pres- 
ent war duties are making university men 
personally acquainted with numerous prac- 
tical problems which in many cases after 
the war, will probably form the basic ma- 
terial for investigations of theoretical rela- 
tions. Even if they are only in a measure 
as successful as those of Baeyer, when 
through the study of the structure and 
synthesis of indigo he opened up the great 
theoretical fields of knowledge of tautomer- 
ism, of the theory of unsaturated com- 
pounds and of eyelic derivatives, they will 
advance both branches of our science, ap- 
plied and theoretical chemistry. Efforts 
along the lines of developing the theory of 
the connection between molecular structure 
and physiological or medicinal properties 
_ are now taking root in a number of our uni- 
versities. But, on the whole, I would rec- 
ommend that technical research problems— 
routine analytical and control work should 
be altogether barred from our universities 
—that technical research problems be lim- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


ited in universities to picked men interested 
in applied chemistry and holding possibly 
professorships or other appointments in in- 
dustrial chemistry. In time, these men will 
become dependent on their colleagues de- 
voted to pure science for keeping step with 
the progress in our science. I would urge, 
too, the perhaps novel recommendation that 
remuneration for such work be made a 
departmental and not an individual affair. 
This wise provision is being enforced in 
those modern medical schools which de- 
mand research work of their staffs, fees for 
practise reverting to the university hos- 
pitals and not to the individual. As ap- 
plied to chemistry, such a provision would 
be desirable, in the first place, because it 
would to a large extent reduce the tempta- 
tion of financial inducements for the men 
whose talents fit them for work in pure 
science and whom the country needs for 
such work. In the second place, one will 
find that the university man interested 
in a technical problem is, after all, less use- 
ful in a teaching department than the man 
devoted to pure research: the pressure from 
outside will lead him to throw a greater 
mass of administrative detail, of instruc- 
tion or of the care of research men, on his 
colleagues. The result is that the depart- 
ment and not the individual really carries 
the burden of the problem in applied chem- 
istry—exactly as in the medical schools, 
which still allow their staffs to practise for 
their own financial benefit, this is all too 
often done with the drawbacks of ineffi- 
cient teaching, the ignoring of administra- 
tive responsibilities and the leaving to the 
care of others the provisions for education 
in research. 

I have dwelt on the details of this great 
problem which is confronting our society, 
because I would protect the outlook for the 
growth and success of theoretical chemis- 
try in our country by every means in my 
power. We have a splendid record: we 


Ocroser 5, 1917] 


are easily leaders in the domain of knowl- 
edge based on the exact determinations of 
atomie weights—a knowledge which leads 
among other results to habits of more exact, 
more critical methods in all fields of our 
science. Arrhenius told us that America 
is leading in the difficult work of the rigor- 
ous examination of the theory of ionization 
and of establishing it on a finished basis. 
The development of the field of free energy 
relations is more intensely cultivated, here 
I imagine, than in any other country. In 
the application of modern theories of 
atomic structure and of the electron theory 
of valence to all branches of chemistry, 
especially also to organic chemistry, we are, 
I believe, easily in the front. Our very 
youth, as a people, has preserved to us in 
science as in national sentiment, that whole- 
hearted enthusiasm for ideals, which in 
world politics has made us the most al- 
truistic nation on the face of the earth and 
which in science finds its expression in the 
pursuit of knowledge for the sake of the 
pure truth alone, a pursuit characteristic 
of the best research in our universities and 
colleges ! 

And so let me conclude my remarks on 
the outlook for chemistry in America by 
emphasizing that we have a goodly heritage 
of success both in our great industries and 
in our great universities, which will form 
the safe basis of a brilliant future, if we 
will but approach the problems of the mo- 
ment and of the immediate future in char- 
acteristically American fashion, with a 
spirit wisely combining altruistic principles 
with practical, worldly common sense. 
This means the ‘‘ square deal’’ in indus- 
trial life for the product of the brains of 
the research chemist, combined with wise 
laws to insure to capital a fair and toler- 
ably safe return for investment in chemical 
industries, needed to make our country 
chemically independent. And it means too 


SCIENCE 


300 


the placing of chemistry in our universities 
on a plane with the other great professions, 
law and medicine, in order to hold in this 
great science, so important for the welfare 
of the nation, the needed numbers of men 
of brilliant minds and energetic ambitions 
—combined with the devotion on their part 
to the search for the truth, for the estab- 
lishment of the great laws of our science, 
for the sake of that truth, that science, 
alone! 
JULIUS STIEGLITZ 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
THE LANE MEDICAL LECTURES 

TuE sixteenth course of Lane Medical Lec- 
tures at Stanford University will be delivered 
by Simon Flexner, M.D., LL.D., director of 
laboratories, Rockefeller Institute for Medical 
Research, New York City, N. Y., on the even- 
ings of October 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, 1917, at 
8:15 o’clock in Lane Hall, Stanford Uni- 
versity Medical School, San Francisco, Cali- 
fornia, on ‘‘ Physical basis and present status 
of specific serum and drug therapy.” 

The titles of the separate lectures are as 
follows: 

October 8: Epidemic Meningitis; Lobar 
Pneumonia; Bacillary Dysentery and Spe- 
cificity in Bactericidal Sera. 

October 9: Gaseous Gangrene; Shiga Bacil- 
lary Dysentery; and the Principles of Homo- 
serum Therapy. 

October 10: Poliomyelitis and the Prin- 
ciples of Homoserum Therapy. 

October 11: Local Specific Therapy as 
illustrated by the Serum Treatment of Epi- 
demic Meningitis, Poliomyelitis and Tetanus. 

October 12: Chemotherapy of the Spiro- 
chetal Infections. 


THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF 
WASHINGTON 


Durine the season from October, 1917, to 
April, 1918, inclusive, the Anthropological 
Society of Washington, D. C., will provide a 
very interesting program of papers or lec- 


304 


tures chiefly concerned with divers nations of 
Europe and the East now at war or likely 
to be involved before long, including espe- 
cially some of our less known and smaller 
allies. The general plan of most of these 
monographs will be a résumé of earliest 
known data, racial origins, shiftings and 
blendings, historical development and present 
status, aiming to further a more thorough 
acquaintance with these peoples, their char- 
‘acteristics and capabilities and the causes 
which have made them what they are. The 
appended schedule may be subject to some 
changes in detail as the season advances and 
is now necessarily incomplete as to one or two 
items, but will give a sufficient idea of what 
is to be expected. The society meets at 4.30 
P.M. in rooms 42-43 of the new building of 
the National Museum on alternate Tuesdays, 
beginning October 2d, 1917. 


PROGRAM 
October 2. Dr. Ale’ Hrdlitka, Bohemia and the 
Bohemians. 
October 16. Dr. Mitchell Carroll, The Story of 
Greece. 
November 6. Professor James H. Gore, Bel- 
gium. 


November 20. Mr. George J. Zolnay, Roumania, 


Past and Present. 
December 4. Dr. Amandus Johnson, Scandi- 


navia; Mr. Juul Dieserud, Certain Customs of Nor- 


way. 
December 18. France. 

January 15. Dr. Voyslay M. Yovanovitch, 
Serbia. 


January 29. Voyslav M. Yovanovitch, Italy. 

February 12. Dr. Joseph Dunn, Scotland. 

February 26. Dr. B. Israeli, Russia. 

March 12. Mr. E. T. Williams, The Origin of 
China. 

March 26. Mr. E. T. Williams, Holland. 

April 9. Dr. Paul Haupt, Mesopotamia and 
Palestine. 

April 22. 
cers. 


Annual meeting and election of offi- 


Some, perhaps, most, of these lectures will 
be illustrated by lantern slides or otherwise. 
The public will be welcome. 


Wm. H. Bascocr, President 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1188 


EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON TECHNICAL 
EDUCATION 


WALTER HuMPHREYS, registrar of the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, has compiled 
registration statistics which indicate the effects 
of the war on technical education. The total 
registration is between eighty-five and ninety 
per cent. of what it was last year at the same 
time. The freshman year shows an increase, 
the percentage in terms of last year’s figure 
being 104, while the second, third and fourth 
years classes are respectively 93 per cent., ‘75 
per cent. and 86 per cent., of the number in the 
school in June. 

The graduate students stand at 60 per cent. 
of last year’s figure. There is the most shrink- 
age in the juniors, the sophomores of last year, 
to whom two years more of schooling has per- 
haps seemed a long time. The return of eighty- 
six per cent. of the juniors to be seniors is evi- 
dence in favor of the junior summer camp. 
The purpose of this was to give some military 
practise and an opportunity to anticipate 
fourth-year studies, and complete work at an 
earlier date. 

In a consideration of the effect on the courses 
it may be well to omit those with less than fifty 
men, since the defection of a few students 
makes an undue percentage shrinkage. One of 
them, however, naval architecture, is stimu- 
lated by the war, the increase béing 16 per 
cent. The course in naval architecture has al- 
ways been small in attendance and has been 
maintained by the institute as a contribution 
to education. 

Of the larger courses civil engineering main- 
tains practically the same figure as in former 
years, the shrinkage being 1.2 per cent., while 
electrical engineering opens the year with a 
loss of only 2 per cent. Chemical engineering 
has 12 per cent. increase. Engineering admin- 
istration is practically holding its own, having 
lost only six and one half per cent. since the last 
registration. Architecture has declined nearly 
one third in the number of its students. Per- 
haps the undue cost of building materials, fifty 
to one hundred per cent. in many cases, and 
the consequent gossip that building operations 
will be at a standstill, has had its influence in 
deterring young men from taking it up with 


Qctoser 5, 1917] 


usual vigor. Mechanical engineering has lost 
about 21 per cent. This is a study that should 
be stimulated by the war. In this work Pro- 
fessor Miller, head of the department, has 
undertaken for the U. S. Shipping Board the 
management of the schools for marine engine- 
room officers in the principal ports in the coun- 
try- 


WORK OF THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL 

Upon recommendation of the National Re- 
search Council Dr. Augustus Trowbridge, of 
Princeton University, and Professor Theodore 
Lyman, of Harvard University, have received 
commissions in the Signal Corps, U. S. A., for 
work in sound ranging. They have sailed for 
France to investigate conditions at the front 
in this subject. The sound ranging service 
which will be developed under their direction 
will utilize in the near future more than fifty 
men. Captain Horatio B. Williams is in 
charge of the development work in this country 
during Major Trowbridge’s absence. 

A meteorological service has been organized 
under the Signal Corps, U. S. A., in which 
about one hundred physicists and engineers 
will be engaged in aerological observational 
work under the direction of Dr. William H. 
Blair, of the U. S. Weather Bureau, who has 
received a commission of major and has sailed 
for France to investigate conditions abroad. 
Forecasting work for the American Expedi- 
tionary Force in France will be in charge of 
Mr. E. H. Bowie, of the U. S. Weather Bu- 
reau, who has likewise received a commission 
of major in the Signal Corps and is already 
on his way to France. Major Bowie will be 
assisted by Mr. R. Hanson Weightman, of the 
U. S. Weather Bureau, who has received a 
commission as lieutenant in the Signal Corps. 

Professor Charles E. Mendenhall, of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, has received a commis- 
sion of major in the Signal Corps, U. S. A., 
and has been placed in charge of the develop- 
ment of aeronautical instruments. 

All of the work of these services, sound- 
ranging, meteorology and aeronautical instru- 
ments, is included within the scope of the Sci- 
ence and Research Division of the Signal 
Corps, which in accordance with a recent order 


SCIENCE 


309 


of the chief signal officer has been established 
and placed under the direction of the National 
Research Council, of which Major R. A. Milli- 
kan is the executive officer. The functions of 
this division of the Signal Corps are two-fold, 
namely: (1) to furnish personnel of the re- 
search sort to the other divisions when the 
situation warrants the assignment of men of 
this type to these divisions, and (2) to have a 
personnel of its own which maintains intimate 
contact with all research and development 
work in other divisions, and distributes re- 
search problems to university, industrial and 
governmental research laboratories with which 
it is associated. Similar, though in some cases 
less formal, relations have been established 
with other technical bureaus of the War and 
Navy Departments. 

Upon request of the French High Commis- 
sion a number of American physicists and 
chemists are being sent to France to assist in 
various war problems in which technically 
trained men are needed. Except in certain 
cases, the Interministerial Commission in 
Paris will assign them to work in university 
laboratories and in technical services of the 
government. Upon recommendation of the 
National Research Council the following men 
are receiving commissions in this connection 
and a number of them have already sailed for 
France: 


Professor R. W. Wood, of Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, major in the U. S. Signal Corps. 

Messrs. Roy W. Chestnut, Leonard Loeb and 
Samuel Sewall, lieutenants in the U. 8S. Signal 
Corps. 

Professor Edward Bartow, of the University of 
Illinois, major, and Professor Reston Stevenson, of 
the College of the City of New York, captain in the 
U. S. Sanitary Corps. 

Messrs. Ralph L. Brown, of the University of 
Chicago, George Scatchard, of Columbia Univer- 
sity, and Kirke W. Cushing, of Western Reserve 
University, lieutenants in the U. S. Sanitary Corps. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 
THE trustees of Columbia University have 
dismissed Professor J. McKeen Cattell from 
the chair of psychology which he has held 
since 1891, on account of a letter which he 


336 


addressed to members of the Congress, asking 
them to support a measure which had been 
introduced against sending conscripts to fight 
in Europe against their will. Professor Cat- 
tell has given out a statement in which he 
says that he is opposed to war and to this war, 
but that he has engaged in no agitation 
against the government, and has not written 
anything opposing conscription or against 
sending an army abroad. He maintains that 
forcing “conscientious objectors” to fight in 
Europe is not only contrary to democratic 
principles, but also subversive of the efficiency 
of the army and of national unity. He claims 
that it is the duty as well as the constitutional 
right of a citizen to petition the government 
to enact legislation believed by him to be for 
the national welfare. For a university to dis- 
miss a professor for doing this is both unjust 
and illegal. Under the circumstances Pro- 
fessor Cattell believes that it may be in the 
interest of Science and of the American As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science for 
him to retire from the editorship which he 
has held for twenty-two years. He has ad- 
dressed a letter to the chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Policy of the Association request- 
ing that a successor be selected. 


At Peking the cornerstone of the hospital 
and medical college of the Rockefeller Founda- 
tion was laid on September 24 by Fan Yuen- 
Lien, minister of education. Dr. Paul Reinsch, 
the American minister, presided at the exer- 
cises, which were attended by Admiral Austin 
Knight, commander of the American Asiatic 
fleet. Dr. Frank Billings, chief of the Ameri- 
can Red Cross mission to Russia, who is now 
in Peking, made the principal address. 


Prorrssor JoHn S. SHEARER, of the depart- 
ment of physics of Cornell University, has re- 
ceived a commission as major in the National 
Army. Since the declaration of war, Professor 
Shearer has been on duty at the Cornell Uni- 
versity Medical College in New York City, in- 
structing officers of the Medical Corps and the 
Medical Reserve Corps in roentgenology, and 
conducting conferences for the standardiza- 
tion of X-ray apparatus. 


Leaves of absence for the year 1917-18 were 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


granted by the administration committee of 
Cornell University to Professor George Young, 
Jr., of the college of architecture, and Pro- 
fessor Ernest Merritt, of the department of 
physies, who are engaged in work for the gov- 
ernment, to L. L. Silverman, instructor in 
mathematics, who is in the service of the com- 
mittee of public safety of the state of Massa- 
chusetts; to Professor Samuel N. Spring, of 
the department of forestry, in order that he 
may serve as a captain in the 20th Engineer 
(Forestry) Regiment, and to Professor Allyn 
A. Young, of the department of economics, to 
permit him to serve as chief of war trade sta- 
tistics in the Division of Export Licenses at 
Washington. 


At the University of North Dakota there has 
been established a research committee to co- 
operate with the National Research Council in 
connection with the advancement of a variety 
of problems of scientific and practical interest. 
The committee consists of Dr. Earle J. 
Babcock, chairman, dean of the engineering 
colleges and professor of industrial chemistry ; 
Dr. J. M. Gillette, professor of sociology; 
Dr. George A. Abbott, professor of chemistry; 
Dr. A. G. Leonard, professor of geology, and 
Dr. Charles E. King, professor of physiology. 


J. W. Batury has resigned an assistant pro- 
fessorship in zoology at the Agricultural Col- 
lege of Mississippi to undertake research work 
for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, with 
headquarters at Tempe, Arizona. 


Dr. Minntz A. GraHaM has resigned her posi- 
tion as instructor in analytical chemistry at 
Wellesley College to act as abstracter for the 
research department of the General Chemical 
Company in New York. 


Dr. Hersert CO. Morritt, dean of the Uni- 
versity of California Medical School, has been 
called into active service as a major in the 
Medical Officers’ Reserve Corps, and is sta- 
tioned at the Army Hospital at San Antonio, 
Texas. 


Dr. W. A. PeRuzwEIc, assistant professor in 
biochemistry in the Creighton University Col- 
lege of Medicine, has been appointed first lieu- 
tenant in the Sanitary Corps of the army. 


Ocroser 5, 1917] 


At the opening exercises of Columbia Uni- 
yersity, Dr. Cassius J. Keyser, of Columbia 
University, gave the address, the subject of 
which was “The enterprise of democracy.” 
The address of the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons was given by Dr. Hans Zinsser, pro- 
fessor of bacteriology, his subject being 
“ Medicine, the great opportunity.” 


Senor Aucusto Vinuanurva, Santiago de 
Chile, has become a member of the Ramsay 
Memorial Committee for Chile. 


Epwarp Boots, assistant professor of chem- 
istry in the University of California, died at 
his home in Berkeley on August 238. 


LreuTenant-Cotonet T. H. BoarpmMan, who 
had charge of the work in physics at Christ’s 
Hospital, London, died of wounds on August 
4 while on active service in the army. 


Dr. J. R. Tosu, lately assistant professor 
of zoology in St. Andrews University, has 
died in Mesoptamia from “heat stroke.” 


As already announced, the thirty-second 
general meeting of the American Electrochem- 
ical Society is being held in Pittsburgh from 
October 3 to 6. The Metallurgical and Chem- 
ical Hngineering states that a special feature 
of the meeting will be a series of papers and 
discussions on electrochemical war supplies, 
and the part the electrochemical industry will 
play in the present struggle. The committee 
in charge is outlining an elaborate program of 
technical sessions, visits to industrial plants 
and entertainment features. It invites the 
delegates to arrive in Pittsburgh on Wednes- 
day, October 2, so as to meet informally and 
enjoy some recreations which have been 
planned for them. On Thursday, October 8, 
a regular meeting of the society will be held 
in the morning, with optional excursions to 
industrial plants in the afternoon. In the 
evening an illustrated lecture on a semi-tech- 
nical subject will be given. On Friday, Oc- 
tober 4, a symposium on electrochemical war 
supplies will be held in the morning, followed 
by excursions to industrial plants in the after- 
noon. A subscription dinner will be held at 
the William Penn Hotel in the evening. Sat- 


urday, October 5, will be devoted to an all-day. 


SCIENCE 


337 


excursion, on a special train with complimen- 
tary luncheon, to several industrial plants in 
the Pittsburgh district.” 


AccorpInG to the London correspondent of 
the Journal of the American Medical Associa- 
tion official statistics show that on an average 
there has been an increase in food prices of 
104 per cent. compared with July, 1914, the 
month before the war began. The increase 
varies from 65 per cent. in the case of fresh 
butter to 191 per cent. in the case of certain 
parts of frozen mutton. The average price of 
bread—23 cents for the 4-pound loaf—is 
double that in July, 1914, and flour shows a 
proportionately greater advance, amounting to 
109 per cent. The price of granulated sugar 
had risen over the war period from an average 
of about 4 cents to nearly 12 cents per pound, 
but increased duty accounts for about 2.5 cents 
of the rise. The average price of cheese is 
slightly more than double than in July, 1914; 
that of eggs, slightly less than double. The 
price of tea is 74 per cent. higher, but about 
half of the advance is due to increased taxa- 
tion. Butter and margarin show increases ap- 
proximating to 65 and 74 per cent., respec- 
tively, over pre-war prices. Milk prices had 
risen 60 per cent., or 4 cents’per quart. In ar- 
riving at the general percentage increase, the 
several articles are weighted in accordance 
with the proportionate expenditure on them in 
pre-war family budgets, no allowance being 
made for the economies resulting from 
changes in dietary which have been effected 
since the beginning of the war, especially in 
those families in which the total income has 
not been increased by advances in rates of 
wages, greater regularity of employment, in- 
creased output, or the working of overtime. 
As an illustration of possible economies in this 
direction, if eggs are omitted from the dietary, 
margarin substituted for butter, and the con- 
sumption of sugar and fish reduced to one 
half of that prevailing before the war, the gen- 
eral percentage increase since July, 1914, in- 
stead of being 104, would be 72. During last 
month alone the general level of retail prices 
of the principal articles of food rose about 1 
per cent. The prices of British beef increased 


338 


about 5 per cent., and those of other meat from 
3 to 4 per cent. Bacon and fish showed some 
decline in price as compared with a month ago. 


In connection with work in food conserva- 
tion the railway freight claim agents in Texas 
are opening the way for cooperation with other 
agencies interested in food production. On 
Saturday, August 4, representatives of three 
of the important railways in Texas met in 
conference with Dr. J. J. Taubenhaus, of the 
Texas Experiment Station, and Dr. F. H. 
Blodgett, of the Agricultural Extension Serv- 
ice, to discuss methods by which losses in 
transit may be reduced in shipments of per- 
ishable farm products. The matter was dis- 
cussed both from the point of view of the 
claim agent in reducing the financial expendi- 
ture in settling damage claims on the part of 
the shippers and others, and from the point of 
view of food conservation, since the damaged 
products, for which claims may be filed and 
paid, draw from the food supply of the coun- 
try with no benefits to any one since even dam- 
age claims only partially represent the true 
value of the products concerned. Plans were 
outlined for the investigation of the unknown 
factors involved by the pathologist of the Ex- 
periment Station, and for the cooperation be- 
tween the Extension Service and the railway 
agricultural agencies to disseminate informa- 
tion in regard to the different modes of hand- 
ling produce to eliminate losses through shift- 
ing of cargo and other causes which are already 
well understood but not always carefully prac- 
tised. 


Ir is stated in the Boston Medical and Sur- 
gical Journal that the thirty-two new hospitals 
which are being built by the medical corps of 
the army for the care of the National Guard 
and National Army camps will cost about $14,- 
500,000. The aim of the medical department 
is to have hospital provision for 5 per cent. of 
the enlisted force by fall, and then extend it to 
10 per cent. Abroad, facilities for 20 per cent. 
of the American expeditionary forces will be 
available. Provision will be made at the can- 
tonments in this country for 3 per cent. of the 
troops in each camp. Each hospital with the 
space reserved for extensions will require sixty 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


acres. The buildings will be 24 feet wide, the 
length varying to meet the needs. A ward 
about 157 feet long will accommodate 32 beds. 
A cantonment hospital on a basis of 1,000 beds 
will include about 70 buildings, if each ward 
is considered as a building. Adequate labora- 
tory facilities will also be provided, and plans 
are being made to appoint permanently to the 
staffs of the hospitals, men especially trained to 
do laboratory work in order that careful tests 
may be made of each and every soldier for 
tuberculosis, intestinal infections, and all 
other infectious diseases. 


In Kansas a deep well struck rock salt at 690 
feet below the surface and penetrated 600 feet 
of rock salt in beds from 5 to 60 feet thick, ac- 
cording to the United States Geological Sur- 
vey. A large area in this state is underlain by 
salt, which is mined by many shafts and ob- 
tained by pumping brine. Drilling for oil in 
Texas and Louisiana has revealed the presence 
of tremendously thick deposits of rock salt at 
a depth of a few hundred feet. Thicknesses of 
2,000 feet are common, and one drill hole 
passed through more than 3,000 feet of rock 
salt. Most of the salt made in Utah is pro- 
duced by evaporating the waters of Great Salt 
Lake, and in California by evaporating sea 
water. These sources are inexhaustible, and 
the limit of production by solar evaporation 
will therefore never be reached. 


The Electrical World states that for several 
years past from fifteen to thirty engineering 
teachers have spent part of the summer vaca- 
tion at the East Pittsburgh works of the West- 
inghouse Electric and Manufacturing Com- 
pany in getting acquainted not only with the 
apparatus manufactured by this company, but 
also with its engineering designers, commer- 
cial engineers and works executives. This 
year there were twenty-four men from seven- 
teen different states and from Canada and 
Japan, representing twenty-three different 
engineering schools. Most of their time is 
spent on actual work, either on assembly or 
test floor or in the engineering offices, but part 
of the time is given up to a series of meetings, 
which include inspection and discussion of ap- 
paratus being manufactured, talks on engi- 


Oocroper 5, 1917] 


neering opportunities and requirements, dis- 
cussions of teaching problems, excursions to 
other plants and social meetings. This course 
gives engineering teachers an opportunity to 
become acquainted with the latest develop- 
ments in electrical power apparatus, with shop 
methods in use in large manufacturing con- 
cerns, and to meet and exchange ideas on 
teaching subjects with other engineering 
teachers of experience. Since the Westing- 
house company draws men from engineering 
schools, it is of advantage to it that students 
may know not only of the opportunities open 
but of methods of working efficiently in its 
organization. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

Dr. Joun R. Muruin, for eight years as- 
sistant professor of physiology in the medical 
school of Cornell University, has been ap- 
pointed director of the new department of 
vital economics at the University of Rochester. 
This department is being organized from 
funds made available by the will of Lewis P. 
Ross, whose will gave to the university the 
residuary estate of more than $800,000, the 
income only to be used “to the end that 
human life may be prolonged with increased 
health and happiness.” The trustees were in- 
structed to expend that income for two pur- 
poses—to contribute toward the support, im- 
provement, and extension of the department 
of household economics of the Mechanics’ In- 
stitute of Rochester, and to establish in the 
university a department of vital economics. 
Dr. Murlin is now a major in the Sanitary 
Corps of the national army, and head of the 
food division in the surgeon general’s office. 

Tue school of engineering of the Pennsyl- 
yania State College has the largest freshman 
enrollment in its history, numbering 271 as 
compared to 210 at this time last year. The 
upper classes are from 50 to 75 per cent. of 
normal, due to the large number who volun- 
teered last spring. 

Proressor GEorcE H. Perkins, dean of the 
College of Arts and Sciences of the Uni- 
versity of Vermont and professor of natural 


SCIENCE 


339 


history, has been designated as acting presi- 
dent for the next year. President Guy Potter 
Benton has been granted a year’s leave of 
absence by the trustees in order to comply 
with the request of the National War Work 
Council to aid in the coordination and direc- 
tion of the council’s work in Europe. Presi- 
dent Benton sailed early in September in 
charge of a force of thirty Young Men’s 
Christian Association men. 

ALBERT RussELL Mann, professor of rural 
social organization, and acting dean has been 
appointed dean of the New York State Col- 
lege of Agriculture at Cornell University. 


Dr. C. P. Fircu, of the New York State 
Veterinary College, has been appointed pro- 
fessor of comparative pathology and bacteriol- 
ogy and chairman of the division of veteri- 
nary medicine in the department of agricul- 
ture, University of Minnesota. 

Tue following promotions have been made 
at the school of medicine, Western Reserve 
University: Paul J. Hanzlik, to be assistant 
professor of pharmacology; Cyrus Hartwell 
Fiske, to be assistant professor of biochem- 
istry; Roy Wesley Scott, to be associate in 
physiology; Julius Moses Rogoff, to be senior 
instructor in experimental medicine; Roy 
Bartlett Metz, to be associate in ophthalmol- 
ogy; Joseph Edgar McClelland, to be instruc- 
tor in pediatrics; Carlos Eugene Pitkin, to be 
instructor in diseases of the nose, ear and 
throat; Chester Dale Christie, to be instructor 
in medicine; Marion Blakenhorn, to be in- 
structor in medicine. 


Proressor N. C. Curtis, of Tulane Univer- 
sity, has been appointed associate professor of 
architectural design in the University of 
Tllinois. 

Dr. R. M. Strone has been promoted from 
associate professor of anatomy to professor of 
microscopic anatomy in the medical school of 
Vanderbilt University. 


Dr. O. vAN DER Stricut, professor of histol- 
ogy and embryology at Ghent, Belgium, who 
for the past two years has held the post of 
fellow in cytology in the anatomical labora- 
tory of Western Reserve University, has been 


340 


appointed lecturer in anatomy at the Johns 
Hopkins University. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
WHEN IS A FORCE NOT A FORCE? 

In his communication to Scmnce for March 
16, 1917, Mr. A. H. Patterson very pertinently 
calls attention to the vagueness, lack of pre- 
cision and error in the treatment of the force 
concept by current physics text-books. Much 
of Mr. Patterson’s criticism deals with New- 
ton’s third law of motion and appears to be 
based on a misinterpretation of that law. To 
this I wish to call attention. 

Force is always exerted by one portion of 
matter, A, upon a second portion of matter B. 
These may be distinct bodies or parts of the 
same body. If A exerts a force on B then, 
the third law tells us, B exerts an equal force 
in the opposite direction on A. If the force 
of A on B is called the action, the force of 
B on A is called the reaction. The action and 
reaction do not act on the same body or body- 
part. Failure to fully appreciate this seems 
to be responsible for the present as well as 
many other misinterpretations of the third 
law. 

Mr. Patterson asks: “ What is a student to 
think when he is told that to every action 
there is always an equal and contrary action, 
and is then informed that (only) an unbal- 
anced force acting on a mass produces ac- 
celeration?” The two statements are mutu- 
ally consistent and true. In order to safe- 
guard the student against some of the pit- 
falls which are dangerous even to his teachers 
it is only necessary to make the information 
more complete. 

Mr. Patterson’s problems may well serve this 
purpose. The ball at the end of a rubber 
band is the first of these. Let us ignore the 
effect of gravity. When the ball is whirled 
about in a circular path at uniform speed the 
pull exerted by the rubber band on the ball 
is called the centripetal force. No other 
balanced force and gives rise to an acceler- 
ation which manifests itself in the change 
in direction of the velocity. The equal and 
contrary action is the outward pull of the 


SCIENCE 


.[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


ball on the string, known as the centrifugal 
force. The string is not accelerated because 
the pull of the support at the fixed end is 
equal and opposite to the centrifugal pull at 
the free end. The forces on the string are 
balanced. 

A porter pushes a truck at uniform speed 
over level ground. Then the force which he ~ 
exerts forward on the truck is equal to the 
backward frictional force. If this frictional 
resistance were suddenly to vanish, the for- 
ward force exerted on the truck by the porter 
would be the only horizontal force, hence un- 
balanced and a forward acceleration would re- 
sult. Both with and without friction the 
truck pushes backward on the porter with an 
equal force. In addition to pushing forward 
on the truck the porter is pushing backward 
on the ground with his feet, and consequently 
the ground is pushing him forward. If the 
forward push of the ground and the backward 
push of the truck are equal the forces on the 
porter are balanced and he moves without 
acceleration. Everywhere the forces act in 
pairs, because there must be an exerter of the 
force and a body on which it is exerted. 
Newton’s law has a meaning only when both 
bodies are considered. 

Newton’s third law requires no distinction 
between inertia-reactions and other forces. 
To introduce them serves to complicate rather 
than to simplify. The following problem 
utilizes Mr. Patterson’s method, quoting 
freely from the closing paragraphs of his 
communication. 

A mass M rests on a perfectly smooth 
horizontal surface. To M we apply a hori- 
zontal force F. Being the only horizontal 
force it is unbalanced. It is opposed by an 
inertia reaction which can in a sense balance 
it, but can not hold it in equilibrium because 
a force opposed only by inertia reaction always 
produces acceleration. 

It is difficult to see the need of this devital- 
ized form of the third law, either from the 
point of view of principle or of practice. 
Forces do always exist in pairs, yet the 
forces on either or both of two bodies between 
which force-action exists may be unbalanced. 


Ocroser 5, 1917] 


Mr. Patterson assumes a contradiction where 
none exists and then proposes an artificial 
way out. E. A. Eckuarpr 
RANDAL MorGan Laboratory, 
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. 


THE THIRD LAW OF MOTION AND 
“INERTIA REACTION” 

THE recent article by Mr. Andrew H. Pat- 
terson in Scmnce for March 16, 1917, impels 
me to add to the discussion of questions in 
mechanics something that I have tried to make 
clear to students. It is along the line of Mr. 
Fulcher’s article of November 24, and con- 
cerns the confusion between the third law of 
motion, the second law, and D’Alembert’s 
principle. 

Mr. Patterson appears to object to teaching 
that “to every action there is always an equal 
and contrary action” or that “forces always 
occur in pairs” and at the same time that an 
“mbalanced force”? produces an acceleration. 
There is surely no inconsistency in this, since 
the “pairs” of forces or the action and re- 
action act on different bodies, say A and B, 
then if no other bodies are acting upon them, 
there will be an unbalanced force on each, 
and each will be accelerated, but in opposite 
directions. Evidently another pair of forces 
may act between B and C such that on the 
whole the forces on B exactly balance, and yet 
A will be left with an accelerated motion. 
On the other hand, while it is clear from writ- 
ing the equation representing the second law 
of motion in the form #—Ma=0, that 
if a force equal to the mass times the acceler- 
ation should act on the body in the opposite 
direction to the impressed force, these forces 
would be in equilibrium, this is not a case of 
the third law, which specifies that the forces 
considered act between two bodies and not 
on one and the same body. If for a system 
one adds the idea (D’Alembert’s principle?), 
that the internal actions and reactions of any 
system of bodies are in equilibrium among 
themselves, a special case of the third law, 
one obtains the more general statement that 
af forces equal to the several masses times 
their respective accelerations were applied, 


SCIENCE 


341 


ete., a form which is useful in the handling 
of problems, but which does not imply that 
such forces are acting and does not call for 
the idea of “inertia reactions.” 

The case where “inertia reaction” is most 
frequently drawn in, in connection with action 
and reaction is the instance of an object being 
whirled around on the end of a string. Now 
when one explains the motion of the moon 
about the earth as due to the action of the 
gravitational force on the moon directed tow- 
ards the earth, one looks for the “reaction” 
in a gravitational force on the earth directed 
toward the moon, but not a force on the moon, 
and this reaction on the earth has nothing to 
do with the mass & acceleration of the moon, 
but would be the same if the moon were at 
rest in the position which it has at any in- 
stant. Is not the same true for the ball and 
string? Consider the case where a person 
grasps the ball by a hook at the end of a di- 
ameter, and pulls on a cord at the other end 
with the force F’, the ball as well as the cord 
is strained, and we may say that the ball is 
pulling on the string and the string on the 
ball (the third law), in virtue of this strain. 
Now let go at the one end, in order to continue 
to apply a force F the hand must be moved 
with the same acceleration which the ball has 
in order to keep the string stretched, and 
would not the ball in the neighborhood of the 
string remain strained as before and hence 
the forces between ball and string be of the 
same nature as before? Now suppose the ball 
swung around the head, as Mr. Patterson sug- 
gests, would not the ball still remain strained 
and would it not pull on the string with a 
force which would be exactly the same as if 
the ball were at rest, but in the same state of 
strain? If so why bring in an inertia reac- 
tion? In the illustration of the porter push- 
ing a cart, as long as he actually pushes there 
is an equal counter force on him, but in the 
one case the push on the cart may be balanced 
by friction, and in the other it would be an 
unbalanced force on the cart. Actually if 
friction suddenly ceased would not the porter 
probably notice that the force with which he 
was pushing had suddenly diminished, and 


342 


that he had to hurry up to push at all? It 
would seem to me to be true in this case also 
that the push back on him would be the same 
if the cart were in the same state of strain and 
at rest. 

If the point of view brought forward here 
is correct it would seem to me desirable to 
leave out of any elementary discussion of me- 
chanics an “ inertia reaction.” 

ExvizaBetH R. Lap 

Mount HoiyoKe CoLLEGE 


AN ADDITIONAL NOTE ON “THE OOLITIC 
AND PISOLITIC BARITE FROM THE 
SARATOGA OIL FIELD, TEXAS” 


Agout three years ago the writer wrote a 
description of some barite of unusual type 
from the Saratoga Oil Field, Texas. Speci- 
mens of this mineral have been brought to the 
surface in pumping, and they have been found, 
in all cases reported to the writer, at a depth 
around 1,200 feet, indicating that they prob- 
ably have their source in a definite geological 
horizon. At the time the above-mentioned 
paper was written it was supposed that the 
concretions of this mineral originated with 
the sands in which they were found but there 
was no definite information on the subject. 

In discussing this matter a short time ago 
with Mr. E. G. Woodruff, he stated that at 
least some of these concretions undoubtedly 
formed in the wells after they were equipped, 
because they had been found reaching a quar- 
ter of an inch in diameter, in a well with a 
screen on the tubing, the mesh of which was 
altogether too small to admit a concretion of 
the size stated. He kindly sent the writer an 
assortment of specimens of various shapes and 
sizes from other wells in the same field as 
those previously described and of approx- 
imately of the same depth. Tests with the 
blow-pipe and specific gravity determinations 
show that the composition of the concretions 
is almost identical to that of those previously 
described. A number were examined for 
nuclei, but in most cases no definite nucleus 
could be found. When a nucleus is present 


1Qdlitic and Pisolitie Barite from the Sara- 
toga Oil Field, Texas,’’ by E. S. Moore, Bull. of 
the Geol. Soc. of Amer., Vol. 25, pp. 77-79, 1914. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1188 


it consists of earthy material made up mostly 
of clay and barite and this mass is often 
stained with iron ioxide which gives the cen- 
ter of the concentration a brownish tint. 

This additional information is interesting 
from the standpoint of its bearing on the 
origin of concretions. It would appear to be 
practically impossible for bacteria or other 
low types of life, which are believed to play 
an important part in the origin of odlites, to 
exist in a liquid with such strong antiseptic 
properties as those of warm petroleum con- 
taining considerable sulphuric acid. It would 
seem to demonstrate that living organisms 
are not essenial to the development of odlites 
and that these may form where precipitation 
is taking place in an agitated solution, in the 
absence of life. - E. 8. Moore 

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE, 

State COLLEGE, Pa. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


Ocean Magnetic Observations, 1905-1916, and 
Reports on Special Researches. By L. A. 
Bauer, Director, with the collaboration of 
W. J. Perers, J. A. Fuemine, J. P. Aut 
and W. F. G. Swann. Washington, D. C., 
1917. Carnegie Institution. Pp. vii + 447. 
This large and handsome volume is the third 

of the series issued by the department of ter- 

restrial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution 
and contains full reports of all the magnetic 
work of the department at sea during the past 
eleven years. The two preceding volumes deal 
with the observations on land for the periods 

1905-1910 and 1910-19138 respectively. 

In 1905 the wooden brigantine Galilee was 
chartered at San Francisco and fitted up for 
magnetic observations with the purpose of ma- 
king a preliminary survey of the Pacific Ocean 
which was at that time “nearly a blank as re- 
gards magnetic observations.” In the course 
of three years, this vessel cruised 63,834 nauti- 
eal miles and, magnetically speaking, put the 
Pacifie Ocean “on the map.” In addition to 
the great number of valuable and accurate ob- 
servations which were accumulated, these 
eruises of the Galilee afforded an opportunity 
for testing and improving magnetic instru- 


OctosEr 5, 1917] 


- ments adapted to sea-conditions, for establish- 
ing a practicable and suitable routine of ob- 
serving and of checking instruments and in 
general for learning how to make magnetic ob- 
servations at sea far more accurately and 
systematically than had ever before been at- 
tempted. 

The “magnetic constants” of this wooden 
sailing vessel were smaller than those of any 
vessel which had been previously used for mag- 
netic observations; but, small as they were, 
they necessitated many corrections and fre- 
quent “swinging the ship” to obtain the ac- 
curacy which Dr. Bauer had determined upon 
as the goal to be attained. This not only con- 
sumed much time, but also diminished the pre- 
cision of the final results. Accordingly, the 
non-magnetic yacht Carnegie was built in 
1909 in which the use of iron was almost 
wholly avoided; wooden pins, and bolts of 
copper and of Tobin bronze took the place of 
iron nails, the producer gas engine used for 
auxiliary power was constructed of bronze, 
and the only magnetic materials used were the 
steel valves, piston rings and cam-rollers. Re- 
peated tests have shown that this unique ves- 
sel has no appreciable effect upon the instru- 
ments; and in her various cruises aggregating 
more than 160,000 miles, observations have 
been obtained with comparative ease and ra- 
pidity whose accuracy is far beyond anything 
which had previously been possible at sea. 

The first 154 pages of the present volume 
give an account of the work done on the 
Galilee, while the remainder deals in the same 
way with the observations made on the Car- 
negie. The various instruments are fully de- 
scribed and illustrated, and it is most interest- 
ing to follow their gradual improvement and 
perfection. To the experimental physicist this 
is one of the most attractive portions of the 
report; especial mention may be made of the 
beautiful and ingenious marine earth-inductor 
described on pp. 196 et seq. A full account is 
given of the methods of making observations, 
their reduction and correction and of the sys- 
tem of checks and controls between the various 
instruments, as well as those introduced by 
shore observations which were made at every 


SCIENCE 


343 


opportunity. The final results for each cruise 
are given in tabular form and no detail is 
omitted which might add to their usefulness. 

In addition to the magnetic measurements, 
systematic observations were also carried out 
on atmospheric electricity, ionization and 
radio-activity; these form the subjects of the 
special reports with which the volume closes. 

The practical utility of this great series of 
magnetic observations in correcting mariners’ 
charts of magnetic variation is obvious; seri- 
ous errors in the present charts have been 
found and their correction lessens the dangers 
of navigation in times of storm and fog when 
astronomical observations are impossible. 
And quite apart from this most useful result 
the ultimate scientific value of such a survey 
continued year after year, as it will doubtless 
be when the war is over, is very great. The 
earth’s magnetism is one of the great myste- 
ries of physical and cosmical science; observa- 
tions on land alone cover too small an area of 
the earth’s surface to afford an adequate basis 
of knowledge of the earth’s field and of the 
intricacies of its secular variations. Con- 
tinued, systematic sea observations of the 
accuracy of those recorded in this report form 
a necessary stage in the solution of the great 
problem; when that is obtained it will doubt- 
less lead to a further knowledge of the sun’s 
magnetism and may well have results of the 
highest significance in cosmical theory. 

This volume is a monument to the well- 
directed enthusiasm and foresight of Dr. Bauer 
and to the skill and zeal of his associates. In 
this case as in many others the Carnegie In- 
stitution deserves the thanks of the scientific 
world for generously supporting and wisely 
forwarding work which could scarcely have 
been done at present by any other agency. 


H. A. Bumsteap 
YALE UNIVERSITY 


THE RELATION OF THE MALPIGHIAN 
TUBULES OF THE HIND INTES- 
TINE IN THE HONEYBEE 
LARVA 


Ir has been known for nearly a hundred 
years that the mid-intestine of larvee of bees 


344 


and wasps was essentially a blind sac.1 The 
subsequent establishment of communication 
between the mid and hind-intestine in the 
larve of various members of the Hymenoptera 
was long since noted and has been studied in 
detail by Rengel.2 The relation of the Mal- 
pighian tubules to the hind-intestine in the 
Hymenoptera has, on the other hand, been 
strangely neglected, being mentioned only in- 
cidentally or completely ignored. For example, 
both Anglas? and Rengel merely state that in 
the late larva or semipupa of the honeybee the 
Malpighian tubules open into the hind-intes- 
tine, and ignore the earlier stages. Kara- 
waiew! and Perez® describe the Malpighian 
tubules in the ant larva as opening into the 
hind-intestine. This condition, however, does 
not obtain in case of the feeding larva of the 
honeybee, the central (caudal) ends of the tu- 
bules being blind from the time of hatching 
up to the sealing of the cell. The relation of 
the tubules to the hind- and mid-intestine dur- 
ing the feeding period is briefly as follows: 
The posterior end or fundus of the mid-intes- 
tine is, as already stated, completely closed, 
the epithelium being continuous here. The 
cephalic end of the hind-intestine is enlarged 
and the mouth of this enlargement closed by 
a thin diaphragm-like layer of cells contin- 
nous marginally with the wall of the hind-in- 
testine The central part of this diaphragm- 
like structure is closely applied to the external 
surface of the fundus of the mid-intestine 
which is here devoid of a muscular coat. The 


1 Dutrochet, R. J. H., ‘‘Mémoire sur les méta- 
morphoses du canal alimentaire chez les Insectes,’’ 
Jour. de Phys., LXXXVI., 1818. 


2Rengel, C., ‘‘Uber den Zusammenhang von 
Mitteldarm und Enddarm bei den Larven der 
aculeaten Hymenopteren,’’ Zeit. wiss. Zool., 
LXXV., 1902. 

3 Anglas, M. J., ‘‘Observations sur les méta- 
morphoses internes de la Guepe et de 1’Abeille,”’ 
Bull. Sci. France et Belg., XXXIV., 1901. 

4 Karawaiew, W., ‘‘Die nachembryonale Ent- 
wicklung von Lasius flavus,’’ Zett. wiss. Zool., 
LXIV., 1898. 

5 Perez, Ch., ‘‘Contribution a 1’étude des méta- 
morphoses,’’ Bull. Sci. France et Belg.. XXXVIL., 
1903. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1188 


pointed central blind ends of the four Mal- 
pighian tubules are inserted between these 
two layers, two on each side, but their tips do 
not extend quite to the center of the area of 
attachment of the mid- and hind-intestines. 

In the newly hatched larva the Malpighian 
tubules are slender tubes, and pursue a wind- 
ing course from their point of attachment up 
to the second or third thoracic segment, lying 
between the capacious mid-intestine and the 
body wall. Their lumen is minute, the walls 
being relatively very thick and composed. of 
cells whose depth and breadth are approxi- 
mately equal. In the mature larva on the other 
hand the Malpighian tubules are relatively vo- 
luminous, attaining, near their posterior ends, 
a diameter greater than that of the hind-in- 
testine. The posterior or central ends them- 
selves, however, always remain of small di- 
ameter. Sections through the tubules at this 
stage show that the walls are extremely thin 
and composed of flat cells. In fact, the tu- 
bules might well be described as “ thin-walled 
tubular sacs.” Evidences of distension by in- 
ternal pressure are obvious. 

After the larva has been sealed up in its 
cell by a waxen capping both the fundus of the 
mid-intestine and the diaphragm-like epithe- 
lium closing the cephalic end of the mid-in- 
testine become perforated, thus establishing an 
avenue of communication between the mid- and 
hind-intestine through which the fecal ac- 
eumulations of the mid-intestine are expelled. 
At the same time that this occurs each of the 
Malpighian tubules establishes connection with 
the hind-intestine by means of a fine canal 
which perforates the diaphragm-like layer of 
cells which formerly closed the anterior end 
of the hind-intestine but which now forms an 
annular structure uniting the mid- and hind- 
intestines. Sections through the tubules show 
that they have greatly diminished in calibre, 
the walls being more or less collapsed and their 
component cells being correspondingly nar- 
rower and deeper. 

The history of the Malpighian tubules and 
that of the mid-intestine during the feeding 
period of larval life are therefore parallel in 
that both, in addition to performing their 


SEPTEMBER 21, 1917] 


original functions, retain and store up the ac- 
cumulated excreta which is discharged only 
after feeding ceases, when such discharge on 
the interior of the cell occupied by the larva 
would not involve contamination of the food. 


BuREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY, Jas. A. Nezson 


WASHINGTON, D. C., 
July 18, 1917 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


CONCERNING THE EFFECT OF INGESTED PLA- 
CENTA ON THE GROWTH-PROMOTING 
PROPERTIES OF HUMAN MILK 


Ir has been shown that the feeding of desic- 
cated placenta to women during the first eleven 
days after parturition causes an increase in 
the protein and lactose per cent. of the milk.t 

The present report is concerned with the 
growth of the infants subsisting upon the milk 
from the above sources. As a basis for com- 
parison there is used the growth of the infants 
whose nourishment was derived from the wo- 
men whose milk production was not subjected 
to the influence of ingested desiccated pla- 
centa. ; 

In the tables at the end of this paper the 
number assigned to the infant corresponds to 
the number given to the mother in the previ- 
ous reports. It should be remembered that all 
the mothers were receiving the same diet and 
that to the second set 0.6 gm. of desiccated pla- 
centa was fed three times a day throughout the 
period. } 

Certain definite differences in the progress of 
growth of the two sets of infants are to be ob- 
served. 

The variation limit per cent. from day to 
day, and the absolute per cent. variation from 
day to day is less in degree and tends to take 
on more of a positive character in those in- 
fants whose mothers were fed the desiccated 
placenta. Also the per cent. variation from 
the first day, both as regards its limits and its 
average is at all times less in degree. The gen- 
eral trend of these latter values is towards 
zero; this is not to be seen with the infants 
receiving milk from uninfluenced sources. 

1 Hammett, F. S., and L. G. MeNeile, Jour. Biol. 
Chem., 1917, XXX.; Hammett, F. 8., Jour. Biol. 
Chem., 1917, XXIX., 381. 


SCIENCE 


345 


It is evident that the recovery from the post- 
natal decline in weight is hastened by the con- 
sumption of milk produced under the influence 
of maternally ingested placenta. 

It is obviously possible to eliminate from 
consideration the increase in protein and 
sugar production induced by the placental 
feeding as the cause of the early weight in- 
crease. 

TABLE I 


The Weights during the First Eleven Days after 
Birth of the Infants receiving Milk from the 
Mothers whose Production was Unin- 
fluenced by the Ingestion of Desic- 
cated Placenta 


Infant No.../|1, Oz.|2, Oz.|3, Oz.|4, Oz.'5, 0z.'6, Oz.|7, Oz.'8, Oz. 
IDE dogs dod 118 | 148 | 120} 120} 119] 104) 96/144 
Ot eryet 108 | 188) 116} 111)114} 98) 91) 143 
Booonao 107 | 130 | 114} 107) 112/100) 94} 131 
Ccobod 109 | 129; 109| 110} 106; 102} 94) 135 
Oerporetee 106 | 129 | 112} 111 | 105} 104 100 | 134 
@oooocn 105 | 182) 114} 104! 106!104! 96) 134 
Uooccce 108 | 131 | 112} 104} 108} 104) 98) 141 
Sco0d0 108 | 130} 108 | 102} 107| 107| 91] 143 
Oooden 105 | 129} 109 | 105} 108| 104} 91] 149 
LO eyeteyate 108 | 128 | 108 | 112| 103 | 107) 93} 146 
aerate 108 | 129/108! 114!104!107| 96] 148 
TABLE II 


The Weights during the First Eleven Days after 
Birth of the Infants receiving Milk from the 
Mothers whose Production was In- 
fluenced by the Ingestion of 
Desiccated Placenta 


Infant No. . .|1, Oz.}2, Oz./3, Oz.|4, Oz.|5, 0z./6, Oz.|7, 0z.'8, Oz. 
Maylene 150} 119] 111] 135| 144] 76 | 114] 123 
Deiat 138} 115] 108] 123] 142] 72 | 112] 117 
Saas ",| 133 | 112] 101 | 123] 136] 71 | 107 | 121 

AN ee 134 | 112] 100) 123] 136] 72 | 108} 122 
fest ary 140| 113} 99] 124] 138} 72 | 110] 119 

6h soe 140} 114] 100} 123} 143] 72 | 106} 126 

Ta edberess 142 | 115 | 100 | 124] 146] 73 | 104] 126 
Sine 145 | 118 | 102 | 124] 147) 76 | 106 | 124 
Geeta 149 | 118} 101] 124| 144} 76 | 108} 118 
LORE: 153/116} 99] 128} 144] 75 | 106/126 
Tne ees |150!116! 98| 1301143! 75 | 108! 126 


These results may then be best interpreted 
on the assumption of the presence of some 
growth-promoting factor in the ingested pla- 
centa, which has been passed on to the infants 
in the milk. There is thus opened up the prob- 
ability of the placenta taking some part in 


346 


intra-uterine growth aside from its function 
as a transfer system. 
FReDERIOK §. HAMMETT, 


Lyte G. McNre 
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, 
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 
Los ANGELES, CaLir. 


THE EFFECT OF DRAINAGE ON SOIL ACIDITY 

For the purpose of studying the effect of 
drainage on soil acidity, samples of soil were 
taken in October, 1916, from three of the ex- 
periment fields of the Purdue Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station. These fields are located 
near Westport, North Vernon and Worthing- 
ton. The soils of these fields are all heavy silt 
loam, very low in organic matter and naturally 
poorly drained and quite acid in reaction. All 
of these fields have been thoroughly tile 
drained from three to five years. A portion of 
the Westport field is undrained and there are 
adjacent undrained, untreated areas alongside 
the North Vernon and the Worthington fields. 


TABLE I 
RELATIVE ACIDITY OF DRAINED AND UNDRAINED SOILS 


Lbs. CaCOs Needed 
Field and Soil Treatment ated EAE 
Drained |Undrained 
Westport field: 
Weimestonen saree cee ones ere eee 40# 760 # 
Limestone, phosphate and potash 30#| 3604 
Wntreated see yecssscestcsececcsesees 860 # | 1,280 # 
North Vernon field: 
Wintreated aw cusscctes desesecs 1,880 # | 2,840 # 
Worthington field: 
Wntreated se seikeseccscseeceneecene 740 # | 1,600 # 


Table I. shows the acidity of the soil as de- 
termined by the potassium nitrate method. 
Without entering into a discussion of the 
merits of different soil acidity methods, it may 
be said that on these soils, which are low in or- 
ganic matter, there is no great difference in 
the degree of acidity shown by this method 
and the lime water and calcium salt methods. 
These results are consistent enough to indicate 
that drainage has a material influence on the 
acidity of soil of this type. 

Farmers often refer to wet, poorly drained 
land as sour. While agricultural writers have 
placed little or no emphasis on such a correla- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1186 


tion, it is quite probable that soils in general 
will tend to become less acid when thoroughly 
drained, and vice versa; they will tend to be- 
come more acid when water-logged and poorly 
aerated. In testing soil acidity at different 
seasons of the year the results often vary quite 
a little in samples from the same plots of soil. 
These differences can not be attributed alto- 
gether to errors in sampling. The writer be- 
lieves that at least part of the change of acid- 
ity is due to difference in aeration and mois- 
ture content of the soil at different seasons. 
Lipman and Waynick,! in an investigation of 
the effect of climate on soil properties, report 
that Maryland soil, which shows an acid reac- 
tion in its original location, when transported 
to Kansas or to California becomes neutral or 
slightly alkaline. It is quite probable that the 
better drainage and aeration of the soil when 
placed under less humid conditions could ac- 
count very largely for the changes in reaction. 

Considering SiO, an acid-forming oxide, 
practically all soils except those very high in 
the basic reacting elements, have a potentially 
great capacity for developing an acid reaction. 

The writer believes that the constitution of 
the silicates of aluminum has more to do with 
injurious soil acidity than any other single 
factor. The acidity of aluminum silicates 
varies both with the relative proportion of 
SiO, to ALO, and with the amount of com- 
bined water in the silicate? The weathering 
and changing of soil silicates under poorly 
drained or well-drained conditions would un- 
doubtedly vary the constitution of the silicates 
and also vary the degree of soil acidity. It is 
quite true that certain types of well-drained 
sandy soils are acid. It is true also that a 
number of other factors besides drainage con- 
ditions affect soil acidity, but it is probable 
that the most acid soils are formed in poorly 


drained areas. S. D. Conner 
INDIANA AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, 
LAFAYETTE, IND. 


1Lipman, C. B., and Waynick, D. D., Soil Sci- 
ence, Vol. I., No. 1, p. 5, 1916. 

2Conner, S. D., ‘‘Acid Soils and the Effect of 
Acid Phosphate and Other Fertilizers upon Them,’’ 
Jour. Ind. and Eng. Chem., Vol. VII., No. 1, p. 35, 
1916. 


CIENCE 


New SERIES 5 SINGLE CopiEs, 15 CTs. 
VoL. XLVI. No. 1189 Pripay, OcTroBER 12, 1917 ANNUAL SUBSORIPTION, $5.00 


For Every Library 


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86. Peters, C. H. F., and E. B. Knobel. Ptolemy’s ""=¥ 
Catalogue of Stars. A Revision of the Almagest. 
Quarto, iii+207 pages 


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RECENTLY ISSUED " : 
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vised from all Persian manuscripts existing in 
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wre 


All communications should be addressed to 


CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


SCIENC 


Fripay, Ocroprr 12, 1917 


CONTENTS 


Radiation and Matter: Proressor WILLIAM 
DD UPAUNEN env louovs chaps oi cve\s/ susioie) absleseiay evarsoele sob00 Bey 
The Relations of Magnetism to Molecular 


Structure: Proressor A. P. WILLS 949 


Enrollment in Science in the High Schools: 
Proressor ELLIOT R. DOWNING........... 351 

Scientific Events :— 
Professor Robertson’s Gift to the University 
of California; The Health of Munition 
Workers in England ; Electrical Engineers as 
Lieutenants in the U. 8S. Naval Reserve; 
Psychological Examination of Recruits 


Scientific Notes and News ........... B600G0 


University and Educational News 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
International Units and Symbols in Aerog- 
raphy: PRoFEssoR ALEXANDER McApIz. 
Symbols: Dr. Orro Kuotz. Bacterial Leaf- 
spot of Tobacco: F. A. Wour anp A. C. 
Foster. Plant Diseases in Canada: Dr. H. 
T. GUssow. Common Plant Names: Mar- 
GARET ARMSTRONG. A Simple Explanation: 
ProFEssoR Cyrit G. HOPKINS ............ 360 


Quotations :— 
Columbia University and Professor Cattell. 363 
Scientific Books :— 
Findlay’s Chemistry in the Service of Man: 
ProFEssor JAS. LEwis Hows. Ulugh Beg’s 


Catalogue of Stars: Dr. BENJAMIN Boss. 364 


Five Years of Starvation of Larve: Dr. J. E. 


IWODSEDATIERA er potoic face ee terete whee 366 


Special Articles :— 


The Réle of the Nucleus in Oxidation: Pro- 
Fessor W. J. V. OSTERHOUT .............. 


Societies and Academies :— 


The American Mathematical Society: Pro- 
PESSOR Wo. IN| COLDM Aetna 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
teview should be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


RADIATION AND MATTER} 

WE must congratulate ourselves upon 
the fact that we have been able to listen to 
such clear, concise and accurate presenta- 
tions of the most fundamental problems 
that lie before pure science to-day. I would 
like, also, to extend to the speakers our sin- 
cere thanks for their efforts in giving us 
such interesting expositions of these ab- 
struse theories. 

It is my privilege to open the discussion 
on radiation and the structure of matter. 
Modern theories of radiation are largely 
concerned with Planck’s conception of the 
radiation of energy in quanta, and with the 
extraordinary action constant usually de- 
noted by the letter ‘‘h.’’ I would like to 
present for your discussion some ideas on 
the relations between the high frequency 
vibrations which we observe in general X- 
radiation, and the forces holding the elec- 
trons and atoms together, including a phys- 
ical conception of what this constant ‘‘ h ’’ 
really means. 

Instead of basing the discussion on the 
conceptions of entropy, and thermo-dy- 
namie probability, I shall start from our 
recent experiments on general X-radiation. 

Before we learned from experiments that 
X-rays had definite wave-lengths, people 
supposed that they had, and that we could 
ealeulate their frequencies by the formula 
kinetic energy equals hv. 


(1) 4mv?=h. 


1 Presented at the symposium on ‘‘The Strue- 
ture of Matter’’ at a joint meeting of the Sections 
of Physies and Chemistry of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, The Amer- 
ican Physical Society and the American Chemical 
Society, New York, December 27, 1916. 


348 


We have shown, by experiments at Har- 
vard, that this equation is not, in general, 
true, but that it does hold for particular 
eases. Mr. Hunt and I investigated the gen- 
eral X-radiation from a Coolidge tube, ex- 


cited by a high potential constant voltage — 


storage battery, using an X-ray spectrom- 
eter, and found that although the effective, 
or average, frequency does not obey the law 
represented in the equation (1), the equa- 
tion does give the maximum frequency ob- 
tainable with a given electron energy. Dr. 
Webster then examined the characteristic 
X-radiation, and discovered that the kinetic 
energy of the electrons required to produce 
the alpha and beta lines of the K series is 
larger than is represented by equation (1), 
but that the gamma line (the highest fre- 
quency line in this series) approximately 
obeys the law. It appears, therefore, from 
our experiments, that equation (1) gives 
the maximum frequency of the radiation 
due to an electron’s hitting an atom, but 
does not, in general, mean that the entire 
amount of the electron’s energy is radiated 
at frequency v. 

I have recently shown that it is not neces- 
sary to assume that energy is radiated in 
quanta ‘‘h’’ in order to deduce equations 
for the distribution of energy in emission 
spectra similar to the equations represent- 
ing black body radiation, so that we are not 
compelled to believe that because Planck’s 
radiation law fits the facts of black body 
radiation more or less closely, therefore 
energy must be radiated in quanta hy. In 
attempting to explain why this constant 
“‘h’’ enters into the radiation law and in 
seeking for a physical conception of the 
mechanism of radiation, we are not there- 
fore compelled to explain the emission of 
radiation in quanta hy, but rather the fact 
that an electron with a given kinetic energy, 
when it hits an atom, can produce radia- 
tions of frequency up to but not greater 
than that given by equation (1). This is 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1189 


the fundamental fact that needs explana- 
tion. 

According to the modern conception of 
the constitution of matter, an atom pos- 
sesses a complicated electro-magnetic struc- 
ture in which the electrons play an impor- 
tant réle. The electro-magnetic forces in 
this structure are greater near its center 
than at the periphery, and therefore the 
high frequency vibrations of the electrons 
must be associated with parts of the atom 
near its center. Hence, the reason why an 
electron can not produce a high frequency 
radiation unless it possesses a certain ki- 
netie energy lies in the fact that it does not 
penetrate far into the atom unless it has a 
sufficient speed. This presupposes a force 
of repulsion between the electron and the 
atom. The theory of atomic structure 
seems to demand such a force in order to 
explain why atoms do not collapse; so that 
we have confirmation of the existence of 
such forces from two sides: the radiation 
and the structure of matter. 

Before discussing further the nature of 
this force and the laws it must obey, I 
would like to present to you a conception 
of the difference between line spectra and 
the general, or continuous spectra. The 
frequencies of the characteristic lines de- 
pend upon the nature of the atoms struck 
by the electrons, whereas the frequencies 
of the general radiation depend upon the 
kinetic energy of the electron that does the 
striking. This suggests that the character- 
istic lines are due to vibrations of parts of 
the atoms themselves (of electrons in the 
atoms, for instance) whereas the general 
radiation or continuous spectrum is due to 
the vibrations of the electrons that hit the 
atoms. 

The question now arises ‘‘How can an 
electron vibrate with all possible frequency 
so as to give a continuous spectrum?”’ 
The electron moves in the strong electro- 
magnetic field of the atom, and when an 


OotoBeR 12, 1917] 


electron moves in a strong magnetic field, 
it follows a spiral path around a line of 
foree. This motion in a spiral path radi- 
ates energy with a frequency that depends 
on the strength of the field, and is therefore 
variable. It is easily shown that in a case 
where the spiral is tightly wound around 
a line of magnetic force, the frequency is 
given by the equation 

ya @) 

From this equation it appears that the 
frequency is independent of the velocity of 
the electron and of the radius of the spiral 
and that it is practically proportional to 
the strength of the magnetic field; and 
since H varies continuously, the frequency 
ean have all possible values (up to a maxi- 
mum), which gives the radiation the char- 
acter of a continuous spectrum. 

Let us combine this conception of gen- 
eral X-radiation with the experimental fact 
that the maximum frequeney due to the 
impact of an electron against an atom is 
given by equation (1). Suppose the elec- 
tron to be traveling very nearly along the 
line of force coming from a very great dis- 
tance, where its velocity is v and let x be 
its distance from any fixed point at the 
time t; let # be the total force acting on 
the electron in the direction of the weaker 
magnetic field. Then we can show easily 
that 


F= ok Tae (3) 
We find, therefore, that a force of repul- 
sion acting on the electron, the magnitude 
of which is represented by equation (3), 
will explain why an electron of given ki- 
netic energy can not produce radiation 
higher than that given by equation (1). 
A force such as that represented by equa- 
tion (3) should hold an electron in equi- 
librium at a distance somewhat smaller 
than 10° from an atomic nucleus, if the 


SCIENCE 


349 


nucleus had a charge e and the magnetic 
moment attributed to atoms and magnetons, 
Such a force would play an important role 
in determining the size and compressibility 
of atoms, the conduction of heat and spe- 
cific heats, and a great variety of phe- 
nomena. Winntim DUANE 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


THE RELATIONS OF MAGNETISM TO 
MOLECULAR STRUCTURE 

Maxwe.u’s classical theory of electricity 
and magnetism contributes little to our 
knowledge of molecular structure. For the 
portion of it which deals with material sub- 
stances is exhibited in terms of quantities 
for which the process of definition wipes 
out structural distinctions. It is only 
through molecular theories of magnetism 
that magnetic phenomena may be corre- 
lated with molecular structure. 

Langevin’s theory of magnetism ap- 
pears to be the soundest attempt to formu- 
late such a theory. He hypothecates the 
existence in the molecules of every sub- 
stance of groups of electronic orbits which 
by virtue of the peculiarities of the struc- 
ture of the molecules may be so arranged 
that the resultant magnetic field due to the 
electronic orbits in a given molecule at 
points without the molecule may or may 
not vanish. In the former case the mole- 
cule is diamagnetic, in the latter magnetic. 

The effect of the application of a mag- 
netic field to a diamagnetic substance is to 
change the orbital velocity of any electron. 
This change is in the proper direction to ac- 
count for the diamagnetic polarity of the 
substance. Langevin’s theory leads to an 
expression for diamagnetic susceptibility 
which does not involve the temperature, in 
agreement with Curie’s law for diamagnet- 
ism. Numerous exceptions to this law ex- 
ist, but the exceptions may probably all be 
taken eare of by a slight extension of 
Langevin’s theory as proposed by Oxley. 


350 


One of Oxley’s most interesting conclu- 
sions is that the mutual magnetic field of 
two diamagnetic molecules in intimate con- 
tact is of the order of 10’ gausses. 

Langevin’s hypothesis, while probably 
the most satisfactory yet advanced, leaves 
us quite in the dark as to a mechanical ex- 
planation of the architecture of the mole- 
cule. 

In paramagnetic and ferromagnetic sub- 
stances in accordance with the views of 
Langevin the réle played by the molecule 
is not as in diamagnetic substances inde- 
pendent of the molecule’s orientation in 
space, and it is necessary to assume that the 
effect of an applied field is to rotate the 
electronic orbits so that the direction of the 
resultant external field of a molecule tends 
toward that of the applied field. But the 
theory tells us nothing of the mechanism 
which will account for this orientation. 
Resisting the orientation. will be heat agi- 
tation and perhaps inter-atomic and molec- 
ular actions of other than magnetic type. 
In a paramagnetic gas the resistance to 
orientation is supposed to be entirely due to 
heat agitation. The theory for such a gas 
leads to an expression for the susceptibility 
which depends upon ‘both the impressed 
field and the temperature, but for fields at- 
tainable in the laboratory the susceptibil- 
ity varies inversely with the absolute tem- 
perature in accordance with Curie’s law 
for paramagnetism. 

With the aid of the assumption that as 
regards rotation the molecules of a para- 
magnetic liquid behave like those of a para- 
magnetic gas it is possible to extend the 
theory of the gas to include that of the 
liquid, and such an extension is probably 
reasonably safe for liquids not given to 
polymerization. 

In Weiss’s theory of ferromagnetism it is 
assumed that, so far as rotation is con- 
cerned, the molecules of a ferromagnetic 
substance behave like those of a paramag- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1189 


netic gas, a somewhat questionable assump- 
tion in this case. The effect of neighbor- 
ing molecules upon a given molecule is as- 
sumed to be that which would be produced 
by a very large localized magnetic field of 
the order of 107 gausses. The theory based 
on these assumptions succeeds to a remark- 
able extent in explaining many of the facts 
of ferromagnetism. 

The large internal fields hypothecated 
by Weiss and by Oxley are to be regarded 
as devices for averaging out in a measure 
the complicated effects due to molecular 
structure. 

Through experiment Weiss was led to 
belief in the existence of an elementary 
unit of magnetic moment which he called 
the magneton. This corresponds in elec- 
trical theory to the electron. In many in- 
stances the magnetic moment per molecule 
appears to be very nearly an integer num- 
ber of magnetons. But the evidence is not 
weighty enough to justify the acceptance 
unreservedly of this proposed new physical 
unit. 

The subject of magneto-chemistry is al- 
ready a very extended one. Here the at- 
tempt is made to establish a connection be- 
tween the magnetic moment of a compound 
and those of its constituents, and additive 
relations are sometimes found. Substan- 
tial chemical information is often found 
through magnetic analysis. Various at- 
tempts have been made to explain chemical 
valency bonds through the magnetic at- 
tractions of rotating electrons in the atoms. 
One of these, that of Parsons, offers promise 
of considerable success in this direction. 

The recent magnetic experiments of Bar- 
nett and of Hinstein and deHass appear to 
prove definitely the existence of electrons 
rotating in closed orbits within the mole- 
cules of material substances, and thus fur- 
nish important support to Langevin’s 
fundamental assumptions. 

From this necessarily inadequate discus- 


OctoBEr 12, 1917] 


sion you will infer that our molecular theo- 
ries of magnetism are yet in a very unsatis- 
factory state in spite of the light which 
Langevin’s ideas have thrown upon the 
subject, and that experiments upon the 
magnetic properties of bodies have not yet 
contributed in a very striking manner to 
our knowledge of molecular structure. 
A. P. Wiis 


CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


ENROLLMENT IN SCIENCE IN THE 
HIGH SCHOOLS 

In the issue of Scmnce for February 12, 
1915 (Vol. XLI., pp. 232-235), I called atten- 
tion to the significance of the data given by 
the Commissioner of Education in regard to 
the enrollment in science studies in the high 
schools of the United States. The appearance 
of additional statistics for the five-year period 
1910-1914 in the 1916 Report makes it possible 
to review the situation in the light of the 
new figures. 

The table on page 489 of the Report of the 
Commissioner of Education for 1916, Vol. IT., 
gives a summary of the enrollment in various 
subjects of the high-school curriculum in 1910 
and 1915, both in terms of the numbers en- 
rolled and in the percentage of the total en- 
rollment. It is rather startling to find that 
in this five-year period there has been a drop 
of 44 per cent. in the enrollment in botany, 
stated in terms of the per cent. of the total 
enrollment, and one of 51.3 per cent. in zoology. 
The decline in botany has been from 16.34 per 
cent. to 7.19 per cent. and in zoology from 7.88 
per cent. to 4.04 per cent. Physics has nearly 
held its own, changing from 14.79 per cent. to 
14.28 per cent. while chemistry has made a 
slight gain, from 7.13 per cent. to 7.63 per cent. 
The other old-line sciences have all dropped off, 
physiology and physical geography quite 
heavily. Nor is the gain in the newer sci- 
ences enough to counterbalance the loss in 
the old. The percentage enrollment in agri- 
culture has increased from 4.55 per cent. to 
6.92 per cent., in domestic science from 4.14 
per cent. to 12.69 per cent. The total per- 


SCIENCE 


351 


centage enrolled in science in 1909-1910 was 
91.99 per cent., in 1914-1915 86.16 per cent., a 
drop of 5.83 per cent. 

It seems strange that in an age when ap- 
plied science is increasingly evident on every 
hand in the commonplace appliances of home, 
farm, factory and office that there should be 
any decline in the relative interest in science 


o °©90000 O90, 


Fig. 1. Showing percentage of total enrollment 
in the high schools of the United States pursuing 
certain groups of studies, as follows: Class- 
ies, ----- ; English, 000000; History —-.—..—..; 
Mathematics, -x-x-x-; Modern Language —_______ ; 
Science, 1mm. =1.2 per cent. 


in the high schools. It is fairly evident that 
the high-school science course is in some way 
out of joint with the times. This decline in 
the’ science enrollment is not so alarming, 
however, when compared with changes in the 
other groups of subjects. The modern lan- 
guage group is the only one of the traditional 
subjects that shows an increase, that a small 
one of 1.5 per cent. The classics drop 11.04 


302 


per cent., mathematics 10.37 per cent., history 
4.23 per cent., English 1.96 per cent. These 
changes are graphically presented in Fig. 1 
and at the same time compared with the 
changes of the two preceding decades. 

In general the interpretation put upon the 
data in the previous article seems still to 
maintain, namely (1) that the decline in the 
percentage of students in the old-line sub- 
jects is largely due to the introduction of 
many new subjects like manual training, do- 
mestic science, biology, agriculture, drawing, 
ete., most of which appear in the tabulation 
for the first time in the 1916 Report; and (2) 
that the science group is holding its own 
reasonably well. This is especially true of 
physics and chemistry which are usually 
offered in the third and fourth years of the 
course. Since the high-school enrollment is 
increasing very rapidly, 45.1 per cent. 1909- 
1914, while the percentage of pupils in the 
upper grades increases slowly (.49 per cent. 
for the third grade, 1.8 per cent. for fourth 
grade in the same five years), there is an in- 
creasingly large number of students that get 
no chance at physics and chemistry. 

The data given for®botany and zoology are 
indicative that another decade will see these 
biological subjects eliminated from the high- 
school curriculum. JI am not sure that such 
a conclusion is justified, however; they may 
merely appear under a new caption. The 
data given for the whole United States may 
obseure what is going on locally and progress 
is usually local at first. Changes of opposite 
character may quite effectually obliterate 
each other when the data are massed. Thus 
the interest in French is largely concentrated 
in the New England States. More than 43 
per cent. of the high-school pupils of Maine 
and New Hampshire are enrolled in French. 
The average for the New England States is 
37.7 per cent.; for the North Central States, 
3.07 per cent. The percentage enrollment in 
French has declined, though the enrollment 
in the modern languages has increased, largely 
due to the increase in Spanish in the Western 
States, the percentage of enrollment in it be- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1189 


ing 10.45 per cent. there, as compared with 
0.76 per cent. in the North Central States. 

The largest decline in botany and zoology 
has been in the North Atlantic States, where 
the percentage of enrollment has dropped in 
the five-year period from 16.28 per cent. to 
6.46 per cent. in the former subject and in the 
latter from 9.64 per cent. to 3.18 per cent. 
But simultaneously the enrollment in biology 
has risen from 2.35 per cent. to 14.88 per cent. 
The percentage of enrollment in botany has 
changed in the North Central States from 
17.72 per cent. to 12.79 per cent. and in zo- 
ology from 5.57 per cent. to 3.49 per cent.; 
but at the same time the enrollment in biology 
has risen from 0.13 per cent. to 1.64 per cent. 
and in agriculture from 4.97 per cent. to 9.78 
per cent. 

Botany and zoology are apparently giving 
way to related subjects that either appeal to 
school authorities as more effective educa- 
tionally or to the public as more closely allied 
to everyday affairs. In view of the fact, now 
generally recognized, that knowledge and prin- 
ciples gained in one field of study do not carry 
over even into an adjacent field readily, it 
must be considered good policy in science in- 
struction to deal with subject matter that is 
as nearly identical as possible with that which 
pupils will handle in their major life inter- 
ests. Exuiot R. Downie 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 

THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


PROFESSOR ROBERTSON’S GIFT TO THE 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


Dr. T. Bramsrorp Ropertson, professor of 
biochemistry and pharmacology in the Uni- 
versity of California, has executed a deed 
donating to the University of California all 
his patent rights in the growth-controlling 
substance, “ Tethelin,” which he has succeeded 
in isolating from the anterior lobe of the 
pituitary body, and which has been employed 
to accelerate repair in slowly healing wounds. 
All profits resulting from this discovery are to 
constitute an endowment, the income to be 
applied to medical research. 


Octoser 12, 1917] 


Tests of this new chemical substance made 
in army hospitals in Europe and in civil 
hospitals in America have shown that it is of 
value in curing wounds and in causing 
wounds to heal promptly which for months or 
even years had refused to yield to treatment. 
While several new substances and new 
methods found by medical investigators since 
the war began have proved extremely useful in 
combating infections in wounds, “ Tethelin ” 
has a field of usefulness all its own—after 
other methods have rendered the tissues 
aseptic and wounds sometimes refuse to heal, 
especially where frostbite, burns, or varicose 
veins have injured the vitality of the tissues. 
There are thousands of such cases in Europe 
to-day and they occupy the hospitals for an 
exceptionally long time, consuming drugs, 
time, space, and food, and frequently such 
cases have to be discharged unhealed. It is 
precisely these cases—the most expensive and 
most disabling type of wounds—which “ Teth- 
elin” aids, since it stimulates the sluggish 
tissues and enables nature to work its own 
repair. 

Professor Robertson has relinquished all 
personal profit from his discovery of this 
growth-promoting substance. In the agree- 
ment by which the regents of the University 
of California have accepted the trusteeship of 
this endowment for medical research it is pro- 
vided that in case Professor Robertson should 
become physically disabled his present uni- 
versity salary would be continued throughout 
his lifetime, from the proceeds of the trust, or 
in case of his death, to his wife for her life 
time. All income above this contingent 
charge will go to endow an institute of medi- 
eal research, devoted to research in medicine, 
and especially to research in the physiology, 
chemistry and pathology of growth. 

Under the supervisory control of the re- 
gents of the university, the researches thus 
provided for are to be directed by a board of 
directors, of which the charter members are 
to be five members of the faculty of the Uni- 
versity of California: Dr. F. P. Gay, professor 
of pathology; Dr. Herbert M. Evans, pro- 
fessor of anatomy; Dr. George H. Whipple, 


SCIENCE 


-piration of four months. 


303 


professor of research medicine and director of 
the George Williams Hooper Foundation for 
Medical Research; Dr. C. L. A. Schmitt, re- 
search assistant in pathology; and Professor 
Robertson himself. Wacancies on this board 
must be filled from men engaged directly and 
primarily in research work of the character 
mentioned or of some kindred character. No 
man who ceases to be so engaged may con- 
tinue to serve as a director, and no director is 
to contine in service on the board after he 
arrives at the age of sixty. It is felt by the 
University of California that one especial 
value of the establishment of this foundation 
is the pattern which it sets for a procedure 
by which other scientific discoverers may dedi- 
eate the results of their scientific discoveries 
to the benefit of mankind as a whole. 


THE HEALTH OF MUNITION WORKERS 
IN ENGLAND 

THE report to the British government Com- 
mittee on the Health of Munition Workers is 
summarized in the Journal of the American 
Medical Association. Dr. H. M. Vernon has 
conducted an elaborate investigation for the 
committee, the members of which realize that 
the data at their disposal are not yet ample 
enough to permit them to express a final judg- 
ment on the whole question of hours of labor 
in relation to output, on the one hand, and the 
well-being of the employees, on the other. But 
they are strongly of opinion that the evidence 
collected by Dr. Vernon and his conclusions 
merit the immediate and earnest considera- 
tion of all concerned in industrial organiza- 
tion at the present time. (a) Observations ex- 
tending over a period of thirteen and one half 
months on the output of workers employed in 
making fuses showed that a reduction of work- 
ing hours was associated with an increase of 
production both relative and absolute. The 
rate of production changed gradually, and did 
not reach an equilibrium value before the ex- 
Thereafter it re- 
mained steady during the period of from three 
and one half to five months during which it 
was observed. The gradual change negatives 
the suggestion that the effect was a mere con- 


354 


sequence of the desire to earn the same weekly 
wage as before the hours were shortened. (bd) 
Owing to the reduction of the working time 
first by a change from a twelve-hour day to a 
ten-hour day, and subsequently by the aboli- 
tion of Sunday labor, it was possible to com- 
pare output under three conditions. The 
group of women (numbering from eighty to 
one hundred) engaged in the moderately heavy 
labor of turning aluminum fuse bodies pro- 
vided the following comparative results: (1) 
When actually working 66 hours a week and 
nominally 74.8 hours, their relative hourly pro- 
duction was 100 and their relative gross pro- 
duction 100. (2) When actually working 54.8 
hours and nominally working from 58.5 to 66 
hours, their hourly production was 134 and 
their gross production 111. (3) When actually 
working 45.6 hours and nominally working 
from 49.5 to 58.5 hours, their hourly produc- 
tion was 158 and their gross production 109. 
It is to be inferred, therefore, that had these 
women been working, uniformly, a nominal 50- 
hour week their gross output would have been 
as large as when they were working a nominal 
66-hour week, and considerably greater than 
when they were working a 77-hour week. (c) 
A group of forty women engaged in the light 
labor of milling a screw thread on the fuse 
bodies improved their gross output by 2 per 
cent. when actually working 54.8 hours a week, 
the standard being their gross output when 
working 64.9 hours per week. A further re- 
duction of actual working hours to 48.1 re- 
sulted in such an improvement of hourly out- 
put that the gross output was 1 per cent. less 
than when the actual working time was 16.8 
hours more. (d) A group of fifty-six men en- 
gaged in the heavy labor of sizing the fuse 
bodies improved their hourly output by 37 per 
cent. and their gross output by 21 per cent. 
when actually working 51.2 hours, the stand- 
ards being the hourly and gross outputs ob- 
served when the actual weekly hours were 58.2. 
(e) Fifteen youths engaged in the light labor 
of boring top caps by means of automatic ma- 
chines produced only 3 per cent. less output 
when their actual weekly hours of work were 
54.5 hours than when they were 72.5 hours. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1189 


(f) A part of the improvement in output was 
due to the workers starting work more 
promptly when on shorter hours. At one 
period the women engaged in turning fuse 
bodies lost on the average thirty-seven min- 
utes daily by starting work after, and stopping 
before, the nominal time. Nine months later, 
when their hourly output was 25 per cent. 
better, they lost only twenty-six and one half 
minutes daily in these ways. (g) A rest from 
work on Sunday is followed by a relatively low 
output on Monday, and this output steadily 
rises in the course of the week, owing to the 
increased efficiency produced by practise. 
Generally, the cumulative effects of fatigue 
neutralize and overpower this increased effi- 
ciency, and the output may fall after the sec- 
ond day (or night) of the working week if the 
hours are long and the work laborious, or not 
till after the third, fourth or even fifth day, 
if the hours are shorter. In the absence of a 
Sunday rest, the fatigued worker has no op- 
portunity for complete recuperation and his 
output, though more uniform, remains per- 
manently at a lower level than that shown on 
Monday by a worker who has rested on 
Sunday. 


ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS AS LIEUTENANTS IN 
THE U. S. NAVAL RESERVE 


1. Tue Secretary of the Navy has authorized 
the commissioning of one hundred graduate 
electrical engineers as lieutenants, junior 
grade, in the Naval Reserve, and directed that 
the necessary action be taken to provide these 
officers at the earliest practicable date. 

2. The qualifications for such officers to be 
in general as follows: (a) Citizens of the 
United States. (b) College graduates in elec- 
trical engineering. (c) Not less than three 
years’ employment in electrical work since 
graduation. (d) Between twenty-five and 
thirty-five years of age. (e) Of character and 
physique required for officers of the regular 
service. 

3. Pay and allowances of lieutenants, junior 
grade, are the same as in the regular Navy, 
and are, approximately: $2,200 at sea; on 
shore, including allowances for commutation 
of quarters, heat and light, $2,480. There is an 


OocToBER 12, 1917] 


additional allowance of $150 for uniforms in 
time of war. 

4, Eighty-five nominations of electrical engi- 
neers meeting the above requirements to be 
made by each of the following agencies: 

(a) Naval Consulting Board. 

(6) National Research Council. 

(c) American Institute of Electrical Engi- 
neers. 

5. Upon receipt of the 255 nominations thus 
made certain forms will be sent each nominee 
to execute, and upon receipt of the executed 
forms a Board of Naval Officers will select 100 
for appointment. 

6. After appointments have been made the 
officers so nominated and selected will be given 
a month’s training and instructions on shore in 
naval methods, customs and regulations and 
instructions. Pay will begin on date of ap- 
pointment. 

7. Upon completion of the month’s training 
on shore they will be ordered to the active 
fleet as electrical officers of ships for a period 
of at least six months. After this period they 
will be assigned to duty as the exigencies of 
the service may demand, excepting such as 
may be unfitted for the naval service. 

8. The utmost care will be exercised in the 
nomination of these candidates as regards pro- 
fessional ability, physical condition, tempera- 
ment and bearing, to the end that each one 
may qualify and not be subjected to incon- 
venience and disappointment and that the 
Navy may be benefited accordingly. 

9. The Provost Marshal General of the U. S. 
Army has stated that any one subject to the 
Selective Draft Law may be released from com- 
pliance in order to accept an appointment as 
officer in the U. S. Naval Reserve Force. 

10. Any one who now is in the Army, either 
volunteer or drafted, may make application 
but must obtain his discharge before he can 
be appointed. This includes any one who has 
been directed to appear before an exemption 
board. Those now in the Naval Reserve are 
eligible. 

11. Individual nominations will be received, 
but any one making such should first assure 
himself that his nominee will agree to serve if 


SCIENCE 


305 


selected and give as much information as pos- 
sible to assist the committees in making nomi- 
nations to the Department. 

12. Any member of the electrical profession 
who can meet the technical requirements and 
who can submit proper credentials may make 
direct application to the undersigned. 

13. To facilitate the work of selection, appli- 
cants should submit, in time to reach the com- 
mittees not later than October 15, the follow- 
ing detailed information on the attached 
blank. 

14. Letters from at least three responsible 
personal acquaintances should accompany each 
application. 

15. From the nominations received the 
undersigned will each select 85 names to be for- 
warded to the Bureau of Navigation, Navy 
Department, Washington, D. C., from which 
total 100 names will be finally selected for 
commissions. 

Applications may be sent to any one of the 
undersigned: 

Nayat Consuttine Boar or THE U. S., 
13 Park Row, New York, 
Nationa ResrarcH Counc, 
33 West 39th Street, New York, 
American InstiTuTE oF ELECTRICAL 
ENGINEERS, 


33 West 39th Street, New York. 
New York, 
October 3, 1917 


THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF 
RECRUITS 


As was announced in ScrENcE at the time, 
a committee on psychology has been organ- 
ized, with the approval of the council of the 
American Psychological Association, by the 
National Research Council. This committee 
consists of J. McKeen Cattell, G. Stanley 
Hall and E. L. Thorndike, from the National 
Academy of Sciences; Raymond Dodge, S. I. 
Franz and G. M. Whipple, from the American 
Psychological Association, and C. E. Seashore, 
J. B. Watson and R. M. Yerkes, from the 
American Association for the Advancement of 
Science. Dr. Yerkes, this year president of 
the American Psychological Association, 
lately professor of comparative psychology at 


356 


Harvard University and recently elected head 
of the department of psychology at the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota, is chairman of the 
committee, and has been made a major in the 
Sanitary Corps of the Army in charge of the 
Section of Psychology, which has been estab- 
lished in the office of the Surgeon General. 

A number of committees were organized 
and are now at work on different problems con- 
nected with the conduct of the war and 
national efficiency, partly under the auspices 
of the office of the Surgeon General and partly 
in the office of the Adjutant General. In- 
formation concerning the work of the com- 
mittee on the psychological examination of 
recruits has been communicated to the press. 

The members of that committee are R. M. 
"Yerkes, W. V. Bingham, professor of psy- 
‘chology, Carnegie Institute of Technology, 
Pittsburgh; H. H. Goddard, director of re- 
search, the Training School, Vineland, N. J.; 
T. H. Haines, professor of medicine, Ohio 
State University; L. M. Terman, professor of 
educational psychology, Stanford University; 
F. L. Wells, psychopathologist, McLean Hos- 
pital, Waverley, Mass.; and G. M. Whipple, 
professor of educational psychology, Univer- 
sity of Illinois. This committee met continu- 
ously for two weeks planning methods and 
tests. The seven men then separated, went to 
various parts of the country and applied the 
methods in actual practise. After making 
about 500 examinations they gathered again 
for two weeks and worked over the methods. 

Six weeks after the first gathering of these 
psychologists, their test sheets, report blanks, 
ete., were ready for the printer. Arrange- 
ments were made for a trial of the method 
under working conditions with large numbers 
of men. About 4,000 men in regular organi- 
zation camps, officers’ training camps and 
naval stations, were examined, and special at- 
tention was given to correlating the ratings 
from the psychological examinations. with the 
ratings prepared by the usual army methods. 

The results of these thousands of examina- 
tions were sent to Columbia University, where, 
under the direction of Professor Thorndike 
and with the cooperation of Professor Cattell, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1189 


Professor Woodworth and other members of 
the department of psychology, ten assistants 
and computers worked a month assembling 
and analyzing the statistical results. Again 
the seven psychologists went over their 
methods in the light of these 4,000 examina- 
tions to make further improvements. 

The psychological examinations are now in 
progress in four of the national army canton- 
ments: Camp Devens, at Ayer, Mass.; Camp 
Dix, at Wrightstown, N. J.; Camp Lee, at 
Petersburg, Va.; and Camp Taylor, at Louis- 
ville, Ky. There are about 160,000 men to be 
examined in these cantonments, and each will 


‘receive an intelligence rating as a result of 


the psychological examination. 

The work is undertaken, first, to supplement 
the medical examination and second, to give 
line officers estimates of the mental ability 
and special aptitudes of their men. Reports 
of the psychological examinations will be 
made to the chief surgeon of the camp or the 
psychiatric officer in order that those mentally 
incompetent may be considered for discharge, 
and to the regimental and company officers in 
order that they may use this additional in- 
formation concerning their men for the im- 
provement of the service. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 
Dr. Orro Kuorz has been appointed chief 
astronomer and director of the Dominion 
Astronomical Observatory at Ottawa. 


Dr. Satvapor DEBENEDETTI has been ap- 
pointed to the directorship of the Museo 
Etnografico at Buenos Aires, in place of 
the recently deceased Dr. Juan B. Ambro- 
setti. 


CuarENcE ExsauGH, professor of chemistry 
in Denison University, is on leave of absence 
for the year 1917-18, to serve as chairman 
of the Council of National Defense for the 
state of Utah. 


Dr. Joun Preston, superintendent of the 
State Insane Hospital, Austin, has been ap- 
pointed by the Medico-Psychological Society 
to organize neuropsychiatric hospital units 
to be attached to the base hospitals and other 


Ocroprr 12, 1917] 


military sanitary units. Dr. Preston has ap- 
pointed the following committee to carry out 
these plans: Drs. Marvin L. Graves, Galves- 
ton; John §. Turner, Dallas; George F. 
Powell, Terrell; Thomas B. Bass, Abilene; 
James R. Nichols, Austin, and John W. 
Bradfield, Austin. 


Dr. G. BacHMANN, professor of physiology 
in the Emory University School of Medicine, 
has been appointed cardio-vascular examiner 
with the rank of first lieutenant and has been 
assigned to duty at Camp Gordon, Atlanta, 
Ga. 


Masor CuHartes F. Hoover, professor of 
medicine, Western Reserve University and as- 
sistant director of Lakeside Base Hospital in 
France, is now in Cleveland on leave of ab- 
sence. 


Dr. Reston STEVENSON, assistant professor 
in charge of physical chemistry in the Col- 
lege of the City of New York, has been ap- 
pointed captain of the Sanitary Corps of the 
United States Army. 


SEVERAL members of the faculty of the Penn- 
sylvania State College are on leave of absence 
for national work. Professor E. D. Walker, 
head of the department of civil engineering, is 
captain in Company A, of the 5th regiment of 
Engineers, which left Pittsburgh about July 
8 for foreign service. Professor Hugo Diemer, 
head of the department of industrial engineer- 
ing, has received a commission as major in the 
Ordnance Department. He is at present lo- 
cated at Lowell, Mass., in charge of the inspec- 
tion of fire arms. Other members of the fac- 
ulty who are in military service are Mr. J. J. 
Light, of the department of mechanical engi- 
neering, who has been commissioned a cap- 
tain; Lieutenants Steel, Long and Bryans, of 
the department of civil engineering, are on 
duty at various camps; Mr. Mills, of the elec- 
trical engineering department, is in Washing- 
ton on naval construction. 


Or the members of the instructing staff of 
the department of chemistry at the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, Professors 
W. H. Walker and J. F. Norris, Dr. F. H. 
Smyth and Mr. R. E. Wilson are on leave 


SCIENCE 


357 


of absence, and Professor W. K. Lewis de- 
votes only part of his time to the institute 
during the present year. All these men are 
actively engaged on gas-defense problems, 
and are holding responsible positions in the 
organization which is dealing with these 
problems at Washington and elsewhere. Pro- 
fessor A. A. Noyes spends a part of his time 
at Washington, in connection with the work 
of the National Research Council and the 
Nitrate Committee. Professors Mulliken, 
Spear and Mueller have also been engaged at 
the institute on investigations relating to gas- 
defence. Professors F. J. Moore and H. P. 
Talbot gave, during a portion of the summer, 
courses of instruction to students who were 
expecting to apply for commissions in the 
Reserve Officers Training Corps. 


Amon@ the appointments recently made in 
the state department of education and registra- 
tion by the governor of Illinois are those of 
Professor Thomas C. Chamberlin, head of the 
department of geology at the University of 
Chicago, and Professor John Merle Coulter, 
head of the department of botany at the same 
institution, to the Board of Natural Resources 
and Conservation. Professor Chamberlin is 
commissioner of the Illinois Geological Survey 
and has been president of the Illinois Academy 
of Sciences. Professor Coulter is now the 
president of the Chicago Academy of Sciences 
and has been for many years a special agent in 
botany for the United States Department of 
Agriculture. The Board of Natural Resources 
and Conservation is part of the state depart- 
ment of education and registration, at the head 
of which is Francis Wayland Shepardson, 
formerly associate professor of American his- 
tory at the University of Chicago. 

FRANK Carney, Ph.D., professor of geology 
and geography at Denison University, has re- 
signed to enter the employ of The National Re- 
fining Company of Cleveland, Ohio. 

_ Proressor H. F. CLeLuanp, secretary of the 
New England Intercollegiate Geological Excur- 
sion, announces that the excursion will be taken 
on Friday and Saturday, October 12 and 13, 
and will be in charge of Professor J. B. Wood- 
worth, of Harvard University, and Dr. Edward 


308 


Wigglesworth, of the Boston Society of 
Natural History. It is planned to visit the 
cliffs of Weyquobsque, Nashaquitsa, and Gay 
Head, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. In- 
formation can be obtained from Professor 
Woodworth at the Geological Museum, Oxford 
St., Cambridge, Mass. Circulars will be sent 
to all persons on the secretary’s list. 

At Harvard University, a plan for an in- 
vestigation of the stratigraphy of the Ordovi- 
cian formations of the Appalachians has been 
approved by the committee on the Shaler Me- 
morial Fund. Three seasons, under the super- 
vision of Professor Percy E. Raymond, have 
been arranged. During the past summer, work 
has been carried on in Vermont, Pennsylvania 
and Virginia by Dr. Raymond, in collaboration 
with Mr. Richard M. Field, lecturer at Brown 
University, Professor E. W. Shuler, of South- 
ern Methodist University, and Professor S. L. 
Powell, of Roanoke College. 

THE National Geographic Society’s expedi- 
tion to Mount Katmai, which sailed for the 
north on May 28, reached Seattle on September 
30. The head of the expedition is Dr. Robert 
F. Griggs, of the Ohio State University. 


Tue Elisha Mitchell Scientifie Society held 
its business meeting September 20. The fol- 
lowing officers were elected: Mr. J. G. Beard, 
president; Dr. J. M. Bell, vice-president; Mr. 
W. W. Rankin, recording secretary. The fol- 
lowing board of editors was elected for the 
Elisha Mitchell Journal: Dr. W. C. Coker, 
chairman, Mr. M. H. Stacy and Mr. Collier 
Cobb. The following were elected to member- 
ship in the society: Dr. A. W. Hobbs, Messrs. 
B. Markham, H. M. Sharpe and W. W. Kirk; 
to associate membership in the society: Messrs. 
J. C. Bynum, L. G. Marsh, G. B. Lay, W. W. 
Eagle, E. H. Griffin, W. F. Morrison, R. W. 
Parks, J. W. Sawyer, N. A. Reasoner, J. W. 
Smithey, C. H. Herty, Jr., R. H. Rimmer, B. 
L. Meredith, I. V. Giles, and R. D. Ballew. 

Tue California Academy of Sciences has 
provided a course of lectures on popular scien- 
tific subjects to be given at three o’clock each 
Sunday afternoon in the auditorium of the 
Academy’s Museum in Golden Gate Park, as 
follows: 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1189 


September 23. Professor S. J. Holmes, depart- 
ment of zoology, University of California, ‘‘ Social 
evolution and eugenie progress.’’ 

September 30. Professor C. A. Kofoid, depart- 
ment of zoology, University of California, ‘‘A 
visit to Easter Island,’’ illustrated by stereopticon. 

October 7. Dr Barton W. Evermann, director, 
California Academy of Sciences, ‘‘Birds of Pyra- 
mid Lake,’’ illustrated by moving pictures. 

October 14. Dr. Chester Stock, department of 
paleontology, University of California, ‘‘Pleisto- 
cene caves of California.’’ 

October 21. Dr. H. W. Fairbanks, supervisor of 
geography, Berkeley Schools, ‘‘Influence of cli- 
mate and topography upon California’s develop- 
ment.’ 


Dr. Cuartes Hucues Jounston, professor of 
education in the University of Illinois and 
editor of Hducational Administration and Su- 
perviston, was killed in an automobile accident 
near Elkridge, Md., on September 8, aged forty 
years. 


THE department of zoology of Smith College 
has been presented by the Boston Scciety of 
Natural History, through its curator, Dr. W. C. 
Johnson, with a complete collection of the land 
and freshwater mollusks of Massachusetts. 
This collection—every specimen of which is ac- 
curately determined and labelled by Dr. John- 
son, will serve as a standard of comparison for 
any one wishing to identify the local mollusean 
fauna. 


Tue Indian Forester, as quoted in Nature, 
describes the organization of the Chinese For- 
est Service, which came into existence in Jan- 
uary, 1916, as a subordinate branch of the 
Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce at 
Peking. The heads of the service, styled “ co- 
directors,” are Mr. Forsythe Sherfesee, for six 
years employed in, and lately director of, the 
Philippine Forestry Bureau, and Mr. Ngan 
Han, who studied forestry in Cornell and 
Michigan universities several years ago. 
There are other Chinese in the service, who 
have received a technical training in the 
United States, and an expert from Kew, Mr. 
W. Purdom acts as botanist and is chief of 
one of the six divisions into which the service 
is organized. In this article an ambitious pro- 
gram of afforestation, education, propaganda, 


OcrTosER 12, 1917] 


ete., is sketched out, but no details are given 
of any work that has been actually accom- 
plished. 

In connection with the search for potash 
and nitrates in the United States the gov- 
ernment receives many reports of supposedly 
valuable discoveries. A letter recently re- 
ceived by the United States Geological Survey 
of the Interior Department describes a cave 
in one of the Southern States which was 
worked by the Confederacy during the Civil 
War for potassium nitrate. This cave is said 
to contain at least 1,000,000 tons of nitrous 
earth, which, however, contains only 1 to 2 
per cent. of nitrate. The survey now states 
that it seems very doubtful whether such ma- 
terial can be profitably used as a source of 
nitrate salts. The minimum grade of caliche 
now worked in the Chilean fields contains 12 
per cent. of sodium nitrate, and though there 
has been much criticism of the crudeness of 
the methods employed there, the work is done 
by very cheap Indian labor, and it is doubtful 
whether leaner material could be worked to 
advantage here, where the price of labor is so 
much higher. Several hundred thousand dol- 
lars have recently been expended in one of the 
Western States in testing the proposition to 
utilize low-grade nitrate. The results have 
been negative. The nitrate caves in the South 
were worked during the Civil War by very 
crude methods. Generally the cave earth was 
shoveled into iron pots, where it was treated 
with water and heated over wood fires.to leach 
out its soluble parts. The liquor was drawn 
from one pot into another and used for treat- 
ing fresh material until it became a highly 
concentrated solution of nitrate salts. It was 
then drawn off and allowed to cool, whereupon 
the nitrate crystallized. The remaining liquor 
was then employed to leach fresh material and 
the crystals were separated and sacked for use. 

To make the desert regions of. the western 
part of the United States more accessible by 
locating their widely separated watering places 
and erecting hundreds of signposts to give 
directions and distances to the watering places 
is an interesting and practical project recently 
undertaken by the United States Geological 


SCIENCE 


359 


Survey, Department of the Interior. The 
project involves also the work of making ac- 
curate maps showing the locations of the 
watering places, of preparing guides describing 
them and giving the distances between them, 
of selecting well sites, and of developing water- 
ing places (so far as money available will 
permit) in localities where water is most 
needed and where the geologic investigations 
indicate that underground supplies can be ob- 
tained. It is expected that this work will 
help to expedite the discovery and develop- 
ment of the rich mineral deposits in parts of 
these regions. It will, of course, also be valu- 
able in other respects. In recent years the 
water-supply geologists of the Geological Sur- 
vey have developed trustworthy methods of 
locating ground water in arid regions from 
surface indications and of estimating the 
depth to water and the approximate annual 
yield of the underground reservoirs. These 
methods will be applied and further developed 
in connection with the survey of desert water- 
ing places. A number of Survey parties are 
now being organized in Washington and will 
in a few weeks be at work in the most arid 
parts of Arizona, California, and Nevada. 
Each party will consist of a geologist and one 
or more assistants and will be provided with 
an automobile and camping outfit. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

THE will of Miss Kate Collins Brown, for- 
merly of New Orleans, who died on August 19, 
disposes of an estate of more than $700,000 of 
which she left nearly $500,000 in direct be- 
quests and gave the residue to Columbia and 
New York Universities and the Presbyterian 
Hospital. The share of the educational in- 
stitutions is to establish scholarships paying 
$300 a year to needy students. 


Tue Pacific Coast Gas Association has given 
$4,415 to the University of California to 
further instruction and research in gas engi- 
neering. 

THE nineteenth annual conference of the 
Association of American Universities will hold 


360 


its annual meeting at the State University of 
Towa on November 8, 9 and 10. 


TueE Rey. Dr. Anson Phelps Stokes, secretary 
of Yale University, has been chosen principal 
of Hampton Normal Institute, to succeed the 
late Dr. V. B. Frissell. 


Dr. Wint1aM B. MEuprum, of Vassar Col- 
lege, has been appointed assistant professor of 
chemistry at Haverford College, taking the 
place of Lyman B. Hall, professor of chemistry, 
who resigned at the retiring age after thirty- 
seven years of service. 


THE following changes have been made 
during the summer in the staff of the depart- 
ment of geology at the University of Illinois: 
Professor OC. W. Rolfe has retired as pro- 
fessor emeritus. Mr. Fred H. Kay, lecturer 
on petroleum geology, has gone into the ser- 
vice of the Sun Oil Company; Dr. F. M. Van 
Tuyl, instructor, has resigned to accept the 
assistant professorship of geology in the Colo- 
rado School of Mines; Dr. C. W. Tomlinson, 
A.M. (Wisconsin), Ph.D. (Chicago), has been 
appointed associate in structural and general 
geology. 


Mr. F. A. C. Perrine has resigned as as- 
sistant professor of psychology at the Uni- 
versity of Pittsburgh to accept the position of 
adjunct professor of psychology at the Univ- 
ersity of Texas. Mr. Jos. U. Yarbrough was 
made an instructor in psychology at the Uni- 
versity of Texas. 


Dr. J. W. BEeEbDE, associate professor of 
geology at the Indiana University, has ac- 
cepted a position in the bureau of economic 


geology and technology, in the University of 


Texas. 


Ar Cornell University, Bernard A. Chand- 
ler has been appointed assistant professor of 
forest utilization for 1917-18, in place of 
Professor A. B. Recknagel, who is absent on 
leave. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 


INTERNATIONAL UNITS AND SYMBOLS IN 
“AEROGRAPHY 


To THE Epitor or Science: In the some- 
what appreciative review of the text-book on 


SCIENCE 


4 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1189 


“ Aerography” in Science, September 14, 
1917, on p. 265 is the statement “the student 
may be confused in having absolute pressure 
units presented as ‘kilobars’ when they are 
eommonly known as ‘millibars.”” The re- 
viewer underestimates the intelligence of uni- 
versity men; because the reasons why kilobar 
is preferable are given at length on page 30. 
Kilobar is as natural as kilogram. It may 
also be added that those who persist in advo- 
cating the retention of millibar are evidently 
not aware that V. Bjerknes expressly states 
that in his system the C.G.S. unit will be the 
microbar. 

Again, the statement of the reviewer that 
“kilobar has historic preference over milli- 
bar but millibar is the internationally accepted 
term” is both inaccurate and misleading. 
Millibar is the earlier term and it has inter- 
national acceptance only because there has 
been no opportunity to have the mistake cor- 
rected by international agreement. Moreover 
it is extremely problematical if the Interna- 
tional Congress will ever meet again. But 
is it good form in scientific work to continue 
the use of an erroneous term because an offi- 
cial disclaimer is lacking? There are some 
other matters which are of perhaps greater 
moment. It is a strange commentary upon 
the work of the International Meteorological 
Congress that while giving us symbols for no 
less than 23 conditions varying from haze to 
aurora, there are no symbols for bright and dif- 
fused sunshine, mountain and valley winds, 
temperature inversion and sea-breeze. For the 
last named, the sea-breeze, we have been using 
at Blue Hill, three arrows on a vertical staff, 
to represent the characteristic changes in cir- 
culation. As the sea-breeze is a frequent and 
very important aerographic condition, any 
suggestion for a more fitting symbol will be 
appreciated. 

ALEXANDER McApIz 


BLuUE HILL OBSERVATORY, 
READVILLE, Mass. 


SYMBOLS 


I am confident that there is not a worker 
in the wide domain of physical science who 


October 12, 1917] 


has not wished for a standard series of sym- 
bols. The question is not a new one; it was 
considered by a committee of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science 
many years ago, but its efforts were shattered 
in the attempt at international cooperation. 
Such cooperation is very desirable, but if it 
is not available that is no reason why America 
should deny herself the benefits of ceordina- 
tion which she, with her scientific resources, 
may devise. Every monograph, every text- 
book that is written adds to the confusion of 
symbols, for there are no standard tables to 
guide one. It seems to me not only possible, 
but practicable that a list of symbols could 
be compiled under various headings—mathe- 
matical, astronomical (with subdivisions), 
physical (with subdivisions), geophysical, 
electrical, etc. The various headings would 
be necessary because the same symbol is fre- 
quently used under different headings, and, 
of course, with different meaning. Whether 
we write g for terrestrial acceleration or a is 
fundamentally quite immaterial, so it is 
whether we write L, or ¢, or for latitude, 
but it is not immaterial for the person who 
reads it. He will probably wonder why the 
writer doesn’t use such and such symbol. We 
want uniformity, uniformity to as great an 
extent as possible. Personal preferences 
should be waived and sunk in the greater 
scheme of uniformity. There are already 
many constants, many expressions, many con- 
cepts that await being labeled for common rec- 
ognition. Who is to undertake this work, who 
is to do the labeling? I can see, or rather I 
ean hear rumbling—“‘I’m not going to be 
bound by any such tables.” Quite so, they 
would have no authority whatever. How- 
ever the dictates of common sense would be 
their propelling force and I think the vast 
majority of American scientific writers would 
avail themselves of their usefulness. Any- 
thing that promotes readiness of understand- 
ing and ease of reading mathematical expres- 
sions and equations should be encouraged. 
In order to give definiteness to my ideas, 
which I hope will arouse discussion, I would 
suggest that the tables of symbols spoken of 


SCIENCE 


“North Carolina. 


361 


be prepared by the Carnegie Institution of 
Washington. It is work that so eminently 
falls within its scope, and it is so well equipped 
with material and other resources, that one 
ean look forward with confidence to a well- 
matured publication. Should the work be 
undertaken by the Carnegie Institution 
nothing would further the general adoption of 
the symbols promulgated more than the wide 
distribution of the publication and that could 
be profitably effected by sending to every sci- 
entist—to every man in “American Men of 
Science ”—gratis a copy of the Carnegie pub- 
lication. 

My closing word: Don’t let details smother 
uniformity. Make a start. Orro Kurorz 

DOMINION OBSERVATORY, 

OTTAWA, 
August 4, 1917 


BACTERIAL LEAF SPOT OF TOBACCO 


A BACTERIAL leaf spot of tobacco has been 
found to occur within certain sections of 
This disease, because of the 
rapidity with which it spreads, has appropri- 
ately been given the name “wild fire.” It 
first manifests itself in seriously destructive 
form at the time of transplanting, so that in 
some fields it has been necessary to replace 
the seedlings by a second and a third trans- 
planting. Plants in the seed beds from which . 
these seedlings were taken have been found to 
be diseased, indicating that the malady was 
introduced from the seed beds. 

The disease first appears as circular yellow 
spots about 1 em. in diameter. A minute 
brown area indicates the center of the spot. 
Within a few days the brown area will have 
enlarged to 2 or 3 em. in diameter with a 
translucent border and surrounded by a wide 
chlorotic halo. When the spots are numerous 
they fuse, forming large brown irregular areas 
which in severe cases involve most of the leaf 
tissues. 

Isolation and inoculation work has shown 
that the disease is due to a grayish white bac- 
terial organism which is heretofore unde- 
scribed. This organism is rod shaped, about 
three times as long as wide, and actively motile 


362 


by a single polar flagellum. It is therefore re- 
ferable to Cohn’s Bacterium as amended by 
Smith and is given the name Bacterium taba- 
cum. The detailed account of the cultural 
studies and inoculation experiments which 
have been made, and of the distribution and 
dissemination studies which are in progress, 
is reserved for subsequent publication. 


F. A. Wotr, 
A. C. Foster 
NortH CAROLINA EXPERIMENT STATION 


PLANT DISEASES IN CANADA 


To tHe Epiror oF Science: Two plant 
diseases have recently been observed in the 
Dominion of Canada which have not been 
recorded before, viz. Dothichiza Populea 
Sace. et Briard, on Lombardy poplar, St. 
Andrews, N. B., and Colletotrichum cereale 
Manns, on spring wheat, Charlottetown, 
Jeg) 18 le 

A third disease affecting seed pods of tur- 


nips grown for seed in P. E. I. caused by - 


Leptosphaeria Napi (Fuckel.) Sace., of which 
the conidial form Sporidesmium exitiosum 
was found, does not appear to have been re- 
corded as causing trouble on the continent of 
America. It is well known in Europe, where 
it is disastrous to seed turnip cultures. 

H. T. Gissow 


COMMON PLANT NAMES 


To Tue Eprror oF Science: May I draw at- 
tention to a point in the discussion on popular 
names: of plants, which M. A. Bigelow, in 
Scrmnce of July 6, seems to ignore; that is, 
the great literary value of a good common 
name and the danger that such names may 
be lost through being ignored by teachers. 
Of course children can learn any name—they 
memorize far more easily than grown people 
—but do not let us give them scientific names 
to learn as a part of nature study, unless they 
are going in for botany as a science. Scien- 
tific names are usually clumsy and pedantic, 
almost always lacking in character, and often 
can not be gracefully absorbed into the Eng- 
glish language. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1189 


The names which Professor Bigelow cites as 
being both popular and scientific are suffi- 
ciently euphonious, but are almost all those of 
garden plants, which may be allowed to bear 
florists’ names. The few wild flowers he men- 
tions all have good common names, which ap- 
parently he is willing to discard. Primrose 
is an older name than Primula, I fancy, and 
for the matter of that, surely rose, lily and 
violet antedate the systematists! Clematis 
and Trillium are pretty enough, but virgin’s 
bower and wake-robin are names to make a 
poet sing for joy. Most eastern wild flowers 
have fairly good names and even in the west 
—a young civilization is apt to be content 
with variations of “bells” and “ roses ”—they 
have some fine names, such as “our Lord’s 
eandle” (Yucca Whipplei), “sweet-after- 
death” (Achlys triphylla) and “flaming 
sword” (Fouquiera splendens). Such names 
as these enrich our language and should be 
preserved at all costs. 

Shall we encourage children to gather nose- 
gays of Blepharipappus, Mesembryanthemum 
and Malacothrix? MUeayen forbid! Only give 
them time and children will evolve good names 
for all conspicuous wild flowers, if we do not 
thwart them by teaching the scientific ones 
unnecessarily. Cat’s breeches, named by Utah 
children, may not be elegant, but it is quaintly 
appropriate and is certainly better for every- 
day use than Hydrophyllum capitatum. Let 
us go slowly in these matters and so long 
as men like Dr. Jepson are continually on the 
lookout for good common names we need not 
despair. 

Marcaret ARMSTRONG 


A SIMPLE EXPLANATION 


In Science, August 31, 1917, page 212, 
Professor C. A. Mooers writes as follows: 

The writer has assumed that Dr. Hopkins could 
give a simple explanation for his conflicting esti- 
mates, as given in ScIENCE, November 3, 1916, p. 
652, and in Science, March 2, 1917, p. 214. In 
the former article he says: ‘‘For each dollar in- 
vested rock phosphate paid back $2.29,’’ but in the 
latter article he says, with regard to the same 
data, ‘‘Easy computations show profits per dollar 
invested of ... $1.29 from phosphate rock.’’ 


OoToBeER 12, 1917] 


The “simple explanation” is that these are 
not conflicting statements. Each dollar in- 
vested in raw rock phosphate paid back $2.29; 
and, when the dollar invested is subtracted 
from this amount, the profit is found to be 
$1.29. 

In this article Professor Mooers bases his 
opinions in part upon “observations” and 
“hay data...not given in Bulletin 90,” 
states that in his conclusions he “was gov- 
erned chiefly by a consideration of the soil 
conditions and the results of the individual 
series”; and he criticizes my use of a sum- 
mary table which he prepared and which he 
also used in his bulletin? and in his former 
Science article.2 His present opinion is that 
this summary table is not fairly representa- 
tive of the results secured, and I must bear 
his criticism for having used it. 

Cyrit G. Hopxins 

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS ’ 


QUOTATIONS 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSOR 
CATTELL 


Tr is contrary to the academic traditions of 
six hundred years to dismiss a university 
professor on account of his opinions expressed 
in a proper way to experts in the subject. It 
is illegal to dismiss a professor in the middle 
of the academic year on false and libelous 
charges, without payment for the year and 
without the pension which he had earned by 
twenty-six years of service. 

I am opposed to war and to this war, but I 
have undertaken no agitation against the 
government nor against its conduct of the 
war. I have written nothing against the draft 
law or against sending armies to Europe, al- 
though I regard both measures as subversive 
of the national welfare. ; 

It is because I care for my country that I 
deplore its entry into a war of aggression and 
the government’s policy of strangling demo- 
cratic principles at home. For the same rea- 
son I have in the journals which I edit done 


1 Bulletin No. 90, Tennessee Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station. 
2 ScIENCE, January 5, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


363 


what I could to promote national efficiency. I 
am a member of the Psychology Committee of 
the National Research Council and spent a 
large part of last week drawing up for the 
War Department plans for the scientific selec- 
tion of aviators. 

In August, 1914, when President Wilson 
was telling us to be neutral in thought as well 
as in speech and in act, and Mr. Roosevelt and 
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler were “ pussy- 
footing,” I wrote in one of the journals that 
I edit: 

The official German justification of the mad and 
wanton European war is that it is in defense of the 
Teutonic culture and people against the semi-Asi- 
atie and barbarie Slav hordes. The verdict of his- 
tory will probably be that it was a war of caleula- 
tion for caste and national aggrandizement, and a 
war of miscalculation. The German emperor and 
his bureaucratic military entourage probably held 
that the time was ripe for an extension of German 
influence in the Balkans and towards Asia Minor 
with an increase of its African possessions at the 
expense of France. But it is not clear why, if the 
serpent was prepared to use its fangs, it did not 
show its alleged wisdom. ... We may look for a 
second Napoleon the little rather than for a second 
Napoleon the great. 


In June, 1917, I began a letter to the New 
York Evening Post with the words: 

An emperor, driven by the militaristic and capi- 
talistic classes of his people and.‘‘by God de- 
mented,’’ must accept responsibility for the great 
crime. 


The letter that I wrote on August 23 to 
members of the Congress, on account of which 
I have been dismissed from the chair of 
psychology at Columbia University, asked sup- 
port for a measure then before the Senate and 
the House to prohibit sending conscripts “to 
fight in Europe against their will.’ There is 
no law requiring or permitting the President 
to send “conscientious objectors” to fight in 
Europe. To do this would be contrary to the 
intent of the constitution and to the uniform 
policy of the nation. It would provide a less 
efficient army and might cause disorder and 
possible revolution at home. Surely this 
should not be done without careful considera- 
tion by the Congress after efforts to learn the 


364 


will of the people. I have only exercised the 
constitutional right and fulfilled the duty of 
a citizen in petitioning the government to 
enact legislation which I believe to be in the 
interest of the nation. For this I am dis- 
missed from the division of philosophy, psy- 
chology and anthropology, which I have made 
the strongest in the world. Professors in 
every university are terrorized, so that they 
dare not exert their influence for peace and 
good will. 

The people of all the European nations long 
for peace, but are kept at war by the klepto- 
cratic classes. In spite of the institutions and 
the instincts which we have inherited from a 
barbarous past, I believe that our people have 
no heart for this war into which they have 
been driven. But even if the nation should 
become a mob mad for war, it is none the less 
the business of each of us to do what he can 
for righteousness as he sees it. If that is 
forbid by force, then indeed we need a new 
national anthem, such as Shelley once wrote 
for England: 


God prosper, speed and save, 

God raise from England’s grave 
Her murdered Queen! 

Pave with swift victory 

The steps of Liberty, 

Whom Britons own to be 
Immortal Queen. 


—J. McKeen Cartetn in a statement 
printed in the daily press. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
Chemistry in the Service of Man. By ALEx- 

ANDER Finpuay, M.A., D.Se., F.I.C. Long- 

mans, Green & OCo., London, New York. 

1916. Pp. xiv-+ 255. Price $1.60. 

This book is the outgrowth of a series of lec- 
tures—the Thomson Lectures—delivered by 
the author before the United Free Church Col- 
lege at Aberdeen, near the close of the year 
1915. It represents the attempt to lay before 
a group of college men, who made no claim to 
chemical knowledge, some account of what 
chemistry has accomplished for the well-being 
and uplift of mankind, and also some glimpse 
of the relation of chemistry to the war. The 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1189 


book is in England especially timely, from the 
fact that among the educated classes, as well 
as among the business men and industrialists, 
an appreciation of chemistry has been sadly 
wanting. The case is somewhat different in 
this country, since for many years chemistry 
in a large share of our colleges and universi- 
ties has been either a required study or a 
widely chosen elective, and has become a part 
of the curriculum of most of our high schools. 
Probably on account of this our manufacturers 
have shown far less reluctance than those of 
England to abandon their “rule of thumb” 
methods. 

Such books as the one before us are always 
timely, never more so than to-day, provided 
the author is a master of his subject and at the 
same time capable of expressing his thought 
in language that can be understood by the man 
with little or no previous knowledge of chem- 
istry. Dr. Findlay well fulfils both of these 
conditions. His work in physical chemistry is 
well known; his success in opening up difficult 
fields in chemistry to the comprehension of the 
ordinary chemist is evidenced by the clearness 
of his “ Phase rule and its applications” and 
his “ Physical chemistry and its applications 
in medical and biological science.” This latter 
book, by the way, should be read by every med- 
ical student. 

The aim of “Chemistry in the service of 
man” is best set forth in a sentence in the in- 
troductory lecture: “ In attempting a brief and 
necessarily incomplete survey of chemistry in 
the service of man, I shall endeavor not merely 
to recount some of the manifold ways in which 
chemistry has revolutionized life and has con- 
tributed, on the material side, to a civilized ex- 
istence; but I shall try, also, to indicate, if I 
can not do more, some of the principles which 
underlie chemical change, and some part of 
the contribution which chemistry has made to 
our knowledge of the constitution of matter.” 
The latter is rather an ambitious program for 
a popular book, intended for readers without 
previous knowledge of chemistry. The chap- 
ters entitled “ Velocity of reaction and cataly- 
sis,” “ Electricity and chemistry,” “The col- 
loidal state,” and “ Molecular structure” would 


OctosER 12, 1917] 


hardly seem fitted for popular perusal, and yet 
so clearly are the fundamental principles 
treated that any intelligent man, or high-school 
scholar, for that matter, would hardly fail to 
be understandingly interested in the applica- 
tion of these principles to important facts of 
every-day life. The consideration of catalysis 
leads to its application in the manufacture of 
sulfuric acid and the hardening of fats, and to 
some of the facts concerned with digestion; in 
connection with electricity are discussed the 
refining of metals, the manufacture of chlorin 
and caustic soda, and many electric-furnace 
products; the colloidal state is illustrated by 
photographic plates, the sedimentation of 
rivers, plasticity of clay, dyeing and water and 
sewage purification. Perhaps the most interest- 
ing chapter is that concerned with the fixation 
of nitrogen, particularly applicable to the de- 
mand, both for munitions and for fertilizers, 
at the present time. Other chapters are “ Com- 
bustion, and the production of fire,’ “The 
chemistry of illuminants,” “ Energy, fuel and 
explosives,” “ Cellulose and cellulose products,” 
“Glass, soda, soap,” and “ Synthetic chemis- 
try.” All are exceedingly readable, and are to 
be recommended, not only to the man who de- 
sires to get a glimpse of what modern chemis- 
try is doing for the comfort and needs of life, 
but quite as well to the first-year student of 
chemistry, in school or in college, who has far 
too often come to regard the study as a mass 
of unconnected facts and abstruse theories, 
mingled with a mess of dirty test tubes and 
beakers. In this book one gains a glimpse of 
the beauty of it all, if indeed one has any com- 
prehension of beauty. 

One word remains to be said. Many of us 
were trained in our earlier years to believe that 
for the past half century all chemistry was 
“made in Germany,” and in this there was far 
more of truth than of fiction. And yet it is 
hardly an exaggeration to say that in Eng- 
land, America and France more progress has 
been made in the past thirty-six months than 
had been made in Germany in the previous 
thirty-six years. Perhaps the same has been 
true of Germany; our information regarding 
this is meager. As never before, chemistry is 


SCIENCE ; 


365 


“coming to her own,” and hence the timeliness 

of Dr. Findlay’s “ Chemistry in the service of 

man.” Jas. Lewis Howe 
WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY 


Ulugh Beg’s Catalogue of Stars. By Epwarp 
Batt Kyosen. Carnegie Institution of 
Washington, Publication No. 250. 1917. 
Pp. 109: 

Mr. Knobel’s compilation of Ulugh Beg’s 
Catalogue forms a fitting sequel to Ptolemy’s 
Catalogue of Stars, also edited by Mr. Knobel 
in conjunction with Dr. C. H. F. Peters. 
Ulugh Beg, born in 1394, succeeded his father 
as ruler of Persia in 1447. Two years later 
he was killed by his son. He devoted much 
of his time to astronomy, was the founder of 
an observatory at Samarkand, which is located 
in the southern part of Russian Turkestan, 
and in the year 1487 published a catalogue 
of stars. 

Such catalogues furnish at best only rough 
determinations of stellar positions because of 
a number of causes. To add to the insecurity 
of the positions, it is not always certain whether 
all the stars of such a catalogue have been 
directly observed by the author, or whether, 
for the sake of completeness he has added star 
positions determined by predecessors, and re- 
duced to the epoch of his own catalogue in a 
manner unrecorded. Added to this is the 
doubt whether the manuscripts available con- 
tain a true record of the original catalogue. 

While it is eminently worth while to pre: 
serve such a catalogue, if only for historica! 
purposes, great care should be taken not to 
place too great dependence upon its star posi- 
tions. 

Mr. Knobel has apparently made a thorough 
investigation of the subject. In addition to 
the catalogue proper he has included a com- 
parison of Ulugh Beg’s star positions with 
positions reduced from Piazzi’s catalogue, 
with the exception of 300 stars whose posi- 
tions were reduced from the catalogues of 
Danckwortt and Neugebauer. Following the 
comparisons he has collated the manuscripts 
which were examined, and closes the volume 
with a vocabulary: of Persian words prepared 


366 


by Dr. Peters which Mr. Knobel has subse- 
quently revised and amended. 


BengaMin Boss 
DUDLEY OBSERVATORY, 
ALBANY, N. Y. 


FIVE YEARS OF STARVATION OF 
LARVA 

THE specimens concerned are the larve of 
Trogoderma tarsale, a small beetle well known 
as a museum pest. The last of a large num- 
ber of specimens lived, without a particle to 
eat, for the suprisingly long period of five 
years, one month and twenty-nine days or, to 
be more specific, from October 28, 1911, to 
December 25, 1916, a period of 1,884 days. 
The case is decidedly outstanding, as to my 
knowledge, nothing similar has ever been re- 
corded as a result of starvation experiments 
with other animals. It is very probable that 
under otherwise non-disturbing conditions 
the starving larve would have lived for even 
a longer period. The specimens concerned 
in this article had undergone considerable 
disturbance after the first two years of starv- 
ation, since many of the larve made the trip 
between Idaho and Wisconsin with me three 
or four times, and several of them covered 
the distance five times. The trips one way 
varied in duration from four to seven days. 
There is no doubt but that the jarring of the 
train had accelerated the metabolism of the 
larve. This fact was evinced by the moulting 
of practically every individual toward the end 
of the trip or within a few days after it, and 
by the decided decrease in the dimensions of 
the larve immediately following such a moult. 
Larve placed under starvation shortly after 
my arrival in Idaho in the summer of 1913, 
which have not been so disturbed, show indi- 
eations of even greater tenacity than is here 
recorded. 

It will not be out of place here to mention 
how the starvation experiments with this 
particular species which proved to be of such 
unusual interest came about. While a grad- 
uate student at the University of Wisconsin 
the writer got into a dispute concerning the 
classification of the larve. To prove his 
point he decided to grow some of the speci- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1189 


mens to maturity and thus obliterate the un- 
certainty of identification. A number of the 
largest larve available were placed in glass 
dishes together with some food material. Not 
having plenty of the favorite food material 
at hand at the time, several specimens were 
placed in other dishes without food and set 
aside in a separate drawer with the intention 
of providing for them later. However, these 
were neglected until the opening of school the 
following September when the writer acci- 
dently discovered them in their secluded place. 
Much to his surprise all of the specimens were 
alive, in spite of the fact that they had re- 
mained there for five months without a thing 
to eat. It was also noticed that the larve 
had decreased in size. This observation was 
further substantiated by the gradual decrease 
in size of the various cast-off skins, which 
this species is not known to attack. This in- 
teresting information later led to experimental 
work on the longevity of the larve, without 
food, on a large scale. 

A number of specimens varying in size 
from newly hatched to practically full-grown 
larve were placed in individual sterilized 
vials for the purpose of ascertaining the 
period of time that they could live without 
food. Even the newly hatched specimens 
showed an amazing tenacity by living over 
four months without ever having eaten at all. 
Some of the one fourth grown specimens lived 
for fourteen months; those about one half 
grown lived almost three years; those three 
fourths grown lived four years; and most of 
the largest specimens lived over four years, 
several of them over four and a half years, 
and one five years and seven days; while the 
last one died after five years, one month and 
twenty-nine days of starvation. 

One of the most interesting phases of these 
experiments is the gradual decrease in size of 
the individual specimens. Many of the largest 
larve which were about 8 mm. in length 
dwindled down to practically the hatching 
length of 1 mm. before dying, and practically 
all of the specimens which were below 7 mm. 
at the beginning of the experiment dwindled 
down to the same dimensions. Many of the 
larve of 2 and 3 mm. were reduced to some- 


OctTosER 12, 1917] 


what below the hatching length, and prac- 
tically all of the newly hatched specimens fell 
down to about three fourths of their original 
length. Speaking in terms of reduction in 
size, it is astonishing to note that some of 
the largest larve have been reduced to about 
1/600 of their maximum larval mass. 

Another, and even more interesting phenom- 
enon, is the fact that when the starved speci- 
mens almost reach the smallest size possible 
and are then given plenty of food, they will 
again begin growing in size. A number of 
the lary which were half grown when placed 
under starvation for the first time, have 
through alternating periods of “feasting and 
fasting” attained that size three times and 
are now on the way to their fourth “ child- 
hood”; and even some of the large specimens 
have started dwindling down to their third 
“childhood” after having twice attained the 
practically maximum larval size. 

Oceasionally these larve are found in large 
numbers in insect, seed and drug collections, 
and naturally destroyed as soon as discovered. 
The writer would appreciate any amount of 
this living material that the reader may 
happen to find if he has no use for it himself. 
The larve, pupe or living adults of other 
dermestids are equally desirable for the pur- 
pose of comparative studies. In response to 
a recent circular letter many men have al- 
ready sent me some valuable material. The 
names of the donators will appear in the 
forthcoming detailed publication of this ex- 
tensive and of necessity prolonged investiga- 
tion. 

The problem has now attained enormous 
proportions and involves the use of thousands 
of specimens. Many normal larve of differ- 
ent sizes, as well as many specimens in the 
different periods of starvation have been sec- 
tioned during the past few years, and com- 
parative cytological studies of the various 
structures of the organisms are being made. 
Physiological studies with special reference 
to metabolic water and excretion have also 
been started. J. E. WopsepaLek 

UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO, 

Moscow, IDAHO 


SCIENCE 


367 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
THE ROLE OF THE NUCLEUS IN OXIDATION? 


In 1897 Spitzer? reported that nucleopro- 
teins extracted from certain animal tissues 
have the same oxidizing power as the tissues _ 
themselves. The idea that the nucleus is a 
center of oxidation was advocated by Loeb,’ 
who pointed out that this would explain why 
cells deprived of nuclei live but a short time 
and are unable to regenerate missing parts. 
R. Lillie* sought to obtain direct experimental 
evidence by applying reagents which become 
colored on oxidation. He found the greatest 
amount of color in the neighborhood of the 
nucleus, indicating that it is a center of oxi- 
dation. Subsequent workers,5 using stains 
which change color on oxidation, failed to 
agree as to the results. 

Mathews® has stated that the nucleus is 
directly concerned in oxidation. 

Warburg’ found that NaOH increased oxi- 
dation in the sea urchin egg, but did not pene- 
trate sufficiently to cause a change of color 
in the interior of eggs stained with neutral 
red. This is regarded by some as indicating 
that oxidation is largely confined to the sur- 
face of the cell.8 R. Lillie® has recently found 
that the formation of indophenol in leuco- 


1 Preliminary communication. 

2 Phliiger’s Archiv, 67: 615, 1897. 

8 Archiv fiir Entwickelungsmechanik der Or- 
ganismen, 8: 689, 1899. 

4 Am. Jour. Physiol., 7: 412, 1902. 

8 Cf. Wherry, E. T., Science, N. S8., 37: 908, 
1913; Schultze, W. H., Verh. deutsch path. Ges., 
16: 161, 1913; Reed, G. B., Jour. Biol. Chemistry, 
22: 99, 1915. Unna, P. G. und Godoletz, L., Op- 
penheimer’s Handb. d. Biochem. Erganzungsband, 
S. 327, 1913. 

6 Mathews, A. P., ‘‘Physiological Chemistry,’’ 
1915, p. 180. 

7 Warburg, O., Zeit. f. physiol. Chemie, 66: 305, 
1910; Biochem. Zeit., 29: 414, 1910. 

8 This conclusion does not seem to be necessary. 
Cf. Loeb and Wasteneys, Jour. of Biochemistry, 14: 
459, 1913; also Osterhout; Ibid., 19: 335, 1914. 
Owing to the buffer action of the protoplasm and 
to the presence of pigment the penetration of a 
small amount of alkali is not easily detected. 

9 Jour. of Biol. Chemistry, 15: 237, 1913. 


368 


cytes indicates that there is rapid oxidation 
at the surface of the cell as well as at the sur- 
face of the nucleus. 

The objection might be made to the use of 
indophenol reaction that the result may de- 
pend somewhat on the manner in which the 
reagent penetrates. If the oxidizing sub- 
stances of the cell are largely concentrated 
in the nucleus, those which are diffused 
throughout the cytoplasm will first meet the 
reagent ‘at the cell surface and produce at 
that point a deposit of granules of indophenol. 
In the same manner the oxidizing substances 
which are retained within the nucleus will 
first meet the reagent at the surface of the 
nucleus and produce a deposit in that region. 
It would therefore appear that the reaction 
might be depended on if it showed the nucleus 
to have the greatest oxidative activity, since 
its error would lie in the opposite direction. 
But any conclusions drawn from it regarding 
oxidation at the surface of the cytoplasm 
would be of doubtful value. 

It would seem that more reliable evidence 
ean be obtained by investigating cases where 
it is not necessary that the reagent should 
penetrate from without owing to the fact that 
the cell itself produces the reagent. 

The writer has studied a case of this kind 
in the Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora), 
which is extremely well suited to such investi- 
gations, because the cells contain a colorless 
chromogen which oxidizes and darkens very 
rapidly upon injury. An additional advan- 
tage is that the leaves are so thin and trans- 
parent that they may be placed under a micro- 
scope, and the details of the cell structure 
studied with care before the cells are injured 
or treated with reagents. 

In a typical leaf cell the cytoplasm is trans- 
parent and nearly colorless, with a few gran- 
ules, while the nucleus is only slightly less 
transparent, is finely granular and has a nu- 
cleolus. When a leaf is mounted in a drop 
of water under a cover glass the cells remain 
for hours unchanged in appearance. 

If an intact portion of the leaf is cut or 
erushed the cells in the neighborhood soon 


change. Jn the course of five or ten minutes 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1189 


the nuclei of the cells nearest the injury as- 
sume a more coarsely granular (or vacuo- 
lated) appearance and soon begin to darken. 
The darkening does not begin at the surface, 
but appears to take place almost simultane- 
ously throughout the whole mass of the nu- 
cleus. Not until the nucleus has become 
very dark (so as to stand out very conspicu- 
ously when the preparation is viewed under 
the low power of the microscope) does the 
cytoplasm begin to darken perceptibly. It 
may be several hours after the nucleus has 
darkened perceptibly before a change of color 
can be perceived in the cytoplasm. The 
darkening of the cytoplasm does not seem to 
be more rapid at the surface than elsewhere. 

That the darkening is due to oxidation is 
shown by the fact that it is retarded by the 
partial exclusion of air!® and is inhibited 
by the usual means employed to prevent the 
action of oxidases. When young leaves (free 
from discolorations) are torn! and placed in 
water the torn edges become dark. This does 
not occur in 0.1 M HCl, 0.1 M KCN,12 0.1 
M NaO8, or in boiling water. If the color- 
less chromogen is extracted by 0.1 M NaOH 
and kept in a tightly stoppered bottle so as 
to exclude oxygen it remains pale yellow for 
months, but if oxygen be admitted it soon 
turns deep red. 

That the darkening of the nucleus is due 
to oxidation taking place in the nucleus itself 
and not to the taking up by the nucleus of a 
stain produced in the cytoplasm or vacuoles 
is shown by the following experiment: Plants 
were ground in a mortar and allowed to stand 
until they became black. The juice was 
squeezed out and centrifuged, giving an inky 
fluid. In this were placed pieces of leaves 


10 That the oxidation is not completely inhibited 
by exclusion of air is doubtless due to the fact that 
a considerable supply of combined oxygen is pres- 
ent in the cell which can be used for oxidation of 
the chromogen. 

11 Cutting with a knife was avoided on account 
of the action of the metal. 

12J3n 0.1 M NaOH and 0.1 M KON the whole 
leaf becomes pale yellow and then colorless. The 
yellow color is doubtless due to the fact that the 
KCN solution is alkaline. 


OcToBER 12, 1917] 


which had been treated with 0.1 KCN and 
then with water. The solution was allowed 
to stand until it became concentrated by 
evaporation: it then appeared black. It was 
found that where the nuclei had been squeezed 
out of the cut cells by the Imife they had 
taken up some stain but not more than the 
cytoplasm. In cells which were merely cut 
open there was little or no staining. 

We must therefore conclude that oxida- 
tion occurs more rapidly in the nucleus than 
elsewhere in the cell. The only way to es- 
cape this conclusion would be by assuming 
that.at the moment of injury there is a sud- 
den migration into the nucleus of some or all 
of the substances necessary for the oxidation. 
This is not only very improbable from a theo- 
retical standpoint, but observation shows that 
it can not be the case, for in this migration 
the substances would mingle and produce the 
pigment either outside the nucleus, or at its 
surface, before any pigment appeared in the 
interior of the nucleus. Observation of the 
nucleus shows that the pigment appears as 
soon within the nucleus as at its surface. 

We may therefore conclude that the sub- 
stances necessary for oxidation do not sud- 
denly migrate into the nucleus at the moment 
of injury but that they must exist there before 
the cell is injured. 

We may ask why the nucleus does not be- 
come darkened in the normal condition of the 
cell. The investigation of several workers 
have made it probable that the pigments pro- 
duced by oxidation under normal conditions 
are at once reduced, giving up their oxygen 
to other substances in the cell. When injury 
occurs the reduction is checked more than the 
oxidation, with the result that the pigment 
accumulates. 

It is also probable that in many cases the 
injury brings the cells into contact with more 
oxygen than under normal conditions. 

In order to compare these results with those 
produced by the indophenol reagent, leaves 
were placed in a mixture of equal parts of 
alpha naphthol (saturated aqueous solution) 
and para phenylene diamine (1 per cent. 
aqueous solution). If the reagents are freshly 


SCIENCE 


‘which is due to oxidation. 


369 


made up there is little action, but if they have 
stood long enough to take up oxygen or if 
H,O, is added a purple color develops in the 
cells, which eventually becomes deeper in the 
nucleus. The result depends greatly on the . 
condition of the reagent and the rate at which 
it penetrates the tissue. 

The general conclusion is that while the 
indophenol reaction indicates that the nucleus 
is the center of oxidation it does not give as 
definite information on this point as does the 
formation of natural pigments within the cell 
resulting from the oxidation of substances 
normally present. 


SUMMARY 


Injury produces in the leaf-cells of the In- 
dian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) a darkening 
The oxidation is 
much more rapid in the nucleus than in the 
cytoplasm and the facts indicate that this is 
also the case with the oxidation of the un- 
injured cell. W. J. V. OsterHouT 

LABORATORY OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY, 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 

Atv the invitation of Adelbert College and the 
Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, Ohio, 
the twenty-fourth summer meeting of the Ameri- 
can Mathematical Society was held at these insti- 
tutions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 
September 4-6, 1917. This was the society’s sec- 
ond visit to Cleveland, the annual meeting having 
been held there in the winter of 1912-1913. On 
the present occasion the interest was reinforced by 
the meeting of the Mathematical Association of 
America, immediately following on September 6-7. 
The arrangements, which were in charge of a com- 
mittee representing both organizations, included a 
joint session on Thursday morning, at which Pro- 
fessor L. P. Eisenhart presented an address on 
‘‘Darboux’s contribution to geometry,’’ and a 
joint dinner on Wednesday evening, attended by 
seventy-six members and friends, to whom Presi- 
dent. Thwing, of Western Reserve University, spoke 
a word of welcome, which was followed by a num- 
ber of informal responses to the calls of the toast- 
master, Professor E, V. Huntington. The pro- 
gram on Wednesday afternoon included an in- 
spection of the harmonic analysis apparatus of 


370 


Professor Miller, of the Case School, and an organ 
recital in the chapel. On Thursday afternoon 
President Thwing gave a garden party in honor of 
the visiting societies. Luncheon was served on each 
day at the Case Club, whose building was thrown 
open to the members afternoons and evenings. At 
the close of the meeting a vote of thanks was tend- 
ered to the authorities of the two colleges for 
their generous hospitality. 

The meeting included the usual morning and 
afternoon sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday and 
the joint session on Thursday morning. Sixty-two 
members were in attendance. At the opening ses- 
sion Professor T. M. Focke, of the Case School, 
occupied the chair, which was filled in succession 
by Professors Hedrick, Cajori, G. A. Miller and 
Hisenhart. Professor Hedrick presided at the joint 
session. The council announced the election of the 
following persons to membership in the society: 
Dr. W. L. Crum, Yale University; Professor T. J. 
Fitzpatrick, University of Nebraska; Mr. T. R. 
Holleroft, Columbia University; E. L. Ince, M.A., 
Trinity College, Cambridge, England; Mr. L. 8. 
Odell, Manual Training High School, Brooklyn, N. 
Y.; Dr. T. A. Pieree, Harvard University. Five 
applications for membership in the society were 
received, 

The following papers were read at this meeting: 

Arnold Emch: ‘‘On the invariant net of cubics 
in the Steinerian transformation.’’ 

J. E. Rowe: ‘‘Theorems related to a point pro- 
jection of the rational plane cubic curve.’’ 

J. E. Rowe: ‘‘Closed hexagons related to the ra- 
tional plane cubic curve.’’ 

J. E. Rowe: ‘‘The projections of certain points 
upon the rational plane quartic curve.’’ 

Tomlinson Fort: ‘‘Some theorems of compari- 
son and oscillation.’’ 

O. D. Kellogg: ‘Oscillation and interpolation 
properties of solutions of integral equations.’’ 

A. B. Coble: ‘‘Finite groups determined by 
2p + 2 points in S,.’’ 

M. G. Gaba: ‘‘Complete existential theory of the 
postulates of the linear order 7.’’ 

L. L. Dines: ‘‘The bordered Fredholm determi- 
nant and the related group of functional transfor- 
mations. ’’ 

R. G. D. Richardson: ‘‘Contributions to the 
study of oscillation properties of ordinary linear 
differential equations of the second order.’’ 

C. N. Moore: ‘‘On the summability of the de- 
velopments in Bessel’s functions.’’ 

G. A. Miller: ‘‘Groups formed by special mat- 
rices.’’ 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1189 


Virgil Snyder and F. R. Sharpe: ‘‘On the space 
involution of order 8 defined by a web of quadric 
surfaces. ’’ 

R. W. Burgess: ‘‘A second approximation for 
cantilevers. ’? 

Florian Cajori: ‘‘L. Wantzel.’’ 

G. M. Green: ‘‘Conjugate nets with equal point 
invariants. ’’ 

G. M. Green: ‘‘Plane nets with equal invari- 
ants.’’ 

Florian Cajori: ‘‘Newton’s solution of numeri- 
cal equations by the use of slide rules.’’ 

L. P. Hisenhart: ‘‘Transformations of planar 
nets with equal invariants.’’ 

L. C. Mathewson: ‘‘On the group of isomor- 
phisms of a certain extension of an abelian group. 

E. D. Roe, Jr.: ‘‘Some restricted developments. ’’ 

E. D. Roe, Jr.: ‘“A geometric representation. 
Second paper.’’ j 

E. D. Roe, Jr.: ‘‘Integral functions as prod- 
ucts. ’? 

Mrs. E. D. Roe, Jr.: ‘‘Interfunctional expressi- 
bility problems of symmetric functions.’’ 

E. L. Dodd: ‘‘The approximation or gradua- 
tion of a mortality table by means of a sum of ex- 
ponential functions. ’’ 

D. C. Gillespie: ‘‘ Repeated integrals.’’ 

W. A. Hurwitz: ‘‘An expansion theorem for 
systems of linear differential equations.’’ 

W. C. Graustein: ‘‘Note on isogeneous complex 
functions of curves.’’ 

Mary F. Curtis: ‘‘A proof of the existence of 
the functions of the elliptic cylinder.’’ 

John Hiesland: ‘‘A Pliicker geometry of flats in 
odd n-space.’’ 

H. J. Ettlinger: ‘‘Theorems of oscillation for a 
generalized Sturmian boundary problem.’’ 

H. J. Ettlinger: ‘‘Theorems of oscillation for 
the general real, self-adjoint system of the second 
order.’’ 

E. V. Huntington: ‘‘ Bibliographical note on the 
use of the word mass in current text-books.’’ 

L. P. Hisenhart: ‘‘Darboux’s contribution to 
geometry.’’ 

Abstracts of the papers are published in the 
Bulletin of the society. 

The next regular meeting of the society will be 
held at Columbia University on October 27. The 
San Francisco Section will meet on the same day 
at the University of California. The annual meet- 
ing of the Southwestern Section will be held at 
the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla., on 
December 1. F. N. Cots, 

Secretary 


or oe 


New SERIES Ded 7 
Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 FRIDAY, OcroBER 19, 1917 aked Weeden aon ep 


Kimley Electro- 
Analysis 
Apparatus 


| for the rapid determination of 
Copper, Tin, Lead 
Zine, ete. 


The stand is composed of three circular 
i) castings mounted on an aluminum pipe, 
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| nearly 180° in either direction. 


| The upper circular casting carries 6 re- 

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| with it a push button switch, also 
| mounted on this same casting. 


The center circular casting carries the 
electrode holders, a push botton switch 
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when not in use, and a pole-reversing 
§| switch to change the polarity of the elec- 
| trodes. Each lamp on the upper casting 
is in parallel with the electrodes under it 
on the center casting so as to take up the 
current carried by the solution when the 
#| solution is lowered, so that the electrodes 
| are out of contact with it. A motor for 

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the center support, between 


- the two upper castings. The 
€2<<((eiy lower circular casting serves 
R& mly to carry the supports 


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Write for E. & A. Bulletin No. 206, giving details of rapid methods of electro-analysis 
with the Kimley Apparatus 


EIMER & AMEND 


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SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


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STRATIGRAPHY 


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PROFESSOR OF PALEONTOLOGY IN 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


**Should be on the reference shelf of every col- 
lege, normal school, and large high school in the 
United States.”—Journal of Geography, Vol. XIII, 
Jan. 1915. 


8vo, 1150 pages, 264 illustrations. Price, $7.50 


Descriptive Circular Sent upon Request 


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The Microscope 
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The Naples Table Association for Promoting 
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written by an American woman embodying new ob- 
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SCIENCE 


Fripay, Octoser 19, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Utilization of Patents for the Promotion 
of Research: Proressor T. BRAILSFORD 


ROBERTSON): js:6.:a ojovsisyos one foretationstsiaveis wionaavaievsiee 371 


Scientific Events :— 
Joseph Young Bergen; The American Asso- 
ciation of Variable Star Observers ; The Cor- 
nell Medical School; A School for Oral and 
Plastic Surgery; The Red Cross Medical 


NPWS SoucidedocdconsobodadeoocnodouGe 379 
Scientific Notes and News ..............+-+ 381 
University and Educational News .......... 385 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

Isolation Cultures with Small Aquaria: Dr. 

FREDERICK H. BLopGett. Two Methods of 

Orientation of Small Objects in Paraffin: 

Jas. A. Netson. The Aurora Borealis: 

CHARLES BAS (MEAD We ji nsreysis «iereys els, adhere «i etoyers 386 
Scientific Books :— 

Jackson’s Experimental Pharmacology: Dr. 

DY AsV ID Me MEA CHIT <i. 5 cheheNele fs Stecereusieverololave less 3888 
Aphis Immunity of Teosinte-corn Hybrids: Dr. 

Wevise) GERNER DW acres, fey scustt set wolehereaveis isos 390 
Special Articles :— 

The Tillering of Wheat: A. E. GRANTHAM. 

Transmitting the Fowl Nematode: JaAmEs E. 

A OREE Torstar sheets een Oh isis 392 


MSS. intended for publication and,books, etc., intended for 
teview should be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


THE UTILIZATION OF PATENTS FOR 
THE PROMOTION OF RESEARCH 


On September seventh of the current 
year an agreement was executed between 
Dr. T. Brailsford Robertson, professor of 


biochemistry and pharmacology, and the re- 


gents of the University of California, 
whereby the ownership of his patents 
covering the growth-influencing substance 
‘“Tethelin’’ which he has isolated from the 
anterior lobe of the pituitary body, and 
which, among other possible applications to 
therapy, promises to be of value in accel- 
erating the repair of slowly healing wounds, 
was transferred to the University of Cali- 
fornia, upon the condition that the pro- 
ceeds or profits which might accrue from 
their ownership of these rights should be 
devoted to the furtherance of medical re- 
search, such research to be conducted under 
the immediate direction of a board of di- 
rectors constituted in the first instance of 
the undersigned individuals, 

The proposal thus advanced by Pro- 
fessor Robertson and accepted by the re- 
gents of the University of California con- 
stitutes, we believe, a new development in 
the relationship of science to the indus- 
tries, and of scientific investigators to the 
institutions employing them, and we be- 
lieve that, as such, it should receive the 
serious consideration of the scientific 
public, entirely apart from the separate 
question of the possible merits of this par- 
ticular invention. 

The growing recognition of the intimate 
dependence of the industries upon science 
and the increasing complexity and require- 
ments of scientific research itself, have led 


372 


many to the belief that some modification 
is desirable of the traditional relationship 
between the investigator and the material 
product of his discoveries. In the initia- 
tion of such changes, of which the present 
proposal is one among a number which 
might be suggested, many serious problems 
present themselves, and we feel that the 
solution suggested by Professor Robertson 
should be subjected to careful scrutiny and 
the fullest possible criticism. We have ac- 
cordingly requested Professor Robertson 
to publish a statement of the fundamental 
conceptions underlying his proposal, to- 
gether with the text of the agreement it- 
self. Professor Robertson’s statement fol- 
lows: 

H. M. Evans (Professor of Anatomy), 

F. P. Gay (Professor of Pathology), 

T. BraisrorD Ropertson (Professor 
of Biochemistry and Pharmacol- 
ogy), 

C. L. A. Scumipt (Research Assistant 
in Pathology), 

G. H. Wurprte (Director of the 
Hooper Foundation for Medical Re- 
search and Professor of Research 
Medicine). 

At the present time, as in the historic 
past, the scientific investigator looks to 
public or private generosity to supply him 
with the means of subsistence and the ma- 
terial prerequisites of his work. This re- 
lationship of the investigator to the public, 
while it has been unquestionably fruitful, 
is nevertheless fraught with many and 
serious disadvantages. To enumerate but 
a few of the more salient of these, the in- 
vestigator is placed in a relationship of 
direct. or indirect dependence upon his 
patron, a relationship which is not con- 
ducive to the best and most complete 
mutual understanding and appreciation. 
The income proceeding from these hap- 
hazard sources is of variable and unpre- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


dictable magnitude, and bears no necessary 
relationship whatever to the development 
of our material environment and the con- 
current increase in complexity and pro- 
liferation in detail of scientific problems. 
The donors to a greater or less extent 
modify {by their imperfectly informed 
preferences the channels of expenditure, so 
that the resources available for the de- 
velopment of any particular field of re- 
search are frequently disproportionate to 
its intrinsic importance. 

It is obvious that a much more desirable 
condition of affairs might be attained if 
some automatic mechanism could be de- 
vised whereby a proportion (and a very 
small proportion would be sufficient) of the 
values created by scientific investigation 
would flow back to provide the material 
foundations of further discoveries, just as, 
at the present time, the intellectual founda- 
tions of fresh discoveries are automatically 
afforded by the information flowing in 
from the discoveries of the past. 

A number of separate attempts to 
achieve this end have already been made, 
but while the results achieved have fre- 
quently been admirable in themselves, they 
have hitherto failed to afford any pre- 
cedent which is generally acceptable to 
scientific men or to the institutions employ- 
ing them. In some eases individuals have 
set aside a proportion of the proceeds from 
their inventions for the support of isolated 
scientific enterprises, the Solvay Institute 
in Brussels being a noteworthy instance of 
this type. In others an institution or an 
individual affiliated with the institution 
has entered the commercial field, selling 
certain articles manufactured in the labor- 
atory, the proceeds from the sales being 
devoted to the upbuilding of the institu- 
tion. Illustrious examples of this method 
of procedure have been afforded by Behr- 
ing and by Pawlow. The objection to this 


Ocrosrr 19, 1917] 


method lies in the fact that the efforts and 
attention of the individuals concerned are 
to a greater or less extent and more or less 
permanently deflected from their proper 
business of investigation and that certain 
dangers and abuses might conceivably arise 
from the too close identification of the in- 
dividual and the laboratory in which he 
works with purely business enterprise. 

In other instances, of which Ehrlich’s 
disposal of the proceeds from salvarsan 
affords the most illustrious example, the 
discoverer has patented his invention, 
leased the patents to manufacturers, and 
dedicated the proceeds to the furtherance 
of a particular field of research, usually 
closely allied to the field from which the 
patented discovery arose. While the re- 
sult of this procedure in the particular 
example chosen to illustrate it was in the 
highest degree successful, and the work ac- 
complished by this means has been of in- 
calculable value to humanity, yet, as a pre- 
cedent, it has been felt by many that it 
presents several imperfections, notably that 
afforded by the association of an individual 
investigator with a particular business 
enterprise and the absence of any super- 
visory control over the commercial exploi- 
tation of the discovery. 

The industrial fellowships which in re- 
cent years have been established in many 
institutions in the United States and par- 
ticularly in affiliation with the Mellon In- 
stitute of Pittsburgh, represent another 
stage in the evolution of the relationship 
between the sciences and the industries. 
The industrial fellowship plan has proved 
to be far more widely acceptable as a pre- 
cedent than any of the plans which J have 
heretofore mentioned. It is, however, more 
especially designed to be of direct service 
to existing industries, to bridge the gap 
between pure science and _ industrial 
progress and to meet the immediate needs 


SCIENCE 


373 


of existing industries as they arise rather 
than to initiate new developments of sci- 
ence itself. Their purpose diverges, there- 
fore, from that of the purely scientific in- 
vestigator, and while they are of unques- 
tionable value in the field for which they 
are designed, they leave unsolved the prob- 
lem of providing automatic support for the 
development of the deeper foundations of 
industrial and social evolution. 

A plan of wider scope, and applicable to 
the support either of the pure sciences or 
of industrial research was launched some 
years ago by my former colleague Dr. F. 
G. Cottrell, in the form of the Research 
Corporation of New York,! to which he 
donated certain of his patent rights in his 
electrical precipitation process. The cer- 
tificate of incorporation of this company 
decares that its purposes are: 

(a) To receive by gift and to acquire by 
purchase or otherwise, inventions, patent 
rights and letters patent either of the 
United States or foreign countries and to 
hold, manage, use, develop, manufacture, 
install and operate the same, and to con- 
duct commercial operations under or in 
connection with the development of such 
inventions, patent rights and letters patent 
and to sell, license or otherwise dispose of 
same and to collect royalties thereon, and 
to experiment with and test the validity 
and value thereof and to render the same 
more available and effective in the useful 
arts and manufactures and for scientific 
purposes and otherwise. 

(6) To provide means for the advance- 
ment and extension of technical and scien- 
tific investigation, research and experi- 
mentation by contributing the net earnings 
of the corporation, over and above such 

1‘*The Research Corporation, An Experiment in 
Publie Administration of Patent Rights,’’ Eighth 


International Congress of Applied Chemistry, New 
York meeting, October, 1912, Vol. XXIV., p. 59. 


374 


sums as may be reserved or retained and 
held as an endowment fund or working 
capital and also such other moneys and 
property belonging to the corporation as 
the board of directors shall from time to 
time deem proper, to the Smithsonian In- 
stitution and such other scientific and edu- 
cational institutions and societies as the 
board of directors may from time to time 
select in order to enable such institutions 
and societies to conduct such investigation, 
research and experimentation. 

The efficient business administration 
which is thus provided and the separation 
of the scientific laboratories or investiga- 
tors from responsibility for the administra- 
tion of the funds and exploitations of the 
inventions combine to render the Research 
Corporation in many respects an ideal 
means of accomplishing the ends we have 
in view. It is impossible, however,* for 
purely physical reasons, for the Research 
Corporation to handle all of the vast 
variety of profitable inventions, great and 
small, which issue or may come to issue 
from the laboratories of the United States, 
and it would obviously not be in the best 
interests of research to too greatly central- 
ize the control of the means of its con- 
tinuance and development. Some system 
is required which, like the Industrial Fel- 
lowship System, is indefinitely reproduc- 
ible, and adaptable to all of the great 
variety of learned institutions which might 
desire to utilize it, so that the system may 
become an organic part of the investi- 
gator’s environment and numerous foci 
come into existence from which the means 
for the furtherance of. investigation may 
proceed. It was to provide a possible solu- 
tion of this problem and a precedent which 
might be acceptable to other investigators 
and other institutions that the subjoined 
agreement between the regents of the Uni- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


versity of California and myself was 
drafted. 

There are highly profitable discoveries, 
of course, which are of such a nature as to 
demand expensive field-trials, or the ex- 
penditure of capital to ensure their suc- 
cessful flotation and protection during the 
period of tentative ultilization. The plan 
which I have to propose is not designed to 
deal with inventions of this type, but 
rather with the equally numerous inven- 
tions which are complete in themselves and 
ready to be leased or sold to existing com- 
mercial establishments. Public institu- 
tions, holding their funds on trust, can not, 
of course, enter into speculative enterpises. 


For dealing with discoveries requiring ex- 


tensive initial expenditure and the flotation 
of new commercial enterprises to handle 
them, the Research Corporation and an- . 
alogus corporations which may come to be 
founded for a like purpose provide an ac- 
ceptable means of ensuring the adequate 
development of the invention and the re- 
turn of the proceeds to the support of 
scientific investigations, 

The fundamental administrative basis of 
the agreement which has been concluded 
between the regents of the University of 
California and myself consists in the pro- 
vision for as complete a separation as is 
consonant with stability of the responsi- 
bility for the business administration of 
the trust and that for the actual perform- 
ance of investigations financed from the 
proceeds of the trust. The successful sci- 
entific investigator is usually, for the 
simple reason of his success as an investi- 
gator, a very indifferent financier. The 
professional administrator or financier, 
whose interests and information are far re- 
moved from the battle-front of the con- 
quest of nature, and whose preoccupation 
is rather the consolidation of conquests 
previously achieved, is usually a very in- 


OctosER 19, 1917] 


different director of scientific investigation. 
The truth of the former of these proposi- 
tions will be admitted on every hand; that 
of the latter is not so generally recognized. 
It is, however, very clearly evidenced in 
many contemporary scientific enterprises 
which, under the too exclusive guidance of 
professional administrators, are compara- 
tively inefficient in production of results of 
the highest intrinsic value, while the most 
successful scientific enterprises of our day 
are those which are being administered, so 
far as actual investigation is concerned, by 
men who are themselves practical investi- 
gators of distinction. 

In the terms of the agreement it is pro- 
vided that sole responsibility for every 
phase of the business administration of 
the patents and of the proceeds accruing 
therefrom rests with the regents of the 
University of California, while the proxi- 
mate responsibility for the performance of 
investigations which may be financed by 
these proceeds rests with the board of sci- 
entific directors, under whose immediate 
direction, subject to the supervisory con- 
trol of the regents of the university, all re- 
searches must be carried out. It is 
furthermore provided, in order to ensure 
that the personnel of the board shall con- 
sist exclusively of men in living touch 
with contemporary scientific problems, that 
the directors shall be persons themselves 
engaged directly and primarily in research 
work, and upon ceasing to be so engaged 
they shall be under obligation to resign as 
such directors, and if they do not resign 
their positions shall be declared vacant by 
the regents of the university. It is fur- 
thermore provided that the position of 
any director shall become vacant upon his 
attaining the age of sixty years, unless the 
regents of the University shall, for strong 
reason existing in the particular case, ex- 
tend his term of office. 

The conquest of nature, which is the ma- 


SCIENCE 


3795 


terial preoccupation of the scientifie in- 
vestigator, is not unlike a military cam- 
paign, in that those who retire from im- 
mediate contact with operations speedily 
lose the instincts which underlie and de- 
termine practical success. The scientific 
investigator who ceases to pursue active 
investigation and turns to administrative 
or other pursuits, sooner or later loses the 
intuitions which formerly led him to detect 
the weak spots in the defense which nature 
opposes to our inquiry, and that grasp of 
the field of investigation as a whole which 
actual contact keeps alive. 

A true estimate of any professional man 
can only be formed by his professional 
colleagues, and it is therefore provided that 
any vacancies in the board of directors 
must be filled on nomination of the remain- 
ing members. Such nominees, however, 
must be approved by the regents of the 
university, and responsibility for the per- 
sonnel of the board is thus shared in the 
fullest possible measure between the mem- 
bers of the board itself and the regents of 
the university. This provision, and the 
preceding provisions, are designed to ob- 
viate the notorious defects attaching to 
self-perpetuating boards, while introducing 
a just sufficient element of self-perpetua- 
tion to ensure the perpetuation of the es- 
sential character of the present board. 

There is a very prevalent misunderstand- 
ing even among scientific men, of the true 
function of the protection extended by pat- 
ents. While they are designed among other 
things to ensure a monetary return to the 
discoverer by granting him a temporary 
monopoly of his discovery, yet this is only 
one and not by any means the most success- 
ful feature of their purpose. As sumn- 
marized by Dr. F. G. Cottrell, the basic rea- 
sons for granting patents are the follow- 
ing :? 

2‘*Government Owned Patents,’’ Proceedings of 


the American Mining Congress, Nineteenth Annual 
Session, Chicago, Illinois, November 13-16, 1916. 


376 


Firstly, to substitute a definite and regu- 
lated form of monopoly under the law for 
the broader and entirely unregulated one 
which the patentee might otherwise secure 
by retaining his secret. 

Secondly, to encourage and stimulate in- 
vention. 

Thirdly, to give adequate opportunity 
and encouragement for intensive commer- 
cial development of the invention which is 
almost invariably necessary to make it gen- 
erally available on its own merits to the 
ultimate consumer. 

Among medical investigators a very defi- 
nite prejudice exists against the patenting 
of any medical discoveries, and this view is 
to some extent shared by not a few investi- 
gators in other fields. The fundamental in- 
stinet which leads to this aversion is unques- 
tionably a sound one. It consists in the 
feeling that monopoly renders possible com- 
mercial exploitation, which increases the 
cost of the article to the consumer dispro- 
portionately to the cost of production, 
while among medical men the word ‘‘pat- 
ent’’ arouses the repellant idea of the so- 
ealled, but mis-named ‘‘patent medicine.’’ 
That notorious abuse is, of course, not pat- 
ented and should correctly be designated 
the ‘‘proprietary medicine.’’ If existing 
proprietary medicines were patented (and 
of course the vast majority, being merely 
recipes, would not be patentable) their most 
undesirable feature, that of secrecy, would 
be at once removed, since, in Great Britain 
and America at least, the issuance of letters 
patent is the completest and most accessible 
form of publication possible. As regards 
the objection to the feature of monopoly, it 
is to be recollected that letters patent are 
only one and not the most efficient among 
many methods of securing monopoly, and 
it may be questioned whether the non-issu- 
ance of patents would in any important de- 
gree lessen the average cost of medical 
articles to the ultimate consumer. It is, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


however, to be admitted that the possibility 
of outrageous extortion from the public 
does exist and has occasionally been real- 
ized in practise. In the subjoined agree- 
ment it is, however, provided (subdivision 
a) that the regents of the University of 
California undertake to utilize the rights 
granted to them in such a manner as will in 
their judgment best produce a monetary re- 
turn and at the same time render the use of 
the preparation patented most generally 
available for the benefit of the human race. 
The regents of the university are thus 
clearly authorized, in event of their consid- 
ering it to be desirable in the interest of 
availability of the preparation for the bene- 
fit of humanity, to deliberately sacrifice 
monetary advantage, and, the element of 
personal interest being entirely excluded, 
the public has the fullest procurable guar- 
antee that they would, if occasion arose, 
take such action. 

In subdivision 6 are contained clauses 
which provide for the reimbursement and 
“‘eonditional insurance’’ of the donor. In 
this particular instance the reimbursement 
is confined to the repayment of actual ex- 
penses incurred, but in many other in- 
stances it might very properly consist in a 
sharing of profits, either expressed as a 
lien consisting of a cash sum or of a defi- 
nite sum per annum, or as a percentage of 
the proceeds, or geographically, the patent 
rights in certain countries or localities be- 
ing retained by the donor. The ‘‘condi- 
tional insurance’’ clause is inserted to fore- 
stall the obvious injustice which might 
arise were the surviving family of the donor 
to find themselves in actual need while the 
university might at that moment be reap- 
ing large returns from his discoveries. If, 
however, the university were to be com- 
pelled from the beginning to accumulate a 
fund to cover this contingency, the result 
might be, at least for a considerable term 
of years, to completely stultify the gift and 


OctosEr 19, 1917] 


the purposes of the donor. In order to 
neutralize this it is therefore provided that 
the university shall not be required to 
make any provision for this purpose in ad- 
vance of the actual event of the death or 
disability of the donor, and the claims of 
his survivors only become operative at the 
moment of his death. 

In subdivision c are included certain in- 
dividual preference-clauses which, collec- 
tively considered, must form an essential 
and very valuable part of any widely ac- 
ceptable plan of this nature. In the first 
place the donor expresses his preference 
that the proceeds be expended in the fur- 
therance of research on the physiology, 
pathology and chemistry of growth. This 
is expressed merely as a preference, how- 
ever, and is not mandatory. It is merely 
equivalent to a consistent vote in a certain 
direction which may, if necessary or advis- 
able, be outweighed by a majority of the 
votes of the board. It is felt by the writer 
that the expression of such preference in 
each and every ease of the kind will help to 
automatically adjust the material resources 
of the different fields of scientific investiga- 
tion to their current needs. The donor is 
usually likely to desire that the proceeds be 
appropriated to the support of a field of in- 
vestigation which he considers to be, at that 
time, lacking in sufficient material support. 
Such preferences should not ‘be rendered 
mandatory, however, for the reason that the 
condition which the donor seeks to rectify 
may turn out to be only temporary, or the 
intrinsic importance of the field may ulti- 
mately prove to be insufficient to warrant 
the expenditure of the entire proceeds upon 
it. 

The donor also expresses his preference 
regarding the locality in which a propor- 
tion of the proceeds should be expended. 
This arises from his conviction that the wel- 
fare of scientific investigation, as a whole, 
demands the widest possible distribution of 


SCIENCE 


377 


the facilities for conducting practical in- 
vestigation.® At the present time in New 
York, London, Paris or Berlin the young 
man who has capability for original investi- 
gation has every opportunity of acquiring 
facilities for his work and of gaining in- 
spiration from the example of investiga- 
tions proceeding to a successful issue in his 
own vicinity and under his own observa- 
tion. He sees in actual operation the meth- 
ods of work adopted by masters of his sub- 
ject, and examples and opportunity alike 
combine to make the path easy to his chosen 
career. But what shall we say of the oppor- 
tunities of the young man or woman in Si- 
beria, China, Australasia, South America 
or Africa? In certain localities in these 
countries every necessary institution exists 
for providing the essential preliminary 
training of the investigator, but, training 
in the fundamentals of his subject secured, 
where is he now to turn for the living ex- 
ample of the successful experimental in- 
vestigator or for the opportunities of a 
large and abundantly equipped laboratory, 
partly or wholly devoted to research? The 
bare possibility of creating fresh fields of 
knowledge will probably never even occur to 
him, since he has never seen or been stimu- 
lated to imagine investigation conducted on 
a broad and practical scale. As a means of 
tapping new sources of talent for investiga- 
tion a centripetal disposal of investigators 
and the opportunities for investigation has 
become a paramount necessity. The fact 
that the donor received his fundamental 
training in Australia determined the pref- 
erence which he has expressed. It is not 
rendered mandatory, however, for the rea- 
son that it is not clear that the opportunity 
to so dispose of the proceeds in this partic- 
ular instance will ever arise, or if it did 
arise, whether unforeseen political or other 
events might not, at some time in the fu- 


3‘*The Strategies of Scientific Investigation,’’ 
The Scientific Monthly, December, 1916, p. 547° 


378 


ture, render this disposal of the proceeds 
inadvisable. 

In conelusion, although the plan incor- 
porated in this agreement is applicable to 
any and all completely developed patent- 
able discoveries which may be made by the 
employees of learned institutions, the board 
of directors herein created confines its func- 
tions to the administration of medical re- 
search. It was felt that it would be impos- 
sible to choose a board commanding the 
confidence of investigators in all the various 
fields of scientific research without making 
up the personnel by ex-officio appointments, 
as the dean of this or the professor of that 
particular college or subject, and thus in- 
troducing the very atmosphere of bureau- 
eracy and officialism which it was sought to 
avoid. In event of this precedent being at 
all extensively copied it will obviously be 
necessary, for universities at all events, to 
establish three or four separate founda- 
tions and a like number of boards of scien- 
tifie directors. 

The text of the agreement follows: 


T. BramusrorD ROBERTSON 


THIS INDENTURE, made this 7th day of Septem- 
ber, 1917, between T. B. Rosertson, the party of 
the first part, and THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVER- 
SITY OF CALIFORNIA, a corporation, the party of the 
second part, 

WITNESSETH: 

Wuerkas the party of the first part is the dis- 
coverer of a medical preparation named Tethelin, 
covered by United States and British patents, and 
is the owner of such preparation and of such 
patents and of the trade-name ‘‘Tethelin,’’ 

Now, THEREFORE, IT Is AGREED AS FOLLOWS: 


I 

The party of the first part hereby conveys and 
grants to the party of the second part the said 
preparation, patents and trade-name, and all his 
rights as the discoverer of said preparation and the 
owner thereof and of said patents and trade-name, 
upon the following trust, to wit: 

(a) To utilize the rights hereby granted in such 
a manner as in the judgment of the party of the 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


second part will best produce a monetary return 
therefrom and at the same time render the use of 
such preparation most generally available for the 
benefit of the human race. The party of the sec- 
ond part shall have the right to sell or dispose in 
any other manner of said rights or any of them, in 
whole or in part, or to grant subsidiary rights and 
privileges thereunder, either upon royalties or other- 
wise. The party of the second part agrees that it 
will use all reasonable diligence to utilize said 
rights as aforesaid, but it is particularly agreed, 
and the party of the second part accepts said trust 
only upon the condition, that it shall be the sole 
judge as to what is reasonable diligence in the re- 
spect mentioned, and that it shall not be pecuniarily 
or legally responsible for any want of diligence in 
such respect unless the same be in bad faith or the 
equivalent of bad faith, and that in view of the 
fact that the party of the second part is a public 
eleemosynary corporation all of whose funds are 
held upon other trusts, the party of the second 
part shall not be pecuniarily or legally liable under 
any circumstances whatsoever except to the extent 
of such rights or the proceeds, profits or returns 
thereof at the time of recovery against it in the 
hands of the party of the second part: 

(b) To apply any proceeds, profits or returns 
from the utilization of said rights, after paying 
the expenses of the party of the second part in 
connection with the trust, to the reimbursement of 
the party of the first part in the sum of one thou- 
sand dollars ($1,000) for expenses incurred by 
him in making such discovery of such preparation, 
and, in ease of his disability, to the payment to him 
thereafter for his life of the sum of five thousand 
dollars ($5,000) annually, and in case of his death 
to the payment of a like amount to his wife for her 
life, and in case of the death of both himself and 
his wife leaving a minor ehild or children, to the 
payment of a like amount to such child or children 
until such child or the youngest of such children 
shall have reached majority: provided, however, 
that such annuities shall each year be payable only 
out of such proceeds, profits or returns as may 
come in during that year and any balance on hand 
at the beginning of the year unexpended and unap- 
propriated for the purposes mentioned in the fol- 
lowing subdivision (subdivision c) : 

(c) To apply any unexpended balance of such 
proceeds, profits or returns to research work in 
medicine and preferably in the physiology, chemis- 
istry and pathology of growth either under the aus- 
pices of the University of California or otherwise, 
it being the wish of the party of the first part, but 


OcrosEr 19, 1917] 


not a condition, that in case such proceeds, profits 
or returns amount to a sum sufficient to justify it, 
such research work be conducted in part in Aus- 
tralia, either under the auspices of some institution 
of learning there or otherwise. The party of the 
second part shall direct such research work in con- 
sultation with the men hereafter named as the first 
members of the board of directors of the Institute 
of Medical Research whose creation is hereinafter 
provided for and their successors. The party of the 
second part shall-have the right, subject to the pro- 
visions of subdivisions (a) and (0b) preceding, to 
expend such proceeds, profits or returns on such 
research work either in whole or in part, holding 
and investing such accumulation as a fund and ex- 
pending the income of such fund in the mainte- 
nance of research work: 

PROVIDED, however, that in case at any time such 
proceeds, profits or returns are sufficient in the 
judgment of the party of the second part to justify 
it, it shall create an Institute of Medical Research 
which shall, under the immediate direction of a 
board of directors of five members subject to the 
supervisory control of the party of the second part, 
earry on and direct the work of research men- 
tioned. Such Institute, if created, shall also be 
authorized to conduct other kindred lines of re- 
search with funds received or appropriated by the 
party of the second part for that purpose from 
other sources, and particularly from the utilization 
of other discoveries transferred by the discoverers 
to the party of the second part, provided that in 
case of conveyance to or acquisition by the party 
of the second part of other discoveries or patents 
or rights from which and from the discovery pat- 
ents and rights hereby conveyed, come proceeds 
which are joint to both, the party of the second 
part shall be the sole judge as to the relative pro- 
portion of such joint proceeds as are attributable to 
each of the joint sources thereof. Such board of 
directors shall in the first instance be composed of 
F. P. Gay, H. M. Evans, G. H. Whipple, C. L. A. 
Schmidt, and the party of the first part. Any va- 
eancy in said board shall be filled on the nomina- 
tion of the remaining members approved by the 
party of the second part. The directors shall be 
persons themselves engaged directly and primarily 
in research work either of the character mentioned 
or of some kindred character, and upon their ceas- 
ing to be so engaged they shall be under obliga- 
tion to resign as such directors, and if they do not 
resign their positions shall be declared vacant by 
the party of the second part and upon such declara- 
tion shall be vacant. The position of any director 


SCIENCE 


379 


shall become vacant upon his attaining the age of 
sixty (60) years unless the party of the second 
part shall, for strong reasons existing in the par- 
ticular case, extend his term of office. 


II 

The party of the second part accepts the forego- 
ing grant and conveyance upon the trust above set 
out. 

In Witness WHEREOF the party of the first part 
has hereunto signed his name and the party of the 
second part has by its officers thereunto duly au- 
thorized hereunto signed its corporate name and 
affixed its corporate seal all on the day and year 
first above written. 

T. BRAILSFORD ROBERTSON, 

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
CALIFORNIA, 

By Wo. D. STEPHENS, 
Governor of the State of California, and ex- 
officio President of the Regents of the Uni- 
versity of California, 

By V. H. HENDERSON, 
Secretary of the Regents of the University 
of California 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
JOSEPH YOUNG BERGEN 

JosepH YouNnG BeErcen, author of several 
well-known text-books of botany and physics, 
died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on Oc- 
tober 10. Born at Red Beach, Maine, on Feb- 
ruary 22, 1851, he spent his youth in Ohio, 
where in 1872 he graduated from Antioch Col- 
lege, and where in connection with the State 
Geological Survey he performed his first 
scientific work. In 1876 he married Fanny 
Dickerson, who has collaborated with him in 
the production of several of his papers on evo- 
lution and Darwinism, and who herself has 
made notable contributions to the literature of 
American folklore. In 1887 Mr. Bergen be- 
came teacher of physics in the Boston Latin 
School and later for many years he was in- 
structor in biology in the Boston English High 
School. 

In 1891, in collaboration with Professor E. 
H. Hall, of Harvard University, he brought 
out “A Text-book of Physics.”’ This had 
passed through subsequent editions in 1897 
and 1903, and is still widely used in secondary 
schools. 


380 


His first biological text-book, “ Elements of 
Botany,” appeared in 1896 and its excellence 
was speedily recognized. With some modifica- 
tions it was subsequently republished under 
the name of “Essentials of Botany,” and in 
1901 Mr. Bergen brought out his “ Founda- 
tions of Botany,” including a condensed flora 
for school use. Other text-books with special 
adaptation for schools of particular grades of 
scientific equipment were later published by 
Mr. Bergen with the collaboration of Dr. Otis 
W. Caldwell and Professor Bradley M. Davis. 

By his long personal experience in the difi- 
culties of the presentation of the subject of 
botany in the secondary school Mr. Bergen was 
able to frame these text-books in a way to meet 
both the needs of teacher and pupil and it is 
doubtful if any other texts have been more 
widely used or met with a greater success dur- 
ing the last two decades in the field which they 
cover. 


THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF VARIABLE 
STAR OBSERVERS 


Tue American Association of Variable Star 
Observers concludes this month six years of 
active service with a record of 15,763 observa- 
tions of 832 variable stars for the year, and a 
grand total for the six years of 75,373 observa- 
tions. 

The past year has been one of marked prog- 
ress in the efficiency of the scientific service 
rendered and growth in the membership of the 
association. 

A meeting of the association will be held at 
the Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, 
Mass., at 2 p.m., November 10. At this meet- 
ing a constitution and by-laws will be adopted 
and officers elected. Seventy-two observers 
have already enrolled as charter members and 
a cordial invitation is extended to all inter- 
ested in the work to be present at the meeting. 
It will be a splendid opportunity to inspect 
through the courtesy of the director, Professor 
E. C. Pickering, the historic Harvard College 
observatory and to see exhibits of great inter- 
est to all astronomically inclined. 

The undersigned will be pleased to answer 
any questions relative to the work of the asso- 
ciation and will be glad to hear from any one 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


who wishes to join the organization, and take 
up a line of telescopic work that is teeming 
with interest, devoid of mathematics and intri- 
eate detail, and eminently worth while. 


WiniiaM TyLer OLcort, 


Corresponding Secretary 
NorwicH, Conn. 


THE CORNELL MEDICAL SCHOOL 


CornELL University Mepicat CoLLecE opened 
its twentieth session on October 1, 1917. The 
student assembly was addressed by Dr. William 
H. Polk, the dean, who discussed the relation 
of the medical college to the present military 
situation and outlined the opportunities for 
patriotic service by students of medicine. The 
attention of the student assembly was called to 
the active participation in the work of the 
United States of America by the college, 
the members of the faculty and the medical 
graduates by active service in the field and by 
providing facilities for the instruction of offi- 
cers of the Medical Reserve Corps. The enter- 
ing students were exhorted to continue their 
course, that, in accord with the announced 
plan of the authorities, they may be prepared 
to fill the vacancies in the medical ranks 
which, with the continuance of the war, are 
certain to arise. The enrollment is as fol- 
lows: First year, registered in New York, 38; 
registered at Ithaca, 30; total, 68; second year, 
34; third year, 29; fourth year, 27; graduates 
in medicine, 4; total, 182. All students regis- 
tered for the degree of M.D. (with the excep- 
tion of those in the first year who are taking 
the seven-year course leading to the degrees of 
A.B. and M.D.), are graduates in arts or sci- 
ence. As a result practically all members of 
the first-year class fall within the limits of the 
military draft. Several students, having been 
drafted into the National Army, or fearing the 
draft in the immediate future, failed to reg- 
ister. 


A SCHOOL FOR ORAL AND PLASTIC SURGERY 


By order of the surgeon general of the 
army an officers’ school for oral and plastic 
surgery has been established in St. Louis. 
The purpose of this new school is to train a 


Octoser 19, 1917] 


limited number of the medical reserve and 
perhaps other medical officers for the care of 
those peculiar wounds of the face and jaws 
characteristic of trench warfare. Both sur- 
geons and dentists will enter upon this work 
and will eventually constitute a section of the 
staff in every base hospital and evacuation 
hospital in connection with the army. The 
plan involves the training and placing of a 
sufficient number to care for the face injuries 
presented among a million men in hospitals. 
Major Vilray Papin Blair, of St. Louis, has 
been called to Washington to organize and 
direct this important work. The first school 
has its headquarters at the Washington Uni- 
versity Medical School, which at the beginning 
of the war offered to the government the 
facilities of its new laboratories, hospitals and 
clinics, and the services of its faculty. In- 
structors have been chosen chiefly from the 
faculties of Washington University Medical 
School and St. Louis University School of 
Medicine and the special curriculum has been 
adopted. The latter offers intensive work in 
anatomy, operative surgery, sepsis, anesthesia 
and dentistry. The first course will begin on 
Monday, October 15, and will extend over a 
period of three weeks to be repeated until the 
number of men desired has been reached. 
The surgeon general has designated for dean 
Dr. R. J. Terry, professor of anatomy in the 
Washington University Medical School, and 
for chairman of the curriculum committee, 
Dr. Hanau W. Loeb, dean of the St. Louis 
University School of Medicine; Dr. Ernest 
Sachs, associate professor of surgery at Wash- 
ington University Medical School, to serve as 
secretary of the council. 


THE RED CROSS MEDICAL SERVICE 

Tue establishment of a bureau of medical 
service of foreign commissions to give prompt 
and expert attention to the requests for medi- 
eal and surgical supplies received from Amer- 
ican Red Cross commissions now at work in 
France, Russia, Roumania, Italy, and Serbia 
is announced by the Red Cross war council. 
Requests for additional doctors and nurses for 
service with these commissions, particularly 


SCIENCE 


381 


in France and Roumania, will also be handled 
by the new bureau. 

In cooperation with the medical advisory 
board, the bureau will also render assistance 
in the solving of many new pathological prob- 
lems constantly arising out of the war. 

Dr. R. M. Pearce, of Philadelphia, pro- 
fessor of research medicine at the University 
of Pennsylvania, is director of the new 
bureau: Dr. W. C. Bailey, of Boston, associate 
director; and Dr. Ralph Pemberton, of Phila- 
delphia, assistant. The secretary of the 
bureau is John Gilbert, of Philadelphia. 

The growth of the work of all the Red Cross 
commissions in European countries during 
the last two months made the establishment 
of this bureau necessary. Drugs and medical 
supplies to the value of more than $500,000 
have already been shipped to Russia, while 
three detachments of child specialists have 
been recruited throughout the country for 
service with the new children’s bureau of the 
Red Cross in France. The bureau is furnish- 
ing bacteriologists, chemists, surgeons, and 
others for Red Cross establishments in Paris. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Tue chairman of the committee on policy 
of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science has requested Professor 
Cattell to continue to edit Scmnce until the 
questions involved have been carefully con- 
sidered by the committee on policy and the 
council of the association. 


At the annual meeting of the national ad- 
visory committee for aeronautics held recently, 
Dr. W. F. Durand was reelected chairman 
and Dr. S. W. Stratton was reelected secre- 
tary. Members of the executive committee 
were elected as follows: Dr. Joseph S. Ames, 
Dr. Charles F. Marvin, Dr. Michael I. Pupin, 
Major General George O. Squier, United 
States Army, Dr. S. W. Stratton, Rear Ad- 
miral D. W. Taylor, United States Navy, and 
Dr. Charles D. Walcott. At the organization 
meeting of the executive committee Dr. 
Charles D. Waleott was elected chairman and 
Dr. S. W. Stratton, secretary. Existing sub- 
committees were continued, and an editorial 


382 


committee was appointed to prepare for pub- 
lication the technical reports. 


Masor Grorce E. peScHwernitz, Medical 
Reserve Corps, has been assigned to active 
duty at Philadelphia for the purpose of com- 
piling a handbook on ophthalmology for the 
use of the surgeon-general of the army. 


Freperick B. Mumrorp, dean of the Mis- 
souri College of Agriculture, director of the 
experiment station of the University of Mis- 
souri, and chairman of the Missouri council 
of defense, has been chosen federal food ad- 
ministrator for Missouri, 


Tue deputy-controller for auxiliary ship- 
building, of the British admiralty, has ap- 
pointed Lieutenant-Colonel J. Mitchell Mon- 
crieff to be director of engineering work, to 
deal generally with all civil engineering mat- 
ters which may arise in connection with his 
department. 


TuE post of director of food economy at the 
Ministry of Food of Great Britain has been 
undertaken by Sir Arthur Yapp, the national 
secretary of the Y. M. C. A. 


Amone the members of the faculty of the 
University of California Medical School who 
have been called into active service in the 
Medical Officers Reserve Corps are Dr. Her- 
bert O. Moffitt, San Francisco, professor of 
medicine and dean of the medical school, who 
has been commissioned major, and stationed 
at the Army Hospital at San Antonio, Texas; 
Dr. Eugene S. Kilgore, who has been com- 
missioned major, and is stationed at the Pre- 
sidio in San Francisco; Dr. Alanson Weeks, 
instructor in surgery, commissioned major; 
Dr. Howard E. Ruggles, assistant clinical pro- 
fessor of roentgenology, and Dr. Jule B. 
Frankenheimer, instructor in medicine, com- 
missioned captains; and Drs. Elbridge J. Best, 
Frank P. Brendel, Arthur C. Gibson, Charles 
L. Tranter and Daniel W. Sooy, commissioned 
first lieutenants. 


Tue faculty of applied science of Columbia 
University has lost, temporarily at least, many 
of its officers, who are now engaged in govern- 
ment work. Professors Moss, Sleffel, and 
Thomas, of the department of mechanical 


SCIENCE 


LN. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1190 


engineering, and Mr. Mason, of the depart- 
ment of electrical engineering, are instructors, 
with the rank of lieutenant, in the naval re- 
serve, in the naval engieering school con- 
ducted on the campus; Professor Arendt, of 
the department of electrical engineering, is 
in Charge of electrical instruction at the sub- 
marine base at New London; Professor Webb, 
of the department of physics, is a captain in 
the Signal Corps; Dr. Thomas, of the depart- 
ment of chemistry, and Dr. Burwell and Mr. 
Brown, of the department of sanitary engi- 
neering, are in the sanitary corps of the army; 
Professor Beans, of the department of chem- 
istry, and Mr. McGregor, of the department 
of civil engineering, are in charge of chemical 
and mechanical tests for the Aircraft Produc- 
tion Board; Professor Campbell, of the de- 
partment of metallurgy, is consulting metal- 
lurgist for the navy, and Professor Walker, of 
the department of metallurgy, is in the ord- 
uance department of the army. 


Tue Maryland Geological and Economic 
Survey Commission, which consists of the goy- 
ernor of the state, the presidents of the Johns 
Hopkins University and the Maryland Agri- 
cultural College, and the state comptroller, has 
elected Professor Edward Bennett Mathews, 
for many years assistant state geologist, as 
state geologist to succeed the late Wm. Bul- 
lock Clark. 


AS a war emergency measure the National 
Forest ranges are carrying this summer ap- 
proximately 100,000 more cattle and 200,000 
more sheep than in ordinary years, according 
to the grazing experts of the forest service. 
Ordinarily the National Forests furnish pas- 
turage for about 1,800,000 cattle and horses 
and 7,800,000 head of sheep. The number of 
livestock permitted on the forests is limited in 
order to prevent damage to timber growth, 
water supplies and the range itself. This year 
exceptional weather conditions combined with 
the general food situation to create an unusual 
emergency, calling for special provisions to 
take care of the stock. A severe winter and 
late spring exhausted the hay supply and 
forced use of the spring ranges before they had 
reached their normal state. To lessen the 


OctosEr 19, 1917] 


losses which the western livestock industry 
faced, the National Forest ranges were opened 
early. At the same time, the number of stock 
permitted for the present season was raised to 
the maximum consistent with safeguarding 
future productiveness. It is fully recognized 
that the increases which have been made in the 
allowances of stock on the national forests in- 
volve danger that the range will be depleted 
through overgrazing, but it is believed by the 
grazing experts of the government that the 
emergency increases made can be taken care of, 
at least this year, without material sacrifice of 
productive capacity. The condition of the 
ranges is, however, being carefully watched. 
Reliance is placed also on the special efforts 
being made to secure the most intensive utili- 
zation consistent with sustained productive- 
ness, by improved methods of handling the 
stock. Better salting methods and the de- 
velopment of new watering places are among 
the means employed for this purpose. At the 
close of the grazing season a careful examina- 
tion will be made of the range on each forest 
to determine its condition and to find out how 
many cattle or sheep it will support next sea- 
son. On areas which are found to be over- 
grazed, an attempt will be made to shift the 
surplus stock to range which can stand the 
strain better. While the grazing officials do 
not think that the increase could be carried 
indefinitely without serious damage to the for- 
age, regulated grazing has brought about a 
steady improvement of the range and some 
areas will probably be able to support the 
larger numbers permanently. 


Durine the last week of September nine in- 
dustrial fellows of the Mellon Institute of In- 
dustrial Research entered the service of the 
government. The names of these men, all of 
whom are chemists, are as follows: Dr. Frank 
O. Amon, Dr. Harold S. Bennett, Mr. A. S. 
Crossfield, Mr. W. J. Harper, Mr. C. E. How- 
son, Dr. R. W. Miller, Mr. Ray V. Murphy, Mr. 
W. E. Vawter and Mr. C. L. Weirich. Messrs. 
Amon, Bennett, Howson, Miller, Murphy, Vaw- 
ter and Weirich have received commissions as 
first lieutenants. In addition, three other In- 
dustrial Fellows, Messrs. C. O. Brown, G. F. 


SCIENCE 


383 


Gray and R. P. Rose had previously been com- 
missioned as captains; A. H. Stewart has en- 
tered the aviation service and C. N. Ivy has 
been appointed a second lieutenant in the Engi- 
neering Corps. 

Tue dean of Sibley College, Cornell Univer- 
sity, Professor Albert W. Smith, has received 
leave of absence for the year 1917-18 in order © 
that he may serve as consulting engineer to 
the Mathieson Alkali Works at Saltville, Vir- 
ginia. Professor Dexter S. Kimball, head of 
the department of machine design and indus- 
trial engineering, has been appointed acting 
dean of Sibley College. 


Proressor J. C. Brapiey, of Cornell Univer- 
sity, and Professor Edwin C. Van Dyke, of the 
University of California, have exchanged work 
for the current year. Although both are gen- 
eral entomologists, Professor Van Dyke is an 
authority on the coleoptera, while Professor 
Bradley is a specialist on the hymenoptera. 


Proressor JoHN C. McLennan, Ph.D., head 
of the department of physics of the University 
of Toronto, and member of the Canadian Com- 
mission on Chemical Research, is among the 
first group to receive the honor of the new 
Order of the British Empire. 


Tue Medical Club of Philadelphia will give 
a reception in honor of Dr. Morton Prince, of 
Boston, on October 19, at the Bellevue-Strat- 
ford Hotel. 


Dr. Santos FERNANDEZ, president of the 
Cuban Academy of Science, and one of the 
most distinguished eye surgeons of Cuba, was 
the guest of honor at a luncheon given October 
2, by Dr. William Campbell Posey, of the Wills 
Eye Hospital, Philadelphia. 


AccorpInG to Nature, the seventieth birth- 
day of Professor S. Hoogewerff, formerly 
rector of the Technical High School of Delft, 
was recently celebrated by his friends and 
pupils. Professor Holleman briefly reviewed 
Hoogewerff’s work, carried out conjointly with 
the late Dr. Van Dorp, on the cinchona alka- 
loids, on isoquinoline, and on the production 
of anthracilic acid from phthalimide. The 
latter reaction became a step in the manu- 
facture of synthetic indigo. On behalf of a 


384 


number of Dutch chemical firms, Dr. Van 
Linge, manager of the Maarssen quinine 
works, announced that more than £8,000 had 
been subscribed for the foundation of a prize 
for chemistry at the Technical High School 
at Delft, in order to commemorate Professor 
Hoogewerff’s services to this institution and 
to Dutch chemical industry. 


Havine completed the report upon the geol- 
ogy of southern California for the U. 8. Geo- 
logical Survey upon which he has been en- 
gaged for several years past, Robert T. Hill 
has opened an office for the practise of his 
profession of geologist at 702 Hollingsworth 
Building, Los Angeles, Cal. 


Mr. W. H. Feceiy, for several years in- 
structor in chemistry and assistant director of 
the laboratories at Alleeheny College, has re- 
signed his position to take charge of the re- 
search laboratories of the Erie Malleable Iron 
Company, Erie, Pa. 


Suirtey W. Aen, of the extension depart- 
ment of The New York State College of 
Forestry at Syracuse University, has been ap- 
pointed, temporarily, to suceeed Victor A. 
Beede as secretary of the New York State 
Forestry Association. Mr. Beede has gone 
into forest fire insurance work at Portsmouth, 
N. H., and Mr. Allen will act as secretary 
until the midwinter meeting to be held some 
time in January, 1918. 

Proressor J. A. Fiemine delivered a public 
lecture on “The work of a telephone ex- 
change” at University College, London, on 
October 17. 


Tue death is announced, at fifty-six years 
of age, of Mr. R. D. Pullar, president of the 
British Society of Dyers and Oolorists in 
1914, and chairman of the well-known firm of 
Messrs. J. Pullar and Sons, dyers and clean- 
ers, at Perth. Mr. Pullar was a life fellow 
of the Chemical Society of London. 

Tus death is also announced of A. da Graca 
Couto, professor of ophthalmology at the Uni- 
versity of Rio de Janeiro and director-general 
of the public health service, aged fifty-three. 

The Evening Post says that France presents 
the interesting spectacle of a country in which 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


three of the most important posts in govern- 
ment and army are filled by men whose qualifi- 
cations include a remarkable proficiency in 
mathematics. The new Premier, M. Painlevé, 
was as precocious as a Pascal in that branch 
of knowledge, says the Christian Science Mon- 
tor. He knew enough at eleven and a half to 
have got his bachelor’s degree, and later on he 
was a cause of amazed admiration to no less a 
person than Henry Poincaré. Then there is 
the commander-in-chief General Pétain, 
whom M. Painlevé, when Minister of War, 
chose to lead the French armies in the final 
and perhaps most difficult stage of the war. He 
also is a fine mathematician. Finally there is 
M. Loucheur, the new minister of armaments, 
and he did nothing less while at the Ecole 
Polytechnique than discover a new theorem 
on epicycloids. This is more than coincidence, 
it is significant of the direction in which the 
new France intends to travel. 


THE Engineering Corps is looking for 10,500 
men with road-construction experience to 
serve in an engineer brigade which is soon to 
go to France to do roadbuilding work with 
General Pershing’s expeditionary force. The 
regiment will be made up entirely of volun- 
teers. No man actually called for military 
service is eligible. Rapid advancement is 
promised men with special qualifications, and 
a few college men, preferably with military ex- 
perience, are wanted as non-commissioned 
officers. 

Tuer Journal of the American Medical Asso- 
ciation states that the Swiss Société helvéti- 
que des Sciences naturelles, which was the 
original model on which Virchow founded the 
German organization which meets once a year 
for what are popularly called the Naturforscher 
congresses. The venerable Swiss association 
now announces the formation of a section or 
subsociety devoted to medical biology, to be 
known as the Société de Médecine et de Biol- 
ogie. Professor Hedinger of the University of 
Basel is the moving spirit in the matter. The 
inaugural meeting is to be held this month at 
Zurich. It is hoped for a large membership 
among physicians interested in medical bio- 
logic questions. 


OctosEr 19, 917] 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

By the will of Mrs. E. D. Denning, of Nor- 
wood, London, who left an estate of the gross 
value of £167,719, there is bequeathed “to the 
Public Trustee all her freehold property in 
trust for a ‘ Frank Denning Memorial’ for the 
advancement and propagation of education in 
mechanical science in any part of the United 
Kingdom, with preference to those persons 
who reside in the Borough of Croydon.” 


EncuisH exchanges report that Lord Lovat, 
Mr. Otto Beit and Mr. Rudyard Kipling have 
accepted the positions of trustees under the 
will of the late Mr. Cecil Rhodes in succession 
to Lord Rosebery and Sir Lewis Mitchell, who 
resigned recently, and of the late Earl Grey, 
who had resigned shortly before his death. 
The trustees have decided to allot the four new 
scholarships created in substitution for the 
scholarships formerly held by Germans to the 
provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, to the 
Transvaal, to the Orange Free State and alter- 
nately to the towns of Kimberley and Port 
Elizabeth in the Cape Province. As Alberta 
and Saskatchewan have hitherto had one schol- 
arship between them, the effect of this decision 
will be that each of these provinces will now 
have a scholarship. The trustees have decided 
not to make any appointments to any scholar- 
ships this year, either in the United States or 
in any part of the British empire, although the 
qualifying examinations in the United States 
will be held as already arranged. This de- 
cision is based upon the fact that as all candi- 
dates must be men of military age it would 
not be in accordance with the spirit of the 
testator’s design if young men who first re- 
sponded to the eall of patriotism were to be 
penalized for having done so. Any candidate 
who is eligible this year will be equally quali- 
fied for election next year. 


No successor to the late Professor Wm. Bul- 
lock Clark will be appointed at the Johns Hop- 
kins University. The geological department 
has been reorganized on a committee basis with 
Professor Edward Bennett Mathews as chair- 
man and Associate Professor J. T. Singewald, 
Jr., as secretary. The instruction formerly 
given by Professor Clark has been divided 


SCIENCE 


385 


among the geological faculty, Professor Ed- 
ward W. Berry taking his work in paleontol- 
ogy and historical geology. 


Ar Pennsylvania State College, David Allen 
Anderson has been chosen professor of educa- 
tion and head of the department of education 
and psychology. Dr. Anderson was previously 
associate professor of education in the Univer- 
sity of Washington. 


Proressor Grorce B. McNarr is acting head 
of the department of electrical engineering of 
Colorado College during the absence of Pro- 
fessor George B. Thomas. 


Dr. Witu1am Surner, superintendent of the 
pathological laboratory of the Indiana State 
Board of Health, has been offered the pro- 
fessorship of pathology in the University of 
Texas. 


Dr. SamMurt A. Marruews, professor of 
physiology and experimental pharmacology in 
the University of Kansas, Topeka and Law- 
rence, has accepted the similar chair in the 
University of Alabama, Mobile. 

Dr. Francis M. Van Tuyt, formerly in- 
structor of geology in the University of IIli- 
nois, has recently been appointed an assistant 
professor in the Colorado School of Mines, at 
Golden. 

Brrnarp A. CHANDLER, of the Vermont Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station, has been ap- 
pointed assistant professor of forest utilization 
in the department of forestry of Cornell Uni- 
versity. 

W. G. Briertey, chairman of the division of 
horticulture, department of agriculture, Uni- 
versity of Minnesota, has been promoted to the 
rank of associate professor. 

Dr. FLorence PrEses, professor of biology 
at Newcomb College, Tulane University, has 
been appointed associate professor of physiol- 
ogy at Bryn Mawr College. 

Dr. J. Lucmn Morris, formerly associate 
in biological chemistry at the Washington Uni- 
versity Medical School, has accepted the posi- 
tion of associate in physiological chemistry at 
the college of medicine, University of Illinois. 


A cHair of tuberculosis has been instituted 
by the Edinburgh University Court, and Sir 


386 


Robert Philip has been appointed as the first 
professor of the subject. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
ISOLATION CULTURES WITH SMALL AQUARIA 


WHEN raising small forms of vegetable or 
animal aquatics, it is sometimes desirable to 
follow the development of several individuals 
simultaneously, and for some considerable 
time. This can done of course by removing 
the specimens to separate small aquaria, but 
by so doing the temperature and other condi- 
tions are likely to offer a considerable range 
of variation among the different specimens. 
This invites uncertainty as to the natural rate 
of development, or in response to any intended 
variable introduced by the experimenter. The 
desirable condition is to combine a consider- 
able volume of water with isolation of individ- 
uals so that each specimen may have essen- 
tially identical conditions of temperature, and 
concentration as each other, in groups of 
eight to twelve individuals. 

During a study of Lemna carried on for 
several months, it was desired to isolate in- 
dividual plants in order to watch the rate of 
growth. As the frond floats freely, some method 
by which the surface of the water could be en- 
closed in distinct areas seemed likely to meet 
conditions. It was found that common cotton 
cord, waxed with parafine, and tied into loops 
two inches in diameter, were excellent for this 
work so long as the water was undisturbed. 
Any disturbance, however, either accidental 
or in course of the work, by which the upper 
surface of the string loops become wet, made 
these sink quickly after they had been in use 
two or three days, and the enclosed specimens 
would then be confused with any others which 
might be near. Small snails developing in 
pond water used were quite a source of loss of 
specimens by their destructive habits, as well 
as factors of uncertainty, through the dis- 
placement of the string loops, drawn below 
the surface by the movement of the snails in 
ease these crawled across the strands. The 
vessels used at this time were common glass 
battery jars, and served very well in keeping 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vout. XLVI. No. 1190 


the plants in good condition, but they were un- 
necessarily deep. 

Later work was done with large crystallizing 
dishes, and the separation of individuals was 
secured by the use of glass dehydrating dishes 
with short legs and perforated bottoms, for 
inside dishes. This was found very satisfac- 
tory. The volume of water in the crystallizing 
dish was large enough to retain a much more 
steady temperature than did the small sep- 
arate dishes tried for a time, and the perfo- 
rated walls of the enclosing inner dishes 
permitted the movement of the water with 
sufficient freedom to eliminate any variable 
concentration or composition. 

In securing single specimens for the isola- 
tion work, some interesting conditions were en- 
countered on account of the toughness of the 
water film. It was found difficult, for ex- 
ample, to lift a single specimen of Lemna or 
Wolffia because the surface film would drag 
several additional specimens along with the 
desired individual. This trouble was largely 
eliminated by giving a smart puff of breath 
close to the desired specimen, which would 
cause a general scattering of all the floating 
particles from that point. As the elasticity 
of the film was released upon the cessation of 
the blowing, the dispersed specimens were 
drawn inward toward the center of the cleared 
area. On account of size, root development 
or other causes, the different specimens did 
not move with equal speed, and any one of the 
specimens first entering the cleared space 
could be lifted and removed with ease. It was 
found that a lance-head needle was an excel- 
lent lifter for the specimens. 

Of three species under observation, Wolffia 
was the easiest to thus isolate, Lemna pauci- 
costata next, and Spirodella the most difficult 
to lift with certainty. This is because Wolffia 
is completely immersed in the slight amount 
of water adhering to the needle, and sticks 
closely as this is raised from the dish. The 
single root of Lemna, and the many roots of 
Spirodella, prevent the fronds of these plants 
from so closely adhering to the flat needle. 
and their added weight also is adverse. It 
was found further that a dry needle was far 


October 19, 1917] 


more satisfactory than one which was wet 
when introduced into the dish. The water on 
the needle would promptly unite with the sur- 
face water in the dish, and several specimens 
would then be lifted from the dish in nearly 
every case, unless previously puffed away with 
the breath. But by wiping the needle, the in- 
dividual plant desired can often be lifted out 
even if others are so near as to nearly touch 
the selected plant. 

The dehydration dishes within the crystal- 
lizing pans proved very satisfactory, and per- 
mitted the continued cultivation of the par- 
ticular strain under observation for a con- 
siderable period. Freperick H. Biopcetr 

TEXAS AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE, 

CoLLEGE STATION, TEXAS 


TWO METHODS OF ORIENTATION OF SMALL 
OBJECTS IN PARAFFIN 

Tue following method is applicable to all 
objects which are sufficiently small to admit 
of embedding in watch erystals. It has been 
found practical and easy and is given here in 
the expectation that it will be of assistance 
to others. 

Watch crystals of the Syracuse type with 
flat bottoms are employed. On the bottom, 
parallel lines about 2 mm. apart are ruled with 
a diamond. These are then scraped out with 
a coarse needle, the sharp edges being broken 
off and the lines widened to form open grooves. 
The watch crystals should be washed to re- 
move the small particles of glass and are then 
ready for use. The watch crystals are pre- 
pared for embedding by coating the interior 
with a film of glycerin as usual, but care must 
be taken to rub the glycerin into the lines. 
When infiltration is complete, the watch erys- 
tal containing the objects is removed from 
the oven and the bottom slightly chilled by 
contact with cold wafer. It is then placed 
on the stage of a binocular microscope and 
the objects oriented with a warm needle, so 
that the plane of section desired shall be 
parallel with the lines and normal to the bot- 
tom of the watch crystal. As soon as the 
paraffin on the bottom has cooled sufficiently 
to hold the objects in place, the entire mass 


SCIENCE 


387 


is cooled with water in the usual manner. In 
orienting the objects it is found that the lines 
on the bottom of the watch erystal show more 
distinctly by transmitted than by reflected 
light. The block when removed shows on its 
lower surface minute parallel ridges which 
enable accurate and easy orientation when 
mounted on the object carrier of the micro- 
tome. The block should of course be placed 
in the microtome with the ruled surface up- 
wards and then arranged with the lines par- 
allel with the edge of the knife and the sur- 
face at right angles to the direction of motion, 
that is horizontal in the ordinary vertical 
type of Minot microtome, vertical in the hori- 
zontal type. 

A second method, or variation of the method 
given above, is to rule the parallel lines on 
the watch glass with a “china-marking” 
pencil. These lines, even though the glass 
is thoroughly coated with a glycerin film, will 
come away with the paraffin block and may 
be used as orientation lines. This method 
may also be used for numbering or otherwise 
marking paraftin blocks. 

Jas. A. NELSON 

BuREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY, 

Wasuineton, D. C. 


THE AURORA BOREALIS 

To THE Epitor oF Science: The display of 
the aurora borealis mentioned by your corre- 
spondent, Mr. Thomas Byrd Magath, in Sor 
ENCE, No. 1186, as seen at Fairport, Ia., on the 
ninth of last August at about 8.45 (Central 
time?) was also observed by the writer and 
others from a yacht anchored at Thimble Is- 
lands (Stony Creek), Conn., at about nine, 
75th meridian time, of the same evening. The 
display was quite brilliant, although the 
streamers did not reach much above 50° in 
altitude. The region of greatest brilliancy was 
about N. 25° W., true. 

On August 14 at about the same time a 
more brilliant display was seen at Stonington, 
Conn. (Lat.41° 19’). The illumination reached 
much further to the eastward and the stream- 
ers were higher. At times masses of pale light 
detached themselves from the general illumi- 


388 


nation and rose with a quivering flame-like 
motion almost to the zenith where they disap- 
peared, to be succeeded by others in turn. 
These waves appeared to be about 10° to 30° 
in a horizontal direction and perhaps 2° in the 
vertical direction. The display was observed 
by us until about ten and we were told by 
a fisherman who was out all night that it lasted 
until nearly three in the morning. 

On August 25, at Clinton, Conn. (Lat. 
41° 17’), we observed a still more brilliant dis- 
play at 8.40. There was an arch of greenish- 
white light whose center bore nearly north, 
true, the portion of sky enclosed by the lumi- 
nous arch being entirely dark. Streamers of 
considerable intensity were observed and the 
light from the arch was sufficient to illuminate 
the whole bay, rendering objects 300 yards 
away distinctly visible. At times above the 
greenish-white light, light varying from pale 
pink to deep red was observed, but chiefly on 
the eastern side of the meridian and high up, 
at least 75°. Suspecting that the latter phe- 
nomenon might be an illusion due to a com- 
plementary after-image of the brighter display 
lower down, we examined it carefully with the 
light from the rest of the display cut off for a 
considerable time but could not see that this 
made any difference. The display was ob- 
served until 9.40, when it had not ceased. 

Are not these phenomena, 2. e., the dark seg- 
ment below the bright arch and the pink color, 
unusual in such low latitudes? 

Cuartes A. MrEap 

CARTERET ACADEMY, 

ORANGE, N. J. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
Experimental Pharmacology. By Dennis E. 

Jackson, Ph.D., M.D., Associate Professor 

of Pharmacology, Washington University 

Medical School, St. Louis. St. Louis, C. V. 

Mosby Company. 1917. Pp. 536, with 390 

illustrations. Cloth. Price $4. 

Scientific text-books may be conveniently 
grouped into two classes: the majority have 
for their object the adequate, concise and 
clear presentation of the principal facts and 
data concerning the subject they deal with, in 


SCIENCE 


[N. &. Von. XLVI. No. 1190 


logical order and with a due regard to their 
relative importance. Such works are generally 
impersonal in character and introduce the au- 
thor’s views only incidentally in connection 
with the sections dealing with the particular 
lines of work in which they have been inter- 
ested. Another class of text-books, however, 
may be characterized as distinctly “individ- 
ualistic” in style and seem to have for their 
purpose primarily the exposition of the au- 
thor’s methods and views, relegating all other 
matter to a secondary place. Such a presenta- 
tion of the subject is perhaps a natural one 
for the pioneer in a new domain of science and 
may be exemplified in case of pharmacology 
by Schmiedeberg’s well-known little book, but 
when a science has once reached a high de- 
velopment, as is true of the pharmacology of 
the present day, this form of treatment in any 
hands but those of a great master is apt to be- 
come somewhat one-sided and provincial. 

Within the last few months we have seen the 
publication in this country of two text-books 
on pharmacology which well exemplify the 
two classes just mentioned. Sollmann’s 
“Manual of Pharmacology and Laboratory 
Guide ”—the recent new edition of his older 
work, greatly amplified, revised and rear- 
ranged—is an excellent example of scientific 
exposition belonging to the first or “ imper- 
sonal ” class. 

Jackson’s “ Experimental Pharmacology,” on 
the other hand, is certainly “ individualistic ” 
in character, and must be put in the second 
class described above. It is not an ordinary 
“text-book” of pharmacology but is preemi- 
nently Jackson's text-book of pharmacology. 
The personality of the author is patent on al- 
most every page of it; and therein are ex- 
pressed both the merits and the demerits of 
the work. On the one hand, even a superficial 
examination of the treatise reveals, as is well 
known, that the author is a master of tech- 
nique and the descriptions of various devices 
and experiments originated or improved by 
him are, in so far as they are new, illumina- 
ting and useful. On the other hand, the au- 
thor unfortunately, in exactly the same man- 
ner as he treats new and original manipula- 


Octoser 19, 1917] 


tions, also expatiates upon non-essentials and 
indiscriminately devotes a great deal of valu- 
able space to detailed and minute descriptions 
of ordinary experiments well known to every 
physiologist and pharmacologist, conveying 
the impression as if the methods taught by the 
St. Louis school were the only and the best. 

The mass of unimportant details which are 
crowded into the book is surprising and it is 
doubtful whether they will prove profitable 
even to the student. It is a truism that no 
experimental science can be learned from a 
text-book and it is inherent in the nature of 
experimental investigation that subordinate 
details of various procedures have to be modi- 
fied under various circumstances and condi- 
tions. It is very doubtful, therefore, whether 
pages of detailed description of every step in 
a given experiment may lead to a better grasp 
of its general features. Indeed, such didacti- 
cism may endanger the principal purpose of 
the exercise by diverting the student’s atten- 
tion from the main features of the problem. 
Many minutiz should be best left to the com- 
mon sense of the experimenter, and will be 
learned by the beginner on the first day he 
spends in the laboratory. A single demon- 
stration in the lecture room or the workshop 
will teach the student more than a hundred 
pages of detailed description. For this reason 
long descriptions with illustrations of how to 
tie an animal on the operating table and simi- 
lar incidental and trite matters seem to us 
trivial and entirely superfluous. Such direc- 
tions might possibly be found useful by a self- 
made pharmacologist on an isolated island— 
a Robinson Crusoe with pharmacological tend- 
encies—with no one to guide him, but are 
needless and purposeless in a country where 
good teachers are to be found and well- 
equipped laboratories are accessible. 

The title “ Experimental Pharmacology ” 
as applied to the present work seems to one 
familiar with pharmacological text-books to 
be somewhat misleading. One unconsciously 
expects to find a work along the lines of the 
“ Experimentelle Pharmakologie” of Meyer 
and Gottlieb, namely, a logical presentation of 
important pharmacological facts based upon 


SCIENCE 


389 


the best modern experimental data. Jackson’s 
book is in reality a laboratory manual which 
aims to present pharmacological deductions in 
connection with typical experiments described 
by the author. This fact explains best the 
rather one-sided character of the work, for in 
presenting the subject the author has laid the 
greatest stress upon the experiments in which 
he is an adept, and along the lines in which he 
has been personally interested. Thus, for in- 
stance, the whole group of heavy metals (iron, 
mercury, arsenic, ete.) is practically un- 
touched in the text-book: they are not even 
mentioned in the index. On the other hand, 
the comparatively unimportant minor element 
or metal, vanadium, with which the author has 
done some work, receives considerably more 
attention than it deserves. 

An extraordinary feature of Jackson’s 
“Pharmacology” is its wealth of illustra- 
tions. The book is listed to contain 536 pages, 
including 390 illustrations. As many of the 
cuts are full-page, the drawings occupy about 
half of the book. Some of these are well exe- 
cuted and should prove extremely useful. This 
is especially the case with the reproductions of 
careful and complicated dissections and vari- 
ous schematic illustrations of nerves, blood 
vessels and other structures with which the 
book abounds. Furthermore, the drawings of 
new and original methods for studying circu- 
lation, pulmonary pressure, anesthesia, etc., 
will also be found of help. The diagram of 
the involuntary nervous system (p. 385), how- 
ever, is not as lucid and explicit as that of 
Langley or the modifications of the latter to be 
found in Meyer and Gottlieb’s “Pharmacol- 
ogy.’ <A large number of kymographic trac- 
ings are also a distinctive feature of the book, 
but here again the author’s personality is per- 
haps unduly accentuated by their selection. 
Thus we have noted some twenty or more 
tracings scattered promiscuously throughout 
the book, which illustrate broncho-constric- 
tion and broncho-dilatation, a method of ex- 
perimentation for which the author has become 
well known. While many of the illustrations 
are well chosen and instructive, a large num- 
ber may be found interspersed among them 


390 


which we deem entirely superfluous. We fail 
to discern the purpose served by pictures of a 
“ eraduated cylinder,” a “beaker,” a “ burette 
and rubber tubing,” a “ specimen jar,” “small 
wooden tables,” a “casserole,” a “scalpel,” a 
“hemostat,” an “evaporating dish,” or of 
clamps, forceps, screws, scissors, oxygen tanks, 
hand bellows, bottles for holding stock solu- 
tions, and similar common utensils with which 
every student and laboratory boy becomes fa- 
miliar as soon as he enters the class-room. 
Such illustrations could be obtained at a much 
less expense, if need be, from any laboratory 
supply dealer, by writing for an illustrated 
catalogue. 

Barring the unnecessary mass of subordinate 
detail in the text and illustrations, Jackson’s 
treatise has certain admirable features. The 
style of the author bespeaks his intense ear- 
nestness of purpose and interest in the sub- 
ject. The descriptions of his original or im- 
proved methods are often admirable and il- 
luminating. A number of experiments are de- 
scribed which are not found in the ordinary 
text-book. Among these may be mentioned 
especially experiments on the eyes, intra- 
tracheal insufflation, elaborate and newer meth- 
ods of anesthesia, oncometric and other ex- 
periments on the spleen and other organs, 
methods for the study of esophageal, vesical 
and uterine contractions, and the author’s 
chef d’oewvre—his ingenious methods of study- 
ing pulmonary conditions, namely, pulmonary 
circulation, pulmonary pressure, and the con- 
tractions of bronchioles. Altogether, Jack- 
son’s “ Pharmacology” is a unique and inter- 
esting work and will be found helpful by the 
pharmacologist, especially in the execution of 
some particular kind of work. 

Dav I. Macut 


PHARMACOLOGICAL LABORATORY, 
JOHNS HopPpkKINS UNIVERSITY 


APHIS IMMUNITY OF TEOSINTE-CORN 
HYBRIDS 

CERTAIN properties and functions are pos- 

sessed by some plants and animals providing 

them exemption from disease. The use of the 

word disease as applied to plants is sometimes 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1190 


restricted to bacterial and fungous parasitism 
and its effects. It is also sometimes applied 
to disorders brought about by various forms 
of malnutrition, including attacks by insects 
and other low forms of animal life. 


When the favorable conditions of life are so 
seriously interfered with by any agency, so that 
the life of a part of a plant or of the whole plant is 
threatened, we recognize disease in that plant. 


When a plant is able to repel such devas- 
tating forces, more or less completely, it is 
said to possess corresponding degrees of total 
immunity. 

Plants and animals are also subject to dep- 
redatory attacks of small animal life, parasitic 
in nature, but not producing what is ordinarily 
conceded as organic disease. Certain individ- 
uals repel or resist such depredations and it 
seems proper to call this phenomenon im- 
munity. 

It is with a behavior belonging to the last- 
named category that this account is concerned. 
The appearance of an instance of total im- 
munity of any kind in an economic plant or 
animal seems eligible to record, and especially 
when the immunizing factor is hereditary. 

During the early summer of 1913 there were 
grown in a greenhouse four short rows of F, 
or first generation hybrid plants coming from 
seed produced by fecundating teosinte, Hu- 
clanea mexicana with pollen of yellow dent 
corn, Zea indentata.1 In the same bed, and 
immediately adjoining the hybrid rows, were 
grown one row of the parent strain of teosinte 
on the one side and four rows of the parent 
strain of corn on the other. 


1Teosinte and corn are both members of the 
grass family, but are classed in different genera. 
They hybridize freely with each other, although the 
teosinte is decidedly grasslike in appearance pro- 
dueing small two-rowed fruiting spikes in marked 
contrast to ears of dent corn. The first hybrid 
generation is intermediate in structure between the 
two parents, but more nearly resembling the teo- 
sinte in tillering profusely and being tall, slender 
and foliaceous. The hybrid ears are also small, 
fitting rigidly into a cavity of an internode of the 
rachis which disjoints readily at maturity, but 
succeeding generations produce some larger fruit- 
ing spikes more like the dent-corn parent. 


Octoser 19, 1917] 


As the spring season advanced several 
.species of ants began visiting this bed. Later, 
colonies of aphis were found upon the roots of 
the corn, and finally heavy infestations upon 
the upper parts of a number of the corn plants. 
During four months of almost daily scrutiny 
no aphis was ever discovered upon either the 
teosinte or the hybrids. Ants were noticed 
occasionally upon these plants but their visits 
were apparently fruitless. A dozen or more 
hills of teosinte had been grown in 1909 and 
again in 1910 in cornfields heavily infested 
with aphis, but none had been noticed on the 
teosinte, although no particular attention was 
given to this question at the time. 

The colonies of aphis in the greenhouse 
were sprayed effectively at intervals, but new 
colonies again appeared on the corn. It is 
well known that corn plant aphis, when not in 
the winged state of metamorphosis, frequently 
depend upon ants for transportation over 
short distances, e. g., from one plant to a 
neighboring plant, as well as from one region 
to another on the same plant. The ants act 
as herders and protectors of the aphis, taking 
their toll in the sweet sticky fluid secreted by 
the aphis. The aphis are moved to a new 
feeding spot or pasture when the supply of 
fluid is not satisfactory to their herders. 

The occasional appearance of ants searching 
over the teosinte and hybrid plants, indicated 
that the ants undoubtedly were willing and 
perhaps did perform their share of the com- 
pact, and that the aphis were unable to sub- 
sist upon the tissue of these host plants. 
Aphis in the winged stage, probably, lodged 
many times upon the immune plants. 

It was learned that there were two recog- 
nizd forms of aphis involved in the problem, 
namely, the corn root-aphis, Aphis maidi- 
radicis, and the corn plant-aphis, Aphis maidis ; 
one working only or almost entirely on the 
roots and the other on the culm of the corn 
plant. The former is more numerous and 
destructive in corn fields. 

The attacks of the sap-sucking aphids do not 
produce disease other than depleted plant 
tissue and local lesion in the area upon which 


SCIENCE 


391 


they are at work. A portion of the insect 
secretions is waste—popularly known as 
“honeydew ”—and produces the characteristic 
sticky, gummed and soiled surface where the 
aphis and the ants have been operating. 

Just as there is no important grape-growing 
region free from the devastating woolly aphis 
or phylloxera of the vine; so, also, there is 
probably no corn-growing region of impor- 
tance, in North America at least, which is 
free from the root-aphis of corn. There is no 
way of estimating accurately the enormous 
loss in reduction of yield caused by these in- 
sects which are steadily increasing in num- 
bers and extent of migration, but this loss is 
known to be very great indeed. In Central 
Illinois the damage by the corn root-aphis 
sometimes causes total failure of the crop in 
limited areas. 

Careful cultural methods may reduce con- 
siderably, for the time being, the number of 


aphis in a cornfield; yet the field may become 


reinfested from surrounding, untreated fields 
of corn and from other plants upon which the 
aphis are known to subsist. 

Forbes reports finding from eleven to twenty- 
two generations of corn root-lice in one season. 
He estimates three hundred and nineteen bil- 
lion lice and three trillion eggs left in the 
ground at the end of the season for each louse 
hatched in the spring. These figures are based 
upon the average rate of production with no 
undue break in the cycle. 

It is this high rate of multiplication by a num- 
ber of successive generations which makes the root 
lice so destructive, even in fields first entered by a 
few winged lice borne on the wind from some 
neighboring field which has become more or less 
overstocked. 


We may conclude that improved cultural 
methods and other common treatment will, at 
best, protect the cornfield only for a short in- 
terval. A more effectual remedy and_ per- 
manent solution of the problem is to be wel- 
comed. The amount of work connected with 
a thorough investigation of this discovery 
would have been far greater than the writer 
was able to undertake personally in connection 
with his other duties. 


392 


Perhaps in no one instance of reported re- 
sistance to disease and insect attack has the 
nature of the immunity been fully ascer- 
tained or circumscribed, although it is gener- 
ally conceded as being highly desirable to 
determine the particular immunizing proper- 
ties. In some eases it is thought to be due to 
hardiness of the individual, or vigor of growth; 
in others, to the durability, composition, or 
peculiarity of structure of the affected tissue. 

In the plantlet stage of growth there is not 
much difference between the corn and the 
teosinte except that the leaves and stem of the 
latter are narrower and more slender. As the 
plants grow older the leaves of the teosinte are 
tougher and more leathery in texture, with pro- 
nounced teeth along the edges of the leaf. 
The corn leaves become slashed and torn to 
ribbons by wind storms, while the long narrow, 
and tough leaves of the teosinte remain entire. 
The sap of the corn plant is sweeter than the 
sap of the teosinte. 

In the above-mentioned features the F, re- 
sembles the teosinte more than it does the 
corn. Since the aphis are sap suckers, the 
sweeter juice and more readily penetrated epi- 
dermis of the corn plant may be the deciding 
factors of immunity for the teosinte and the 
hybrid. This remarkable immunity appar- 
ently provided material upon insect parasitism 
as a means of determining genetic relation- 
ship and elucidation of the problem of inher- 
itance of immunizing properties in plants. 


W. B. Gernert 


ILLINOIS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, 
URBANA, ILL. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
THE TILLERING OF WHEAT 


Durine the past eight years the writer has 
made a rather extended study of the tillering 
of winter wheat. The factors studied may 
be divided into two general classes, viz., he- 
redity and environment. It has been found 
that the tendency to tiller appears to be 
largely a varietal characteristic. In order to 
study the behavior of the wheat plant with 
respect to tillering it was found necessary to 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


plant the kernels in hills 6 by 6 in. apart. 
Two kernels were planted and later the plants 
thinned to one per hill. This method of seed- 
ing allowed the plant sufficient space to ex- 
press rather fully its tendency to tiller. Seed- 
ings were also made by drilling in rows as is 
usually done in practical wheat culture. In 
this case; however, the number of tillers per 
plant could not be so accurately determined 
at harvest owing to the crowded condition of 
the plants in the row. As the plants came 
up the number was determined for a definite 
length of drill row. At harvest the total num- 
ber of culms within this space was noted and 
divided by the number of plants. This gave 
the average number of tillers per plant. 
Where the wheat was seeded in hills each plant 
was cut separately and the culms counted. 
The mean for each variety was then deter- 
mined. by dividing the total number of culms 
by the number of plants. More than 150 
varieties and strains of winter wheat were 
included in these tests. It was noted that the 
bearded wheats as a class seem to tiller more 
freely than the smooth. In order to test this 
characteristic of varieties more thoroughly 
identical varieties were grown the same season 
on both fertilized and untreated soil. All of 
the experiments were conducted in the field. 
The following table gives the average number - 
of tillers per plant for four varieties of wheat, 
two smooth and two bearded. 


TABLE I 


Number of Tillers per Plant of Four Varieties 
Grown under Different Conditions 


Smooth Bearded 
Test 
No. Red Wave Invincible Red Wonder |Mediterranean 
1 5.13 4.74 6.19 7.95 
2 5.05 4.13 6.73 6.72 
3 5.45 6.24 8.81 8.90 
4 3.39 4.04 5.58 6.68 
5 7.10 6.28 8.58 9.39 
6 2.94 2.78 4.02 4.44 
i _ 4.08 4.81 6.33 7.16 
8 2.20 2.73 3.15 4.63 
9 1.09 1.22 1.77 1.92 
10 1.02 98 1.29 1.45 
11 98 -97 1.06 1.20 
12 1.14 2.04 2.95 2.63 
13 1.01 1.07 1.81 1.69 
14 1.01 1.19 1.46 1.39 


OctopEr 19, 1917] 


As indicated in the table these varieties 
were grown under 14 different conditions, 
covering a period of eight years. In tests 
one to eight inclusive the varieties were 
grown individually by the hill method, while 
in the remainder of the tests the grain was 
grown in drill row. It will be noted from 
Table I. that the bearded varieties have pro- 
duced more tillers per plant in every case. 

In Table II. is given the summary of the 
results with all varieties included in the dif- 
ferent tests on tillering. The number of va- 
rieties together with their repetition in the 
13 different tests amounts to 973 cases. For 
the sake of convenience the ten highest and 


the ten lowest tillering varieties in each test 


are separated into a smooth and a bearded 
group. 
TABLE II 
Summary of Variety Test on Tillering showing the 
Proportion of Bearded and Smooth Varieties 
in the Highest and the Ten in 


Each Test 
t 

No. of Varieties | Highest Ten | Lowest Ten |N0- of Tillers 

per Plant 

ee eee sale eh ener lessee 
Soca eae sii vei se | a is 
a || ER FI 3 | g FI 

Q aD faa} D foal n faa} n 

1 |! Bate |) SBP TO | Oe al 9 | 1.37) 1.12 
2 Te) Ber | Sa) SO ee 8 | 2.15] 1.95 
3 Bl) Os | SP 3) NO | aw) avers slat 
Ba BH PB WR | e183 Why al 9 | 1.08) 1.01 
AON BP SAN BN OI ah MD 8 | 7.70| 6.02 
Siale5Sie20 e2Onl9) |e tenis 7 |3.21| 2.85 
Bead 58) ig 290129 eS) liens 7 |1.68| 1.46 
5b 5829) 29 9 let 4 6 | 1.10) 1.06 
6 | 13)60),1253")) 10!) 20) 12 8 | 1.40] 1.23 
6-a|113| 60] 53} 9] 1] 2 8 | 1.18] 1.04 
7 53/25 |28| 7] 3 | 1 9 | 1.28] 1.18 
8 0] 2 SB a Bay a 9 | 2.95 | 2.50 
Gaal) GO| |) SEN Oa 8 | 1.63] 1.35 

MHA shoascasees lil [19 [24 |106| ‘| 
PerCent.........]| 85 | 15 | 20 | 80 | | 


The number of tillers per plant refers to 
the average for all bearded and all smooth in- 
cluded in each test. It will be seen that the 
larger proportion of the high tillering -vari- 
eties in every test is bearded while the greater 
number of the low tillering varieties is 
smooth. Of the 130 cases of the ten highest 
tillering varieties, 111, or 85 per cent., are 


SCIENCE 


393 


bearded; of the 130 cases of the ten lowest 
tillering varieties, 106, or 80 per cent., are 
smooth. The results of these tests indicate 
that the bearded varieties have a greater ca- 
pacity for tillering than the smooth. 

In the study of environmental factors it 
was found that the rate of seeding a space 
per plant has a marked influence on the num- 
ber of tillers produced per plant. Close seed- 
ing resulted in a smaller number of tillers 
per plant, earlier maturity and a better qual- 
ity of kernel than wide seeding. The time 
of seeding determines to a large extent the 
rate of tillering. Early seeding is accom- 
panied by a larger number of tillers per plant 
than late seeding. The time of seeding, the 
number of tillers per plant, the yield per plant 
and the quality of grain are closely correlated. 
The competition between plants induced by 
heavy seeding is more marked among smooth 
wheats than among the bearded. It appears 
that heavy seeding has a greater effect in les- 
sening the number of tillers, the length of 
culm, spike, and yield of grain in smooth 
wheats than in bearded. The fertility of the 
soil is a factor that directly affects the rate 
of tillering. Nitrogen and phosphoric acid 
seem to stimulate the production of tillers; 
potash has little or no effect. The relation 
of tillering to yield is shown by the increase 
in the yield per spike as the number of tillers 
per plant increases to 4 or 5, beyond this the 
yield per spike is more or less uniform. The 
low tillering plants of a variety produce a 
smaller yield per spike, and the grain is of 
poorer quality. These experiments have 
shown quantitatively the effects on the rate 
of tillering of such factors as time and rate 
of seeding, the kinds of fertilizer and the re- 
lation of the number of tillers per plant to 
other characters. The tendency of bearded 
wheats to tiller more freely than the smooth 
has not been brought before to the attention 
of the wheat grower. A close analysis of 
these results indicates that there is a physio- 
logical difference between the two types of 
wheat which may mean that the bearded 
sorts are able to make better use of the plant 
food supplied or are able to extract it from 


394 


the soil more easily than the smooth type of 
grain. 
A. E. GrantHaM 
DELAWARE AGRICULTURAL Exp. STATION 


A MEANS OF TRANSMITTING THE FOWL 
NEMATODE, HETERAKIS PAPILLOSA 
BLOCH? 


A RECENT experiment demonstrated that the 
fowl nematode, Heterakis papillosa Bloch? 
may be transmitted to chickens by the feeding 
of a dung earthworm, Helodrilus gieselert 
hempeli Smith The thirteen fowls (three 
of them controls) used in the experiment were 
hatched in an incubator, reared in a worm- 
proof field cage,t and given food free from 
animal tissues, while the dung earthworms 
were taken from a poultry yard in which the 
fowls were heavily infected with H. papillosa. 
When these chicks were about five weeks old, 
they were given dung earthworms every few 
days until each chick had ingested approx- 
imately forty worms. Of ten chicks so fed, 
four became infected with H. papillosa, the 
results of these examinations being as follows: 

Chick 104, examined sixty-four days after 
first feeding, nine nematodes in the ceca, 

Chick 117, examined one hundred thirty- 
seven days after first feeding, one nematode 
in the right cecum. 

Chick 128A, examined twenty-nine days 
after feeding, two nematodes in the cxca. 

Chick 130A, examined twenty-seven days 
after feeding, two nematodes in the ceca. 
The six remaining chicks and the three con- 
trols were free from nematodes. 

As is well known, these small nematodes 
commonly occur in the ceca of fowls, although 


1 Contribution No, 19 from the Zoological Lab- 
oratory, Kansas State Agricultural College. Aid 
of Adams Fund. 

2The identification of this nematode has been 
verified by Dr. B. H. Ransom, Zoologist, B. A. I, 
U. S. Dept. Agr., Washington, D. C. 

3 The earthworms were identified by Professor 
Frank Smith, University of Tlinois. 

‘The field cage with its floor and eighteen-inch 
walls of cement is so constructed as to be prac- 
tically insect-proof also, Examinations of con- 
trol chickens every few weeks for three years have 
not yielded a single parasitic worm. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1190 


they are not infrequently found in the large 
intestine. Of three hundred ninety-five chick- 
ens taken locally and examined in this lab- 
oratory during the last three years, two hun- 
dred ninety-three (74.1 per cent.) were in- 
fected with H. papillosa. The average infec- 
tion was 34.4 nematodes, but a single infection 
of one hundred nematodes is not uncommon, 
and in one instance a fowl contained three 
hundred twenty-six of these parasites. 

The means by which chickens become in- 
fected with H. papillosa is not wholly under- 
stood. Evidently, in some cases, a dung earth- 
worm transmits these nematodes, but whether 
the relation between the two worms is one of 
parasitism or merely that of an association 
has not been fully determined. The presence 
of certain nematodes both free in the neph- 
ridia and imbedded in the muscles of earth- 
worms furnishes a suggestive hypothesis. 
Dung earthworms are of common occurrence 
in the. local poultry yards, and it might be 
possible to account for the rather heavy nem- 
atode ‘infection of fowls from this source 
alone. But Leuckart long ago pointed out 
that H. papillosa may develop directly, accord- 
ing to Railliet and Lucet,® who, by feeding to 
a fowl eggs removed from the uterus of H. 
papillosa, secured a direct infection of fifteen 
of these nematodes. The writer, likewise, has 


. obtained direct infections by giving eges of 


this nematode to fowls reared under controlled 
conditions. These data indicate that the re- 
lation of the nematode to the earthworm is 
that of an association, in which case the eges 
of the former might be carried on the slimy 
surface of the earthworm or in its engulfed 
food. However, the evidence is not such as 
to preclude the possibility that this earthworm, 
H. gieseleri hempeli, may, in some way, serve 
as an intermediate host of H. papillosa, and 
it is hoped that experiments now under way 
will reveal the nature of this relation. 


James EK. AcKERT 
ManuaAtTTan, Kans. 


5 Railliet, A., et Lucet, A., ‘‘Observations et 
expériences sur quelques helminths du genre Heter- 
akis Dujardin,’’ Bull. Soc. Zool. France, Par., 17: 
117-120, 1892. 


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CONTENTS 

The Significance of Mathematics: PRoFESSOR 

1D}, 1, ABHIDMOKE GonooboodsaggonndDaODeCO 395 
An Institute for the History of Science and 

Civilization: Dr. GrorGE SARTON ........ 399 
The Medical School of the University of Penn- 

sylvania and War Service «..........-++-- 402 
Scientific Events :— 

The Total Eclipse of the Sun in 1918; The 

Maria Mitchell Memorial Fellowship of the 

Harvard Observatory; An American Hos- 

FDS OE, JOON, Sos doacsdvguceooupaboooG 404 
Scientific Notes and News ............0000. 407 
University and Educational News .......... 408 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

Reply to Dr. Bleile: Dr. JOSEPH ERLANGER. 

The Correct Name for our Apple-Grain 

ADRS TAN CLIBAKERS pyle teerrtenielsn are ble 409 
Quotations :— 

Columbia University and Professor Cattell. 411 
Scientific Books :— 

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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MATHE- 
MATICS1 

SEVERAL circumstances combine to render 
peculiarly fitting a consideration at this 
time of the significance of mathematics. Of 
late we have heard much from real or al- 
leged educators, tending to show a lack of 
appreciation on their part, if not on the 
part of the public, of the vital part which 
mathematics plays in the affairs of human- 
ity. These attacks were beginning to re- 
ceive some hearing in the educational 
world, on account of their reiteration and 
their vehemence, if not through intrinsic 
merit. 

A counter influence of tremendous pub- 
lic force, whose import is as yet seen only 
by those most nearly interested, has now 
arisen through the existence of war and the 
necessities of war. To the layman, lately 
told by pedagogical orators that mathe- 
matics lacks useful application, the evident 
need of mathematical training on every 
hand now comes as a distinet surprise. 

The attacks on mathematics, and the 
lay conception of the entire subject, cen- 
ters naturally around elementary and sec- 
ondary instruction. We ourselves, college 
teachers of mathematics, have commonly 
talked of current practise and of reforms, 
largely with respect to secondary educa- 
tion. The third influence which contributes 
toward the present situation and which 
may strongly affect its future development 
is the formation and the existence of this 
great association, which affords for the first 
time in the history of America an adequate 

1 Retiring Presidential Address, Mathematical 


Association of America, summer meeting, Cleve- 
land, September 6, 1917. 


396 


forum for the discussion of the problems 
of collegiate instruction in mathematics. 

As retiring president of the association, 
I know of no more fitting topic than that I 
have chosen. It vitally concerns us; it is 
bound up with the functions of this asso- 
ciation; and the times in which we live 
seem to point forcibly toward its considera- 
tion. I shall attempt to outline to you my 
own views on the true significance of 
mathematics, and to sketch what I for one 
would be glad to see this association pro- 
mote. 

In speaking of the significance of mathe- 
matics, I understand that we mean not at 
all the baser material advantage to the in- 
dividual student, not at all a narrow utili- 
tarianism, but rather a comprehensive 
grasp of the usefulness of mathematics to 
society as a whole, to science, to engineer- 
ing, to the nation. Any narrower view 
would be unworthy of us; any narrower de- 
mand by educators means a degraded view 
of the purposes of education in a democ- 
racy. 

Especially under the stress of war, pub- 
lie attention may be secured for the real 
claim of mathematics as a public necessity, 
not only to be employed by a few special- 
ists, but also to influence and to determine 
the conduct and the efficiency of thou- 
sands. 

Thus a knowledge of trigonometry and 
of the trigonometric theorems of geometry 
is a prime requisite for the successful and 
efficient conduct of our armies, not only 
by a few engineers who are to make maps 
and to train artillery, but also for all offi- 
cers to whom the lives of men are en- 
trusted. Any one of these officers, cut off 
with his force, without a superior engineer 
at hand, may lose his position and the lives 
of his men if he is ignorant of the signifi- 
eance of these propositions. Ignorance at 
such a crisis would be next to treason; it 
would be incompetence. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1191 


Do we, in trigonometry, so bring out the 
significance of the fundamental ideas on 
right triangles that the officer who faces 
such a test will sense the possibility of find- 
ing a range, or estimating a distance, with- 
out help and without instruments or tables? 
Frankly I do not believe that we have been 
doing this, even in such a practical subject 
as trigonometry. We have been too often 
content, and too often solely seeking, even 
here, the knowledge of intricate formalisms, 
of formulas and rules and theorems, of 
operations done mechanically. Too often 
we have omitted, even here, to give insight 
into the rather obvious significance of 
these rules and formulas. 

On the whole, however, trigonometry is 
the one subject in which some small meas- 
ure of insight has usually been secured. 

If I now turn to other topics of our cur- 
riculum, may I not name scores of equally 
vital topic, usually studied by our students, 
in which insight is rarely gained? Let me 
mention some such instances: 

In algebra, as taught in colleges, among 
the topics always considered are fractional 
exponents, logarithms and arithmetic and 
geometric progression. To many, frac- 
tional exponents remain a pure formalism, 
learned by rote and unappreciated, con- 
nected neither with the other topics just 
mentioned nor with any realities of life. 
That fractional exponents occur in expres- 
sions for air-resistance (as in airplanes), in 
water resistance (as in measuring stream- 
flow), in electricity (as in induction), 
would surprise most students who pass our 
courses. That these exponents are determi- 
nable and are determined by logarithms 
would surprise students and some teachers, 
even if the essential equivalence of expo- 
nents and logarithms is adequately empha- 
sized. The idea of a compound interest 
law, namely, that one quantity may pro- 
ceed in arithmetic progression as another 


OcroBER 26, 1917] 


related quantity proceeds in geometric pro- 
gression, is ordinarily not brought out, nor 
is the fact that this same situation leads to 
a logarithmic law. 

The omission of these and similar vital 
connections, both of mathematics to the ex- 
terior world and of one topic in mathe- 
matics to another, is directly responsible for 
the failure of algebra to reach the hearts 
of our students, and for the failure of the 
students to gain real insight into the sig- 
nificance of the subjects they so dully learn. 

I shall not dwell long on any one topic, 
‘for I desire to emphasize the existence of 
significance for life and society in the en- 
tire range of mathematical courses, and I 
desire to call your attention to the failure— 
shall I not say our failure?—to bring to 
light that significance. 

Let me turn to analytic geometry for 
another instance of our traditional blind- 
ness, 1f it be that—our sin, if it is not blind- 
ness. Here, as before, applications abound. 
Most of the results of scientific experiment 
to-day are known and are recorded not by 
algebraic formulas of traditional form, 
but solely by curves traced in our tradi- 
tional style, showing graphically the func- 
tional relations between two or more inter- 
dependent variables. Laws of physics, of 
chemistry, of every quantitative science, 
expressed by such means abound. The ef- 
fort of science may well be said to be to de- 
duce from such graphical functions the 
corresponding laws in algebraic or formal- 
istic form. 

Yet to most students of analytic geom- 
etry, precisely the reverse view seems to be 
ouraim. The significance of analytic geom- 
etry as a piece of scientific machinery is 
totally lost, and the subject sinks to the 
level of dubious value in the minds of our 
students and of half-informed educators. 
In the present emergency, popular convic- 
tion of the real significance of analytic 
geometry for society is being attained, and 


SCIENCE 


397 


may be fostered, through the occurrence of 
just such graphical laws in the dynamics 
of airplanes, in artillery performance (bal- 
listies) and in wireless telegraphy. Here 
as in general in science, most of our infor- 
mation on functions is now in graphical 
form, and the desire to express the func- 
tion in equation form illustrates the funda- 
mental demand of science, and the funda- 
mental significance of analytic geometry. 

That the calculus is regarded as dry and 
uninteresting by many students, and that 
its value is occasionally doubted, is the 
strongest proof possible that its significance 
is not grasped. Here the connection with 
realities is so easy and so abundant that it 
is actually a skillful feat to conceal the fact. 
Yet it is done. I know personally of courses 
in the caleulus (and so may you) in which 
the pressure to obtain and to enforce mem- 
ory of formal algebraic rules has resulted 
in absolute neglect of the idea that a deriva- 
tive represents a rate of change! I know 
students whose whole conception of inte- 
gration is the formalistie solution of inte- 
grals of set expression by devices whose 
complexity you well know. That an in- 
tegral is indeed the limit of a summation, 
and that results of science may be reached 
through such summation is often nearly 
ignored and not at all appreciated. That 
the ideas of the calculus should fall so low 
as to consist mainly in formal differentia- 
tions and integrations of set expressions 
must indeed astound any one to whom the 
wonderful significance of the subject is at 
all known. Moreover, it must convinee any 
liberally minded educator who takes our 
own courses as a true representation of 
mathematical values that even the calculus 
is of no importance for real life or for so- 
ciety. 

I might proceed to other courses—differ- 
ential equations as given by Forsyth, the 
theory of equations as by Burnside and 
Panton or as by even the most recent 


398 


writers, the theory of function (without 
any hint of its manifold connections with 
physics), the calculus of variations (de- 
natured, without a hint of its vast impor- 
tance in mechanics and elsewhere), projec- 
tive geometry (with no mention of descrip- 
tive geometry nor the representation of 
space forms). 

In all these, tradition has been leading us 
as far astray as it has in those more elemen- 
tary courses of the secondary school, which 
we are wont to eriticize. Shall we not 
search our own house? Shall we not ask 
if our own collegiate and graduate courses 
in mathematics demonstrate to students the 
real significance of the theory they cover? 
Have we denatured each subject until in- 
sight is eliminated and only formalism and 
logical tricks remain ? 

So long as this blight remains, we must 
expect and we shall deserve public disdain 
and sincere doubt of our value to humanity. 

It should be unnecessary for me to ex- 
plain my own deep interest in the logical 
and cultural side of mathematics. Cer- 
tainly I would be the last to belittle its 
great spiritual values. But this is for the 
specialist rather than for the usual student. 
Values to the world at large must be stated 
in terms of more concrete realities. Shall 
we hide the fact of the immense service of 
mathematics to society? To emphasize 
beauty and pleasure to the entire exclusion 
of the more convincing argument of benefit 
to mankind is as quixotic and short-sighted 
as is the corresponding formalization of our 
courses of instruction. To ignore the sig- 
nificance of our great subject is to spurn 
our birthright. 

Let me then, in retiring from office in the 
association, leave with you the sincere hope 
that a part of the work of this association 
be to impress upon the public the great 
value of mathematics in its direct effects 
upon life and upon human society. To ac- 
complish this end, a most effective means, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1191 


and one ready to hand, is to bring out to 
our own students, not halfheartedly, but 
with vigor, not a few but all available facts 
that shed light on the real meaning of what 
we teach. Let this association be a focus 
from which such doctrine may emanate, a 
forum in which such views may be empha- 
sized and detailed. Thus I to-day have 
mentioned to you a few samples of our 
neglect, in haste and by name only. Shall 
we not discuss among ourselves these and 
other means toward the end, other topics 
whose significance is commonly lost or 
neglected, other points of view that will in- 
crease insight, even if it be at the expense 
of a few formulas or theorems that we tra- 
ditionally treasure. 

To the same end, may I now emphasize 
what seems to me a great if not the great- 
est function of this association? In Amer- 
ica, up to recent years, the beauty and in- 
terest centering in pure mathematics has so 
absorbed all mathematical talent that we 
have almost if not quite neglected that 
other phase of mathematics in which the 
significance of all we do is so self-evident: 
applied mathematics. This association has, 
through its journal and through its meet- 
ings, already demonstrated its willingness 
and its ability to foster mathematics of this 
type. On this side of mathematics, not 
only discussion of the mathematics taught 
or to be taught, but even research papers of 
high grade have had in the past no ade- 
quate means of exposition. The wonderful 
work of Gibbs was for this reason long 
buried in the obscure Connecticut Academy 
and mathematical advancement along the 
important lines that he laid down was de- 
layed or wholly prevented. The great work 
of G. W. Hill, which included profound in- 
vestigations on infinite determinants, was 
for the same reason unknown and unap- 
preciated by many mathematicians in this 
country until near his death, and work by 
others along the lines he mapped out was 


eee 


—Octoser 26, 1917] 


discouraged and delayed. Thus American 
mathematics has suffered not only in repu- 
tation, through the suppression of what are 
perhaps the greatest American achieve- 
ments in mathematics, but also in that en- 
couragement necessary to the establishment 
of a strong school. The same may be said 
of the essentially mathematical researches 
of other men still living, whom I hesitate to 
name,” whose work is scattered through 
journals on general science, journals on as- 
tronomy, journals on life insurance, jour- 
nals on engineering, and so forth. 

Already there have been published by the 
Monthly articles of research on topics in 
insurance, on mathematical history, on me- 
chanics, and on other applied branches of 
mathematics. In the first annual meeting, 
Professors Wilson and Webster presented 
their own studies on the mathematical 
theory of the dynamies of the air. At the 
last summer meeting Professors Hunting- 
ton and Hoskins presented studies on the 
foundations of mechanics. Such work, 
though deserving of high praise, has long 
had no suitable center for exposition and 
for encouragement. This association has 
afforded a means for exposition, as within 
the field of mathematics in its broader 
meaning, of papers in applied branches of 
mathematics. I trust that we shall con- 
tinue this policy, and that we shall no 
longer rule out of our circle in mathe- 
matics, those who find the problems of ap- 
plied mathematics peculiarly attractive. It 
should be our aim to encourage them and 
their students; to hear their work and to 
print it; to listen to their counsel on the 
needs of our traditional mathematical 
courses, to learn from them ourselves to 
appreciate more keenly the significance of 
mathematics as a whole. 

In both these ways—by reorganizing our 
own instruction under the auspices of this 


2 One of the men I have in mind is in attendance 
at these meetings. 


SCIENCE 


399 


association, and by the recognition and en- 
couragement of workers in the various 
fields of applied mathematics, we may, and 
I think we should, increase the apprecia- 
tion of the significance of mathematics 
among our students, among the public and 
even among ourselves. Incidentally we 
shall have done a service, not only to the 
public, in the increased emphasis upon 
phases of mathematics of real public sery- 
ice, but also to the advancement of mathe- 
matics itself, in that a better insight into 
the significance of mathematics will pre- 
vent or nullify mistaken attacks on the sub- 
ject as one of little public worth. 

Such to my mind should be one function, 
if not the chief function of this association; 
the regeneration of a significant mathemat- 
ics, the encouragement of workers in ap- 
plied mathematics, and the effort to obtain 
recognition of the true public worth of 
mathematics in every phase. 

HK. R. Heprick 


UNIVERSITY OF MIssouRI 


AN INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF: 
SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION 

To tHE Eprror or Science: The appeal con- 
cerning “an Institute for the history of sci- 
ence and civilization” published in Scmnce, 
March 23—ill-timed as it was—has met with 
the most encouraging response. Two com- 
munications relating to it have been pub- 
lished in Screncr, June 22 and July 6,1 and 
a great many more have been privately ad- 
dressed to me. Most of them, however, lay 
so much stress on some special feature of our 
plan that I feel it necessary to state again, 
briefly, the fundamental idea that underlies it, 
lest the real purpose of the institute be lost 
sight of. 

But let me say first of all that there is at 
least one point upon which an unanimous 
agreement seems to have been reached. The 
whole budget of letters which I have received 


1Cf. also F. S. Marvin in the Positivist Review, 
London, June, 1917. 


400 


from all over the country, points to the con- 
clusion that there is already a wide-spread, 
though scattered interest in the history of 
science, and that it is high time to organize 
it and to devote to these studies at least as much 
attention as is given to the history of other 
aspects of human life. The wretchedness of 
present conditions will be best depicted by re- 
marking that, whereas there are hundreds of 
scholars who earn a living by teaching gen- 
eral history, or the history of art, of literature, 
of religion, there is not yet in America a 
single chair exclusively devoted to the history 
of science! From my very extensive corre- 
spondence on this subject, I gather, however, 
that before long an irresistible pressure will 
fortunately put an end to this paradoxical 
situation. 

The purpose of the institute can only be 
accomplished if its activities be constantly in- 
spired by a close coordination of the three 
following points of view. 

There is first the point of view of the histo- 
rian: The progress of mankind is a function 
of the development of science. Indeed science 
is the only process which is really cumulative; 
it is also the most international. Hence to 
give a true picture of the development of civ- 
ilization, it must be focused on the evolution 
of scientific thought and practice. 

Secondly, the point of view of the scientist: 
The evolution of science must be studied to 
better understand the interrelations of all its 
branches, and the principles and real signifi- 
eation of each of them. The elaboration of 
science into an organic whole implies such 
historical research. A continuous criticism of 
the foundations of science is equally necessary, 
lest it degenerate into empiricism or into a 
system of prejudices. This critical work is 
essentially of an historical nature. The point 
of view involved is splendidly illustrated in 
the works of Pierre Duhem and Ernst Mach. 

Thirdly, the point of view of the philosopher, 
which could also be called the encyclopedic 
point of view, the philosopher whom I have in 
mind being of course a man highly trained 
in scientific thought and research, but whose 
interest is mainly a coordinating, a synthetic 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1191 


one. It is clear that the more science is spe- 
cialized, the more it becomes complex and ex- 
tensive—the more also do some kind of syn- 
thetic studies become necessary to preserve its 
organic unity and indeed its very existence. 
A work of this kind has been more or less suc- 
cessfully accomplished at different periods by 
such men as Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Kant, 
Comte, Cournot, Spencer. It needs must be 
undertaken over and over again, but it becomes 
increasingly difficult and is now perhaps be- 
yond the grasp of any single man. It is not 
simply a matter of genius—such synthesis 
does not require more genius now than it did 
in the fourth century B.C.—but the initial 
stock of knowledge to be mastered is so much 
greater that the process of classification and 
assimilation previous to any new synthesis 
must be partly effected on a cooperative basis.” 

I beg to repeat that the fundamental idea 
of the institute is to coordinate these three 
converging points of view; that is, to organize 
—for the first time—a systematic collaboration 
between scientist, historian and philosopher, 
and so to make the accomplishment of their 
highest task possible, despite the increasing 
wealth and intricacy of specialized knowledge. 
These points of view complete and balance 
each other. He who separates them simply 
proves that he has failed to understand the 
purpose that we try to accomplish. 

One may object that the cooperative work 
which we are advocating is already possible 
now—without a new institute—and that our 
universities already bring together some of 
the men whose collaboration is needed. The 
objection, however, is not valid, because, even 
if the right men happen to belong to the same 
university, economic conditions will generally 
prevent them from devoting themselves en- 
tirely to an activity of great amplitude and 
duration which does not pay. Besides, we can 
not depend on such chance combinations: this 
synthetic work must be carried through in a 
systematic way, with sufficient completeness 


2 This is especially true for all the historical ma- 
terial. The encyclopedist must take the whole 
past into account; yet, he has no time to pursue 
historical investigations. 


Octoser 26, 1917] 


and thoroughness, extreme accuracy and 
reasonable speed. 

Hence, I believe that the creation of such 
an institute—either as a department of an 
existing university or other institution, or in- 
dependently—is the only practical way to make 
possible this intimate collaboration of historian, 
scientist and philosopher which is becoming 
more and more necessary. Moreover, the in- 
stitute would also provide one of the most 
effective ways of preparing a much needed 
reorganization of our educational system, the 
internal vice of which is clearly proved by the 
ever recurring controversy “science versus the 
humanities.” It is obvious that the impor- 
tance of science in education can but increase, 
but this can not be safely done without intro- 
ducing a little of the humanistie spirit—. e., 
essentially .a historical and disinterested 
point of view—in our scientific and technical 
studies. There should not be any rivalry be- 
tween scientific and humanistic studies, but 
only cooperation to a common end; more 
knowledge, beauty, justice. Now, the proposed 
Institute would become the natural center of 
this New Humanism for which I am pleading; 
it would train men imbued by this new ideal 
—not one easily made up of vague generalities, 
but an idealism constantly rejuvenated and 
checked by intimate contact with the best 
available knowledge and the most exacting 
scholarship. Its humanizing influence would 
soon be felt all over the country. 

I think that I can say, without any imperti- 
nence, that one of the shortcomings of this 
country—one that may imperil the accomplish- 
ment of her higher destiny—is the relative 
scarcity of broad and accurate scholarship. 
This is partly caused by economic conditions 
discouraging disinterested studies, but it also 
is due to the absence of a congenial tradition. 
The institute would establish such a tradition. 

The reader who is in sympathy with the pur- 
pose of the institute will find no difficulty 
in appreciating the interesting suggestions 
published in these columns by Mr. Bert Rus- 
sell and Mr. Aksel G. S. Josephson. 

Mr. Russell suggests (June 22) that to the 
activities of the institute be added the follow- 


SCIENCE 


401 


ing: “the facilitation of prompt and reliable 
judgments upon all questions of novelty aris- 
ing in connection with the administration of 
the patent laws, thereby aiding in the placing 
of the administration of such laws upon a se- 
cure scientific foundation.” 

There should be indeed as close and friendly 
a collaboration as possible between the insti- 
tute and the Patent Office. But we must not 
forget that the collections of the Patent Office 
refer almost exclusively to the technical end 
of science—taking all in all, not the highest 
one (a scientist does not generally patent the 
original combination of instruments that have 
led him to a discovery). Besides they refer 
only to the most recent times. 

It is noteworthy in this connection, that I 
have also received two other interesting com- 
munications insisting on the importance of 
the study of primitive science and suggesting 
therefore a closer collaboration with ethno- 
graphic museums. As a matter of fact, the 
institute should try to consider not simply the 
beginnings or the latest developments of sci- 
ence and technology, but the entire develop- 
ment. After all, in the whole evolution, it is 
impossible to point out one step forward which 
is more important than the others; each is in- 
dispensable and there is no common measure 
between them. 

If the institute is to be associated with an- 
other institution, the most useful association 
would perhaps be one with a great museum, 
such as the U. S. National Museum, the Amer- 
ican Museum of Natural History or the Har- 
vard Museums. The objects of a museum 
can not be easily moved or duplicated, whereas 
it is not difficult to move or photograph books 
or manuscripts. Moreover, the eventual crea- 
tion of a museum of science such as the Con- 
servatoire des Arts et Métiers or the Deutsches 
Museum, would be easier and less expensive 
if the institute were already connected with 
another museum. 

Mr. Aksel G. S. Josephson lays special stress 
(July 6) on the bibliographical activity of 
the institute. The historians of science should 
be grateful to him for the valuable biblio- 
graphical work which he has undertaken in 


402 


their behalf, and I, for my part, am much in 
sympathy with most of what Mr. Josephson 
says. 

Still, we must not forget that bibliography 
is not an end, but simply a means, a method. 
I am, of course, chiefly concerned, not with ex- 
ternal bibliography such as is needed in li- 
braries, but with internal, critical bibliography. 
From this point of view, it is quite clear that 
the matter of essential importance is not the 
mere bibliographical technique—however im- 
portant it may be—but a deep knowledge of 
the subject matter to be criticized. 

I am quite agreed with Mr. Josephson, that 
many scientists show a deplorable lack of 
bibliographical method. Yet, I do not think 
it possible, as a rule, to train bibliographers 
for very special critical work. Anyhow it 
should be easier to teach bibliographical con- 
sistency to the scientists, than to make the 
bibliographers omniscient. 

I hope that Mr. Josephson will be pleased 
with the following conclusion. There should 
be on the staff of the Institute at least one 
highly trained bibliographer, whose duty it 
would be to distribute the books and articles 
among expert critics and to see to it that their 
work, as far as external bibliography is con- 
cerned, be as accurate and uniform as possible. 
His functions would chiefly be those of a 
bibliographical editor. 

At the present time, excellent critical bibliog- 
raphies are periodically published for almost 
all the branches of science, but there is none 
really satisfactory for their history, philosophy 
or for the organization of the whole. I had 
tried to organize such a bibliographical service 
in Isis, but unfortunately this publication was 
stopped by the war, just when I was beginning 
to see my way to do it well. The publication 
of such a bibliography would naturally be in- 
cumbent on the institute; considerable pains 
should be taken to make it as perfect as pos- 
sible—but it would only be a means to a higher 
end. 

GrEorRGE Sarton 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1191 


THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF THE UNI- 
VERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA AND 
WAR SERVICE1 

THE same splendid equipment and patriot- 
ism that enabled the graduates of Pennsyl- 
vania’s medical school to take a preeminent 
position in the surgical and medical work of 
the Civil War, both in the north and south, 
promises to produce similar results in the 
present great war. It is too early to compile 
any trustworthy records of the great army 
of physicans and surgeons who are now in 
the service, but the lists grow longer every 
day. 

Aside from what the medical alumni as a 
class are doing, the medical school as a whole 
is giving to the utmost of the skilled men on 
its faculty. Already between sixty and 
seventy members are in the government sery- 
ice, many of them occupying positions of the 
utmost importance. In fact, so many have 
gone that the teaching staff is maintaining its 
high standard only by the self-sacrificing effort 
of those who have remained. 

Pennsylvania can take a pardonable pride 
in the fact that five of the base hospital units 
which have gone or are prepared to go from 
this city are under the direction of Penn- 
sylvania men, while graduates of the Uni- 
versity comprise most of their staffs. The 
University Base Hospital Unit No. 20, which 
has been ready to sail for several weeks, has 
Dr. J. B. Carnett for its director. Episcopal 
Base Hospital is under the direction of Dr. 
A. P. C. Ashurst. Dr. John H. Jopson oc- 
cupies a similar position with the Presby- 
terian Base Hospital, while Dr. Robert Le- 
Conte, a member of the Board of Trustees, is 
director of the Naval Base Hospital No. 5 
from the Methodist Hospital. Dr. Richard H. 
Harte is director of the Base Hospital No. 10, 
which the Pennsylvania Hospital sent to 
France last June. 

In addition to the foregoing, Lieutenant 
Colonel Henry Page, 794 M., is commander of 
the Medical Training Camp at Fort Ogle- 
thorpe, Ga. On this staff are such men of 
national repute as Dean William Pepper, of 


1 From Old Penn. 


OoctToBeR 26, 1917] 


the Medical School, and Dr. Alexander C. 
Abbott, while others have been sent to other 
camps. 

Those members of the staff who are still on 
active duty at home are concentrating all their 
energies toward helping America to win the 
war. In addition to carrying on the regular 
work, a course in neurology and brain surgery 
is being given in the medical school under 
the direction of Dr. Charles Frazier. 

About fifty officers of the Medical Reserve 
have been picked by the War Department to 
take this course preparatory to their assign- 
ment to duty either with the various training 
camps or in France. Dr. Frazier has charge 
of the course in clinical surgery. His as- 
sistants and the courses on which they are 
lecturing are: Dr. George Dorrance, anatomy ; 
Dr. Theodore Weisenberg, physiology; Dr. S. 
D. Ludlam, pathology; Dr. George P. Mueller, 
operative surgery on the cadaver, and Dr. 
William G. Spiller, neurological diagnosis. 

The officers taking this course come from 
all parts of the United States, Pennsylvania 
having been designated by the War Depart- 
ment as the particular institution to fit officers 
doing medical work along these lines. 

It should be explained that there are several 
members of the medical school faculty who 
are doing very important government work, 
but still keeping up their work in the medical 
school. Among these may be mentioned Dr. 
Alonzo Taylor, professor of physiological 
chemistry; Dr. Richard M. Pearce, professor 
of research medicine, and Dr. Edward Martin, 
professor of surgery. Dr. Taylor, who per- 
formed important service for the State De- 
partment in Germany and France before our 
entry into the war, is now giving the govern- 
ment the benefit of his experience on the ex- 
portation of foodstuffs to neutral countries; 
Dr. Pearce is doing work for the Red Cross, 
while Dr. Martin is a member of the Council 
of National Defense. The following is a 
nearly complete list of those members of the 
medical school faculty who have been given 
leave of absence to serve the government: 


Dr. Walter W. Cornell, instructor in osteology. 
Now stationed at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind. 


SCIENCE 


403 


Dr. Penn Gaskill Skillern, instructor in anatomy. 
In the Navy with rank of lieutenant. 

Dr. J. Leon Herman, instructor in anatomy. 
Member of Navy Base Hospital No. 5 with rank 
of lieutenant. 

Dr. Alexander C. Abbott, director of the depart- 
ment of hygiene and bacteriology. Now stationed 
at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., with rank of major. 

Dr. David H. Bergey, assistant professor of 
hygiene and bacteriology. Now stationed at Fort 
Oglethorpe, with rank of captain. 

Dr. Robert A. Kelty, instructor in pathology. 
In the Army. 

Dr. Baldwin H. Lucke, assistant instructor in 
pathology. In the Army with rank of first lieu- 
tenant. 

Dr. John Speese, instructor in surgery and sur- 
gical pathology. In the Army with rank of first 
lieutenant. 

Dr. Henry P. Brown, Jr., assistant instructor in 
surgical pathology. In the Army with rank of first 
lieutenant. 

Dr. Alfred R. Allen, associate professor of neuro- 
pathology. In the Army with rank of major. 

Dr. Samuel Leopold, instructor in neuro-pathol- 
ogy. In the Army. 

Dr, William B. Cadwallader, instructor in neuro- 
pathology. In the Army. 

Dr. M. Howard Fussell, professor of applied 
therapeutics. In service with the Tuberculosis 
Commission of the Army with rank of captain. 

Dr. William Pepper, assistant professor of clin- 
ical pathology and dean of the medical school. <As- 
signed to Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., in charge of one 
battalion with rank of major. 

Dr. Albert P. Francine, associate professor of 
medicine. In Army wth rank of captain. 

Dr. J. H. Austin, associate in medicine. As- 
signed to the Rockefeller Institute with rank of 
first lieutenant. 

Dr. G. G. Ross, instructor in surgery. Member 
of Naval Base Hospital No. 5 with rank of lieu- 
tenant. Ordered to France September 15. 

Dr. D. B. Pfeiffer, instructor in surgery. As- 
signed to Fort Oglethorpe with rank of captain. 

Dr. A. P. C. Ashurst, instructor in surgery. Di- 
rector of Episcopal Base Hospital Unit with rank 
of major. 

Dr. E. L. Eliason. Member of University Base 
Hospital Unit No, 20 with rank of major. 

Dr. George M. Laws, instructor in surgery. 
Member of University Base Hospital Unit No. 20. 
Now on duty at Fort Hancock, Augusta, Ga., with 
rank of first lieutenant. 


404 


Dr. Thomson F. Edwards, assistant instructor in 
surgery. In Army. 

Dr. Rutherford L. John, assistant instructor in 
surgery. In Army. 

Dr. Henry Winsor, assistant instructor in opera- 
tive surgery. Captain in Sanitary Detachment of 
Second Battalion Signal Corps, Camp Jackson, Co- 
lumbia, S. C., with rank of captain. 

Dr. Allan C. Woods, assistant professor of re- 
search medicine. Now on duty in France with 
Base Hospital No. 10 with rank of captain. 

Dr. De Forrest P. Willard, instructor of ortho- 
pedie surgery. Now at Shepherd’s Bush Hospital, 
London, Eng., with rank of captain. 

Dr, F. E. Keene, instructor in gynecology. Mem- 
ber of University Base Hospital Unit No. 20 with 
rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. F. C. Knowles, instructor in dermatology. 
In France with Base Hospital No. 10 with rank of 
first lieutenant. 

Dr. E. H. Goodman, associate in medicine. As- 
signed to Base Hospital at Greenville, S. C., with 
rank of major. 

Dr. G. M. Piersol, associate in medicine. In 
Army with rank of major. 

Dr. J. H. Musser, associate in medicine. In 
Army with rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. C. B. Farr, associate in medicine. Assigned 
to Fort Oglethorpe with rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. E. B. Krumbhaar, associate in medicine. In 
Army. 

Dr. J. H. Cruice, instructor in medicine. In 
Army. 

Dr. Ward Brinton, instructor in medicine. In 
Army. 

Dr. N. B. Gwyn, instructor in medicine. 
British. Army Medical Corps. 

Dr. A. H. Gerhard, instructor in medicine. In 
Army. 

Dr. T. G. Schnabel, instructor in medicine. In 
Army. 

Dr. H. B. Wilmer, assistant instructor in medi- 
cine. In Army with rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. George Wilson, assistant instructor in medi- 
eine. In Army with rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. Herbert Fox, director of Pepper Clinical 
Laboratory. In Army, assigned to Louisville, Ky. 

Dr. J. E. Sweet, assistant professor of surgical 
research. In France with Base Hospital No. 10 
with rank of captain. 

Dr. Richard H. Harte, adjunct professor of sur- 
gery. Director of Base Hospital No. 10, now in 
France with rank of major. 

Dr. John H. Jopson, associate in surgery. Di- 


With 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1191 


rector of Presbyterian Base Hospital with rank of 
major. 

Dr. J. B. Carnett, associate in surgery. Director 
of University Base Hospital Unit No. 20 with rank 
of major. 

Dr. George E. de Schweinitz, professor of oph- 
thalmology. On duty in General Medical Board 
and Commission of Ophthalmology in Council of 
National Defense, at Washington, with rank of 
major. 

Dr. H. Maxwell Langdon, instructor in ophthal- 
mology. Now on duty at University Hospital ex- 
amining candidates for Aviation Corps with rank 
of first lieutenant. 

Dr. Philip F. Williams, instructor in obstetrics. 
Member of University Base Hospital Unit. Now at 
Fort Oglethorpe with rank of captain. 

Dr. Edmund J. Piper, instructor in obstetrics. 
In Army with rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. Benjamin D. Parrish, instructor in otology. 
In Army. 

Dr. James A. Babbitt, instructor in otology. 
Now with Haverford College Unit in France. 

Dr. Isaac H. Jones, instructor in Otology. In 
Army with rank of major. 

Dr. Warren Stirling, assistant in bacteriology. 
Now stationed at Fort Benjamin Harrison with 
rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. Andrew Anders, lecturer in medicine. 
Ordered to Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., with rank of first 
lieutenant. 

Dr. Stilwell C. Burns, instructor in surgery. 
Now on duty at Spartanburg, S. C., with rank of 
captain. 

Dr. W. Easterly Ashton, professor of gynecology. 
Assigned to 300th Heavy Artillery with rank of 
major. 

Dr. John W. McGlenn, assistant professor of 
obstetrics. In charge of Naval Station Hospital 
No. 2 at League Island with rank of first lieutenant. 

Dr. Charles B. Reynolds, assistant professor of 
obstetrics. First lieutenant 309th Infantry. 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN IN 1018 
_ Tue department of astronomy and astro- 
physics at the University of Chicago is 
making preparation for observing the total 
eclipse of the sun, which will be one of the 
six to occur in the United States during the 
present century. This total eclipse will be 
visible on June 8, 1918, over a narrow strip 
having a maximum width of about sixty miles 


OctoBER 26, 1917] 


and extending from the state of Washington 
through parts of Oregon, Wyoming, and Idaho, 
across Colorado and Kansas, and finally reach- 
ing Florida about, sunset. The duration of 
totality will be two minutes and two seconds 
at the coast of Washington, and less than half 
that time in Florida. 

Director Edwin Brant Frost, of the Yerkes 
Observatory, and his colleague, Professor Ed- 
ward Emerson Barnard, astronomer at the 
observatory, recently spent a week in Denver, 
where the authorities of the University of 
Denver have placed their facilities at the dis- 
posal of the party from the University of 
Chicago, through the courtesy of Professor 
Herbert A. Howe, who is himself a graduate 
of the Old University of Chicago. Among the 
various pieces of equipment at the Yerkes Ob- 
seryatory is apparatus which could be suit- 
ably adapted to the excellent 20-inch equa- 
torial of the Denver University. It was neces- 
sary to know whether this equatorial could be 
successfully used as a photographic instru- 
ment, and Professors Frost and Barnard were 
finally successful in demonstrating that it 
could be. It will accordingly probably be 
used with a spectroscope from the Yerkes Ob- 
servatory for photographing the spectrum of 
the corona, and, if possible, for measuring its 
speed of rotation. 

From a considerable study of the weather 
observations and from estimates of cloudiness 
in June made for several years by volunteers 
along the path of the shadow, it appeared 
that certain regions in the mountains of Colo- 
rado were likely to be cloudy in the after- 
This applies also to Denver. Accord- 
ingly a side trip was made by Director Frost 
to Green River, Wyoming, a point on the 
Union Pacific Railway, lying between Che- 
yenne and Ogden. This station is situated in 
the so-called Red Desert, with a rainfall of 
about ten inches per year and at an elevation 
of 6,000 feet. A suitable station near the 
town was readily selected and the transpar- 
ency of the air was extraordinary on the day 
spent there. This station seems one of the 
most promising of any along the line of 
totality. 


noon. 


SCIENCE 


405 


However, a small cloud may spoil the prep- 
arations of many months, and _ therefore 
another site was selected about sixty miles 
southeast of Denver on the Rock Island Rail- 
way, near Matheson, Colorado, at an elevation 
of about 6,000 feet. The trip was made by 
Director Frost from Colorado Springs with 
several members of the faculty of Colorado 
College. This site is a very favorable one and 
quite likely to be free from clouds in the after- 
noon. It is not the present plan to have 
members of the party from the Yerkes Ob- 
servatory at this point, although minor in- 
struments may be sent there for use by others. 
The station at Green River, Wyoming, will be 
the principal station for the party from the 
University of Chicago, if, as is hoped, the uni- 
versity is able to supply the funds for observ- 
ing the eclipse in an adequate way. 

The only previous expedition from the 
Yerkes Observatory for observing a solar 
eclipse was in 1900, to Wadesboro, North 
Carolina, where the total eclipse on May 28 
was observed with very satisfactory results by 
a considerable party from the observatory. 


THE MARIA MITCHELL MEMORIAL FELLOW- 
SHIP OF THE HARVARD OBSERVATORY 


Tue Maria Mitchell Memorial Fellowship 
of the Harvard Observatory, of the value of 
$500, is offered to a woman for the year be- 
ginning September 15, 1918. A competitive 
examination will not be held. The candidate 
must present evidence of qualifications under 
the following heads: 

1. A letter from the candidate addressed to 
the secretary of the committee, giving an ac- 
count of previous educational opportunities 
and training, and of plans for future work. 

2. College diploma or a certificate from the 
registrar of her college, and if she has already 
held a position as instructor or teacher in any 
college or other institution, a clear statement 
of the work done, together with a certificate as 
to the quality of work. 

3. Examples of work already accomplished. 

4, Testimonials as to ability and character. 

5. Satisfactory evidence of thoroughly good 
health. 


406 


The fellowship at all times must be used for 
purposes of serious study, and the fellow 
should be as free as possible from other re- 
sponsibilities. 

Applications for the year beginning Sep- 
tember 15, 1918, should be made under the 
above heads, and must be in the hands of the 
secretary of the committee, Mrs. Charles S. 
Hinchman, 3635 Chestnut Street, Philadel- 
phia, Pennsylvania, on or before April 1, 1918. 

Proressor Mary W. WHITNEY, 

director emeritus of Vassar College 
Observatory, honorary chairman, 
Annigz J. Cannon, A.M., 
curator of astronomical photographs, 
Harvard College Observatory, 
chairman, 
Proressor Epwarp ©. Pickering, Se.D., 
director of Harvard College Ob- 
servatory, 

Proressor ANNE §. Youne, Ph.D., 

director of Mt. Holyoke Observatory, 

Proressor JoHN C. Duncan, Ph.D., 

director of Whitin Observatory, Wel- 
lesley, Mass, 

EvizaBetH R. Corrin, A.B., 

Vassar College, 1870 Nantucket, 

Mass., 

Frorence M. Cusuine, A.B., 

Vassar College, 1874, Boston, 
Lypi 8. HincuMan, 

secretary, 8635 Chestnut Street, Phil-. 

adelphia, 
Committee 


AN AMERICAN HOSPITAL IN LONDON 

Tue United States Ambassador, who was 
accompanied by Mrs, Page, recently opened 
St. Katherine’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, as a 
hospital for American and British officers. 

The house, in the Outer Circle, Regent’s 
Park, with grounds of about four acres, has 
been equipped for about 40 patients by Mr. 
and Mrs. William Salomon, of New York, 
owners of the lease, who will maintain it for 
the duration of the war. It is controlled by 
the London Chapter of the American Red 
Cross, and is the first American Red Cross 
Hospital established in Europe. It is fitted 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1191 


to accommodate orthopedic cases. The 
United States War Department recruited 20 
of the most prominent orthopedic surgeons 
in the United States and sent them to Eng- 
land under the command of Major Goldthwait, 
of Boston.. Two of these surgeons, who are 
attached to the Shepherd’s Bush Military 
Orthopedic Hospital, Captain F. Kidner, of 
Detroit, and Captain de Forrest Willard, of 
Philadelphia, have been chosen as the nucleus 
of the medical unit at St. Katherine’s Lodge, 
under the general supervision of Colonel Sir 
Robert Jones. It is hoped that both British 
and American officers will be treated at the 
hospital throughout the war. The nursing staft 
will be American. 

For work other than orthopedic the follow- 
ing London physicians and surgeons have 
offered their services on the staff. 

Colonel Donald Armour, Dr. A. P. Beddard, Sir 
James Mackenzie Davidson, Dr. H. J. Banks 
Davis, Dr. Guy Leroy Gillett, Captain Charles T. 
W. Hirsch, Mr. Herbert Parsons, Mr. F. J. Pearce, 
Dr. George Pernet, Dr. Hugh R. Phillips, Surgeon- 
General Sir G. H. Makins and Lieutenant-Colonel 
Hugh M. Rigby. 


The following are members of a committee 
of control: 

Viscountess Harcourt, Mrs. Walter Hines Page, 
Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Mrs. L. P. Sheldon, Mrs. Wil- 
liam Salomon, Mrs. L. P. Sheldon, Mr. William 
Salomon, Colonel Sir Walter Lawrence (represent- 
ing the British War Office) and Mr. L. P. Shel- 
don (chairman). 


Among others present yesterday were Sir A. 
Keogh, Surgeon-General Sir G. H. Makins, 
General Nassiter, and Commander Badcock 
(representing Admiral Sims). 

Mr. Page said he had to acknowledge the 
great generosity of the donors and the suc- 
cessful work of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon and the 
American Red Cross. It was gratifying to 
find the work well started in London, and the 
organization already making itself useful. 
The hospital differed from others in that it 
would give orthopedic treatment to officers. 
He was told that 70 per cent. of cases yielded 
to the treatment which had been developed 
under the leadership of Sir Robert Jones. 


OctToBER 26, 1917] 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Dr. WituiaM R. Bua, of the University of 
Chicago, has been placed in charge of the 
meteorological service of the Signal Corps, 
which includes a very extensive program for 
mapping the highways of the upper air. 


Dean James R. ANGELL, of the department 
of psychology at the University of Chicago, 
has been relieved from his university duties 
and has gone to Washington to work in the 
offices of the National Research Council. 


Proressor A. D. Witson, of the University 
of Minnesota, and chairman of the Minnesota 
Food Production Committee has been ap- 
pointed food administrator for Minnesota. 


Mr. Warren R. Scuoonover, instructor in 
soil biology in the department of agronomy, 
University of Illinois College of Agriculture, 
and Agricultural Experiment Station, re- 
cently enlisted in the Gas Defense Service of 
the Sanitary Corps, United States Army. He 
expects to be connected with the Over-seas 
Repair Section, No. 1. 


Dr. THomas McCrat, professor of medicine 
in Jefferson Medical College, who has been 
in charge of a large military hospital in Eng- 
land, has returned home and resumed his prac- 
tice and teaching in Jefferson College and 
Hospital. 


Freperick D. Fuuuer, formerly chief deputy 
state chemist of Indiana, and more recently in 
charge of the scientific and educational de- 
partment of the American Feed Manufactur- 
ers’ Association, has accepted the appointment 
as chief of the Division of Feed Control Serv- 
ice, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, 
College Station, Texas. 


Dr. Pui CastLEMAN has been appointed 
deputy health commissioner of Boston, and 
Dr. Honore Van de Velde, assistant director 
of pathologie laboratories in the health de- 
partment. Dr. M. Victor Safford, of the 
Public Health Service, has been appointed 
epidemiologist of the Boston Health Depart- 
ment. 

Proressor W. L. Oswaup, head of the seed 
laboratory of the University of Minnesota, 
was made secretary of the association of offi- 


SCIENCE 


407 


cial seed analysts of North America at a 
convention held at Detroit, Mich., June 19, 20 
and 21. 


THE College of Physicians of Philadelphia 
announces that the Alvarenga Prize for 1917 
has been awarded to Dr. Wilbur C. Davison, 
Baltimore, for his essay entitled “ The Supe- 
riority of Inoculations with Mixed Triple Vac- 
cine over successive inoculations with the 
single vaccines, as shown by Agglutinin 
Curves in Men and Rabbits.” 


Dr. W. J. Hoxuanp, director of the Carnegie 
Museum, Pittsburgh, has received a telegram 
from St. John’s, N. F., announcing the arrival 
at that point of the expedition which last 
April started from the Bay of Seven Islands 
on the Gulf of St. Lawrence for Ungava, on 
Davis strait, the expedition having succeeded 
in its object of crossing the peninsula of 
Labrador from the south to the north. The 
expedition was financed jointly by the Car- 
negie Museum, the National Geographic So- 
ciety and Alfred Marshall, of Chicago, who 
was a member of the party. With Mr. Mar- 
shall were W. E. C. Todd, the curator of 
ornithology in the Carnegie Museum, and O. 
J. Murie, the curator of mammals in the same 
institution. They took with them a number 
of Indians. A number of unsuccessful at- 
tempts have been made previously by explor- 
ers to cross Labrador from the south to the 
north. 


Proressor J. Paun Gooner, of the depart- 
ment of geography at the University of Chi- 
cago, is to give an address on “ Geographic 
Influences in the European War,” before the 
Minnesota Educational Assocation, which 
meets in Minneapolis from October 381 to 
November 3. 


Proressor R. A. Buprneton, of Oberlin Col- 
lege, gave an address on Louis Pasteur and 
his work before the Men’s Club of St. An- 
drews Episcopal Church at Elyria, O., on Oc- 
tober 17. 


Euceng T. Roruer, editor of the Metal- 
lurgical and Chemical Engineer, died on Oc- 
tober 17 at his home in East Orange. He 
was born in Germany in 1867, and came to 
the United States in 1894. In 1902 he was 


408 


one of the founders and first directors of the 
Electrochemical Society and continued a di- 
rector until 1913, when he became president. 


Dr. James A. GiBson, professor of anatomy 
in the University of Buffalo, and for the last 
seven years secretary of the medical depart- 
ment, died on October 4 at the age of fifty 
years. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

By the will of Isaac M. Seligman, brother of 
Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman, of the de- 
partment of economics of Columbia Univer- 
sity, who died on September 30, leaving an es- 
tate estimated at more than $15,000,000, the 
bulk of his estate is bequeathed to his family. 
He left bequests aggregating $69,000 to Colum- 
bia University, the Educational Alliance, Mt. 
Sinai Hospital, Society of Ethical Culture and 
other institutions. 


YaLe University’s budget this year shows a 
net deficit of about $258,866 as a result of war 
conditions, it is announced, despite savings of 
about $200,000 mainly through decrease in the 
faculty salary list where members are absent 
in government service. The total registration 
this year was announced as 2,122, as against 
3,262 last year, with a decrease of 117 univer- 
sity officers. 


StuDENT enrolment at Princeton Univer- 
sity is 618 less than a year ago. The total reg- 
istration is 987. A year ago it was 1,555. It 
is stated that for the first time since its or- 
ganization the school of electrical engineering 
has no students. 


Tue faculty changes at Stevens Institute of 
Technology this year include the appointment 
of former Assistant Professor Louis A. Hazel- 
tine as acting professor of electrical engineer- 
ing to fill the vacancy caused by the death of 
Professor Albert F. Ganz. Leslie H. Backer, 
M.E., has been appointed assistant professor 
in chemistry; Gustav G. Freygang, M.E., as- 
sistant professor in mechanics; Frank OC. 
Stockwell, A.B., S.B., assistant professor in 
electrical engineering, and Lewis A. Belding, 
M.E., assistant professor in mechanical engi- 
neering. Extensive changes have been made 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1191 


in the addition and rearrangement of lecture 
and drafting rooms. The large building for- 
merly occupied by the Stevens Preparatory 
School has been connected by a covered bridge 
with the main building, and has been renamed 
recitation hall. The interior has been rear- 
ranged to contain 15 lecture rooms and 14 
offices, thus relieving the main building where 
a large drafting room has been created by re- 
moving partitions between old classrooms. ~ 


In coordinating the work between the main 
Texas Agricultural College and the two 
junior colleges, created by the last legislature, 
a representative has been assigned to the Vo- 
cational College at Arlington and to the Junior 
Agricultural College at Stephenville. Mr. J. 
A. Evans, pecan specialist, of the Extension 
Service, will be at Arlington, Texas, during 
the current year while Dr. Frederick H. 
Blodgett will be the representative at Stephen- 
ville. 

Dr. TruMAN MICHELSON, of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology, has been appointed pro- 
fessor of ethnology in the George Washington 
University. He will also retain his position as 
ethnologist in the said bureau. 

Dr. H. B. GoopricH and Dr. L. L. Steele 
will conduct courses in the department of biol- 
ogy of Wesleyan University during the present 
year, or until a successor is chosen to the late 
Professor Herbert W. Conn. 


Proressor RatpH H. McKes, formerly of 
the University of Maine, and the past year in 
charge of the research department of the Ten- 
nessee Copper Company, has been appointed 
associate in chemical engineering at Colum- 
bia University. He will have in his especial 
charge the graduate work in applied organic 
chemistry. 

Dr. Leon V. Hartman has been appointed 
professor of physics at the University of Ne- 
vada. 

Dr. D. Watter StTeckBecK has been ap- 
pointed assistant professor of botany in the 
University of Pennsylvania. 

Lee R. Dice, Ph.D., of the department of 
zoology of the Kansas State Agricultural Col- 
lege, has been given a temporary appointment 
as assistant professor of biology in the Mon- 


OctoBER 26, 1917] 


tana State University, filling the place of A. 
W. L. Bray, who is taking advanced work at 
Harvard University this year. 


W. F. Lusk, formerly of the department of 
rural education in the University of Minne- 
sota, has accepted a position as professor of 
rural education in Cornell University. 

Dr. THomas Byrp Maaatnu (Ph.D., Illinois) 
has been appointed instructor in anatomy in 
the medical college of the University of Ili- 
nois, Chicago. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
REPLY TO DR. BLEILE 


Dr. Buiemtz, in his reply! to my criticism 
of his paper on the “Rdle of Boyle’s law in 
clinical sphygmomanometry,’”? takes me to 
task, as I see it, on account of four scores. 

The first is that I criticised an “ abstract ” 
of his paper. He does not make it clear that 
this “abstract” was written by himself and 
was published in the American Journal of 
Physiology. Nor does he make it clear that it 
has been abstracted in Physiological Abstracts 
in the form that is accorded to all papers. My 
criticism, therefore, is of statements that have 
been put on record in two publications. 

The second count is personal: to this I will 
not reply. 

The third count is that I “completely ” 
missed the point of his paper. I take it that 
he here refers to my understanding of his 
statement of Boyle’s law in comparison with 
mine, which, as I say in my criticism, led me 
“+o suppose that in my application of Boyle’s 
law I have committed the mistake of making 
the relation between pressure and volume a 
direct instead of an inverse one.” If Dr. 
Bleile did not intend to give this impression, 
he had the opportunity of saying so in his 
reply; but on this subject he remains silent. 
This is to be regretted all the more, because 
Physiological Abstracts makes exactly the 
same interpretation as I made. The whole 
abstract’ there consists of this sentence: 


1 Scrence, N. S., XLVI., 111, 1917. 


2 Sorenog, N. 8., XLYV., 384, 1916. 
3 Physiol. Abstr., II., 176. 


SCIENCE 


409 


It is shown that the oscillations of pressure and 
volume always vary inversely, as required by 
Boyle’s law, and contrary to what is implied in 
Erlanger’s hypothesis. 


In the fourth count he accuses me of chang- 
ing somewhat radically some of the statements 
of my own paper. If this accusation refers 
to my quotations, I can only say that they are 
absolutely verbatim. If it refers to my “ para- 
phrase,” I must leave it to others, who are 
sufficiently interested to take the time to com- 
pare it with the original, to decide whether 
the sense of my original statement is altered 
in it. 

The major part of Dr. Bleile’s “ Reply ” 
consists of a painstaking mathematical proof 
of the admission clearly made in my “ Reply,” 
that : 

I inadvertently employed . . the pressures 
taken directly from the mercury manometer in- 
stead of the absolute pressures. a 


He here, therefore, proves, as I say in my 
criticism, that “the failure to express the 
pressure in absolute terms affects ... only the 
magnitude of the change, not its sign.” And 
if the sign is not changed, my thesis is sub- 
stantiated, for, to repeat, 

My only object in invoking Boyle’s law was to 
show that under the particular set of ideal condi- 
tions premised . . . the amplitude of the pressure 
oscillations, resulting from the filling and empty- 
ing of the artery, must increase as the compressing 
pressure increases from the diastolic to close to the 
systolic level. 

Since my criticism was written, Dr. Bleile’s 
full report has appeared.t In it he makes ad- 
ditional criticisms of my work, which likewise 
are practically irrelevant to the purpose of my 
paper or are made possible through conditions 
gratuitously imposed. I will. discuss one of 
these criticisms in order to indicate their na- 
ture. Dr. Bleile says: 

Erlanger’s deductions are: If a pressure now 
equal to the diastolic be applied during the dias- 
tolic phase in the artery, no oscillations will be pro- 
duced in the manometer during the pulsations of 
inside arterial pressure. For, he [Erlanger] 
argues, if the inside pressure rises above the dias- 


4 Amer. Jour. Physiol., 1917, XLIII., 475. 


410 


tolic, the vessel is already completely filled, and 
being inextensible, can not expand further and 
therefore can not transmit the increase of inside 
or arterial pressure when it rises above the dias- 
tolic level. But I [Bleile] wish here to point out 
that if the pressure in the chamber is at the dias- 
tolic level and the pressure within the artery is 
also just at the diastolic level, then it does not at 
all follow that the artery must necessarily be 
filled with fluid. Since the artery is readily col- 
lapsible (though not elastic) it may be only partly 
filled, or it may be entirely flat and empty. It 
may be in any degree of fulness or emptiness. 
But one must know the amount of fluid within the 
artery before he can tell whether a rise in arterial 
pressure will be transmitted to the chamber. As 
a matter of fact, not unless the artery is com- 
pletely filled with fluid at the diastolic pressure 
and the chamber pressure just equal to it is applied 
without allowing the artery to collapse the slight- 
est amount, can the result obtained by Erlanger 
be possible. 

In order to bring clearly before the reader 
the three sets of conditions described in the 


foregoing quoted paragraph, I analyze them 
here into the form of a table. In this table 


| 
Initial Com- | arterial | Resulting 
Com- Initial | pressing | pressure | Compres- 
Conditions | pressing Arterial | Pressure | Raised | sion Os- 
Pressure | Pressure Toereaeee to cillation 
Erlanger’s. |Atmos- |Dias- |Dias- |Sys- None 
pheric| tolic | tolic tolic 
(Oy COV 1@ 1 © 
Bleile’sIst.|Dias- |Dias- |No Sys- Any 
tolic tolic | change| tolic | ampli- 
(1) (1) (2) tude 
Bleile’s 2d.|Atmos-|Dias- |Dias- |Sys- None 
pheric| tolic | tolic tolic 
(1) (2) | @) (4) 


the numbers indicate the sequence of events. 
It thus is made obvious that Dr. Bleile’s 
second set of conditions is merely a repetition 
of mine. And he admits that under his second 
set of conditions there will be no oscillations, 
which, it will be noted, is exactly the conclu- 
sion I came to. This result can be altered 
only by supplying energy not included in my 
premises. To be sure, no one can find any 
fault with the conclusion Dr. Bleile is led to 
by his first set of conditions, but they are not 
the set of conditions I chose to start with in 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1191 


developing the theory of compression oscilla- 
tions. JOSEPH ERLANGER 
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL, 
St. Louis 


THE CORRECT NAME FOR OUR APPLE-GRAIN 
APHIS 


Mucu confusion has existed in regard to the 
name applied to our apple-grain aphis. In the 
first place the name aven@ which is now ap- 
plied to this species in America was for many 
years applied to Macrosiphum granaria. These 
two species were eventually separated and 
granaria applied to the Macrosiphum on grains 
and grasses and the name avene restricted to 
the present species or group of species on the 
same plants. } 

To the apple-grain aphis on its primary host 
the name mali Fab. was applied. This name, 
mali, is, however, a synonym of pomz DeGeer, 
a species which was not well known in Amer- 
ica. The alternation between grains and apple 
was worked out while the name mali was still 
in use for the species. When pomz became 
better known it was shown that the present 
species was not mali, 1. e., pomi, but was in 
reality the same species as the so-called avene 
on grains. Pomi was then restricted to the 
true pomi and avene transferred also to the 
apple-feeding form of this grain aphid. 

Fitch described a species under the name 
prunifolie which he found upon the plum. In 
this description he gave the characters of some 
specimens collected and placed in his cabinet. 
These specimens are now in the National Mu- 
seum collection and show that the species he 
had was the one treated in this note. . Before 
publication, however, he observed some other 
specimens on plum and these had a black spot 
on the abdomen. He therefore included in his 
description remarks on this spot. His speci- 
mens, however, show that he really had the 
apple-grain aphis in his collection and in his 
manuscripts as pruntfolic. 

On account of his mentioning this spot sub- 
sequent writers considered his specimens to be 
specimens of pruni Koch. This latter species 
has been shown to migrate to thistles and in 
reality to be a synonym of cardui L. Therefore 
recent writers have considered Fitch’s prunt- 


OctroBeR 26, 1917] 


folie to be a synonym of cardwi L. His name, 

however, must be applied to the apple-grain 

species to which we are in this country giving 
the name avene. 

In Europe it is known that the name avene 
is a synonym of padi L. and that the primary 
host of the oat aphis is the bird cherry from 
which it migrates to grains and grasses. 
Avene is, however, employed here for the spe- 
cies living upon the apple. To use the names 
correctly then padi L. should be applied to our 
apple-grain aphis. But this would not be cor- 
rect, for padi winters on cherry and migrates 
to grass. It is evident that our species is not 
padi. 

Fitch described a species on choke cherries 
under the name of cerasifolie. This species 
curls the leaves of the cherry and suggests the 
work of padi in Europe. Transfers made by 
the writer prove that this species alternates be- 
tween chokecherry and grasses in the same 
way that padi migrates in Europe. It is not 
impossible that they are the same species. We 
have then to deal with this species also on 
grains and grasses in the avene mix up. It is 
noteworthy that the cornicles of the choke- 
cherry species are sometimes slightly swollen 
in a way similar to those of the common oat 
aphis. The second fork of the wing is also 
very close to the margin of the wing and rusty 
patches are present at the base of the cornicles 
of the individuals feeding on grains and 
grasses. 

Some authors have expressed the opinion 
that our apple-grain insect is biennial. The 
experiments conducted by W. F. Turner and 
the writer prove that it is annual. It is not 
improbable that the difficulty in transfer arose, 
in that more than one species was concerned 
and that the apple was in reality not the winter 
host of the specimens transferred. 

From the evidence in hand it appears: 

1. That more than one species occurs upon 
grains and grasses under the name avene@ 
Fab. 

2. That one of these species migrates to apple 
and related trees where the eggs are laid. 
This species must be known as prunifolie 
Fitch. 


SCIENCE 


411 


8. That another species, the oat aphis, mi- 
grates to bird cherries in Europe and must 
be known as padi L., of which avene Fab. 
is a synonym. 

4, That the species now known as cerasifolie 
Fitch migrates to grains and grasses as 
does padi and is possibly the same species. 

5. That the present placing of the name pruni- 
folie as a synonym of cardui L. is not 
correct. A. C. BAKER 

BurEAv or ENTOMOLOGY, 
WASHINGTON, D. C, 
QUOTATIONS 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSOR 
CATTELL 


I sHoutp think that the New York news- 
papers would be as tired of me as I am of 
them. As, however, you have devoted another 
editorial article to Columbia University and‘to 
my case, I beg permission to state certain 
facts. 

My relations with the university were not 
considered by the department or faculty of 
which I was a member, or, contrary to your 
statement, by any faculty committee. At a 
meeting of the Columbia trustees on March 5 
a resolution was introduced retiring me on ac- 
count of a frivolous but truthful remark that I 
had made concerning the president of the uni- 
versity in a confidential letter to members of 
the Faculty Club. At the same meeting of the 
trustees a committee was appointed to ascer- 
tain whether doctrines contrary to the Consti- 
tution and the laws were being taught or dis- 
seminated at Columbia. 

This latter resolution raised a storm of pro- 
test, the faculty of political science voting that 
it “betrays a profound misconception of the 
true function of a university in the advance- 
ment of learning.” After passing resolutions 
of protest, the council, itself primarily an ad- 
ministrative body, appointed a committee of 
nine to defend the interests of academic free- 
dom. This was not a committee of the fac- 
ulty, but a Butler-Seligman committee, con- 
taining six deans, who are appointed by the 
president, and, according to the statutes of the 
university, must “act in subordination to the 


president.” From this committee Professor 


412 


Dewey has recently resigned as a _ protest 
against the general situation. 

The resolution retiring me was referred to 
the committee, which unanimously recom- 
mended that no action be taken. They, how- 
ever, asked me for an apology for my ironical 
remark about the president, and I signed the 
statement which Professor Seligman wrote, on 
the assurance that this would be of great serv- 
ice to the committee in maintaining the rights 
of the faculty and of freedom of speech, and 
on the promise that it would be shown to no 
one except the committee on inquisition of the 
trustees, and only to them if necessary. 
When the apology was sent out by Professor 
Seligman to officers of the university and 
printed in the newspapers I wrote a letter to 
members of the Faculty Club telling how it 
had been obtained. I thought I owed this to 
them, as many had approved of my remark 
about the president, one professor, for example, 
having written: ‘‘ Let me first of all thank you 
for saying so well some of the things that I 
and many others dare not say for fear our 
families would be left without support if we 
did say them.” 

Professor Seligman then wrote a letter to 
me, copies of which he sent out by the hun- 
dred, stating that I did not “ respect the ordi- 
nary decencies of intercourse among gentle- 
men’’ and that my “ usefulness in the univer- 
sity has come to an end.” As I understand it, 
Professor Seligman claims that he only broke 
the promise of a gentleman and I had no right 
to reveal the fact. I hold that it was the prom- 
ise of the acting dean of the graduate facul- 
ties and of the chairman of the committee of 
nine of the council, made officially in the 
dean’s office, and that secret diplomacy should 
have no place in a university. ; 

Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of 
this petty squabble, seven of the nine mem- 
bers of the Butler-Seligman committee on 
June 18 recommended that I be retired from 
active service with the pension due me. The 
trustees, however, chose to dismiss me for 
maintaining academic freedom in the classical 
sense, not for resisting academic slavery as it 
exists at Columbia. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1191 


When they dismissed me on October 1, with- 
out a hearing, without payment for the year 
and without the pension due me, it was on the 
sole ground that I had on August 23 addressed 
a letter to members of the Congress asking 
them to support a measure then before the 
Senate and the House to prohibit sending con- 
scripts “to fight in Europe against their will.” 
There is no law requiring or permitting the 
President to send “ conscientious objectors ” to 
fight in Europe. To do this, according to an 
opinion prepared by the Attorney General of 
the United States for the President in 1912, 
would be unconstitutional. It is also against 
the uniform policy of the nation. It would 
provide a less efficient army and might cause 
disorder at home. The British government 
does not require “ conscientious objectors” to 
fight, and does not force conscription on Ire- 
land. I only exercised the constitutional right 
and fulfilled the duty of a citizen in petition- 
ing the government to enact legislation which 
I believe to be in the interest of the nation. 
By a curious irony the committee of the trus- 
tees appointed to guard the Constitution rec- 
ommended my dismissal for using the method 
which the Constitution states shall not be 
abridged in a letter written to members of the 
Congress asking them to respect the Constitu- 
tion. 

If the president and the trustees could have 
found in anything else that I have said or done 
anything that by any possible perversion 
could have been made to appear unpatriotic 
they would have been only too glad to have ad- 
duced it. As it is, they have hid behind the 
flag to assassinate, relying on the prejudice 
and blind patriotism of war. They might have 
retired me for insubordination, and there 
would have been no public protest; but they 
apparently wanted to injure me and discredit 
my efforts for university reform. This they 
may have been able to do, but only by causing 
at the same time far greater injury to the uni- 
versity. 

I favor peace on the Russian terms, prac- 
tically adopted by the President in his reply 
to the Pope. But both before and since our 
entry into the war I have done everything in 


OcrosER 26, 1917] 


my power to promote national efficiency. I 
spent a large part of the week before I was dis- 
missed drawing up for the War Department 
plans for the scientific selection of aviators. 
My oldest son, with my approval and assist- 
ance, was one of the first to enlist in the army 
and go to France, where he is in charge of 
sanitation in the Harvard hospital recently 
bombed by German aviators.——J. McKeen 
CAaTTELL in the New York Tribune. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
Alge. Volume I. Myxophycee, Peridinier, 

Bacillariewx, Chlorophyces, together with a 

Brief Summary of the Occurrence and Dis- 

tribution of Freshwater Ale. By G. S. 

West, M.A., D.Sc., A.R.C.S., F.L.S., Mason 

Professor of Botany in the University of 

Birmingham. Cambridge, The University 

Press, 1916. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New 

York. $7.50. 

The first volume of the series, to be issued 
as the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks under 
the editorship of Professor A. C. Seward and 
A. G. Tansley, of the school of botany of Cam- 
bridge University, is Professor G. S. West’s 
volume on the “ Alge.” <A life-long interest 
in, and an ever-increasing acquaintanceship 
with the extraordinarily diversified and numer- 
ous organisms embraced within the scope of 
this work have qualified this leading British 
algologist to undertake this task. For many 
years father (the late William West) and son 
have collaborated in the publication of a long 
series of memoirs and monographs dealing 
with the microscopic flora, not only of British 
waters, but of those of many other lands also. 
The critical knowledge thus acquired of the 
very large number of genera and species of 
alg, mainly microscopic, has made possible 
this scholarly and well-proportioned treatise. 

Dealing as it does with the Protophytes, the 
work is of especial interest, not only to botan- 
ists, but also to zoologists, especially protozo- 
ologists, who have long felt the need of a 
work more comprehensive in scope and suc- 
cinct in treatment than Oltmann’s “ Algen,” 
Chodat’s “ Algues Vertes de la Suisse,” or the 
authors’ “ Treatise on the British Freshwater 


SCIENCE 


413 


Alge,” and more critical, the Lemmermann’s 
useful handbooks of the Brandenburg Alge. 

Professor West’s work adequately supplies 
this need. Since the work includes the Dino- 
flagellata (Peridiniee) and the Volvocide 
(Volvocinexz) flagellates familiar to all zool- 
ogists and prominent in our text-books, the re- 
viewer takes this means to call the attention 
of all zoologists and of biologists generally to 
the mine of information contained in this 
work. He shares with the author the opinion 
that the Flagellata are a primitive group and 
therefore of exceptional significance to all who 
seek the beginnings of either the plant or the 
animal world, and especially to students of 
sex, reproduction, variation, and the processes 
of evolution. It is noteworthy that the classi- 
fication of green alge adopted by the author 
and the criteria of their chief subdivisions are 
based upon flagellate affinities. 

It is perhaps natural that Profesor West’s 
investigations of the Phytoplankton should 
have convinced him that most flagellates are 
holophytie and that ninety per cent. of the 
Dinoflagellata “are true vegetable organisms 
with a holophytic nutrition,” but students of 
parasitic flagellates will demaur from the first 
conclusion. In the reviewer’s experience there 
is abundant evidence that the Gymnodinioide, 
or the most primitive section of the Dinoflagel- 
lata, the most abundant flagellates of the sea, 
are predominantly holozoic, and some are even 
cannibalistic, while many of the deep water 
species are undoubtedly saprophytic. 

The author’s conclusions regarding poly- 
morphism among the alge, especially the 
Chlorophycee, will interest all students of vari- 
ation and evolution. Professor West has been 
a champion of the view of specific stability 
among the unicells, as over against the view 
of a wide polymorphism advocated by Chodat, 
Playfair and others. The results of the pure 
culture method in the hands of Klebs, Beijer- 
inck, and others, have in the main supported 
the conclusion that specific stability is quite 
as constant among the alge as it is among 
higher plants. It is doubtless true that much 
of the so-called evidence for polymorphism 
has rested upon misjudgment as to the rela- 


414 


tionships of convergent types commingled in 
a common environment and has no basis in 
critically conducted pure cultures. On the 
other hand, it is certainly to be expected that 
more instances of polymorphic life cycles, both 
obligatory and adaptive, will be discovered 
when the full histories of green unicells are 
unraveled. Furthermore, among the Dino- 
flagellata with certainty, and possibly among 
the desmids also, there is a high degree of 
self-regulating control of surface structures 
leading to a considerable range of form within 
the species. This is made evident from the 
fact that in both of these groups there are 
many species in which at the time of binary 
fission the daughter organisms each inherits 
one half of their exoskeleton or cell wall and 
forms the other half under the influence of 
the circumambient environment, which in 
some instances induces a strikingly different 
form of cell wall, involving structures util- 
ized as specific characters. These may be of 
a mutative category, or more evidently of an 
adaptive or self-reeulatory nature. It is also 
true that the theca or exoskeleton of the Dino- 
flagellata is subject to autotomy, local ecdysis, 
total exuviation, and local resorbtion and re- 
construction to a considerable degree, after 
its formation, in adaptive response to chang- 
ing environmental conditions. Such changes 
are not, however, of the same order of magni- 
tude as those more profound ones occurring 
in the transformations in the life history of 
alee, such as the Palmella stage of the 
Chlamydomonads. 

On the whole, Professor West’s contention 
as to specific stability seems to be well 
founded, provided adequate latitude for the 
metamorphoses of life history is retained and 
due allowance is made for adaptive and in- 
volution stages arising under environmental 
pressure. Both the pure culture method and 
wide observation of much material of the spe- 
cies under varying environments are needed 
to determine the normal range of form. 

The rapid growth of biological literature 
in the past decades has tended to isolate bot- 
anists and zoologists, to the detriment of prog- 
ress in both fields. Professor West’s work is 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1191 


of great value in facilitating excursions of 
zoologists into one fundamental and sug- 
gestive field of botanical research. 
Cuartes Atwoop Korom 
ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY, 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


A German-English Dictionary for Chemists. 
By Austin M. Parrerson, Ph.D., editor of 
chemical terms for “ Webster’s New Inter- 
national Dictionary” and formerly editor 
of “ Chemical Abstracts.” New York, John 
Wiley & Sons, Ine.; London, Chapman and 
Hall, Limited. 1917. Pp. xvi + 316. 
Price $2.00. 

Dr. Patterson’s dictionary fulfils a need 
which probably every English-speaking worker 
in chemistry has experienced, and fulfils it 
admirably. The large number of scientific and 
technical words and the abbreviations which 
puzzle the beginner in the reading of chem- 
ical German are all there and the older chem- 
ist long accustomed to the reading of German 
chemical literature will experience no less 
satisfaction in the use of this book, for it is 
sure to save him much time in determining 
the exact meaning of the words that even he 
is apt to find troublesome. The thoroughness 
with which the dictionary covers the broad 
field of chemistry as well as such related 
sciences as physics, mineralogy and pharmacy 
is very satisfying. Since its appearance in 
January it has been in constant use in the 
office of Chemical Abstracts, where transla- 
ting work involving every phase of theoret- 
ical and applied chemistry is done and it has 
stood this test of completeness in such a way 
as to justify the confidence with which it is 
used. I say “justify” because, knowing the 
nature of Dr. Patterson’s work on other 
things and having in mind his experience in 
handling chemical literature and in compiling 
the chemical vocabulary and other parts of 
the New International Dictionary, we expect 
much. 

In his translations of German names of 
chemical compounds Dr. Patterson has used 
care to keep the nomenclature in accord with 
the best usage. The Introduction, which 
should be very helpful in several ways, in- 


OoroBER 26, 1917] 


cludes interesting sections on inorganic and 
organic nomenclature. Many American chem- 
ists should read and heed the translating rules 
contained in these sections, for all too often 
German spellings, especially endings, are car- 
ried over into names used as English. At 
times this results in confusion. The new dic- 
tionary will tend to correct this bad practise, 
and it is hoped that it will help the cause of 
good chemical nomenclature in other ways. 

Besides words from fields of science related 
to chemistry the dictionary contains a general 
vocabulary “to save the user the trouble of 
looking up the more common German words in 
a separate dictionary ” and “because many 
general words have a technical, or at least a 
customary, chemical meaning,” which “in a 
general work is often either absent or buried 
among other senses.” The entries are all 
brief, few of them requiring more than a 
single line (two columns to the page). There 
are no long paragraphs of combinations, ex- 
amples, ete., to wade through. The English 
equivalent usually sought by the scientist is 
given at once. These features add greatly to 
the convenience in use. 

The use of small type (six point), which 
does not seem objectionable since one does not 
read a dictionary steadily, has made for com- 
pactness. The book will fit a large pocket. 
The work of the printer and binder (the cover 
is flexible) has been well done. 

E. J. CRANE 


OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
THE NATURE OF THE ULTIMATE 
MAGNETIC PARTICLE 
Ir appears probable from various consid- 
erations that when a substance is magneti- 
eally saturated, the “molecular magnets” of 
which it is composed have their axes arranged 
parallel with the external magnetic field. On 
this assumption it is possible to investigate 
the validity of those theories, such as Bohr’s 
which would explain the magnetic properties 
of an atom as due to electrons revolving about 
the atomic center in orbits all lying in the 
same plane. 


SCIENCE 


415 


It has been shown that the relative inten- 
sity of the different orders of an X-ray spec- 
trum line depends upon the distance of the 
electrons from the middle planes of the atomic 
layers in the diffracting crystal.t Imagine 
X-rays to be reflected from the surface of a 
ferro-magnetic crystal composed of atoms of 
the type just described. When the crystal 
is unmagnetized the different atoms will have 
their electronic orbits distributed in all pos- 
sible planes, so that on the average the elec- 
trons will be at an appreciable distance from 
the mid-planes of their atomic layers. If, 
however, the crystal is magnetically saturated 
perpendicular to the reflecting face of the 
crystal, the electronic orbits, being perpen- 
dicular to the magnetic axes of their atoms, 
will all lie parallel to the crystal face. The 
electrons will therefore now be in the mid- 
planes of the layers of atoms which are 
effective in producing the reflected beam. It 
can be shown that such a shift of the elec- 
trons must produce a very considerable in- 
crease in the intensity of the reflected beam 
of X-rays. On the other hand, if the erystal 
is magnetized parallel to the reflecting face, 
the turning of the orbits will carry the elec- 
trons farther, on the average, from the middle 
of their atomic layers, and a decrease in the 
intensity of reflection should result. Of 
course if the electrons are arranged isotropic- 
ally in the atom, or if the atom is not rotated 
by a magnetic field, which would mean that 
it is the electron or the positive nucleus that 
is the ultimate magnetic particle, no such 
effect should be observed. 

We have hunted in vain for such an effect 
on the intensity of the reflected beam of X-rays 
when the reflecting crystal is strongly magnet- 
ized. In our experiment a “null method” was 
employed. The ionization due to the beam of 
X-rays reflected from a crystal of magnetite 
was balanced against that due to a beam re- 
flected from a crystal of rock-salt, so that a 
very small change in the relative intensity 


‘of either beam could be detected, while vari- 


ations in the X-ray tube itself had little effect. 
1A. H. Compton, Phys. Rev., 9, 29 (1917). 


416 


By means of an electromagnet with a lamin- 
ated core the magnetite crystal was magnetic- 
ally saturated, and then demagnetized with an 
alternating current. The effect of magnet- 
ization perpendicular to the plane of the ecrys- 
tal face was investigated for the first four 
orders. On account of mechanical difficulties 
the test was made only in the third order when 
the crystal was magnetized parallel to the re- 
flecting surface. In no case was any change 
observed in the intensity of the reflected beam 
when the crystal was magnetized or demag- 
netized, though the method was sufficiently 
sensitive to detect a variation in the intensity 
of less than 1 per cent. 

A direct calculation shows that a displace- 
ment of the atoms of 0.004 of the distance 
between the successive atomic layers is suffi- 
cient to cause 1 per cent. change in the inten- 
sity of the fourth order spectrum. If there 
is any displacement of the atoms when a 
erystal is magnetized, it is therefore very 
small. This confirms the observation of K. T. 
Compton and E. A. Trousdale? that magneti- 
zation does not shift the atoms in a crystal 
sufficiently to change the general form of the 
space lattice in which they are arranged, and 
verifies their conclusion that the ultimate 
magnetic particle is not a group of atoms, 
such as the chemical molecule, but is the in- 
dividual atom or something within the atom. 

It can be shown further that if all the elec- 
trons in an atom are in the same plane, the 
effect on the intensity of the reflected X-ray 
beam of turning the atom will be greater than 
one per cent. unless the effective radius of 
the atom is less than 10-19 em. Other con- 
siderations, however, prove that the radius of 
the atom must be much greater than this. 

There is a relatively small number (26) of 
electrons in the iron atom, and it appears 
probable that 8 of these, as valence electrons, 
are at a considerably greater distance than the 
others from the center of the atom. It is 
therefore difficult, though perhaps not im- 
possible, to imagine an arrangement of the 
electrons so isotropic that a rotation of the 

2K. T. Compton and E. A. Trousdale, Phys. 
Rev., 5, 815 (1915). 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1191 


atom will not produce an appreciable change 
in the intensity of the reflected X-ray beam. 

The most obvious explanation of our nega- 
tive result is that it is not the atom which is 
the elementary magnet, but that it is either 
the positive nucleus, as suggested by Merritt, 
or the electron, as suggested by Parson. 

If the ultimate magnetic particle is not 
rotated to any great extent by the magnetic 
field, no conclusions can be drawn from our 
experiments. It appears much more probable 
however, that the molecular magnet is capable 
of being turned through a large angle, and on 
this basis we may conclude that: 

1. The ultimate magnetic particle is either 
the atom or something within the atom. 

2. If the atom is the ultimate magnet, its 
electrons are not all distributed in the same 
plane, as assumed by Bohr, but are arranged 
very nearly isotropically. 

8. Our experiments are in accordance with 
the hypotheses that the atomic nuclei or the 
electrons themselves are the ultimate mag- 
netic particles. 

In a subsequent paper we shall describe our 
experiment in greater detail, and shall discuss 
more ‘fully the significance of our negative 
result. ArtHur H. Compton, 


OswaLp RoGNLEY 
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 


APPARATUS FOR PHYSIOLOGICAL AND 
PHYSICAL LABORATORIES 


An Adjustable Stand for Graphic Experi- 
ments.—The stand illustrated in the figure 
was designed by me, twenty-three years ago, 
for use with the piston-recorder for air trans- 
mission. It has served its purpose so admir- 
ably, and is so well adapted for all graphic 
work where a very delicate adjustment of the 
writing point is required, that it has seemed 
to merit a description in print. 

The features that have commended it es- 
pecially are its simplicity, its great delicacy 
of movement and absence of backlash, and 
the ability to use it at all times for any of the 
purposes for which a small stand is necessary. 

Its construction is not difficult, but requires 
accurate workmanship. 


OcrosER 26, 1917] 


The central part of the tripod base is bored 
and faced on the lathe, and the hole is reamed 


to a standard size. The base is then placed 
on an arbor and the lower surface of the hub 
is turned to correspond with the front. The 
lower end of the vertical rod is ground into 
the hole. A collar is securely fastened to this 
part of the rod, and its lower surface turned 
to an accurate bearing. A long rod is screwed 
into the collar, and is firmly pressed against 
the adjusting screw I’ by the steel rod A, 
which acts as a very strong spring. The 
vertical rod is fastened to the base by a screw 
in its lower end, and a spring washer which 
bears against the turned surface. As the 
horizontal rod has a considerable length, and 
the adjusting screw a fine thread, the rotation 
of the rod when the screw is turned is very 
slow, and is under perfect control. The elas- 
ticity of the spring rod is sufficient to allow 


SCIENCE 


417 


the necessary movement in graphic experi- 
ments, and is rigid enough to prevent rotation 
when the stand is used for ordinary purposes. 

The vertical rod of the stand just described 
has a diameter of 10 mm. <A much larger 
stand of slightly modified construction, with 
a heavy base, and a rod 25 mm. in diameter, 
is a most useful addition to the equipment of 
the laboratory, and forms a very satisfactory 
support for a reading telescope. The lower 
end of the rod is turned to a shoulder, and is 
fitted to the base with a screw and a washer, 
as in the previously described instrument. 
The collar into which the horizontal arm is 
inserted is not permanently fastened to the 
central rod, but is clamped by a thumb-screw 
which permits the rod to be rotated to any 
extent before using the fine adjustment. A 
leveling-screw, and a clamp-screw in the hub 
not shown in the figure are also desirable 
additions. 

Universal Clamps—The clamps shown in 
the drawing were designed to be used on the 
adjustable stand. Within the limits of their 
capacity they enable flat objects, and rods of 
round, square, triangular and oblong section, 
to be held very firmly in any position without 
marring. They can be easily adapted to any 
stand and modified in various ways. The 
clamps are attached to the supporting rod by 
a split cast-iron piece in the shape of two 
crossed cylinders, which are carefully bored 
at right angles to each other. The bolt which 
passes through the horizontal cylinder has the 
same size as the vertical rod, and in one form 
has for the head the iron dise J, which is per- 
manently fastened to it. A similar dise re- 
volving on the bolt, forms the second jaw. 
The two discs are turned, and their inner sur- 
faces have parallel V grooves which accurately 
correspond, and a recess in each for a spiral 
spring which opens the jaws when the nut is 
loosened. The object to be held is fixed in 
the jaws, and the clamp to the stand by the 
single nut VV. 

The upper clamp is fixed to the vertical 
rod independently by the lever LZ which turns 
a screw in the split projection. The bolt W 
has a number of transverse holes which enable 


418 


the right hand disc to be fastened in different 
positions by the pin P. This arrangement 
allows objects of considerable width to be 
held by their edges. A supporting screw in 
the movable dise opposite the groove is some- 
times used to prevent tipping and wedging of 
the dise under strong pressure, but it is gener- 
ally not required. 

Universal Tripod Bases—Of all laboratory 
implements the tripod stand is probably the 
one that is most constantly and universally 
employed. A tripod base forms the founda- 
tion of a great number of scientific instru- 
ments; it is therefore desirable to have a 
number of accurately made bases for use with 
interchangeable apparatus, and adaptable to 
a great variety of purposes. 

The ordinary way of fastening the stand- 
ard to a tripod base is by means of a screw 
on the end of the rod. This is permissible 
when the rod is to be left in position perma- 
nently, but when it has to be removed fre- 
quently, it is very inconvenient, as a special 
wrench is required for the operation. When 
accurate construction is required it is nec- 
essary to reduce the diameter of the lower end 
of the standard to form a shoulder, and to 
cut the screw in a lathe. This adds consider- 
ably to the expense and difficulty of fitting 
apparatus to the base. A much simpler and 
better mode of attachment can be employed 
which has proved itself to be very satisfactory 
in my laboratory. The bases that I have 
made are of two sizes. The larger one covers 
a circle of 30 ecm. and weighs 5 kilograms. 
Its center is a cylinder 8 cm. in diameter and 
7 em. in height. This base is like that of the 
large adjustable stand which I have described, 
and is turned and bored on the lathe in ex- 
actly the same manner as that. The central 
hole has a diameter of 19 mm. and the stand- 
ards are clamped in it by a large brass screw 
which passes horizontally through the center 
of the hub. As the screw has a large head 
with four spokes like the hand-nut on the 
universal clamp figured in the drawing, the 
rods and bushings are held with the greatest 
firmness, but they can be changed almost in- 
stantly. This kind of attachment allows a 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1191 


certain amount of vertical movement of the 
standard of a table, or of apparatus, when 
variation of height is desirable. When a more 
extensive elevation is necessary the tripod can 
be placed over a hole in the table through 
which the rod can pass, or it can be supported. 
on rods clamped by brass set-screws in 13 mm. 
holes in the cylindrical feet. These supple- 
mentary rods may be used as substitutes for 
leveling-screws. If such screws are required 
they are made with brass cylindrical nuts 
which are clamped in the holes in the feet. 
These holes are exactly at right angles to the 
plane of the bottom of the feet, it is therefore 
possible to have four vertical rods, parallel to 
one another, attached to the same base. This 
is a great convenience in assembling compli- 
eated combinations of apparatus. Rods 
smaller than the holes can be clamped by 
means of bushings. When these bushings are 
of non-conductors the rods can be insulated, 
or the rods may be made of these materials. 
The smaller base has all the features of the 
one just described, and weighs about three 
fourths of a kilogram. The holes in the feet 
are 10 mm. in diameter, and the central one 
18 mm. These bases can be bored while 
clamped together in pairs. This insures exact 
correspondence of the holes when the bases are 
used together in combinations. They form 
excellent end supports for the horizontal rod 
of an optical bench, or similar apparatus. 
They may be used instead of flanges for table 
tops and wheels. They can be fastened easily 
to the wall or ceiling by screws passing 
through the holes in the feet, or be em- 
ployed in the construction of a wall bracket 
of adjustable height. In order to make such 
a bracket two short rods in two of the supple- 
mentary holes are held in corresponding holes 
in a block of wood screwed to the wall. A 
long rod in the anterior leg terminates in a 
rectangular piece through which passes a hor- 
izontal rod abutting against the wall. A 
table top is attached to the central standard 
when an adjustment for height is desired, or 
it may be screwed or clamped to the anterior 
rod. Freperick W. E.tis 
Monson, Mass. 


_SCIENCE 


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CONTENTS 


The Structure of Atoms, and the Evolution of 
the Elements as related to the Composition 
of the Nuclei of Atoms: PRorrssor WILL- 
Wnty ID) MEL NEaNIS) aay odonoe pcan Heddedoobob 419 


Scientific Events :— 
Chemicals and War in England; Faculty 
Changes at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology; The University of Pittsburgh 
and the Army Medical Service; The War 
and Navy Departments and the Coast and 


GeadeticnSaunueyicne eye sclera revelscclete cievele 427 
Scientific Notes and News .............---- 330 
University and Educational News .......... 432 


Discussion and Correspondence :-— 

-Algonkian Bacteria and Popular Science: 
Dr. HENRY FatrFIELD OssporN. The Teach- 
ing of Optics: Dr. Davin VaNcE GUTHRIE. 
Trans-Pacifie Agriculture: Dr. O. F. Cooxr. 
Benjamin Franklin and the Struggle for 
Existence: Proressor B. W. KuNKEL .... 432 


Scientific Books :— 
Iunge on the Manufacture of Sulphuric 
Acid: Proressor Jas. Lewis Howr. An 
Encyclopedia of Peaches: F, A. W. ...... 438 


Special Articles :— 
Comparison of the Catalase Content of the 
Breast Muscle of Wild Pigeons and of Ban- 
tam Chickens: W. E. Burae. Cilia in the 
Arthropoda: Dr. NaTHAN Fasten. Rhyth- 
mic Banding: Dr. Harry N. Ho~mes .... 440 


MSS. intended for publication and books, ete., intended for 
teview should be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


THE STRUCTURE OF ATOMS, AND THE 
EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTS AS 
RELATED TO THE COMPOSI- 
TION OF THE NUCLEI 
OF ATOMS?! 

Tue general theory of the structure of 
the atom which seems to be most closely in 
harmony with the facts is that developed 
by Rutherford. His theory assumes that 
the atom consists of a central nucleus or 
sun, and that the satellites of the miniature 
solar system are the negative electrons. 
The central nucleus is supposed to contain 
almost all of the mass of the atom, and is 
charged with positive electricity. That 
this nucleus is very minute in comparison 
with the size of the atom is indicated by 
the work of Rutherford, of Geiger and 
Marsden, and of Darwin, who find that the 
deflection of alpha particles, which are shot 
from radioactive atoms at speeds which 
approach 20,000 miles per second and so 
pass directly through other atoms, is of 
such a character as to indicate that the 
positive charge of the atom is very highly 
concentrated. Thus Darwin’s work indi- 
eates that the maximum diameter of the 
nucleus of a hydrogen atom (1.7 < 107% 
em.) is only about one-one hundred thou- 
sandth of the diameter usually assumed for 
the atom. On this basis the atom would 
have a volume a million-billion times larger 
than that of its nucleus, and thus the nu- 
cleus of the atom is much smaller in com- 


“1 Address presented at the Symposium on the 
Structure of Matter at the New York meeting of 
the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science. A bibliography will be found in the fol- 
lowing papers: Jour. American Chemical Society, 
37, 1367-1421 (1915), 39, 856-879 (1917); Philo- 
sophical Magazine, 30, 723-734 (1915). 


oY 


420 


parison with the size of the atom than is 
the sun when compared with the dimen- 
sions of its planetary system. 

The special modification of Rutherford’s 
theory which has met with the most suc- 
cess is that due to Bohr. ‘The very re- 
markable features of this theory have been 
made the subject of Professor Millikan’s 
address, which has already been given, so 
they need not be mentioned here. How- 
ever, in spite of its success, Bohr’s theory 
possesses in common with the other special 
views of atomic structure which have been 
developed, the limitation that its applica- 
tion has been restricted to one special class 
of phenomena, those of radiation, and that 
it is too simple to give a mechanism which 
will act as any except the most simple of 
atoms. In the Bohr atom the negative elec- 
trons external to the nucleus are all sup- 
posed to lie in the same plane with the nu- 
cleus, while the structural relations of or- 
ganic molecules seem to indicate that at 
least the outer electrons do not lie in a 
plane (except when only two in number) 
but that they have a three-dimensional ar- 
rangement. 

It was found by Moseley that if the ele- 
ments are arranged in order according to 
their X-ray spectra, they fall in the same 
order as they do in the periodic system. If 
arranged in this way, beginning with hy- 
drogen as 1, and helium as 2, they are said 
to be arranged according to their atomic 
numbers. In our ordinary system of ele- 
ments there are in all 91 elements from 
helium to uranium inclusive, and in addi- 
tion to these there is hydrogen which makes 
92 in all. Of these 86 or 87 have been dis- 
covered and 6 or 5 remain to be found. 
It is the purpose of this paper to present 
some relations which have been found by 
the writer and his students, which have a 
bearing on the structure of the atoms of 
these elements, upon the problem of their 
stability, and their formation by evolution. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1192 


1. ARE THE ELEMENTS INTRA-ATOMIC COM- 
POUNDS OF HYDROGEN ? 

One of the first suggestions in regard to 
the structure of the atom was made by 
Prout in 1815, or a little over a century 
ago. Prout found, on the basis of his own 
experiments and the more accurate work 
of Gay-Lussac, that if the atomie weight ot 
hydrogen was put as 1.00, the atomic 
weights of the other elements became whole 
numbers as follows: 


PROUT’S ATOMIC WEIGHTS (1815 a.D.) (WITH THE 
1915 ATOMIC WEIGHTS ON HYDROGEN 
BASIS IN PARENTHESES) 


Hydrogen ...... 1.0 (1.000) 
Carboneperys sitet 6 (11.91) 
INatroS ene eerie 14 (13.90) 
Phosphorus ..... 14 (30.78) 
Oxyicenveaneeerirs 16 (15.88) 
Sulphuric 16 (31.82) 
Calcium ey 20 (39.76) 
Sodiumieeenae 24 (22.82) 
rong ee pea 28 (55.41) 
ZING oer teva 32 (64.86) 
Chlorine ........ 36 (35.46) 
Potassium ...... 40 (38.80) 
Bariumieertieic 70 (136.31) 
Modine were smeie 124 (125.94) 


If Prout’s atomic weights had proved ex- 
actly correct, his claim that hydrogen is the 
protyle (porn vAn) or fundamental ele- 
ment, might have seemed justified, but 
when it was found that these weights were 
very far from correct his hypothesis was 
largely discarded. 

The prejudice which existed a few years 
ago against Prout’s idea is well shown by 
a quotation from von Meyer’s “‘ History of 
Chemistry,’’ printed in 1906. 

During the period in which Davy and Gay-Lus- 
sac were carrying on their brilliant work, and be- 
fore the star of Berzelius had attained to its full 
luster, a literary chemical event oceurred which 
made a profound impression upon nearly all the 
chemists of that day, viz., the advancement of 
Prout’s hypothesis. This was one of the factors 
which materially depreciated the atomic doctrine in 
the eyes of many eminent investigators. On ac- 


NoveMBER 2, 1917] 


count of its influence upon the further development 
of the atomic theory this hypothesis must be dis- 
cussed here, although it but seldom happens that 
an idea from which important theoretical concep- 
tions sprang, originated in so faulty a manner as 
it did. 

However, a careful study of the most ac- 
curately determined of the recent atomic 
weights reveals some very remarkable re- 
lationships. If first of all we make the as- 
sumption, as a subject for argument, that 
the heavier atoms are built up from hy- 
drogen atoms, then it is found that the 
atoms are in nearly all cases lighter than 
they should be on the basis of such an hy- 
pothesis. Thus, if the following atoms of 
low atomic weight are considered, it is 
found that nearly all of them weigh 0.77 
per cent. too little. 


TABLE I 

Atoml Difference from Per Cent. 

ANE Welght a Whole Number Variation 
Helium....... 3.97 —0.03 —0.77 
IBoronereriieee 10.92 —0.08 —0.77 
Carbon....... 11.91 —0.09 —0.77 
Nitrogen...... 13.90 —0.10 —0.70 
Oxygen.......}| 15.88 —0.12 —0.77 
Fluorine...... | 18.85 —0.15 —0.77 
Sodium....... 22.82 —0.18 —0.77 


Therefore, if these atoms are built from 
hydrogen atoms, there must be during their 
formation a loss in weight, and presumably 
in mass, equal to 0.77 per cent. This will 
be called the ‘‘packing effect.’? When all 
of the 26 elements from helium of atomic 
number 2, to cobalt (No. 27) are consid- 
ered, it is found that with the exception of 
the four elements, beryllium, magnesium, 
silicon, and chlorine, which have atomic 
weights higher than the corresponding 
nearest whole numbers, the average pack- 
ing effect of the elements is again —0.77 
per cent. This constaney of the pack- 
ing effect suggests that the variation 
is due to some single cause, though the four 
exceptional cases cited above, show that 
there is undoubtedly some other compli- 


SCIENCE 


421 


eating factor. The discovery by Thomson 
and Aston that the similar exceptional case 
of neon is due to the admixture of an iso- 
tope of higher atomic weight suggests that 
it may not be impossible to find a cause for 
the exceptional behavior in the four other 
cases. 

It has formerly seemed difficult to ex- 
plain why the atomic weights referred to 
oxygen (16.00) as a basis are so much 
closer to whole numbers than those referred 
to hydrogen as 1.00, but the explanation is 
indeed very simple from the point of view 
presented here. The closeness of the atomic 
weights on the oxygen basis to whole num- 
bers, is indeed extremely remarkable. 
Thus for the eight elements from helium to 
sodium the average deviation is only 0.02 
unit, or less than the average probable 
error of the atomic weight determinations, 
and for all of the first 27 elements the aver- 
age deviation from a whole number is, 
though more, increased only to 0.09 unit, 
when the sign of the deviation is consid- 
ered. If it is not considered the deviation 
is reduced to 0.01 unit for 21 elements. 
The probability that such values as these 
could be obtained by accident is altogether 
unworthy of consideration. If an oxygen 
atom is a structure built up of 16 hydrogen 
atoms, then according to the ordinary 
theory that mass and weight are strictly 
additive, the weight of an atom of oxygen 
should be exactly 16 times the weight of a 
hydrogen atom. Now, according to the 
present system of atomic weights the 
weight of an atom of hydrogen is taken as 
1.0078, so the oxygen atom should weigh 
16.125. However, it is found to weigh 16.00. 
The difference between 16.125 and 16.000 
is the value of the packing effect, and if 
this effect were exactly the same for all of 
the elements except hydrogen, then the 
choice of a whole number as the atomic 
weight of any one of them, would, of neces- 
sity, cause all of the other atomic weights 


422 


to be whole numbers. Though this is not 
quite true, it is seen that the packing effect 
for oxygen is 0.77 per cent., which is the 
average packing effect for the twenty-one 
elements considered (elements of low atomic 
number). Therefore these elements, which 
have packing effects equal to that of oxy- 
gen, will have whole numbers for their 
atomic weights. Since, too, the packing ef- 
fect is very nearly constant, all of these 21 
elements will have atomic weights close to 
whole numbers. 

While according to our ordinary experi- 
ence mass and weight seem to be additive, 
the question may be raised whether in the 
formation of atoms, which is a process 
which is, up to the present time, outside 
our experience, this is true. There are 
three remarkable facts to be explained: 
first, the atomic weights of the lghter ele- 
ments on the hydrogen basis approximate 
whole numbers; second, the deviations 
from whole numbers are negative, and 
third, these deviations are practically con- 
stant in magnitude. 

It has been already stated that accord- 
ing to the work and calculations of Dar- 
win, and of Geiger and Marsden, the nu- 
cleus of the atom is extremely minute in 
comparison with the size of the atom, so 
that in the nucleus the mass, if the deter- 
mined dimensions of atoms and their nu- 
elei are at all correct, is many thousand 
billion times more concentrated than in the 
atom. If the nucleus is complex, the elec- 
tromagnetic fields of the charged particles 
would be extremely closely intermingled in 
the nucleus, and it would seem reasonable 
to assume that this would affect the mass, 
so that the mass of the whole nucleus would 
not be equal to the sum of the masses of its 
parts. 

Let us take an extremely simple case for 
calculation, and find how closely packed 
the charged particles in a nucleus would 
have to be to cause the observed decrease in 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1192 


weight (0.77 per cent.) which is found for 
most of the atoms. In making such a eal- 
culation, as a guide for our assumptions, 
we have the observed fact that radioactive 
atoms shoot out both positively charged 
alpha particles and negative electrons at 
such high speeds that it seems probable 
that they come from the nucleus of the 
atom. The observed relations between the 
products of the radioactive changes sup- 
port this idea very strongly indeed. Thus 
there seem to emerge from the nuclei of 
complex atoms both positively and nega- 
tively charged particles, and the negatively 
charged particles are found to be negative 
electrons. This point should be empha- 
sized, since many workers on atomic theory 
have endeavored to construct their imagi- 
nary nucleus of positively charged par- 
ticles alone. 

The simplest case for calculation? would 
then be for a nucleus consisting of one 
positive and one negative particle. Let the 
distance between the particles be d, the 
charges respectively e, and e., let the ve- 
locity of the particles be along the straight 
line connecting them and equal to wu. Then 
if c is the velocity of light, the particles 
have a longitudinal momentum which dif- 
fers from the momentum calculated by 
ordinary mechanics for electrically neutral 
particles possessing mass by an amount 
equal to 


a 
Pee 
C2 Gh 


This may be called the mutual electromag- 
netic momentum of such a system of par- 
ticles. The mutual electromagnetic mass 
corresponding to this is 

2 @@2, 2¢ 


2 
ONO ah Orr Se 


since €; = é. 
Coa ed 


2 For this calculation see the following papers by 
Harkins and Wilson: Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, 1, 
277-78 (1915); J. Am. Chem. Soc., 37, 1373-78 
(1915), and Phil. Mag., 30, 725-28 (1915). 


NovEMBER 2, 1917] 


The corresponding mass of one particle is 


where # is the radius of the electron; so 


Mi) PE 


m d 


In the application of this last equation, 
F is to be taken as the radius of the positive 
electron, since it is assumed that it is the 
seat of practically all of the mass of the 
atom. In order to produce a decrease of 
mass equal to 0.77 per cent., which is the 
average decrease in weight as caleulated 
from the atomic weights, the two electrons 
should approach until their distance is 400 
times the radius of the positive electron. 
Thus a packing effect of 0.77 per cent. 
would be produced by a moderately close 
packing of the electrons in the nucleus. 

The packing effect for oxygen, which has 
been taken as the basis for our modern 
atomic weights, is exactly equal to the aver- 
age value given above. If the number rep- 
resenting the atomic weight of hydrogen on 
the oxygen basis, 1.0078 is decreased by 
this percentage amount, it becomes equal to 
1.000, so the oxygen system of atomic 
weights may be considered as a hydrogen 
system, with hydrogen taken as 1.000, but 
where the weight of the hydrogen atom is 
taken after it has been subjected to the 
average packing effect of 0.77 per cent. 
Thus in going over from the hydrogen to 
the oxygen system of atomic weights, the 
chemists who made the change were, with- 
out knowing it, making allowance for the 
average packing effect, for, while the 
atomic weight of hydrogen is 1.0078, the 
atoms heavier than hydrogen have atomic 
weights which are near what they should 
be if they were built up of units of weight 
very close to 1.000. On the other hand, this 
unit of mass must be somewhat variable to 
give the atomic weights as they are, even 
although a part of the variation, in some 


SCIENCE 


423 


cases, may be due to the inaccuracy with 
which the atomic weights are known. This 
leads either to the supposition (1) that the 
atoms are built up of some unknown ele- 
mentary substance, of an atomic weight 
which is slightly variable, but is on the 
average extremely close to 1.000, and which 
does not in any case deviate very far from 
this value, or to the idea (2) which is pre- 
sented in this paper, that the nucleus of a 
known element is the unit of structure. 
The atom of this known element has a mass 
which is close to that of the required unit, 
and it has been proved that the decrease of 
mass involved in the formation of a com- 
plex atom from hydrogen units is in accord 
with the electromagnetic theory. The 
adoption of the first hypothesis would in- 
volve much more complicated relations. It 
would necessitate the existence of another 
elementary substance with an atomic 
weight close to that of hydrogen, it would 
involve a cause for the increase of weight 
in the formation of some atoms, and a de- 
crease in other cases, and it would also in- 
volve the existence of another unit to give 
the hydrogen atom. 

It may be well to consider here the prob- 
ability that the elements from helium to 
cobalt, atomic numbers 2 to 27, may have 
atomic weights as close to whole numbers 
as they are on the oxygen basis, entirely by 
accident. For example we may calculate 
the chance that each of the atomic weights 
should be as close as it is to a whole num- 
ber, and we find that there is one chance in 
five thousand billion billion. Another 
probability is that the sum of the devia- 
tions from whole numbers shall not exceed 
the sum found experimentally. This gives 
the result that there is one chance in fifteen 
million. Thus, in the words of Laplace as 
applied to a ealeulation of probability in 
connection with an astronomical problem, 
that the atoms are built up of units very 
close to one, ‘‘est indiquée avee un pro- 


424 


babilité bien supérieure 4 celle du plus 
grand nombre des faits historiques sur 
lesquels on ne se permet aucune doute.”’ 


THE ATOMS ARE INTRA-ATOMIC HELIUM-HY- 
DROGEN COMPOUNDS 

The atoms of radioactive substances are 

known to shoot off alpha particles with 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1192 


trates the change which occurs in this 
process. Any special element, such as 
radium (which is an extremely active solid, 
with a valence of 2, and belonging there- 
fore to group 2) has its valence reduced by 
two when the atom ejects an alpha par- 
ticle (which carries two positive charges), 
and in this case changes into the inactive 


Potomiun 


Fie 1. 
tive elements. 
number. 


speeds as high as 20,000 miles per second. 
These alpha particles carry two positive 
charges, have an atomic weight of 4.0, and 
when they are collected and take up nega- 
tive electrons, give ordinary helium. They 
may be thought of as the nuclei of helium 
atoms, and seem to be shot out from the 
nucleus of the more complex atom such as 
that of radium or thorium. Fig. 1 illus- 


TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS. 


& RAY CHANGE ————= 
THaLuiua (A 


The a and @ changes of the radio-ac- 


Note that the atoms of even atomic number are more numerous than those of odd atomic 
Thus there are 32 of the former class to 11 of the latter. 


gas, radium emanation or niton. The alpha 
particle has a weight of 4, and niton has 
an atomic weight which is 222, or four less 
than that of radium (226). That this is a 
general rule was discovered by Soddy, and 
it was verified later by Fajans, Russell, von 
Hevesy and Fleck. 

Let us picture the changes which occur 
during the long chain of processes which 


NoveMBeER 2, 1917] 


converts Uranium 2 into Radium B, which 
is a variety (isotope) of the element lead. 
We will assume that the nucleus of a 
uranium 2 atom, so far as its composition, 
but not its constitution, is concerned, Is 
made up of the nucleus of a Radium B 
atom (which nucleus we will designate by 
(RaB),», where the subseript » denotes that 
it is the nucleus only), and 5 a™ particles, 
where the two plus signs serve to remind us 
that the alpha particle carries a double 
positive charge. Then the changes which 
occur, beginning with Uranium 2, and end- 
ing with Radium B, are such that in each 
successive change one of these a** particles 
is emitted by the nucleus. 


SCIENCE 


425 


the fact that there is evidence in the chem- 
ical properties that the number of valence 
electrons decreases by two. According to 
this idea, when the nucleus shoots out an 
a’* particle, the atom, as a whole, loses an 
entire helium atom by the time it becomes 
electrically neutral. That the loss of the 
negative electrons in alpha disintegrations 
has not been detected is probably due to the 
low velocities with which such external 
electrons leave the outer part of the atom. 


THE ELEMENTS OF EVEN ATOMIC NUMBER, OR 
HELIUM SERIES ELEMENTS 

While the alpha disintegrations of atoms 

are known only among the heaviest atoms, 


TABLES 


The Changes in the Composition of the Nuclei of Atoms when they eject Alpha Particles (Nuclei of 


Helium Atoms) of Weight 4, and carrying Two Positive Charges, 


with Corresponding 


Changes in the Non-nuclear Electrons 


| | Number of Inner | Number of 
Group Stonle. Name of Element Toten Composition of Nucleus af Chargeion NOrENTCIERT EN valence) 
—Electrons Electrons 
g2+ (Note 3) 
6 92 Uranium 2 234 (RaB),+ 5at* 82+ 10 = 92 86 6 
82+ : 
4 90 | Ionium 230 (RaB)n+ 4att 82+ 8=90 86 4 
82 
2 88 Radium 226 (RaB)a+ 3a** 82+ 6=88 | 86 2 
82+ 
0 86 | Niton 222 (RaB),+ 2att 82+ 4= 86 86 0 
(Decrease here 
§2-+ by 8) [lean 
6 84 Radium A (Isotope} 218 (RaB),n+ lat* 82+ 2=84 78 6 
of Polonium) 
82+ 
4 82 Radium B 214 (RaB)n 82+ 0=82 78 4 


According to this table it would seem 
that when the nucleus of an atom loses an 
a** particle, and thus decreases its positive 
charge by two, the outer atom must lose 
two negative electrons in order to keep the 
atom electrically neutral. That this is 
actually the case seems to be indicated by 


8 The most doubtful feature of this table is the 
assumption that the nuclear charge is equal to the 
atomic number, but the insertion of 92 + » for 92, 
of 90 + u for 90, etc., where uw is a whole number, 
and probably either zero or else very small, re- 
moves this doubtful feature. 


and extend downward from element ninety- 
two (uranium) to element eighty-two 
(lead), it occurred to me several years ago 
that this system undoubtedly should ex- 
tend downward still further, and quite pos- 
sibly even to the lightest elements. The 
indication that the system still holds 
should be found in the atomie weights, for 
these should increase in steps of four be- 
tween the atoms of even number. Thus the 
atomie weights of the lighter elements, if 
exactly this same system holds, should be 
as follows: 


426 
Atomic Number Atomic Weight 
2 4 
4 8 
6 12 
8 16 
10 20 
12 24 
14 28 
16 32 


Now, the extremely remarkable fact is 
that the atomic weights given above are the 
atomic weights of the even numbered ele- 
ments, with only one exception. 

If the twenty-six elements from helium 
to cobalt (atomic weights from 4 for 
helium to 59 for cobalt), inclusive, are con- 
sidered, it might be assumed that the even 
numbered, or one half of the elements, 
should have atomic weights divisible by 4. 
Indeed, while there are two exceptions to 
the exact system, just 13 of these elements 
do have such atomic weights, and every 
possible multiple of 4 but one is taken, as 
is shown in the following table: 

1 XxX 4=helium 


2xX4=—missing, and 
replaced by2 X 4+1 


8 X 4= sulphur 
9X 4=missing, but 
replaced by 10 X 4= 
argon 
10 X 4=ealeium 
11 x 4=seandium 


3 X 4—= carbon 
4X 4= oxygen 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No, 1192 


12 X 4= titanium 
13 * 4= chromium 
14 <* 4= iron 


B 


agnesium 


Thus, since the even-numbered elements 


of high atomic weight give off helium atoms 


when they disintegrate, and in such a way 
that for each helium atom lost the heavy 
atom changes into the atom of the element 
which has an atomic number which is 
smaller by 2; and since the even num- 
bered elements of low atomic weight have 
atomic weights which increase by four, or 
the atomic weight of helium, for each in- 
crease of 2 in the atomic number, the nat- 
ural assumption is that the even numbered 
elements are compounds of helium. To dis- 
tinguish them from chemical compounds 
they may be called intra-atomic. At least 
for the elements of low atomic number, 
their general formula is nHe’, where the 
prime is added to indicate an intra-atomic 
compound. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ODD ATOMIC NUMBER, OR 
ELEMENTS OF THE HELIUM-H, SERIES 
If the odd-numbered elements, beginning 
with atomic number 38, or lithium (atomic 
weight —7), are built up according to a 


TABLE III 
The Helium—H, System of Atomic Structure H=1.0078 
i 0 1 2 | 3 4 5 6 7 8 

At.No.| 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 

He Li Be B Cc N oO F 
Ser.2..| He | He+H; | 2He+H |2He+H;3| 3He 3He+ He 4He 4He+ Hs 
Theor..| 4.00 7.00 9.0 11.0 12.00 14.00 16.00 19.00 
Det. ..| 4.00 6.94 9.1 11.0 12.00 14.01 16.00 19.00 
At.No.| 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 

Ne Na Mg | Al Si 12 Ss Cl 
Ser.3..| 5He |5He-+ Hz 6He 6He+Hs| 7He | 7He+Hs 8He 8He+ Hs 
Theor..| 20.0 23.0 24.00 27.0 28.0 31.00 32.00 35.00 
Det. ..| 20.0 23.0 24.32 27.1 28.3 31.02 32.07 35.46 

— | 

At.No.| 18 OMe ene 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 

A K | Ca Se pba V Cr Mn Fe Co 
Ser.4..)| 10He|9He+H;| 10He 11He 12He| 12He+H; | 13He} 13He+H; | 14He} 14He+ Hs 
Theor..| 40.0 39.00 40.00 44.0 48.0 51.0 52.0 55.00 56.00 59.00 
Det. ..| 39.9 39.10 40.07 44.1 48.1 51.0 52.0 54.93 55.84 58.97 


Increment from Series 2 to Series 3 = 4He. 
K and Ca). 


Increment from Series 3 to Series 45 He (4 He for 
Inerement from Series 4 to Series 5—= 6He. 


NOVEMBER 2, 1917] 
similar system, their atomic weights should 
be as follows: 


Atomic Number Atomic Weight 


3 7 
5 11 
7 15 
9 19 
11 23 
13 27 
15 31 
uly 35 
19 39 


There is here again the remarkable fact 
that with one exception these are the atomic 
weights of the odd-numbered elements. 
The general formula for the odd-numbered 
elements may be expressed as nHe’ + H,’. 
From the numerical standpoint it will be 
seen that the system here proposed corre- 
sponds to the formulas found for the 
atomie weights by Rydberg in 1897. He 
found that most of the atomic weights can 
be expressed by 2m or 2m —1, where m is a 
whole number. 

The proposed structure for the 26 ele- 
ments of low atomic number is presented 
in Table III. While it is not meant that 
in every minute detail this table is neces- 
sarily correct, very strong evidence has 
been found for its validity as a general re- 
lationship. Wiutam D. Hargis 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

(To be continued) 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
CHEMICALS AND WAR IN ENGLAND 

Proressor W. J. Pops, addressing a meeting 
of teachers at the Regent-street Polytechnic 
on October 6, according to a report in the 
London Times, said that Germany prepared 
for war by the establishment of a huge chem- 
ical industry, which was built up about the 
coal-tar industry, and then by exporting a 
very large proportion of the world’s require- 
ments of coal-tar colors, and pharmaceutical 
and photographie products. 

That success was achieved in spite of the 


SCIENCE 


427 


fact that England once possessed the whole 
of the heavy chemical industry of the world. 
We formerly produced practically all the 
nitric and sulphuric acids, and the greater 
part of the alkali used throughout the world. 
That had been taken from us as the result of 
Germany’s foresight and exploitation of sci- 
entific ability. The coal-tar industry was 
established originally in this country. Until 
ten years ago Germany was practically de- 
pendent on us for erude coal-tar, and for the 
simpler first products separated from coal-tar. 

Alluding to the establishment of the depart- 
ment for scientific and industrial research 
with an endowment of £1,000,000, Professor 
Pope said: The question we want answered is 
why that experiment was not made twenty 
years ago, at a time when it would have beem 
undoubtedly successful in preventing the 
horrors of the last three years? We have suf- 
fered in the past from the exclusively British 
method of making the specialist entirely sub- 
servient to the administrator, the adminis- 
trator being generally chosen because he is 
available, because he is politically acceptable, 
and because he knows nothing whatever about 
the subject which is to be administered and is 
therefore not likely to be prejudiced by any 
previous convictions. That process of ap- 
pointing someone who knows nothing, to 
supervise the work of some one who does know 
how to do the job, seems to have been at the 
bottom of a great many of our misfortunes in 
the past. 

Even in 1915 the government applied this 
same method to reestablish the coal-tar in- 
dustry in this country. An organization was 
established in which all the people in control 
were men who knew nothing whatever about 
chemistry or science, and naturally enough 
the government organization has proved not 
only a great failure, but has had the further 
effect of inhibiting the reestablishment of the 


-coal-tar industry. That is to say, the organi- 


zation apparently was to do everything that 
was necessary, and consequently private effort 
was to a considerable extent hampered, and 
could not get on with the important problem 
of reestablishing this fine chemical industry. 


428 


Such prevalent, but entirely mistaken, activity 
arises, I think, from a lack of education. If 
it were generally demanded that no person 
should be regarded as decently educated who 
had not mastered the rudimentary principles 
of natural science and of scientific method, 
this farce, staged for the amusement of the 
whole world, in connection with this coal-tar 
color question, would have been impossible. 

The law had absorbed a great proportion of 
the youth of the nation who were most fitted 
for a scientific career. The young man who 
was capable of advancing knowledge, either 
in science or in any other branch of learning, 
must be taught to regard it as his duty, not 
to use his abilities simply for the sake of 
acquiring an easy and comfortable position in 
life. Above all, we must prevent the young 
man of the type I have named from going 
into such a blind alley occupation as that of 
the law, with the ultimate prospect of quitting 
the world, having left nothing behind, and 
having made no contribution whatever to its 
progress. 

Professor Armstrong, who presided, declared 
that the present position of chemistry in this 
country was deplorable, owing to government 
ignorance and indifference. The Board of 
Trade had, advisedly and of set purpose, it 
would seem, put all scientific advice aside, and 
had taken measures which had not only proved 
a failure but which had actually retarded the 
development of the dyestuff industry. The 
government seems to be bent on putting us 
back, body and soul, into the hands of the 
Germans, in so far as the higher interests of 
chemistry are concerned. 


FACULTY CHANGES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS 
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 


Ar the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology the faculty changes have introduced 
some new problems since there has been so 
much demand by the U. S. government and by 
industrial corporations related to the war for 
men of technical skill. So great has been this 
draft that in the department of electrical engi- 
neering one third of the staff has been called 
away, in mechanical engineering a dozen men 
have gone into war work while civil engineer- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1192 


ing, chemistry, naval architecture and the 
other departments have sustained serious 
losses. On the other hand, the demands for 
instruction have not only not decreased, for 
the registration is but slightly less than 
normal with much the same distribution 
through courses, but are to a considerable ex- 
tent greater, for the institute is furnishing 
instruction in academic and engineering lines 
to the schools of aeronautics for the army and 
the navy, and is carrying on no less than 
three schools for deck officers and the school 
for marine engineers. 

Changes already announced include the re- 
tirement of Professor Charles R. Cross, with 
the title of professor emeritus, and the ap- 
pointment of Professor E. B. Wilson, of the 
department of mathematics, to the chair of 
mathematical physics and head of the depart- 
ment of physics. Professor C. L. Norton has 
been appointed professor of industrial physics, 
and Dr. Charles R. Mann has been appointed 
professor of education and educational re- 
search. 

The following is the list of promotions: 


Instructor A. L. Goodrich to assistant professor 
of mechanical drawing and descriptive geometry; 
Instructors F. L. Hitchcock and Joseph Lipka to 
assistant professor of mathematics; Instructor H. 
P. Hollnagel to assistant professor of physics; In- 
structor R. E. Rogers to assistant professor of 
English; Assistant A. B. English to instructor in 
machine tool work; Assistant W. T. Haines to in- 
structor in electrical engineering. 

The special lecturers and teachers thus far 
named are, William S. Franklin in physics and 
electrical engineering, Eliot Putnam in architec- 
tural history, Charles R. Gow on foundations, Ed- 
ward F. Rockwood on concrete design, and T. W. 
Sprague on electricity in mining. 

The appointments of new men to places in the 
institute instructing staff include: In civil engi- 
neering, James B. Newman to be assistant. In 
mechanical engineering, Robert DeCourcey Ward, 
DeWitt M. Taylor, to be instructors; Chester A. 
Rogers, Andrew J. Ferretti, John A. Lunn, Paul 
Hatch, and H. ©. Parker to be assistants. In 
mining and metallurgy, Frank H. Ellsworth and 
William A. Wissler, to be assistants. In architec- 
ture, Paul W. Norton to be assistant. In chemis- 
try and chemical engineering, John B. Dickson, 


NOVEMBER 2, 1917] 


Henry W. Stuckeln, Charles R. Park, Charles M. 
Wareham; Ralph D. McIntire and Earl P. Steven- 
son to be instructors, and Roger B. Brown, James 
F. Maquire, Jr., Alden D. Nute, Chandler T. 
White, Walter G. Whitman, Edward Zeitfuchs, 
Louise P. Johnson, Frank F. Hansen, Earle E. 
Richardson and A. G. Richards to be assistants. 
Amy Walker to be research assistant in chemistry 
and Duncan A. MacInnes research associate and 
Leon Adler, research assistant in physical chem- 
istry. In electrical engineering, Edwin A. Ekdahl, 
and Clifford E. Lansil, to be assistants. In biol- 
ogy and public health, Dr. Francis H. Slack, to be 
instructor, and Elmer H. Heath, Jr., to be assist- 
ant. In physics, Arthur C. Hardy and Joseph DeL, 
McManus to be assistants. In naval architecture, 
P. L. Rhodes to be assistant, and Edwin E. Aldrin, 
George M. Denkinger and Edward P. Warner, to 
be assistants in aeronautical engineering. In elec- 
trochemistry, Casimiro Lana to be assistant. In 
mechanical drawing, Charles R. Mabie and Walter 
C. F, Gartner to be assistants. In mathematics, 
W. H. Wilson to be instructor. In business man- 
agement, Erwin H. Schell to be assistant pro- 
fessor. In English and modern languages, Frank 
L. Hewitt, Penfield Roberts and Arthur L. Mc- 
Cobb to be instructors. 


THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AND THE 
ARMY MEDICAL SERVICE 
Forty-two per cent. of the teaching staff of 
the school of medicine, University of Pitts- 
burgh, have enlisted in the medical service of 
the government. The following men are in 
Base Hospital No. 27: 


Surgery.—Major Robert T. Miller, professor of 
surgery; Captain Paul R. Sieber, assistant pro- 
fessor of surgery; Captain Stanley S. Smith, as- 
sistant professor of ophthalmology; Captain John 
R. Simpson, assistant professor of otology; Cap- 
tain Edward J. MecCague, instructor in surgery; 
First Lieutenant J. W. Robinson, instructor in 
surgery; Captain Eben W. Fiske, demonstrator in 
orthopedic surgery; First Lieutenant R. J. Frodey, 
instructor in gynecology; First Lieutenant John H. 
Wagner, demonstrator in surgery; First Lieuten- 
ant Bender Z. Cashman, instructor in surgery. 

Medicine.—Major James D. Heard, professor of 
medicine; Major T. S. Arbuthnot, associate pro- 
fessor of medicine; Major Howard G. Schleiter, 
assistant professor of medicine; First Lieutenant 
R. R. Snowden, instructor in medicine; First Lieu- 
tenant A. H. Colwell, instructor in medicine; First 
Lieutenant C. B. Maits, demonstrator in medicine; 


SCIENCE 


429 


First Lieutenant A. P. D’Zmura, demonstrator in 
medicine, 

Laboratory.—Captain H. H. Permar, instructor 
in pathology; First Lieutenant F. M. Jacob, in- 
structor in immunology. 

Registrar—Captain Edward W. zur Horst, dem- 
onstrator in medicine. 


The following men from the teaching staff 
have received commissions in the Medical 
Officers Reserve Corps: 


Dr. R. H. Boots, Mr. J. Garfield Houston, 
Dr. D. Hartin Boyd, Dr. T. D. Jenny, 

Dr, Ewing W. Day, Dr. H. 8. Kenny, 

Dr. A. W. Duff, Dr. F. V. Lichtenfels, 


Dr. R. M. Entwisle, Dr. George C. Johnston, 
Dr. Wade Carson, Dr. M. B. Magoffin, 
Dr. 8. K. Fenollosa, Dr. C. H. Marcy, 

Dr. J. W. Fredette, Dr. E. W. Meredith, 
Dr. H. C. Flood, Dr. H. T. Price, 

Dr. Carl Goehring, Dr. R. V. Robinson, 
Dr. J. B. Gold, Dr. David Silver, 

Dr. J. P. Griffith, Dr. H. W. Stevens, 

Dr. J. L. Gilmore, Dr. W. C. White, 

Dr. R. T. Hood, Dr. E. E, Wible. 


Dr. F. H. Harrison, 


THE WAR AND NAVY DEPARTMENTS AND THE 
COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 

AN executive order has been issued trans- 
ferring to the service and jurisdiction of the 
War Department and the Navy Department 
certain vessels, equipment and personnel of 
the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. 
It reads as follows: 


In accordance with the authority vested in me 
by the ‘‘Act to temporarily increase the commis- 
sioned and warrant and enlisted strength of the 
Navy and Marine Corps and for other purposes,’’ 
approved May 22, 1917, I Woodrow Wilson, Presi- 
dent of the United States of America, do hereby 
declare that a national emergency exists and do 
direct that there be transferred to the service and 
jurisdiction of the Navy Department for tempo- 
rary use the following vessels, including equipment 
and personal other than commissioned officers 
thereof: Surveyor, Isis, Bache. 

Also there shall be transferred to the service and 
jurisdiction of the Navy Department the follow- 
ing named persons now part of the commissioned 


personnel of the Coast and Geodetic Survey: 


William E. Parker, 
Nicholas H. Heck, 
Clifford G. Quillian, 
Paul C: Whitney, 
Francis H. Hardy, 
Raymond S. Patton, 
Gilbert T. Rude, 


Robert F. Luce, 
Thomas J. Maher, 
Francis G. Engle, 
Leon O. Colbert, 
Harry A. Seran, 
Paul M. Trueblood, 
Richard R. Lukens, 


430 


Arthur J. Ela, 
Arthur Joachims, 
Harold A. Cotton, 
Alfred L. Giacomini, 
George C. Mattison, 
Fritz C. Nyland, 
Eustace 8S. Walker, 
Harrison R. Bartlett, 
William V. Hagar, 
Kenneth T. Adams, 
Raymond V. Miller, 
Frederic L. Peacock, 


Ray L. Schoppe, 
Conrad T. Bussell, 
Leroy P. Raynor, 
Gardiner Luce, 
Lyman D. Graham, 
Stanley T. Barker, 
Leo C. Wilder, 
Paul V. Lane, 
Wilmer O. Hinkley, 
George H. Durgin, 
Charles K. Green, 
George L. Bean. 

Also there shall be transferred to the service and 
jurisdiction of the War Department, and I do 
hereby appoint and direct that they be commis- 
sioned and ordered to active duty as of date of 
this order, in the Officer’s Reserve Corps in the 
grades set opposite their names, the following 
named persons now part of the commissioned per- 
sonnel of the Coast and Geodetic Survey: 

John T. Watkins, captain, U. S. R., 

Carey V. Hodgson, captain, U. S. R., 

John H. Peters, captain, U. 8. R., 

John D. Powell, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Isaiah M. Dailey, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Otis W. Swainson, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

George D. Cowie, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Ernest E. Reese, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Frank S. Borden, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Max Steinberg, first lieutenant, U. 8S. R., 

Harry T. Kelsh, Jr., first lieutenant, U.S. R., 

Ernest W. Hickelberg, first lieutenant, U. S. R. 

Arthur S. Hallberg, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

William H. Clark, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Bert OC. Freeman, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Raymond A. Wheeler, second lieutenant, U.S. R., 

Andrew C. Witherspoon, second lieutenant, U. 
S. B., 

Herbert R. Grummann, second lieutenant, U. 
S. R., 

Roland K. Bennett, second lieutenant, U. 8S. R., 

Max O. Witherbee, second lieutenant, U. 8. R., 

Payson A. Perrin, second lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Aaron L. Shalowitz, second lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Roland D. Horne, second lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Robert J. Hole, second lieutenant, U.S. R., 

Frederick E. Joekel, second lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Harrold W. Pease, second lieutenant, U.S. R., 

Benjamin Galos, second lieutenant, U. 8. R., 

John W. Cox, second lieutenant, U. 8. R., 

George R. Hartley, second lieutenant, U. S. R., 


Also there shall be transferred to the service and 
jurisdiction of the War Department, and I do 
hereby appoint and direct that they be eommis- 
sioned and ordered to active duty as of date of 
this order in the Officer’s Reserve Corps in the 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1192 


grades set opposite their names, the following 
named persons now part of the personnel of the 
Coast and Geodetic Survey: 

Edmund P. Ellis, captain, U. 8. R., 

James W. McGuire, captain, U. S. R., 

Earl F. Church, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Osear S. Adams, first lieutenant, U.S. R., 

Perey B. Castles, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Charles A. Mourhess, first lieutenant, U.S. R., 

Walter D. Lambert, first lieutenant, U. S. R., 

Walter N. McFarland, second lieutenant, U. 
S. R., 

S. L. Rosenberg, second lieutenant, U. 8. R., 

H. 8. Rappleye, second lieutenant, U. S. R. 

The War and Navy Departments shall return to 
the service and jurisdiction of the Department of 
Commerce any or all of the material or personnel 
of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey 
transferred by this order when directed by me so 
to do. Wooprow WILSON 

THE WHITE HOUSE, 

24 September, 1917 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

Pans are under way for the Pittsburgh 
meeting of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science from December 28 
to January 2. The Carnegie Institute, the 
Carnegie Institute of Technology and the 
University of Pittsburgh are uniting in pre- 
paring to entertain the association. Dr. W. 
J. Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum, 
is chairman of the committee on arrange- 
ments, and S. B. Linhart, secretary of the 
University of Pittsburgh, is secretary of the 
committee. Secretaries of affiliated societies 
and of other organizations meeting at this 
time are requested to send to the secretary as 
soon as possible the approximate number of 
members of each organization who expect to 
attend; the time for which meetings are to 
be arranged; also any social functions which 
will be included in their plans; and also 
whether lantern or moving picture equipment 
will be required for any of these meetings. 
Information in regard to entertainment, hotel 
rates, etc., can be secured from the secretary. 

Tue Bell Memorial, erected in honor of 
Alexander Graham Bell and his invention in 
1874, of the telephone, was unveiled on Oc- 
tober 21, at Brantford, by the Duke of Deyon- 


NOVEMBER 2, 1917] 


shire, governor general of Canada. Mr. Bell 
took part in the ceremonies. The memorial is 
the work of W. S. Allward of Toronto. It is 
on the Bell homestead, dedicated as the Alex- 
ander Graham Bell gardens. W. F. Cock- 
shutt, M.P., originator of the plan, and presi- 
dent of the Bell Memorial Association, de- 
scribed Mr. Bell’s work resulting in the send- 
ing of the first message over a real line in 
1875 between Brantford and Paris, Ont. 


Tuer Albert Medal conferred recently on Mr. 
Orville Wright by the Royal Society was pre- 
sented to him by Lord Northcliffe on Oc- 
tober 27. 


Temporary Brigadier-General Auckland 
Campbell Geddes, M.D., professor of anatomy 
in McGill University, has had conferred on 
him the honor of Knight Commander of the 
Order of the Bath. Dr. Geddes is now di- 
rector of recruiting in England. 


In the department of chemical engineering of 
the University of Michigan all but one mem- 
ber of the faculty has left for active service. 
Every effort made by the university to replace 
them temporarily proved unavailing, owing to 
the unprecedented demand for men in this 
branch. The situation became so acute that 
several manufacturing concerns of the state, 
who employ expert chemical engineers, and 
the Michigan Agricultural College came to 
the aid of the university and it opens with a 
complete staff in this department. Dr. C. D. 
Holley, of the White Lead and Color Works, 
of Detroit, will act as head of the department 
during the absence of Professor A. H. White. 
Professor W. Platt Wood, of the chemical 
engineering faculty of the Michigan Agri- 
cultural College, has also been given leave of 
absence for the entire year. In addition the 
university has secured the services of J. C. 
Brier, of the Holland, Michigan, Chemical 
Company, and C. F. Smart, of the United 
States Graphite Company, of Saginaw. 


A pivision of the Food Administration 
under the direction of Charles W. Merrill, of 
San Francisco, has been created to cover the 
chemicals involved in the production and con- 
servation of foods. This division will co- 


SCIENCE 


431 


operate with the other chemical committees 
of the government in their activities looking 
to the control and allocation of chemicals used 
as insecticides, fertilizers, and in refrigeration 
and other preservative methods. 

Suvce the opening of the war Professor John 
Zeleny of the University of Minnesota has 
been engaged in perfecting devices for sub- 
marine detection, and is serving on a board 
for making practical tests at the submarine 
base at New London of other devices which 
have been submitted to the government for 
the detection of submarines. This work is 
still in progress. 

Dean Grorce B. Franxrorrer, of the school 
of chemistry of the University of Minnesota, 
and a member of the research committee of 
the Minnesota Public Safety Commission, has 
been commissioned major in the ordnance 
department of the army and will be given a 
leave of absence to attend to the duties of his 
new position. 

Proressor Cuartes W. Copp, associate pro- 
fessor of mathematics in Amherst College, has 
been granted leave of absence for one year to 
enter the aviation work of the government. 
He will hold a position in the Bureau of In- 
struction that supervises the teaching in the 
eight ground schools for aviators. 

Masor Dana H. Crissy, for four years pro- 
fessor of mathematics at West Point, has been 
appointed commandant of the government 
school of aeronautics at Princeton. 

Dr. Frank C. Hammonp, who is connected 
with the Samaritan Hospital, has been ap- 
pointed a member of the board of health of 
Philadelphia to serve during the absence in 
France of Dr. Alexander C. Abbott, who en- 
tered the Army Medical Corps several months 
ago. 

Winiiam H. Warren, professor of chemistry 
in Wheaton College, Norton, Mass., and cap- 
tain in the Quartermaster Corps, United 
States Reserve, has been placed on active duty 
and stationed at Camp Hancock, Augusta, 
Ga. 

Proressor Grorce C. Wurepie, of Harvard 
University, and Professor C.-E. A. Winslow, 


432 


of the Medical School of Yale University, 
have returned from Russia, where they were 
members of the American Red Cross Mission 
to assist in the sanitary survey. 


Proressor WALLACE C. Sapine, Harvard ex- 
change professor at Paris last year, has re- 
turned to America. 


Proressor Dr. THEopoRE Kocuer, chief sur- 
geon of the Inselspital, Berne, Switzerland, 
and professor at the medical faculty of the 
University of Berne, died on July 27. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

THE teaching hospital of the University of 
Nebraska college of medicine was dedicated 
with appropriate ceremonies on October 17, 
the principal speaker being Chancellor Avery 
of the university. The new structure, now in 
full operation with a capacity of 119 beds, 
was made possible by three legislative appro- 
priations, $150,000 for the building; $65,000 
for equipment and $100,000 for a biennial 
maintenance. 


Proressor Henry OC. ANDERSON, of the me- 
chanical engineering department, of the Uni- 
versity of Michigan, who has been on leave of 
absence for the past two years, has been ap- 
pointed head of the department in place of 
Professor John R. Allen, who resigned to ac- 
cept the deanship in the college of engineering 
at the University of Minnesota. 


Proressor O. F. Curtis Ritey, who has 
been in charge of the department of biology 
at the State Normal College, Milwaukee, Wis- 
consin, for the past four years, has been ap- 
pointed special lecturer in animal behavior, in 
the department of forest zoology, at the New 
York State College of Forestry at Syracuse 
University. 


Dr. L. G. Rowntree, of the University of 
Minnesota, has declined the deanship of the 
Illinois school of medicine. His salary at 
Minnesota has been increased to six thousand 
dollars and an additional appropriation has 
been made for the further development of his 
department of medicine. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1192 


Dr. Cart Rosrnow (Ph.D., Chicago 717), 
and Dr. Jacob Kantor (Ph.D. 714, Ph.D. 717, 
Chicago) have been appointed instructors in 
the department of psychology of the Univer- 
sity of Chicago. 


AT the college of medicine of the University 
of Nebraska Dr. Maurice I. Smith, for several 
years connected with the department of 
pharmacology at the University of Michigan, 
has been placed in charge of the department 
of pharmacology. Mr. J. A. Kittleson, of the 
University of Minnesota, has accepted the 
position of assistant professor of anatomy and 
Dr. S. A. Rubnitz has been made instructor 
in biochemistry. 


At Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, 
E. Flammer, Ph.D. (Harvard), has been ap- 
pointed assistant professor of physics; O. F. 
S. Smith, M.Se. (Pennsylvania State) has 
been made lecturer in the same department. 
In the department of geology, Kirtley F. 
Mather, Ph.D. (Chicago), has been promoted 
from associate professor to professor of 
paleontology. 


Dr. Ouar Bercrem of the department of 
physiological chemistry of Jefferson Medical 
College, has been promoted to associate in 
that department. 


Dr. A. E. Surpitey, Master of Christs Col- 
lege, Cambridge University, has succeeded to 
the office of vice chancellor of the University, 
in succession to the Rey. T. C. Fitzpatrick, 
president of Queen’s College. 


DISCUSSION AND. CORRESPONDENCE 
ALGONKIAN BACTERIA AND POPULAR 


SCIENCE 

THERE are two points in Dr. R. S. Breed’s 
communication of September 7 entitled “ Pop- 
ular Science” to which I would like to eall at- 
tention. 

First, my obvious error in the citation from 
page 292 of The Scientific Monthly. How this 
non sequitur slipped through my reading and 
that of Dr. I. J. Kligler I do not know. It is 
a wholly illogical statement which is corrected 
and replaced in the following sentence of my 


NoveMBER 2, 1917] 


recently published work “The Origin and 
Evolution of Life,” where it reads (p. 85) as 
follows: 

, The great geologic antiquity even of certain 
lower forms of bacteria which feed on nitrogen is 
proved by the discovery, announced by Waleott in 
1915, of a species of pre-Paleozoie fossil bacteria 
attributed to ‘‘Micrococcus,’’ but probably re- 
lated rather to the existing Nitroso coccus, which 
derives its nitrogen from ammonium salts. 


Perhaps the words “rendered probable” 
would be more accurate than the word 
“»yroved’’ in the sentence as it stands. 

As to the second point, Dr. Breed raises the 
question whether the fossil markings described 
by Dr. Walcott in the fossil limestone are 
actually bacteria. On this point there can be 
no doubt whatever. Walcott reproduced for 
comparison an illustration of Micrococcus 
from the Encyclopedia Britannica and re- 
ferred the Algonkian bacteria to Micrococcus 
sp. undt = species undetermined. 


A 


At my request this very interesting deter- 
mination by Walcott was taken up by Dr. 
Kligler, and after a careful investigation he 
made the series of special preparations of bac- 
teria which are reproduced (B-F’) in the ac- 
companying figure together with parts of Wal- 
cott’s two figures (A). Dr. Kligler came to 


SCIENCE 


433 


the conclusion that the Algonkian type was 
closer to the existing Nitroso coccus, which de- 
rives its nitrogen from ammonium salts, than 
to Micrococcus. The similarity between the 
Algonkian bacteria (A) and some recent forms 
of nitrifiers (B, C) is shown in the compari- 
son of the parts indicated by arrows in the 
figure. 

A comparison of these fossil and recent prep- 
arations appears to bear out my statement, 
made on the authority of Dr. Kligler, that 

The cell structure of the Algonkian and of the re- 
cent Nitroso coccus bacteria is very primitive and 
uniform in appearance, the protoplasm being 
naked or unprotected. 


Here the word “ relatively” might have been 
inserted. 

My entire chapter on bacteria was pre- 
pared with the kind cooperation of Dr. I. J. 
Kligler. Walcott’s discovery was cited as in- 
dicative of the antiquity of bacteria and my 


GE 


statement was intended to be hypothetical and 
not categorical. Dr. Breed may be correct in 
the assumption that the fossil bacterial im- 
pressions represent forms related to the denitri- 
fying bacteria and not to the nitrogen fixers or 
nitrifiers, as Dr. Kligler has suggested. The 
acceptance of his view would strengthen rather 


434 


than weaken the general thesis that bacteria 
represent a very ancient form of life, for the 
denitrifying bacteria are generally conceded to 
be higher in the scale of bacterial life than 
either the nitrogen fixers or the nitrifiers. If 
organisms related to the higher denitrifiers ex- 
isted in the Algonkian, is it not reasonable to 
assume that simpler forms existed earlier in 
geologic time? In other words, the hypothet- 
ical point as to whether the Algonkian bac- 
teria represent forms related to the nitrifiers 
or the denitrifiers is immaterial to the conclu- 
sion regarding the great antiquity of bacteria. 

As to the matter of “popular science” in 
general the popularizer always runs into 
danger as soon as he leaves his own special 
field of research. No one is more conscious of 
such pitfalls than myself; it is difficult enough 
to avoid pitfalls in one’s own field without 
venturing into others. At the same time I feel 
very strongly that little or no progress will be 
made in the principles of biology (as distin- 
guished from discoveries in special fields of re- 
search) unless biologists have the courage to 
venture occasionally into the fields of physics, 
chemistry, physiology and zoology in order to 
look at life from a broader and more distant 
point of view. Such an attempt I have made 
in the Hale Lectures which Dr. Breed cites 
and which now appear in a somewhat more 
carefully considered form in “The Origin 
and Evolution of Life.’ On every topic I 
have sought and found the cooperation and 
criticism of other workers—in physics of 
Pupin, in chemistry of Gies and Clarke, in 
zoology of Wilson, in astronomy of Hale and 
Russell, in botany of Goodspeed and Howe, 
and many others. Although every effort has 
been made to guard against errors, it may be 
that others have slipped in, but I take it for 
granted that specialists will not mistake a 
popular work for a work of reference nor 
imagine that I presume to speak with the au- 
thority of a specialist in any field but my own. 


Henry FamrizrLpD OSBORN 


THE TEACHING OF OPTICS 


Tuer recent discussion in the columns of 
Science as to the best method to be followed 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1192 


in presenting the fundamental laws and con- 
cepts of mechanics to the student has been 
followed with much interest by teachers of 
physics. To the writer it seems equally im- 
portant that attention be directed to another 
branch of physics, and the question raised 
as to whether there should not be a radical 
change in our methods of introducing the stu- 
dent to the subject of optics. 

It is generally conceded by those qualified 
to speak with authority that the establish- 
ment of the electromagnetic theory of light 
represents one of the greatest achievements 
of modern science. Yet in spite of the far- 
reaching importance of this principle, the 
average student who has completed his col- 
lege course in general physics, or even in 
many cases more advanced special courses, is 
entirely unfamiliar with the meaning or the 
significance of the electromagnetic theory. 
This need occasion no surprise, however, in 
view of the methods commonly employed at 
present in teaching the subject of optics. For 
certainly a text-book which either does not 
mention the electromagnetic theory of light 
or relegates it to a footnote or inconspicuous 
paragraph is hardly calculated to inspire the 
student with any great respect for that 
theory. This criticism applies, not to our 
text-books alone, but with equal force to the 
ordinary lecture course. 

In order to investigate the justice of this 
claim that one of the most important prin- 
ciples of modern physics is almost entirely 
ignored in our present system of teaching 
and is seldom accorded the attention its im- 
portance demands, the writer recently made 
a careful examination of ten representative 
text-books of physics, all of them published 
within the past decade and including prac- 
tically all, so far as known to the writer, 
which are very extensively used in our Amer- 
ican colleges and universities at the present 
time. As a result of this examination it 
was found that in three of these text-books 
no reference whatever is made to the electro- 
magnetic theory; three other authors content 
themselves with a bare mention of the theory; 


NovEMBER 2, 1917] 


in four of the books an attempt is made to 
state a few of the more important conse- 
quences of the theory, but in practically every 
case this discussion is limited to one or two 
paragraphs, either at the very end of the book 
or at the end of the subject of electricity. 
(It is a striking fact that nearly all of these 
authors who deem the electromagnetic theory 
of light worthy of any comment at all, dis- 
cuss it, not where we would naturally look 
for it—under the head of “ Light ”—but 
under “ Electricity,” and then proceed calmly 
to ignore it when “Light” is taken up!) In 
only one of the text-books examined is there 
any attempt at the outset to make clear to 
the student what light really is or to bring 
out the fact that there is an intimate con- 
nection between optical and electrical phe- 
nomena. In not one of the books is the elec- 
tromagnetic theory made the basis of the 
treatment of light. 

In most of our text-books there is a chapter 
entitled “The Nature of Light” or “ Theo- 
ries of Light,” in which pains are taken to re- 
late the triumph of the wave theory of light 
over the corpuscular theory, but in practically 
every case the author stops short before com- 
ing to the crux of the whole matter; there is 
no suggestion as to what kind of waves light 
waves are. This is a question which is sure 
to occur to the student, if he be of a normally 
inquiring turn of mind, but his perplexity is 
left unanswered. Certainly no teacher would 
think of omitting from a discussion of sound 
waves an explanation of what kind of waves 
sound waves are; yet this is the common pro- 
cedure when light waves are discussed. 

Only two ideas suggest themselves as rea- 
sons for the common neglect of so important 
a principle; either the electromagnetic theory 
is thought to be not yet sufficiently well 
established to find a place in our text- 
books, or it is thought to be too difficult for 
the average student to grasp. As to the for- 
mer, few will question the fact that the theory 
has been abundantly verified from every 
point of view and has been firmly established 
long enough to justify its occupying a promi- 
nent place in our text-books and lectures. 


SCIENCE. 


435 


The opinion is widely prevalent, however, 
that the electromagnetic theory presents diffi- 
culties so great as to be insuperable for the 
average college undergraduate. While it may 
be admitted that the mathematical develop- 
ment of Maxwell’s equations and their appli- 
cation to the various cases of reflection, re- 
fraction, and dispersion are decidedly beyond 
the grasp of the average sophomore, yet it 
is surely possible to present the essentials of 
the theory in non-mathematical form, and to 
discuss its more important consequences, as 
was attempted by the writer in a recent 
number of The Scientific Monthly. As to the 
vagueness which many feel to be inherent in 
any attempt to picture a light wave on the 
electromagnetic theory, we may remark that 
our conception of an electromagnetic wave is 
precisely as definite as our ideas of an electric 
or magnetic field. 

It is true that many of the phenomena of 
light can be given a very simple explanation 
in terms of the so-called “elastic solid 
theory,” but whatever the advantages offered 
by the conventional mode of presentation, 
they are more than counterbalanced by the 
simple fact that in the light of our present 
knowledge it is not true to the facts. Cer- 
tainly our aim in teaching should be to in- 
culeate a knowledge of reality, not of con- 
venient fictions with regard to the processes 
of nature. In more than one of the text- 
books under consideration frequent reference 
is made to the “vibrating ether particle” 
which it is assumed serves to transmit a 
light wave. It would be interesting to know 
just what sort of a thing an “ether particle” 
is conceived to be, but quite apart from the 
absurdity involved in the use of such a term, 
there can be no doubt that the conception 
which the expression “vibrating ether par- 
ticle” tends to fix in the mind of the student 
is erroneous and misleading. And so with 
certain other of the stock phrases we have 
become accustomed to use in dealing with the 
phenomena of light. 

The ideal course in optics, in the opinion 
of the writer, should be based from first to 
last upon the electromagnetic theory. A 


436 


chapter on electromagnetic waves under the 
head of “ Electricity,” in which the nature 
and chief properties of these waves and their 
application in wireless telegraphy are briefly 
discussed, paves the way for a more thorough- 
going discussion of these waves under the 
head of “Light.” From the beginning of 
his study of light to the end the student 
should never be allowed to lose sight of the 
fact that light is essentially an electromag- 
netic phenomenon; each branch of the subject 
should be developed on the basis of this 
theory; and the intimate relationship between 
the optical properties of a body and its elec- 
trical properties should be constantly stressed. 

There is perhaps no other branch of sci- 
ence in which the disparity between the point 
of view of the investigator and that of the 
elementary student is quite so great as in 
optics. The modern worker in this field 
thinks of the phenomena of light in terms 
of electromagnetic waves and the behavior of 
electrons under the influence of these waves; 
to the student, on the other hand, the ideas 
which form the working basis of the investi- 
gator in his researches are meaningless, be- 
eause he has no knowledge of the theory 
upon which these depend or of the experi- 
mental facts which underlie them. It must 
be admitted that in all essentials the subject 
of light is taught to-day very much as it was 
taught fifty years ago; exactly as we might 
expect it to be taught if Maxwell had never 
lived and if the theory which we owe to him 
had never been suggested. It is to be sin- 
cerely hoped that the near future may witness 
a radical change in this respect, and that 
those principles which serve as the ground- 
work of the modern physicist and which 
guide him in his researches may be corre- 
spondingly stressed in our attempts to pre- 
sent the essential facts of optics to the 
student. 

Davip VANCE GUTHRIE 
Louisiana STaTE UNIVERSITY 


TRANS-PACIFIC AGRICULTURE 


WHatever the merits of the particular case, 
the coincidence between the design called 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1192 


House of Teuhu in Arizona and the Minoan 
Labyrinth in Crete, described in Scmnce for 
June 29, page 677, is of interest as an illus- 
tration of a large class of facts in need of 
the more general scientific consideration that 
Professor Colton bespeaks. The statement, 
“There are three possible explanations of the 
coincidence,” needs to be extended. Ameri- 
can origin and prehistoric transportation to 
the old world is a fourth possibility as worthy 
of consideration as pre-Columbian transfer 
from the old world to America, introduction 
with the Spanish conquest, or independent 
origins in the two hemispheres. 

Several cultivated plants of American 
origin appear to have been carried across the 
Pacific in prehistoric times, such as the coco- 
nut palm, the sweet potato, the bottle gourd, 
the yam bean, and the Upland species of 
cotton. The same name for sweet potato, 
cumara or kumara, is used by the Indians of 
the Urubamba valley of southern Peru and 
by the Polynesians, and other plant names are 
similar. Moreover, since the migrations of 
the prehistoric Polynesians extended across 
the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from Hawaii 
and Easter Island to New Zealand and Mada- 
gascar, it is not unreasonable to look for 
traces of communication with ancient Amer- 
ica in the early civilizations of Asia, Africa 
or the Mediterannean region. 

Agriculture is the primary, fundamental 
art of civilization, and the evidence of the 
cultivated plants is the most concrete of any 
that bears upon the question of prehistoric 
communication between the more civilized 
peoples of the two hemispheres. No such 
significance can be ascribed to the contacts 
or migrations of non-agricultural people 
across Bering Strait or the Aleutian Islands. 
For ethnologists, it may be easy to assume 
that agriculture had separate beginnings in 
the old world and the new, but botanists are 
unable to believe that the same genera and 
species of cultivated plants originated inde- 
pendently in the two hemispheres; or that they 
were carried across the Pacific without human 
assistance. 

Peru undoubtedly was the chief center of 


NovEMBER 2, 1917] 


domestication and distribution of cultivated 
plants in America, and in view of this must 
be considered also as a point of convergence 
in attempting to trace back to their origins 
other features of primitive civilization. The 
large number of domesticated plants and the 
high development of agriculture in Peru 
testify even more forcibly than the succession 
of different styles of Cyclopean architecture 
to the presence of large agricultural popula- 
tions in the valleys of the eastern Andes 
through long periods of time. The ancient 
reclamation works of Peru challenge com- 
parison with anything that was accomplished 
in Egypt or Assyria. How far the influence 
of the ancient Peruvian civilization.may have 
extended in America or elsewhere is a ques- 
tion to which attention may well be given. 
Pressure of population is a compelling force 
in the domestication of plants and the de- 
velopment of intensive agriculture, as well 
as a cause of migration to unoccupied regions. 
The essential unity of physical types and of 
agricultural and other arts among the more 
advanced peoples of ancient America is to 
be taken into account, as well as the indica- 
cations of early trans-Pacifie communication 
of agricultural arts and cultivated plants. 

It is important to consider all of the arch- 
eological and ethnological agreements or co- 
incidences, since these may make it possible 
to determine the stage of development of 
civilization in which the prehistoric com- 
munication occurred. Whether any partic- 
ular agreement of words, traditions, or “ cul- 
ture elements” is of real significance is not 
likely to be determined until such data are 
brought into relation with facts of other kinds. 
From the House of Teuhu in Arizona to the 
Labyrinth of Minos in Crete, by the way of 
Peru and Polynesia, is a long journey, but it 
covers the most practicable routes for the 
gradual extension of primitive agricultural 
peoples. That the labyrinth design origi- 
nated independently in the two hemispheres 
is as hard to believe as that different people 
should have identical thumb-prints. If post- 
Columbian transfer from the Mediterranean 
region can not be shown, the trans-Pacific 


SCIENCE 


437 


route from America to the old world should 
be considered, O. F. Coox 
Bureau oF PLANT INDUSTRY, 
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 
WasuHIneton, D. C. 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE STRUGGLE 
FOR EXISTENCE 

Tue extent of Benjamin Franklin’s mail- 
ing address mentioned in the contributions of 
Dr. Hussakoff and Professor Woodruff in re- 
cent issues of ScrrNCE is equalled only by the 
breadth of Franklin’s scientific and other in- 
terests. 

Just as Darwin and Wallace arrived at the 
theory of natural selection by reading 
Malthus’s essay on the “ Principle of Popula- 
tion” so Malthus was prompted to write his 
essay by reading a very brief contribution of 
Franklin published in 1751 “ Concerning the 
Increase of Mankind.” 

Franklin’s clear observations on the peo- 
pling of the New World led him very surely to 
the notion of a struggle for existence and the 
pressure of population on the environment. 
On these two points Franklin writes as fol- 
lows: 


There is, in short, no bound to the prolific na- 
ture of plants and animals but what is made by 
their crowding and interfering with each other’s 
means of subsistence. Was the face of the earth 
vacant of other plants, it might be gradually 
sowed and overspread with one kind only. as, for 
instance, with fennel, and were it empty of other 
inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished 
from one nation only, as, for instance, with Eng- 
lishmen. Thus there are supposed to be now up- 
wards of 1,000,000 of English souls in North 
America (though it is thought that scare 80,000 
have been brought over sea) and yet, perhaps, 
there is not one the fewer in Britain. 


Regarding the pressure of population, 
Franklin says in this same essay that America 
is 


chiefly occupied by Indians who subsist mostly by 
hunting. But as the hunter, of all men requires 
the greatest quantity of land from whence to draw 
his subsistence, the Europeans found America as 
fully settled as it well could be by hunters. 
B. W. Kunxkeu 
LAFAYETTE COLLEGE 


438 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
The Manufacture of Sulphuric Acid and Alkali 
with the Collateral Branches. A Theoret- 
ical and Practical Treatise. By GrorcE 

Luncr, Ph.D. Fourth edition. Supplement 

to Volume I. Sulphuric and Nitric Acid. 

New York, D. Van Nostrand Company. 

1917. Pp. xii+- 847. Price $5.00. 

This volume represents rather a new idea in 
bringing books up to date. The last edition of 
Lunge’s great treatise on sulfuric acid was 
published in February, 1918. The great ad- 
vances made along this line, as along almost 
every line of chemical technology, in the past 
four years have rendered no little material in 
the book quite out of date. At the same time 
a new edition of such a large and expensive 
work seemed hardly called for. The author 
and his publishers have found an excellent so- 
lution of the problem with which they were 
confronted by issuing this supplement. All the 
new matter is printed consecutively with refer- 
ence to the paging of the original, quite like a 
volume of footnotes. While the book thus 
necessarily lacks literary form, to the techno- 
logical student it is unexpectedly readable, 
furnishing, as it does, a complete review of the 
progress of the acid industry for the past four 
years. 

On looking through the book one is struck 
with the immense amount of work that has 
been done since the opening of the war, most 
of it directly occasioned by the inexorable de- 
mand for explosives. Sir William Crookes 
little dreamed, when a few years ago he deliy- 
ered his now classic address on the wheat 
supply of the world, that he was making such 
a world-wide war as the present possible. He 
saw the peoples of the world rapidly becoming 
wheat-eaters; the possible wheat lands of the 
world largely utilized; the only possible source 
of increased wheat supply a greatly increased 
production per acre; this increased produc- 
tion only attainable by greatly increased quan- 
tities of nitrogen fertilizer; and the only im- 
portant source of fertilizer, the Chile salt- 
peter beds, facing exhaustion in a few decades. 
The clear statement of the problem naturally 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1192 


set chemists at its solution, which of course 
involved methods of utilizing the inexhaustible 
supply of atmospheric nitrogen for the manu- 
facture of nitric acid and ammonia. But ni- 
trates are as indispensable for munitions of 
war as for fertilizer. Ten years ago the other 
nations would have been helpless at the hands 
of Germany as soon as their first meager sup- 
ply of explosives had been shot away, since 
Germany had foreseen this shortage and long 
ago “stocked up.” On the other hand, had the 
Chilean niter beds sufficed for the Allies until 
Germany’s supply was exhausted, she would 
have been at their mercy. Thanks to the stim- 
ulus of Sir William Crookes’s address, as far 
as explosives go, the war can continue indefi- 
nitely, but after the war the farmer and the 
wheat-eaters will come to their own, as Sir 
William intended they should. 

The problem of combining atmospheric ni- 
trogen had been commercially solved a few 
years before the war opened. Lime, saltpeter 
and nitric acid were being manufactured at 
Notodden in Norway, and the Rjukanfos, with 
its 250,000 horse-power, was largely ready for 
utilization in 1913. Calcium cyanamid was 
being made at half a dozen plants in different 
countries, and from this ammonia was easily 
obtained. The Haber process for combining 
nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia was 
probably being worked commercially in Ger- 
many early in 1914, and processes for oxidiz- 
ing ammonia into nitric acid were becoming 
available. All of these and numerous lesser 
processes sufficed to free Germany from de- 
pendence on the Chile niter, and the Allies 
have profited no less. 

Equally necessary for munitions is concen- 
trated sulfuric acid, which indeed is demanded 
in almost every chemical industry, and while 
the advances in its manufacture have been less 
striking than has been the case with nitric 
acid, fully two thirds of the volume is taken 
up with its progress. These developments have 
been divided between improvements in the 
contact process, and the old lead-chamber proc- 
ess, and in the concentration of the chamber 
acid. 

It will interest technologists to know that 


NovEMBER 2, 1917] 


the book contains at least brief descriptions of 
practically all patents bearing on the subject 
during the period covered by the book, and the 
information regarding progress in Germany 
during the war is probably fuller than has else- 
where appeared. 

The book contains a full author and subject 
index, which is particularly valuable, since it 
includes references both to the original fourth 
edition and to the supplement. 


Jas. Lewis Howe 
WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY 


AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PEACHES 
The Peaches of New York. By U. P. Hep- 

RICK, assisted by G. H. Hows, O. M. Taytor 

and OC. B. Tupercen. New York Agricul- 

tural Experiment Station, Geneva, 1917. 

Two comparisons come easily to mind on 
opening Professor Hedrick’s “ Peaches of New 
York.” The first is with Poiteau’s “ Pomo- 
logie Francaise”; the second is with Professor 
Beach’s “ Apples of New York.” 

The beauty of the ripened fruit has always 
appealed to persons of literary taste and es- 
thetie sensibility, and such persons have often 
wished to make permanent record of the de- 
lights of their gardens and orchards. There 
have been many notable books, covering more 
than a century of time, extra-illustrated with 
colored plates of fruits. The “ Pomologie 
Francaise” may be mentioned as one of the 
best early examples of such work. 

It might not be much to expect that the 
“Peaches of New York ” would excel any 
book of a hundred years ago, and yet this 
standard has been so rarely reached that it is a 
compliment to say that any one anywhere ap- 
proaches it. This new book, however, sur- 
passes the old in two fundamental particulars, 
in the excellence of its plates and in the scien- 
tific assemblage of taxonomic data. 

Professor Beach’s “ Apples of New York” 
comes into the comparison as being the great 
beginning of this notable series, which now 
includes the “ Grapes of New York,’’ “ Plums 
of New York,” and “Cherries of New York.” 
It will be seen that the technical processes of 
color-photography and printing as applied to 


SCIENCE 


439 


this line of work have been greatly improved, 
even in these last few years, for though the 
photographing of peaches is much more diffi- 
cult than the photographing of apples, the color 
plates of the present volume are emphatically 
superior. And this point will bear some em- 
phasis, considering how important such plates 
are as a means of description, and considering 
that the accurate description of varieties is 
exactly the main objective of the series. 

One must see, too, that the science of syste- 
matic pomology has made great progress since 
the days of Poiteau and Turpin. There have 
been catalogues of varieties with descriptions 
and lists of synonyms of course for nearly 200 
years, but as a matter of fact the science of 
systematic pomology is practically a develop- 
ment of the last dozen years. It is, moreover, 
as yet almost an exclusively American science, 
having been developed largely by the critical 
pomological workers in the experiment sta- 
tions and the United States Department of 
Agriculture. Professor Hedrick, with his 
quite unusual facilities and his corps of 
trained assistants, has been able to bring these 
modern methods of systematic study to a high 
degree of perfection. It is not too much to 
say that, in breadth of view, bibliographic com- 
prehensiveness, and critical examination of de- 
tail it would be hard to find better work any- 
where in the older fields of taxonomic science. 

Emphasis is placed upon the systematic or 
encyclopedic features of the work, for these are 
certainly the most important. There are 
dozens of books and hundreds of bulletins 
where the reader can more easily find a dis- 
cussion of how to grow peaches, but the pres- 
ent work will long be the first reference for all 
those who want the last word on the descrip- 
tion or nomenclature of varieties. 

The title is of course a brazen misnomer. 
The book is not limited to the peaches of New 
York, and probably was never intended to 
cover any such narrow view. It is a book for 
the whole United States and the peach-grow- 
ing portions of Canada. In fact one might 
better call it “Peaches of the World,” for it 
will doubtless be consulted as widely as Poi- 
teau’s fine old book written over seventy years 


440 


ago and called by a less provincial name, the 
“Pomologie Frangaise.” 


Ff. A. W. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


COMPARISON OF THE CATALASE CONTENT OF 
THE BREAST MUSCLE OF WILD PIGEONS 
AND OF BANTAM CHICKENS 


Ir is now generally accepted that the energy 
for muscular work is derived from oxidation 
of the food materials, although physiologists 
are not agreed as to the means by which the 
body accomplishes this oxidation at such a 
low temperature as 39° C., the temperature of 
the body. 

The present investigation was carried out 
to determine if catalase, an enzyme which lib- 
erates oxygen from hydrogen peroxide or from 
an organic peroxide comparable in structure 
to hydrogen peroxide, is greater in amount in 
the breast muscles of wild pigeons accus- 
tomed to flying than it is in the breast muscle 
of bantam chickens not so accustomed; if the 
catalase content of the breast muscles of the 
pigeons would be decreased by decreasing the 
amount of work done by these muscles, and if 
it would be increased in the breast muscles of 
the chickens by increasing the amount of work 
done. 

After several wild pigeons and bantam 
chickens had been washed until free of blood 
by the use of large quantities of 0.9 per cent. 
sodium chloride, as was indicated by the fact 
that the wash water gave no test for catalase, 
the breast muscles were removed and ground 
up separately in a hashing machine. One 
gram of this material was added to 50 c.c. of 
hydrogen peroxide in a bottle at 22° C., and 
as the oxygen gas was liberated it was con- 
ducted through a rubber tube to an inverted 
burette previously filled with water. After the 
volume of oxygen gas, thus collected in ten 
minutes, was reduced to standard atmospheric 
pressure the resulting volume was taken as a 
measure of the amount of catalase in the 
gram of material. It was found that one gram 
of the breast muscle of the wild pigeons liber- 
ated on an average, 98 ec. of oxygen, while 
that of the bantam chickens liberated only 
about 8 ¢.c., hence, the amount of catalase in 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1192 


the breast muscle of the wild pigeons is much 
greater than that of the bantam chickens. 

Several wild pigeons were confined for three 
weeks in individual small cages so that they 
could not use their breast muscles in flying, 
while several bantam chickens were made to 
run and fly until they were almost exhausted 
once a day for fifteen days. The catalase of 
the breast muscles of these pigeons and chick- 
ens was determined as in the preceding. It 
was found that confinement decreased the cata- 
lase content of the breast muscles of the pi- 
geons by about 40 per cent., while exercise 
increased that of the breast muscles of the ban- 
tam chickens by almost 25 per cent. 

The fact that an increase or decrease in the 
amount of work, and hence in oxidation in a 
muscle, is accompanied by a corresponding in- 
crease or decrease in the amount of catalase, 
would seem to suggest that catalase may play 
a role in the oxidative processes of the body. 


W. E. Burce 


PHYSIOLOGICAL LABORATORY OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


CILIA IN THE ARTHROPODA 


Tuat cilia are absent in the Arthropoda is 
an assumption which has crept into our 
zoological literature. Thus, Adam Sedgwick 
in his “Student’s Text-Book of Zoology,” Vol. 
III., 1909, pp. 316-317, says: “These ducts 
in the female! retain a ciliated lining 
(Gaffron), the only known instance of the oc- 
currence of a ciliated tract among the Arthro- 
poda.” Then again, we read in Parker and 
Haswell’s “Text-Book of Zoology,” Vol. L., 
(revised edition), 1910, p. 526, as follows: “Ar- 
thropods are also characterized by the almost 
universal absence of cilia.” Kingsley, on page 
357 of his revised edition of Hertwig’s “ Man- 
ual of Zoology,” 1912, makes the following 
assertion concerning cilia in the Arthropoda: 
“The entire absence of cilia is noteworthy. 
Ciliated cells have never been found in ar- 
thropods.” Still another zoologist, J. Arthur 
Thomson in the fifth, revised edition of his 


1 Sedgwick is discussing ducts in the female re- 
productive organs of Peripatus. 


NoveMBer 2, 1917] 


“ Outlines of Zoology,” 1913, makes a similar 
remark. Thomson, in speaking of the char- 
acteristics of the Arthropoda, on page 281, 
says: “Ciliated epithelium is almost always 
absent.” 

While working on the structure of the male 
reproductive organs of certain Decapoda,” the 
author has found good examples of ciliated 
epithelium in the vasa deferentia of the fol- 
lowing forms: the Pacific coast crayfish 
Astacus leniusculus, the Puget Sound hermit 
erab Pagurus setosus, the Atlantic coast lob- 
ster, Homarus americanus, and the spiny lob- 
ster of the California coast, Panulirus inter- 
ruptus. 

The vasa deferentia of these crustacea were 
fixed in various fluids (Hermann’s, Flem- 
ming’s, Bouin’s and formaldehyde), and the 
section were cut 5 # in thickness. These pre- 
pared sections formed the basis for the ob- 
servations herein recorded. The author tried 
to tease out the living epithelial cells from 
the vas deferens of Astacus leniusculus in 
physiological salt solution, Ringer’s solution 
as well as in the body fluids of the crayfish, 
with a view towards observing ciliary move- 
ment in the living cells, but along this line 
of experimentation little success was met 
with. In the first place, the heavy secretions 
of the vas deferens, coupled with the refraction 
of the cell structures, masks any clear-cut ob- 
servations. Secondly, the cytoplasm of the 
epithelial cells is so frail that it goes all to 
pieces upon the application of the least amount 
of pressure. The writer had, therefore, to 
rely solely on the prepared slides. However, 
these epithelial cells are so distinctly and so 
characteristically ciliated in the fixed material, 
that they are very convincing and appear to 
allow of no other interpretation. 

In all the forms mentioned the inner lining 
of the vas deferens consists of a layer of cil- 
iated epithelium, which is made up mainly 
of columnar cells. This epithelium is more or 


2A fuller account of these studies is soon to ap- 
pear in the publications of the Puget Sound Ma- 
rine Station, Vol. No. 26, under the title of ‘‘Male 
Reproductive Organs of Decapoda, with Special 
Reference to Puget Sound Forms.’’ 


SCIENCE. 


441 


less glandular in nature and manufactures a 
thick, viscid secretion that forms the sperma- 
tophoral pouches as well as the sperm-preserv- 
ing fluid which is commonly found in the 
Decapoda. 

In Astacus leniusculus the epithelial lining 
is more or less uniform throughout the vas 
deferent tube, while in the other forms it be- 
comes somewhat modified. 

In Paragus setosus, the epithelial cells be- 
come concentrated at one pole of the vas defer- 
ens and here they are very much elongated, 
columnar cells and bear fine examples of cilia. 
This region of the epithelium seems to be es- 
pecially adapted for manufacturing the secret- 
ing fluid. The lining epithelium of the rest 
of the vas deferens tube consists of ciliated 
cuboidal cells. 

In Homarus americanus the epithelium be- 
comes convoluted in numerous places of the 
distal end of the vas deferens, thus affording 
a larger secreting surface. Wherever these 
convolutions occur, the cells are usually larger, 
and contain longer cilia than in other regions. 
Herrick? who has made an extensive study of 
the lobster does not mention ciliated epithel- 
ium in the vasa deferentia. In good prepar- 
ations, the ciliated epithelium is so distinct 
that one is able to make clear microphoto- 
graphs of these structures without any diffi- 
culty. 

In the spiny lobster Panulirus interruptus, 
the finest examples of ciliated epithelium were 
found. In this crustacean the vas deferens 
is very long and is lined by an inner layer of 
ciliated columnar epithelial cells. At one 
point in the vas deferent tube this epithelial 
lining dips inward into the cavity of the 
tube and becomes profusely convoluted into a 
mass of simple tubular glands. In cross sec- 
tions, some of these glands may be seen cut 
across to show the central lumen completely 
surrounded by the epithelial cells. In such 
eases, the long cilia are very distinctly seen 
extending from the free surfaces of the cells 
into the interior of the lumen. 


8 Herrick, F. H., ‘‘ Natural History of the Amer- 


ican Lobster,’’ Bull. U. S. Bur. of Fisheries, Vol. 
XXIX., 1909. 


442 


The cilia described in these Decapoda con- 
form in every respect to all authentic descrip- 
tions and pictures of cilia which have come 
under the writer’s observation. Jn many cases, 
they are short and straight. In other in- 
stances they are long and wavy. In still 
other examples they cluster together to form 
the so-called brushes. Furthermore, the cilia 
in all the cases mentioned spring from a well- 
defined border, and also contain the char- 
acteristic basal granules. 

Natuan Fasten 

ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY, 

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, 
SEATTLE, WASH. 


RHYTHMIC BANDING! 

Tue formation of Liesegang’s rings, known 
sometimes as “rhythmic banding,” is of in- 
terest to the geologist and biologist as well as 
to the chemist. The color arrangement of 
agate is an excellent example of this phenome- 
non. Liesegang’s original experiments dealt 
with the rhythmic precipitation of silver 
dichromate in gelatine. A solution of silver 
nitrate was poured on a solid gel containing 
dilute potassium dichromate. The precipitate 
of silver dichromate formed was not continu- 
ous but marked by gaps or empty spaces at 
regular intervals. 

I found it possible to obtain distinct band- 
ing of silver dichromate in loosely packed flow- 
ers of sulphur. From this and other experi- 
ments it is evident that a gel is not absolutely 
necessary. In practise I found the best 
medium for sharply marked bands to be silicic 
acid gel. With this I secured remarkably 
crystalline banding of mercuric iodide, as many 
as forty bands in a test tube. Reduced gold in 
red, blue and green colloidal particles recur- 
ring in regular rainbow bands was obtained 
with a special silicie acid gel. 

Basic gels made it possible to secure bands 
of cupric hydroxide merging into red and yel- 
low forms of cuprous oxide. In a silicic acid 
gel of slightly basic reaction crystalline basic 
mercuric chloride formed in very distinct 

1 Abstract of paper read at the Kansas City 
meeting of the American Chemical Society, April 
12, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1192 


bands. The best banding in the absolute 
clearness of the gaps was that of copper 
chromate in a slightly basic gel. 

Upon these experiments a new theory may be 
built. For illustration consider the copper 
chromate banding. : 

The gel contains a dilute solution of a 
chromate and above it in the tube a solution of 
a copper salt. The copper ions diffuse into the 
gel, meet the chromate ion and form a layer 
of insoluble copper chromate at the surface of 
the gel. The chromate ions immediately be- 
low this precipitation zone diffuse into this 
region now depleted of chromate ions and 
meet the advancing copper ions thus thicken- 
ing the layer of copper chromate. According 
to Fick’s law of diffusion the rate of diffusion 
is greatest where the difference in concentra- 
tion of the chromate ions in two contiguous 
layers is greatest, that is, just below the front 
of this thickening band of copper chromate. 
As a result the region near the band decreases 
in concentration of the chromate ions faster 
than the space below. Finally the copper ions 
have to advance some distance beyond the 
band to find such a concentration of chromate 
ions that the solubility product of copper 
chromate may be exceeded and a new band 
formed. This repeats again and again. Of 
course if the copper ions were retarded suffi- 
ciently there would be time for the concentra- 
tion of the chromate ions again to become 
uniform throughout the remaining clear gel 
and no gap would occur. Hence if the diffu- 
sion of the copper ions is retarded by any 
means the clear gaps decrease in depth—the 
bands are closer together. If copper ferrocya- 
nide bands are formed in similar manner they 
almost merge after the first layer reaches a 
thickness of a few cubic centimeters. Yet they 
are distinct and agate-like. A precipitate of 
copper ferrocyanide greatly retards the dif- 
fusion of the ions that form it, hence we have 
here the proper condition to reduce the clear 
gaps to a minimum depth. 

The complete paper with working directions 
and a full exposition of the theory will soon be 
published elsewhere. Harry N. Houmes 

OBERLIN COLLEGE 


SCIENCE 


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SCIENCE 


Fripay, NoveMBer 9, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Structure of Atoms and the Evolution of 
the Elements as related to the Composition 
of the Nuclei of Atoms: PROFESSOR WILLIAM 


1D), ISINERATN ogonosgo0dscoconoodanSanaGOD 443 
The Care of Wounded Soldiers ............ 448 
Deaths among Ornithologists ............... 450 
Scientific Events :— 

War Service for Chemists; The Mayo Foun- 

dation; The Connaught Laboratories of the 

University of Toronto; The Annual Meeting 

of the Federation of American Societies for 

Experimental Biology; The Pittsburgh 

Meeting of the American Society of Natu- 

RAPHE sodploooposeooandoobanedobogabadex 451 
Scientific Notes and News ................- 454 
University and Educational News .......... 456 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

The ‘‘ Age and Area’’ Hypothesis of Willis: 

Dr. E. W. Sinnott. EHrasmus Darwin and 

Benjamin Franklin: W. C. PECKHAM...... 457 
Quotations :— 

TREGSPRY SUE. Offs LLECHULES ere rai stele) stnjole clave eek 460 
Scientific Books :— 

Healy on Mental Conflicts and Misconduct: 

Proressor R. 8. WoopwortH. Shepardson 

on Telephone Apparatus: A. E. K......... 461 
Special Articles :— 

Anesthesia and Respiration: A. R. C. HAAs. 

The Life History of the Clothes Moth: Dr. 

RaupH C. BENEpIcT. A Chromosome Differ- 

ence correlated with Sex Differences: Dr. 

CHARLES, Hs (ATEN) 5)2y0/0c1fecticlecierlrciecie). 462 
The American Astronomical Society: Dr. 

JORG, STEBBINS) s.- cice sflcleileietiacloetoets ass 467 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review shoule be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


THE STRUCTURE OF ATOMS AND THE 
EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTS 
AS RELATED TO THE COM- 
POSITION OF THE 
NUCLEI OF 
ATOMS, 


II 

The elements have thus been found to 
fall into two series: first, those of even, and 
second, those of odd, atomic number. Now, 
if the theory presented for the structure of 
the atoms is correct, then it should be pos- 
sible to find some difference between the 
two series with reference to their proper- 
ties. Since, however, this part of the 
theory refers specifically to the structure 


_ of the nuclei of the atoms, and not to the 


arrangement of the external or non-nu- 
clear electrons, it is evident that this dif- 
ference should not be found in those prop- 
erties due to the external electrons, that is 
in the chemical or physical properties. On 
the other hand, the difference should be 
found in any properties inherent in the 
nucleus, and the only property, aside from 
mass and weight (from which our system 
has been developed), which has thus far 
been discovered, and which is due to the 
structure of the nucleus of the atom, is that 
of atomic stability. Thus, if an atom loses 
outer electrons, it does not change its 
atomic number, and therefore does not 
change to another element, but if it loses 
nuclear electrons, it does change its nu- 
cleus, its atomic number is changed, and 
the atom is said to disintegrate—that is, it 
changes into the atom of another element. 

Our theory therefore mdicates a prob- 
able general difference in stability between 
the even- and odd-numbered elements. A 


444 


consideration of the radioactive elements 
indicates that those which have odd atomic 
numbers have either shorter periods, or else 
are at present unknown. Now unfortu- 
nately there is no known method of test- 
ing the stability of the elements of low 
atomic number, but it might seem, at first 
thought, that the more stable atoms should 
be the more abundantly formed, and to a 
certain extent this is undoubtedly true. If 
then, at the stage of evolution represented 
by the solar system, or by the earth, it is 
found that the even-numbered elements are 
more abundant than the odd, as seems to 
be the case, then it might be assumed that 
the even-numbered elements are on the 
whole the more stable. However, there is 
at least one other factor than stability 
‘which must be considered in this connec- 
‘tion. The formula of the even-numbered 
‘elements has been shown to be nHe’. Now, 
since that for the odd-numbered elements 
is nHe' + H,’ it is evident that if the sup- 
ply of the H,’ needed by the elements was 
relatively small at the time of their forma- 
tion, not so much material would go into 
this system, and this would be true whether 
the H,’ represents three atoms of hydrogen 
or one atom of some other element.® 
In studying the relative abundance of 
the elements the ideal method would be to 
sample one or more solar systems at the 


3 With regard to the latter alternative, it is at 
least remarkable that the H, occurs 11 times in the 
system for the first 27 elements, while H, and H 
each occur only once, and it may also be men- 
tioned that Fabry and Buisson have by interference 
methods determined the atomie weight of nebulium 
to be 2.7, and this they think indicates that its real 
atomic weight is 3. Also, Campbell has found that 
in the nebula N. G. C. Index 418, situated in the 
southern part of the constellation of Orion, the 
nebulium spectrum is found farther from the in- 
terior than that of helium, while the hydrogen spec- 
trum extends out to a much greater distance still. 
This, he thinks, indicates that the atomic weight of 
nebulium lies between the values for hydrogen (1) 
and helium (4). 


SCIENCE 


eae 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1193 


desired stage of evolution, and to make a 
quantitative analysis for all of the 92 ele- 
ments of the ordinary system. Since this 
is evidently impossible, even in the case of 
the earth, it might be considered that suffi- 
ciently good data could be obtained from 
the earth’s crust, or the lithosphere. How- 
ever, the part of the crust to which we 
have access is relatively so thin, and has 


Y 0 


ABUNDANCE OF THE ELEMENTS 


Fr 


$1 


Percentage by Weight 


reTeat T ray Far ay Seat 
2 M16 18 20 22MN24 26 28 «030 32 —> 


Atomic Number 

Fig. 2. The Periodic Variation in the Abun- 
dance of the Elements as the result of Atomic Evo- 
lution. The data are given for 125 stone meteo- 
rites, but the relations are true for meteorites in 
general. Note that ten elements of even atomic 
number make up 97.59 per cent. of the meteorites, 
and seven odd-numbered elements, 2.41 per cent., 
or 100 per cent. in all. Elements of atomie num- 
ber greater than 29 are present only in traces. 


been subjected to such far-reaching mag- 
matic differentiation, and to such extensive 
solubility effects, that it seems improbable 
that the surface of the earth at all truly 
represents its composition as a whole. 
The meteorites, on the other hand, show 
much less evidence of differentiative ef- 
fects, and undoubtedly represent more 
truly the average composition of our 
planetary system. At least it might seem 
proper to assume that the meteorites would 


NovEeMBER 9, 1917] 


2.0-— 72% 


Percentage Abundance of the Elements in the Meteorites 


iP Cr 


Co 
; x nh No Cu 
16 20 22 24 26 28 
Atomie Number 
Fig. 3. The abundance of the elements in the 
meteorites. Every even-numbered element is more 
abundant than the two adjacent odd-numbered ele- 
ments. 


not exhibit any special fondness for the 
even-numbered elements in comparison 
with the odd, or, vice versa, any more than 
the earth or the sun as a whole, at least not 
unless there is an important difference be- 


SCIENCE 


445 


tween these two systems of elements, which 
is Just what it is desired to prove. A study 
of the compilations made by Farrington, by 
Merrill, and by other workers of analyses of 
meteorites, has given some very interesting 
results. 

The results show that in either the stone 
or the tron meteorites the even-numbered 
elements are very much more abundant 
than the odd. Thus in the iron meteorites 
there are about 127 times more atoms of 
even atomic number than of odd, while in 
the stone meteorites the even-numbered ele- 
ments are about 47 times more abundant. 
If we average the 125 stone and 318 iron 
meteorites given by Farrington, it is found 
that the weight percentage is 98.78 for the 
even and 1.22 for the odd-numbered ele- 
ments, or the even-numbered elements are 
about 81 times more abundant. 

If we consider these same meteorites, 443 
in all, and representing all of the different 
classes, it is found that the first seven ele- 
ments in order of abundance are iron, oxy- 
gen, silicon, magnesium, calcium, nickel 
and sulphur, and not only do all of these 
elements have even atomic numbers, but in 
addition they make up 98.6 per cent. of the 
material of the meteorites. 

Table IV. gives the average composition 
of these meteorites. The numbers before 
the symbols are the atomic numbers, and 


TABLE IV 
Average Composition of Meteorites Arranged According to the Periodic System 


| | Group 8 
| Group 1 | Group 2 Group 3 | Group 4 Group 5 Group 6 Group 7 |____ —— : 
Serles | Odd Even Odd | Even Odd Even Odd ae ett || La 
| | | | 
2 | | 6C 80 | 
| | 0.04% ie 10.10% 
| —————— | | ———— eee 
3 11Na | 12Mg 13Al | 14Si | 15P 16S 
2.17% | 3.80% 0.39% 9.20% | 0.14% | 0.49% | 
4 | 19K | 20Ca | 227% | 24Cr | 25Mn | 26Fe | 27Co | 28Ni 
0.04% | 0.46% | 0.01% 0.09% 0.03% | 72.06% | 0.44% | 6.50% 
| | | 
} | | 
| 29Cu ] | 
0.01% | 


446 


those below give the percentages of the 
elements. Jt will be noted that the even- 
numbered elements are in every case more 
abundant than the ADJACENT odd-numbered 
elements. The helium group elements form 
no chemical compounds, and are all gases, 
so they could not be expected to remain in 
large quantities in meteorites. For this 
reason, and also because the data are not 
available, the helium or zero group is 
omitted from the table. 

From this table it will be seen that while 
high percentages, as great as 72 per cent. 
in one case, are common among the even- 
numbered elements, the highest percentage 
for any odd-numbered element is less than 
one per cent. (0.39 for aluminium). 

If we now turn to the composition of the 
earth, it is found that the atoms of even 
atomic number are about ten times more 
abundant in the surface of the earth than 
those which are odd. Also, all of the five 
unknown elements, eka-cesium, eka-manga- 
nese 1, eka-manganese 2 (dwi-manganese), 
eka-iodine and eka-neodymium, have odd 
atomic numbers. It should be mentioned 
in this connection, however, that there is 
some doubt as to whether element 72 has 
been discovered. 

While the relative abundance of the ele- 
ments in the lithosphere is undoubtedly 
much affected by differentiation, there is 
one group whose members are so closely 
similar in chemical and physical proper- 
ties, that they would be much less affected 
in this way than any other elements. These 
are the rare earths. The only difficulty in 
this connection is that of making an accu- 
rate estimate of the relative abundance. 
In this the writer has been assisted by Pro- 
fessors C. James and C. W. Balke, but any 
errors in the estimate should not be attrib- 
uted to them. In the table, which includes 
beside the rare earths a number of elements 
adjacent to them, the letter c indicates com- 
mon in comparison with the adjacent ele- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


ments, and r represents rare. ccc repre- 
sents a relatively very common element, ete. 
The comparison is only a very rough one, 
but it indicates that the even-numbered 
elements are in general more abundant 
than the odd-numbered ones which are ad- 
jacent. 7 
TABLE V 


The Predominance of Even-numbered Elements 
Among the Rare Earths 


ae Abund- Element ie Abund-| Element 
ber ance ber ance 
E55 ce |Caesium 63 rr |Europium 
56 cece |Barium 64 r_ |Gadolinium 
57 e {Lanthanum 65 rrr |Terbium 
58 ee |Cerium 66 r |Dysprosium 
59 r |Praseodymium!| 67 rrr |Holmium 
60 ec |Neodymium 68 r |Erbium 
61 rrr_ |Unknown 69 rr |Thulium 
62 ce |Samarium 


The above results may be summarized in 
the statement that IN THE FORMATION OF 
THE ELEMENTS MUCH MORE MATERIAL HAS 
GONE INTO THE ELEMENTS OF EVEN ATOMIC 
NUMBER THAN INTO THOSE WHICH ARE ODD, 
either because the odd-numbered elements 
are the less stable, or because some constit- 
uent essential to their formation was not 
sufficiently abundant, or as the result of 
both causes. 

It is easy to see, too, that in the evolu- 
tion of the elements, the elements of low 
atomic number and low atomic weight have 
been formed almost exclusively, and this 
indicates either that the lighter atoms are 
more stable than those which are heavier, 
or else that the lighter atoms were the first 
to get the material, and their stability was 
at least sufficient to hold it. 

It is possible that the heavier atoms have 
been formed in larger amounts than now 
exist, and that their abundance has been 
reduced by atomic disintegration. It is of 
course evident that the radio-active ele- 
ments are now disintegrating, but the radio- 
active series of elements includes only those 
of atomic number 81 (thallium) to 92 


NoveMBER 9, 1917] 


(uranium) ; and lead (82) is the end of the 
series as now recognized. For our pur- 
poses, however, we still call the atoms of 
atomic numbers 1 to 29 the lighter atoms, 
and from 380 to 92 the heavier atoms. The 
following table indicates that when de- 
fined in this way the lighter atoms are ex- 
tremely more abundant. In the table the 
weight percentages are given, but it is evi- 
dent that if these same figures were caleu- 
lated to atomic percentages they would show 
even smaller values for the heavier ele- 
ments. The table shows that although the 
heavy atoms have been so defined as to in- 
clude more than twice as many elements 
as the light atoms, their total abundance 
is so small as to be relatively insignificant. 
The data are taken from estimates by 
Clarke and by Farrington. 


TABLE VI 
Illustrating the Large Proportion in Various Ma- 
terials of the Elements of Low Atomic 
Numbers (1-29) 


Percentage of Elements with 
Atomic Numbers 


Material 1-29 30-92 
Meteorites as a whole. 99.99 0.01 
Stone meteorites ..... 99.98 0.02 
Iron meteorites ...... 100.00 0.0 
Igneous rocks ....... 99.85 0.15 
Shallow tiene cts 99.95 0.05 
Sandstone: )22\2- 2 none 99.95 0.05 
Lithosphere ......... 99.85 0.15 


It is thus seen that SO FAR AS THE ABUN- 
DANCE OF THE ELEMENTS IS CONCERNED, THE 
SYSTEM PLAYS OUT AT ABOUT ELEMENT 30, 
and it is of great interest to note that it is 
just at this point that other remarkable 
changes occur. For example, up to this 
point nearly all of the atomic weights on 
the oxygen basis are very close to whole 
numbers. On the other hand the elements 
with higher atomic numbers (28 to 92) 
have atomic weights which are no closer 
to whole numbers than if they were 
wholly accidental. Also, just at this 
point the atomic weights cease to be those 


SCIENCE 


447 


predicted by the helium-hydrogen theory 
of structure presented in this paper 
(Table III.). This does not mean, how- 
ever, that the helium-hydrogen system 
fails at this point, but that the deviations 
in the atomic weights for the elements of 
higher number are produced by some com- 
plicating factor. This would be most easily 
explained on the hypothesis that isotopes 
are abundant among the elements of atomic 
number higher than 28. Such a hypothe- 
sis should, of course, be confirmed experi- 
mentally before it is given much credence. 
It is quite possible, too, that radioactive dis- 
integrations have proceeded downward in 
the system as far as iron, and that iron is 
the end of a disintegration series. If this 
were true, it would explain the great abun- 
dance of iron in the meteorites. In what- 
ever way we may average the analyses of 
the materials found in meteorites or on 
earth, the two most striking elements from 
the standpoint of abundance are oxygen, 
the most abundant of the elements of very 
low atomic number (8), and iron, which 
has the highest atomic number (26) of any 
very abundant element. 

The fact that the elements which have 
heavy atoms (atomic numbers 30 to 92, or 
more than two thirds of the elements) have 
been formed in such minute amounts 
would be very much more striking to us if 
we lived on an earth with a perfectly uni- 
form composition. On such an earth, 
formed without any segregation, it is prob- 
able that almost none of these elements 
would have been discovered. Quite cer- 
tainly such elements as gold, silver, iodine 
and arsenic would not be known, and 
copper, lead, zine and tin, if known at all, 
would be in the form of extremely small 
specimens. 

In this connection it may be remembered 
that the earth has the highest density of 
any of the planets. The data given in 
Table V. show that in the meteorites, which 


448 


vary in density from about 2.5 for the 
lightest stone, to more than eight for the 
heaviest iron meteorites, the increase in 
density is not brought about by an increase 
in the abundance of what have been de- 
fined as the heavy atoms, but only by a 
shift in the relative abundance of the light 
atoms. Thus in the less dense stone 
meteorites the average atomic percentage 
of oxygen, atomic weight 16, is 54.7 per 
cent., while that of iron, atomic weight 
55.84, is 10.6 per cent. In the more dense 
iron meteorites, on the other hand, the per- 
centage of oxygen is practically negligible, 
while that of iron has risen to 90.6 per 
cent.* A study of the densities of the ele- 


8 


nai 


6 


Number of Isotopes 


Ate 6! 82 63 64 85 86 87 88 89 50 HW 92 
Fia. 4. 


ments and their compounds shows that the 
abundance of the elements does not seem to 


4¥For nickel, atomic weight 58.68, it is 8.5 per 
cent. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


be related to this property. In fact the 
only apparent relation is to the atomic 
number, which indicates that the abun- 
dance relations are the result of evolution, 
that is of the factors involved in the forma- 
tion and disintegration of the atoms. 


WintuiamM D, Harkins 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 


Note: Since the presentation of the 
above paper it has been pointed out by 
Norris F. Hal] that both the isotopic com- 
plexity, and the number of predominant 
radiation of the radio-active elements show 
a sharp alternation with increasing atomic 
number, and that this alternation is strictly 
in accord with the general hydrogen helium 
theory of atomic structure. The variation 
of these properties is illustrated in Figure 
4 and it will be seen that the general form 
of these figures is the same as that of 
Figures 2 and 3 which represent the abun- 
dance of the elements. 


THE CARE OF WOUNDED SOLDIERS 

Many matters of importance touching upon 
American cooperative effort and activity along 
medical and surgical lines were developed 
during the past week in Chicago, when the 
general medical board and the State activi- 
ties committee of the medical section of the 
Council of National Defense held stated 
meetings in conjunction with the annual 
meeting of the Clinical Congress of Surgeons 
of North America. Secretary of the Navy 
Daniels discussed the activities of the Navy 
directed toward the moral and _ intellectual 
welfare of the naval personnel, and Surgeon 
Generals Gorgas, Braisted, and Blue spoke 
for the Army, Navy, and Public Health Servy- 
ice, outlining the medical work in these re- 
spective branches. 

Surgeon General Gorgas at a meeting of 
the general medical board, which preceded 
the clinical congress, outlined the efforts now 
being directed toward meeting medical needs 
on the fields of battle, at home, and also in 


Novemperr 9, 1917] 


transporting permanently disabled United 
States soldiers from abroad. Only those men 
will be returned home who are permanently 
disabled or who have a contemplated con- 
valescence of six months. The experience of 
the allies, it was stated, indicates that about 
10 per cent. of the wounded are permanently 
disabled. 

On their return home the American soldiers 
will receive not only adequate medical treat- 
ment but will also be afforded the extra facili- 
ties of special hospitals built with the idea 
in view of rehabilitating physically and re- 
educating industrially our incapacitated sol- 
diers. It is also contemplated to devote spe- 
cial hospitals in France to the treatment of 
special diseases, such, for example, as tuber- 
culosis or injuries of the head, brain, eyes, 
ears, or face. 

General Gorgas announced the fundamental 
policy of adhering to the Manual of 1914, 
which provides that the military hospitals 
shall consist of three general divisions, medi- 
cine, surgery, and laboratories. Under this 
type of organization the specialties will have 
full scope and yet come under adequate medi- 
cal or surgical control and direction. 

The Clinical Congress of Surgeons of 
North America is an organization founded 
seven years ago by Dr. Franklin H. Martin, 
of the advisory commission of the Council of 
National Defense, of Chicago. Surgical 
demonstrations were held at 25 important 
Chicago hospitals and programs were arranged 
almost exclusively along medico-military lines. 

France was represented by Colonel C. 
Dercle and England by Colonel T. H. Good- 
win, R. A. M. C. Sir Berkeley Moynihan 
presented the activities of the British Army 
and Major George W. Crile, M. R. C., detailed 
the American medical activities in France. 

After Colonels E. L. Munson and F. F. 
Russell had outlined the work of the Sur- 
geon General’s office in organizing the medical 
officers’ training camps and the various mili- 
tary laboratories, Sir Berkeley Moynihan con- 
tributed an exposition of wound treatment in 
the British Army. He explained in detail the 
search for satisfactory antiseptic drugs and 


SCIENCE 


449 


ventured the novel axiom that wounds did 
best when merely carefully cleaned, put at 
rest, and kept free from contact with any drug 
or antiseptic. His address attracted much at- 
tention because it was the first authoritative 
denial of the universal efficacy of the now 
famous Carrel-Dakin technique of wound 
treatment. 

Major G. W. Crile, in discussing the ad- 
dress of Sir Berkeley, corroborated all that 
he said. Short addresses were made by Drs. 
Edward Martin, E. H. Dunham, and W. E. 
Lee, all of Philadelphia. By means of a 
moving-picture demonstration and the detail- 
ing of experimental and clinical data, they 
showed how much could be done for clean 
wound healing by the new antiseptic, Dichlor- 
amine-T, which is being investigated under 
instructions from the Surgeon General’s office. 
Dr. William O’Neill Sherman, who presented 
evidence of the efficacy of the Dakin-Carrel 
method of wound treatment, closed the Tues- 
day evening program. 

In addition to the usual committee reports, 
the meeting of the general medical board was 
livened by two instructive reports from Sir 
Berkeley and Major Crile. Sir Berkeley 
showed the remarkable efficiency developed by 
the Medical Corps of the British forces, and 
this despite the fact that 96 per cent. of the 
doctors were civilian physicians at the out- 
break of the war. This efficiency is attribut- 
able, among other things, to the two important 
factors of “surgical teamwork” and surgical 
consultants. The principle of surgical team- 
work was learned in the United States, said 
Sir Berkeley, and the principle of consultants 
(these consultants are picked from the leading 
surgical minds of Britain) was evolved from 
the necessity of having some one authoritative 
group to direct and correlate medical activi- 
ties consecutively from the field dressing sta- 
tions back to the base hospital. 

Major Crile outlined this plan for the so- 
called clinical sector, which in brief is made 
up of a team of men, selected preferably from 
a university or hospital where they have preyi- 
ously worked in unison, and now distributed 
among the dressing, field, evacuation, and 


450 


base hospitals of a given sector at the front. 
The object of such a unit is to secure at all 
times uniformity and continuity of oversight 
in the treatment of the wounded from the 
time of the first field dressing to the comple- 
tion of convalescence. 

At the meetings of the States activities 
committee resolutions were introduced and 
acted upon in regard to the universal training 
of young men above,19 for a period of six 
months, for the rehabilitation of rejected 
physically defective conscripts, and for the 
prophylaxis, control, and treatment of ve- 
nereal disease. 


DEATHS AMONG ORNITHOLOGISTS 

Tue Auk publishes obituary notices of sev- 
eral ornithologists who have died recently from 
which we take the following facts: 


Dr. Emil August Goeldi died suddenly at 
Bern, Switzerland, July 5, 1917, in the fifty- 
eighth year of his age. He was born at Ennet- 
biihl, Canton of St. Gall, Switzerland, August 
98, 1859. He studied at the Zoological Station 
at Naples and was assistant of Professor 
Ernst Haeckel at the Zoological Institute at 
Jena. In 1884 he went to Brazil and became 
associated with the museum in Rio de Janeiro. 
After the fall of the Emperor Dom Pedro IL, 
in 1889, he retired from this position and lived 
for four years in the state of Rio de Janeiro. 
About 1894 he founded the museum in Para, 
now known as the Museu Goeldi. This insti- 
tution which comprised not only a museum but 
also a zoological garden and a botanical gar- 
den was taken over by the state a few years 
later and Goeldi then became honorary di- 
rector. In 1905, after twenty years of life in 
the tropics, he returned to Switzerland and 
took up his residence in Bern where, since 
1908, he has been professor of zoology in the 
Cantonal University. He visited the United 
States in August, 1907, at the time of the 
meeting of the Seventh International Congress 
of Zoology in Boston. Dr. Goeldi has pub- 
lished a number of papers in English, German 
and Portuguese on various branches of zool- 
ogy, but chiefly on mammals, birds and fishes. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1193 


Alfred John North died of heart failure at 
Sydney, Australia, May 6, 1917, only five 
months after the death of his former chief and 
associate, Dr. E. P. Ramsay. He was born in 
North Melbourne, Australia, June 11, 1855, 
and was educated in the public and grammar 
schools of Melbourne. Later he worked at the 
jeweler’s trade for some years. At an early 
age he developed an interest in ornithology 
which was stimulated by visits to the National 
Museum at Melbourne and by the officers of 
this institution, Sir Frederick McCoy the di- 
rector, and John Leadbeater in charge of 
ornithology. In 1878 he corresponded with 
Ramsay and eight years later went to Sidney 
to arrange the Ramsay collection of birds and 
the collection of eggs of the Australian Mu- 
seum. After spending several months at this 
task he was asked to prepare the “ Descriptive 
Catalogue of the Nests and Eggs of Birds 
found Breeding in Australia and Tasmania” 
which was published in 1889. About this time 
he was appointed an assistant to the curator, 
Dr. Ramsay, and in 1891 was made ornitholo- 
gist of the museum, a position which he re- 
tained until his death. He has published 
many papers on the birds of Australia. 


Rey. William Rogers Lord died in Dover, 
Mass., February 2, 1916, in the sixty-ninth 
year of his age. He was born in Boston, Mass., 
May 6, 1847. He graduated from Amherst 
College with the degree of A.B., in 1875 and 
from the Union Theological Seminary, in New 
York, in 1878, and had held pastorates in the 
East and in the West. 

Mr. Lord was deeply interested in birds 
and especially in popularizing bird study and 
bird protection. 

Dr. Bert Heald Bailey died at Cedar Rap- 
ids, Iowa, June 22, 1917. He was born at 
Farley, Iowa, May 2, 1875. Dr. Bailey grad- 
uated from Coe College in 1897 and received 
his master’s degree from the same institution 
in 1900. In 1900 he also completed his course 
and received an M.D. degree from Rush Med- 
ical College, Chicago. In September, 1900, he 
became professor of zoology and curator of 
the Museum of Coe College, a position which 
he held at the time of his death. 


NoveMBeER 9, 1917] 


He published a small volume entitled “200 
Wild Birds of Iowa’’ in 1906, and was the au- 
thor of numerous short papers and notes on 
mammals and birds which appeared from time 
to time in the Proceedings of the Iowa Acad- 
of Science and in The Auk. In addition, 
many valuable notes contributed by him ap- 
pear in Anderson’s “ Birds of Iowa.” 


Francis Windle died at his home in West 
Chester, Pa., on February 24, 1917, in his sev- 
enty-second year. Mr. Windle was born in 
West Marlboro, Chester county, Pa. He lived 
most of his life in West Chester, having re- 
ceived his education in the schools of his na- 
tive county and at the University of Michigan, 
at which latter place he took his law course. 
Owing to poor health Mr. Windle found it 
necessary to give up the practise of law and 
seek outdoor employment. He secured a posi- 
tion with one of the extensive nurseries at West 
Chester. Here his wide knowledge of botany 
acquired during his frequent outing trips, 
which constituted his chief recreation for 
years, proved a valuable asset. During his 
recreational activities his time was about 
equally divided between his study and observa- 
tion of plants and birds, with the result that he 
became skilled in both botany and field orni- 
thology. 

For several years Mr. Windle taught biology 
at Darlington Seminary, West Chester, and 
also did some teaching at the State Normal 
School in the same place. 

For about eleven years prior to his death 
he was connected with the Bureau of Zoology, 
Department of Agriculture of Pennsylvania, 
with headquarters at Harrisburg. He became 
assistant orchard inspector for the eastern end 
of Pennsylvania, and while acting in this ca- 
pacity was made a member of the Chestnut 
Blight Commission, and later of the White 
Pine Blister Rust Commission. The duties of 
these positions took him all over the eastern 
end of the state and kept him out of doors 
where he could indulge his passion for botany 
and ornithology. He was a member of the 
Philadelphia Botanical Club and of the Dela- 
ware Valley Ornithological Club and kept con- 
stantly in touch with men in these fields. 


SCIENCE 


451 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
WAR SERVICE FOR CHEMISTS! 

France and England freely acknowledge 
that they greatly decreased their efficiency by 
sending their scientific men to the trenches. 
Although they have since withdrawn most of 
those still alive and are now using them in 
special service, the dearth of technically 
trained men has been and is severely felt. 

Secretary of War Baker, aware of this fact, 
is carrying out the full spirit of the selective 
draft, and specially trained men, so far as 
needed, are being assigned to the war service 
which they are trained to render. 

More than others among scientific men, 
trained chemists have been needed for war pur- 
poses by both the Army and the Navy. 

Fortunately, the American Chemical So- 
ciety and the Bureau of Mines, acting coopera- 
tively, foreseeing this need, took first a census 
of American chemists and later compiled from 
all data available a list of those enlisted. From 
this list of chemists actually in the Army and 
the Navy a large number have been selected 
for special fitness and have been already as- 
signed. Many more, undoubtedly, will he so 
assigned, and if the present demand keeps up, 
it may later be necessary to ask for special en- 
listment for chemical work. That time has not 
yet arrived. 

At present any chemist not required by law 
to enter chemical war service who enters vol- 
untarily keeps one chemist in the ranks and 
deprives the chemical industries of his own 
service as well. A number of chemists have 
been commissioned, but these are picked men 
of special attainments and specific experience. 
The majority will serve as privates or non- 
commissioned officers until such time as they 
are found to deserve promotion. 

Don’t ask to be assigned to chemical work 
until you are actually in the camp. Camp as- 
signment must be made before your name will 
be submitted to the War Department. 

Don’t send in your name, even for considera- 
tion for such service, if exemption is to be 


1From The Journal of Industrial and Engineer- 
ing Chemistry. 


452 


asked for or while exemption claims are pend- 
ing. It leads to endless confusion. 

Don’t try to deprive another chemist actu- 
ally in the Army of his opportunity to render 
chemical service by yourself seeking such serv- 
ice, until called. The industries which supply 
the Army and Navy with the sinews of war 
need trained chemists and are being seriously 
handicapped by the depletion of their chemical 
personnel. 
| Don’t write to anyone in Washington to aid 
you in a claim for exemption. Even if they 
wished to do so, they are quite properly power- 
less for the law delegates exemption to the Lo- 
eal and District Boards. 

Do send me your name, address, military 
and camp assignment when actually sworn in 
(not before). If you have not already filed de- 
tails of your age, training and experience, send 
this also at the same time. 

Cuarites L. Parsons, 
Secretary 
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 
Box 505, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


pi THE MAYO FOUNDATION 

Ar the meeting of the board of regents of 
the University of Minnesota held on Septem- 
ber 13, the regents adopted the following reso- 
lution thanking the Drs. Mayo for their gift 
establishing the Mayo Foundation for medical 
investigation and research: 

Whereas, Dr. William J. Mayo and Dr. Chas. 
H. Mayo, of Rochester, Minnesota, have given the 
sum of $1,650,344.79 to the University of Minne- 
sota for the establishment of a fund to be known 
as the ‘‘Mayo Foundation for Medical Education 
and Research,’’ and, 

Whereas, This gift has been duly accepted by 
unanimous action of the board of regents, 

Therefore, be it Resolved, That the board of re- 
gents records its profound sense of gratitude to the 
donors. The gift is unique in the annals of Amer- 
ican education. It represents the lofty purposes of 
two of the most distinguished citizens of our com- 
monwealth. They believe that this money has 
come from the people and that it should be returned 
to the people. It has been the sole aim of the 
donors to provide a fund which would be of perma- 
nent benefit to the state of Minnesota and to man- 
kind as a whole. They have wisely and appropri- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1193 


ately provided that the income of the fund shall 
be used for medical education and research. 
American universities should be encouraged in the 
prosecution of an educational policy which aims to 
develop investigators and scientists of the first 
rank. One clear function of a true university is 
to make actual contributions to various fields of 
knowledge. This new foundation, therefore, re- 
lates itself very intimately to the realization of our 
highest educational aims. Both for the gift itself 
and for the genuine impetus which it will impart to 
scholarly investigation in this university, we desire 
to convey to the donors our sincere appreciation. 


THE CONNAUGHT LABORATORIES OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF. TORONTO 


Tue Connaught Laboratories of the Univer- 
sity of Toronto, and a farm of fifty acres, 
were formally presented by Colonel Albert 
Gooderham, to the University of Toronto and 
at the same time officially opened by the Goy- 
ernor General, the Duke of Devonshire, on Oc- 
tober 25. The value of the gift is about sev- 
enty-five thousand dollars. The laboratories 
are to be used for the purpose of research in 
preventive medicine and for the production of 
serums and vaccines. Sir William Hearst, the 
premier of Ontario, at the opening, announced 
that a grant of seventy-five thousand dollars 
would be authorized at the next session of the 
legislature, to establish a research foundation 
in preventive medicine. The income from this 
and also from an additional twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars, will be used for research only, 
the laboratories being self-supporting. This is 
the first endowment of research in preventive 
medicine in Canada. In connection with the 
official opening of these laboratories, a lecture 
was delivered in Convocation Hall, on the 
same evening by Dr. Simon Flexner, director 
of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Re- 
search, on the “ War activities of the Rocke- 
feller Institute.” A distinguished audience, 
including the Governor General and the Lieu- 
tenant Governor, attended this most interest- 
ing and able lecture. 


THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE FEDERATION 
OF AMERICAN SOCIETIES FOR EXPERI- 
MENTAL BIOLOGY 


THE annual meeting of the Federation of 
American Societies for Experimental Biology 


NoveMBER 9, 1917] Py 


oceurs this year at the University of Min- 
nesota in Minneapolis. The scientific pro- 
gram covers the three days of December 27, 
28 and 29. The Local Committee is planning 
attractive features of general interest, includ- 
ing a trip to Rochester, that center of medical 
and surgical activities which the war condi- 
tions have raised to a plane of paramount 
importance. The four societies of the federa- 
tion are the American Physielegical Society, 
the American Society of Biological Chemists, 
the American Society for Pharmacology and 
Experimental Therapeutics, and the American 
Society for Experimental Pathology. Many 
members of these societies are engaged in 
scientific work in support of our government. 
in the great war struggle. The general secre- 
tary hopes that the scientific program will 
strongly reflect this present activity and that 
the meeting will be one of unusual interest 
and enthusiasm. The members of the socie- 
ties are urged to make vigorous efforts to at- 
tend and to contribute to the program. The 
fact that the meetings of the American Asso- 
ciation of Anatomists and the American Zo- 
ological Society occur at the same time and 
place lends the strong appeal of mutual and 
cooperative interest which every member of 
the federation will find it difficult to resist. 
Cuar es W. GREENE, 
General Secretary of the Federation. 
CoLuMBIA, MIssourRI, 
October 25, 1917 


THE PITTSBURGH MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
SOCIETY OF NATURALISTS 


Tue American Society of Naturalists, in 
affiliation with Section F of the American As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science and 
the Botanical Society of America, will hold its 
thirty-fifth annual meeting at Pittsburgh, 
under the auspices of the University of Pitts- 
burgh, beginning Tuesday, January 1, 1918. 

There will be a smoker for Biologists on Sat- 
urday evening, December 29. 

The Botanical Society of America will place 
the genetical papers of its program on Mon- 
day morning, December 31, and in the after- 
noon of the same day will present an invitation 
program including the presidential address of 
R. A. Harper. 


SCIENCE 


453 


Section F of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science will have on Mon- 
day morning the address of the retiring vice- 
president, G. H. Parker, and in the afternoon 
a symposium on “ The contributions of zoology 
to human welfare.” 

By this arrangement there will be sessions 
of interest to the members of the American 
Society of Naturalists on the day preceding 
the meetings of the society. 

The American Society of Naturalists will 
offer for Tuesday morning, January 1, a pro- 
gram of invitation papers. 

The program for Tuesday afternoon will be 
a symposium on “Factors of organic evolu- 
tion.” 

The Naturalists’ dinner, in which members 
of the affiliated societies are invited to partici- 
pate, will be held on the evening of Tuesday. 
At the close of the dinner George H. Shull will 
give his presidential address, “ The genotype 
and its environment.” 

As the result of an apparently growing de- 
sire on the part of members of the American 
Society of Naturalists to contribute papers, 
the Program Committee will this year receive 
titles for a program to begin on Wednesday 
morning, January 2. It is desired that the 
papers be short and it should be remembered 
that the interests of the Naturalists are pri- 
marily on problems of organic evolution. The 
papers on this program will in general be ar- 
ranged in order of the receipt of the titles, ex- 
cept that papers on similar subjects may be 
grouped. Titles with estimated length of de- 
livery and statement of lantern or chart re- 
quirements must be in the hands of the secre- 
tary by December 1. 

Nominations for membership must be sent 
to the Secretary not later than December 1 in 
order that the Executive Committee may give 
them due consideration before the meeting. 
Blank forms for nominations may be obtained 
from the secretary. 

’ Headquarters of the Naturalists will be at 
the Monongahela House, Smithfield and Water 
Streets. Members are advised to make early 
reservations. 
Singleyroomsieyaseeeee. tee 
Moublemoomsseeecre sce. 


$1.50; with bath, $2.00 
$2.00; with bath, $3.00 


454 


Other hotels recommended by the local com- 
mittee: 


Minimum rate 
for single room 


Anderson ........ Penn and Federal ........ $1.50 
Chathamyea si) 423 Penn Ave...........- 1.50 
Colonial Annex ...Sixth and Penn ......... 1.00 
Hortpeittie eri Tenthvand)Pennl ss). -) 1.) 2.00 
TIMIAY CoS 46000000 417 Wifth Ave.....-..5... 2.00 
Lamont .......... Spahr and Adler ........ 1.00 
IMOETAING piel yet Highland and Rodman ... 1.00 
Motor Square ....Center and Beatty ....... 1.00 
INewellac asset: 343 Bifth Ave..........-- 1.50 
Schenley,.......... Bigelow Blvd. and 5th.... 2.00 
Seventh Ave......Seventh and Liberty .... 1.50 
William Penn ....Wm. Penn Place ........ 2.50 
pVodermecitiicicr 1112 Forbes St. ........ 50 
BraptEy M. Davis, 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, Secretary 


PHILADELPHIA 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Dr. L. I. Battzy was elected president of 
the American Pomological Society at the re- 
cent Boston meeting. 


Dr. JoHN CHARLES HeEsstEr, professor of 
chemistry in the James Millikin University at 
Decatur, Illinois, has been elected to the presi- 
dency of the Illinois State Academy of Sci- 
ence. 


At the Chicago meeting of the American 
College of Surgeons the following were elected 
fellows: Surgeon General Rupert Blue, United 
States Public Health Service; Surgeon Gen- 
eral William C. Gorgas, United States Army; 
Surgeon General William C. Braisted, United 
States Navy; Colonel T. H. Goodwin, British 
Medical Corps; Colonel C. Dercle, French 
Medical Corps; Sir Berkeley Moynihan, Leeds, 
England. 


Dr. Louris B. Witson, of the Mayo Founda- 
tion of the University of Minnesota, has been 
appointed director of the foundation. 


Frank C. Baker, zoological investigator of 
the New York State College of Forestry, at 
Syracuse, formerly acting director of the Chi- 
cago Academy of Sciences, has been appointed 
curator of the university museum at the Uni- 
versity of Illinois, where his work will begin 
within a couple of months. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1193 


A TESTIMONIAL banquet was given by the 
Physicians’ Club of Chicago, in honor of Dr. 
Frank Billings, at the Auditorium Hotel, on 
November 1. Dr. Augustus O’Neill acted as 
toastmaster. A silver loving cup was presented 
to Dr. Billings on behalf of the Physicians’ 
Club. 


A PEERAGE of the United Kingdom has been 
conferred upon the Right Honorable Sir 
Francis Hopwood, vice-chairman of the De- 
velopment Commission, and a member of the 
General Board and Executive Committee of 
the National Physical Laboratory. 


PresENT Porncaré has conferred the Le- 
gion of Honor upon Dr. John Cadman, C.M.G., 
professor of mining in the University of Bir- 
mingham, in recognition of valuable services 
rendered by him in the cause of the allies. 

Proressor I. Banpi has been placed in charge 
of the newly opened institution at Naples for 
the production of therapeutic serums and vac- 
cines as a center for research in hygiene and 
biology, with special regard to colonial condi- 
tions. 

P. F. Waker, dean of the engineering 
school and formerly head of the department of 
mechanical engineering at the University of 
Kansas, has been granted an indefinite leave 
of absence to enter the army. He has received 
a commission as Lieutenant Colonel and is sta- 
tioned at Camp Cody, N. M. Professor George 
C. Shaad has temporarily assumed the duties 
of dean and Professor Frederick H. Sibley has 
been made head of the department of mechan- 
ical engineering. 

James H. Bonner, professor of forestry in 
the Montana State University, has been ap- 
pointed captain in the engineers’ section of 
the officers’ reserve corps. 


Victor K. La Mer, formerly chemist at the 
Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring Harbor, 
Long Island, has received a commission of 
first lieutenant in the Sanitary Corps. ° 


PRESDENT WILLIAM Jasper Kerr, of the 
Oregon Agricultural College, has been ap- 
pointed head of the increased agricultural pro- 
duction campaign and chairman of the Food 
Committee of the State Council of Defense. 


NovEMBER 9, 1917] 


Proressor H. S. Pratt, of Haverford Col- 
lege, assisted by Frank C. Baker, zoological in- 
vestigator of the New York State College of 
Forestry, made during the past summer a 
study of the parasitic worms of Oneida Lake 
fishes. This work was made by cooperation be- 
tween the U. S. Bureau of Fishes and the New 
York State College of Forestry at Syracuse, 
and was a part of the fish survey which has 
been carried on there for the past three years. 


Proressor Carvin H. Kaurrman, curator of 
the Cryptogamie Herbarium, and professor in 
the department of botany of the University of 
Michigan, has left for Colorado where he will 


spend the year gathering and selecting mush- | 


rooms in order to experiment on them for cer- 
tain malignant diseases which affect crops. 
Professor Kauffman was granted a year’s leave 
of absence in order that he might work on 
these plant diseases for the United States 
government, 


Dr. Wim OC. Faraser, director of the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum, who re- 
cently returned from a two years’ exploring 
trip to the Amazon River, is now engaged in 
installing the exhibits he collected. Thousands 
of rare specimens are being made ready and 
when finished they will occupy the entire floor 
of the museum. The collection, which will be 
opened to the public early in November, 
promises to be the finest of its kind in the 
world. In the absence of Director Gordon, Dr. 
Farabee is acting director of the museum. 


Dr. Frank Carney, professor of geology 
and geography at Denison University, has re- 
signed to enter the employment of The Na- 
tional Refining Company of Cleveland, Ohio. 


L. M. Toiman, for seventeen years connected 
with the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, and for the last three 
years chief of the central food and drug in- 
spection district of that bureau, has resigned 
to become chief chemist of Wilson & Co., Chi- 
eago, to have charge of their control and re- 
search work. 


Sm Maurice Fitzmaurice, C.M.G., has been 


appointed to fill the vacancy on the advisory 
council of the Committee of the Privy Coun- 


SCIENCE 


455 


cil for Scientific and Industrial Research of 
Great Britain, caused by the retirement, by 
rotation, of Mr. W. Duddell, C.B.E., F.R.S. 

A Peruvian Medical Commission, which will 
tour the United States inspecting medical 
schools and hospitals, began its work in Balti- 
more, October 14, and from there went to 
Philadelphia and New York. The commission 
is composed of Professor Dr. Guillermo Gasta- 
neta and Drs. E. Campodonico and R. Asplazu. 
The object of the commission is to secure in- 
formation for the reorganization of the med- 
ical schools of Peru in accordance with Amer- 
ican standards. 


Dr. Henry C. SHerMan, professor of food 
chemistry in Columbia University, who has 
recently returned from service in Petrograd 
as a member of the scientific division of the 
American Red Cross Mission to Russia, spoke 
of the work of the mission in Russia at Hast- 
ings-on-Hudson, New York. 


Prorressor L. H. Bamey, of Cornell Uni- 
versity, will present a paper on the evening of 
November 12 before the Society for the Pro- 
motion of Agricultural Science in Washing- 
ton on “ Permanent Agriculture and Democ- 
racy (suggested by the situation in China).” 


Proressor Srmeon FE. Baupwin, of Yale 
University, was reelected president of the 
Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences at 
its annual meeting on October 18. At this 
meeting Professor Baldwin read a paper on 
“The growth of law during the past year.” 
Dr. Olive Day and Dr. George F. Eaton were 
elected vice presidents. 


THe Harvey Society lectures will be given 
at the New York Academy of Medicine, as 
follows: Noy. 10, Dr. Carl L. Alsberg, Wash- 
ington, D. C., “Current food problems”; 
Noy. 24, Dr. Linsly R. Williams, “ The medi- 
cal problem of the war”; Dec. 8, Professor 
Aldred S. Warthin, Ann Arbor, “The new 
pathology of syphilis.” 


Mr. FisHer, the British minister for educa- 
tion, presided, on October 31, at a meeting in 
London, which was addressed by Mr. Waldorf 
Astor, on “ Health problems and a state min- 
istry of health.” Mr. Kingsley Wood, of the 


456 


London County Council, and others took part 
in the discussion. 


Dr. Grorce D. Husparp, head of the depart- 
ment of geology of Oberlin College, will ad- 
dress the annual meeting of the Central Asso- 
ciation of Teachers of Science and Mathe- 
matics at Columbus, Ohio, which will be held 
from November 30 to December 1, on “ Why 
should geography be taught in the high 
schools?” Dr. Hubbard has recently been re- 
tained in Toledo in connection with certain 
problems of physiography and geography in- 
volved in the riparian case in litigation in 
which agricultural and fishing industries 
clashed. 


Dr. R. H. Warp, of Troy, N. Y., known for 
his work in microscopy and from 1869 to 1892 
professor of botany in the Renssellaer Poly- 
technic Institute, died on October 29, aged 
eighty years. 


Sm Wim JAMres HerscoHe., discoverer 
and developer of the system of identification by 
fingerprints, died on October 24. Sir William 
was born in 1833. He was the grandson of 
Sir William Herschel, the English astronomer, 
and the son of Sir John Frederick William 
Herschel, whom he succeeded in the baronetey 
in 1871. 


Tue death is announced of Mr. Charles 
Latham, at Glasgow. Mr. Latham was the first 
Dixon professor of mining in Glasgow Uni- 
versity. 

Wituram Ropert SyKes, the inventor of the 
lock-and-block system of railway signalling, 
died on October 2, at the age of seventy-seven 
years. 


UnpeEr an agreement between the executors 
of the estate of the late James Buchanan 
Brady and his heirs, most of the estate, esti- 
mated at $3,000,000, is now available for the 
New York Hospital, and makes possible the 
establishment of the James Buchanan Brady 
Foundation of Urology, which is in accord- 
ance with the testator’s plans. Dr. Oswald 
S. Lowsley, who was named by Mr. Brady as 
director, has the plans of the foundation in 
charge. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


Tue Robert Dawson Evans Memorial for 
Clinical Research and Preventive Medicine of 
the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital will 
receive about $1,000,000, as residuary legatee 
of the estate of Maria Antoinette Evans. 


Tue forty-fifth annual convention of the 
American Public Health Association opened in 
Washington on October 18. Herbert C. 
Hoover, director of the United States Food 
Administration, addressed the convention at 
its first general session. The program for the 
afternoon called for a joint session of the as- 
sociation with the American Social Hygiene 
Association, the Baltimore Medical Society 
*and the Maryland Society for Social Hygiene. 
A symposium on easily preventable disease 
control in the army, the navy and the civilian 
community was given by Colonel F. F. Rus- 
sell, U. S. A.; Surgeon R. C. Holcomb, U. S. 
N.; Raymond B. Fosdick, chairman of the 
commission on training camp activities; As- 
sistant Surgeon General J. W. Kerr, of the 
Federal Public Health Service, and Surgeon 
William H. Frost, director of the Red Cross 
Sanitary Service. 


Tue Civil Service Commission of the State 
of New York announces examinations for the 
State Department of Health for a physiologi- 
cal chemist at a salary of $1,500; for a labora- 
tory assistant in chemistry at a salary of 
$720 to $1,200 and for a laboratory assistant in 
bacteriology at a salary of $720 to $1,200. 
These positions are open to non-residents and 
to citizens of other countries except those at 
war with the United States, and in the first 
two positions a degree from a college maintain- 
ing a standard satisfactory to the commission 
or an equivalent education is required. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

Cotumsi1a University, New York University 
and the Presbyterian Hospital are beneficiaries 
in the will of Kate Collins Browne, who died 
on August 19. They will share the residue 
of the estate after half a million dollars is 
distributed in bequests. 


NOVEMBER 9, 1917] 


YaLe University has acquired by purchase 
another entire city block in the center of New 
Haven. 


Tue enrollment in the College of Medicine 
of the Universtiy of Cincinnati shows an in- 
crease of about 40 per cent. over last year. 
The enrollment in 1916 was 102 compared 
with 148 for the year 1917-18. 


In the Oregon Agricultural College Adolph 
Zeifle has been made dean of the newly created 
school of pharmacy; Miss Ava B. Milam dean 
of the school of home economics, and E. K. 
Soper, head of the department of mines at the 
University of Idaho, has been appointed dean 
of the school of mines to fill the vacancy made 
by the resignation of Dean H. M. Parks to 
head the Oregon Bureau of Mines and 
Geology. 


Proressor Horcuniss, of the department of 
business education of the University of Min- 
nesota, has been made chief of the department 
of economics during the absence of Professor 
Durand. 


Proressor C. C. Paumer, of the College of 
Agriculture of the State University of Min- 
nesota, has been appointed head of the depart- 
ment of bacteriology, physiology and hygiene, 
at the Delaware College, Newark, Del. 


Dr. Apert C. Herre, for several years past 
professor of geography and agriculture in the 
Bellingham, Washington, State Normal 
School, has recently been appointed head of 
the department of biology in the same institu- 


tion. 


Espen H. Toor, recently of the Kansas 
Agricultural College, Manhattan, Kansas, has 
been appointed to succeed Professor G. N. 
Hoffer as assistant professor of plant pathol- 
ogy and physiology, at Purdue University. 
Professor Hoffer has been transferred to the 
Agricultural Experiment Station of Purdue. 


Dr. C. C. Forsairu, instructor in botany in 
Dartmouth College, has been appointed in- 
structor in wood technology in the New York 
State College of Forestry. 


E. A. Rem, for the past two years instructor 
in electrical engineering at Minnesota, has 


SCIENCE 


457 


resigned to accept a similar position at the 
University of Illinois. 


Proressor CLarence A. Morrow, formerly 
professor of chemistry in the Nebraska 
Wesleyan University, has been elected as- 
sistant professor of agricultural biochemistry 
in the University of Minnesota. 


Mrs. J. A. Nyswanper has been appointed 
assistant professor of mathematics at the Uni- 
versity of Nevada, to take the place of her 
husband, who has been called to government 
service. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
THE “AGE AND AREA” HYPOTHESIS OF 
WILLIS 
Tuer “Age and Area” hypothesis of Willis, 
recently discussed and endorsed by Professor 
De Vries in Scrence,! states that “the area 
occupied by any given species (of plants) 
at any given time in any given country 
in which there occur no well-marked bar- 
riers depends upon the age of that species 
in that country.” The older the species is, 
in other words, the wider is its range. If con- 
firmed, this hypothesis would be of the great- 
est scientific importance, for not only would 
it discredit the efficacy of natural selection— 
the point chiefly emphasized by its author 
and Professor De Vries—but, by enabling us 
to identify with certainty the most widespread 
types as the most ancient ones, in any given 
region or in the world as a whole, it would 
also clear up a host of vexed questions in 
plant geography and plant phylogeny. Certain 
objections to the hypothesis appear to be so 
great, however, as to cast doubt upon its 
universal applicability; and a careful study 
of the floras of Ceylon and New Zealand, the 
regions with which Professor Willis has 
chiefly worked, serves to emphasize the com- 

plexity of the whole problem involved. 
Factors other than age evidently share in 
determining the area occupied by a species. 


1De Vries, H., ‘‘The distribution of endemic 
species in New Zealand,’’ Scrence, N. S., Vol. 
XLV., No. 1173, pp. 641-642, June 22, 1917. 


458 


Barriers of various sorts certainly do exist 
almost everywhere and effectively limit the 
extent to which a species may be dispersed. 
We have reason to believe that many types 
are as widespread as they can ever be and that 
no increase in age, other factors remaining 
constant, will widen their ranges. In fact, 
evidence from fossils shows that certain spe- 
cies and genera occupy to-day smaller areas 
than they formerly did. 

Factors inherent in the plant itself are also 
bound to influence the extent of its distribu- 
tion. Types which are hardy and able to 
thrive under a wide range of conditions will 
obviously spread farther and faster that those 
which are sensitive or specialized. The growth 
habit of a plant, too, seems to be very im- 
portant in determining distribution, trees usu- 
ally occupying small ranges, shrubs wider 
ones and herbs the widest of all. This may 
be observed in almost any flora and is very 
noticeable in those of Ceylon and New Zea- 
land, where the endemic species, necessarily 
of limited dispersal, are predominantly trees 
and shrubs; the non-endemic, widespread ones, 
predominantly herbs. The data as to rela- 
tive commonness of species in Ceylon given 
in Trimen’s “Flora,” the authority used by 
Professor Willis, also show clearly that the 
herbs are much commoner and more widely 
dispersed than are the woody plants. 

The theory that the most widespread types 
are the oldest meets with further difficulties 
from some of its implications. The fact 
which we have just mentioned, that species 
of herbs tend universally to have much wider 
ranges than those of shrubs or trees, a cir- 
cumstance long ago noted and emphasized by 
De Candolle, must mean, if we follow Pro- 
fessor Willis, that the herbaceous element in 
the angiospermous vegetation of the globe is 
more ancient than the woody element. 
Against this conclusion there are serious ob- 
jections, and it is at present maintained by 
few botanists or geologists. In its interpre- 
tation of endemic types the hypothesis is also 
open to objection, since it regards endemic 
species and genera in all cases as of recent 
origin, the newest element in their respective 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


floras. There is much evidence, however, 
from taxonomy and paleobotany, that in many 
eases endemics are relicts of types once much 
more widely spread which have disappeared 
from all regions save one. Such endemics 
are evidently ancient rather than recently 
acquired members of a flora. 

This point involves the necessary corollary 
to his hypothesis which Professor Willis 
brings forward when he states? that the 
“ dying out ” of a species is a rather rare event, 
usually requiring some profound geological or 
climatic change. This belief in the essential 
permanency of types necessarily leads Pro- 
fessor Willis to the view that species or genera 
which are isolated taxonomically and without 
near relatives have become so not through the 
extinction of intermediate and connecting 
forms, but by a single step, a view demanding 
belief in the frequency and permanence of wide 
mutations. If we look again at the fossil 
record, however, we see such an overwhelming 
array of extinct types that it is hard to attrib- 
ute their extermination in every case to a 
cataclysmic disturbance. This difficulty in- 
creases when we examine the flora of any such 
isolated region as Ceylon or New Zealand. If 
Professor Willis’s hypothesis is correct, the 
original invaders of each of these islands—its 
oldest plant inhabitants—should now be the 
most widespread and common members of its 
flora, in contrast to the endemic forms which 
have sprung from them and are thus more rare 
and local. If we look at the flora of Ceylon, 
however, we find that there are no less than 63 © 
genera of dicotyledons alone, 8 per cent. of the 
whole, which, though not endemic in Ceylon, 
are represented only by endemic species. In 
New Zealand 90 non-endemic genera of dicoty- 
ledons, or 48 per cent. of the whole, are simi- 
larly represented only by endemic species. In 
these cases, where in each genus is the parent 
species or group of species, the original in- 
vader, which has supposedly given rise to all 
these endemic forms and which should now be 
more common than any of them? It certainly 

2Willis, J. C., ‘‘The evolution of species in 
Ceylon, with reference to the dying out of spe- 
cies,’’? Annals of Botany, Vol. XXX., 1916, p. 1. 


NoveMBER 9, 1917] 


has died out in some way, since it no longer 
exists in the island. 

A further objection to the hypothesis lies in 
its particular application to the flora of New 
Zealand. On the basis of the soundings, Pro- 
fessor Willis believes that the land bridge over 
which came the original plant population of 
the islands entered at about the center of the 
chain. He presumably refers to the strip of 
shoal water running northwesterly from New 
Zealand toward Australia, on which stands 
Lord Howe Island. On the assumption that 
all the original invaders entered at this central 
point and spread north and south, and that in 
doing so they followed the rule of “age and 
area,’ Professor Willis makes and verifies a 
series of predictions as to the disposition of 
the flora to-day. His whole argument hinges 
on the existence of an original central point of 
entry and dispersal. It neglects entirely the 
evidence that a large and characteristic ele- 
ment of the New Zealand flora entered the is- 
lands not from Australasia on the west, but 
from the antarctic regions to the south. 
Hooker, Wallace and Cheeseman, the foremost 
authorities on antarctic floras, state their be- 
lief that, even if there was never a complete 
land bridge from the southern extremity of 
New Zealand to the antarctic continent, there 
was at least a considerable southward exten- 
sion of New Zealand at one time (for which 
there is also evidence on the ocean bottom) 
over which the “antarctic types” came north 
and entered it. If the southern tip of New 
Zealand was thus also a center of entrance and 
dispersal for a large floral element, Professor 
Willis’s observations are far from supporting 
his hypothesis. He notes particularly the 
scarcity of endemic species at both the north 
and south extremities of the islands, and 
points to this fact as convincing confirmation 
of his views, since (assuming a single central 
point of dispersal) the extremities would be 
populated last and would have produced as yet 
but few endemics. But assuming a second 
point of entry, at the southern extremity of the 
islands, we should expect to find there to-day, 
if the “ age and area” hypothesis is true, a de- 
cided bunching of endemic species. Either the 


SCIENCE 


459 


hypothesis is incorrect, or the commonly ac- 
cepted theory as to the dispersal of the ant- 
arctic floras is erroneous. 

Against Professor Willis’s hypothesis are 
therefore to be urged (1) that it disregards im- 
portant factors other than age which deter- 
mine area of dispersal; (2) that the conclu- 
sions which it necessarily implies as to the an- 
tiquity of certain plant types are opposed by a 
preponderance of evidence; (3) that, contrary 
to its expressed assumption, many species are 
becoming rarer and are “ dying out”; and (4) 
that it fails to explain the distribution of the 
New Zealand flora. 

There are doubtless a large number of spe- 
cies which are still extending their ranges and 
for which Professor Willis’s hypothesis holds 
good. Many persons will also sympathize with 
his chief contention, that natural selection 
ean not fully explain the origin of endemic 
species and genera; and a few will share 
his belief in the frequency and importance of 
very wide mutations. The problems involved 
in the origin, dispersal and extinction of spe- 
cies, however, are evidently far too complex to 
be covered by any single inclusive hypothesis 
like that of “age and area.” 

E. W. Srynotr 


CoNNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 


ERASMUS DARWIN AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 


To THE Epiror oF Science: Referring to the 
Notes on Erasmus Darwin and Benjamin 
Franklin in Science of September 21, last, on 
page 291 near the bottom of Column 1 is the 
remark that 


Even as far back as 1772 some one was puzzling 
over the idea of making a phonograph. 


He quotes Dr. Darwin as saying: 
I have heard of somebody that attempted to 


make a speaking machine, pray was there any 
truth in such reports? 


The “speaking machine” referred to was 
not a phonograph for reproducing speech, but 
a machine which could talk of itself. There 
was an effort to make such a machine, which 
the writer of the article quoted seems not to 
have heard of. This effort was continued 


460 


down to the time of the invention of the 
phonograph, and somewhat beyond that time. 
One Joseph Faber began to work on an idea 
of this sort in 1815, and in 1841 had the ma- 
chine so far finished that it was exhibited to the 
king of Bavaria, as stated in an article from the 
London Times of February 12, 1880, which is 
now lying before me. This machine was ex- 
hibited in America in the seventies and eighties 
and I heard it talk and ask and answer ques- 
tions put by the audience. Its speech was very 
mechanical, without inflection or emphasis. 
It was worked by an attendant with a key- 
board and bellows, An ivory reed whose pitch 
could be varied formed the vocal chords. The 
eavity of the mouth could be changed in shape 
and size by the keys of the keyboard. A 
tongue and lips of rubber formed the conson- 
ants. A windmill in the throat rolled the R’s 
and a tube was attached to the nose when it 
spoke French! It could also speak German 
and English. It is not probable that any one 
had thought of a phonograph in the sense in 
which we use the term as early as 1772. 
Knowledge of electricity was not sufficiently 
advanced at that time. 
W. C. Peckuam 


QUOTATIONS 
THE PHYSIQUE OF RECRUITS 

In the summer of 1916 the Board of Scien- 
tific Studies was established under the egis of 
the Royal Society to serve as a means of plac- 
ing knowledge in the possession of scientific 
and technical societies at the disposal of gov- 
ernment departments. At the first general 
meeting of this board in July, 1916, the 
urgency of a physical survey of the nation, to 
discover whether or not there existed definite 
evidence of physical deterioration, was dis- 
cussed. Emphasis was laid by various speakers 
on the fact that an Interdepartmental Com- 
mittee had reported in 1904 that such a survey 
was necessary. Nothing, however, had been 
done. The mobilization of a national army 
had provided an opportunity, as well as a need, 
for such a survey. 

The Board of Scientific Studies requested 
the Royal Anthropological Institute to report 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


on the desirability and possibility of such a 
survey. The institute having reported that 
such a survey was both desirable and possible, 
the board formed an Anthropological Survey 
Sub-committee to consider the manner in 
which such an investigation could best be car- 
ried out. This sub-committee has not yet re- 
ported to the Board of Scientific Studies, but 
we understand that it is seeking for the means 
of carrying out such a survey through the gov- 
ernment departments which have directly to 
do with the health and physique of the nation: 
the Recruiting Authority—now the Ministry 
of National Service—the Local Government 
Board and the Board of Education. Repre- 
sentatives of these departments have joined 
the Anthropological Survey Sub-committee, 
and it is hoped that a practical scheme may be 
formulated at an early date. 

Meanwhile American anthropologists have 
stolen a march on their British colleagues. 
When the United States entered the war the 
National Research Council was at once ere- 
ated to serve the same purpose as our Board 
of Scientific Studies. Its Anthropological 
Committee, formed to advise in the selection, 
standardization and examination of recruits, 
has already issued its report and recommenda- 
tions. It proposes that six of the sixteen great 
concentration camps should be selected for an 
anthropological survey—two in the Eastern, 
two in the Middle, and two in the Western 
States—and that special men who had been 
trained to use exactly the same anthropo- 
metrical methods at the National Museum at 
Washington, should be dispatched to carry out 
a survey of the men in the selected camps. 
The points for investigation have been reduced 
to a minimum, namely, standing and sitting 
heights, three dimensions of the head, two of 
the face, two of the chest, with precise records 
of the color of skin, eyes and hair. The statis- 
tical staff of the Prudential Insurance Com- 
pany of America has undertaken to deal with 
the data collected, while the Smithsonian In- 
stitution will facilitate the publication of re- 
sults. 

Although the intentions of the British com- 
mittee are more wide-reaching and aim at as- 


November 9, 1917] 


certaining the condition of all elements in the 
population, it is to be hoped that the observa- 
tions taken in Britain and America will be 
capable of direct comparison—for, beyond 
doubt, the bulk of the population of the United 
States has a British ancestry. 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


Mental Conflicts and Misconduct. By Wit- 
LIAM Hrany. Boston, Little, Brown & Com- 
pany, 1917. Pp. 330. 

Like earlier studies from the psychopathic 
institute attached to the Chicago Juvenile 
Court, this work emphasizes the need of 
painstaking inquiry into the experience and 
inner life.of the individual delinquent, if the 
treatment given him is to be in any sense 
remedial. The present book illustrates the 
author’s method of “ mental analysis,” a proc- 
ess somewhat akin to the “psychoanalysis” 
of Freud, though not making the same pre- 
tensions to penetrate to the very depths of 
the individual’s make-up, and not operating 
with dreams, symbols or association tests, 
but by a straightforward conversational ap- 
proach, in which the subject is sympatheti- 
eally asked to tell “if anything is worrying 
him.” This line of approach is especially in- 
dicated when the subject shows signs of an 
“inner urge” towards misdoing, without de- 
riving any material benefit, but only painful 
consequences, from his misdoing. In such 
cases, there is reason to suspect a “mental 
conflict,” which may be discovered by the 
analysis and then cleared up by proper hand- 
ling, with the happy result that the misccn- 
duct ceases. 

The mental conflict discovered by analysis 
is often of the following stamp. A young 
child, previously a good child, and often of 
good intelligence and from a good home, is 
incited by some bad boy or girl or older 
person to sex practices, and very often at the 
same time to stealing or truancy. The child 
rejects the sex practices, though often obsessed 
by the thought of them or by the bad words 
used in connection with them, but begins to 
steal or run away from home. The author 


interprets this to mean that an “inner urge,” 


SCIENCE 


461 


primarily directed towards sex behavior but 
prevented from finding an outlet there, es- 
capes through the channel of stealing, etc., 
which has become accidentally associated in 
the child’s mind with the sex matter. From 
such causes, quite a career of delinquency 
may be entered upon by children who are 
fundamentally normal and healthy-minded. 

As judged from a series of two thousand 
juvenile recidivists, the per cent. of cases of 
delinquency in which mental conflict of this 
general type enters as a causative factor is 
about seven—more rather than less. It is 
not the “rough” type of juvenile offender 
that is here in question, nor the mentally 
defective. Usually the cases show good men- 
tality and good social qualities. They are 
not moody and “shut-in,” nor egocentric, 
nor, indeed, of any peculiar mental or temp- 
eramental type (unless, as is possible from the 
tests given, the imagery or mental representa- 
tion of these individuals is unusually active 
and vivid). Heredity does not appear as an 
important factor; but it is rather the social 
or mental environment of the child that gen- 
erates the conflict. Specially important in 
this regard is the lack of confidential re- 
lations between the child and his parents, 
leading the child to keep his difficulties to 
himself, when a frank discussion of them 
with a sympathetic adult would resolve the 
conflict. 

The treatment appropriate to this species 
of delinquents is by no means punishment— 
an entirely superficial and notably unsuccess- 
ful reaction—but, first of all, mental analysis 
directed to discovering the genesis of the mis- 
conduct, and then “reeducation,” including 
the giving of suitable information and the 
development of an intelligent attitude towards 
the causes of conflict; further, the establish- 
ment of confidential relations between the 
delinquent child and an adult adviser, and 
often the removal of features of the environ- 
ment that suggest misconduct. 

Psychologically, the author’s case-material 
is of great interest, and the interpretation 
given, in terms of mental conflict, is likewise 
of considerable interest, though it does not 


462 


appear to fit all the cases equally well. To 
the reviewer, at least, a rather different “‘ men- 
tal mechanism” would seem to fit the case 
histories better. In particular, the associa- 
tion between sex behavior and such other 
forms of misconduct as stealing and truancy 
is perhaps not so purely accidental and ex- 
traneous as the author assumes; for all of 
these forms of bad conduct typify for the 
child that life of ‘‘ badness” which, perhaps 
because of its rebellion against authority and 
restraint, makes a certain appeal even to the 
“good” child. That is to say that the child 
does not resort to stealing as an outlet for 
dammed-up energy primarily directed towards 
sex behavior, but that, being incited to “ bad- 
ness” in several directions, and responding 
in some measure to the incitation, he follows 
the line that he is able to understand and 
follow with some success, leaving aside what 
he is not ripe for, though perhaps being mys- 
tified and obsessed by this latter. 


R. S. WoopwortH 
CoLuMBIA UNIVERSITY 


Telephone Apparatus. By Grorce D. SHEp- 
ARDSON, Professor of Electrical Engineering, 
University of Minnesota. D. Appleton & 
Co. 1917. 837 pages, 115 illustrations. 
Considering the marvelous rapidity of 

growth of telephony and the extent to which 
the telephone permeates the daily life of the 
modern business man, especially in America, 
where there is an average of one telephone to 
each ten persons, it is surprising how little is 
generally known concerning the history, con- 
struction or mode of operation of that wonder- 
ful device. This book presents an introduc- 
tion to the development and theory of tele- 
phony for the educated classes of the public in 
general, and particularly for those engaged in 
telephonic operation or manufacture. 

The book contains sixteen chapters, relating 
respectively to the following subjects: Intro- 
duction, Sound, Speech sounds, Telephone re- 
ceivers, Telephone-receiver 
Telephone transmitters, Telephone-transmitter 
investigations, Signaling devices, Design of 
non-polarized signaling apparatus, Perma- 


investigations, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1193 


nent magnets and polarized apparatus, Design 
of polarized apparatus, Electromotive forces 
and currents, Principles of induction coils, 
Uses of induction coils in telephony, Conden- 
sers in telephony, Protective devices. The 
treatment is directly descriptive, abundantly 
illustrated by pictures and diagrams of the 
apparatus. The mathematical analysis is 
nearly all collected into the appendices at the 
end of the book, so that a non-mathematical 
reader can peruse all the chapters with very 
few interruptions. 

The book deals mainly with telephonic 
apparatus, and the principles underlying its 
operation. Circuit arrangements are given 
relatively minor consideration, and radio-tele- 
phony is not included. A good set of indexes 
at the end of the volume greatly assists the 
reader. 

A noteworthy feature of the book is the 
large number of collateral references indi- 
cated in footnotes throughout the text. The 
collection and collation of so much historical 
and technical material represents a large 
amount of labor. The insertion of this sub- 
ordinate material makes the work of great 
value as a reference book to telephonists and 
students of telephony. Probably no other 
text-book on telephony in the English lan- 
guage contains such a wealth of electro-tech- 
nical reference material. INQ ADS AEG 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
ANESTHESIA AND RESPIRATION! 


THERE is much uncertainty as to the effect 
of anesthetics upon respiration. Some writers 
hold that anesthetics decrease respiration 
while others take the opposite view.? To clear 
up this confusion appears to be a necessary 
step toward a satisfactory theory of anes- 
thesia. 


1 Preliminary communication. 

2Cf. Hober, R., ‘‘Physik. Chem. der Zelle und 
der Gewebe,’’ Ch. 8 und 9, 1914. Czapek, F., Bio- 
chem. der Pflanzen, Vol. I., 8. 195 ff., 1913. Ewart, 
A. J., Annals of Bot., 12: 415, 1898. Tashiro, S. 
and Adams, H. 8., Amer. Jour. of Physiol., 33 
xxxvili, 1914. Appleman, C. O., Amer. Jour. of 
Bot., Vol. 3, No. 5, May, 1916. 


NovEMBER 9, 1917] 


The writer has recently been able to develop 
a method? for the measurement of minute 
amounts of carbon dioxide. The application 
of this method to the present problem has 
yielded interesting results. 

The experiments were made by measuring 
the change in the hydrogen-ion concentration 
of sea-water produced by the respiration of 
the marine alga, Laminaria. This was con- 
veniently done by the addition of a suitable 
indicator (phenosulphonephthalein) to the sea- 
water and comparing the color of the solution 
with the colors of a series of buffer solutions 
of known hydrogen-ion concentration (con- 
taining the same concentration of indicator). 

When the concentration of the anesthetic 
was so great as to cause considerable dilution 
of the sea water, concentrated sea water was 
added until the mixture had the same elec- 
trical conductivity as sea-water. When an 
anesthetic (as formaldehyde) showed an un- 
usually high acidity, the free acid was first 
neutralized with sodium carbonate. This is 
allowable for the purposes of the present in- 
vestigation, as its only effect would be to make 
the amount of CO, produced appear somewhat 
less than was actually the case. By selection 
of sea-water from different carboys, sea-water 
could be obtained for controls that had the 
same PH value as that of the sea-water con- 
taining the anesthetic. 

The fronds were cut up into pieces about 
two inches long, the cutting being reduced to 
a Minimum, since it is known that an increase 
of respiration may follow injury. Prelimi- 
nary experiments, in which uncut smaller 
fronds were used for comparison with the cut 
fronds, showed that the change in the respira- 
tion due to the cutting was negligible (espe- 
cially since the cut pieces were usually left 
about half an hour in sea-water before being 
used). 

Each piece of tissue was inserted into a 
Pyrex glass tube, closed by fusion at one end, 
a piece of paraffined rubber tubing being at- 
tached to the open end. Sea-water was then 

8 Haas, A. R., ScreNcE, N. S., 44: 105, 1916. 


4Cf. Richards, H. M., Annals of Bot., 10: 551, 
1896; ibid., 11: 29, 1897. 


SCIENCE 


463 


added, the solutions being the same tempera- 
ture as the bath. The temperature of the 
bath was always kept at 16° C.  Black- 
enamelled collapsible tin tubes served to ex- 
clude light from the tubes. After the sea- 
water bathing the tissue had been changed 
several times, a given amount of sea-water was 
added to the tube and a small bubble of air 
was included in order to serve as a stirrer (it 
was found to be preferable to paraffined glass 
beads). After the tube had been kept in the 
dark at 16° C. for a definite period it was re- 
moved from the bath and stirred by inverting 
the tube a few times. The clamp was then 
opened and the solution rapidly poured into: 
an empty tube, to which the same number of 
drops of indicator had been added as was 
added to the buffer solutions. The solution 
was then mixed with the indicator in the man- 
ner just described and the color was then com- 
pared with buffer solutions of a known PH 
value (containing the same concentration of 
indicator). The decrease in PH as observed 
with a constant source of light (“ Daylight” 
lamp) served to measure the amount of CO, 
produced by respiration. 

In order to be sure that no acid except CO, 
was being given off by the plant a stream of 
hydrogen was allowed to bubble through the 
solution which had been made acid by respira- 
tion in order to see whether it came back to 
the same PH value as at the start.5 This was 
the case in every instance. 

Each piece of material was used for a num- 
ber of periods (always of the same length) in 
sea-water (which was changed at the end of 
each period) until the rate of respiration had 
become practically constant. Then several of 
the pieces were used as controls while others 
were placed in sea-water containing the an- 
esthetic (the solutions were always renewed at 
the end of each period). 

Experiments were carried on with sea-water 
containing the following substances: .1 per 
cent. chloral hydrate, .1 per cent. novocain, 1 

5In very strong concentrations (alcohol 24 per 
cent, or acetone 17 per cent.) a little pigment may 
be extracted from the plant. In this case it may be 
necessary to reject the figures for the first period 
(or of the first two periods). 


464. 


per cent. ether, 0.1 per cent. caffeine, ethyl 
bromide (approximately saturated), 3.2 per 
cent. formaldehyde, .8 per cent. formaldehyde, 
.38 per cent. chloroform, .05 per cent. chloro- 
form, 0.1 per cent. acetone, 0.51 per cent. ace- 
tone; 17.4 per cent. acetone, 24.2 per cent. 
ethyl alchohol, 16.1 per cent. ethyl alcohol, 
10 per cent. ethyl alcohol, 5 per cent. ethyl 
aleohol, 2 per cent. ethyl aleohol and 1 per 
cent. ethyl alcohol. 

It was found that whenever the concentra- 
tion of anesthetic is sufficiently strong to pro- 
duce any measurable result, the initial effect 
is always an increase of respiration which may 
either remain approximately constant over a 
large number of periods and then gradually 
decline or’the increased rate of respiration 
may fall very rapidly below the normal when 
the concentrations of anesthetic are too great. 

It is very noteworthy that in no case was 
the respiration of Laminaria observed to fall 
below the normal when exposed to sea-water 
containing anesthetic except after prolonged 
exposure to high concentrations which pro- 
duced death. 

SUMMARY 


When Laminaria is exposed to the action 
of anesthetics (in sufficient concentration to 
produce any result) there is an increase in 
respiration. This may be followed by a de- 
crease if the reagent is sufficiently toxic. No 
decrease is observed with low concentrations 
which are not toxic. 

These facts contradict the theory of Ver- 
worn that anesthesia is a kind of asphyxia, 
for his view is based upon the assumption that 
anesthetics decrease respiration. 

A. R. C. Haas 

LABORATORY OF PLANT. PHYSIOLOGY, 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


AN OUTLINE OF THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE 
CLOTHES MOTH, TINEOLA BISELLIELLA 


Somer four years ago the writer was asked by 
Mr. Walter S. Kupper and Mr. J. R. Howlett, 
of New York City, to undertake an investiga- 
tion of clothes moths for the purpose of gath- 
ering information which would help solve the 
problem of moth-proofing ordinary woolen fab- 
rics. At that time and at present, the only 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


original information available consisted of dis- 


connected observations, mainly concerned with 
the case-forming clothes moth, Tinea. In con- 
nection with the study which followed, hun- 
dreds of pounds of fur and old woolen rags 
were purchased, the moth larve painstakingly 
picked out, and the rags then sold back or 
thrown away. One lot of eighteen hundred 
pounds of old rags was purchased at one time. 
From these several thousand larve of Tineola 
was picked out by boys employed for that pur- 
pose, and placed on test cloths which had been 
treated with various chemicals in the hope of 
finding one which would prevent moth ravages. 
Two trunksful of fur garments were obtained 
from the Salvation Army stores. Two hun- 
dred pounds of blown fur were purchased from 
a firm which prepares rabbit fur for the hatter’s 
trade. 

The yellow clothes moth, Tineola biselliella, 
was the only moth found in all this material 
during a period of four years. This seems 
strange, especially in view of the fact that the 
rag material had been shipped to New York 
from all parts of the country, the large bale of 
cloth above mentioned having come from the 
south and consisting of dirty cast-off clothing 
from that region. About three specimens of 
the spotted clothes moth, Tinea, were caught 
flying about the house in the Bronx, New York 
City, in which the study was at first carried 
on, but the circumstances indicated that they 
were adventitious, and in no way connected 
with the supply of Tineola fur of which only 
a few cardboard boxes were present at that 
time. The conclusion would seem inevitable 
that in the region of New York City, at least, 
Tinea is of comparatively rare occurrence and 
that the extensive damage which is done in 
connection with the fur and woolen trades is 
due almost entirely to the other species. Both 
the black and the Buffalo carpet beetles were 
found invariably in each supply of moth ma- 
terial, but in comparatively small numbers. 
A much larger unidentified beetle occurred in 
great numbers in the supply of blown hat fur 
and rabbit skins which had their source in 
Australia. 

Infe History—Mature moths were found 


NovEMBER 9, 1917] 


emerging from cocoons in the fur material first. 


studied in June and July, 1913. These were 
caught and placed in pairs for breeding pur- 
poses in jelly tumblers which were easily cov- 
ered. The females were almost invariably 
larger than the males and much less active. 
Breeding began usually immediately after 
emergence from the cocoons. The males were 
active in pursuit, fluttering and running about 
the female and bringing the flexible abdomen 
forward until it pointed anteriorly. During 
copulation the moths rested with bodies in op- 
posed directions. The abdomen of the female 
was always large and distended with eggs even 
before copulation. 

Ege-laying began within twenty-four hours 
after breeding. Single females were found to 
lay from thirty to one hundred and sixty eggs, 
but the latter number was very exceptional 
and by only one unusually large moth. The 
usual number was between forty and fifty. The 
egg-laying might be completed in one day or it 
might continue two or three weeks. The fe- 
male died when the eggs were all laid. The 
males might live and continue active and 
breeding for two or three weeks. Twenty-three 
days was the longest period observed. The 
eggs were carefully placed among the threads 
of the cloths and fastened by some glutinous 
material so that they did not readily shake off. 
If the cloth had a ravelled edge, the female 
would generally place most of the eggs deep 
among the loose threads. 

To receive the eggs, small pieces of woolen 
cloth were generally used. When cotton cloth 
was tried experimentally, the moths did not 
differentiate, but laid on cotton stocking ma- 
terial and also on silk. 

For incubation and brooding, Petri dishes 
were used and the egg-covered cloths were 
placed one in each dish. Hatching began in 
seven days, the larvee emerging as millimeter- 
long translucent-white active caterpillars. 
These began to feed immediately and were then 
eolored according to the color of the cloth 
used. Experiments were tried with felts of 
several colors and as a result larve could be 
obtained with a median streak of red, blue, 
green, et al. The dyes passed through the ali- 


SCIENCE 


465 


mentary canal apparently unchanged, and it 
was always possible to determine by the excreta 
what material had been fed upon when there 
were cloths of different colors. 

The larve behaved differently in the matter 
of case making. Some began immediately to 
spin a webbing case or sometimes a passage 
several times the length of the body in which 
they would live for a longer or shorter length 
of time. Woven into this “silk” tunnel were 
usually fibers from the material from which 
they were feeding. In the case of fur, the re- 
sulting case would often have the appearance 
of a bur with the hairs woven crossways and 
forming a case sometimes much thicker than 
long. On cloth, the case was made of shorter 
fibers closely attached to the cloth, thus dis- 
tinguishing it from the cases formed by Tinea 
which are carried about. When a Yineola larva 
wished to change its feeding place it would 
either continue its gallery, sometimes for sev- 
eral inches, or would leave it entirely and build 
another when a satisfactory place was reached. 
As the larve grew to mature size, the feeding 
case was enlarged and changed to form the 
cocoon. 

Other larve seemed to spend their time 
“prazing” about without ever forming more 
than small patches of silk if any. No conclu- 
sion was drawn as to the probable explanation 
of the difference. It might be that the quieter 
kind were eventually to form the female moths, 
and necessarily had less energy to spend in 
roaming. If this is true, it establishes another 
instance of the application of Kipling’s law, 
for the larvee which remained in cases do much 
more damage than the roaming kind. Moth 
holes usually appear as round holes, or as 
dumbbell-shaped slits. The latter are made by 
the feeding of a stationary larva, the straight 
slit part being cut out underneath the case, the 
enlarged ends being at either opening of the 
The single holes are merely the feeding 
places at the ends of a case without the con- 
necting split. These stationary larve also use 
much more cloth in order to make their 
eases. Of course both types enter cases at the 
end before passing into the pupa stage. 

The larval stage may be completed in about 


case. 


466 


ten weeks. It was found difficult to carry defi- 
nite specific Jarve under observation in 
Petri dishes through the entire period, but the 
time was established by noting the appearance 
of new groups of moths in the larger stock of 
fur. Just what there was in the Petri-dish 
method of culture to hinder the larval develop- 
ment could not be determined. Some larve 
grew to large size, approximating maturity, 
others died in a few weeks, but none were cer- 
tainly carried from the egg to the cocoon. 
Ten weeks appeared to be the shortest period 
in which larval growth was completed, but this 
is necessarily partly an estimate. 

The cocoon stage lasted at the shortest two 
weeks. This was definitely established by ob- 
serving the time at which larve ceased feeding, 
and closed their cases, and then putting such 
cases away for observation. 

It is probable that all stages of the life his- 
tory may under some circumstances be more 
or less indefinitely lengthened. Certainly the 
larval stage may. Its conclusion probably de- 
pends entirely on the obtaining of a sufficient 
amount of food, and may probably last several 
months, as over winter for example. Winter 
stops the activities of this moth only when the 
temperature of the surroundings is too much 
lowered. In the present investigation moths 
were observed emerging from cocoons and 
larve were seen feeding during all months of 
the year. Breeding experiments were not at- 
tempted during the winter but there seems no 
reason to suppose they would not have been 
successful and that egg-laying would also have 
occurred. 

Remedies for Moths—A summary of results 
along this line may be interesting. 

Remedies intended for the flying-moth stage 
are worse than useless. So-called repellants 
such as tobacco, cedar, did not repel or harm 
the moth in any stage. The imago stage is the 
most delicate of all, but it could be placed in a 
small closed tumbler with burning tobacco with 
no apparent injury. Cloth soaked in odorifer- 
ous substances for the purpose of repelling 
them was made the recipient of eggs as read- 
ily as untreated cloth. As already noted, the 
moth laid eggs as readily on cotton and silk as 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


on wool although neither of these was used as 
food by the larve. 

Any method of attack must be directed 
toward the larval stage to be effective. 
Camphor and napthalene in closed places kill 
all stages. The egg and larve turn from whit- 
ish to a yellowish brown in color; the larve 
cease activity almost immediately. No gaseous 
poisons were tried but undoubtedly the com- 
mon ones would be effective. Kerosene and 
gasoline fumes were not effective. 

The main method of attack in this case was 
directed toward poisoning the larve through 
their food. The problem was to find some poi- 
son which could be placed on cloth and serve 
to kill larve feeding on it before they could 
do material damage. At the same time it must 
not be harmful to human beings, or if harmful 
in posse, must be insoluble. If baby wants to 
chew mother’s dress or its woolen blanket, it 
must be able to do so with impunity. After 
about four years of nearly continuous investi- 
gation, during which several chemists were 
cooperating, the problem was finally dropped. 
Numerous compounds were used in tests but 
the larve proved singularly immune. Larva 
placed in Petri dishes with a piece of cloth 
soaked in corrosive sublimate as well as other 
common poisons, ate of the cloth as shown by 
the color of their alimentary canal and the 
feces, but lived on for weeks apparently unin- 
jured. Some few substances were found which 
did appear to have some result but not enough 
to justify adopting them as the basis of a moth- 
proofing process. 

The problem still seems to be possible, but 
the solution is not apparent. After the sub- 
stance is found, there still remains the over- 
coming of the objections of the tailors and 
clothing manufacturers, some of whom con- 
sider clothes moths among their best friends. 

Raps C. BENEDICT 

BROOKLYN 


A CHROMOSOME DIFFERENCE CORRELATED 
WITH SEX DIFFERENCES IN 
SPHAZROCARPOS 


THE chromosome group found in the cells 
of the female gametophyte of Spherocarpos 
Donnellit contains one large element which 


NoveMBER 9, 1917] 


considerably exceeds both in length and in 
thickness any of the older chromosomes. The 
chromosome group of the male gametophyte 
contains no element similarly distinguished 
by its size; on the other hand, the male pos- 
sesses a very small chromosome which seems 
not to correspond in size to any element in 
the female. 

The other chromosomes in the cells of either 
sex have the form of slender rods; there are 
noticeable differences in length between those 
of each group. The bending and not infre- 
quent overlapping of the ends of the chromo- 
somes place difficulties in the way of an exact 
determination of their number; but, subject 
to modification by further study, it may be 
said with reasonable assurance that the chromo- 
some number for each sex is eight. As to 
seven of the eight, the chromosomes of the 
male seem to resemble those of thé female; 
but the eighth chromosome of the female is 
probably corresponding to it in the male is the 
the large one already referred to, and the one 
very small chromosome. 

Of the two spindles formed in each spore 
mother cell at the time of the homeotypic 
division, one shows a large body which is some- 
times plainly two-parted; no element appears 
on the other spindle that approximates in size 
this large chromosome. It has been reported 
that in at least one species of Sphe@rocarpos 
two of the spores of each tetrad develop into 
male plants and the other two into females. 
Observations which I have made, although 
as yet in limited number, indicate that the 
same rule holds for S. Donnellit. The cyto- 
logical results here reported seem to show that 
in consequence of the chromosome distribu- 
tion in the reduction divisions two of the four 
spores derived from a single mother cell re- 
ceive each a large chromosome (and seven of 
smaller size), and these spores develop into 
female plants; and that each of the other two 
spores receives a small chromosome instead of 
the large one, and, on germination, gives rise 
to a male plant. 

The resemblance between this history and 
that of the chromosomes of certain insects, 
such as Lyg@us and Luschistus, which pos- 


SCIENCE 


467 


sess a large X- and a small Y-chromosome, is 
obvious. It is too early to conclude that the 
particular chromosomes with respect to which 
the male and female gametophytes of Sphero- 
carpos differ are the bearers of definite sex- 
determining factors; but it seems not unlikely 
at least that the greater size and vigor of 
growth of the female gametophyte are associ- 
ated with the greater amount of chromatin 
that its cells contain. 


Cuarues E. ALLEN 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 


THE AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL 
SOCIETY 

THE twenty-first meeting of the society was held 
August 29 to 31 at the Dudley Observatory, Al- 
bany, N. Y., about ninety members and visitors 
being present. The arrangements for the meeting 
were admirably carried out by the host, Professor 
Benjamin Boss, acting also for the trustees of the 
Dudley Observatory and the department of meri- 
dian astrometry of the Carnegie Institution of 
Washington. The activities included an excursion 
to Saratoga Lake and a visit, at the close of the 
meeting, to Vassar College and its observatory. 

Various committee reports and items of business 
were considered by the society, among others the 
question of the daylight saving movement, and 
when an informal expression of opinion was called 
for, the vote stood 


In favor of daylight saving..... 18 
Opposed to the plan ........... 22 
INeUtralie mer isetete teisc teicher: 6 

46 


Another matter in the same connection, which 
would affect only astronomers, was a proposal com- 
ing from England that the astronomical day be- 
gin at midnight instead of at noon as at present. 
A test vote showed that a large majority of the 
members present were opposed to the change, but 
after some parliamentary procedure it was agreed 
to refer the matter to a committee to make a re- 
port back to the society. 

Officers were elected for the ensuing year as fol- 
lows: 

President—Edward C. Pickering. 

First Vice-president—Frank Schlesinger. 

Second Vice-president—W. W. Campbell. 

Secretary—Philip Fox. 

Treasurer—Annie J. Cannon. 


468 


Councillors—Ernest W. Brown, Edwin B. Frost, 
J. 8. Plaskett, Joel Stebbins. 

The next meeting of the society will be held at 
the Harvard Observatory about September 1, 1918. 

Following is the list of papers presented at the 
meeting, the abstracts of which are published in 
Popular Astronomy: 

Sebastian Albrecht: On the variation in spectral 
type of the fourth-class variable star 1 Carine. 

8. I. Bailey: Note on the variable stars in the 
globular cluster Messier 15. 

L. A. Bauer: A brief statement of the work of 
the Committee on Navigation and Nautical Instru- 
ments of the National Research Council. 


R. R. Candor: A mechanical device for interpola- 


tion. 

Annie J. Cannon: 
stellar spectra. 

J. B. Cannon: Note on two spectroscopic bi- 
naries, 

W. A. Conrad: Note on a possible explanation 
of erratic jumps in clock rates. 

R. H. Curtiss: Spectra of Nova Geminorum No. 
2 and other stars. 

Ralph E. De Lury: A new form of spectrocom- 
parator. 

A. E. Douglass: The Steward Observatory of the 
University of Arizona. 

A. E. Douglass: An optical periodograph. 

Raymond S. Dugan: On the eclipsing variable 
R Canis Majoris. 

W. S. Eichelberger: Eecentricity and longitude 
of perisaturnium of the orbits of Enceladus, 
Tethys and Dione. 

W. 5S. Eichelberger: The obliquity of the ecliptic 
from the Sun observations made at the U. S. Naval 
Observatory, 1903-1911. 

W. S. Hichelberger: The refraction at Wash- 
ington. 

W. 8S. Hichelberger and F. B. Littell: Day ob- 
servations minus night observations. 

W. S. EHichelberger and H. R. Morgan: Com- 
parison of Washington right ascensions with those 
of Newcomb, Auwers, Boss, Hedrick and Poulkowa, 
1905. 

W. S. Eichelberger and H. R. Morgan: Com- 
parison of Washington declinations with those of 
Newcomb, Auwers and Boss. 

George E. Hale: The best service of astronomers 
in time of war. 

' W. E. Harper: Notes on some spectroscopic bi- 
naries. 

C, C. Kiess: On the presence of rare earths in 
a Canum Venaticorum. 


Distribution of light in 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1193 


EH. S. King: Some recent work in photographic 
photometry. 

Jacob Kunz and Joel Stebbins: 
observations of new variable stars. 

C. O. Lampland: Measures of position of the 
nucleus of the great nebula in Andromeda. 

C. O. Lampland: Recent observations of Nova 
Perset 1901. 

C. O. Lampland: Photographie observations of 
the variable nebule N.G.C. 2261 and N.G.C. 6729. 

F. B. Littell: Variation of latitude at the U. S. 
Naval Observatory. 

W. I. Meggers: Photography of the solar spec- 
trum. 

Paul W. Merrill: Photography of the extreme 
red and infra-red portions of stellar spectra. 

Joel H. Metcalf: A comparison of an 8-inch 
doublet with a 10-inch triple anastigmatic lens. 

G. H. Peters: The photographic telescope of the 
U. S. Naval Observatory. 

E. C. Pickering: Variation in light of asteroids, 

W. F. Rigge: The:total solar eclipse of June 8, 
1918, as visible in the United States. 

Luis Rodés: Direct application of Wulf’s elec- 
trometer for recording the time sent by wireless 
telegraphy, and its connection with the potassium 
photo-electric cell to register the duration of total- 
ity in a solar eclipse. 

H. B. Rumrill: A plea for the small telescope. 

H. N. Russell: The masses of the stars. 

H. N. Russell: On the calculation of the orbits 
of visual binaries. 

H. N. Russell: New double star orbits. 

F. H. Seares, A. Van Maanen and F. Ellerman: 
Loeation of the sun’s magnetic axis. 

H. T. Stetson: Some recent improvements in 
thermo-electrie apparatus for photographie pho- 
tometry. 

Frank Schlesinger: Determination of stellar par- 
allaxes at the Allegheny Observatory. 

V. M. Slipher: Observations of the aurora spec- 
trum. 

V. M. Slipher: Spectrographic observations of 
star clusters. 

R. Triimpler: Preliminary results on the consti- 
tution of the Pleiades group. 

David Todd: Weather prospects along the cen- 
tral line of total eclipse, 1918, June 8. 

A. Van Maanen: Discussion of the Mt. Wilson 
parallaxes. ° 

F. W. Very: On a possible limit to gravitation. 


Photo-electrie 


JOEL STEBBINS, 
Acting Secretary 


NEw SERIES 
Vou. XLVI. No, 1194 Frrpay, Novemser 16, 1917 (Rea geute ea, $800 


Kimley Electro- 


Analysis 


Apparatus 


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| The upper circular casting carries 6 re- 
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|| The center circular casting carries the 
''B| clectrode holders, a push botton switch 
#| to short circuit the electrode holders 
# when not in use, and a pole-reversing 
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|| is in parallel with the electrodes under it 
t B| on the center casting so as to take up the 
|! current carried by the solution when the 
solution is lowered, so that the electrodes 
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the center support, between 
~< the two upper castings. The 
lower circular casting serves 
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for the beakers. 


Write for E. & A. Bulletin No. 206, giving details of rapid methods of electro-analysis 
with the Kimley Apparatus 


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SCIENCE 


Frmay, NoveMBrr 16, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Present Condition of the Social Sciences: 
Proressor CHARLES A. ELLWOOD ......... 


Work of the National Research Council ...-.. 


Scientific Events :— 


Celebration in Honor of Dr. Henry Fairfield 
Osborn; The Laboratory of the U. S. Fish- 
erties Biological Station at Woods Hole; 
The American Psychological Association; 
The Section of Education of the American 


Association for the Advancement of Science. 477 
Scientific Notes and News ................. 479 
University and Educational News .......... 482 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Botany and Common Names of Plants: Wit- 
LARD N. Cuutx. Lacepéde or Lacépéde: 
Dr. W. J. Houtanp. The Forbes-Winslow 
Memorial Hospital: MarGarET ForBEs 
WARS IOntioropabasabonodenoce sonaeTasonne 483 


Quotations :— 
Increased Rank and More Authority for 


ME dtcaliOficers) ane eee eet 485 


Scientific Books :— 


Newman on the Biology of Twins: H. H. 
W. Ries’s Economic Geology: PRoFESsOR 


ATNRED IC MEGANE) sa iors foie ovale crate iethohyerevercter siete 486 
Special Articles :— 

Experiments with a Focault Pendulum: 

WY TI OS ARR eayssaveve\s «oie eter stare eta ers 489 


The Philadelphia Meeting of the National 
ACOGEMYNOP SCLENCES) w\« nieve <lsyeeieteteeioeiars «1 < 


MSS. intended for publication and books, ete., intended for 
review shoule be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y£. 


THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE 
SOCIAL SCIENCES1 

A new world is being born. Out of the 
chaos and the conflict of the present it 
seems certain that great social changes are 
bound to emerge. At the birth of this new 
social world it is the social sciences, not the 
physical, which must preside. Yet we who 
are interested in the development of the 
social sciences must candidly ask ourselves 
how far they are fitted to assist in the birth 
of a new social world. How far are they 
fitted to lead and to guide in the work of 
social reconstruction which must follow the 
World War? Do they command such gen- 
eral respect and confidence that the masses 
will turn to them for guidance to avoid the 
mistakes of the past and to make secure the 
foundations for a worthy civilization in the 
future? Are their leaders so united on 
fundamentals that, though they may differ 
regarding minor details, yet they substan- 
tially agree on the general direction which 
reconstruction in our political, economic, 
educational, domestic and general social 
life should take? Can, in brief, the social 
sciences present such an accurate body of 
information and of generalizations from 
facts that in this crisis sane men will turn 
to them voluntarily for guidance, much as 
they would to the physical sciences if any 
one were called upon to build a bridge? 

Such questions as these are of more than 
merely academic significance. Germany 
has taught the world in this war the value 
and the possibilities of social organization ; 


1An address before the local chapter at the 
University of Missouri of Alpha Zeta Pi, a society 
for encouraging scholarship and research in the 
social sciences. 


470 


and organization is destined to be a watch- 
word of the future, whatever the outcome 
of this war. Organization of our political, 
economic, educational and general social 
life will be tried on a scale never before at- 
tempted, at least in English-speaking coun- 
tries. Will the organization attempted be 
wise or otherwise? Wise social organiza- 
tion is evidently what we need, but it can 
not be successfully accomplished without 
scientific knowledge of our social life. Are 
we, then, as students of the social sciences 
prepared to give reliable scientific guidance 
in every field of social activity? Or have 
we only conflicting opinions to offer? We 
should face such questions as these can- 
didly. The watchword of the present is 
‘‘national service.’’ Are we fully prepared 
to do our ‘‘bit’’ in the work of social re- 
construction which our national welfare 
and security in the future demand? That, 
for us who are engaged in scientific and 
educational work along social lines, is a 
more important question than whether we 
are ready to do our ‘‘bit’’ in the war itself; 
for whether this war will prove to be a 
ereat victory for humanity and civilization 
will be evident, not upon the announcement 
of the terms of peace, but a generation or 
two thereafter. 

What, then, are the social sciences ready 
to do for civilization ? 

The editor of The Scientific Monthly, in 
commenting on the papers presented before 
the Section for Social and Economie Sci- 
ence of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science in the year 1915, 
published in the April, 1916, issue of that 
journal, said: 

An obvious difference exists between the eleven 
sections of the American Association devoted to 
the natural sciences and the one devoted to the 
social and economic sciences. The former are in 
the main concerned with the discovery of truth, 


the latter in the main with the expression of opin- 
ion. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1194 


While the work of the Social and Keo- 
nomic Section of the American Association 
may, perhaps, justly be held to be not rep- 
resentative of the best work in the social 
sciences, yet the general justice of this im- 
plied criticism of the social sciences can not 
be doubted. In spite of the labors of many 
eminent minds, in the main the social sci- 
ences, especially those of a theoretical na- 
ture, do remain still to-day in the realm of 
opinion rather than in the realm of accu- 
rate and verified truth. This is shown by 
the fact that not infrequently even in aca- 
demic circles they are developed in the 
service of fads, social, political, metaphys- 
ical and methodological. This was once 
supposed not to be true of the older social 
sciences, such as economies and polities, but 
in the light of recent events it would be a 
very rash man who would affirm that even 
these older sciences have yet passed from 
the stage of opinion to that of verified sci- 
entific knowledge. It may possibly be said 
that when the whole world is in a condition 
of confusion and revolution, it is too much 
to expect that the social sciences will not 
also reflect this condition. But science is 
supposed to be something which, aiming as 
it does at the discovery of objective, verifi- 
able knowledge, transcends the mere Zeit- 
geist. Besides, if the social sciences are in 
a State of confusion, the world can scarcely 
be expected to look to them to lead it out of 
its present confusion into a new and better 
day of peace, harmony and agreement as to 
the fundamentals of human living. It is 
true that the disagreements among the 
more carefully trained scientific social 
thinkers are much less than what the pub- 
lic suppose; but it is useless to deny that 
there are disagreements of the most funda- 
mental sort, and that the social sciences 
suffer, as well as the world, from such dis- 
agreements. Of course, the lateness of their 
development and the complexity of the 
subject-matter with which they deal ex- 


NovemBeER 16, 1917] 


plains much of their unsettled condition 
and of the lack of harmony among their de- 
votees. Nevertheless, this does not explain 
all. There are other conditions which ex- 
plain the present backwardness of the social 
sciences, which are more remediable, and 
which it should be the object of this so- 
ciety to aid in removing. It is the purpose 
of this paper to point these out, and I be- 
lieve that the chief among them is the fail- 
ure of the leaders of the social sciences to 
develop an adequate, sound and generally 
accepted scientific method. Scientific 
method may not be very important in the 
laboratory sciences where mechanical in- 
struments of precision often take the place 
of methods of reasoning; but in the social 
sciences ‘‘a sound method is alone compe- 
tent to the uniform and constant discrimi- 
nation of truth from error.’’ As has been 
well said, what the microscope is to biol- 
ogy, or the telescope to astronomy, that a 
sound scientific method is to the social sci- 
ences. In other words, the tendency toward 
methodological ‘‘fads’’ or one-sidedness is 
one of the most serious impediments to the 
development of the social sciences, and at 
the same time one most easily removable. 
What, then, may be regarded as a sound 
and adequate method for the social sci- 
ences? My thesis is that such a method 
must be an extension and an adaptation of 
the methods employed by the so-called nat- 
ural sciences. If it be objected that this 
means materialism or at least ‘‘mechanistic 
interpretation’’ in the social sciences, the 
reply is that this is a mistake. Science 
builds itself upon no universal, a priori 
hypothesis. People who try to make it do 
so are imbued with the metaphysical rather 
than with the scientific spirit. The spirit 
and the method of all true science is mat- 
ter-of-fact, inductive and pragmatic, not 
deductive and dogmatic. It takes the world 
as it finds it, correcting common sense only 
as it is shown to be in error. It explains 


SCIENCE 


471 


phenomena, not by reference to some uni- 
versal abstract principle, such as mechan- 
ical causation, but by describing fully all 
the conditions essential to their appearance. 
But this is exactly what the social sciences 
do also. They also seek to explain the phe- 
nomena with which they deal by observing 
and describing all the conditions which 
seem to be in any way connected with their 
appearance. Science is therefore one, even 
though reality may be complex; and the 
same general spirit pervades all science, 
even though different methods of investiga- 
tion and research have to be developed and 
applied in different realms of phenomena. 
Moreover, inasmuch as the universe is in- 
terdependent in all its parts and forms a 
working unity, it follows, as Comte long 
ago pointed out, and as every worker in the 
natural sciences practically acknowledges, 
that the more complex sciences are depend- 
ent upon the less complex, and the more 
specialized upon the more general. 

An immediate corollary from these con- 
clusions is that the social sciences should 
preserve the point of view and utilize the 
results of the natural sciences; that is, they 
should preserve the same matter-of-fact 
method and build themselves upon the 
antecedent sciences as their basis. This is 
in no sense to surrender the inductive spirit 
of science. The inductive spirit is behind 
all science, and when a worker in a more 
complex science borrows a principle or a 
truth from a simpler science and applies it 
in his own field, he is not thereby giving up 
the inductive spirit of science, even though 
for the time being he is working deduc- 
tively. For there is no reason why a stu- 
dent of society should have to work out for 
himself independently truths which have 
already been discovered through inductive 
processes by investigators in other realms. 
The true inductive spirit is not opposed to 
the proper use of deduction. What passes 
for induction in the social sciences—the 


472 


mere gathering and amassing of facts—is 
often but superficiality under another 
name. If there is any hope of the social 
sciences getting beyond the stage of mere 
socially approved opinions, and of coming 
to substantial agreement on fundamental 
issues, it must be through basing themselves 
upon the established results of antecedent 
sciences, particularly of biology and psy- 
chology. Yet the natural-science point of 
view is largely lacking in much of the litera- 
ture of the social sciences to-day. Many of 
their devotees seem to think that the world 
of human society, of social phenomena, is a 
thing apart, to be studied and understood 
by itself. This is noticeable, not only in 
politics and in economies, but also in sociol- 
ogy, where for a number of years a consid- 
erable school have openly maintained that 
the biology and psychology of the individ- 
ual have little effect upon the group or so- 
cial life, and that therefore the social sci- 
ences can not base themselves upon biology 
and psychology. Even the most notable 
book published in sociology during the 
present year—Professor R. M. Maclver’s 
‘“‘Community’’?—though in many ways a 
remarkable book, showing both penetration 
and breadth of view, fails to recognize ex- 
plicitly the close connection between the 
natural and social sciences and denies alto- 
gether that sociology should in part be 
based upon psychology. 

But two of the social sciences at the pres- 
ent time may be said to have attained even 
to a partly adequate method if judged by 
the standards which have been just set 
forth. Both these sciences, however, are 
preliminary and methodological to the 
more theoretical and applied social sciences. 
They are anthropology and history. An- 
thropology, on account of its close connec- 
tions with zoology, especially in its physical 
sections, has long had the point of view of 
the natural sciences, though for a long time 

2The Macmillan Company, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Von. XLVI. No. 1194 


its work was narrowly individualistic. The 
new school of social anthropologists, how- 
ever, have developed a social point of view 
while making full use at the same time of 
modern psychology. The achievements and 
methods of this school we shall touch upon 
later. Suffice to say that modern anthro- 
pology has demonstrated its right to a place 
among the social sciences, and in its care- 
fully worked out and highly conscious 
methods it is perhaps the best equipped of 
all of them. This explains its rapid recent 
advance. But dealing as it does with hu- 
man origins in general and with social and 
cultural origins in particular, its work from 
any practical viewpoint must be regarded 
as preliminary to the other social sciences. 

History, the oldest of the social sciences, 
has long since worked out an elaborate 
methodology for the critical determination 
of events, conditions, and institutions in 
the human past. But only recently has a 
new school of historians, led chiefly by Pro- 
fessor J. Harvey Robinson in this country, 
attempted to bring history into vital touch 
with the natural sciences, on the one hand, 
through anthropology, and with the theo- 
retical social sciences on the other, through 
social psychology. From this ‘‘new his- 
tory’’ we can expect much; but from the 
standpoint of the theoretical and applied 
social sciences history is chiefly important 
as a method of approach to their problems. 
It is, indeed, of vital importance; and I 
know of no surer touchstone of sanity in 
the social sciences than the amount of con- 
sideration which is accorded to human his- 
tory. But every historian should know, 
what every economist, sociologist, and poli- 
tical scientist does know, that the historical 
method has not yielded the results which 
were once hoped from it. By itself the 
historical method is inadequate from the 
very nature of recorded human history. 
The historical evidence of the past is at 


NovemBeEr 16, 1917] 


best but fragmentary and fails to yield all 
the knowledge which we need for guidance 
in the complex social conditions of the 
present. 

This perception has led to the search for, 
and the emphasis upon, other methods of 
social research and investigation. Chief 
among these has been statistics. Statistics 
has had many enthusiastic advocates as 
the method of the social sciences, both 
among economists and sociologists, a recent 
advocate going so far as to say that the 
statistical method bears much the same rela- 
tion to the social sciences that the experi- 
mental method bears to the physical sci- 
ences.2 There can {be no doubt that 
statistics presents the one means of measur- 
ing social facts upon a wide scale, and so 
of rendering our knowledge of mass move- 
ments exact. In so far as exact measure- 
ments are needed in the social sciences 
(and they are needed not less than in other 
sciences), the statistical method must re- 
main a highly important part of the 
methodology of the social sciences. It is 
greatly to be regretted, therefore, that as 
yet we possess adequate statistics of only 
very small sections of our social life; and 
it is manifestly our duty as students 
banded together to promote scholarship in 
the social sciences to do all that we can to 
promote the accurate collection and study 
of social statistics. However, apart from 
the fact that statistical methods have still 
to be enormously developed before they are 
susceptible of application to the general 
problems in the field of the social sciences, 
it is evident that there are many problems 
in political science, jurisprudence, sociol- 
ogy and other social sciences which by 
their nature are not amenable to statistical 


3See the suggestive articles on ‘‘The Experi- 
mental Method and Sociology’’ by Professor F. 
Stuart Chapin in the February and March, 1917, 
issues of The Scientific Monthly. 


SCIENCE 


473 


treatment. It is noteworthy, moreover, 
that the natural sciences have made but a 
subordinate use of statistics. It ig true 
that they have other instruments of pre- 
cision, but the experimental method, so far 
from closely resembling the statistical 
method, is rather mere observation under 
controlled conditions. It would seem, 
therefore, that the nearest approach to it 
in the social sciences would be the direct 
observation of social life under mentally 
controlled conditions. It is true that 
social conditions can rarely be fully con- 
trolled, but observation by trained observ- 
ers can be, and the results can be checked 
up with the aid of the historical, compara- 
tive, and statistical methods, 

A little over a dozen years ago the prac- 
tical needs of social workers for more ac- 
curate and scientific knowledge of the 
soeial conditions in the communities in 
which they worked led to their instituting 
programs of social investigation which they 
called ‘‘social or community surveys.’’ 
One of the first and most extensive of these 
““surveys’’ was the well-known ‘‘Pittsburgh 
Survey.’’ A great number of these sur- 
veys have now been made in widely scat- 
tered communities, and the movement has 
become specialized, so that now we have 
surveys of different sorts, such as ‘‘health 
surveys,’’ ‘‘educational surveys,’’ ‘‘in- 
dustrial surveys,’’ ‘‘agricultural surveys,”’ 
ete. It will be noted that the movement 
arose entirely to meet practical needs, and 
that there was no thought of making a con- 
tribution to scientific methods of studying 
the social life. At first, the movement was 
narrow. The ‘‘survey’’ was confined 
largely to the material aspects of the social 
life, such as sanitation, housing, wages, etc. 
Moreover, the survey was supposed to be 
an entirely local and community affair, and 
though statistical accuracy was emphasized, 
but little attention was paid to history and 


474 


comparison. How, then, does this move- 
ment, which many scientific men have 
doubtless looked upon as a passing fad, 
contain the promise and the potency of an 
adequate method for the social sciences? 
Science demands world-wide, or universal, 
generalizations, whereas the survey is a 
local or community affair. 

Before answering this question it may 
be well to point out that social workers, 
though they have popularized it, were not 
the first to employ the ‘‘survey’’ method. 
The anthropologists may probably claim 
that honor. The old-time anthropologist 
was a laboratory or library worker, relying 
largely upon the reports of travellers and 
missionaries for his knowledge of customs 
and institutions. The new anthropologist 
is a field worker. Moreover, he works co- 
operatively, organizing expeditions which 
undertake extensive ‘‘anthropological sur- 
veys,’’ investigating minutely the customs, 
institutions, ideas, beliefs, and history of 
the population of a given region. Such 
have been, for example, the Jesup North 
Pacific Expedition and the Torres Straits 
Expedition. Very valuable scientific re- 
sults have come from such anthropological 
surveys, especially when their facts have 
been compared one with another. 

Now this illustration shows that survey 
methods are not limited, that surveys 
properly made are of far more than local 
significance, and that the most valuable 
scientific facts and principles can be 
secured through the careful survey of dif- 
ferent communities and their comparison. 
The survey method might, indeed, properly 
be called the laboratory method of the 
social sciences; for the world of human 
beings, the community, whether large or 
small, is the only possible laboratory which 
the social sciences can employ. Like 
laboratory methods in the natural sciences, 
this intensive study of the social life per- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1194 


mits the isolation of phenomena and at the 
same time their study by a combination of 
methods. It is as if nature had set a great 
many experiments going at once in many 
different laboratories, and the scientific ob- 
server had only to devise adequate methods 
of checking up the results. It is not neces- 
sary, of course, that such inductive study 
should go on indefinitely for certain re- 
sults, as some have claimed; on the con- 
trary, a single accurate observation may 
give a clue which a comparatively small 
number of similar observations may suffice 
to establish as accurate scientific knowl- 
edge. Neither need the community which 
is studied by the survey method be a small, 
local area. It can be of any size, provided 
we perfect our methods of observation. 
Why should not the survey method be ex- 
tended to the life of the whole nation? 
The Census Bureau, it may be said, has 
long undertaken such work, but not on the 
scale demanded by the social surveyor, 
much less by the scientific student of 
society. Moreover, social life is no longer 
national, but international. What is 
needed most of all, of course, is a survey of 
our whole civilization. Such a vast ¢co- 
operative undertaking may, at first 
thought, seem fantastic; but it is surely 
the logical goal of the social sciences on the 
side of induction; and practically we surely 
need to know much more about the condi- 
tions of our whole civilization than we have 
known if rational social control over human 
life is to be made possible. 

We are now prepared to see that the 
survey method is not opposed to the his- 
torical method of approaching social prob- 
lems. On the contrary, the survey method 
includes the historical method as a neces- 
sary part. The survey must be extended 
in time if it is to be of scientific value. 
The statistical method is also evidently a 
part of any adequate survey work. Exact 


NoveMBER 16, 1917] 


measurement of all phenomena that can be 
measured is needed. The survey method 
is, indeed, but a name for the proper com- 
bination of all inductive methods in the 
scientific study of the social life. But 
therein lies its promise of becoming an ade- 
quate method for the social sciences of the 
future; for no method will be adequate in 
their complex field which is not synthetic. 
As their inductive instrument the survey 
method of studying social facts will not 
preclude the social sciences from making 
full use of psychology, biology and geog- 
raphy. For social facts could not be in- 
terpreted, as we have seen, without the use 
of these antecedent natural sciences; and 
hence any method to be fully scientific 
must be a synthesis of inductive results 

It may be objected that the use of such 
a complex, synthetic method in the social 
sciences will be beyond the ability of ordi- 
nary minds. That I do not believe. To be 
sure, the level of scholarship in the social 
sciences will have to be raised before it can 
be used successfully. I am not, however, 
among those who believe that the present 
level of scholarship in the social sciences is 
lower than in the so-called natural sciences. 
I believe the contrary. But I would urge 
that the grave responsibility resting upon 
us as leaders of social thought, as well as 
the complexity of the problems with which 
we deal, demands higher standards of 
scholarship among us than among the 
students of the natural sciences. In this 
grave crisis of our civilization it is time 
that we recognize this fact. It particularly 
demands that we be more than mere special- 
ists in economics or administration, in his- 
tory or anthropology, in education or law; 
but that we have that breadth and depth 
of scholarship which will enable us to see 
on all sides of, and to the bottom of, our 
particular problem. 

The practical difficulties, however, of em- 


SCIENCE 


475 


ploying such a comprehensive, synthetic in- 
strument of social investigation can not be 
ignored. .The survey method of social in- 
vestigation is still very far from being de- 
veloped to the point which I have described. 
It can not be so developed without the aid 
of governmental and educational agencies. 
It is the same with the social sciences as 
with all sciences, that they can not flourish 
without the aid and encouragement of so- 
ciety at large, especially through govern- 
mental and educational institutions. I be- 
lieve, however, that such aid will be forth- 
coming if we keep our standards of schol- 
arship sufficiently high, and work together 
to show the need for the development of all 
the social sciences. 

In this crisis, therefore, let us who are 
students of social life close up our ranks 
and work together for the establishment 
and diffusion of that accurate social knowl- 
edge for lack of which the world seems al- 
most on the point of perishing; for this 
erisis has clearly demonstrated that it is 
to the social sciences, not to the physical 
sciences, to which the world must look for 
its salvation. And it is upon us who are 
students of the social sciences that the re- 
sponsibility for their future development 
and usefulness to humanity must rest. 


Cuartes A. Evuwoop 
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 


WORK OF THE NATIONAL RESEARCH 
COUNCIL 

Masor R. A. Mipurkan, vice-chairman of 
the National Research Council, wrote, on Sep- 
tember 7, a letter to Dr. Cary T. Hutchinson, 
secretary of the Engineering Foundation, re- 
viewing the work of the council. The letter 
as “edited for publication” in the Proceed- 
ings of the American Institute of Electrical 
Engineers is as follows: 

The following is a statement of some of the work 
of the National Research Council, condensed with 
difficulty on account of the great variety and scope 
of the council’s activities. 


476 


All of the work of the Research Council that 
touches upon Army or Navy problems is carried on 
with the advice, cooperation or control, as the case 
may be, of the representatives of the various de- 
partments of the Army or Navy under which such 
work comes. 

The council has cooperated in the establishment 
and organization of the. submarine experimental 
work at Nahant and has also established a very ac- 
tive submarine station at New London, another at 
San Pedro, California, and has been instrumental 
in the organization of groups working at New 
York, Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin. 

There has resulted a great practical advance in 
the art of submarine detection which it is not de- 
sirable to go into further. 

The physics committee of the council has dis- 
tributed to various groups twenty or more large 
problems in physies, which are being actively 
worked upon and some of which have already been 
solved. Among the latter are the location of air- 
eraft by sound, the development of fire control for 
anti-aircraft guns, telephoning between airplanes, 
protection of balloons from ignition by static 
charges and the development of new and improved 
methods of measuring muzzle velocities. - 

The chief officer of the signal corps of the Army 
has asked the Research Council to act as the Di- 
vision of Science and Research of the Signal Corps, 
and in this capacity the council has organized a 
sound ranging service in the signal corps, a new 
meteorological service in the signal corps, and is 
now drawing specifications for scientific instru- 
ments to be used on airplanes. It has sent a dozen 
of the best physicists in the country to France to 
aid the American Expeditionary Forces with their 
scientific knowledge and is selecting a personnel of 
several hundred men who are to be engaged in the 
scientific services of the Army and Navy. 

The chemistry committee has perfected an elab- 
orate organization for the handling of all of the 
chemical problems which arise in the Army and in 
the Navy, and it has distributed some 150 chem- 
ical problems which are being attacked in the 
chemical laboratories of the country. 

The psychology committee has presented to the 
Seeretary of War and the adjutant general a vast 
program for the selection of officers for the Army 
from officers’ reserve camps and for the classifica- 
tion of drafted men. In fact it has called in most 
of the best known psychologists of the country and 
has organized them and employment experts into 
a large group in whose hands the War Department 
has placed the largest responsibilities regarding 
the examination and selection of men. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Von. XLVI. No. 1194 


The medical committee has enlisted the services 
of a large number of medical men of the country 
both in medical research problems and in the reg- 
ular work of the sanitary corps of the Army. 

The engineering committee has contributed in no 
small degree to the development of devices for the 
protection of ships from submarines. It has or- 
ganized a large group which are now working on 
the development of steel protective devices for use 
of the soldiers at the front, and through coopera- 
tion with the National Advisory, Committee for 
Aeronautics it has carried on extensive and im- 
portant researches in the development of airplanes 
and airplane engines. 

Turning to the work of the special committees 
of the council, the nitrate committee has made an 
elaborate study and report which has been made 
the basis for the expenditure by the government 
of large sums.of money upon the erection of a ni- 
trate plant. 

The gas warfare committee has had for six 
months 120 chemists working on the problems of 
gas warfare and the results already attained have 
been of the utmost importance—so important that 
the Army and Navy have placed large appropria- 
tions at the disposal of this committee for its re- 
searches. 

The optical glass committee, by taking from the 
research laboratories like the geophysical labora- 
tory and the bureau of standards, a dozen more 
silicate chemists and putting them directly in the 
works of the Bausch and Lomb Company and the 
Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, has in six months’ 
time developed in America the production of op- 
tical glass from nothing up to 20,000 pounds a 
month and in two months more this figure will have 
been multiplied two or three fold. 

The psychiatry committee has established abroad 
a laboratory for the study of shell shock. 

The foreign service committee, which the coun- 
cil sent abroad at once upon the outbreak of the 
war, was wholly responsible for the sending back 
to this country of a French, English and Italian 
scientific mission, which brought with them the 
contributions which science had made to the war, 
both in the matter of instruments and methods, and 
unquestionably saved months of time in putting the 
United States abreast of the European situation, 
as regards modern scientific methods in warfare. 
It is difficult to overestimate the stimulus to 
American participation in the war which resulted 
directly from the action of the Research Council 
in sending abroad at once this foreign service com- 
mittee composed of seven of the best scientists in 
the country. 


NoveMBeErR 16, 1917] 


, These are a few of the results which have fol- 
lowed from the assistance which the engineering 
foundation gave in the bringing into being of the 
National Research Council. It is hoped that they 
are only a small part of the results which will have 
been attained. by the end of the second year of its 
existence. 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


CELEBRATION IN HONOR OF DR. HENRY 
FAIRFIELD OSBORN 


On the afternoon of September 29 a large 
and informal gathering of friends surprised 
Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn at his home at 
Garrison-on-Hudson in honor of his sixtieth 
birthday. The visit had originally been 
planned for August 8, his birthday, but was 
necessarily deferred until September 29, which 
chanced to be the thirty-sixth anniversary of 
his marriage with Mrs. Osborn. The Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History was repre- 
sented by Mr. Madison Grant of the board 
of trustees, by the members of the scientific 
staff and their wives, by the members of the 
department of vertebrate paleontology and of 
the administrative and technical staffs and 
their wives. The New York Zoological Park 
and the New York Aquarium, Columbia Uni- 
versity and Princeton University were also 
represented. The weather was favorable so 
that the arrangements for luncheon on the 
lawn were enjoyably carried out. After the 
luncheon Professor Edmund B. Wilson, of 
Columbia, read congratulatory messages from 


Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, President Nich- 


olas Murray Butler, and Mayor Mitchel, and 
presided at the addresses, the speakers includ- 
ing Mr. Madison Grant, Professor McClure of 
Princeton, Mr. William Church Osborn, Pro- 
fessor Bashford Dean, and Dr. Frank M. 
Chapman. Dr. F. A. Lucas gave a discourse 
on “ Birthdays,” after which he presented to 
Professor Osborn an illuminated message of 
congratulation bearing forty-six signatures. 
The text of this message and the signatures 
were as follows: 
TO 
HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 

Your friends, who are bound to you by many 
years of treasured association, bring this message 
of congratulation upon your sixtieth birthday. 


SCIENCE 


477 


We have followed with increasing admiration 
the progress of your labors during the past forty 
years in an ever widening field of science. We are 
proud of the splendid record of your achievements: 
admirable researches accomplished and in progress, 
great institutions of science and education founded 
and fostered, high scientific ideals nobly illustrated 
and practised. 

May the coming years further expand the orbit 
of your influence. May your spirit of high en- 
thusiasm, thoroughness and unwearying indus- 
try, sustained by the cordial sympathy and co- 
operation which you have always shown towards 
others, become more and more characteristic of 
American science. 


J. A. ALLEN, 

L. P. GRATACAP, 
GrorGE F. Kunz, 

E. O. Hovey, 

FRANK M. CHAPMAN, 
JONATHAN DwIicHT, 
Roy W. MInEr, 

W. D. MatrHew, 
WALTER GRANGER, 
Barnum Brown, 

A. HERMANN, 
Wituiam K. Gregory, 
Freperic A. Lucas, 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 


EpmunNpD B. WILSON, 
Wm. H. Carpenter, 
BASHFORD DEAN, 
Henry E. Crampton, 
T. H. Morean, 

Gary N. CaLxkIns, 

J. Howarp McGrecor, 
W. B. Scorr, 

Cuas. W. Mean, 
CuEsTER A. REEDS, 
JOHN TREADWELL NICHOLS, 
CLEVELAND H. Dope, 
Mapison GRANT, 
Prrcy R. Pyne, 


N. L. Brirton, W. T. Hornapay, 
Gro. H. SHERWOOD, Cuas. H. TOWNSEND, 
R. W. Tower, C. W. BEEBE, 


Mary C. Dickrrson, RayMmonp L. Dirmars, 
Purny Earue GopparD, S. H. CHuss, 

CuarK WISSLER, ALBERT THOMSON, 
FRANK E. Lutz, E. 8S. CuristMan, 
Frep H. Smytu, A. E, ANDERSON, 
Gro. N. Prnpar, H. Lane. 


August 8, 1917 
THE LABORATORY OF THE U. S. FISHERIES 

BIOLOGICAL STATION AT WOODS HOLE 

Tue work of the staff at the station of the 
Bureau of Fisheries at Woods Hole during 
1917, has been. concentrated during the sum- 
mer on problems directly bearing on the con- 
servation of food fishes and the utilization of 
marine forms not now appreciated in this 
country as food. Researches on the best 
methods of desiccating fish for storage, on the 
rehydration of dried fish and on the food value 
of such preparations were undertaken by Dr. 
G. G. Scott, of the College of the City of 
New York. Observations on the relation of 
parasites, especially nematodes, to the edible 
qualities of food fishes were made by Dr. 
Edwin Linton of Washington and Jefferson 
College. Investigations on the bacteriology 


478 


of food fishes during refrigeration and on the 
methods of combating “rust” in salt fish were 
carried on by Dr. W. W. Brown, of the College 
of the City of New York. The food value 
and the possible methods of marketing squid, 
the utilization of the waste products of gray- 
fish, optimum methods of canning as applied 
to fish, the utilization and preservation of 
shark and certain problems concerning the 
nutrition of oysters were investigated by Dr. 
P. H. Mitchell, of Brown University. Mr. A. 
E. Barnard, Mr. F. R. Dieuaide, Mr. B. N. 
Harris and Mr. H. E. Stewart were scientific 
assistants. Dr. P. H. Mitchell acted as di- 
rector. The laboratory opened on dune 20 
and closed September 8. 


THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL 
ASSOCIATION 


THE council of the association has voted 
unanimously to hold the annual meeting at 
Pittsburgh imstead of Ann Arbor, as was 
previously announced. 

The Pittsburgh meeting will be held on 
Thursday to Saturday, December 27, 28 and 
29. The sessions will take place in the school 
of applied design of the Carnegie Institute of 
Teehnology. The sessions will overlap the 
meetings of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science which holds its con- 
vention in Pittsburgh, from December 28 to 
January 2. Sections H and L of the Amer- 
ican Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
ence will meet in rooms in the same building, 
and it is probable that there will be joint ses- 
sions with these sections. Arrangements will 
be made for visiting the psychological labora- 
tory and psychological clinic at the University 
of Pittsburgh, which is near by. The meeting 
place is within walking distance of the hotel 
headquarters at Hotel Schenley. In order to 
reach the meeting place by street car, the 
members should take a car running to Forbes 
Street and Woodlawn Avenue and leave the 
ear at Woodlawn Avenue. Those who come to 
Pittsburgh from the East on the Pennsylvania 
Railroad and wish to go directly to the meet- 
ings, should leave the train at the East Liberty 
Station and take a street car at the corner of 
Penn and Shady Avenues. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No, 1194 


The annual dinner will occur on Thursday 
evening, December 27, at the Pittsburgh 
Athletic Association, which is across the 
street from the hotel headquarters. The 
dinner will be followed by the annual presi- 
dential address and smoker. 

Hotel headquarters will be at the Schenley 
which is also to be the hotel headquarters for 
the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science. It is the only hotel imme- 
diately accessible to the meeting places; the 
other hotels are located in the business dis- 
trict which is from twenty to thirty minutes 
distant, by street car. Professor Miner, as 
local member of the executive committee, will 
be glad to arrange for rooms in the dormi- 
tories at the Carnegie Institute of Technology 
or in neighboring boarding houses, for those 
who may so prefer. Luncheons will be served 
at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. 

The program will be sent to members on 
December 1. In order to have it finished by 
that date, all titles, together with abstracts, 
must be in the secretary’s hands by November 
24. It is proposed as in previous years, to 
print the abstracts in advance of the meeting. 
They will then be available for distribution 
among the members in attendance. The at- 
tention of the members is called to a motion 
defining the functions of the program com- 
mittee and the method of submitting papers 
to be read at an annual meeting, which was 
recommended by the council and passed by the 
association at its last annual meeting. The 
motion reads as follows: 

That the committee be granted full power in the 
selection and rejection of papers; 

2. That no title shall be accepted unless accom- 
panied by a summary of the paper giving the main 
points to be developed; that the summary shall be 
submitted typewritten in triplicate and ready for 
printing; that it shall not exceed one printed page 
of the Proceedings, and shall contain no tables or 
drawings; 

3. That all titles and summaries shall be in the 
hands of the secretary on a certain date to be set 
by the committee and announced to members of 
the association; 

4. That the titles of rejected papers shall not be 
listed on the program, nor their summaries pub- 
lished in the proceedings. 


NoveMBER 16, 1917] 


The secretary is authorized to arrange for 
the payment of transportation charges on new 
apparatus for research, useful charts and 
demonstration devices which the members may 
be willing to display. The consignments 
should be shipped to Dr. J. B. Miner, division 
of applied psychology, Carnegie Institute of 
Technology. A convenient room for exhibit- 
ing apparatus will be provided. Members, 
however, should supervise the setting up of 
their apparatus and the re-packing of it, so as 
to relieve the local committee from responsi- 
bility for possible injury. There will be also 
an opportunity to exhibit mental and educa- 
tional tests, with charts or tables of results 
and directions for giving each test. These 
will be placed with the apparatus exhibit. 

H. S. Lancre.p, 
Secretary. 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


THE SECTION OF EDUCATION OF THE AMER- 
ICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE- 
MENT OF SCIENCE 

Section L of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science will hold its 
annual meeting at Pittsburgh, on December 
29 and 381, and January 1. 

The general subject of the program is the 
scientific study of educational problems. Any 
paper dealing with a topic of this character 
will be acceptable. This year the section will 
be particularly glad to receive papers dealing 
with 


1, Studies of the Reliability of Educational or 
Mental Tests. 

2. Correlations between Educational Abilities. 

3. New Tests for the Measurement of Educa- 
tional Products. : 

4. Studies of the Relative Efficiency of Different 
Methods of Teaching. 

5. Scientific Determinations of Desirable Con- 
tent for Courses in Study. 

6. Studies of the Diagnosis and Remedy of Edu- 
cational Defects. 


Membership in the Section is open to all 
interested in education, and the sectional com- 
mittee will be glad to consider any papers 
submitted. You are hereby invited to take 
part in the meetings of the Section, or, if you 


SCIENCE 


479 


are unable to contribute a paper yourself, to 
aid in the work of the section by bringing this 
invitation to the attention of any person 
known to you to be attempting the scientific 
evaluation of the effects of any educational 
experiments in which they may be engaged. 
All titles should be sent to the secretary by 
November 24, before if possible. 
S. A. Courtis, 
Secretary Section L 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


A MEMORIAL meeting for Professor Wm. Bul- 
lock Clark was held at the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity on the Sunday afternoon of November 
4, President Frank J. Goodnow presiding. The 
speakers were Dr. Charles D. Walcott, the sec- 
retary of the Smithsonian Institution; Mr. R. 
Brent Keyser, the president of the board of 
trustees of the university; Professors Harry 
Fielding Reid and J. S. Ames, of the faculty, 
and Judge J. T. C. Williams, of the Baltimore 
Juvenile Court. 


Dr. Atonzo E. Taytor, of the University of 
Pennsylvania, now of the food administration 
at Washington, is a member of the American 
Commission to the Allied War Conference to 
be held in Paris on November 15. 


Proressor A. O. Leuscuner, director of the 
astronomical department of the University of 
California, at Berkeley, has been delegated by 
the director of instruction in the navigation 
schools of the United States Shipping Board, 
to administer the details of instruction on the 
Pacific coast and in particular to provide 
qualified instructors. 


Dr. F. B. Kinessury, assistant professor of 
physiological chemistry in the University of 
Minnesota, has been granted leave of absence 
for the duration of the war. He has been 
commissioned first lieutenant in the sanitary 
corps of the Army and will be directly under 
Major John R. Murlin, of the Food Division. 
His work at first will be in the army medical 
school, in preparation for the nutritional sur- 
vey of the army camps and cantonments here 
and at the front. 

Dr. ALEXANDER Hamitton Rice, the explorer, 
has been commissioned senior lieutenant in the 


480 


naval reserves. He will have charge of the de- 
partments of astronomy and navigation in the 
Naval Cadet School at Newport, R. I. 


Proressor RicHarp W. Huspanp, of Dart- 
mouth College, whose services have been loaned 
to the State Committee on Publie Safety, will 
write a complete history of New Hampshire’s 
‘part in the war. Men have been named to 
compile statistics in the cities and towns. 

Popular Astronomy states that Dr. F. C. P. 
Henroteau, of Brussels, has been appointed 
Martin Kellogg Fellow in the Lick Observa- 
tory for the year 1917-18. Since leaving Brus- 
sels, in August, 1914, Dr. Henroteau has spent 
fourteen months in work at Stonyhurst Col- 
lege Observatory, in England, and nearly a 
year and a half at the Detroit Observatory, 
Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mr. Holger Thiele has 
also been appointed fellow in the observatory 
for the year 1917-18 and is now in residence. 
Mr. Thiele was assistant in the observatory at 
Bamberg, Bavaria, in 1900-01, in the observa- 
tory at Copenhagen 1901-07 and in the observ- 
atory at Bergdedorf, Hamburg, from 1908 to 
February, 1917. 

Dr. J. C. Wirt, for the past two years en- 
gaged in industrial research at the Bureau of 
Science, Manila, has been appointed technical 
director of the Rizal Cement Company. This 
company operates the only cement mill in the 
Philippine Islands. 

At the Museum of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, Dr. G. B. Gordon, the director of 
the museum, is away on a six months’ leave of 
absence and Dr. W. C. Farabee has been ap- 
pointed acting director in his place; Mr. H. 
U. Hall, assistant curator of the section of 
general ethnology, is now with the Second 
Pennsylvania Field Artillery at Camp Han- 
cock, Augusta, Georgia; Mr. B. W. Merwin, 
assistant curator in the American section, has 
left the museum for military service, and is 
stationed at Macon, Georgia. 

Mr. W. Evmer Exsiaw of the University 
of Illinois, has been appointed research asso- 
ciate in geology in the American Museum of 
Natural History for the years 1917 and 1918, 
in recognition of his record and services on 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1194 


the Crocker Land Expedition during the years 
1918 to 1917. 

Honorary membership in the Chemists’ 
Club, New York City, was conferred upon 
Professor Grignard, of the French Mission, at 
a joint meeting of the New York Section of 
the Society of Chemical Industry, American 
Chemical Society and the American Electro- 
chemical Society, on October 19. An address 
was made by Professor Grignard. 


Owi1ne to the resignation on account of ill 
health of Mr. W. B. Worthington, president 
of the Institution of Civil Engineer of Great 
Britain, Mr. H. E. Jones, a vice-president, has 
been nominated president for the ensuing 
year. 


At the annual statutory meeting of the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh, held on October 
22, the following office-bearers and members 
of council were elected: President, Dr. J. 
Horne; vice-presidents, the Right Hon. Sir J. 
H. A. Macdonald, Professor R. A. Sampson, 
Professor D’Arey Thompson, Professor J. 
Walker, Professor G. A. Gibson, and Dr. R. 
Kidston; General Secretary, Dr. C. G. Knott; 
Secretaries to Ordinary Meetings, Professor 
A. Robinson and Professor E. T. Whittaker; 
Treasurer, Mr. J. Currie; Curator of Library 
and Museum, Dr. A. OC. Mitchell; Councillors, 
Dr. J. H. Ashworth, Professor C. G. Barkla, 
Professor C. R. Marshall, Dr. J. S. Black, Sir 
G. A. Berry, Dr. J. S. Flett, Professor M. 
Maclean, Professor D. Waterson, Professor F. 
O. Bower, Professor P. T. Herring, Professor 
T. J. Jehu, and Dr. A. Lauder. 


Proressor E. OC. Jerrrey, of Harvard Uni- 
versity, gave a lecture on “The Origin of 
Coal” at Wellesley College, on November 6. 


Tue three hundred and thirty-fourth meet- 
ing of the American Institute of Electrical 
Engineers was held in the Auditorium of the 
Engineering Societies Building, New York, on 
November 9. The paper of the evening was 
entitled “ An experimental method of obtain- 
ing the solution of electrostatic problems with 
notes on high-voltage bushing design,” by Mr. 
Chester W. Rice, of the General Electric 
Company. 


NovEMBER 16, 1917] 


WE learn from Nature that on October 10 a 
memorial tablet was unveiled at Oxford, com- 
memorating the life and work of Roger Bacon. 
The tablet has been fixed to the old wall of 
the city, dating from early in the thirteenth 
century, close to the site of the Grey Friars 
Church in the precincts of which Roger Bacon 
was buried. The church has long since dis- 
appeared, but the position of the burial 
ground, though not the exact spot of Bacon’s 
grave, is known. After the celebration at Ox- 
ford in 1914 of the seven hundredth anniver- 
sary of Bacon’s birth, it was thought fitting 
that in addition to the statue then created in 
the University museum, a permanent and 
public memorial should be set up as near as 
possible to the site of the Franciscan friary 
in which Bacon passed so many years of his 
strenuous life. This has now been accom- 
plished. 


THE death is announced, at seventy-three 
years of age, of Professor A. J. F. Dastre, di- 
rector of the laboratory of animal physiology 
at the Sorbonne, and a member of the Paris 
Academy of Sciences. 


Dr. Appison, the minister of reconstruction 
of Great Britain, has appointed a committee 
to consider and report on questions connected 
with the supplies of raw materials which will 
be required by British industries for the pur- 
pose of restoring and developing trade after 
the termination of the war and the best means 
of securing and distributing supplies, due re- 
gard being had to the interests of the Allies. 
The committee, which will be known as the 
Central Committee of Materials, consists of 
the following members: Sir Clarendon Hyde 
(chairman), Sir H. Birchenough, K.C.M.G., 
Mr. Cecil Budd, Sir C. W. Fielding, K.B.E., 
Sir H. Babington Smith, K.C.B., My. W. 
Thorneycroft and Mr. A. Weir. The secretary 
is Mr. J. F. Ronea, who should be addressed at 
the Ministry of Reconstruction, 2 Queen 
Anne’s Gate Buildings, Westminster, S.W. 1. 


We learn from Nature that a meeting was 
held at the Manchester School of Technology 
on November 10, under the chairmanship of 
Dr. Alfred Rée, for the purpose of inaugurat- 


SCIENCE 


481 


ing a British Association of Chemists. The 
objects of the proposed association are (a) to 
obtain power to act as sole registration au- 
thority for all chemists; (b) to have the word 
chemist legally redefined; (c) to safeguard the 
publie by obtaining legislation ensuring that 
certain prescribed chemical operations be under 
the direct control of a chemist, and (d) to raise 
the profession of the chemist to its proper posi- 
tion among the other learned professions, so 
that it may attract the attention of a larger 
proportion of the best intellects, and thereby 
secure a supply of highly trained chemists ade- 
quate to the industrial needs of the country. 
The secretary of the Provisional Committee is 
Mr. R. E. Crowther, 3 Langford Road, Heaton 
Chapel, near Stockport. 

At the Pittsburgh meeting of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, 
Section G—Botany, will hold on Saturday, De- 
cember 29, at 2 P.M., a joint session with the 
Botanical Society of America and the Ameri- 
can Phytopathological Society. The program 
will be as follows: 


‘“The near future of botany in America’’ (vice- 
presidential address), C. Stuart Gager. 


Invitation Papers Relating to War Problems in 
Botany 

‘«A new wheat disease in relation to the national 
food supply,’’ Erwin F. Smith. 

‘«Plant disease survey work and its relation to 
food production.’’ G. R. Lyman. 

““Porestry problems after the war.’’ I. W. 
Bailey. 

‘“War work of the botanical committee of the 
National Research Council,’’ John M. Coulter. 


THE course of scientific lectures of the 
California Academy of Science have been con- 
tinued on Sunday afternoons at 3 o’clock in the 
Auditorium of the Museum in Golden Gate 
Park. Announcements for the month were 
as follows: 


October 28. Mr, Henry H. Hart, assistant city 
attorney. San Francisco, Hawaii Nei. (lIllus- 
trated.) 


November 4. Dr. Bailey Willis, head, depart- 
ment of geology, Stanford University, The Chinese 
at home. (Illustrated.) 

November 11. Professor G. A. Coleman, college 
of agriculture, University of California, Natural 


482 


history and manipulation of bees. (Illustrated by 
moving pictures.) 

November 18. Professor George D. Louderback. 
department of geology, University of California. 


Geological explorations in China. (Illustrated.) 


These lectures are well received by the people 
of San Francisco and the number of regular 
attendants is particularly noteworthy. The 
auditorium of the academy has been filled to 
its capacity several times during the past 
month. 


t 

THE forty-second year of the Ecole d’Anthro- 
pologie de Paris opened on November third 
with courses offered as follows: 


1. R. Anthony, Development of the brain in man 
and the apes. 

2. L. Capitan, Art and architecture during the 
neolithie and protohistoric periods. 

3. G. Herve, Ethnology and ethnography in 
France during the eighteenth century. 

4, P. G. Mahoudeau, The precursors and the au- 
thors of evolution: Buffon, Lamarck, Darwin. 

5. L. Manouvrier, Ethnie psychology. 

6. A. de Mortillet, Burial customs among ancient 
and modern primitive races. 

7. C. Papillault, Psycho-social values and soph- 
isms. 

8. F. Schrader, Geographic causes of rapproche- 
ment and differentiation among human groups.— 
Evolution of the old world. 

9. J. Vinson, Primitive languages, popular lan- 
guage, folk-lore. 

In addition there are two short courses of eight 
lectures each on: (1) The survival of primitive in- 
dustries, by D. Bellet; and (2) Falsehood from 
the viewpoint of anthropology and criminology, by 
Paul-Boncour. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 
YALE UNIVERSITY receives the sum of $300,- 
000 by the will of Mrs. Charles W. Harkness, 
who died on December 6, 1916. 


Harvarp University has received a bequest 
from the estate of Horace Davis amounting to 
$10,000, the income of which is to be used for 
the purchase of books for the Harvard Univer- 
sity Library relating to the Northern Pacific 
Ocean and its shores. The university has also 
received a gift of $50,000 from Mrs. S. Park- 
man Blake, the income to be used “ for the care 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1194 


of the yard or other grounds of the univer- 
sity.” The gift is a memorial to her husband, 
S. Parkman Blake, of the class of 1855, and to 
her son, Robert Parkman Blake, of the class 
of 1894. 


In accordance with the terms of the will of 
the late Richard Black Sewall, of Boston, there 
are public bequests amounting to $380,000, and 
the residuary legatees are Harvard University 
and Yale University. The Boston Museum of 
Fine Arts, the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 
Williams College and Amherst College each 
receives $30,000. Tuskegee Institute and 
Hampton Normal Institute are each given 
$5,000. 


Tue Converse Library at Amherst College 
was dedicated on November 8. The new $250,- 
000 building is the gift of Edmund C. Con- 
verse, of New York, in memory of his brother, 
James B. Converse, who was a member of the 
class of ’67 at Amherst. Mr. Converse, Her- 
bert Putnam, librarian of Congress, and 
George A. Plimpton, of New York, president 
of the college board of trustees, took part in 
the exercises. 


THE University of Rochester has expanded 
its work in psychology. Quarters are now pro- 
vided for an experimental laboratory, and are 
thoroughly equipped for experimental pur- 
poses. Two experimental courses will be 
given during the present year. One course, ex- 
tending through the college year, emphasizes 
the psychology of the sense organs and more 
complex mental processes. The second course 
takes up the study of comparative psychology. 
Quarters for animal experimentation have been 
provided. The course is under the charge of 
L. A. Pechstein, Ph.D. (Chicago). 


Artuur L. Fotry, head of the department 
of physics of Indiana University, has been 
elected research professor in the Waterman 
Institute, the first to be elected to this posi- 
tion. The institute was founded and endowed 
a few years since by Dr. Luther Dana Water- 
man, a retired physician of Indianapolis. It 
is under the control of the trustees of Indiana 
University and is in part supported by the uni- 


Novemper 16, 1917] 


versity. The entire income of the Institute is 
to be devoted to research. Professor Foley re- 
tains charge of the physics department of the 
university, but is relieved of all teaching 
duties. 


Dr. H. D. Senior, head of the department 
of anatomy of New York University and Belle- 
vue Medical College, is in England engaged in 
military medical work. Dr. F. W. Thyng is 
acting professor of anatomy and head of the 
department in Dr. Senior’s absence, and has 
charge of histology and embryology. Dr. E. 
R. Hoskins is acting assistant professor and is 
in charge of gross anatomy and neurology. 
Dr. J. L. Conel and Dr. Margaret M. Hoskins 
are instructors in histology and embryology 
and Dr. C. Hield is instructor in gross anat- 
omy and neurology. The school year began 
with 190 students in the first-year class, an in- 
crease of 13 over last year. 


Warren G. WaterRMAN has been appointed 
assistant professor of botany at Northwestern 
University, having completed his work at the 
University of Chicago, where he received the 
degree of doctor of philosophy at the August 
convocation. 

Proressor D’Arcy WENTWoRTH THOMPSON, 
professor of natural history, University Col- 
lege, Dundee, has been appointed to the chair 
of natural history at St. Andrews, vacant 
through the retirement of Professor W. C. Mc- 
Intosh. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
BOTANY AND COMMON NAMES OF PLANTS 
To THE Epiror oF Science: Those who favor 
using the common names of plants, instead of 
the technical names, probably do not realize 
the confusion that would result in most in- 
stances, where exactness is necessary or desir- 
able, if their suggestions were followed. 
Imagine the pharmacist relying solely upon the 
common names in selecting such drugs as man- 
drake, bitter-sweet, coltsfoot and sarsaparilla. 
Some of his patrons would surely be poisoned 
and others would die for want of the proper 
remedy. Scientific names were given to plants 
for the express purpose of facilitating exact 
reference to them and it is a mistaken kindness 


SCIENCE 


483 


to teach children and others the common names 
under the impression that the technical terms 
are too difficult. Any child who can be taught 
to say rhinoceros, chrysanthemum or rhododen- 
dron can be taught the scientific names of 
plants and thereby advanced on the road to 
knowledge, instead of being plunged into a 
morass of inexact and untrustworthy common 
names, however poetic. As a matter of fact 
there is as much poetry and folk-lore in the 
scientific names as in the common ones. Con- 
sider Campanula, Phlox, Asplenium and Heli- 
anthemum. Are these less euphonious or 
poetic than such “common” names as Judge 
Daly’s sunflower, Stewardson Brown’s Indian 
turnip, or Brainerd’s cat?s foot? There is un- 
doubtedly much literary value in the common 
names of plants, but the same can not be 
claimed for the “English” or vernacular 
names with which we have been deluged of 
late. A common name is a name that is in 
common use for the plant in some part of the 
world and therefore entitled to consideration, 
but an “ English” name is too often merely a 
poor translation of the scientific name and 
therefore better left in the original. Common 
names or, if you please, vernacular names, are 
still being coined—Christmas fern, foam 
flower, boulder fern, Darwin tulip, and obedi- 
ent plant are good illustrations—but who ex- 
pects such “ English” names as repand-leaved 
erysimum, Hooker’s musinon, Gregg’s hap- 
loesthes, and tall flat-topped white aster to ever 
become common? In the opinion of many 
good observers the declining popularity of bot- 
any as a high-school study is due in large meas- 
ure to the efforts of those well-intentioned but 
misguided popularizers of plant study who 
either by assertion or implication give to the 
scientific study of plants a reputation for diffi- 
culty which it does not deserve. 

It is well to reflect, therefore, that common 
names can not be made by fiat. If a plant has 
a common name, we may well use it in the re- 
gion where the name is common and therefore 
understood, but to imagine that there is any 
special sanctity in the common names as such 
and to insist upon their use on all occasions is 
as absurd as for the scientist to use technical 


484 


terms in speaking of familiar species. In all 
cases where exactness is necessary, even well- 
known common names will not serve, for often 
a single plant will have several names or a 
single common name may be applied to several 
plants. In spite of the conspicuous differences 
that still exist between the adherents of the 
“ American Code” and those who advocate the 
“Vienna Rules,” the scientific names are still 
the safest to go by and all botanists would do 
well to insist upon their use. The sooner the 
general public discovers that even technical 
botany is still “ the amiable science” the better 
it will be for all concerned. 
Wiuiarp N. CLute 
JoureT, ILL. 


LACEPEDE OR LACEPEDE 

In going over “ The Genera of Fishes” re- 
cently published by Dr. David Starr Jordan, 
assisted by Barton Warren Evermann, I dis- 
cover that these authors accept and adopt the 
view expressed by Sherborne in his “ Index 
Animalium,” p. lvii, where, under the head of 
“ Additions and Corrections,” Sherborne says: 

A letter dated 1831 is signed ‘‘b.g.é cte de lace- 
péde.’’ This spelling and accentuation should be 
adhered to. 


The writer is very much inclined to think 
that both Sherborne and the learned authors of 
the recent paper on “ The Genera of Fishes” 
err in accepting the accentuation of the name 
of the great Frenchman found attached to a 
scrap of paper bearing his name, which was 
evidently written in haste. “ One swallow does 
not make a spring,” and one hurriedly written 
autograph with the omission of the acute ac- 
cent over the first “e” in the word does not 
prove that this was the correct way of writing 
the name. The writer of these lines is called 
upon every month to attach his signature hun- 
dreds of times to vouchers and other docu- 
ments. He ordinarily puts a period after his 
initials, W and J; but only yesterday, having 
signed some two hundred vouchers, he observed 
that in the haste of doing so he had in a num- 
ber of cases omitted the period after his ini- 
tials. Personal observation shows him that 
just so it is not an infrequent thing for French 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1194 


gentlemen in hurried writing to omit an ac- 
cent. 

In the judgment of the writer of these lines 
the existence of one letter in which the French 
ichthyologist signed himself “lacepéde” 
should not avail against the fact that in all his 
published writings the other method of accen- 
tuation prevails, that all biographies, encyclo- 
pedias, and dictionaries, in which the name 
occurs, give it as “ Lacépéde.” If he were the 
only person who had borne the name there 
might be some weight attached to the signa- 
ture, which Sherborne has turned up; but there 
were and are others in France who bear the 
name, and any one who takes the trouble to 
consult a French dictionary or encyclopedia of 
biography will find that invariably the name is 
and has been spelled “ Lacépéde.” The name 
is so spelled in Buffon, who was the friend and 
contemporary of Lacépéde, and I think it seems 
“rather late in the day” to change the uni- 
versally accepted spelling of the name of the 
well-known naturalist on the strength of the 
L. S. discovered by Sherborne. 

To be consistent, if the acute accent is 
omitted on the first “e,” the capitals should 
also cease to be employed, not only in the fam- 
ily, but also the Christian names of Lacépéde, 
for in the autograph which Sherborne quotes 
the name is written throughout without capi- 
tals. After carefully weighing the matter the 
writer is of the opinion that Buffon, the au- 
thors of the “Dictionnaire Universelle,” and 
the thousand or more Frenchmen engaged in 
scientific research, who have for over a century 
written the name “ Lacépéde” are more likely 
to know what is correct than the author of the 
“Tndex Mammalium,” who, having unearthed 
this L. S., has on the strength of it proceded in 
this particular to overthrow the usage of more 
than a century, and the usage of those who 
were the friends and acquaintances of Lacé- 
pede himself. W. J. Houtanp 

PITTSBURGH, Pa., 

October 17, 1917 


FORBES WINSLOW MEMORIAL HOSPITAL 

To tHe Eprror or Science: The British 
Ministry of Pensions has recognized and 
authorized for trial psychical treatment for 


NovEeMBER 16, 1917] 


soldiers suffering from shell-shock and nervous 
breakdown. It can not be too widely known 
that this is exactly the treatment practised 
at the British Hospital, 72 Camden Road, 
London, N. W. 1, England, for over a quarter 
of a century. The hospital has given effective 
and permanent relief gratuitously to thou- 
sands of men, women and children. The war 
has obviously increased the number of cases 
suffering from shell-shock and nervous break- 
down to a marked extent, and the hospital is 
at present appealing for additional funds to 
cope with the position, and also with the ob- 
ject of sending patients into the country, so 
necessary for their speedy recovery. 

Will our American friends help us? Dona- 
tions, however small, will be greatly appre- 
ciated and may be sent to me or the Secretary, 
Mr. F. J. Lee-Smith, 72 Camden Road, 
London, N. W. 1, England. 


Marcaret Forses WINSLOW 


QUOTATIONS 


INCREASED RANK AND MORE AUTHORITY FOR 
MEDICAL OFFICERS 


As most of our readers are aware, an amend- 
ment was introduced into Congress at the re- 
cent session which, if it had been adopted, 
would haye given the medical officers in the 
Army the same rank that prevails in the 
Medical Corps of the Navy. Specifically the 
amendment provided that there should be 
twenty-five one-hundredths of 1 per cent. of 
major-generals, the same proportion of briga- 
dier-generals, 4 per cent. of colonels, 8 per 
cent. of lieutenant-colonels, 23.5 per cent. of 
majors, 32 per cent. of captains, and 32 per 
cent. of lieutenants, this to apply to both the 
regular and the reserve corps men. Thus, if 
there are 10,000 medical officers in active 
service, there might be 25 major-generals, 25 
brigadier-generals, 400 colonels, 800 lieuten- 
ant-colonels, 2,350 majors, 3,200 captains and 
3,200 first lieutenants. This amendment 
lapsed without action by the ending of the 
session. The substance of the amendment, 
however, will be incorporated in a bill which 
will be introduced in both the Senate and the 
House at the coming session of Congress. 


SCIENCE 


485 


Medical officers must be equal in rank and 
authority with line officers if they are ade- 
quately to carry out the duties for which they 
will be held responsible. This fact has been 
emphasized by the experience of our allies in 
the present war, as well as by our own ex- 
perience in the past. Our allies admit that in 
the beginning the medical officer did not have 
the rank, and consequently the authority, he 
should have had and that, for this reason, 
there have been grievous consequences. 
Among these was the disastrous experience of 
the British Army in the Mesopotamian cam- 
paign as a result of the failure of the medical 
service. The report of this tragedy, made by 
a board of nonmedical men, showed that lack 
of authority of the medical officers was an 
important factor. The medical officers were 
practically ignored. They were not advised 
as to the character of the expedition that was 
being undertaken, and as a consequence, they 
were unprepared for what happened. When 
later a medical officer made urgent representa- 
tions in regard to the actual conditions ob- 
taining, which in his opinion needed prompt 
action, he was threatened with arrest and 
removal from his post. When the actual re- 
sults came the blame was thrown on the medi- 
cal department, of which this medical officer 
was a member. The medical officers were 
censured because they had not protested more 
vigorously. We had a similar experience in 
1898 when our medical officers were criticized 
for insanitary conditions at Chickamauga and 
elsewhere, although there was plenty of evi- 
dence to show that they had protested against 
these conditions to line officers. The whole 
sad story is told in detail in the Dodge report. 
There, also, will be found testimony that line 
officers treated with contempt the recom- 
mendations and protests made by medical 
officers. The medical officer is without influ- 
ence simply because his shoulder straps indi- 
eate lower rank than that of the line officer 
with whom he is associated. Some may sneer, 
but the fact remains that it is rank that 
counts in both the Army and the Navy. 

Of course rank brings with it increased pay. 
This, however, is immaterial. At the same 


486 


time, it should not be forgotten that most of 
the physicians now in the Medical Reserve 
Corps have not only left the comforts of their 
homes, but also have given up practises which 
in the majority of instances yielded far more 
income than the pay they would receive as 
medical officers of the Army even if they had 
conferred on them the highest rank that the 
proposed law would provide. Among these 
medical reserve officers are many of the most 
prominent men in our profession, including 
the leading men in the specialties, as well as 
our best surgeons and internists. 

When the war broke out there were less than 
450 medical officers in the regular Army Medi- 
eal Corps. To-day there are commissioned, 
including officers of the regular Army, the 
National Guard and the Medical Reserve 
Corps, at least 17,000 physicians. Less than 
1,000 are in the regular Army Medical Corps. 
Under the present law these regular Medical 
Corps officers are entitled to the grades of 
lieutenant-colonel and colonel; and in the case 
of the surgeon-general, to that of brigadier- 
general;! the highest rank that can be con- 
ferred on any one of the other 16,000—that is, 
on any reserve medical officer—is that of 
major. 

May we remind our readers that the men in 
active service will be prevented by the regula- 
tions from using their influence in this 
matter, and that the duty of pushing this 
measure rests on those who stay at home? 
Every physician has representing him in Con- 
gress one man in the House of Representatives 
and another in the Senate. If every phys- 
ician will let his representatives know that 
this proposed measure should become a law, 
and if in addition he will enlighten his 
neighbors in regard to the matter, an effective 
public opinion will be created. The time is 
opportune; congressmen are at their homes. 
Write or speak to your representatives now; 
get your neighbors to do likewise—not for the 
good of the medical profession, but for the 
good of the service—The Journal of the 
American Medical Association. 

1 Surgeon-General Gorgas has the rank of major- 
general by special act of Congress. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1194 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 


The Biology of Twins. By Horatio Hackett 
Newman, Associate Professor of Zoology, 
and Dean in the Colleges of Science, Uni- 
versity of Chicago. University of Chicago 
Press, 1917. Pp. 1-185. 55 figures in the 
text. 

Polyembryony, or the production of more 
than one individual from a single fertilized 
egg, although a phenomenon occurring con- 
stantly in some groups of animals, and occa- 
sionally in others, including man, is as yet un- 
mentioned in our text-books of general zool- 
ogy, where the impression is given, or the 
statement even definitely made, that, except as 
the result of experiment, a single zygote, re- 
sulting from a normal fertilization, invariably 
results in the formation of a single individual. 

That in the Texan armadillo a single egg 
always produces four individuals, and that a 
much more numerous progeny results from a 
single egg in certain of the gall-wasps (Copi- 
dosoma), are facts that are now forcibly 
brought to the attention of zoologists through 
the long and arduous labors of the two asso- 
ciates, H. H. Newman and J. W. Patterson. 

While the original papers are necessary for 
one seeking the details, the essential points ob- 
tained by these and other investigators to date 
have been placed in a single small volume 
where, appearing in a not too technical dress, 
they are readily and conveniently available, 
not to zoologists alone, but to the thinking 
public in general. 

The work is based upon the Texan armadillo 
(Dasypus novemcinctum), which produces 
four young at a birth, all of the same sex. 
After an introduction and a preliminary chap- 
ter, setting forth what is commonly known 
concerning twins in general, mainly human, 
and their probable relation to double monsters, 
there follows in Chapter II. an almost complete 
sketch of the development of the nine-banded 
armadillo. This sketch includes “the whole 
range of stages from ovogenesis to birth, with 
but one gap which, it is hoped, the near future 
will see filled in.” This gap is that of the 
early cleavage stages, but as a partial substi- 
tute for these Newman refers to his paper of 


NovremMBer 16, 1917] 


June, 1913 (Biol. Bull.), in which he records 
his observations on certain non-fertilized eggs, 
in which cleavage advanced parthenogenetically 
as far as the eight-cell stage, apparently in nor- 
mal manner. In this chapter the gastrulation, 
the germ-layer inversion, and the formation 
of first two and then four embryos from the 
embryonic area, are given in order, followed 
by the subsequent separation of the four dis- 
tinct embryos, each with its own amnion and 
placenta. Corresponding to their origin, two 
secondary embryos from the two primary ones, 
the four are distinctly paired, the two of each 
pair revealing a more complete identity than 
does either one when compared with a mem- 
ber of the other pair, and this relationship in 
certain extra-embryonal features, such as the 
approximation of the placentas of each pair, is 
shown in anatomical relations up to birth. 
The condition in other species and genera 
of armadillo is presented in Chapter IIL, 
which shows that the number of young varies 
from eight (occasionally 7-12), polyembryonic 
ones in Dasypus hybridus, to Euphractus vil- 
losus, which is not polyembryoniec, but produces 
fraternal twins from two separate eggs, or, oc- 
casionally, bears only a single young. The facts 
for this chapter are furnished largely by the 
work of Fernandez of the Museo Nacional at 
La Plata (Argentina), who has made special 
studies on the armadillos of South America, 
and whose first account of the polyembryony 
of Daypus hybridus appeared in 1900 (Morph. 
Jahrb.) almost simultaneously with the first 
paper of Newman and Patterson on the same 
phenomenon in D. novemcinctus (Biol. Bull.). 
Chapter IV., although short, has a special 
interest since in it the author discusses causes 
of polyembryonic development, thereby bring- 
ing in something of the many theories that 
have been brought forward to account for hu- 
man twins, at least those of the duplicate or 
monochorial type. The author considers the 
phenomenon one of fission, “if by fission we 
mean merely the physiological isolation of sey- 
eral secondary points in a single embryonic 
vesicle, and the consequent acquisition by 
these points of independence in growth and 
development” (p. 93). He assumes a consid- 


SCIENCE 


487 


erable amount of differentiation to have oc- 
curred before these points become isolated, “so 
that genetic factors are unequally distributed 
in the various regions which give rise to the 
new apical points,” and thus if two embryos 
are developed from closely adjacent territory 
they are likely to be more nearly alike than 
those which are a greater distance apart on 
the blastoderm. This accounts for the phe- 
nomenon, substantiated by hundreds of obser- 
vations, that the closely adjacent twins of a 
pair, where the placentas are nearly in contact, 
are closer duplicates that are individuals taken 
from the two pairs. 

Chapter V. considers the phenomenon of the 
free-martin in cattle, or the occurrence of a 
normal male twin with an imperfect twin, 
variously considered an hermaphrodite, an im- 
perfect female, or an imperfect male. The au- 
thor was fortunately able to avail himself of 
the work of Lillie and his pupil Miss Chapin, 
previous to its publication (J. Hap. Zool., 
July, 1917) and thus presents this work as 
revealed by the latest investigation. This 
shows conclusively that the free-martin is a 
sterile female, with abortive gonads, and with 
certain of the secondary characters of the male 
due to the influence of male hormones from 
the associated male, obtained from the blood 
circulating in the common placenta. This is 
a totally different phenomenon from that pre- 
sented by armadillos, as the twins are here of 
the fraternal type (dizygotic), and in the 
latter true duplicates (monozygotic). 

The two final chapters, VI. and VII., show 
the various contributions to general biological 
problems afforded by the study of twins, espe- 
cially in the case of variation and heredity, 
and here the work of the author and his asso- 
ciate on armadillos, where the scales of the 
carapace are used to show the amount of iden- 
tity, links up extremely well with that of 
Wilder on human twins, who has employed in 
a similar way the conformation of the friction- 
ridges of the palms and soles. Indeed, there is 
probably more than a general correspondence 
in method between these two independent 
series of investigations, since it is altogether 
likely that the human friction-ridges are 


488 


formed of rows of integumental scales, and 
that they are thus the same sort of organ as 
are the bands of the armadillo carapace, which 
Newman finds so convenient for the compari- 
son of individuals. 

The last and longest chapter, Chapter VIL., 
gives a detailed study of the results of both 
lines of investigation, and presents, with nu- 
merous illustrations the strange correspond- 
ences in detail in the external characters of 
monozygotic twins, whether found in the cara- 
pace of the armadillo, or in the palm and sole 
ridges of man. These two series of studies 
serve to strengthen each other, and are shown 
to be essentially similar phenomena, of great 
biological significance. In the facility with 
which embryonic material of every stage may 
be obtained the armadillo has a decided ad- 
vantage over man as a Versuchstier, although 
in the enormous amount of detail presented by 
human palms and soles, and the readiness with 
which they may be compared in the form of 
prints, there are certain distinct advantages 
in the study of man. If once the essential 
identity of the phenomenon of polyembryony 
in Dasypus and Homo be generally recognized, 
those parts of the history of human duplicate 
twins (and perhaps, of double monsters as 
well) which are beyond our power to observe 
directly, may be satisfactorily supplied through 
the study of the corresponding stages in the 
armadillo; while the correspondences in the 
friction-skin configuration of human monozy- 
gotic twins may be added to those observed in 
the carapace of the armadillo to show the 
amount of power possessed by the germ- 
plasm, or some other element or elements of 
the egg, to determine the details of the adult 
soma. H. H. W. 


Economic Geology. By HetnricH Rims, A.M., 
Ph.D. Fourth edition. John Wiley and 
Sons. 

The appearance of the fourth edition of this 
excellent and standard book on the subject, in 
the midst of a year of battle largely as to sup- 
plies of war materials, deserves attention, since 
the change of publishers has been marked by 
thorough rewriting and extensive additions. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1194 


The statistics and references are brought 
down to 1914-15, showing the first effect of the 
war, but not the rebound. Not only are there 
25 per cent. more illustrations, but many of the 
less legible ones are redrawn and greatly im- 
proved. Compare, for instance, those on pages 
529 and 545 of the new with the corresponding 
figures on pages 367 and 878 of the old. A. 
large number of half tones taken by the author 
show that the descriptions of the various ore 
deposits are not mere compilations. This is 
perhaps the main use of some of them, for un- 
dated views of a mine do not show what now 
is. Would it not be well if in scientific works 
the date of views were always given? 

The main improvement of the book, how- 
ever, is that it now includes descriptions, in 
but slightly smaller type, of the chief rival ore 
deposits in other countries, and thus makes 
possible a much more comprehensive handling 
of the great question of ore deposits. For in- 
stance, the Swedish deposits of Kiruna receive 
first-hand treatment, and there is a plate of a 
section of Luxembourg iron ores. While the 
treatment is and must be brief, there are al- 
ways one or two recent references to start one 
on further search. The summaries of different 
views as to the origin of ores, for instance, 
Cuban ores, though brief, are well done 
While the author does not hesitate at times to 
express his own views, yet he gives rival views. 
The account, for instance, of the odlitic iron- 
ore deposits could hardly be improved for so 
brief a statement. 

While of course the publications of the 
United States Geological Survey have been 
largely used, they: are by no means the exclu: 
sive source, and the various publications of the 
mining engineering societies have been also 
duly consulted. 

The table of geographic and geologic dis- 
tribution of coal in the United States is a new 
and valuable feature, and the general subject 
of coal receives very satisfactory treatment. 
If the source of the analyses of coal on pages 
8 and 9 is given it has been overlooked by the 
reviewer. 

The treatment of copper has been brought 
to date by reference to the Nonesuch Lode. 


NovEeMBER 16, 1917] 


But in the footnote at the bottom of page 609, 
by the term “Lake ore” the writer really 
means “ Lake copper” and his statement that 
“the term has now lost its original meaning ” 
is hardly justifiable, since in the first place for 
“ore” one should read “ copper,” and in the 
second place, that western copper should have 
been almost fraudulently sold as Lake copper 
does not signify that the term has lost its 
meaning; otherwise there would have been no 
object in the trick. In fact the difference in 
selling price between Lake copper and electro: 
lytic copper has been unusually great at times 
during the last three years. 

Although of course, the book is primarily a 
text-book, yet the summaries of different theo- 
ries as to ore deposits (see, for instance, the 
discussion of Mississipi zinc), often largely 
based upon original studies, are so valuable 
that no one interested in its field can afford to 
be without the book. ALFRED C. LANE 

Turts CoLLEGE 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
EXPERIMENTS WITH A FOCAULT PENDULUM 


In the issue of ScrencEe for March 16, last 
Dr. Carl Barus, under the above title, de- 
scribed certain measurements of the rotation 
of the plane of oscillation of a Focault pen- 
dulum. The present note gives, for the same 
determination, another method that is simple, 
direct and of fair accuracy. 


Fig. 1. 


If in Fig. 1 the point A represent an arc 
lamp that, through the slit B, illuminates a 
portion of the scale D; and if PQ represent 
the plane of vibration of a Focault pendulum 
at a given time, it is evident that the dif- 
fraction pattern of the wire will travel up and 
down the scale as the pendulum oscillates. 
Further, as the plane of the vibration rotates 
about the center at C, the amplitude of the 
motion of the shadow on D will decrease, and 


SCIENCE 


489 


will become zero at the instant when the os- 
cillation plane includes the line DCA. This 
amplitude of the shadow’s motion will increase 
again as the plane of vibration continues its 
rotation towards the position RS. If the 
position on the scale of one edge of the central 
band be taken at each successive elongation 
of the pendulum; and if these readings be 
plotted against the time (in terms of the 
period of the pendulum) two approximately 


ts 
ia 
~ 
p- 
ue 
iO 
Q- 
i 
~r 
q- 


Shh dt }3 6 15 th Nelo do by 82 $3 84 


Fig. 2a. 


straight lines will be obtained. The coor- 
dinates of the intersection of these lines will 
give (1) the point on the scale where it is cut 
by the vertical plane that includes the line 
AC; and (2) the time (in terms of the period 
of the pendulum) of the coincidence of the 
plane of vibration with the vertical plane 


defined in (1) (see Fig. 2, a and 6). 


Oy gu se s7 SF sede 41 4233-4 Ws Abdy Fe 4980 
Fig, 2b. 


If, next, the lamp be moved to a position 
indicated in Fig. 1 by A’ a similar set of 
observations will determine a second vertical 
plane and the time of passage of the plane of 
vibration through it. The number of oscilla- 
tions that elapse between a given observation 
of the first set and a given observation of the 


490 


second set is determined by starting a stop- 
watch as the first reading of the first set taken, 
and stopping it at the first observation of the 
second set. This time divided by the known 
period of the pendulum will fix the number of 
oscillations from the first of one set to the 
first of the other, 7. e., it will give the os- 
cillation number of the first elongation of the 
second set, the initial elongation of the first 
set being taken as zero. Thus knowing the 
distance of the scale D from the center of os- 
cillation C, and the intersections of the two 
vertical planes at D, we get the angle be- 
tween them; and from this and the time inter- 
val the angular velocity of the rotation of the 
plane of vibration follows at once. 

The first attempts to use this method were 
made with the slit about two meters from the 
center at C, and the scale six meters away. 
The observations were made on the first dif- 
fraction minimum to one side of the pattern, 
but the decay of the amplitude of vibration 
introduced here an undeterminable correction 
which was too large to be neglected. The 
final procedure was to put the are about six 
meters from the center and to bring the scale 
to two meters. Readings were then made of 
the edge of the central dark shadow—the 
bright line in the middle of the shadow being 
too faint for quick reading. Under these cir- 
cumstances the variation of the width of the 
central shadow, even in its extreme positions, 
was negligible. 

The Apparatus.—A turned leaden sphere of 
mass 4.8 kilograms was suspended from a 
roof joist of the laboratory by a long steel 
piano wire 0.39 mm. diam. Attached to the 
wire, so that its shadow would cross the scale 
D at each oscillation, was a small ball of wax. 
As the screen was about a meter above the 
floor and the are about 20 centimeters, this 
shadow was at its highest point at one max- 
imum elongation of the bob and at its lowest 
at the other. By noting the motion of the 
shadow of the wax ball at the ends of its path 
one could detect any tendency to elliptical 
motion of the bob. The prevention of such 
motion is, of course, one of the difficulties in 
securing good results. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1194 


The period of the pendulum was 7.50 secs. 

To start the oscillation the bob was drawn 
back 40 or 50 cm. from its equilibrium posi- 
tion and held there by a belt of thread that 
passed about its equator and through a small 
horizontal pulley, which latter was fastened 
to a standard by the thread which was to be 
burned in releasing the pendulum (see Fig. 
8). The object of the pulley was to prevent 
torsional strain in the wire, but as the re- 
storing couple was so small for the wire in 
question it was found best to place a mark on 
the sphere after it had been hanging at rest 
for some time, and to adjust the ball in its 
belt so that the mark was at its original 
azimuth. Next, to damp out side motion of 
the bob the following device proved efficient; 
a flat dise of cork (about 2 cm. diam.) was 
fixed centrally on the inside of a light tin 
dish (top of a coffee can, 11 em. diam. See 
Fig. 3) and this was floated on cylinder oil in 


a larger vessel that was carried on a table that 
could be racked up and down (the front of a 
projection lantern). This system was placed 
centrally under the bob in its deflected condi- 
tion, and was raised until the cork just 
touched the sphere. The slight friction be- 
tween them caused the dish td move with the 
bob, so that the oil quickly damped the resid- 


NovEeMBER 16, 1917] 


ual motion. When all was perfectly still—as 
indicated by the absence of movement of the 
shadow D—the damping system was lowered 
away and the thread behind the pulley quickly 
burned through. If the bob were left hang- 
ing after the removal of the damping system, 
air currents and the tremors of the building 
soon set it swinging again—for these observa- 
tions were made while other operations were 
being carried on in the same building. After 
releasing the bob the position of the are lamp 
was adjusted so that the amplitude of the 
shadow’s motion was decreasing and was about 
5 mm. on the scale. Readings were then made 
of successive elongations until the plane of the 
pendulum’s motion had passed completely 
through the plane fixed by the slit and the 
vertical through the point C. Readings were 
always begun with the outward swing of the 
pendulum so that no ambiguity resulted from 
the recording only the millimeters and tenths 
after the first. The record for the first few 
points of experiment A (below) for instance 
was : 
23.42 em. 

.89 

47 

87 

ete. 


Blanks (when the are sputtered or the eye 
did not catch the turning point) were indi- 
cated, both in the record and on the graph, by 
strokes. 

The determination of the point on the floor 
directly beneath the center of suspension was 
effected as follows: A metal plate with a peep- 
hole (1 mm. diam.) was held in the laboratory 
stand so that the plumb-bob, hung through the 
hole, fell just over the edge of one of the feet 
of the stand, about a meter below. A straight- 
edge placed on the floor against this foot, when 
observed through the peep-hole, defined a ver- 
tical plane. The bob was then set swinging 
through an are of amplitude equal to its own 
radius and the position of the straight-edge 
was adjusted until at extreme elongations the 
sphere appeared tangent to the straight-edge 
on opposite sides successively. A line drawn 
along the straight-edge must contain a point 


SCIENCE 


491 


vertically under the center of suspension. 
In this same manner two other lines, each 
at about 60° to the first, were determined, 
and the center of the resulting triangle (about 
1 mm. altitude) was taken as the point re- 
quired. 

Trouble was found at first at the suspension 
point itself, but this was finally overcome by 
boring a 5-mm. hole half way through a stout 
piece of brass and finishing it through with a 
half millimeter drill. The wire was then in- 
serted, the larger hole being in the lower side 
of the bar. The hole was then filled with 
solder, sufficient being used to leave the sur- 
face slightly convex. This excess was scraped 
away with a knife, leaving a plane surface 
from which the pendulum could swing. The 
bar was then clamped into place against the 
roof joist. 

The details of a set of five consecutive read- 
ings taken on the fifteenth of May, 1917, are 
as follows: 

Latitude of Kingston 44° 13’. 

Period of Pendulum JT 7.50 sec. 

Distance to scale from center of oscillation 

Coordinates of intersections of lines on 
graph f,, t,, %,, Z>. 

Angular velocity of plane of vibration 


t2— U1 
(& — t,)T200 


Qo = 


ERD 4 ts a (cem.) | 22 (cm.) oe 
A |1097| 39.37 | 23.65 | 25.81 |5.07x10-5 
B 19.57 | 64.57 | 21.58 | 24.92 |4.95 
C 10.57 | 44.17'| 20.90 | 23.39 |4.95 
D 13.37 | 53.97 | 20.94 | 24.04 |5.09 
E 14.47 | 48.67'| 22.64 | 25.30 [5.18 
IMGaneersrrcet cette eee 5.05x10-% 
Calculated value at Kingston............... 5.08x10-6 


Of these the experiment of shortest dura- 
tion was A, which included 28.4 periods or 
about 34% minutes; the longest was B, of 45 
periods, or about 54% minutes. 

Wu C. Baker 

PHYSICAL LABORATORY, 

QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY, 
KINGSTON, ONT., 
May 18, 1917 


, 


492 


THE PHILADELPHIA MEETING OF THE 
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
TuE autumn meeting will be held at Philadel- 

phia, November 20 and 21, in the engineering 

building of the University of Pennsylvania. On 

Tuesday evening a reception for the members of 

the academy and invited guests will be given by 

Provost and Mrs. Smith at the University Mu- 

seum at 9 o’clock. The academy dinner will take 

place at the Bellevue-Stratford on Wednesday even- 
ing at 7.30 o’clock. 
The scientific sessions are as follows: 


Tuesday, November 20, 10.80-12.30 

The wheat problem of the United States, Erwin 
F. Smith, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 

The modern systematist, Liberty H. Bailey, Cor- 
nell University. 

A criticism of the evidence for the mutation 
theory of De Vries from the behavior of Gnothera 
in erosses and in selfed lines (by invitation), Brad- 
ley M. Davis, University of Pennsylvania. 

The chemical mechanism of regeneration, Jac- 
ques Loeb, Rockefeller Institute. 

A comparison of growth changes in the nervous 
system of the rat with the corresponding changes 
jin man, Henry H. Donaldson, the Wistar Institute. 

Hereditary tendency to form nerve tumors, 
Charles B. Davenport, Station for Experimental 
Evolution, Carnegie Institution. 

Food hormones or vitamines in some animal tis- 
sues (to be presented by L. B. Mendel), Lafayette 
B. Mendel and Thomas B. Osborne, Yale Univer- 
sity. 

Tuesday Afternoon, 2.00-4.00 

The atomic weight of boron, Edgar F. Smith 
and Walter K. VanHaagen, University of Penn- 
sylvania. 

The effect of intravenous injection of magnesium 
sulphate upon tetanus—with a lantern slide dem- 
onstration by J. Auer (by invitation), Samuel J. 
Meltzer and John Auer. 

Chemotherapy of spirochetal infections, for Drs. 
Jacobs and Brown, Simon Flexner, Rockefeller In- 
stitute. 

Possible action of the sex-determining mechan- 
ism (by invitation), Clarence E. McClung, Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania. 

The cause of mosaics and gynandromorphs in 
Drosophila, Thomas H. Morgan, Columbia Univer- 
sity. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1194 


Spectrum analysis by different persistence of 
vision (by invitation), Herbert E. Ives, Physical 
Laboratory, The United Gas Improvement Com- 
pany. 


Wednesday, November 21, 9.80-10.80 


The atmosphere and terrestrial radiation, Charles 
G. Abbot, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. 

Geometric aspects of the theory of heat, Edward 
Kasner, Columbia University. 

Invariants which are functions of parameters of 
the transformation (by invitation), Oliver HE. 
Glenn, University of Pennsylvania. 

The validity of the thermoelectric equation 
P=T(dv/dT), Edwin H. Hall, Harvard Univer- 
sity. : 

A thermoelectric diagram on the P. V. plane, Ed- 
win H. Hall, Harvard University. 

The Astrapotheria of the Patagonian Miocene, 
William B. Seott, Princeton University. 

Evolution of the Titanotheres: Final conclu- 
sions, Henry F. Osborn, American Museum of Nat- 
ural History. 

Study of the motions of forty-eight double stars 
(by invitation), Erie Doolittle, University of Penn- 
sylvania. 

A determination of the solar motion and of 
stream motion based on absolute magnitudes (read 
by Professor Hale), Gustaf Strémberg, Mt. Wilson 
Solar Observatory, Carnegie Institution (intro- 
duced by Walter S. Adams). 


Wednesday Afternoon, 2.00-4.00 


The coral reefs of Tutuila, Samoa, Alfred G. 
Mayer, Marine Laboratory, Carnegie Institution. 

The subsidence of volcanic islands, William M. 
Davis, Harvard University. 

A duty of the International Association of 
Academies, William M. Davis, Harvard University. 

The work of the Anthropology Committee of the 
National Research Council, William H. Holmes, U. 
S. National Museum. 

The work of the Psychological Committee of the 
National Research Council, Edward L. Thorndike, 
Columbia University. 

The work of the National Research Council, 
George E. Hale, Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory, Car- 
negie Institution. 

Biographical memoir of James D. Dana (read 
by title), Louis V. Pirsson, Yale University. 

Biographical memoir of Cleveland Abbe (read 
by title), William J. Humphreys, U. S. Weather 
Bureau (introduced by A. L. Day). 


SCIENCE 


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the buyer, the main question still persists, 


How well can I see with this instrument ? 


Bausch & Lomb Microscopes predomin- 
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SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


THE 
PRINCIPLES OF 
STRATIGRAPHY 


BY 


AMADEUS W. GRABAU, S.M., S.D. 


PROFESSOR OF PALEONTOLOGY IN 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


*Should be on the reference shelf of every col- 
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United States.”—Journal of Geography, Vol. XIII, 
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8vo, 1150 pages, 264 illustrations. Price, $7.50 


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Description of Some New Species of Polynoidae from 
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Optimum Moisture Conditions for Young Lemon 
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Some Abnormal Water Relations In Citrus Trees of 
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New Species of Amphinomidae from the Pacific Coast, 
by Christine Essenberg..........:cssccccccsseececessesssccesenscerensees 


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THE COMSTOCK PUBLISHING CO.,Ithaca,N Y. 


MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY 
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Biological Material 

1. Zoology. Preserved material of all types of animals 
for class work and for the museum. 

2. Embryology. Stages of some invertebrates, fishes (in- 
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GEORGE M. GRAY, Curator, Woods Hole, Mass. 


SCIENCE 


Frmay, NoveMBER 23, 1917 


CONTENTS 


Electromerism, a Case of Chemical Isomerism 
resulting from a Difference in Distribution 
of Valence Electrons: Proressor LAupER 493 
WALA Ma ONES © 0. clltfelcversisiieieioiciyaisace 


Recent Physiology and the War: PROFESSOR 
CHARLES S. SHERRINGTON ..............- 502 


Pre-medical Training in Chemistry: Dr. FRED- 
ERIOK4 Os EUARCNE TT Baer ee rey rien r rs ere 504 


Scientific Events :— 
British Experimental Station for Fuel Re- 
search; The Columbian Institute; Award of 
the John Scott Legacy Medals and Pre- 
miums and of the Edward Longstreth 


Med alhofeWertitinenct tat. ioc n cee isc 506 
Scientific Notes and News ...........2++0+. 509 
University and Educational News .......... 510 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
An Extraordinary Rainfall Record: Pro- 


FEssor Doucuas H. CAMPBELL .......... 511 
Quotations :— 
The Rockefeller Health Researches ....... 512 


Scientific Books :— 
Thompson on Growth and Form: J. P. 
McM. Boas on Tsimshian Mythology: 
JouHN R. Swanton. Trelease’s The Genus 
Phoradendron: Grorcr G. Hepacock .... 513 


Mechanical Properties of Wood ............ 516 


Special Articles :— 
A Convenient Nerve Holder: S. S. Max- 
WELL. The Urine of the Horned Lizard: 
ALE OSS WIEESE ji. 'overstayeisieists craveiarate ctereteteteres io eye 517 


Societies and Academies :— 
The American Mathematical Society: Pro- 
MESSOR IE. AN: CODE of yess) «varsicrsverertet revere ssi ore 518 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review shoula be sent to The Editor of Scienee, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


ELECTROMERISM, A CASE OF CHEM- 
ICAL ISOMERISM RESULTING FROM 
A DIFFERENCE IN DISTRIBUTION 
OF VALENCE ELECTRONS1 

ReEcENT advances in our knowledge of 
the structure of matter have made it pos- 
sible for an organic chemist to address a 
group of non-organic chemists and of 
physicists upon this subject without apolo- 
gizing. During a period which is not far 
behind us in the past, not only the validity, 
but, possibly, even the utility of employing 
structure conceptions requiring atoms and 
their arrangements was brought into ques- 
tion; so that the organic chemist, who has 
maintained an abiding faith in atoms and 
a confidence in his ability to decipher some- 
thing of their arrangements in molecules, 
became aware of an indulgent smile when- 
ever he broached this subject except in the 
company of his own confréres. 

With this inheritance, it is natural to ex- 
pect that the organic chemist would wel- 
come any discoveries which make our con- 
ception of atoms and of the mechanism by 
which atoms combine to form molecules 
more concrete ; and that he would be among 
the first to seek to apply these concepts to 
special problems in his own field. 

With a feeling of keen satisfaction, 
therefore, we learn through the work of 
Bragg that, in a diamond erystal, each car- 
bon atom is surrounded by four other ear- 
bon atoms placed equidistant from it. 
These atoms are grouped around the cen- 
tral carbon atom as the four corners of a 

1 An address prepared for the symposium on the 
‘«Structure of Matter,’’ held at the meeting of the 


American Association for the Advancement of 
Science in New York City, December, 1916. 


494 


regular tetrahedron are arranged around 
its center. Thus, the tetravalent character 
of the carbon atom manifests itself clearly. 
Furthermore, when a model of a diamond 
erystal is examined, it is discovered that 
the atoms appear to arrange themselves in 
rings of six. These relationships suggest 
at once well known fundamental theories 
of the organic chemist. 

Through the writings of J. J. Thomson,” 
Stark,? Abege* and many others, the convic- 
tion has been reached, that the forces which 
hold the atoms together, commonly called 
chemical affinity, are chiefly, if not wholly, 
electrical in character. The impetus to this 
interpretation has come from the discov- 
ery that electricity itself possesses an 
atomic structure, and that our material 
atoms appear to be composed of units of 
positive and negative electrical atoms 
nicely balanced in the neutral atom. As 
Carl Barus says :° 

Not only has energy possessed herself of in- 
ertia, but with ever stronger insistence she is 
usurping the atomic structure once believed to be 
among the very insignia of matter. Contempo- 
raneously matter, itself, the massive, the indestruct- 
ible, endowed by Lavoisier with a sort of physical 
immortality, recedes ever more into the back- 
ground among the shades of velocity and accele- 
ration. 


Electrochemical theories have not been 
lacking in the development of chemistry. 
For many years the electrochemical theory 
of Berzelius was ‘a guide in the interpreta- 
tion of chemical phenomena. There is, per- 
haps, no greater tragedy recorded in the 
annals of science during the past one hun- 
dred years than that which overtook Ber- 
zelius at the close of his active career as 


2J. J. Thomson, Phil. Mag., March, 1904, 27, 757 
(1914), ete. 

3J. Stark, ‘‘Die Elektrizitut im Chemischen 
Atom,’’ Leipzig, 1915. 

4 Abegg, Z. Anorg. Chem., 39, 330 (1904); 50, 
309 (1906). 

5 Science, N. S., Vol. XL., 727, 1914. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


leader of chemical thought. We of to-day 
know best why this theory failed, and why 
we are now busily engaged in formulating 
a new electrochemical theory, as well as a 
new electrophysical theory. In fact, J. 
Stark in his recent work, ‘‘Die Hlektrizitat 
im chemischen Atom,’’ gives a eulogy of 
Berzelius, and points out the many strik- 
ing qualitative resemblances which the 
theory of Berzelius bears to his own. 

The special purpose of my remarks to- 
day precludes any detailed discussion of 
the various theories concerning the struc- 
ture of the atom. This phase of the subject 
has already been presented in the morning 
meeting of this symposium. It may be 
said that all theories agree upon a positive 
core or nucleus associated with negative 
electrons, the atoms of negative electricity. 
Thomson presents hypotheses concerning 
the possible arrangements within the atom, 
while Stark limits his treatment chiefly to 
the surface layer. The surface layer, he 
says, contains an excess of positive electric- 
ity. In the neutral atom one or more elec- 
trons, called valence electrons, are held 
close to the surface of the atom by this posi- 
tive charge. Compounds are formed, when 
the lines of force from one or more of these 
valence electrons reach out and end on the 
positive areas of other atoms. In the case 
of strongly polar compounds, an electron 
is almost wholly drawn over to the atom 
which it then holds combined. 

Lewis® classifies compounds into polar 
and non-polar, but in a footnote remarks: 

It must not be assumed that any one compound 
corresponds wholly, and at all times, to any one 
type. 

He distinguishes between valence num- 
ber and polar number. Valence number he 
defines as the number of positions, or re- 
gions, or points (bond termini) on the 


6G. N. Lewis, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 38, 762 
(1916). 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


atom at which attachment to correspond- 
ing points on other atoms may occur. 
Polar number is the number of negative 
electrons which an atom has lost (in an 
algebraic sense). 

The evidence of, perhaps, indeed, the cause of the 
mobility of polar compounds is the freedom of one 
especially important atom, the atom of electricity, 
or the electron, to move from one position to 
another. 

From a study of the reactions of chem- 
ical compounds, and in particular of or- 
ganic compounds, it seems doubtful whether 
the classification into polar and non-polar 
based upon physical values, such as the 
dielectric constants’ of compounds in the 
gaseous state, is of any more significance 
than the terms electrolyte and nonelectro- 
lyte were to the older supporters of the 
theory of Arrhenius. In time, it came to 
be known that it was no easy matter to 
draw the dividing line between these two 
classes, and that one class seemed to merge 
imperceptibly into the other. So, with polar 
and non-polar compounds, it seems theo- 
retically probable that there is no per- 
fectly non-polar compound, unless it be a 
molecule composed of two like univalent 
atoms, such as hydrogen; and that other 

7 Stark (‘‘ Die Elektrizitiit im Chemischen Atom,’’ 
p- 29) says: ‘‘Between the properties ‘dielectric’ 
and ‘conducting’ there is a connection. In a di- 
electric medium, since there are positive and neg- 
ative ‘Quanten’ bound to one another, it follows 
that the medium may become conducting when, 
through proper application of energy from without, 
the ‘Quanten’ pairs become partially dissociated, 
or ionized; that is, into freely moving positive and 
negative ‘Quanten.’ Conversely, the ions of a 
conducting medium by mutual union to form 
‘Quanten’ pairs may make the medium dielectric; 
and in general a material medium is at the same 
time dielectric and conducting, so that by as- 
signing a dielectric constant and a specific con- 
ductivity, the medium is characterized for a finite 
electric field and a finite electrical current.’’ 

8 Bohr concludes that the hydrogen molecule 
consists of two hydrogen nuclei (at a distance 
apart of 0.60 < 10-8 em.), and two electrons which 


SCIENCE | 


495 


compounds are polar in varying degrees, 
depending upon the mutual attractions be- 
tween valence electrons and the positive 
surfaces or cores of the atoms combined, 
and upon the distances to which these elec- 
trons, in forming such compounds, are de- 
flected from their normal positions rela- 
tive to the positive areas of the uncombined 
atoms themselves. 

Even before the electron theory had been 
proposed, an application of the theory of 
ion formation and charges upon ions led 
to ihe recognition of polar characteristics 
in compounds not known to be ionogens. 

In a study of chloroamines, RNHCI and 
R,NCI, Seliwanow® observed that, during 
hydrolyses, the chlorine in these compounds 
was replaced by hydrogen; and that they 
interacted with hydrogen iodide with the 
liberation of two equivalents of iodine for 
each equivalent of combined chlorine, 


R.NC1+ 2 HI=R,NH + HCl+ L.. 


Usually, during hydrolysis, combined 
chlorine in organic compounds is exchanged 
for hydroxyl and has no tendency to lib- 
erate iodine from hydriodie acid. Seliwa- 
now ascribed this peculiar behavior of the 
chlorine atom in chloroamines to the fact 
that, even in combination, it existed as 
‘‘hypochlorous chlorine.’? He pointed out 
that the chlorine atoms in nitrogen tri- 
chloride, NCl,, also showed the same pe- 
euliar behavior. 

In 1901, Noyes and Lyon,*® in perform- 
ing Hofmann’s well-known lecture experi- 
ment for demonstrating the composition of 
ammonia, observed that, under certain 
favorable conditions, the amount of ni- 
trogen liberated as free nitrogen was about 
one sixth, instead of one third, the volume 


revolve in an orbit in a plane perpendicular to the 
line joining the nuclei. 

9 Seliwanow, Ber., 25, 3612 (1892). 

10 W. A. Noyes, A. C. Lyon, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 
23, 460 (1901). 


496 


of the chlorine used. They explained this 
reaction by the following equation: 


12 NH, +' 6 Cl, =N,-+ NCl; + 9 NH.Cl. 


_ This observation led them to study the 
chemical properties of nitrogen trichloride. 
They found that each chlorine atom pres- 
ent in nitrogen trichloride was equivalent 
to two atoms of ‘‘available chlorine,’’ or, 
as Seliwanow had put it, the chlorine is 
hypochlorous in character. Noyes and 
Luyon represented nitrogen trichloride as 
follows: 

a 526 Gil 

N—+ Cl 

at Ci 
and, to account for the reaction between 
ammonia and chlorine, assumed that am- 
monia may ionize in two ways, 


4 
N44 3H-2NH,=N = + 3Ht 
Hi 


and, furthermore, that the chlorine mole- 
eule may ionize to give both positive and 
negative chlorine ions. 

In the same number of the Journal of the 
American Chemical Society, Stieglitz? com- 
mented upon the work of Noyes and Lyon, 
and put forth arguments to show that this 
reaction, 

H,O + Cl, = HCl + HOGI, 


a reversible reaction, was, at the same time, 
an ionic reaction. In other words, hypo- 
chlorous acid may ionize in two ways, 
amphoterically, z 
HOCI=H* + OCI 
HOCl=HO-+ Ctl. 
The chlorine molecule, therefore, must 
yield negative chlorine ions, Cl-, and, also, 
positive chlorine ions, Cl*. 

These deductions, expressed originally 
by Noyes and Lyon, as well as by Stieglitz, 
in terms of ion formation, have since been 
translated into the language of the electron 
theory of valence. Thus, the chlorine mole- 


11 Stieglitz, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 23, 797 (1901). 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


cule may be represented electronically by 
the symbol, Cl— -+ Cl. 

The striking difference in behavior of de- 
rivatives of positive chlorine and of nega- 
tive chlorine may be illustrated by compar- 
ing the two compounds, nitrogen trichlo- 
ride and phosphorus trichloride, which, by 
virtue of the family relationship of nitro- 
gen and phosphorus in the periodic system, 
and the similarity in the formulas of the 
two chlorides, would be expected to re- 
semble one another in chemical behavior 
about as closely as any two compounds 
could. At the same time, the illustration 
will serve to explain the significance of the 
statement made in an earlier part of this 
paper, viz., that the polar characteristics of 
compounds may be revealed by a study of 
their chemical interactions. 

If the electronic formulas, 


=u @ Ll 
nyse Gi pte Gil 
—+01 45-5@), 


are assigned to these two substances, we ob- 
tain formulas which, unlike those in general 
use, Show why it is that the two compounds 
are most dissimilar in chemical deportment ; 
why nitrogen trichloride, when hydrolyzed, 
gives ammonia and hypochlorous acid, 
while phosphorus trichloride yields phos- 
phorus acid and hydrogen chloride; why 
the chlorine atom in nitrogen trichloride 
possesses oxidizing properties, while the 
chlorine in phosphorus trichloride does 
not. The oxidizing value of a positive 
chlorine atom corresponds to a gain of two 
negative electrons, if a negative chlorine 
ion is the final stage in the change. 
ci) Cl >) (Cl 


Certain other halogen compounds have 
been found to show similar polar differ- 
ences. Thus, Nef? observed that chloro- 
cyanogen, upon hydrolysis, gave hydrogen 
chloride and eyanic acid, while iodocyano- 
gen gave hypoiodous acid and prussic acid, 


12 Nef, Ann., 308, 320 (1899) ; ibid., 329 (1899). 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


cl—+cN + H+—0H= 

H +—cCl + HO—+CN, 
I+—cn + H+—0H= 

BO 2b Se Ger HELL Ging 
Tetrabromomethane and tetraiodomethane, 
when hydrolyzed, give bromoform and iodo- 
form, respectively : 
Br,—+Br + HOH=— 

Bro—+H + HO—-+ Br, 

Ic—+ I -- HOoH— 
IC—+H + HO—4+I 
Iodine monochloride reacts as follows: 
I+ —cl+ Ht—OH = HO—+1+H++W—Cl. 
In fact, there is no difficulty in finding 

among organic compounds countless cases 
in which the polarity manifests itself 
clearly during chemical changes. Thus, in 
the case of alkyl cyanides, RCN, it may be 
asked what indication there is in the for- 
mula itself to lead chemists to predict, un- 
erringly, that the products of hydrolysis of 
such a compound are always ammonia and 
a carboxylic acid. Pure speculation would 
suggest that at least four different sets of 
products are possible: 


(a) RC(OH), and NH; 


(b) RCH(OH), and NH,OH; 
(c) RCH,OH and NH(OH),; 
(d) RCH; and N(OH);. 


But the substances expressed under (a) are 
the only ones ever realized. That this de- 
cision is not inherent in the formula is 
emphasized all too forcibly by the fact that 
these four sets of products are the very ones 
which beginning students offer to explain 
the hydrolysis of an alkyl cyanide. In 
terms of the electron conception valence, 
the explanation lies in the fact that the 
nitriles are polar compounds of the for- 
mula: 
+ = 
RC+—WN 

In this connection, some recent experi- 
ments on mercury dialkyls carried out with 
Mr. Werner in our laboratory have led to 
the observation that, upon complete hydro- 
lysis in the presence of acetic acid, the 


SCIENCE 


497 


products formed are metallic mercury, an 
alcohol, and a hydrocarbon. At about 200°, 
mereury diethyl decomposes to give mer- 
eury and butane. This dissociation im- 
plies that the mereury atom in these dia- 
lixyls either possesses, or readily assumes, 
the condition of reduction which it has in 
the metallic state, viz., with an equal num- 
ber of positive and negative ‘‘charges.’’ 
This suggests, also, that the two ethyl 
groups may be one negative and the other 
positive : 


Hg | + Gis — ue 


oe =e + CH.+—GH,. 


When mercury diethyl is heated with 
acetie acid, further evidence in support of 
this inference is furnished; a quantitative 
yield of metallic mereury is found, and in 
addition, ethane and ethyl alcohol (or acetic 
ethyl ester). These changes may be ex- 
pressed in terms of the electron conception 
of valence as follows: 


ALG, 4 edb On 
SEAR Coliseo cei L a (Oise 
He + Ba Gn + Ho 


If these reactions of mereury diethyl are 
compared with those of zine alkyls and of 
oxygen alkyls, the significance of the state- 
ment that the polar characteristic of com- 
pounds becomes manifest during chemical 
changes will be apparent. Thus, zine 
alkyls are hydrolyzed to give exclusively 
zine hydroxide and a hydrocarbon; oxygen 
alkyls give exclusively alcohols. 


He Ghet g se ie 
2 Core teen = Oia 
ees HE = — CAF 
fe WE Oye, ar sesh Gnsr, 
Se Ce One 
@) AE (ohre 2 iat 2 Soha 
o — +H , HO—+6H, 
eer tO e 4 Cae 


If, therefore, the atoms in compounds 
may function positively or negatively, in 
general a univalent atom, A, may be repre- 
sented by two electronic symbols, 4 + and 


498 


A — ; and an atom whose valence is n may 
function in (n-+1) ways electronically. 
Thus: 


A compound formed by the union of the 
univalent atoms, A and B, may be repre- 
sented by two electronic formulas: 


A+—BandA—+B. 


These two formulas represent isomers in a 
peculiar sense, quite unlike structural 
isomers. The difference lies solely in the 
distribution of valence electrons. Two or 
more compounds related in this manner 
have ‘been called electronic isomers, or 
electromers.'8 

There is a certain resemblance between 
electromers and _ structure tautomers. 
While the transformation of one tautomer 
into another is accompanied by a wander- 
ing of an atom from one position in the 
molecule to a new position, the transforma- 
tion of one electromer into another depends 
upon a more subtle change, viz., of elec- 
trons, or negative atoms of electricity, from 
one position to another within the mole- 
cule. Furthermore, it would be expected 
that, like tautomers, one electromer would 
be more stable than the other, and, in the 
majority of cases, that only one form 
might be capable of isolation, but that 
under certain favorable conditions, both 
electromers might be realized. 

Moreover, between two electromers there 
might exist a condition of equilibrium simi- 
lar to that which exists between tautomers 
and desmotrops, viz., 


A+—BaA—+B. 
Many cases requiring an assumption of 
such a relationship have been observed. 
One simple illustration will suffice. When 
18 Fry, Z. Physik Chem., 76, 387 (1911). 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


benzene sulphonic acid is subjected to the 
action of superheated steam, it yields ben- 
zene, C,H,, and sulphuric acid. But if the 
same sample is heated with caustic alkalies, 
the products are phenol, C,H,OH, and 
sulphurous acid (or sulphites). Since ben- 
zene and phenole, as well as sulphurous 
acid and sulphuric acid, are related as oxi- 
dation-reduction products, the question 
arises what is the electronic formula of ben- 
zene sulphonic acid? To account for the 
substances formed in the two reactions, it 
must be assumed that two electronic for- 
mulas may be assigned to benzene sul- 
phonie acid, and that the two substances 
represented by these formulas are in equi- 
librium as tautomeric electromers* 
C,H; — + SO;H = C,H, + — SO,H. 

It is self-evident that the problem of 
preparing two or more electromers presents 
far greater experimental difficulties than 
the separation of structure tautomers has 
offered in the past. When, therefore, it is 
recalled that von Baeyer observed the first 
case of tautomerism while studying isatin, 
and that many years elapsed before two 
compounds related as tautomers were ac- 
tually separated as distinct substances 
(desmotrops), it should not be a matter of 
surprise that the preparation of actual 
electromers has not been more successful 
so far. 

The first set of experiments, and prac- 
tically the only ones, carried out with the 
express purpose of preparing electromers, 
are those of W. A. Noyes.® Noyes tried to 
prepare a nitrogen trichloride in which the 
chlorine atoms, like those in phosphorus tri- 
chloride, are negative 


+-— Cl 
yea 
+—c. 


No conclusive evidence in support of the 
14. W. Jones, Am. Chem. J., 48, 26 (1912). 


15 W. A. Noyes, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 35, 767 
(1912). 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


existence of such an electromer could be 
found. 

In an article’® published in the Journal 
of the American Chemical Society, I pre- 
sented evidence, which I believe to be con- 
clusive, to show that the certain derivatives 
of hydroxylamine, prepared by Meisen- 
heimer, represent the first known cases of 
electromers, viz., compounds identical in 
structural formulas, but dissimilar in chem- 
ical and physical properties by virtue of a 
different arrangement of valence electrons, 
and the concomitant differences in force 
fields within the molecules. 

A consideration of the properties of hy- 
droxylamine, and its various derivatives 
and, in particular, the peculiar behavior of 
the hydroxyl group-in such compounds, led 
me to conclude that this hydroxyl group 
could not be regarded as identical with 
negative hydroxyl, —OH. This opinion 
was expressed by Stieglitz.27 

The similar behavior of hydroxlamine and hal- 
ogen amines, of hydroxylamine and hydrogen per- 
oxide, still more the fundamental similarity exist- 
ing between hydroxylamine and ammonia, and 
between their salts, and above all, the fact that, as 
far as the writer is aware, no hydroxylamine de- 
rivative has been found to exchange hydroxyl for 
halogen by treatment with halogen acids, or phos- 
phorus halides, are facts upon which the writer’s 
views are based. (According to a later private 
communication from Dr. Jones, he has now reached 
the same conclusion in this question and has dis- 
covered further evidence supporting it.) 

These facts all imply that the hydroxyl 
group in hydroxylamine may be positive, 
ar O re =e H, 

—— a fal 
N—+H 
—-+ OH. 

Compounds of the formula R,N(OH) X*8 
are found among the products which result 

16L. W. Jones, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 36, 1268 
(1914). 

17 J. Am. Ch. Soc., 36, 288 (1914). 


18 Dunstan and Goulding, J. Chem. Soc., 69, 839 
(1896) ; 75, 1005 (1899). 


SCIENCE 


499 


when hydroxlamine is treated with halogen 
alkyls. Moist silver oxide converts these 
substances into hydrated amine oxides, 
R,N(OH),, H,O. The same hydrated 
amine oxides may be prepared by the action 
of hydrogen peroxide? upon tertiary 
amines, R,N. In fact, Hantzsch and Hil- 
lard’? suggested that hydrogen peroxide 
might react with tertiary amines by addi- 
tion and that the reaction may be revers- 
ible. 
(CH;),N + HOOH = (CH;),;N(OH),. 

By careful dehydration of hydrated amine 
in vacuo, amine oxides, R,NO, are formed. 

These amine oxides and their hydrates 
are oxidizing agents, and in this property 
show a striking resemblance to hydrogen 
peroxide. In fact, Dunstan and Gaulding, 
in summing up their behavior, gay: 

We conclude that the oxygen is in an ‘‘active’? 


condition analogous to the oxygen atom in hy- 
drogen peroxide. 


Thus, trimethylamine oxide rapidly de- 

composes in two ways: 
2(CH;),;NO = 2(CH;),N + ©O., 
(CH;);NO = (CH;).NH + CH.O. 

These changes, looked at from the point of 
view presented by the electron theory, 
would lead to the inference that the oxygen 
atom in amine oxides should be represented 
as follows: R,N = O; and that the hydrated 
amine oxides, or their salts, should receive 
OH. 
xX 

If the hydroxyl group in hydroxylamine 
be regarded as positive, and if this eondi- 
tion of the hydroxyl group be retained in 
the alkyl (aryl) derivatives, two inferences 
concerning the behavior of substituted 
hydroxylamines must follow logically. 

In the first place, compounds containing 
in their formula the group N — OH, or the 

19 Merling, Ber., 25, 123 (1892); Wernick Wolf- 
fenstein, Ber., 31, 1553 (1898); Mainlock and 
Wolffenstein, Ber., 33, 159 (1900). 

20 Hantzsch and Hillard, Ber., 31, 2058 (1898). 


the following formulas: R,N . 


500 


group N — OR, should show different phys- 
ical and chemical properties, depending 
upon the nature of the hydroxyl, or alkoxyl 
group; 2. €., whether it is negative (I.) or 
positive (IL.). 


Nee One eR Ne On R 
(1.) 


(IL.) 

Then, again, provided one of the hydroxyl 
groups is positive and the other negative, 
compounds of the type, (R),N(OH), 
should exist in two isomeric forms (elec- 
tromers) when one of the hydrogen atoms 
is replaced by a single radical R; and, fur- 
thermore, there should be two distinet 
isomers (electromers) if two of the hydro- 
gen atoms are replaced simultaneously by 
dissimilar radicals, R and R’. 


(Es), = Nie Ome 


—+0O0—+R?’ 
+») =NT+O—+H 
@.sN Toot R: 
ee Oo suis 
ENG =e, 
oe th OSS ly 
(Rt); = +—O—-+R 


In the second place, compounds of the 
formula R, R’, R’”, N(OH)., in which there 
are three different alkyl (or aryl) radicals 
linked to the nitrogen atom, should exist in 
stereoisomeric modifications, provided one 
hydroxyl group is negative and the other 
one is positive. By the action of an opti- 
eally active acid, e. g., d-bromocamphorsul- 
fonie acid, or d-tartaric acid, a racemic 
compound obtained by synthesis should be 
resolved into a dextro- and a levo-modifica- 
tion. Optical activity might even persist 
in the corresponding amine oxides R, R’, 
R”’, NO. Although the two hydroxyl 
groups are structurally alike, they are 
totally different electronically. Conse- 
quently, the nitrogen atom is linked to five 
different radicals, and, in this respect, com- 
pounds of these types may be compared to 
substituted ammonium derivations of the 
formula R, R’, R”, R’”, N— X, which have 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1195 


been resolved into optically active forms?* 
repeatedly. Experimental evidence sup- 
porting both of these deductions has been 
presented quite recently. 

1. Electromers.—In an article concern- 
ing the ‘‘Non-equivalence of the Five 
Valences of Nitrogen,’’ Meisenheimer”? de- 
scribes the preparation of two isomeric 
compounds of the type 


(R):N(OCH,) (OH). 


The first isomer was obtained by the action 
of methyl iodide upon trimethylamine 
oxide, and the subsequent replacement of 
iodine by hydroxyl. Thus: 


1, (CH,),N=0 + CHI = (CH,),.N= OCHs 


2, (CH;)sN_ pC + NaOH = 


(CH,) NOCH 


(A) 
The second isomer was secured by the ac- 
tion of sodium methylate upon the salt ob- 
tained by treating trimethylamine oxide 
with hydrogen chloride. 


+ Nal. 


1. (CH;);N=O-+ HCI= (CH,),N —~ 02 


Gn )9 

2, (CH):N _ Qh + NaOCH, = 
(CH,).N — GGy, + Nad 

(B) 


The two forms, (A) and (B), are identical 
except for the order in which the hydroxyl 
groups and the methoxyl groups were in- 
troduced. In (B), as Meisenheimer said, 
the methoxyl group is linked to the ‘‘fifth 
valence,’’ or the one which usually engages 
the acid radical; while it is linked to the 
“fourth valence’’ in formula (A). But 


21Le Bel, Compt. rend., 112, 724 (1891); 129, 
548 (1899); Ber., 33, 1003 (1900); Wedekind, 
Ber., 32, 517, 3561 (1899); 35, 766 (1902); 36, 
3791 (1903); 38, 1838 (1905); Wedekind and 
Oberheide, ibid., 37, 2712, 3894 (1904); Wedekind 
and Froelich, ibid., 38, 3438 (1905); Pope and 
Peachey, J. Chem. Soc., 75, 1127 (1899) ; Pope and 
Harvey, ibid., 79, 828 (1901). 

22 Ann., 397, 273 (1912). 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


these two substances are fundamentally 
different. This is easily demonstrated by 
a study of their solutions. When a water 
solution of trimethylmethoxyammonium 
hydroxide (A) was heated, it decomposed 
quantitatively in accordance with the fol- 
lowing equation: 

—=(O1EL_ (@) — 


— OCH, (4) = 
(CH,),N + CH,.O + H,0. 


(A) (CHs)sN 
While trimethylhydroxyammonium methyl- 
ate (B) showed a totally different behavior 


(Bye (CH) cN ae ee 


— OCH;(5) 
(CH,);N =O + CH,OH. 
In addition to these compounds, Meisen- 
heimer prepared a number of isomeric 
mixed dialkyl compounds, with methyl, 
ethyl and propyl radicals, e. g., 


— OCH, 
(CED Bio wire 


and (CHa) Namie: 
In every case, water decomposed com- 
pounds of this type to give a tertiary 
amine, an alcohol and an aldehyde; but, in- 
variably, the radical which was eliminated 
as aldehyde was the radical which occupied 
‘‘nosition four (4)’’ and the group elimi- 
nated as alcohol always occupied ‘‘position 
five (5).’? Meisenheimer stated that he 
never obtained even recognizable traces of 
the aldehyde which should have resulted if 
the group attached in position five had sep- 
arated in that form. His conclusions may 
be stated in his own words: 

Durch diese Reaktion ist bewiesen dass die 
beiden Alkoxygruppen nicht in gleicher Weise an 
das Stickstoffatom gebunden sind. 

The key to these disputed relations is 
easily furnished in terms of the electronic 
conception, by assuming that the one hy- 
droxyl (or alkoxyl group) is positive and 
the other negative; thus: 
(CH) y= None gma 


(CH,t);=N 


(A) a 
-—0—}+H + 


SCIENCE 


501 


my ae eth ash tat (Cb) 2 
(CH,;*);=N +—O—-+ CH,(5) — 


(CH;*),=N7O + CH,+—O—+H. 

It will be observed that the two groups, 

or, in the final analyses, the two oxygen 

atoms, upon which the electromerism de- 

pends, are not linked directly, but through 
a third atom, nitrogen. 


(B) 


ROL Nee OH and) HO-s—N OR: 


This is undoubtedly responsible for the 
relative stability of these electromers as 
compared with others in which the atoms of 
different polarity are directly connected; 
Os. Oey 
A+—B and A—+B. 
Here, again, the analogy to structure tau- 
tomers appears. Chemists have failed to 
prepare desmotrops of prussic acid, and of 
many other compounds in which the wan- 
dering atom passes from one atom in the 
molecule to another directly linked to it. 
HCN = CNH. 


The majority of successful separations of 
desmotrops lie among compounds in which, 
similar to the electromers described above, 
tautomeric changes involve two atoms not 
directly linked, but connected by a third 
atom. Thus, in the keto-enol and in the 
nitro-nitronic acid desmotrops, 


paleo ke 
O—N—CH= HON=C— 


d II Hae! 


the wandering hydrogen atom passes from 
carbon to oxygen not directly linked. 

2. Stereomers.—Meisenheimer** was the 
first to observe that amine oxides with three 
different radicals R R’ R’N =O, could be 
resolved into enantiomorphous modifica- 
tions. Amine oxides of this kind were pre- 
pared by oxidizing tertiary amines with 
hydrogen peroxide, or Caro’s acid. Meis- 

23 Meisenheimer, Ber., 41, 3973 (1908); Ann, 
385, 117 (1911); 399, 371 (1913). 


502 


enheimer and his coworkers prepared 
methylethylaniline oxide, methylethyl-6- 
naphthylamine oxide and other similar 
compounds, 
(CH;) (C:Hs) (CoHs) N =0 

(CH;) (C:Hs) (CH:) N = 0. 
The racemates were resolved by means of 
d-bromocamphorsulfonie acid or d-tartaric 
acid. After fractional crystallization and 
separation, each salt was converted into 
the active picrate, which was changed to 
the corresponding active chloride and 
finally into the active amine oxide itself. 

Previous attempts to resolve compounds 
with two like radicals, Na,bed, have been 
fruitless. Even compounds more closely 
allied to these amine oxides in form, such 
as N-methylpicolinium salts, N-methylqui- 
nolinium salts, could not be resolved by H. 
O. Jones.24 Meisenheimer takes it for 
granted that an explanation of the stereo- 
isomerism is provided when he has called 
attentiom to the fact that, in the amine ox- 
ides, the doubly bound oxygen engages the 
valence which usually holds the acid rad- 
ical, while in the case of the compounds 
studied by H. O. Jones, only non-ionizable 
valences have been satisfied by doubly 
bound carbon. 

Tt seems that a more consistent explana- 
tion may be offered in terms of the elec- 
tronic viewpoint, if the amine oxides and 
their hydrates are assigned the following 
formulas : 


R +— 
R’ +—N 
R”’ + — 


=5' tL Ost 
+— OH? 


I. II. 


Tt must be assumed that the linking in for- 
mula II. is similar to the grouping in for- 
mula I., in so far as its effect upon the 
asymmetry of the molecule is concerned, 
since amine oxides dissolved in benzene 
often show large rotations. The nitrogen 
atom, in either even, does not hold two like 
groups, since the properties of positive and 


24H. O. Jones, J. Chem. Soc., 83, 1400 (1903). 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1195 


negative hydroxyl are as divergent as those 
of positive and negative chlorine. In this 
respect, the conditions are not the same as 
those in ammonium compounds of the 
form, Na,bcd, but are comparable to the 
condition existing in ammonium compounds 
of the general type, Nabcde. 

In conclusion, permit me to express the 
belief that chemists will soon come to real- 
ize more fully that the recent investiga- 
tions into the structure of the atom have a 
practical bearing upon their particular 
problems. The study of electromers, and 
the investigations of the conditions under 
which they may be prepared, certainly fur- 
nishes an inviting field of research, which, 
in my opinion, is worth tilling, and can not 
fail to be productive of results of far- 
reaching importance to chemists. Fur- 
thermore, with our present limited knowl- 
edge of the subject, no one can predict in 
what manner the discoveries, sure to be 
made, may react to modify and clarify our 
theories concerning the structure of mat- 
ter, and, in particular, our vague notions 
of ‘‘chemical affinity.’’ 


LAUDER WILLIAM JONES 
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, 
CINCINNATI, OHIO 


RECENT PHYSIOLOGY AND THE WAR}! 

Tuis theme, kindly suggested by Pro- 
fessor Sir James Dewar, is sufficiently 
large to preclude more than a succinct 
treatment of some outstanding points in 
the time permissible in a single lecture. 
But these points are of considerable inter- 
est and have a more than fleeting impor- 
tance. 

The first is that of fatigue, its measure- 
ment and incidence in factory employees. 
The indices taken have been speed of out- 
put and quantity of output by groups of 
workpeople working under the conditions 
of ‘a munitions factory. An inference of 


1 Address before the Royal Institution of Great 
Britain, February 2, 1917. 


NoveMBER 23, 1917] 


practical value drawn from the observa- 
tions is that when the number of working 
hours per week was reduced from sixty-two 
to fifty-six the output actually increased. 
The reduction of the length of the working 
day by one hour per diem gave a rise of the 
total output of the week from an amount 
stated numerically as 6,150 to an amount 
expressed as 6,759. The output per hour 
increased 22 per cent. The kind of work in 
this case was ‘‘heavy,’’ namely, deep screw- 
cutting by hand. 

In another ease, that of 200 women turn- 
ing aluminium fuse-bodies, the reduction of 
the working hours per week from 68.2 to 
60 notably increased the total output, and 
of course still more the rate of output. 
From these and other examples the lesson 
seems to be that there is for manual labor 
a certain length of working week, or work- 
ing month, best suited for satisfactory pro- 
duction in permanence. The length varies 
with the class of the manual work. If a 
good efficiency is to be maintained in the 
factory this ‘‘most favorable’’ length of 
working month has to be followed. Before 
that it has to be found out and measured. 

The next point raised was the influence 
of alcohol on the workers’ output. The 
question has at present been attacked only 
in the laboratory so far as physiology is 
concerned. Physiological experiment shows 
that even a large single dose of aleohol— 
e. g., 40 ¢.c.—has little or no effect upon 
the muscles per se, but that it does impair 
the working of the nervous system which 
actuates the muscles. 

A suitable test in respect of the simplic- 
ity of the nervous centers involved in it is 
the knee-jerk. This is a familiar reaction 
to every physician; it is a reflex act, the 
spinal center for which has been thor- 
oughly investigated. The effect of a single 
dose of alcohol of 30 ¢.ce. quantity diluted 
with 120 ¢c.c. of water is to diminish and 
render sluggish the knee-jerk; the speed of 


SCIENCE 


503 


the response is sometimes decreased by 9.6 
per cent., the amplitude of the response 
lessened by 48.9 per cent. The greatest im- 
pairment of the reaction was noted about 
one hour after the dose. 

Another test of the effect of alcohol on 
the musculo-nervous actions was furnished 
by a very simple voluntary act. The per- 
son subjected to the experiment was re- 
quired to move one finger to and fro, that 
is, to bend and straighten the finger alter- 
nately, as rapidly as possible. The rate of 
movement was examined before and after 
taking a dose of 80 ¢.c. aleohol diluted as 
above. This dose impaired the rate at 
which the oscillatory movement of the 
finger could be performed. The rate was 
diminished an hour after the dose by 8.9 
per cent. 

Such a movement is not well calculated 
to test that form of skill which consists in 
precision. Reasons were adduced for think- 
ing that a precision of movement is that as- 
pect of a muscular act which will be most 
detrimentally interfered with by alcohol. 
The testing of alcohol effect by the ergo- 
graph seems to show that a moderate dose, 
say 30 c.c. of alcohol, in a person accus- 
tomed to moderate use of alcohol, does not 
appreciably impair the power of the move- 
ment nor its resistance to fatigue. But the 
movements chosen as suitable for ergo- 
graphic record are such as give little oppor- 
tunity for the exhibition of precision or of 
skill of any kind. 

The next point dealt with was the at- 
tempt to devise some fluid which can be in- 
jected to counteract the effect of severe loss 
of blood in the wounded. The properties 
desirable for the required fluid were shown 
to be: harmlessness in respect of avoidance 
of causing clotting in the circulation; res- 
toration of the volume of the fluid in the 
circulation ; maintenance of the due degree 
of viscosity of the circulating fluid, since 
on that factor depends the arterial and 


504 


capillary pressure; and, finally, preserva- 
tion of the balance between the osmotic 
pressure of the fluid inside the blood-ves- 
sels and outside in the tissues. It was 
shown that considerable success had been 
reached in this problem by the experiments 
of Professor Bayliss and others. 

A final point dealt with was the treat- 
ment of tetanus by administration of ‘‘anti- 
tetanus serum.’’ This serum is obtained 
from the blood of horses which have been 
subjected to gradually-increasing doses of 
tetanus-toxin, the poison produced by the 
tetanus-bacillus. The high efficiency of 
this anti-toxic serum when used as a pro- 
phylactie was first demonstrated on man on 
a large scale by its employment in the first 
autumn of this war. Curves illustrating 
the statistics were shown. The severe out- 
break of tetanus which ensued in the 
troops at the outset of the campaign was 
checked and practically stopped almost, in- 
stantaneously by the orders that every 
wounded man, as soon as possible after be- 
ing wounded, that is to say, at the first field 
casualty-station, should receive a small in- 
jection of anti-tetanus serum from the im- 
munized horse. But the efficacy of the 
serum when once signs of tetanus have ap- 
peared in the patient is far less satisfac- 
tory. The remainder of the lecture was de- 
voted to discussion of why this should be, 
and in what ways the difficulty may be, at 
least in part, overcome. 


CHARLES S. SHERRINGTON 


PRE-MEDICAL TRAINING IN 
CHEMISTRY! 

As a country we are rubbing the sleep out of 
our eyes and wishing we had split the kindling 
and brought up the coal the night before. The 
alarm clock has been ringing for some time, 


1 Read before the Division of Biological Chem- 
istry, American Chemical Society, Boston, Sep- 
tember, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


but we have preferred our dreams of ease to the 
realities of necessities. 

The medical profession is awake and trying 
to start the water boiling, but finds it can not 
lay the fire. The wood and coal are at hand, 
but the knowledge of their proper use is lack- 
ing. Now, more than ever, do progressive 
physicians realize the dependency of successful 
practise on a well-founded knowledge of the 
chemistry of the human body, and more than 
ever do they irritably contemplate their lack 
of preparation. 

This lack of preparation in a science so ob- 
viously fundamental to rational understanding 
of the human mechanism as to require no elab- 
oration, at present exists; that a continuation 
of this condition should be allowed is a parody 
upon our intelligence. 

The futility of expecting the physician to 
utilize all possible sources of relief to suffering 
without a knowledge of the application of basic 
chemical principles to the body reactions is 
apparent. 

It is equally as absurd to expect the medical 
student to appreciate or assimilate the possi- 
bility of chemistry being a practical science 
for his uses, if he does not have sufficient 
foundation in this subject before he enters the 
medical school. The medical school is funda- 
mentally a school of applied science. It is 
where the individual is taught science as ap- 
plied to the human body. Any attempt to 
teach a student biological chemistry without 
his having received an adequate foundation in 
the fundamental principles of chemistry in 
general, and to expect him to know much 
of anything when we are through with him, is 
as idiotic as to try to teach calculus to men 
who have yet to know algebra. The foundation 
must be laid in the pre-medical work. 

It is only in recent years that the teaching 
of elementary chemistry has been dropped 
from the medical curriculum. Unfortunately 
however even to-day it is only the few schools 
interested in turning out doctors instead of 
groups of men competent to pass State-board 
examinations, that have adapted themselves to 
the logical demand of the times as justified by 
the ever-increasing applicability of chemical 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


science to medical practise, and brought about 
this necessary change. 

It is admitted that plausible excuse for this 
disorderliness exists. The appearance of chem- 
istry as a real aid to diagnosis and treatment 
from the Stygian darkness has been not only 
remarkable for the rapidity of its development, 
but amazing in its stability. A new phase in 
medical knowledge has been produced through 
the pressure of the discoveries of countless in- 
vestigators. And it is not surprising that the 
now should-be obsolete system clings tenaci- 
ously to the older but invalid conceptions. 

It is well recognized that the efficient prac- 
tise of medicine entails a scientific knowledge 
of ever-widening scope. It is therefore of the 
greatest importance that a proper selection of 
scientific information be presented to the pros- 
pective medical student for his assimilation. 
Purposeless instruction, from the point of view 
of the pre-medical student, is haphazard and 
yields results that are worse than nothing. 

Conscientious objectors will mentally raise 
the objection that the pre-medical requirements 
are already well set down in the regulations of 
the various medical schools and by the Ameri- 
ean Medical Association. From the quantita- 
tive standpoint this is largely true, but from 
the point of quality the field is barren. And 
whereas these dicta were sufficient for the time 
and admirable in that an appreciation of the 
increasing importance of chemistry to the 
practise of medicine was shown, yet such ad- 
vantages are now possible to be derived from a 
more exact definition of requirements that a 
change is imperative, else stagnation will 
set in. For mark you, while directions are 
given that so much inorganic, and so much 
organic, and so much advanced chemistry 
should be given, nothing is said about what of 
inorganic, and what of organic or what of ad- 
vanced should be taught. To chemists it is a 
matter of individual experience that any of the 
various branches of the science can well occupy 
the studies of a lifetime. 

So why try to make the pre-medical student 
a chemist. He wants to be a doctor, and he 
wants to learn what of chemistry there is that 
can help him to be a better doctor. But in- 


SCIENCE 


505 


stead of getting what he wants he is put 
through the mill with the students who wish to 
enter upon chemistry as a life work, gets so 
far and no farther, wonders what it is all 
about, takes a good dose of physic in the form 
of an examination and gets rid of all he had 
taken in. If the college instructors of pre- 
medical students should look upon them as a 
problem in research, the results would never 
see the light. 

Now this pre-medical training in chemistry 
is essentially a question of what instead of 
how much, and the decision as to the subject- 
matter to be offered for utilization is not espe- 
cially difficult if one cares to look into a bio- 
logical chemistry for a few hours. What the 
pre-medical student needs is to learn the fun- 
damental principles common to all chemical 
reaction. He does not need encyclopedic de- 
tails. Principles are to details as granite is to 
points in the work, they should not be ob- 
secured by a fog of wearying and relatively un- 
important details. Let me illustrate: the 
understanding of the nature of oxides is a 
principle, the number and formule of the 
oxides of iron is an unessential detail, and 
again, the phenomena of isomerism is a prin- 
ciple, the ability to enumerate all possible iso- 
merides of a given compound is detail. 

Principle must not be subordinated to de- 
tail. 

Human health and happiness rests to a great 
degree in the physician’s hands. The true 
physician must be a true diagnostician. He 
can not be a diagnostician if he lacks power of 
observation and ability to carry on deductive 
reasoning. Where better can he gain this 
fundamental training than in chemistry? 
And can he get this point of view in a 
mind befuddled with inconsequential detail? 
Another essential attribute of the efficient doc- 
tor is technique. The ability to rapidly, 
smoothly and accurately carry on delicate 
manipulations is a prime requisite for adequate 
medical service. What teaches this better than 
intensive training in quantitative analysis? 
Can we conclude from the results handed over 
to us that these things have been done? We 
can not. 


506 


Any teacher of biological chemistry in a 
medical school knows how flimsy a chemical 
structure has been erected in the minds of the 
students coming to him, and that the informa- 
tion acquired is about as useful as is a cobweb 
for catching fish. 

The causes of this are self-evident. Probably 
the most satisfying reason lies in the newness 
of the possibilities of the application of the 
science of chemistry to diagnosis and treat- 
ment. The collegiate instructor has failed to 
appreciate the progressive utilization of chem- 
istry by the biological sciences. There is a 
chasm between what the instructor knows and 
attempts to teach to the pre-medical student 
and what the pre-medical student needs. And 
as a result the student falls into the chasm, 
and is lost. It is the job of the collegiate in- 
structor to bridge the gap through constructive 
cooperation. The medical-school instructor has 
not been sufficiently insistent on preliminary 
requirements from a qualitative standpoint, 
nor has he shown any special inclination to 
relate the needs of the situation. These facts 
when coupled with the disinclination of the 
college teacher of chemistry to break away 
from the classical and now obsolete methods of 
teaching and inaugurate a system adapted to 
the demands of the times give some explana- 
tion of what at present confronts us. There is 
at hand a supply of potential useful informa- 
tion that lacks efficient assimilation because of 
the lack of understanding of fundamental 
principles. 

The remedies are obvious—an attempt by the 
collegiate instructor in chemistry to learn 
something of what chemistry is doing in biol- 
ogy, a measure of cooperation between teachers 
of biological chemistry and the pre-medical in- 
structors, a willingness on the part of the lat- 
ter to recognize the validity of the wishes of 
the former, an outline of preparedness from the 
qualitative point of view, and a realization 
that true preparedness rests on understanding, 
while understanding can only come when de- 
tail is subordinated to principle. 


Freperick 8S. HAMMETT 
HARVARD MeEpICcAL SCHOOL 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1195 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


BRITISH EXPERIMENTAL STATION FOR FUEL 
RESEARCH 


THe Fuel Research Board of the Depart- 
ment of Scientific and Industrial Research 
has issued a report, signed by Sir George 
Beilby, the director of fuel research, describ-_ 
ing the scheme of research they have adopted 
and their plan for the establishment of a fuel 
research station on an industrial scale. 

It is stated in the London Times that in a 
previous report, which has not been published, 
they stated that they had in view two main 
lines of research: (1) A survey and classifica- 
tion of the coal seams in the various mining 
districts by means of chemical and physical 
tests in the laboratory, and (2) an investiga- 
tion of the practical problems which must be 
solved if any large proportion of the raw coal 
at present burned in its natural state is to be 
replaced by the various forms of fuel obtain- 
able from coal by processes of carbonization 
and gasification. 

At one time it was thought that the former 
line of inquiry could be proceeded with in ad- 
vance of the second, but further consideration 
has shown them to be so interdependent that 
they can be most satisfactorily dealt with side 
by side. However, in preparation for the or- 
ganization of the first line of inquiry, an ex- 
perimental study of standard methods for the 
examination of coal in the laboratory has been 
made, and as the result of work carried out 
for the board in the Fuel Laboratory of the 
Imperial College of Science a test has been 
elaborated which, by direct weighing and 
measurement, gives the yields of gas, oil, 
water and carbonaceous residue that result 
from carbonization at any definite temperature. 

Among the problems to be investigated are: 


1. Can the 35 to 40 million tons of raw coal used 
every year for domestic heating be replaced wholly 
or partially by smokeless fuel, solid or gaseous, 
prepared by the carbonization of this coal? 

2. Can adequate supplies of fuel for the Navy 
be obtained by carbonizing the coal at present 
used in its raw form for industrial and domestic 
purposes? 

3. Can supplies of town gas be obtained more 
economically and conveniently by methods of car- 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


bonization and gasification other than those now 
used in gas works? 

4. Can electric power be obtained more cheaply 
if the coal used for steam raising is first sub- 
jected to processes of carbonization and gasifica- 
tion? 

5. Will the more scientific development of the 
preparation and use of fuel, which would be im- 
plied in the successful working out of the forego- 
ing questions, enable the peat deposits of the 
United Kingdom to take a serious place as eco- 
nomic sources of fuel for industrial purposes? 

6. Can the use of gaseous fuel in industrial 
operations be forwarded by the development of 
more scientific methods of combustion in the fur- 
naces, muffles and ovens used in metallurgical, 
ceramic and chemical operations? 


Answers to these questions, the report points 
out, will be obtained only by coordinated re- 
search carried on the lines of a broad and 
well-considered scheme, but at the same time 
the Fuel Research Board think it is to be ex- 
pected that solutions of some of the problems 
will be supplied by workers in the industries, 
and they would regard it as a great misfortune 
were the establishment of a government or- 
ganization for fuel research to result in dis- 
couraging or in any way limiting the activi- 
ties of outside workers or organizations. 

It was realized that the conditions required 
for the research station could be fulfilled only 
by a site in the neighborhood of a large gas 
works. Some months ago the director of Fuel 
Research approached Dr. Charles Carpenter, 
the chairman of the South Metropolitan Gas 
Company, and subsequently Dr. Carpenter on 
behalf of the directors of his company, made 
the following very generous offer: 


1. To lease the government at a peppercorn rent 
sufficient land at the East Greenwich gasworks for 
the erection of the research station. 

2. To prepare drawings and specifications for 
the station on lines laid down by the board and to 
make contracts for its erection; and 

3. To give every facility for the transport of 
coal and other supplies to the station and to take 
over at market prices the surplus products, gas, 
tar, liquor and coke, resulting from the operations 
of the station. 


The site consists of a strip of level ground, 
about 250 feet wide by 700 feet to 800 feet long, 


SCIENCE 


507 


situated on the main siding which connects the 
gas works with the South-Eastern Railways 
and possessing access to an existing road. The 
station, as planned, will be capable of any ex- 
tensions required for future researches. Of 
the four acres to be leased, only one acre will 
be oceupied by buildings under the present 
scheme. Further, a large part of the equip- 
ment of the buildings will be of a permanent 
character and will serve all the general pur- 
poses of a research station. Future exten- 
sions, therefore, will not repeat this perma- 
nent equipment, but will be based upon it. 


THE COLUMBIAN INSTITUTE 

THE great scientific bureaus of the govern- 
ment at Washington with their thousands of 
employees dealing with the country’s problems 
in every branch of science, and the important 
learned societies and scientific establishments 
of the national capital, were influenced in 
their early growth and development in a 
greater or less degree by a scientific. society 
which flourished in Washington during the 
early years of the last century. The Colum- 
bian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and 
Sciences, now all but forgotten, was the first 
learned society established in Washington, its 
organization dating from June, 1816, sixteen 
years after the occupation of the city as the 
federal capital, and less than two years after 
the invasion by the British troops. The 
population of Washington was at that time 
little more than 10,000, and the repair and 
reconstruction of the public buildings was still 
in the initial stage. The history, organization 
and achievements of this society are fully de- 
scribed in an interesting Bulletin of the 
United States National Museum by Mr. 
Richard Rathbun, assistant secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution, in charge of the Na- 
tional Museum. 

The objects of the Columbian Institute, 
which was chartered by Congress in 1818 for 
a term of twenty years, were as a whole very 
diversified, those specifically named in the be- 
ginning having been almost wholly of a utili- 
tarian nature, such as the government has 
from time to time assumed and made the basis 
of the work of several scientific bureaus. 


508 


Four years later, however, an organization was 
adopted which gave to the Institute the lati- 
tude of a comprehensive learned society. 
Among all the activities planned only a few 
were in any way conspicuously earried out, in 
default of the necessary support, the most im- 
portant and material of these being the estab- 
lishment of a botanic garden and a museum. 
The former occupied the extreme eastern end 
of the Mall which then approached much 
nearer the capitol than at present, and in- 
cluded the site of the present United States 
Botanic Garden. 

Starting with a cabinet of minerals which 
remained predominant in this connection, this 
feature soon developed into a general though 
small museum, containing specimens of zool- 
ogy, botany, ethnology, archeology, fossils, etc. 
Transferred to the National Institution in 
1841, some of the objects are now readily dis- 
tinguishable in the United States National 
Museum, forming, it may be claimed, the 
nucleus of its collections. 

The institute obtained its meeting places 
and accommodations for its museum mainly 
through the favor successively of the execu- 
tive departments, the municipal government, 
and Congress. It was first located in 
Blodget’s Hotel, containing the general post 
office and the patent office, followed by the 
treasury department and city hall, being 
finally assigned a permanent home, in 1824, in 
the western addition to the capitol building, 
which had just been completed. The use of 
the site for its botanic garden was also a 
grant from Congress. 

However unfortunate in the realization of 
its ambitions, the Columbian Institute never- 
theless occupied an enviable position among 
the earlier associations of this country for the 
breadth and importance of its object, even 
if they be regarded only in the nature of sug- 
gestions, which have since been so fully recog- 
nized in the organization of the government 
and elsewhere, and for its hearty and unselfish 
efforts to carry them out. The Columbian 
Institute owed its establishment and early 
successes to a masterful mind, that of Dr. Ed- 
ward Cutbush, then a surgeon in the Navy, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


and the first president of the society, though 
acknowledgments are also due to Thomas Law 
for the suggestion of such a society at the seat 
of government. 

The membership of this institute included 
a great many of the prominent men of every 
walk of life in Washington, among them John 
Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, John C. Cal- 
houn, Henry Clay, and well-known representa- 
tives of the Army, the government service, the 
medical and other professions. 


AWARD OF THE JOHN SCOTT LEGACY MEDALS 
AND PREMIUMS AND OF THE EDWARD 
LONGSTRETH MEDAL OF MERIT 


THE city of Philadelphia, acting on the 
recommendation of The Franklin Institute, 
has awarded the John Scott Legacy Medal 
and Premium to Alfred Rishworth Tattersall, 
of London, England, for the “ Midget” Mar- 
vel Flour Mill. 

This device is a small and simple form of 
flour mill, designed to enable local millers to 
make a good grade of flour at a comparatively 
low cost. It is of especial value in farming 
communities in which the flour mills run by 
water power have been abandoned. 

And has also awarded the John Scott Legacy 
Medal and Premium to Max Ulrich Schoop, 
of Zurich, Switzerland, for the Schoop Metal 
Spraying Process. 

In this process, wire of some easily fusible 
metal, like zinc, is fed into a device called a 
spraying pistol. The wire passes through a 
tube and at its end comes into contact with 
burning gas, by which it is melted, and the 
molten metal is sprayed by an air blast upon 
the surface to be covered. The use of this 
process has been found to greatly increase the 
life of patterns for castings. 

The John Scott Legacy Medal and Premium 
has also been awarded to Thomas A. McCall, 
of South Akron, Ohio, for his inventions em- 
bodied in the early development of the Hooven 
Automatic Typewriter, and to John H. Pil- 
lings, of Hamilton, Ohio, for his inventions 
and improvements embodied in its later de- 
velopment. 

The Franklin Institute has awarded its Ed- 
ward Longstreth Medal of Merit to The 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


Hooven, Owens, Rentschler Company, of 
Hamilton, Ohio, for the development of in- 
genious methods used in the manufacture of 
this typewriter. 

_ This machine is capable of producing type- 
written form letters much faster than they 
can be written in the ordinary way. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

A SPECIAL board of chemists to investigate 
explosives, the uses of gases in warfare and to 
act as advisers to the Bureau of Mines, has 
been appointed. The board will study the 
problem of increasing the production of ma- 
terials used in explosives manufacture and 
will advise the bureau in the operation of the 
recently enacted law regulating the sale of ex- 
plosives. The members are: Dr. William H. 
Nichols, of the General Chemical Company, 
New York, chairman; Professor H. P. Tal- 
bot, head of the chemical department of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Wil- 
liam Hoskins, of Chicago, a consulting chem- 
ist; Professor H. P. Venable, of the Univer- 
sity of North Carolina; Professor E. C. Frank- 
lin, of Stanford University, and Dr. Charles 
L. Parsons, of the Bureau of Mines. 


Preswent J. G. SchurMAN, of Cornell Uni- 
versity, has announced that the State Food 
Commission, of which he is a member, had 
completed its organization. Its work is now 
in three divisions—production, under Commis- 
sioner Wieting; distribution, under Commis- 
sioner Mitchell, and conservation, under Com- 
missioner Schurman. For each of these 
divisions a bureau has been established with a 
director at its head. Calvin Huson, a former 
commissioner of agriculture, heads the bureau 
of production, and Cyrus Miller, a lawyer of 
New York City, the bureau of distribution. 
Professor Howard E. Babcock, of the State 
College of Agriculture at Cornell, now di- 
rector of Farm Bureaus, has been appointed 
director of the bureau of conservation. Pro- 
fessor Babcock will receive a leave of absence 
from the university for the period of his sery- 
ice with the Food Commission. 


THE mission sent to France by the Rocke- 
feller Foundation to assist in combating the 


SCIENCE 


509 


threatened increase of tuberculosis has de- 
cided to work in three sections under the gen- 
eral direction of Dr. Livingston Farrand. 
The first section will establish in one of the 
arrondissements of Paris and in certain large 
provincial towns a complete antituberculosis 
organization consisting of dispensaries, clin- 
ics and laboratories, with provision for domi- 
ciliary attendance. This section will be di- 
rected by Dr. Miller. A second section, under 
Dr. Charles White, will undertake the distri- 
bution of assistance. A third section, under 
Professor Gunn, will be concerned with the 
education of the public; it has already com- 
menced to organize traveling exhibitions, 
meetings and kinematograph displays. 


Tue British Industrial Research Committee 
of the Board of Education have made a grant 
to Professor G. H. Bryan, F.R.S., of the Uni- 
versity College of North Wales, which will 
enable him to devote the whole of next session 
to the carrying on of some special research 
work in aeroplane construction of national 
importance. In the first instance Professor 
Bryan proposes to work at the University of 
Bristol. 


Tue following-named officers, Engineer 
Officers’ Reserve Corps, are relieved from duty 
at the Engineer training camp, and will re- 
port by letter to the director, United States 
Geological Survey, for assignment to duty 
connected with military mapping: From Fort 
Leavenworth, Kans., Second Lieutenants 
Elmer LeC. Goldsmith, John W. Lewis, Ed- 
ward J. Francis, Elmo N. Murphy, Carl R. 
French, William D. Lewis, and Charles B. 
Moore. From American University, District 
of Columbia, Second Lieutenants Charles M. 
Madden, Edward H. Stelle, Frederic E. Smith, 
Edward P. Asbury, George B. Davidson, 
Frederick W. Look, Gordon D. Cooke, Joseph 
W. Geary, Jr., and Walter K. Wood, and also 
Second Lieutenant Herman J. Switzer, Engi- 
neer Officers’ Reserve Corps. 


Mr. A. H. Giupertr has accepted a position 
as a pathological inspector with the Federal 
Horticultural Board with headquarters at 
Washington, D. C. Mr. Gilbert was formerly 


510 


associate professor of botany at the University 
of Kentucky. 


Unver a grant from the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, Dr. C. 
H. Kauffman spent the month of August, 
1917, in the state of Colorado studying the 
genus Cortinarius for his proposed monograph. 
In September, Dr. Kauffman began his work 
as a pathological inspector with the Federal 
Horticultural Board with headquarters at 
Washington, D. C. 


Tur Herbert Spencer Lecture for 1917 was 
delivered by Professor Emile Boutroux, mem- 
ber of the “Institut ” and the French Acad- 
amy, and Doctor of Letters of the University 
of Oxford, on October 20, in the Oxford Uni- 
versity Museum. The subject of the lecture 
was “The relation between thought and ac- 
tion from the German and from the classical 
point of view.” The lecture was delivered in 
English. 

Tue Bradshaw Lecture on “The causes of 
disease”? was given before the Royal College 
of Physicians on November 8 by Professor 
Ernest S. Reynolds, physician to the Man- 
chester Royal Infirmary. The FitzPatrick 
lectures were delivered on November 13, 14 
and 15, by Dr. Arnold Chaplin, known for his 
studies of the Napoleonic period, on “ Medi- 
cine in England during the reign of George 
Til.” 


Dr. J. S. Fuetr gives this year the course 
of twelve Swiney lectures on geology at the 
Royal Society of Arts on Tuesdays, Thurs- 
days and Fridays, beginning on Tuesday, No- 
vember 13. The subject is “ The Mineral Re- 
sources of the British Empire.” 

MemoriAL services were held at Cornell 
University Medical College for the late Dr. 
Lewis A. Stimson, professor of surgery at the 
college from the time of its foundation in 
1898 to his death on September 17, this year. 
Among the speakers were Mr. Elihu Root, 
President Jacob Gould Schurman, of Cornell; 
Dr. Gilman Thompson, professor of medicine, 
emeritus; Howard Townsend, president of the 
board of governors of New York Hospital, 
and Dr. Edward L. Keys. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


Proressor Epwarp Hutt, LL.D., F.BS., 
late director of the Geological Survey of Ire- 
land, died on October 18, in his eighty-ninth 
year. 

A BRONZE tablet commemorating Dr. Simon 
Baruch’s connection with the campaign for 
public baths in New York City was unveiled 
at the Simon Baruch Public Baths, formerly 
the Rivington Street baths on October 29. 
The tablet was donated by Mrs. Belle Baruch 
through the Association for the Promotion of 
Hygiene and Public Baths. Borough Presi- 
dent Marcus M. Marks made the address of 
acceptance in behalf of the city. 

Nature states that the late Mr. Cawthron 
left £250,000 to the city of Nelson, New Zea- 
land, for scientific research. The trustees are 
the bishop of the diocese, the member for the 
district, the mayor of Nelson, two chairmen 
of local bodies and a personal friend of the 
deceased. The site of the proposed institute 
has been purchased, and the appointment of 
a director and staff is under consideration. 
The object of the institute is, primarily, scien- 


tifie research work for the benefit of the prov- 


ince of Nelson and the Dominion of New 
Zealand. The province of Nelson is mostly 
concerned with fruit, agriculture and miner- 
als. } 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

By recent decision of the court Wilberforce 
University has come into possession of $30,000 
of the Charles Avery estate in Pittsburgh. 
The fund is to be used for endowment pur- 
poses. 

COMMITTEES representing Leander Clark 
College, of Toledo, and Coe College, of Cedar 
Rapids, recently voted to merge these two in- 
stitutions. Coe College will absorb Leander 
Clark with its endowment of about $250,000. 

Sm Wiiu1aMm Tatem has given £25,000 for a 
laboratory at the University College of South 
Wales, Cardiff. 

As has been already announced Dr. Ralph 
H. McKee has been appointed to take charge 
of the graduate work in industrial organic 
chemistry (department of chemical engineer- 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


ing) at Columbia University, New York City. 
Dr. McKee was at the head of the department 
of chemistry of the University of Maine from 
1909 to 1916, leaving this position a year ago 
to enter commercial chemical work in New 
York City as head of the research department 
of the Tennessee Copper Company. While 
at Maine he initiated and developed the de- 
partment for the making of pulp and paper, 
the first of its kind to be established in any 
college in this country. 


THE personnel of the department of geology 
and mining engineering at Iowa State Col- 
lege, Ames, Ia., is now as follows: Head of 
department, Dr. S. W. Beyer, who is also dean 
of the division of engineering, vice A. Mar- 
ston, now major of the Battalion of Engineers, 
Towa National Guard; L. C. Hodson and Dr. 
S. L. Galpin, associate professors of mining 
engineering; H. F. Staley, professor of 
ceramic engineering; Dr. Chas. A. Mann, as- 
sociate professor of chemical engineering; 
John E. Smith, assistant professor of geology. 


Dr. J. E. Marr, University lecturer in geol- 
ogy in Cambridge University, has been elected 
to the Woodwardian professorship of geology 
in succession to the late Professor McKenny 
Hughes. 


F. pE Qurrvatn, professor of surgery at the 
University of Basle, has accepted a call to the 
medical faculty of Berne as successor to 
Professor Kocher. 


J. JADASSOHN, professor of dermatology at 
the University of Berne, has been appointed 
professor in Breslau in succession to Pro- 
fessor Neisser, who died some months ago. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
AN EXTRAORDINARY RAINFALL RECORD 


Durine a recent visit to the Hawaiian Is- 
lands, I had oceasion to do some collecting on 
Kauai, the northern island of the group. 
While there I made a trip to a region of such 
extraordinary precipitation that it seemed 
worthy of record. 

The island is almost circular in outline, 
rather less than thirty miles in its greatest 
diameter. It consists for the most part of a 


SCIENCE 


dll 


plateau averaging about 3,500-4,000 feet in ele- 
vation, but rising to a little over 5,000 feet at 
Mt. Waialeale, almost in the center of the is- 
land. 

As in all the Hawaian Islands the windward 
(NE.) side has a very heavy precipitation, 
while on the leeward side the rainfall is very 
light. 

The central part of Kauai, culminating in 
Mt. Waialeale, has the heaviest precipitation of 
any station in the Hawaiian group, and can 
be equalled by very few regions anywhere, 
where rainfall data have been kept. In one 
year over 600 inches fell, and for the five 
years—1912-1916—the average was slightly 
more than 500 inches. 

Waialeale is seldom free from rain clouds, 
and the precipitation is almost incessant. In 
consequence the whole region near it is a bog, 
partly covered with a forest of low trees, 
thickly draped with dripping masses of mosses 
and liverworts, but a good deal of the region, 
including the summit of Waialeale, is an open 
bog, covered with coarse grasses and sedges, 
with a few stunted shrubs and various charac- 
teristic bog plants. 


TABLE I 


Precipitation at Waialeale, Island of Kauai, Terri- 
tory of Hawaii 


Elevation above sea level 5,075 feet 


Year Rainfall in Inches 
IGN) gag adicooauneausoOsGono 399.35 
UGAIBH oir oo duo OODO GUD OOUOOG 453.00 
UG NA earey- bale fetetetevotesre tele voleveley cele 610.00 
IGS) ooo bosooKsaUEdOOCdCODO 590.00 
LONG BerereyerterVsicievetelercicveioexctovere 539.70 


Precipitation at Waimea Village, Island of Kauai, 
Territory of Hawait 


Elevation above sea level 10 feet 


Year Rainfall in Inches 
NEM 5 SASoocouDadLb000000000 20.50 
LMS GoougudooodooKecocODdo™ 23.58 
Oe GopoooabousocoosoopaOus 24,50 
by ec omooneb0000da5n000004 13.40 
UNG, Gagsgoodhoedéoonqguesod CI 


Distance Waimea to Waialeale (air line) 13.5 
miles. 


My guide on this expedition was Mr. W. V. 
Hardy, hydrographer of the United States Geo- 
logical Survey, who has been keeping records 


512 


on Mt. Waialeale for the past six years. I am 
under great obligation to Mr. Hardy for many 
kindnesses, and I am indebted to him for the 
accompanying tables. The second table shows 
the rainfall data for Waimea, a village on the 
leeward coast of Kauai. 


Doueias H. CaMPBELL 
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 
CALIFORNIA 


QUOTATIONS 

THE ROCKEFELLER HEALTH RESEARCHES? 

THE third annual report of the Rockefeller 
Foundation, the International Health Board 
(known previously as the International Health 
Commission), deals with the year 1916. The 
general summary, which precedes the details 
of different states and countries, shows that in 
addition to ankylostomiasis, malaria and yel- 
low fever have been dealt with, and this would 
seem to indicate that the Board is prepared 
to tackle all tropical disease where the neces- 
sity arises. As regards the first of these 
scourges, ankylostomiasis, it is stated that ac- 
tive measures to control and prevent the 
disease are now in operation in Kentucky, 
Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Caro- 
lina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia in the 
United States; in certain West Indian islands 
—Antigua, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, 
and Trinidad; in British and Dutch Guiana, 
Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, 
Salvador, in South America; and in Ceylon 
and Siam in the East. Such widespread work, 
properly controlled as this is, and with no 
lack of funds to support it, is bound to do 
good, and, though remarkable results can not 
be looked for in a few years, nevertheless re- 
sults will come, all in due time. To ensure 
this, permanency of the work is essential, as 
otherwise matters would quickly drift back. 
The sanitation of many of the small tropical 
towns and villages at the present day is very 
similar to that which existed in England a 
hundred years ago, and only time and much 
labor will bring them into line with modern 
sanitary ideas. As many tropical maladies 


1N. Goormaghtigh, Arch. méd. Belges, Paris, 
1917. Tome LXX., p. 697. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


are insect-borne, study of the habits of the 
insects concerned is essential, and engineer- 
ing works, large and small, may be required 
to abolish their different breeding grounds. 
The importance of collective investigation and 
organized campaigns in such a task is mani- 
fest, and it is here that the great value of 
the efforts of the International Health Board 
lies. The report describes fully the means 
adopted in the fight against ankylostomiasis. 
Of great interest also is the work of the com- 
mission appointed by the board to inquire into 
the problem of yellow fever centers in South 
America. The report states that the only 
endemic center of the disease in South 
America at present is Guayaquil; Ecuador, 
though certain sections of Colombia, Vene- 
zuela, and the adjacent West Indian Islands 
are also under suspicion and require close ob- 
servation. The eradication of the disease, 
with this knowledge as a guide, is feasible. 
The report suggests that Mexico and West 
Africa should similarly be examined. Experi- 
ments upon the control of malaria have also 
been commenced, and these will be extended 
in due course. Further, a new school of 
hygiene and public health has been established 
in Baltimore by the Rockefeller Foundation 
in connection with the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, and is to be opened this month with 
Dr. William H. Welch as director. Three 
main purposes will be served by the new school: 
first, to furnish trained men on whom the 
board may draw; secondly, to serve as a train- 
ing center to which students from other coun- 
tries may be sent for instruction; and, thirdly, 
to provide a laboratory for solving scientific 
problems which arise. This Rockefeller 
Foundation is a splendid conception. Un- 
trammelled by questions of expense, its activi- 
ties are unlimited, and the benefits it can and 
will bestow upon mankind in the tropics are 
inestimable. It is a dream the original work- 
ers in tropical medicine often dreamed, and it 
has come true. Finally, a word of congratula- 
tion is due to Dr. Wickliffe Rose, its able 
director-general, for the work he has already 
accomplished. Long may he continue to di- 
rect its energies.—British Medical Journal. 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
On Growth and Form. By D’Arcy Went- 
wortH THompson. Cambridge University 

Press. 1917. 8vo. 779 pages with 408 

text-figures. 

In the author’s own words the purpose of 
his book is to show “that throughout the 
whole range of organic morphology there are 
innumerable phenomena of form which are 
not peculiar to living things, but which are 
more or less simple manifestations of ordinary 
physical laws.” This'thesis Professor Thomp- 
son elaborates in a most interesting manner, 
developing with the aid of our fuller knowl- 
edge of physical forces and of the conditions 
under which they act, the mode of study 
initiated by Borelli many years ago, and ap- 
plied, more recently, with striking and sug- 
gestive results, to several forms of organic 
activity by Rhumbler, Leduc, Przibram, 
Macallum and others. These results and 
many others less familiar receive clear ex- 
position, but the book is far from being a 
mere compilation, a refreshing originality, 
being characteristic both in subject matter 
and in the manner of its presentation. 

The contest between the vitalistic and 
mechanistic views of the phenomena of life 
has been carried on by generation after gen- 
eration of men and always with the strategic 
results of the struggle in favor of the mechan- 
ists, as one vitalistic stronghold after another 
has fallen. The attack is drawing ever nearer 
to the central citadel and Professor Thomp- 
son’s book is a massing of the attacking 
forces before this citadel. But the author 
with all his enthusiasm, recognizes limita- 
tions in his resources. “ Nor do I ask of 
physics,” he says,’ how goodness shines in 
one man’s face and evil betrays itself in an- 
other. But of the construction and growth 
and working of the body, as of all that is of 
the earth earthly, physical science is, in my 
humble opinion, our only teacher and guide.” 
Psychic phenomena are outside the limits of 
his attack. Even with this limitation, how- 
ever, the book is one of the strongest docu- 
ments in support of the mechanistic view of 
life that has yet been put forth. 


SCIENCE 


513 


It would be difficult to give an adequate 
résumé of the contents of a book, so crowded 
with facts and ideas of the greatest interest 
to morphologists; it must suffice merely to 
mention some of the problems treated. One 
finds an interesting discussion of the physical 
factors determining the size of organisms, 
especially interesting being the consideration 
of the conditions which may determine the 
minimum size of a living organism. This is 
followed by a chapter on the factors deter- 
mining growth and then follow chapters on 
the structure and form of the cell, in which 
the phenomena of karyokinesis are regarded 
as “analogous to, if not identical with those 
of a bipolar electric field,’ and the forms 
assumed by organisms as expressions of the 
law that a liquid film in equilibrium assumes 
a form which gives it a minimal area under 
the given conditions. In this connection 
Professor Thompson expresses the opinion 
that in the simpler organism, whose form is 
due to the direct action of a particular phys- 
ical force, similarity of form is not neces- 
sarily an indication of phylogenetic relation- 
ship. 

The form of the cell in cell-aggregates is 
then taken up, the arrangement of the divi- 
sion planes being considered as illustrations 
of the principle of minimal areas, and the 
author then passes on to the consideration of 
concretions and spicules. This involves as 
an essential problem the question of crystal- 
lization in the presence of colloids, a question 
concerning which there is much yet to, be 
learned. The further discussion of the forms 
assumed by spicules leads to their division 
into two groups, those of intracellular origin 
and those that are intercellular, linear growth 
of the former under restraint leading to forms 
which have for their mathematical basis geo- 
detic curves, while in the case of the latter 
the phenomena of adsorption and the deposit 
of the crystalline material on interfaces are 
held to be sufficient for the explanation of 
even the marvellously complicated radiolarian 
skeletons. 

The mathematical properties of the log- 
arithmic spiral as applied to the forms shown 


514 


by molluscan and foraminiferal shells are then 
discussed and from this to a consideration of 
the form of horns and tusks the passage is 
easy. A brief discussion of phyllotaxis fol- 
lows and is succeeded by a chapter on the 
shapes of eggs and other hollow structures, 
after which one finds an interesting descrip- 
tion of the mechanical principles illustrated by 
the structure of individual bones and by the 
skeleton as a whole. The concluding chapter 
is an exposition of Professor Thompson’s 
method of comparing the form of different 
organisms, or of their parts, by inscribing, 
for example, the outline of the skull of 
Hyracotherium in a system of Cartesian co- 
ordinates and then determining the defor- 
mation of the system necessary for a similar 
inscription of the outline of the skull of a 
horse. A graphic representation is thus ob- 
tained of the manner of growth characteristic 
of this particular line of evolution, and the 
method may thus serve in certain cases as a 
test of phylogenetic affinity. 

This brief outline may give some idea of 
the scope of the book, but it altogether fails 
to indicate the interesting and suggestive 
manner in which the various topics are 
treated. Professor Thompson’s style is marked 
by a clearness of expression which makes 
every page of interest and his book is one 
that may well be recommended as revealing 
food for thought and fields for investigation 
which have been too much neglected by stu- 
dents of morphology. J. P. McM. 


Tsimshian Mythology. By Franz Boas. Based 
on Texts recorded by Henry W. Tarte. 
Paper accompanying the Thirty-first Annual 
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnol- 
ogy, 1909-1910. Washington, Government 
Printing Office, 1916. Pp. 1037; 3 plates; 24 
text figures. 

The core of this paper consists of English 
versions of sixty-four Tsimshian myths and 
three war tales, written down for the author by 
Mr. Henry W. Tate, a Tsimshian Indian of 
Port Simpson, B. C., in his own language, be- 
tween 1902 and the year of his death, 1914. 
The translations were made by Professor Boas 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


on the basis of “a free interlinear rendering by 
Mr. Tate.” 

However, unlike most ethnologists who have 
published Indian stories, Professor Boas has 
not rested satisfied with the mere printing of 
“material,” important as such publication un- 
doubtedly is, nor even with the addition of 
comparative footnotes. He has made this work 
the occasion and the basis for studies of sev- 
eral different aspects of Tsimshian ethnology, 
and for what is by all odds the best investiga- 
tion of the distribution of American myths and 
mythic elements which has so far appeared, 
one which goes a long way toward satisfy- 
ing the often-voiced demand for a concordance 
of American myths. Besides the usual tables 
of contents, bibliography and alphabet explana- 
tory of the characters representing native 
sounds used in the work, it contains an intro- 
ductory description of the Tsimshian, and, 
best of all, a summary of the comparisons and 
a detailed index to the references used in the 
comparison, the latter prepared with the as- 
sistance of Dr. H. K. Haeberlin. In appen- 
dices III. and IV. students of American In- 


’ dian languages will find useful material re- 


garding the speech of the people among whom 
these myths were current. The work is also 
used as a medium for the publication of seven 
Bellabella and ten Nootka tales, by Dr. Liv- 
ingston Farrand and Mr. George Hunt re- 
spectively. 

The longer studies to which reference has 
been made are “A Description of the Tsim-- 
shian, Based on Their Mythology” (pp. 393- 
477), a treatise on “ Tsimshian Society ” (pp. 
478-564), and finally the “ Comparative Study 
of Tsimshian Mythology” (pp. 565-871), al- 
ready mentioned as the crowning feature of 
this work. 

While the value of myths as sources of in- 
formation regarding the general ethnology of 
the tribe from which they were collected has 
frequently been commented upon, so far as I 
am aware we have here the first attempt to 
write an ethnological description based entirely 
upon them. For this reason, if for no other, 
the result is of interest. It shows that Tsim- 
shian stories contain an incomplete, but upon 


NovEMBER 23, 1917] 


the whole trustworthy, picture of native life 
and thought. On the one hand this must be 
supplemented by the introduction of matters 
too well known among his people to be ex- 
plained by the storyteller, and on the other 
by determining in how far the conception of 
what ought to be in the social and religious 
lives of the people conformed to things as they 
actually were. 

The discussion of Tsimshian society derives 
a large part of its importance from the fact 
that it concerns one of the two areas over the 
data from which controversies regarding “ the 
origin of totemism ” have raged most violently. 
Evidence of the entire absence of such a thing 
as totemic taboos and of the importance of the 
father’s as well as the mother’s clan in the life 
of the individual are therefore of interest, as 
also the comparative study of the distribution 
of crests among the matrilineally organized 
peoples of this region. The general discussion 
of totemism on pages 515 to 519 should be read 
carefully by all interested in that subject. 

In his treatment of the evolution of the 
north Pacifie clan systems Professor Boas 
follows his usual cautious method. He 
criticizes adversely the reviewer’s theory re- 
garding a former extension of the Tlingit 
over what was later the Tsimshian coast, 
as also his suggestion that Haida moieties 
have arisen as the result of the amalgama- 
tion of two distinct peoples. The evidence for 
the former view was, however, not entirely tra- 
ditional, being based partly on the presence of 
a considerable number of animal names in 
Haida identical with those in Tlingit, and the 
comparative lack of similar Tsimshian names, 
although in historic times relations between 
the Haida and Tsimshian were much more 
intimate than between the Haida and Tlingit. 

To prepare the comparative study of Tsim- 
shian mythology an enormous amount of pains- 
taking work was necessary, particularly in the 
analysis of the various versions of the Raven 
legend, and future students will be saved an 
incalculable amount of labor. Two or three 
more efforts of the same kind would result in 
the much-desired concordance. The results of 
this comparison are summarized on pages 872— 


SCIENCE 


515 


881, the more important points being the fol- 
lowing. 

As forecasted in JBoas’s “ Indianische 
Sagen,” published in 1895, Tsimshian mythol- 
ogy is distinguished from the mythologies of 
other Pacific coast peoples by the presence of 
a large number of tales of inland origin. An 
examination of the content of the material gen- 
erally shows “that there are a number of very 
simple plots, which have a wide distribution, 
and which are elaborated by a number of inci- 
dents that have a very wide distribution and 
occur in a variety of plots.” Comparing Eu- 
ropean and North American folk-lore Pro- 
fessor Boas finds that “European folk-lore 
creates the impression that the whole stories 
are units and that their cohesion is strong, the 
whole complex very old. The analysis of Amer- 
ican material, on the other hand, demon- 
strates that complex stories are new, that there 
is little cohesion between the component ele- 
ments, and that the really old parts of tales are 
the incidents and a few simple plots.” There 
is a tendency among these Indian tales to shake 
off many of their supernatural elements along 
the border of their area of distribution, but 
this is “counterbalanced by another tendency 
of tales to take on new supernatural signifi- 
cance.” In conclusion Professor Boas has a 
word to say (pages 879-881) regarding the 
general theory of mythology, with particular 
reference to that widespread impression that 
mythic tales represent an attempt on the part 
of primitive man to explain the phenomena of 
nature. Professor Boas thinks that this belief 
is not justified. His conclusion is that the ma- 
terial presented in this work “rather empha- 
sizes the fact that its origin must be looked for 
in the imaginative tales dealing with the 
social life of the people.” Still he would prob- 
ably not deny that particular applications of 
such tales to the explanation of natural phe- 
nomena had been attempted at a very remote 
period in human history. 

“Tsimshian Mythology ” furnishes a notable 
addition to the sum of myth material and to 
our knowledge of northwest coast enthnology, 
but its chief claim to distinction rests on the 
great advance which it registers in the com- 


516 


parative study of myths current among Amer- 
ican Indians and in the interpretation of them. 


JoHN R. Swanton 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


The Genus Phoradendron. By WuituiaM 
TRELEASE, Professor of Botany in the Uni- 
versity of Illinois. Published by the Uni- 
versity. Octavo, pp. 224, pls. 245. Price, 
paper, $2.00; cloth, $2.50. 

It is fortunate for botanists that the author 
of this excellent treatise has made so thorough 
a revision of the genus Phoradendron instead 
of being content with merely attempting to 
straighten out the tangle existing in regard 
to the group of related forms hitherto known 
as Phoradendron flavescens, as he first con- 
templated. The author notes that Engelmann 
has shown too great a conservatism in his 
published studies of the various forms of 
species of the genus, by later withdrawing 
segregates of P. flavescens that he formerly had 
recognized, and that in continuing the work 
of Engelmann, also being influenced by his 
views, Torrey allowed a number of forms which 
he had designated as new species to lie unpub- 
lished in the Torrey herbarium. The author 
in addition to making a critical study of the 
abundant data and material of North Ameri- 
can species collected by Engelmann, Torrey 
and others in the great herbaria of this 
country, visited those of Europe and extended 
the investigation to the collection of West 
Indian and South American species by 
Urban, Martins and others. This has en- 
abled him to make a careful comparison of 
numerous types and variants of species of the 
genus, and to more carefully discriminate be- 
tween varieties and species. He recognizes 
962 differentiable forms, most of which he 
has classified as species. In this matter he 
apparently does not share the conservatism of 
Engelmann and Torrey. Of the species he 
now recognizes, 154 are listed from North 
America and 124 from South America. The 
genus is separated into two primary groups, 
the Boreales and the A‘quatoriales, plants of 
the former are constantly without, and the 
latter constantly with cataphyls on their foli- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1195 


age shoots. Both groups contain species 
destitute of expanded foliage, which are well 
represented by Phoradendron juniperinum in 
the southwestern United States. All of our 
species-belong to the Boreales, those of Mexico 
and Central America to both primary groups, 
and those of the West Indies and South 
America wholly to the Xquatoriales. These 
primary groups are each divided and then 
subdivided, making finally in all groups 55 
minor subdivisions. 

The book contains 224 pages of descriptive 
matter including very good and usable keys; 
these are supplemented by indexes of col- 
lectors, occurrence, and names. The illustra- 
tions, 245 full sized plates, are indeed works 
of art but are also true to nature. Few books 
of this class are so fully and beautifully 
illustrated. GrorcE G. Hepecock 


MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF WOOD 
DETERMINED 

A nuMBER of fundamental laws governing 
the properties of wood, such as those covering 
the relations between strength and specific 
gravity, and between strength and moisture 
content, are laid down in a bulletin just issued 
by the Department of Agriculture. In this 
publication are presented the results of about 
130,000 strength tests, probably the largest 
single series ever run on one material, made 
by the Forest Products Laboratory of the 
Forest Service on 126 species of American 
woods. The laws derived from the tests cover 
the general relations existing between me- 
chanical and physical properties of each 
species, and also the general relations existing 
between these properties irrespective of 
species. 

The results ought to prove of great value 
wherever knowledge of the properties of wood 
is essential. They have, for example, made 
possible the preparation of accurate tables 
showing all the needed strength properties for 
the woods used in airplanes. With these as a 
basis, specifications can be drawn up to elimi- 
nate all material that does not meet the exact- 
ing requirements of this highly specialized 
use. 


NovemMBER 23, 1917] 


The data also permit of the proper choice 
of substitutes for woods which have become 
scarce or unobtainable. Here again the air- 
plane may be cited, since the supplies of some 
woods ordinarily used in airplane construction 
are insufficient to meet the present building 
program of the United States and its allies. 

Among the relations between mechanical 
and physical properties of wood for which laws 
have been obtained are static bending-specific 
gravity, impact bending-specifie gravity, com- 
pression parellel to grain-specifie gravity, 
compression perpendicular to grain-specific 
gravity, static bending-moisture content; im- 
pact bending-moisture content, compression 
parallel to grain-moisture content, compres- 
sion perpendicular to grain-moisture content, 
shrinkage-moisture content. 

The bulletin, the authors of which are J. 
A. Newlin and Thomas R. C. Wilson, is en- 
titled ‘“ Mechanical Properties of Woods 
Grown in the United States,” and is No. 556 
in the Department of Agriculture series. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
A CONVENIENT NERVE HOLDER 
For several years past in this laboratory 
experiments on chemical stimulation have 
formed a part of the routine students’ work 
on the physiology of muscle and nerve. In 
these experiments we have used a nerve holder 


which has proved so simple and convenient 
that it seems desirable to suggest it to others. 
In its first form it consisted merely of a thin 
watch-glass 45 to 50 mm. in diameter, 
cemented by sealing-wax to the flattened end 
of a piece of 4 inch lead wire 12 inches long. 

If the muscle of a gastrocnemius-sciatic 
preparation is mounted on a muscle lever, the 
edge of the watch-glass may be brought very 
near to the muscle and the whole nerve may 
be allowed to lie in the liquid to be applied, 


SCIENCE 


517 


as for example, a solution of sodium citrate or 
barium chloride. 

The construction is so simple, requiring no 
special skill and only a few minutes of time, 
that it was used in this way for two or three 
years. Later, Mr. L. A. Ray, technician, de- 
vised the following more permanent construc- 
tion. A small bit of glass rod is fused to the 
bottom of the watch-glass. The rod is then 
melted and pulled in two at a point about 4 to 
+ inch from the bottom of the glass, and is 
held in the flame till a small knob forms on 
the end. A hole is punched in the flattened 
end of the lead rod, the glass rod is inserted 
and the joint made fast with cement. The 
knob on the end of the glass is held firmly in 
place by the cement. The accompanying figure 
of a section of watch-glass and rod will make 
the whole arrangement perfectly obvious. 

S. S. Maxwetu 

RUDOLPH SPRECKELS PHYSIOLOGICAL LABORATORY, 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


THE URINE OF THE HORNED LIZARD 


VAUQUELIN,! in reporting the first analysis of 
reptilian urine, in 1822, stated that it was com- 
posed almost entirely of urie acid, and since 
that time this fact has been interpreted by 
various observers as an adaptation to the con- 
ditions of life in arid regions, where animals 
obtain their only external water supply in 
very limited quantities in the food substances, 
as this type of nitrogenous excretion involves 
practically no water loss. The reptiles of arid 
regions have been known for some time to ex- 
crete practically all of their waste nitrogen in 
the form of uric acid and its salts, while, on 
the other hand, birds and aquatic and semi- 
aquatic reptiles may excrete considerable 
amounts of urea. 


1 Vauquelin, Louis Nicolas, ‘‘Examen des ex- 
erémens des serpens que l’on fait voir en ce moment 
a Paris, Rue Saint-Nicaise,’’ Annales de Chimie et 
de. Phisique. 2me Serie, Tome 21, p. 440, 1822. 
Two boas, species not stated, were the source of 
the urine examined in this ease. Uric acid had also 
been associated with reptiles as early as 1793, when 
a ‘‘pasty deposit’’ found in the bladder of a tor- 
toise by Vieq-d’Azyr was found to contain this 
substance, 


518 


The urine of the horned lizard is excreted 
in the dry form at the same time as the feces, 
from which it is separated by a constriction of 
the common mass, the material voided at any 
one time having roughly the shape of a dumb- 
bell, one of the enlargements being composed 
of urine and the other of fecal matter. The 
following figures for the composition of the 
urine of Phrynosoma cornutum (specimens ob- 
tained at Alamogordo, N. M.) have been ob- 
tained recently in the laboratory of physiolog- 
ical chemistry of the University of Illinois, 
the work having been undertaken at the sug- 
gestion and under the direction of Dr. H. B. 
Lewis. 


Constituents Mg. per Gm. of Dry Urine 

Total nitrogen ............ 260 

Urea + ammonia nitrogen .. 1.4 
Ammonia nitrogen ........ 1.4 
Wricwacid ier, yaaa eset te 765 
Creatininey-e eee eee Trace 

PX, Avolaibtenna a din yous Get 87.5 
Phosphorus as P.O;........ 3.5 


It will be noticed from the above figures that 
uric acid accounts for practically the total 
amount of nitrogen present, and that there is 
no urea. The small amount of ammonia is 
probably present as ammonium urate. The ash 
present is mostly composed of foreign mate- 
rials (sand grains, ete.) inseparable from the 
urinary mass and therefore weighed and 
analyzed with it. A. O. WEESE 

THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 
THE one hundred and ninety-third regular meet- 
ing of the American Mathematical Society was held 
at Columbia University on Saturday, October 27. 
The attendance at the morning and afternoon ses- 
sions included thirty-five members. Professor Os- 
wald Veblen occupied the chair, being relieved by 
Professor L. P. EHisenhart. The council an- 
nounced the election of the following persons to 
membership in the society: Dr. J. V. DePorte, 
State College, Albany, N. Y.; Mr. J. W. Lasley, 
Jr., University of North Carolina; Mr. Vincente 
Mills, Philippine Bureau of Lands; Professor B. 
M. Woods, University of California. Five appli- 
cations for membership were received. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1195 


A committee was appointed to audit the ac- 
counts of the treasurer for the current year. A list 
of nominations for officers and other members of 
the council was prepared and ordered printed on 
the official ballot for the annual election at the 
December meeting. The Secretary was directed to 
procure insurance to the amount of $10,000 on the 
library of the society, which is deposited in the 
Columbia Library. 

The following papers were read at this meeting: 

R. D. Carmichael: ‘‘Elementary inequalities for 
the roots of an algebraic equation.’’ 

Louise D. Cummings: ‘‘The two-column indices 
for triad systems on fifteen elements.’’ 

G. A. Pfeiffer: ‘‘On the continuous mapping of 
regions bounded by simple closed curves.’’ 

J. F. Ritt: ‘‘On the differentiability of asymp- 
totic series.’’ 

W. B. Fite: ‘‘Concerning the zeros of the solu- 
tions of certain linear differential equations.’’ 

J. E. Rowe: ‘‘Hexagons related to any plane 
cubic curve.’ 

G. D. Birkhoff: ‘‘On a theorem concerning 
closed normalized orthogonal sets of functions 
with an application to Sturm-Liouville series.’’ 

Edward Kasner: ‘‘Systems of circles related to 
the theory of heat.’? 

O. E. Glenn: ‘‘Systems of invariants and co- 
variants of Hinstein’s theory of relativity.’’ 

J. K. Whittemore: ‘‘Theorems on ruled sur- 
faces.’’ 

R. L. Moore: ‘‘On certain systems of equally 
continuous curves.’’ 

R. L. Moore: ‘‘Continua that have no continua 
of condensation.’’ 

J. R. Kline: ‘‘Necessary and sufficient condi- 
tions, in terms of order, that it be possible to pass 
a simple continuous are through a plane point 
set.” 

Oswald Veblen: 
ceells.’? 

Oswald Veblen: ‘‘Deformations within an n-di- 
mensional sphere. ’’ 

The San Francisco Section met at the Univer- 
sity of California on October 27. The Southwest- 
ern Section will meet at the University of Okla- 
homa on December 1. The Chicago Section will 
meet with the Mathematical Asssociation of Amer- 
ica at the University of Chicago on December 28- 
29. The annual meeting of the society will be held 
at Columbia University on December 27-28. 


¥F. N. Coxe, 
Secretary 


‘On the deformation of n- 


SCIENCE 


NEw SERIES SINGLE Copies, 15 CTs. 
VoL. XLVI. No. 1196 Fripay, NovEMBER 30, 1917 Annual SuBsORIPTION, $5.00 


BOOKS | 


Stiles’ Human Physiology 


This new physiology is particularly adapted for high schools and general colleges. It is 
written by a teacher who has not lost the point of view of elementary students. Professor 
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prehension. This he does by the use of homely similes and happy teaching devices. 


12mo of 400 pages, illustrated. By Percy Go~pruwair STILEs, Assistant Professor of Physiology at Har- 
vard University. Cloth, $1.50 net. 


Fred’s Soil Bacteriology 


The exercises described in this book are arranged primarily for students of soil bacteri- 
ology, soil chemistry and physics, and plant pathology. As far as possible the experi- 
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12mo of 170 pages, illustrated. By E. B. FRED, Pu.D.,"Associate Professor of Agricultural Bacteriology, College 
of Agriculture, University of Wisconsin. Cloth, $1.25 net. 


i 3 
Herrick’s Neurology 
Professor Herrick’s new work is sufficiently elementary to be used by students of elemen- 
tary psychology in colleges and normal schools, by students of general zoology and com- 
parative anatomy, and by medical students as a key to the interpretation of the larger 
works in neurology. 


12mo of 360 pages, illustrated. By C. Jupson Herrick, Ph.D., Professor of Neurology in the University"of 
Chicago. Cloth, $1.75 net. 


Winslow’s Prevention of Disease 


This book gives briefly the means to avoid disease. The chapters on diet, exercise, tea, 
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12mo of 348 pages, illustrated. By KENELM WINSLow, M.D.,' formerly AssistantZ Professorof Comparative 
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Brady’s Personal Health 


This book is quite different from other health books. It is written by a physician with 
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Send for ‘Wealth and Health” booklet] 


W. B. SAUNDERS COMPANY Philadelphia and London 


SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


THE 
PRINCIPLES OF 
STRATIGRAPHY 


BY 


AMADEUS W. GRABAU, S.M., S.D. 


PROFESSOR OF PALEONTOLOGY IN 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


* Should be on the reference shelf of every col- 
lege, normal school, and large high school in the 
United States.”—Journal of Geography, Vol. XIIi, 
Jan. 1915. 


8vo, 1150 pages, 264 illustrations. Price, $7.50 


Descriptive Circular Sent upon Request 


A. G. SEILER & CO. 
NEW YORK CITY 


The Microscope 


12th Edition, Published April 10, 1917 
Re-Written and largely Re-Illustrated 


By SIMON HENRY GAGE of Cornell University 
Postpaid $3.00 
COMSTOCK PUBLISHING CO., Ithaca, N. Y. 


Memoirs of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and 
Biclogy. No. 6, 1915 


THE RAT 


Data and Reference Tables. 278 Pages. 89 Tables. 
Biblio raphy. 

Compiled and Edited by HENRY H. DONALDSON. 
Postpaid $3.00. 


The Wistar Institute Philadelphia, Pa. 


The Ellen Richards Research Prize 


The Naples Table Association for Promoting 
Laboratory Research by Women announces the offer 
of a research prize of $1000.00 for the best thesis 
written by an American woman embodying new ob- 
servations and new conclusions based on independent 
laboratory research in Biology (including Psy- 
chology), Chemistry or Physics. Papers published 
before 1916 will not be considered and theses pre- 
sented for a Ph.D. degree are not eligible. Theses 
offered in competition must be in the hands of the 
Chairman of the Committee on the Prize before 
February 25, 1918. Application blanks may be ob- 
tained from the secretary, Mrs. Ada Wing Mead, 
823 Wayland Avenue, Providence, R. I. 


Fascinating Jungle Studies of Jungle Life 


TROPICAL WILD LIFE 


IN BRITISH GUIANA 


Being Zoological Contributions to science, from the Tropical Research 
Station of the New York Zoological Society, at Kalacoon, 1916 


By Witu1am Breese, G. InNess Harttey and Pau G. Howss, with an introduction by 
CoLoNEL THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
Octavo, cloth, gilt top and side stamp, 504 pages, 4 colored plates and 140 other illustrations 
This remarkable volume sets an entirely new pace in the study of wild life. The three 


naturalist authors went to a South American jungle 


that was teeming with animal life, lived there 


under most advantageous conditions, and for several months indulged in a genuine orgy of observa- 
tions and studies of tropical wild life as that life was lived and developed from day today. The key- 
note was the evolution and development of interesting and little known forms. 

The studies so beautifully revealed in this fascinating volume embrace such bird species as 
the wonderful tree-climbing hoatzin, various toucans, tinamou, jacanas, anis, nighthawks, fly- 
catchers, antbirds and many others. The reptiles were the giant marine toad, the deadly bush- 
master, and alligators; and great work was done among the wasps. 

The volume tells the whole story of the Research Station, its work and surroundings. It 
shows how it will expand in the future, offering splendid opportunities for investigation to pro- 


fessors, students and nature lovers. 


As a vivid exposition of tropical life in a rich South American 


jungle, it is unique and unrivalled. The wealth of skillfully made photographs, colored plates, 
maps and diagrams, brings the whole of the subject matter into the reader’s grasp. 

Only 500 copies are available for sale outside the Society. 

Price $3.00 net. Average of postage 15 cents extra. Special price to all members of the New 
York Zoological Society $2.00 net, postage 8 cents extra. 


Remit to H. RAYMOND MITCHELL, Chief Clerk, New York Zoological Park, 
New York City. 


CIENCE 


Fripay, NovEMBER 30, 1917 


CONTENTS 

The Production of Scientific Knowledge: Dr. 

CPE IRENNETHS MES! elope jetetcheciereielsceteres el « 519 
The Department of Agriculture and the Food 

WS ELULALLOTU Mtn acclnrolaxciolcleketste elon eisterciere 528 
The Pittsburgh Meeting of the American Asso- 

ciation for the Advancement of Science ... 5380 
Scientific Events :— 

Smithsonian Excavations in New Mexico; 

Progress in Combating Hookworm; The 

British Committee for Scientific and In- 

dustrial Research; A Tribute to Professor 

ORAS Gogo pacaKobanon ORO des noe ooaoen 532 
Scientific Notes and News ..........-..0.+. 536 
University and Educational News .......... 538 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

The Manufacture of Optical Glass in Amer- 

ica: Dr. P. G, Nurrine. A Note on the 

“*Age and Area’’ Hypothesis: PROFESSOR 

EDWARD BW a BERR Vig.) yeerieytacitoeeinecian 538 
Scientific Books :— 

McClendon on the Physical Chemistry of 

Vital Phenomena: Proressor RaupyH S. 

Liz. Bailey’s Text-book of Sanitary 

and Applied Chemistry: Proressor W. P. 

MEAS ONY A aie late ecole re)nisj/stists rs 2's crate) eb sere bons eta 540 
Special Articles :— 

The Uffington Shale of West Virginia and 

its Supposed Marine Fauna: Proressor W. 

ARMSTRONG PRIOR) «:c1s\«\-\jeyoiclersieeeeriieae oe 540 
The American Chemical Society ............ 542 


MSS. intended for publication and books, ete., intended for 
review shoula be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


THE PRODUCTION OF SCIENTIFIC 
KNOWLEDGE? 


THE great value of scientifie research 
both ‘to the industries and to the nations at 
large is now generally recognized through- 
out the world and the last few years have 
seen a remarkable increase in the efforts 
made to stimulate the production of scien- 
tific knowledge. In 1914 the American As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science 
appointed a Committee of One Hundred to 
inquire into the steps which should be 
taken for the increase of scientific research 
in the United States and the work of this 
committee has been continued and ex- 
panded by the National Research Council. 
Among the European nations there is a 
great awakening to the national value of 
scientific research. The British government 
has appointed a Department of the Privy 
Council to deal with the subject, while it is 
announced that in France a new national 
laboratory on a very large scale has been 
projected. In Australia the government 
has appointed a special department to con- 
sider what steps should be taken for the or- 
ganization and development of research 
work in the Commonwealth, and in Canada 
the matter has been the subject of govern- 
ment inquiry and solicitude. 

The increase of scientific knowledge can 
be divided into three steps: first, the pro- 
duction of new knowledge by means of 
laboratory research; second, the publica- 
tion of this knowledge in the form of papers 
and abstracts of papers; third, the diges- 
tion of the new knowledge and its absorp- 

1 Being a paper read before the Rochester Sec- 


tion of the Optical Society of America, October 23, 
1917, 


520 


tion into the general mass of information 
by critical comparison with other experi- 
ments on the same or similar subjects. 
The whole process, in fact, may be likened 
to the process of thought. We have first 
the perception by means of the senses. The 
percept is then stored in the memory and 
in the mind is compared with other previ- 
ously stored percepts, and finally forms 
with them a conception. 

I desire in this paper to consider the 
methods by which these three sections of 
the production of knowledge may be car- 
ried on, to suggest an arrangement of lab- 
oratories to produce experimental results 
dealing with any branch of science, then to 
consider how the knowledge so obtained 
may best be stored and classified and finally 
the methods to be employed to make the 
results of scientific research available for 
application. 


1. RESEARCH WORK 


The agencies engaged in scientific re- 
search are of several kinds. The tradi- 
tional home of research work is in the 
university, and the bulk of the scientific 
production of the world comes from institu- 
tions connected with teaching. The indus- 
tries are more and more supporting re- 
search laboratories, a large number of 
which contribute to the general fund of 
scientific knowledge by publishing the re- 
sults which they obtain, and some of which 
are engaged upon purely scientific work of 
no mean order. Consulting and technical 
laboratories engaged in industrial work 
make frequent contributions to science, and 
there are some very important laboratories 
engaged in pure research work which are 
supported by philanthropic foundations. 

The classification of research laborator- 
jes is not altogether an easy task. They 
may obviously be classified according to 
the source of the funds which support 
them; that is, we may classify them as uni- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


versity laboratories, industrial laborator- 
ies, government laboratories, institution 
laboratories, and so on, but if we look at 
them simply in the light of the research 
undertaken, this does not seem to be alto- 
gether a logical classification since there is 
little distinction between the work done in 
some university laboratories and some in- 
dustrial laboratories, and the work of the © 
government and institution laboratories 
again overlaps that of the two former 
classes. 

The University of Pittsburgh, for in- 
stance, has an industrial laboratory where 
definitely technical problems are dealt 
with. The research work on photometry 
done at Nela Park and at Cornell Univer- 
sity would seem to be similar in kind, and 
work on physical chemistry or on the struc- 
ture of chemical compounds is of the same 
type, requires the same class of workers, 
and produces the same results, whether it 
be done in a university, in a laboratory of 
the Carnegie Institution or in such an in- 
dustrial laboratory as that of the General 
Electric Company. It is equally difficult 
to classify laboratories according to the 
purpose for which researches are avowedly 
carried on. Most university laboratories 
are willing to undertake work of industrial 
value, and, indeed, some specialize in such 
problems; while many industrial labora- 
tories are quite willing to carry out a re- 
search of purely academic and theoretical 
interest provided the problems involved 
bear a relation to the general work of the 
laboratory. 

A useful classification of laboratories can, 
however, be obtained if we consider 
whether the problems investigated in a lab- 
oratory are all connected with one common 
subject or whether the problems are of 
many kinds, having no connecting bond of 
jnterest. I would suggest that the first 
type of laboratory might be called ‘‘con- 


NovEMBER 30, 1917] 


wergent’’ laboratories and the second ‘‘di- 
vergent.’’’ 

In the ‘‘divergent’’ group of laborator- 
jes are included all those institutions 
where research is carried on which are in- 
terested in science in general or in science 
as applied to industry and which will at- 
tack any problem which may seem to prom- 
ise progress in knowledge or, in the case of 
an industrial laboratory, financial return. 
Most university laboratories are of this 
type. When they devote themselves to spe- 
cial problems it is usually because of the 
predilection of some professor, and as a 
general rule a student or instructor may 
choose any problem in the whole field of 
the science in which he is working and may 
carry out an investigation on that problem 
if he be interested in it without regard to 
the relation of his work to the other work 
which is carried on in the same laboratory. 

Correspondingly, in most industrial lab- 
oratories the problems investigated are 
those which present themselves as a result 
of factory experience or of suggestions 

‘from the men working in the laboratory 
and which promise financial return, and 
the different problems carried on in the 
same laboratory are not necessarily related 
in any way whatever. 

The greater number of university and in- 
dustrial laboratories are necessarily of this 
type. It would be a disadvantage for a 
university laboratory, whose primary busi- 
ness is training students, to be too nar- 
rowly specialized. Specialized university 
laboratories are only desirable in the case 
of post-graduate students, and it would be 
wery inadvisable to allow the laboratories 
responsible for the general training of sci- 
entific men to specialize in one branch of 
science, since as a result the students would 
acquire a proper acquaintance with only a 
limited portion of their subject. 

Industrial laboratories, on the other 
hand, must necessarily be prepared to deal 


SCIENCE 


521 


with any problems presented by the works, 
and as these will be of all kinds, covering 
generally the whole field of physics, chem- 
istry and engineering, it is impossible for 
the usual works laboratory to specialize ex- 
cept in so far as it deals with the works 
processes themselves. 

In the ‘‘convergent’’ laboratories, how- 
ever, although the actual investigations 
may cover as great a range of science as 
those undertaken in a ‘‘divergent’’ labora- 
tory, yet all those investigations are di- 
rected toward a common end; that is, 
towards the elucidation of associated prob- 
lems related to one subject. Thus, the staff 
of the Geophysical Laboratory, which in- 
cludes physicists, geologists, erystallog- 
raphers, mineralogists and chemists, works 
on the structure of the rocks, and although 
the field of the actual investigations ranges 
from high temperature photometry to the 
physical chemistry of the phase rule, yet 
the results of all the work carried out are 
converged on the problem of the structure 
and the origin of the earth’s crust. 

The Nela Park Laboratory, in the same 
way, is studying the production, distribu- 
tion and measurement of illumination, and 
all its work, which may involve physiology, 
physics and chemistry, is related to that 
one subject. Such convergent laboratories 
sometimes develop in universities owing to 
the intense interest of a professor in a 
single subject and to the enthusiasm which 
inspires students and assistants to collabo- 
rate with him and to concentrate all their 
energies on the same group of problems. 
There are many examples of such labora- 
tories, such as the laboratories dealing with 
radio-activity, and those which are con- 
cerned chiefly with spectroscopy. Among 
others may be mentioned the Cavendish 
Laboratory at Cambridge and several of 
the larger university laboratories which 
deal with the physical chemistry of solu- 
tions. 


922 


But these university laboratories are 
rarely able to concentrate on to the group 
of problems which they are studying spe- 
cialists from such different branches of 
science as are available for similar labora- 
tories outside the universities owing to the 
fact that it is very difficult to obtain inter- 
departmental cooperation in research in a 
university. In a specialized laboratory, on 
the other hand, workers in all branches of 


PHYSICS 


GLOYYIETICAL OPTICS FHYSCAL OPTICS 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


The purpose of this laboratory is the in- 
vestigation of the scientific foundations of 
photography and its applications, every- 
thing relating to photography in all its 
Joranches and applications being of inter- 
est. The branches of science which are of 
chief importance in photographie problems 
are those of optics in physics and of the col- 
loidal, physical and organic branches of 
chemistry, and the relations of these sci- 


CHEPUSTRY 


COLLOOCHELUSTRY FUYS(AL CHEYUSTRY ORGANIC CHEPHISTRY | 


bee 


_ CAMERAS, LENSES COOPAULTERS Mk UNAMID ETE EPIMSIONS DEVELZOING AGENTS 
ae 
SENS/TOMETRY ————_T HOR OF DEVELOPYTEN, 
ee EXPOSURE \ 
cle age 4 UREA 
PHOTOGRAPHY 


Vas ATEUP PHAGE Y §=PORTRTURE CINEPATOGRAPHY 


AP2UED & SCIENTIFIC PHOLOGAPHY 


COLOP PHOTOGHAPHY FHOTO ENGRAVING. 


Fie. 1. 


science may well collaborate in the investi- 
gation of problems representing different 
points of view of one general subject. 

In addition to the examples of industrial 
and institutional laboratories mentioned 
above I should like to illustrate the struc- 
ture of a convergent laboratory, if I may be 
forgiven for doing so. by referring to the 
organization of the research laboratory 
with which I am connected—that of the 
Eastman Kodak Company. 


ences to photographic problems are shown 
in graphic form in Fig. 1. 

Optics deals on its geometrical side with 
the materials used in photography—cam- 
eras, lenses, shutters, ete.-—and on its phys- 
ical side with such materials as color filters 
and iluminants, but especially with the 
study of the relation of the photographie 
image to the light by means of which it was 
produced—a study which is known by the 
name of sensitometry. The manufacture 


NoveMBER 30, 1917] 


of the sensitive material itself, which in the 
ease of modern photographic plates, films 
and paper is called the emulsion, is a proy- 
ince of colloid and physical chemistry, col- 
loid chemistry dealing with the precipita- 
tion and nature of the sensitive silver salts 
formed in their gelatine layer, while phys- 
ical chemistry informs us as to the nature 


PHYSICS 


FEFLECT/IAV AND 
ABSORETIN 


COLLUID 
CHE/USTRY 


DEVELOWS 
AGENTS 


of the reactions which go on, both in the 
formation of the sensitive substance and in 
its subsequent development after exposure. 

The organic chemist prepares the reduc- 
ing agents required for development and 
the dyes by which color sensitiveness is 
given to the photographic materials and by 
which the art of color photography can be 
carried on, and while the physicist there- 


SCIENCE 


CBE, TRUAL OPTICS: 
FAY WORK 
COLOR =CAAP SENSITIVE 
LAER FILTERS BIE VOOT/ON PXTURE VIORK 
Sy, 


523 


fore deals with sensitometry and the theory 
of exposure, the chemist must deal at the 
same time with the theory of development 
and with the conditions relating to the de- 
velopment of photographie images. 

A laboratory, therefore, for the study of 
photographie problems must be arranged 
with a number of sections such as are 


COLORUIETAY SL ROXOEX 


SPIOTO LWGKA VING 


Ahoy DOLOHA 


PORTA ORE 


PHTOGEAPHIC CHE UST RY 


shown in Fig. 2. In physics we require 
departments dealing with sensitometry and 
with illumination, reflection and absorption, 
colorimetry, spectroscopy and geometrical 
optics. We need a department of colloid 
chemistry, one of physical chemistry, one 
of organic chemistry, one of photo-chemis- 
try to deal with the action of light upon 
the plate, and finally a number of photo- 


524 


graphic departments, dealing with photo- 
graphic chemistry, with portraiture, color 
photography, photo-engraving, motion pic- 
ture work and X-ray work, and all these 
departments are converged together first 
upon the theory, and then upon the prac- 
tise, of photography. 


PHYSICS 


Each research specialist in the labora- 
tory is given work corresponding to a lim- 
ited field of science, so that while his special 
attention is devoted to that one depart- 
ment his field of activity just overlaps that 
of the departments on each side of him, 
while his general knowledge of the subject 
should, of course, cover a much wider 
range. It is important that each man 
should have his own special field of work 
and that overlapping should not be com- 
plete since such complete overlapping will 
inevitably produce friction destructive of 
cooperation and harmony. The way in 
which such a subdivision is arranged may 
perhaps be best illustrated by Fig. 8, which 
shows the range of the specific investiga- 
tions of those who in our laboratory cover 
the range of research work between sensi- 
tometry and pure physical chemistry. 
There are five workers in this range; the 
first, A, being a pure physicist; B, a physi- 
cist with a considerable experience of chem- 
istry ; C, a physical chemist who has special- 
jzed in photography; D, a_ physical 
chemist who has specialized in photographic 
theory; and HZ, a pure physical chemist. 
The interest of each of these workers over- 
laps the field of the other workers but 
nevertheless each of them has his own spe- 


SCIENCE 


LN. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


cific problem, his own equipment and appa- 
ratus. Thus, A and B use sensitometric 
apparatus chiefly; C, both sensitometrie 
apparatus and the thermostatic and elec- 
trical equipment of physical chemistry ; D, 
microscopic apparatus and chemical appa- 
ratus dealing with the precipitation of 


D E 


CHEMISTRY 


silver salts; and Z, the analytical and solu- 
bility apparatus of chemistry. 

The whole of this range is also connected 
with colloid chemistry and especially the 
overlap of the different sections involves 
colloid problems, so that we can consider 
colloid chemistry as dealing with the inter- 
relations of the different sections of photo- 
graphic chemistry and can represent its 
province in the diagram by shading the 
overlapping areas. The colloid division of 
the laboratory will therefore be interested 
in the work of each of the specific investi- 
gators and will be of assistance to all of 
them. 

These charts, prepared for a photographie 
laboratory, are equally applicable in form 
for almost any other convergent laboratory, 
so that if we have to work out the organi- 
zation of a research-laboratory which is to 
study any inter-related group of problems, 
we can do it by the construction of charts 
similar to these. Thus, considering Fig. 1, 
we place first at the bottom of the chart the 
general subject considered and its various 
branches and then above these the scientific 
problems involved, separating out on oppo- 
site sides of the chart those problems which 
would involve different branches of pure 
science. Thus, we can place on one side 


NoveMBER 30, 1917] 


biological problems, then physical prob- 
lems, then chemical problems and so on, so 
reconstructing a chart similar to Chart 1 
from the bottom up until at the top we 
have the various branches of pure science 
involved, subdividing these branches until 
each subdivision represents the work ca- 
pable of being handled by one man in the 
laboratory. 

It will now be possible to draw Fig. 2, 
showing on the cireumference the different 
sections of the laboratory for which ac- 
commodation, apparatus and men must be 
provided and showing the relation of these 
sections to the problem as a whole, and 
having worked this out it is easy to find the 
amount of space and the number of men 
which will be required or which the funds 
available will allow for each part of the 
work. 

Specialized laboratories may originate in 
various ways, but it seems clear that with 
an increasing total amount of research and 
with an increasing realization of the im- 
portance of research more laboratories will 
be developed and no doubt laboratories 
which originally were of the divergent type 
will with their growth tend to split into a 
linked group of convergent laboratories. 
Consider, for instance, a very large indus- 
trial research laboratory covering a wide 
field of research and dealing with many 
different types of problems. There are two 
types of organization possible to such a 
laboratory. It might be divided according 
to the branches of science in which the 
workers were proficient. It might have, for 
instance, chemical divisions, physical divi- 
sions, and so on, but if the groups of prob- 
lems dealt with were reasonably permanent 
in their character it would more probably 
develop into a group of convergent labora- 
tories in which men from different branches 
of science—chemists, physicists and so on— 
worked together (and probably even had 
their working places in proximity) because 


SCIENCE 


525 


they were working on the same general 
problem. Any national laboratory which 
is developed for industrial research, for 
instance, should almost certainly be organ- 
ized as a group of convergent laboratories 
rather than as a group of separate physical, 
chemical, engineering, etc., laboratories. 

We may expect then that the general or- 
ganization of scientific research will tend 
towards the production of numbers of spe- 
cialized laboratories, each of which will be 
working on an inter-related group of prob- 
lems and attacking it from various stand- 
points. 

Some of the questions relating to the in- 
ternal organization suitable for these con- 
vergent laboratories have already been dis- 
cussed in a former paper? and I need only 
add here that the ‘‘conference’’ system de- 
scribed there as a method of actually carry- 
ing on the scientific work of the research 
laboratory has continued to prove quite 
satisfactory. 

2. THE CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENTIFIC 

KNOWLEDGE 

The work of the research laboratories is 
published by various methods in the form 
of scientific papers, and with the increas- 
ing amount of research done the number of 
technical journals is increasing steadily, 
so that the workers in most branches of 
science find it difficult to keep up ade- 
quately with the current literature and 
especially those who become interested in 
the light thrown upon their own problem 
by other branches of science find it a task 
of great magnitude to acquaint themselves 
adequately with the literature. In order 
to meet this difficulty the various scientific 
societies publish journals giving abstracts 
in-a conveniently indexed form of all the 
important papers published, and these ab- 
stract journals are of great value in search- 
ing for information on special subjects. 


2‘¢The Organization of Industrial Scientific Re- 
search,’’ SCIENCE, 1916, p. 763. 


526 


In spite of these abstract journals the 
task of obtaining all the references to the 
literature on a given subject is still a 
formidable one and might be very much 
simplified by the adoption of some radical 
changes in the organization of the abstrac- 
tion and classification of scientific knowl- 
edge. 

In the first place, there seems to be no 
reason why abstracts of scientific papers 
should be prepared by the national so- 
cieties. At present, for instance, there are 
at least four complete sets of abstracts of 
chemical papers prepared in different coun- 
tries, together with a number of less com- 
plete sets, and this represents a great over- 
lapping and duplication of effort. On the 
other hand, sciences which have not so 
many or so wealthy workers as chemistry 
ean not afford to produce any complete ab- 
stract journals, so that in these sciences 
reference to the literature is much more 
difficult. There seems to be no reason why 
an interchange of abstracts between differ- 
ent countries could not be arranged and, 
indeed, it might be the best method of ob- 
taining abstracts to have the author of a 
paper supply an abstract suitable in form 
and length for the abstract journal at the 
same time that he sends his paper in to the 
journal which publishes it. The editor of 
that journal could suggest modifications in 
the abstract which in his opinion were de- 
sirable and forward both the corrected and 
uncorrected abstract to the editor of the 
abstract office, where it would be re-edited 
for insertion in the international abstract 
journals and these journals would, of 
course, be supported by subscriptions 
either through the societies or individuals 
in the same way as the abstract journals 
which are at present published. 

Whether such an ambitious scheme of 
international scientific abstracts is capable 
of realization or not, reference to the ab- 
stract journals would be made much 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


simpler if some method of numerical classi- 
fication could be adopted. 

In this connection, an experiment has 
been made in the last two years at the lab- 
oratory of the Hastman Kodak Company 
which has proved successful and which 
seems to be worth trying on a larger scale. 
The laboratory publishes each month for 
the use of the employees of the company an 
abstract bulletin of the photographic jour- 
nals, including also abstracts from other 
scientific journals which have any relation 
to photographic problems or manufacture, 
the abstracts being made by the laboratory 
staff, and attached to each abstract is a ref- 
erence number: These numbers refer to a 
numerical classification of photography 
based somewhat on a decimal system but 
adapted to the special needs of the subject. 
Each month as the bulletin is issued the 
abstracts are clipped out, pasted on cards 
and filed under the number printed on 
them in numerical order so that each recip- 
ient of the bulletin can prepare for himself 
a file either of all photographic literature 
or of any portion of it in which he may be 
specially interested. For example, in the 
classification photographic apparatus com- 
mences with the number ‘‘2,’’ and if any 
particular worker is not interested in any- 
thing but apparatus, if he has no interest 
in materials or in photographic processes 
or in applications of photography, then he 
need only file the cards starting with ‘‘2,”’ 
while, if his interests are even more lim- 
ited, if, for instance, he is interested only 
in photographic shutters, he can file the 
cards starting with ‘‘262’’ thus obtaining 
only a very limited file which is, however, 
complete for the subject in which his inter- 
est lies. 

If the abstract journals would print such 
a numerical classification attached to each 
abstract, adopting as their basis either the 
numerical classifications of the interna- 
tional catalogue of scientific literature, 


NovEMBER 30, 1917] 


which have proved themselves satisfactory 
after trial, or some different classification 
adopted after due consideration, then each 
recipient of the abstract journals could 
prepare for himself card index files of the 
scientific literature in which he was inter- 
ested. 

To prepare a card index of all science or 
even a complete index of one large branch 
of science in this way would be too 
formidable an undertaking either for 
an individual or even for a small library, 
but it should certainly be possible for large 
libraries such as those of the scientific so- 
cieties or of large cities to keep such nu- 
merically indexed files to which reference 
could be made by correspondence from any 
research worker. Thus, adopting the 
classification of the international catalogue, 
a worker who became interested in ques- 
tions, e. g., of catalysis, could apply for a 
copy of the reference cards on this subject, 
which would include all those indexed 
under 7065 and could be supplied with a 
complete file or with a partial file covering 
any period of time; the copies could easily 
be made by photographing the cards with 
such a camera as the ‘‘Photostat.’’ 


3. THE UTILIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC 
KNOWLEDGE 


The actual application of science to in- 
dustry is so vast a subject that it can not 
be considered here, but it is not satisfac- 
tory to leave the results of research at the 
point where they are published in papers 
and filed in the abstract journals. In 
order to make them available as a part of 
scientific knowledge the new information 
as it is obtained must be incorporated in 
books. 

There are three classes of books dealing 
with scientific work which require separate 
consideration. The first class comprises the 
dictionaries, in which almost all the prog- 
ress in some branches of science can con- 


SCIENCE 


527 


veniently be summarized.  Beilstein’s 
“Handbook of Organic Chemistry”? is a 
good example of the way in which almost 
all the facts of a science can be absorbed in 
a classified form and made available for 
ready reference. These dictionaries, in 
fact, represent the critical and discrimina- 
ting summary of the scientific publications 
on the subjects with which they deal and 
the preparation of such dictionaries should 
be ensured by international cooperation of 
the national societies. 

Other sciences, however, do not by their 
nature lend themselves to the convenient 
preparation of dictionaries and what is 
wanted in this case are critical and well ar- 
ranged handbooks covering the whole sci- 
ence and resuming impartially but criti- 
cally the various additions which are made 
from time to time in the different branches 
of the subject. These handbooks as well as 
the dictionaries would, of course, require 
the addition of supplementary volumes 
from time to time and occasional complete 
revision. 

The preparation of both dictionaries and 
handbooks would, of course, be greatly fa- 
cilitated by the existence of a numerically 
classified card index to the literature con- 
cerned, and the preparation and revision of 
such books might well be undertaken in con- 
nection with the large libraries having in 
their possession the complete classified card 
indexes. 

On the other hand, for the assistance of 
advanced students of science, what is re- 
quired is a steady supply of monographs 
correlating critically and comprehensively 
all the literature in a special field, and 
these must be brought up-to-date from time 
to time. Such monographs are especially 
required in connection with rapidly devel- 
oping new branches of science; it is difficult 
to overestimate the importance and value 
for progress in research of such a book as 
Bragg’s ‘‘X-Rays and Crystal Structure’’ 


528 


for instance, and while nothing should be 
done to hinder individual initiative in pub- 
lishing such books, it would seem that when 
it was apparent that some branch of sci- 
ence required such a monograph a national 
society might very well approach well- 
known workers in the field and request 
them to write such a book, offering its as- 
sistance in the matter of bibliography and 
also offering to arrange for the publication 
of the manuscript. The initiative in indi- 
eating the need for such a book might come 
in the form of suggestions from members 
of the society or other scientific men. It is 
quite true that at the present time the sci- 
entific publishers are extremely active in 
searching for suitable books to publish, but 
necessarily they must consider the probable 
demand rather than the actual need for a 
book, and this leads to an over-production 
of books dealing with those fields of science 
which have a large following and an insuffi- 
cient supply of books in those fields where 
the workers are few, though for progress 
the more sparsely worked fields would seem 
to require almost as much representation 
in literature as those which are of wider in- 
terest. 
C. E. KennerH Mess 


RESEARCH LABORATORY, 
Eastman Kopak CoMPANY, 

Rocuester, N. Y., 

October 26, 1917 


THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
AND THE FOOD SITUATION! 


Accorpine to the calendar it is almost 
a year to the day since my last meeting with 
you. Judged by the experiences through 
which we have passed, it seems more like a 
generation. Then this country was at peace, 
though its patience was being sorely tried. 


1¥From an address given by Secretary of Agri- 
culture Houston, addressing the Thirty-first An- 
nual Convention of the Association of American 
Agricultural Colleges and Experimental Stations 
in Washington on November 14. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Von. XLVI. No. 1196 


Now it is at war for reasons which I need 
not discuss before this body. It had no alter- 
native. It either had to fight or to admit that 
it had no honor, was not a free nation, and 
would henceforth be subjected to a medieval 
power that in the last analysis knows no law 
but might. The nation was living on a peace 
basis and was not fully prepared for war 
in any respect; but it was fortunately circum- 
stanced in the character of its agricultural 
organization and the number and efficiency 
of its expert agencies. 

The nation may well pride itself on the 
fact that it had had the foresight generations 
ago to lay deep its agricultural foundations. 
I congratulate the representatives of the land 
grant colleges on the fine opportunity for 
service presented to them and on the splen- 
did way in which they have seized it. The 
Department of Agriculture has had great 
comfort in the thought that these institutions, 
ably planned and wisely directed, existed in 
every part of the nation and stood ready not 
only to place themselves at the service of the 
national government but also to take the 
initiative in a vast number of directions. 

When a state of war was declared on April 
6, the food situation was unsatisfactory. The 
need of action was urgent and the appeal for 
direction was insistent. The nation looked 
for guidance primarily to the federal depart- 
ment and to the state agencies which it had so 
liberally supported for many generations. It 
was not disappointed. In a two-days’ session 
at St. Louis, the trained agricultural officers 
of the country conceived and devised a pro- 
gram of legislation, organization and prac- 
tise the essential features of which have not 
been successfully questioned and the sub- 
stantial part of which has been enacted into 
law and set in operation. This great democ- 
racy revealed its inherent strength. 

To the normal forces of the government 
leading with agriculture and rural problems 
there has been added an emergency agency 
with great and unusual powers, with enorm- 
ous possibilities for good, and with a remark- 


NovEMBER 30, 1917] 


able record for achievements already to its 
eredit. It has enlisted in its ranks men of 
wide experience, fine spirit, and high ideals, 
many of whom are gladly volunteering their 
services for the common cause. I refer to 
the Food Administration under the direction 
of Mr. Hoover. 

The relation between this agency and the 
other organized agricultural forces of the 
nation is intimate dnd fundamental. It is 
impossible completely tto disassociate them and 
it would be undesirable to do so. 

The problem in part is a common one, and 
it is of the first importance that the work 
be. done in the closest cooperation and with 
an eye single for the public good. There is 
no need for undue duplication of effort and 
no causes of friction which can not be re- 
moved through an intelligent conception by 
each agency of the powers and purposes of all 
and by a spirit of mutual accommodation. In 
a broad way it is agreed that the prime func- 
tion of the Department of Agriculture shall 
be the stimulation of production, the con- 
servation of products on the farm through 
all the normal and approved processes, the 
promotion of better marketing and distribu- 
tion of products from the farms to the 
markets, the prosecution of the work in home 
economics along usual lines, the dissemina- 
tion of information, and the extension of all 
these activities as authorized by law. In a 
similar way the principal function of the 
Food Administration is the control and 
regulation of commercial distribution of 
foods; that is, of products which have reached 
the markets, are in the channels of distribu- 
tion or in the hands of consumers, their con- 
servation by consumers, the elimination of 
waste, and the handling of foods and feeds 
in the market by legal means through its 
regular officials as well as through its volun- 
teer agencies. 

In the main the Department of Agriculture 
deals with all the processes of farming up 
to the time products reach the market until 
they are in the requisite form for consump- 
tion and are available for the purpose. At 


SCIENCE 


529 


this point the Food Administration enters 
and exercises its wide powers of regulation, 
direction, and suggestion. Where the Food 
Administration through its powers can be 
of assistance to the Deparament of Agricul- 
ture in its field, it is at liberty freely to 
make suggestion, and, when necessary, to co- 
operate in execution; and the same relation 
obtains as to the department’s participation 
in Food Administration matters in which it 
has a vital interest and toward the promo- 
tion of which it can be of assistance. This is 
the substance of the agreement originally 
entered into between the Food Administra- 
tion and the Department of Agriculture, and 
will be more satisfactorily observed as the 
agents and divisions of the two departments 
familiarize themselves more fully with their 
tasks and with the prescribed lines of effort. 

Obviously the making of a program for 
the agricultural activities of the nation did 
not end with the St. Louis conference. 
Thought, action, and cooperation between the 
members of this association and other state 
agencies on the one hand and the federal 
department on the other have been continu- 
ous. Attention has been given without cessa- 
tion to problems in the field of labor. It was 
obvious that difficulties would be presented 
and that apprehension would run beyond the 
actual condition. An army could not be 
raised without taking men from every field 
of activity; and it would have been unfair 
to any class of workers in the community 
to have proposed its exemption. It was im- 
possible in the haste of the first draft satis- 
factorily to work out in detail the principle 
of selective service; but, nevertheless, under 
the regulations, consideration was given 
throughout by exemption boards and by the 
officers of the War Department to the needs 
of agriculture. With ampler time at its dis- 
posal, the War Department has worked out a 
system of classification which gives due re- 
gard to the necessity of retaining skilled 
farmers and expert agricultural leaders on the 
farms and ranches and in the educational and 
administrative services. 


530 


THE PITTSBURGH MEETING OF THE 
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR 
THE ADVANCEMENT OF 
SCIENCE 
THE opening session will be held on Thurs- 
day evening at 8 o’clock in the Carnegie Music 
Hall. After general announcements concern- 
ing the Convocation Week meetings, the re- 
tiring president of the Association, Dr. 
Charles R. Van Hise, will deliver his ad- 
dress on “The economic effects of the world 
war in the United States.” Following the 
president’s address, a reception will be ten- 
dered to the members of the association and 
the affiliated societies in the foyer of the 

Music Hall. 

The addresses of the retiring vice-presi- 
dents, to be delivered throughout the week, 
are as follows: 


Section A. Luther P. Hisenhart The Kinemat- 
ical Generation of Surfaces. 

Section B. Henry A. Bumstead. Present Tend- 
encies in Theoretical Physics. 

Section ©. Julius Stieglitz. The Electron Theory 
of Valence and its Application to Problems of 
Inorganic and Organic Chemistry. 

Section D. Henry M. Howe. Some Needs of En- 
gineering. 

Section E. Rollin D. Salisbury. 
tional Value of Geology. 

Section F. George H. Parker. An Underlying 
Principle in the Architecture of the Nervous 
System. 

Section G. C. Stuart Gager. 
of Botany in America. 

Section H. Frederick W. Hodge. 
Pueblo of Hawikuh. 

Section I. Louis I. Dublin. 
our Declining Birth Rate. 

Section K. Edwin O. Jordan. 
fections. 

Section L. 
dress. ) 

Section M. Whitman H. Jordan. The Future of 
Agricultural Education and Research in the 
United States. 


The Educa- 


The Near Future 
The Ancient 
The Significance of 
Food-borne In- 


(Leonard P. Ayres absent—no ad- 


The symposia, as far as announced, are as 
follows: 
Section F. The Value of Zoology to Humanity. 
Section E. Mineral Resources and Chemical In- 
dustries. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


Section H. The Contributions of Psychology to 

. the War. 

Section G. Forestry Problems after the War, and 
War Work of the Botanical Committee of the 
Council of National Research. ; 

Section I. Economic Problems based upon the 
World War. 

Section K. The Food Problem of to-day (or the 
Lessons of the War in Medicine). 

Section B. The Relationship of Physics to the 
War. (In cooperation with the Council of Na- 
tional Defense.) 


The Council will meet daily at 9 a.m., at 
the Schenley Hotel, which will be the hotel 
headquarters. 

Owing {to the unprecedented demand for 
railroad service for the nation’s defense, pre- 
ferential rates for individual travel have 
been tentatively abandoned. The New Eng- 
land Passenger Association, however, has au- 
thorized local fares in each direction to its 
boundary points going and returning via same 
route only and over which one-way tickets are 
regularly sold—one and one half westbound 
differentials to apply, added to fares tendered. 
The Trunk-Line Association has authorized 
the following: “Two cents a mile in each 
direction, with minimum of $1 for tthe round 
trip, going and returning via same route only; 
tickets to be sold and good, going, December 
26 to 28, and returning to reach original 
starting point not later than January 5, 1918.” 
All members living beyond the boundaries 
of the above passenger association territori- 
ties should consult their local passenger ticket 
agents. Members from west of the Missis- 
sippi should consult their local ticket agents 
for trans-continental and winter tourist rates. 

The following affiliated societies have indi- 
cated their intention to meet in Pittsburgh 
during Convocation Week: 


American Federation of Teachers of the Mathe- 
matical and the Natural Sciences—Will hold coun- 
cil meeting on Saturday, December 29, 1917, 10 
A.M. President, C. Riborg Mann. Secretary, 
William A. Hedrick, Central High School, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 

American Physical Society.—Will hold meetings 


NoveMBER 30, 1917] 


on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, December 27 
to 29, 1917, in joint session with Section B, 
A.A.AS. President, R. A. Millikan. Secretary, 
Alfred D. Cole, Ohio State University, Columbus, 
Ohio. 

Optical Society of America.—Will meet on Mon- 
day, December 31, 1917. (President, Perley G. 
Nutting, Westinghouse Research Laboratory, East 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 

American Electrochemical Society—The Pitts- 
burgh Section will meet on either Saturday, De- 
cember 29, 1917, or Wednesday, January 2, 1918. 
President, Colin G. Fink. Secretary, Pittsburgh 
Section, C. G. Schleuderberg, East Pittsburgh, Pa. 

Society for the Promotion of Engineering Edu- 
cation.—Will hold meetings on dates to be an- 
nounced. President Milo S. Ketcham. Secretary, 
F. L. Bishop, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, 
Pa. 

Illuminating Engineering Society—Will hold 
meetings on dates to be announced. President, G. 
H. Stickney. Chairman, Committee on Reciprocal 
Relations, W. A. Durgin, 72 West Adams St., 
Chicago, Ill. 

Paleontological Society of America.—Will meet 
on Monday to Wednesday, December 31, 1917, to 
January 2, 1918. President, John C. Merriam. 
Secretary, R. S. Bassler, U. S. National Museum, 
Washington, D. C. 

Seismological Society of America.—Will meet on 
dates to be announced. President, J. B. Wood- 
worth. Secretary, S. D. Townley, Stanford Uni- 
versity, Cal. 

American Society of Naturalists—wWill meet on 
Tuesday and Wednesday, January 1 and 2, 1918. 
President, George H. Shull. Secretary, Bradley 
M. Davis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadel- 
phia, Pa. 

Entomological Society of America.—Will meet 
on Friday and Saturday, December 28 and 29, 
1917. President, Lawrence Bruner. Secretary, J. 
M. Aldrich, U. S. Bureau of Entomology, West 
Lafayette, Ind. 

American Association of Economic Entomolo- 
gists—Will meet Monday to Wednesday, Decem- 
ber 31, 1917, to January 2, 1918. President, R. 
A. Cooley. Secretary, Albert F. Burgess, Melrose 
Highlands, Mass. 

Ecological Society of America.—Will meet Sat- 
urday, Monday and Tuesday, December 29, 31, 
1917, and January 1, 1918. President, Ellsworth 
Huntington. Secretary, Forrest Shreve, Easton, 
Maryland. 

American Nature-Study Society—Will meet on 


SCIENCE 


531 


dates to be announced. Secretary, Mrs. Anna B. 
Comstock, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. 

Wilson Ornithological Club.—Will meet on Tues- 
day and Wednesday, January 1 and 2, 1918. 
President, W. F. Henninger. Acting Secretary, 
T. C. Stephens, Morningside College, Sioux City, 
Towa, 

Botanical Society of America—Will meet on 
Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, December 
28, 29 and 31, 1917, and January 1. President, 
F. C. Newcombe. Secretary, H. H. Bartlett, Uni- 
versity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 

American Phytopathological Society Will meet 
Friday to Wednesday, December 28, 1917, to 
January 2, 1918. President, Mel T. Cook. Secre- 
tary, C, L. Shear, U. 8. Department of Agriculture, 
Washington, D. C. 

Society for Horticultural Science-——Will meet 
Thursday to Saturday, December 27 to 29, 1917. 
President, T. C. Johnson. Secretary, C. P. Close, 
College Park, Maryland. 

American Microscopical Society—Will hold 
meetings on Saturday, December 29, 1917, for 
transaction of business only. President, M. F. 
Guyer. Secretary, T. W. Galloway, Beloit Col- 
lege, Beloit, Wis. 

American Fern Society Will meet on dates to 
be announced. President, William Palmer. Sec- 
retary, C. A. Weatherby, 1062 Main St., East 
Hartford, Conn, 

American Psychological Association —Will meet 
on Thursday to Saturday, December 27 to 29, 1917, 
President, R. M. Yerkes. Secretary, H. S. Lang- 
feld, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 

American Metric Association—Will meet on 
dates to be announced. President, George Fred- 
erick Kunz. Secretary, Howard Richards, Jr., 
156 5th Avenue, New York, N. Y. 

Society of American Foresters—Will meet on 
dates to be announced. President, Filibert Roth. 
Secretary, Elmer R. Hodson, U. S. Forest Service, 
Washington, D. C. 

School Garden Association of America.—Will 
meet on Monday, December 31, 1917. President, 
Eyrie Kilpatrick, 124 West 30th Street, New 
York, N. Y. 

Society of the Sigma Xi.—Will meet on Satur- 
day, December 29, 1917. President, Julius 
Stieglitz. Secretary, Henry B. Ward, University 
of Illinois, Urbana, Ill. 

Gamma Alpha Graduate Scientific Fraternity. — 
Will hold annual convention and dinner on date to 
be announced. President, Norman E. Gilbert, 
Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H. 


532 


Phi Kappa Phi Fraternity —Will meet on Satur- 
day, December 29, 1917. President General, Ed- 
win E. Sparks. Secretary General, L. H. Pammel, 
Towa State College, Ames, Iowa. 

Gamma Sigma Delta.—Will meet on dates to be 
announced. President, A. V. Storm. Secretary, 
L. H. Pammel, Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa. 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
SMITHSONIAN EXCAVATIONS IN NEW MEXICO 


An expedition organized by the Bureau of 
American Ethnology of the: Smithsonian In- 
stitution and the Museum of the American 
Indian, Heye Foundation of New York City, 
under the immediate direction of Mr. F. W. 
Hodge, ethnologist-in-charge of the Bureau 
mentioned has concluded its first season of 
excavating among the ruins of Hawikuh in 
western New Mexico. This pueblo was one 
of the famed “ Seven Cities of Cibola” which 
was seen by Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan 
Friar, in 1539 and was the scene of the death 
of his negro guide and companion. In the 
following year the pueblo was stormed by 
Francisco Vasquez Coronado, the celebrated 
Spanish explorer, who almost lost his life in 
the attack. The Zuni occupants of Hawikuh 
fled to their stronghold a few miles away; the 
Spanish took possession of their village, which 
Coronado called Grenada, and while there 
wrote his report to the Viceroy of Mexico, 
giving an account of his expedition up to 
that time and sending various products of the 
country and examples of native art. 

The excavations were commenced at the 
close of May by Mr. Hodge, assisted by Mr. 
Alanson Skinner and Mr. E. F. Coffin of the 
Museum of the American Indian. Work was 
begun in a great refuse heap forming the 
western slope of the elevation on which Hawi- 
kuh is situated. This refuse was found to 
contain many burials of Zuni dead, of which 
there were three types—remains cremated and 
deposited in cinerary vessels accompanied by 
food and water vessels; others buried at 
length, or in abnormal postures without ac- 
companiments; and usually dismembered; 
others still deposited at length with head di- 
rected eastward and with them numerous 
vessels of earthenware, great quantities of 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


food, and the personal tools and ornaments of 
the deceased. In all, 237 graves were opened 
during the three months devoted to the work, 
in which quantities of pottery vessels of vari- 
ous forms and with a great range of decora- 
tive painting, were uncovered. Among burials 
of the third type mentioned were several skel- 
etons of members of the Zuni Priesthood of 
the Bow, with their war paraphernalia, in- 
cluding bows and arrows, sacred paint, war 
clubs, and their personal or ceremonial be- 
longings. 

A Franciscan mission was established at 
Hawikuh in 1639 and continued in operation 
until 1670 when the pueblo was abandoned on 
account of Apache depredations. Considering 
the length of time since the village was for- 
saken by its inhabitants, the remains were in 
a remarkably good state of preservation. The 
deposit of great quantities of food in the 
graves, especially boiled corn on the cob, had 
the effect of decaying the bones but of pre- 
serving the materials that usually more read- 
ily perish, such as baskets, fabries, and ob- 
jects of wood, many of which were saved by 
immediate treatment. Many very beautiful 
things found in association with the remains 
include 8 objects of turquoise mosaic, consist- 
ing of ornamental hair combs, ear pendants, 
and hair ornaments, some of which are so 
well executed as to be among the finest ex- 
amples of encrusted turquoise ever found in 
America, and far exceeding the mosaic work 
of the Hopi Indians in Arizona to-day. Of 
the fabrics various examples were recovered, 
and indeed in one instance the clothing of a 
woman was so well preserved that it was pos- 
sible to study the character of her dress from 
neck to feet. 

The pottery of the Hawikuh people, as 
mentioned, possesses a wide range of decora- 
tion and coloring. Most of the designs are 
geometric, but numerous highly conventional- 
ized figures of birds, as well as many lifelike 
forms of quadrupeds, the eagle, the butterfly, 
the tadpole, and the corn plant were found. 
Many of the vessels are decorated with a dis- 
tinct glaze, black and green predominating. 
The vessels consist chiefly of bowls, ranging 


NoveMBER 30, 1917] 


in size from tiny toy affairs to some as large 
as fifteen inches in diameter; but there are 
also large and small water jars, and black, 
undecorated cooking pots, duck-shaped ves- 
sels, and the like. 

The finds include, among others, the cere- 
monial paraphernalia of a medicine man, com- 
prising his medicines; a turkey’s egg con- 
taining the bones of the embryo and accom- 
panied with a food bowl; several skeletons of 
eagles, turkeys, and dogs that had been cere- 
monially buried, and deposits of pottery that 
had been broken in sacrifice and deposited in 
the cemetery not as burial accompaniments. 
It was the custom of the Zunis of Hawikuh 
to “kill” all the vessels deposited with their 
dead by throwing them into the graves, and 
this was likewise the case with other house- 
hold utensils such as metates and manos used 
in grinding corn. Some of the vessels escaped 
injury, while all of the fragments of the 
broken ones were carefully gathered and will 
be repaired. 

The site of Hawikuh covers an area of 
about 750 by 850 feet, so that only a com- 
paratively small part of the site was exca- 
vated during this season. The refuse was 
found to attain a depth of 144 feet in the 
western slope and it will probably be found 
to reach a depth of at least 18 feet before the 
walls of the summit of the elevation are 
reached. An interesting discovery consists 
of the remains of many walls entirely beneath 
this great deposit of refuse, showing that the 
site was occupied in prehistoric times long 
before Hawikuh itself was built. 


PROGRESS IN COMBATING HOOKWORM 


THE recently published annual report of 
the Rockefeller Foundation records the re- 
sults of intensive work on the study and con- 
trol of hookworm and malaria. The report 
as quoted in the Boston Medical and Surgical 
Journal states that during the year 1916 
the work of the International Health Board 
continued to be directed chiefly toward the 
relief and control of hookworm disease. In 
cooperation with the government, systematic 
efforts toward control have now been inaugu- 


SCIENCE 


533 


rated in eight of the Southern states and in 
fifteen foreign countries, located between de- 
grees of latitude 36 north and 30 south in 
the tropical and sub-tropical belt, which is 
the native habitat of the hookworm. New 
fields of operations in 1916 were Salvador, 
Brazil, Ceylon, and Siam. Arrangements 
were also completed to start work early in 
1917 in the Fiji Islands, in Papua, and in 
Queensland, Australia. 

In British Honduras and the island of 
Barbados, preliminary infection surveys were 
made, and in the Yangtsekiang valley of Cen- 
tral China a preliminary survey was carried 
out with special reference to the problem of 
soil pollution in shallow mining operations. 

The board conducted during the year a 
series of four experiments in malaria control. 
Three were finished. The fourth will be com- 
pleted in 1917. The object of all four experi- 
ments was to determine the degree to which 
malaria could be controlled within the limits 
of reasonable expenditure and under condi- 
tions prevailing in typical farm communities 
of the South. Gratifying results have been 
obtained. 

Two commissions were sent to South Amer- 
ica. One, composed of six sanitarians, with 
Maj.-Gen. William ©. Gorgas as chairman, 
visited the republics of Ecuador, Peru, Co- 
lombia, Venezuela and Brazil, to study yellow 
fever conditions. Two definite objects were 
sought: (1) to determine the status of doubt- 
ful endemic centers of infection; (2) to as- 
certain what measures were necessary and 
feasible to eradicate the disease from the lo- 
ealities responsible for its dissemination. 
The second commission investigated medical 
education and public health agencies in Bra- 
zil. 

Active measures to control and prevent 
hookworm disease are now-in operation in 
Kentucky, Louisiana, ~ Mississippi, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas 
and Virginia; in Antigua, Grenada. St. 
Lucia, St. Vincent and Trinidad of the West 
Indies; in British Guiana and Dutch Guiana; 
in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Pan- 
ama and Salvador of Central America; in 


5084 


Brazil, and in Ceylon and Siam of the Far 
East. 

Four experiments in malaria control were 
carried out during 1916 at different points in 
the Lower Mississippi River Valley. In each 
a different line of investigation was pursued, 
the object being to discover a practical method 
of control which the average rural community 
could afford. 

An experiment was conducted under the 
administration of the Mississippi Department 
of Health, with Dr. W. S. Leathers as ad- 
ministrative director and Dr. C. C. Bass of 
Tulane University as scientific director. The 
practicability of control through detecting the 
carriers and freeing them of the malaria par- 
asites was tested. The experiment covered 
925 square miles of territory, the size of the 
communities varying from nine to sixteen 
square miles, with an average population of 
1,000. Adjoining communities were taken 
up, one after another, as facilities permitted, 
the work in each lasting about four weeks 
with subsequent visits to insure thorough- 
ness. Blood tests were taken, quinine treat- 
ment was given to those found infected. The 
experiment will be continued in 1917. 


THE BRITISH COMMITTEE FOR SCIENTIFIC 
AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 


THE second annual report of the Commit- 
tee of the Privy Council for Scientific and 
Industrial Research for the year 1916-17 has 
been published. According to an article in 
Nature it consists of an introductory state- 
ment by Lord Curzon, as lord president of 
the privy council, the report of the Advisory 
Council, signed by Sir William McCormick 
and Sir Frank Health, and appendices giving 
orders in council, terms of the imperial trust, 
documents relating to research associations, 
and names of members of committees at- 
tached to the department of scientific and 
industrial research. Lord Curzon points out 
in his introduction that the foundation of the 
department led to the creation of the im- 
perial trust for the encouragement of scien- 
tific and industrial research. 

The trust holds on behalf of the depart- 
ment the sum of one million sterling which 


SCIENCE - 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


Parliament has voted for the purposes of the 
department. The negotiations of the ad- 
visory council with the leading manufacturers 
in the various industries showed that it would 
not be possible to develop systematic research 
on a large scale unless the government were 
in the position to assist financially over an 
agreed period of years. These considerations 
led the government to place a fund at the 
disposal of the privy council committee to be 
spent over a period of five or six years af- 
forded the best means of dealing with the 
problem. During the past year negotiations 
have been concluded with the Royal Society 
for the transfer of the property of the Na- 
tional Physical Laboratory, together with the 
responsibility for its maintenance and deyvel- 
opment, to the department of scientific and 
industrial research. The scientific manage- 
ment of the laboratory will remain in the 
hands of the executive committee under the 
chairmanship of Lord Rayleigh, a member of 
the advisory council. 

The committee reported last year that 
grants had been approved to a number of in- 
dividual students and research workers for 
the year 1916-17 to an amount not exceeding 
60001. The amount actually expended under 
this head, however, was not more than 35501. 
upon thirty-six workers. Throughout the 
work has suffered in amount owing to the 
war, and the committee was unable to expend 
more than 14,524]. out of the 40,0001. placed 
at its disposal by Parliament for the financial 
year 1916-17. During the current year a 
sum of 38,0507. was taken in the estimates, 
in addition to the fund of a million referred 
to already. The annual vote is intended to 
cover (a) the cost of those researches which 
will not be undertaken by the proposed re- 
search associations; (6) the grants to indi- 
vidual research workers, both students and 
others; and (c) the cost of administration. 

The report says: 

The one question of policy, to which throughout 
the year we have continuously devoted our atten- 
tion, is the working out, with all the care and ad- 
vice we have been able to command, of the policy 
of cooperative industrial research foreshadowed 
in our last report. Lord Crewe, who was at that 


NovEMBER 30, 1917] 


time lord president of the privy council, received a 
deputation of the board of scientifie societies on 
December 1 last, at which he outlined the policy 
of the government in regard to industrial re- 
search. He announced their intention to ask par- 
liament to place a large fund—a million sterling 
—at the disposal of the department to enable it to 
cooperate with the industries of the country in the 
foundation and maintenance of approved associa- 
tions for research during the next five years or so. 
After these initial years it is expected that the 
larger industries, at any rate, will be able and 
willing to earry on the work of the associations 
without assistance. The intention of the govern- 
ment is to make a contribution to the assured in- 
come of such associations from the subscriptions of 
their members, varying in amount according to 
circumstances, and with a normal maximum of 
pound for pound, though in very exceptional cases 
this limit may be exceeded. Lord Crewe also an- 
nounced that the board of inland revenue would be 
prepared to instruct surveyors of taxes to allow 
as a working expense for income-tax purposes the 
contributions by traders to industrial associations 
formed for the purpose of scientific research for 
the benefit of the various trades. The allowance 
would be subject to certain conditions; that is to 
say, the association must be under government 
supervision and the trader’s contribution must be 
‘fan out and out payment, made from his trade 
profits and giving him no proprietary interest in 
the property of the association.’’ Since this de- 
cision includes war profits and excess profits taxes, 
it offers a considerable inducement to firms af- 
fected by these taxes to act promptly. 


A TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR CHURCH 


THE College of Civil Engineering of Cor- 
nell University paid a tribute of affection and 
respect to the emeritus professor of applied 
mechanics and hydraulics, Irving Porter 
Church, ’73, on November 9. Alumni of the 
college presented to the university a portrait 
of Professor Church and the sum of $2,500 
in Liberty Bonds to form the Irving P. 
Church Fund, the income of which is to be 
devoted to the purchase of additions to the 
library of the college. 

According to the Cornell Alumni News, a 
simple ceremony of presentation took place 
at noon in the auditorium of Goldwin Smith 
Hall. Among the persons assembled were 
Mr. White and Professors Law, Hewett, Com- 


SCIENCE 


535 


stock, and Gage—men whose terms of service 
in the faculty are comparable in length to 
that of Professor Church; Mrs. Orandall; the 
members of the faculty of civil engineering, 
and a number of other professors. 

On the rostrum, veiled, was the portrait 
lately completed by J. Campbell Phillips. 
Dean Haskell expressed the pleasure of the 
faculty of civil engineering in taking part in 


.this tribute to a beloved teacher, and intro- 


duced William D. Kelley, ’80, the representa- 
tive of the alumni committee which the Cor- 
nell Society of Civil Engineers had appointed 
to provide the double memorial. Mr. Kelley 
gracefully expressed the affection of the old 
students for Professor Church and their sense 
of his great services to the college and to 
engineering science during so many years. 
The contributions to this testimonial, he said, 
had come from Cornell engineers in all parts 
of the world. He unveiled the portrait and 
presented it to the university. Then he took 
from his pocket the Liberty Bonds constitut- 
ing the Church Fund and handed them to 
President Schurman. 

The President accepted the gifts in behalf 
of the university. He congratulated the 
alumni of the College of Civil Engineering on 
the value of their testimonial and still more 
on the propriety of their gift. What other 
offering, he asked, could be more grateful to 
a teacher than this double memorial? The 
whole university, he said, would be forever 
in debt to Professor Church’s character and 
scholarship. 

[Everybody arose as Professor Church ad- 
vanced to the front of the platform. He 
apologized for his presence there. What need 
for him to talk, he said, when a speaking like- 
ness was there to represent him. He accepted 
gratefully the tribute of his old students, and 
spoke for a few minutes of his reminiscences 
of the forty-eight years he had spent at 
Cornell. 

The board of trustees next day adopted 
this resolution: “ First, that the communica- 
tion of Mr. F. W. Scheidenhelm, chairman 
of the committee, be spread on the minutes 
of this board; secondly, that the sincere 


536 


‘thanks of the Trustees be tendered to the 
committee in charge and to all the Cornell 
men who have contributed to the gift for this 
admirable and appropriate tribute to Pro- 
fessor Church; and, thirdly, that it be re- 
ferred to the dean of the college of civil 
engineering to hang the portrait in a suitable 
place.” 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Dr. Frankitiy P. Matu, professor of an- 
atomy in the Johns Hopkins University and 
director of the department of embryology of 
the Carnegie Institution of Washington, died 
in Baltimore on November 17. 


THE anniversary address of the New York 
Academy of Medicine was delivered on No- 
vember 15 by Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, 
L.L.D., president of the American Museum of 
National History, on “The origin and na- 
ture of life.” 


Art its meeting held November 14 the Rum- 
ford Committee of the American Academy of 
Arts and Sciences voted the following appro- 
priations: To Professor Raymond T. Birge, 
of Syracuse University, $150 in aid of his 
research on the Structure of Series Spectra; 
to Professor Theodore W. Richards, of Har- 
vard University, $250 in aid of the publica- 
tion of Marie’s Tables of Physico-Chemical 
Data; to Professor Ancel St. John, $500 for 
the purchase of a refrigerating machine and 
accessories to be the property of the com- 
mittee and loaned to Dr. St. John for use in 
connection with his researches on crystal 
structure by means of X-Rays. 


Proressor J. F. Kemp, for many years head 
of the department of geology in Columbia 
University, has become associated temporarily 
with the firm of Hager Bates and Lewis of 
Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the absence of 
Whitney Lewis in France. 


Gustave R. Tusa, consulting engineer, 
New York City, formerly chief engineer of 
the Panama Railroad Company and lecturer 
in engineering at Columbia University, has 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No, 1196 


been commissioned as major in the Engi- 
neer Section of the Officers’ Reserve Corps 
of the United States Army. 


Masor Joun M. T. Finney, M. R. C., U. S. 
Army, has been appointed director of general 
surgery with the American Expeditionary 
Forces in France; Major Hugh H. Young, 
M. R. C., director of venereal skin and genito- 
urinary surgery, and Lieutenant-Colonel 
Joseph Hiler, M. C., U. S. Army, director of 
the laboratory service. 


It is announced that Dr. Hugh Cabot of 
British Base Hospital No. 22 has been made 
lieutenant colonel of the Royal English Medi- 
cal Corps. He has succeeded Lieutenant- 
Colonel Sir Allan Perry as commanding 
officer of the hospital. This is in addition to 
being chief surgeon, which position he has 
held for some months. 


Dr. A. B. Corpiey, dean of agriculture and 
director of the Oregon Experiment Station, 
has been elected chairman of the State Lime 
Committee, authorized by the state legisla- 
ture to build and operate a state-owned lime 
plant for providing cheap agricultural lime. 


Dr. CarotinE RumBoxip, formerly collabo- 
rator in forest pathology, Bureau of Plant 
Industry, has been appointed assistant pa- 
thologist in the Office of Sugar Plant Inves- 
tigations, Bureau of Plant Industry. 


Tue sulphur committee of the War Indus- 
tries Board has recently visited Texas. The 
committee consists of J. Parke Channing, 
J. W. Malcolmson, A. B. W. Hodges, P. S. 
Smith, of the U. S. Geological Survey, and 
W. O. Hotchkiss of the University of Wis- 


consin. 


THE course of popular scientific lectures of 
the California Academy of Sciences, Golden 
Gate Park, is being continued on Sunday 
afternoons in the Auditorium of the Museum 
in Golden Gate Park, as follows: 

November 18. Professor G. A. Louderback, 
geology department, University of California, ‘‘A 
geological expedition into the interior of China.’’ 
(IIustrated.) 


November 25. Professor E. C. Franklin, chem- 


NovEMBER 30, 1917] 


istry department, Stanford University, ‘‘ Liquid 
air.’? (With demonstrations.) 

December 2. Dr. A. A. D’Ancona, member of 
San Francisco Board of Edueation, ‘‘Cireculation 
of the blood.’’ (Illustrated by motion pictures.) 

December 9. Miss Alice Eastwood, curator, de- 
partment of botany, California Academy of Sci- 
ences, ‘‘ Weeds.’’ (Illustrated.) 


Tue series of lectures on heredity pre- 
sented before the Washington Academy of 
Seiences and later published in the Journal 
of the academy has now been reprinted in col- 
lected form. The volume contains the fol- 
lowing addresses: 

Dr. H. S. Jennings. ‘‘Observed changes in he- 
reditary characters in relation to evolution.’’ 

Dr. Osear Riddle. ‘‘The control of the sex 
ratio.’’ 

Dr. W. E. Castle. 
redity.’’ 


‘<The role of selection in he- 


The collected papers bound in buckram in 
uniformity with the preceding series of lec- 
tures on “Nutrition” may be obtained from 
the treasurer of the academy, Mr. William 
Bowie, U. S. Coast Survey, Washington, 
D. C. 


Mr. Carterton R. Batu, agronomist in 
charge of Western Wheat Investigations, U. 
S. Department of Agriculture, delivered a 
lecture on “The Scope and Problems of 
Agronomy” before the students in agronomy 
at the Maryland Agricultural College, on 
November 8. 


Tue American Phytopathological Society 
will meet at Pittsburgh, December 28, 1917, 
to January 3, 1918, in affiliation with 
the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science. There will be joint meet- 
ings of the society with Section G of the 
association and also with the Botanical So- 
ciety of America. 


Section E—Geology and Geography—of 
the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, will hold meetings at Pitts- 
burgh, Pa., on Friday and Saturday, Decem- 
ber 28 and 29, with a session on Monday, 
December 31, provided enough papers are 
offered by geologists returning from the meet- 
ings of the Geological Society of America in 


SCIENCE 


537 


St. Louis to make a Monday session desirable. 
A symposium upon the topic “ Mineral Re- 
sources and Chemical Industry,” to be held 
jointly with Section CO, is planned for Friday, 
December 28. The address of the retiring 
vice-president of Section E, Professor Rollin 
D. Salisbury, of the University of Chicago, 
upon “The Educational Value of Geology,” 
will be given on Saturday morning, December 
29, at 10 o’clock. The meetings of Section E 
will be presided over by Professor George H. 
Perkins, of the University of Vermont. Titles 
of papers to be read before the Section should 
be in the hands of the secretary, Dr. Rollin 
T. Chamberlin, University of Chicago, before 
December 15. Members who can only attend 
a session on Monday, December 31, and who 
wish to present papers at that time are re- 
quested to notify the secretary as soon as pos- 


Tue Journal of the American Medical As- 
sociation states that the second American 
orthopedic contingent, composed of forty-two 
medical officers under the direction of Major 
Goldthwaite, has arrived in England. All 
the officers as well as three of engineering ex- 
perience commissioned in the sanitary corps 
are to take charge of the development of 
curative workshops in the American ortho- 
pedic hospitals in France. There are also 
twelve orthopedic nurses as a nucleus around 
which a nursing staff is to be developed. All 
the medical staff except the director are to be 
distributed temporarily through the British 
orthopedie centers. Arrangements have been 
made by which these centers can be used for 
training Americans in orthopedic work with 
the idea of providing relief for the large 
number of medical officers that will be re- 
quired for this special work. When these 
men are needed for service in the American 
hospitals in France, another group will be 
sent from home to take their place in the 
British hospitals. The rotation will be con- 
tinued until the American hospitals are fully 
staffed. Major Goldthwaite is going on to 
American headquarters in France to organ- 
ize the orthopedic hospital with the Ameri- 
can Army. 


538 


BerorE the Chemical Society, London, the 
following lectures will be given: December 6, 
“The Relation between Chemical Constitu- 
tion and Physiological Action,” Dr. F. I. 
Pyman; February 21, 1918, “ Recent Studies 
on Active Nitrogen,” Professor the Hon. R. 
J. Strutt; April 18, the Hugo Miller lecture, 
entitled “The Old and the New Mineralogy,” 
Sir Henry A. Miers. 


Dr. RicHarp WEIL, professor of Experi- 
mental Medicine in Cornell Medical College, 
a major in the Medical Reserve Corps and 
chief of the medical staff of the Base Hos- 
pital at Camp Wheeler, Macon, Ga., died of 
pneumonia on November 19. 


Nature states that in a private letter Dr. 
Paul Bertrand announces the death of his 
father, Professor O. E. Bertrand, the dis- 
tinguished plant-anatomist and paleobotanist. 
Dr. Bertrand was professor of botany at Lille, 
and lived there for the last three years of his 
life under German rule. Under these difficult 
conditions, he was still able to carry on both his 
university courses and his private research, 
as long as his health permitted. 


Tue death is announced, on October 27, of 
Mr. Worthington G. Smith, of Dunstable, 
fellow of the Linnean Society, at eighty-two 
years of age and on October 24, at fifty-four 
years of age, of Mr. George T. Holloway, vice- 
president of the Institution of Mining and 
Metallurgy, known as a consultant metal- 
lurgist and assayer. 


Mr. GrorcE CHarLes ORIcK, assistant in the 
geological department of the British Museum, 
died on October 8, aged sixty-one years. 


EDUCATIONAL NOTES AND NEWS 


Tue Probate Court has allowed the will 
of Mrs. Augusta E. Corbin, by the terms of 
which Boston University receives $555,000. 


Extensive additions are to be made to the 
laboratories of the department of chemistry 
of the Rensselear Polytechnic Institute. En- 
tirely new and complete laboratories will be 
constructed for quantitative analysis, for or- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1196 


ganic chemistry and for physical chemistry. 
Material enlargement will be provided for the 
food analysis and gas analysis laboratories, 
and new space assigned for lecture room and 
recitation room needs. The great increase 
in number of students entering for the course 
in chemical engineering has demanded these 
extensions. Work on the new construction 
will be started in March, 1918, at which time 
also ground will be broken for four new 
dormitories. 


Dr. F. L. Pickett, formerly associate pro- 
fessor of taxonomy and ecology at the State 
College of Washington, has been made head 
of the department of botany at that imstitu- 
tion to fill the vacancy in the department of 
botany made by the resignation of Dr. I. D. 
Cardiff. 


Proressor WALTER Burton Forp has been 
promoted to a professorship of mathematics 
in the University of Michigan, and James 
Garret Van Zwaluwenburg to a professorship 
of roentgenology. 


Mr. Geo. E. Croroor has been promoted 
from instructor in mechanical engineering to 
assistant professor of mechanical engineer- 
ing in the Towne Scientific School of the 
University of Pennsylvania. 


Mr. E. G. Gaut, M.Sce., lecturer in bacterio- 
logical chemistry at the University of Man- 
chester, has been appointed part-time demon- 
strator in chemistry in the university depart- 
ment. Mr. G. Hickling, D.Sc. has been 
appointed reader in paleontology and in the 
absence of Professor Holland, acting director 
of the geological laboratories. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 


THE MANUFACTURE OF OPTICAL GLASS IN 
AMERICA 


To THE Epiror oF ScieNcE: There is an ob- 
vious lesson of general interest and of impor- 
tance in national welfare in the present situa- 
tion concerning the manufacture of optical 
glass in this country. That lesson relates in 
principle to the injury to important manufac- 
turing interests resulting from a large con- 


NovEeMBER 30, 1917] 


sumer becoming the sole producer of a ma- 
terial vital to that line of manufacture. 
When expert scientific knowledge is involved 
it is well that scientific men be alive to the 
consequences of certain lines of activity. 

Four years ago this country imported an- 
nually about half a million dollars worth of 
optical glass, chiefly from Schott in Jena, 
Mantois in Paris and to some extent from 
Chance in England. At the outbreak of the 
war the German supply ceased, while the 
French and English supplies were limited to 
that not required for war purposes. Six of 
the large consumers of optical glass, a gov- 
ernment bureau and three glass manufacturers 
at once started experimental work in this 
country on the manufacture of optical glass. 
The entire normal demand for this material is 
barely sufficient to pay overhead and a modest 
profit to a single manufacturing concern. 
But two of these would-be producers have 
faced the very considerable development ex- 
pense and brought their production to a fac- 
tory basis. One of them is a large consumer 
of optical glass, the other a large manufac- 
turer of plate glass. 

The situation faced by the independent 
consumer is a difficult one. He naturally can 
not depend upon his largest competitor for his 
raw material. Neither can the plate-glass 
manufacturer be depended upon as a perma- 
nent source of supply since his large orders 
for his regular product are much more re- 
munerative. The outlook is therefore rather 
dismal both for the independent consumer and 
for the future manufacture of optical glass in 
America. 

Optical glass manufacture, like so many 
other industries newly taken over in this 
country, is extremely sensitive to the favor of 
the capitalist as well as of the scientific ex- 
pert and skilled laborer. Optical glass has 
been successfully made in this country in 
small experimental batches at various times 
for at least thirty years back, but no one would 
risk the necessary capital in a business with 
a demand so circumscribed and a margin of 
profit so limited. At present a concern de- 
voted exclusively to optical glass, booking the 


SCIENCE 


539 


entire American demand might weather the 
return to normal trade conditions. With the 
business split into at least two parts, one chief 
producer a large consumer, another operating 
it as a trivial side issue, the industry is un- 


likely to survive. 
P. G. Nurrine 
PITTSBURGH, 


October, 1917 


A NOTE ON THE “AGE AND AREA” 
HYPOTHESIS 


Proressor DrEVrigs’} recent endorsement of 
the hypothesis advanced by Willis that the 
range of any plant, barring barriers, depends 
upon the age of the species, is a most curious 
illustration of how uncritical a man becomes 


who is obsessed with a theory. The Willis hy- 


pothesis has already been satisfactorily dealt 
with by Sinnott? in the pages of Science and 
I wish only to add one or two brief comments. 

Neither Willis nor DeVries appear to have 
any knowledge of or interest in the facts of 
paleontology, certainly the latter, since he is 
an evolutionist of a sort, might have selected 
a name for his supposed factor that had not 
already been used in a perfectly definite way 
for a process diametrically the opposite of 
saltation. This has all been well said by 
former critics and I mention it in the present 
connection merely as more cloth off the same 
piece as the adoption of the Willis hypothesis. 

Regarding barriers, we are familiar with 
certain gross kinds such as mountain ranges 
and seas, but who can successfully formulate 
the interrelations of organisms with one 
another and with their environment and the 
less obvious but no less real barriers that result 
from these correlations? One is reminded of 
Darwin’s classic explanation of the relation- 
ship between cats and red clover, in which 
case spinsters might prove an effective barrier 
to field mice and offer optimum conditions for 
the spread of clover. 

With reference to New Zealand, a philo- 
sophie botanist would have to account for 
very many plant radiations of different ages 
and from different directions—certainly the 

1 Screncr, N. S., Vol. 45, pp. 641-642. 

2 Sorence, N. §., Vol. 46, pp. 457-459. 


540 


present flora of New Zealand can not legiti- 
mately be postulated as having entered that 
region as a unit at the central point advocated 
by Willis, nor can the flora of any region as 
a whole be dated from one period of time or 
from a single geographical point. 

Finally the statement that the dying out of 
species 1s a rare event is overwhelmingly op- 
posed by all of the facts of paleontology and by 
all of the facts of history unless its adherents 
are prepared to accept the Mosaic cosmogony. 
This comment is as true of vertebrate and 
invertebrate paleontology as it is of plants. 
In the case of the last the probability is very 
great that the present flora of the globe repre- 
sents a minute fraction of the extinct floras. 
Pointing in the same direction is the well- 
authenticated fact that in all the orders of 
plants that are prevailingly arborescent the 
geologic distribution where it is known is 
found to have been more extensive than the 
present distribution. The same statement is 
true of the higher animals and of such inver- 
tebrate groups as I am familiar with. 

So-called monotypic genera, whether plant 
or animal, at least in the majority of cases, are 
relicts of a once wider distribution. Among 
plants this is strikingly true of arborescent 

‘forms and needs qualification only in the case 
of certain mainly herbaceous, relatively mod- 
ern and prevailingly temperate groups such as 
the Papilionacew, Labiateew, Scrophulariaces, 
Plantaginacee, Valerianacex, ete. 

Epwarp W. BrErry 

THE JOHNS HopKINS UNIVERSITY 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
A Text-book of Sanitary and Applied Chem- 
istry; or, the Chemistry of Water, Air and 

Food. By E. H. §. Bamey, Ph.D., Pro- 

fessor of Chemistry, University of Kansas. 

Fourth Edition revised. New York, The 

Macmillan Company. 1917. Cloth. 12mo, 

xxiv + 894 pp. Price $1.60. 

As Dr. Bailey says in his preface, the object 
of the book is to furnish a text, for the use of 
students, upon chemistry as applied to the 
most important topics having to do with daily 
life in the household. The opening chapters 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


deal with the Atmosphere, Fuels, Heating and 
Ventilation, Lighting, Water, Sewage, Tex- 
tiles, Soap, Disinfectants and Poisons. The 
second half of the book treats of the chemistry 
of food. The treatment is naturally descrip- 
tive only and does not cover analytical proc- 
esses. Throughout the text there are distrib- 
uted 197 well selected experiments which will 
greatly help to fix important facts in the stu- 
dent’s mind. 


W. P. Mason 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 
THE UFFINGTON SHALE OF WEST VIRGINIA 
AND ITS SUPPOSED MARINE FAUNA? 

AT a number of localities in northern West 
Virginia the Uffington shale of I. C. White™ 
lies at the base of the Conemaugh formation, 
occupying the interval between the Mahoning 
sandstone above and the Upper Freeport coal 
of the Allegheny formation below. It is a 
dark shale, a portion or the whole of which is 
sandy and bears plant fossils in abundance. 
It is variable in thickness, forty feet being 
about the maximum reported, while over 
much of the area it is lacking altogether, the 
sandstone being in contact with the coal. 
The replacement of the shale by the sandstone 
is clearly the result of erosion as is indicated 
by the ‘sinuous contact between the two 
strata, the shale often varying in thickness as 
much as twenty feet in a distance of a hun- 
dred yards. 

In 1871, John J. Stevenson, in a paper en- 
titled: “ A geological examination of Monon- 
galia county, West Virginia,” by John J. 
Stevenson; together with lists of fossils and 
descriptions of new species, by F. B. Meek,” ? 
described a “dark colored, fine grained, argil- 
laceous” shale overlying the ‘Upper Free- 
port” coal and containing abundant inverte- 
brate fossils. Its thickness is given as 12 
feet. It is said to be best exposed in the 
“bluff bordering the bottoms two or three 


1 Published by permission of I. C. White, state 
geologist of West Virginia. 

taI, C. White, West Virginia Geol. Survey, Vol. 
IL., 1903, p. 323. 

2 West Virginia University, Board of Regents, 
Third Ann. Rept., 1871, for 1870, pp. 41 to 73. 


NoveMBER 30, 1917] 


hundred yards above the old ‘ Point House.’ ” 
It is also reported as underlying the “ Mahon- 
ing” sandstone. Meek’s list of fossils includes 
7 brachiopoda, 13 pelecypoda, 10 gastropoda, 
2 cephalopoda, a trilobite and a crinoid, be- 
sides crinoid columns. Three new species of 
pelecypoda were described; namely, Nucula 
anodontoides, Yoldia carbonaria and Y. stev- 
ensont. Stevenson informed I. C. White that 
most of his fossils were collected at the town 
of Uffington.® 

White in 1908 described the Uffington shale 
at Uftington and reported Stevenson’s fossils 
as found in it, thus describing it as bearing 
both plant and animal remains.* 

Stevenson in 1906 repeats White’s statement 
that the Uffington shale—which name he now 
employs for the first time—bears a marine 
fauna.® 

Hennen in 1913 mapped the outcrop of the 
Upper Freeport coal of the area and described 
the Uffington shale,® but did not observe ani- 
mal fossils in it.7 

After a close examination of the area the 
following facts bearing on the location of the 
marine fossils have come to light, correlation 
and identification of strata being based on the 
work of White and Hennen: 

At Uffington the Uffington shale is 30 feet 
thick, plant-bearing throughout and very 
sandy in the lower half. Above it lie in as- 
cending order the Mahoning sandstone, 39 
feet thick, clay-shales 20 feet in thickness, the 
Brush Creek coal, 6 inches thick, and 3 feet 
of dark shale of the Brush Creek limestone 
horizon containing abundant marine fossils. 
Above the latter is the Buffalo sandstone, 16 
feet thick. 

At Rock Forge, 4 miles east of Uffington, 
stands the old “ Point House,” a frame dwell- 
ing, a relic of the settlement built during the 
operation of the Deckers Creek Iron Works 

31. C. White, oral communication. 

4W. Va. Geol. Surv., Vol. II., p. 323. 

5‘ Carboniferous of the Appalachian Basin,’’ 
Geol. Soc., America Bull., Vol. 17. 1906, p. 132. 

6R. V. Hennen, West Virginia Geol. Sury., Re- 
port on Monongalia, Marion and Taylor counties, 
p. 321, 

7 Oral communication. 


SCIENCE 


541 


which has been inactive since about 1855. 
Here the “bluff” referred to by Stevenson is 
capped by the Buffalo sandstone overlying 13 
feet of dark shale containing abundant marine 
invertebrate fossils, the Brush Creek limestone 
horizon, which is just above the level of 
Deckers Creek. The strata at this point dip 
to the west, and seven tenths of a mile to the 
northeast the Upper Freeport coal rises to the 
ereek level with the Mahoning sandstone rest- 
ing directly upon it, no shales intervening be- 
tween them. 

It is thus seen that the dark fossiliferous 
shale of Stevenson at Rock Forge is Brush 
Creek. It was found to contain a number of 
the species listed by Meek. 

Stevenson’s description of his fossil bed 
does not agree with the characters of the 
Uffington shale at Uffington. It is less than 
one third as thick—the shales do not thin 
down in the immediate vicinity of the town— 
no sandy shale is reported and the strikingly 
abundant plant remains are not noted, nor 
does another fossiliferous stratum of black 
shale appear in the section below the 
well-marked Ames limestone, with which 
neither of the strata under discussion could 
have been confounded. It is therefore 
concluded that Stevenson collected marine 
fossils from the Brush Creek and _ not 
from the Uffington and it appears that at the 
time of writing he correlated the coal which 
lies below the true Uffington with the “ Kit- 
tanning.” This coal he mentions as seen at 
low water in the Monongahela River between 
Morgantown and Uffington and is the Upper 
Freeport of White and Hennen. It is there- 
fore apparent that Stevenson’s “ Upper Free- 
port” is a higher coal. From these considera- 
tions it seems that there is little doubt that 
the Brush Creek coal and fossiliferous shale 
are Stevenson’s “Upper Freeport coal” and 
“Dark shale just below the Mahoning sand- 
stone,” respectively. Diligent search by the 
writer failed to reveal marine fossils in the 
Uffington shale, while a number of Meek’s° 

7a A sparse marine fauna is occasionally found 
in the green and yellow shales of the Pine Creek 
limestone horizon above the Buffalo sandstone. 


542 


listed species were found in the Brush Creek. 
Besides the writer, Messrs. S. B. Brown, 
David White, J. W. Beede and R. V. 
Hennen® have examined the Uffington shale at 
Uffington and vicinity without discovering 
marine fossils. 

Studies of the Conemaugh formation in 
West Virginia and Maryland by the writer 
have not revealed a marine fauna at this hori- 
zon nor has such been reported by other ob- 
servers in these and adjoining states, with 
the exception of the instances mentioned 
above and two other West Virginia localities 
reported by Stevenson. These places are: in 
Wirt county 8 miles north of Burning Springs? 
and at Cutright in Upshur county.?° These 
localities have since been studied by mem- 
bers of the West Virginia Geological Survey 
during the preparation of county reports. 
From the similarity of the sections given by 
the different observers the fossiliferous 
members at these localities also appear to be 
Brush Creek. 

In Ohio the shale is reported by Condit but 
marine fossils were not found. 

The Uffington shale may then be re-defined 
as follows: 

The Uffington shale is a plant-bearing bed 
of shale, frequently sandy in the lower por- 
tion, of non-marine origin, occupying in 
places the interval between the Upper Free- 
port coal and the Mahoning sandstone, and 
indicating by its variable thickness and un- 
dulating upper surface that erosion took place 
over the area of its outcrop before or during 
the deposition of the Mahoning sandstone. 
The maximum reported thickness of the shale 
is 40 feet and, though lacking in many places, 

8 Oral communication from S. B. Brown and R. 
V. Hennen. 

9 Geol. Soc. America Bull., Vol. 17, 1906, p. 149. 
*‘Carboniferous of the Appalachian Basin,’’ by J. 
J. Stevenson. 

10 Tdem., p. 135. 

11 R, V. Hennen, W. Va. Geol. Sury., Wirt, Roane 
and Calhoun counties, Rept., 1911, p. 258; and I. C. 
White, W. Va. Geol. Surv., Vol. II., 1903, p. 279 
(recent field work by D. B. Reger in the preparation 
of a report on Upshur county confirms the corre- 
lation of I. C. White). 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


its appearance at widely separated points in 
Maryland, West Virginia and Ohio shows that 
its former distribution was perhaps general 
in the Appalachian Carboniferous area. 


W. ArMstronG PRICE 
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, 


BOSTON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY 

Tue fifty-fifth meeting of the American Chem- 
ical Society was held at the Massachusetts Insti- 
tute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., from Sep- 
tember 10 to September 13, inclusive. The gen- 
eral program was carried out under the able leader- 
ship of Professor Julius Stieglitz, president of the 
society, and Dr. Charles L. Parsons, secretary, 
while the local arrangements were under the di- 
rection of Professor H. P. Talbot, assisted by the 
chairmen of the numerous committees. The vari- 
ous divisions were presided over by J. E. Brecken- 
ridge, T. J. Bryan, E. H. S. Bailey, L. F. Kebler, 
L. E. Weber, C. L. Alsberg, J. R. Bailey, H. P. 
Talbot, and H. E. Howe. 

During the session, the usual order of business 
was carried out, consisting of meetings of the 
council, with general and public meetings. A 
strong feature of the meeting was the stress placed 
upon ‘‘War Service of the Chemist.’’ A shore 
dinner at the Hotel Pemberton, held on Tuesday 
evening, was much enjoyed and served as a pleas- 
ant break in the work before the Society. Wednes- 
day evening was given over to the address by 
President Stieglitz, who took for his subject, ‘‘ The 
Outlook for Chemistry in the United States.’’ 
This address was printed in the issue of Science 
for October 5. 

During the entire week, the time was taken up 
by the reading of papers. 


DIVISION OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY 
C. L, Alsberg, Chairman. 
I. K. Phelps, Vice-Chairman and Secretary. 


Abstracts have been received of the following © 
papers: 

Oxidase action in the nucleus: W. J. V. OSTER- 
Hout. The Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora) 
contains a colorless chromogen which darkens on 
oxidation. This process takes place more rapidly 
in the nucleus than in the cytoplasm, indicating 
that the nucleus is the center of oxidation in the 
cell. 


The dynamics of the process of death: W. J. V. 
OstErHOuT. Determinations of the electrical 


NoveMBER 30, 1917] 


conductivity of living tissue enable us to follow 
the process of death in the same manner as we 
follow chemical reactions in vitro. The process 
usually proceeds as a monomolecular reaction 
which is somewhat accelerated or inhibited at the 
start. It is probable that we have to do with 
consecutive reactions, in which case the acceleration 
or inhibition is easily explained. The same as- 
sumption enables us to give a quantitative ex- 
planation of injury and of recovery. 


The dynamics of photosynthesis: W. J. V. Os- 
TERHOUT and A. R. C. Haas. When plants of 
Ulva are taken from darkness and exposed to light 
the process of photosynthesis goes on at a regu- 
larly increasing speed until a steady rate is 
reached. This may be explained by assuming that 
a catalyst is produced in light. The values cal- 
culated upon this hypothesis are in good agree- 
ment with the observed values. 


Note on the physiological action of Cordyceps 
sinensis: C. L. ALSBERG and J. F. Brewster. It 
is a practise among certain of the Chinese to ex- 
tract the tufts caused by the growth of Cordyceps 
sinensis on caterpillars and use the extract for 
medicinal purposes. Extracts made both of the 
tufts separately and of the tufts with the cater- 
pillars when injected into rabbits proved to be 
toxic. 


The influence of phosphates on the action of al- 
phacrotonic acid on plants: J. J. SKINNER and F. R. 
Rem. Alpha crotonie acid in amounts of 25 and 
50 p.p.m. was found to be very harmful to wheat 
plants grown in nutrient culture solutions. The 
solutions were composed of calcium acid phosphate, 
sodium nitrate and potassium sulphate and were 
prepared according to the triangular system. 
Growth was reduced about 50 per cent. when the 
material was used in amounts of 50 p.pm. In 
cultures containing 80 p.p.m. P.O, growth was re- 
duced 30 per cent., in cultures containing 40 
p.p.m. P.O; growth was reduced 45 per cent., and 
in cultures with no P.O, growth was reduced 55 
per cent. When the material was used in the cul- 
tures in amounts of 25 p.p.m. growth was reduced 
about. 30 per cent. In cultures having 80 p.p.m. 
P.0,;, growth was reduced 9 per cent., and in those 
having 40 p.p.m. P.O,, 28 per cent., and where 
no P.O, was present 34 per cent. Phosphate seemed 
to have an ameliorating effect on the harmlessness 
of the crotonie acid. NaH,PO, used in the place 
of CaH, (PO,)- in the culture solutions had a simi- 
lar effect on the action of the crotonic acid. Ex- 


SCIENCE 


543 


periments using Na,HPO, and also Na;PQ,, showed 
that each of these phosphate salts, regardless of 
the character of the base, in combination had an 
action antagonistic to the harmfulness of alpha- 
crotonic acid. 


The oxidation of vanillin to vanillic acid by 
certain soil bacteria: WiuLiaM J. RopBins and 
Ebert C. Latrurop. A bacterium, apparently 
specific for vanillin, has been isolated from an 
Alabama soil. This organism when grown in a 
medium of inorganic salts with vanillin as the sole 
source of cdrbon, in the course of five days com- 
pletely oxidized vanillin to compounds of a non- 
phenolic character. The first oxidation product 
has been isolated and its identity as vanillic acid 
has been established by the mixed melting points, 
the crystalline form and solubilities, the color re- 
actions, the neutralization equivalent, methoxyl de- 
termination and organie combustion. By means 
of color reactions the rate of oxidation of vanillin 
to vanillic acid and the rate of the ensuing oxida- 
tion of vanillic acid has been determined. Vanil- 
lin has been found in a number of field soils and 
the infertility of some of these soils may be due 
to vanillin. Vanillie acid has also been shown to 
be harmful to growing plants. The biological 
oxidation of these harmful soil compounds and 
the effect of fertilizer compounds on this biolog- 
ical transformation is therefore of special interest 
in soil fertility. 


The value of yeast ‘‘vitamine’’ as a supplement 
to a rice diet: A. D. EMMETT and L. H. McKim, 
Research Department of Parke, Davis & Co., De- 
troit. The criteria for estimating the value of the 
diet of polished rice supplemented with vitamine 
for polyneuritie pigeons was to determine the rate 
of full recovery of pigeons that had been brought 
out of the typical polyneuritis attack by a treat- 
ment of the Seidell yeast vitamine. This was in- 
dicated by the body weight curves before and after 
treatment. The control vitamine-containing diet 
for the treated birds was natural unpolished rice. 
Other feeds were also used—corn, barley and oats. 
It was found that this yeast vitamine preparation 
was a most excellent agent for bringing about re- 
covery from the typical attack of polyneuritis; 
that, as a supplement to polished rice, when used 
in rational amounts (equal to slightly more than 
the dose needed for treatment) the diet was ade- 
quate for producing moderate gains in weight, but 
that these gains were much less than those ob- 
tained with the control or unpolished rice diet. 
Corn produced smaller gains than unpolished rice 


544 


but more than polished rice. Barley produced 
fair gains for a time but later the pigeons lost 
weight. Oats proved to be very inferior. The re- 
sults suggest that this vitamine preparation, when 
used in amounts commensurate with rational 
therapy, is a very valuable adjuvant to a vita- 
mine-poor diet but in order to obtain the very best 
results one should have for the patient a dietary 
containing foods rich in vitamine. 


The growth promoting value of the lactalbumins 
obtained after separating casein by (a) hydro- 
chloric acid and (b) lactic acid culture: A. D. 
EmmMetrr and M. E. Suater, Research Department 
of Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit. The lactalbumins 
used were obtained from skim milk whey. In one 
case, the casein was removed from the skim milk 
by a slight acidification with hydrochlorie acid 
and in the other it was thrown out by using a lac- 
tic acid ‘‘starter’’ and allowing the milk to incu- 
bate until sufficient acid was formed to cause the 
separation. The two lactalbumins were compared 
as to their growth promoting value by feeding 
young rats that had been kept on a maintenance 
ration. It was found, on a low protein plane, that 
the lactic acid culture lactalbumin had very little 
growth producing value when compared with the 
hydrochlorie acid lactalbumin. The influence of 
various factors involved was studied among them 
—varying the quantity of lactalbumin, adding 
eystine and increasing the total protein intake. 


The influence of accessory substances on growth, 
with a low protein ration containing lactalbumin 
from lactic acid whey: A. D. EMmettT and M. E. 
Sater, Research Laboratory of Parke, Davis & 
Co., Detroit. Young rats which had been on main- 
tenance were put upon a basal ration low in pro- 
tein but ample in energy and mineral content. The 
protein concentrate used was corn gluten. This 
was supplemented with lactic acid, lactalbumin. 
Butter fat was omitted. Vitamine preparations 
(water soluble) were added to the basal relation 
after a test period showed that the expected rate 
of growth did not take place. In fact, during this 
test period, there was almost no response to the 
change in the ration from maintenance to basal. 
Upon replacing part of the lard with butter fat, 
there was a slight increase in growth; adding vi- 
tamine preparation B to the basal ration, there was 
some effect produced; and on adding vitamine 
preparation A, a decided gain in weight resulted 
which compared favorably with the growth curve 
obtained on using the hydrochlorie acid lactalbu- 
min, 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


On the origin of the humin formed by the acid 
hydrolysis of proteins III. Hydrolysis in the 
presence of aldehydes II. Hydrolysis in the pres- 
ence of formaldehyde: Ross AIKEN GORTNER and 
Grorce E. Houm. Hydrolysis in the presence of 
formaldehyde completely alters the nitrogen distri- 
bution obtained by Van Slyke’s method. Black 
insoluble humin is formed from tryptophane and 
no other known amino acid is concerned in the re- 
action. The primary reaction of black humin for- 
mation involves only the indole nucleus and not the 
a amino group of the aliphatic side chain of trypto- 
phane. Formaldehyde forms a soluble humin with 
tyrosine which is precipitated by Ca(OH),. 
Hydrolysis in the presence of formaldehyde causes 
enormous increases in the ammonia fraction but 
the inerease is not due to ammonia but to volatile 
alkaline compounds. The detailed paper will ap- 
pear in the Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc. 


On the relative imbibition of glutens from strong 
and weak flours: Ross AIKEN GorTNER and 
Everett H. Dourerty. The gluten was washed 
from both ‘‘strong’’ and ‘‘weak’’ flours and the 
hydration capacity of the colloids measured by im- 
mersing weighed disks in different concentrations 
of certain acids, allowing them to remain a definite 
length of time and again weighing. Lactic and 
acetic acids produced greatest imbibition, the form 
of these hydration curves being very different 
from those of hydrochloric and oxalic acids which 
produced much less hydration. The gluten from 
a ‘‘weak’’ flour has a much lower rate of hydra- 
tion and a much lower maximum hydration ca- 
pacity than has the gluten from a ‘‘strong’’ flour. 
Gluten from a ‘‘weak’’ flour changes from a gel 
to a sol at a much lower degree of hydration than 
does that from a ‘‘strong’’ flour. There is an in- 
herent difference in the colloidal properties of the 
glutens from ‘‘strong’’ and ‘‘weak’’ flours and 
these glutens would not be identical even if the 
flours had originally had the same salt and acid 
content. The paper will be published in Jour. 
Agr. Res. 


The nitrogen distribution in protalbinic and 
lysalbinic acids: Ross AIKEN GoRTNER and Cor- 
NELIA KENNEDY. Lysalbinie and protalbinie acids 
were prepared from egg albumen by Paal’s method 
and their nitrogen distribution, together with that 
of the original egg albumen, determined by Van 
Slyke’s method. No marked difference was ob- 
served in any of the fractions although both of the 
derived products show a somewhat greater ap- 
parent lysine content. This is probably due to 


NovEMBER 30, 1917] 


ornithine derived from arginine. The analyses 
furnish no evidence as to whether or not these 
‘facids’’ are true chemical compounds or as to 
whether or not their structure is more simple than 
is that of egg albumen. The paper will appear in 
the Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc. 


The effect of prolonged acid hydrolysis on the ni- 
trogen distribution of fibrin with especial reference 
to the ammonia fraction: Ross AIKEN GORTNER 
and GrorGe E. Hou. Fibrin was boiled with 20 
per cent. HCl for varying periods of time ranging 
from 1 hour to 6 weeks, the ammonia fraction in- 
ereases continuously showing a 150 per cent. in- 
crease at the end of six weeks over that obtained 
at the end of twelve hours. This increase in am- 
monia comes almost entirely from the deamination 
of mono amino acids. The ammonia fraction of a 
twenty-four or forty-eight-hour hydrolysate can 
not be taken as an absolute measure of amide 
nitrogen for some ‘‘deamination’’ nitrogen is un- 
doubtedly present, the amount depending both 
upon the particular protein and the length of hy- 
drolysis. The paper will appear in the Jour. Amer. 
Chem. Soc. 


Comparative analyses of fibrin from different 
animals: Ross AIKEN GORTNER and ALEXANDER J. 
Woertz. Fibrin has been prepared from the 
blood of cattle, sheep and swine and the nitrogen 
distribution determined by Van Slyke’s method. 
No differences significantly greater than the ex- 
pected experimental errors were found. It would 
thus appear that fibrin from-any of these three 
sources can be used interchangeably in experi- 
mental work without invalidating the results. 
Whether or not this is true for fibrins from other 
sources remains still an open question. The paper 
will appear in the Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc. 


The nitrogen distribution of fibrin hydrolyzed 
in the presence of ferric chloride: CLARENCE AUS- 
TIN Morrow. When a protein is hydrolyzed in the 
presence of ferric chloride an accurate nitrogen dis- 
tribution can not be obtained. There is a substan- 
tial increase in the ammonia N, due probably to 
deamination of amino acids at the higher temper- 
ature of hydrolysis. The acid soluble humin in- 
creases at the expense of a corresponding loss from 
the ‘‘filtrate from the bases,’’ thus indicating 
that the earlier conclusion regarding the soluble 
humin N of soils was incorrect and that this frac- 
tion of a soil hydrolysis may be of protein origin. 
Since hydrolysis in the presence of either carbo- 
hydrates or ferrie chloride radically changes the 
nitrogen distribution of proteins, it is obvious that 


SCIENCE 


545 


no accurate knowledge of soil proteins can be ob- 
tained by applying Van Slyke’s method to soils. 


A new form of ultra-filter; its uses in synthetic 
and biological chemistry: P. A. Koper. A new . 
form of ultra-filter is described which depends on 
pervaporating both dialysis and diffusate solution 
during dialysis. Its usefulness in filtering off 
humus and other coloring matter in biological work 
and organie synthetie work, as well as colloids in 
general, is pointed out. The apparatus makes it 
possible now, for the first time, to dialyze quanti- 
tatively. 


Studies on Piper bredemeyeri, an adulterant of 
matico: A, VIEHOEVER and M. G, Mastin. A 
study has been made of the volatile oil obtained 
from Piper bredemeyeri, an adulterant of matico, 
Piper angustifolium. It was found that the 
volatile oil did not yield asaron, which is obtained 
from genuine matico, nor matico camphor, ob- 
tained from Piper angustifoliwm var. ossanwm. 
The oil from Piper bredemeyeri, containing over 
50 per cent. of dillapiol, was very similar in com- 
position to that reported to be obtained from 
Piper mandoni. The chemical and botanical simi- 
larities suggest that the name Piper mandoni has 
been given to plants belonging to the species Piper 
bredemeyeri. A paper on the subject is in prep- 
aration. 


Studies on mustards and mustard substitutes: 
A. VIEHOEVER, C. O. Ewine and J. F. CLEVENGER. 
Work on monographs of mustards and mustard 
substitutes has progressed considerably. New 
supplies from India, China and Japan have been 
identified on the basis of studies including the 
botany and chemistry of the seeds, and also 
studies of plants grown from the seeds. Ma- 
terial of Indian brown mustard proved to be sub- 
stituted by Indian rape or tori, Brassica napus 
var. dichotoma. Chinese mustard, Brassica jwncea, 
was found to be usually improperly collected, 
containing a considerable amount of immature 
seeds and weed seeds, including generally Eruca. 
A preliminary study of the volatile oils obtained 
from Chinese mustard, Brassica juncea, and Jap- 
anese mustard, Brassica cernua, indicates that 
they are mixtures containing only in part allyliso- 
thiocyanate. The volatile oil from Brassica cam- 
pestris sativa chinensis, another adulterant of 
mustard, proved to be crotonylisothiocyanate. 
This oil has no mustard qualities. Since the plant 
grows very vigorously, plans are under way to 
utilize it either for greens and salads or for stock 


546 


feed. The seeds yield over 40 per cent. of a fatty 
oil with the general characteristics of rape oil. 


An alkaloid from lupinus leucopsis: O. F. 
Buack. The European lupines have been very 
extensively studied especially in respect to their 
alkaloids. No work has been reported on the 
native species of the plant which grow abundantly 
on western ranges. Lupinus leucopsis, suspected 
of causing the poisoning of cattle, was tested for 
alkaloids and gave positive reactions. The alka- 
loid was thereupon isolated in the following 
manner: the seeds were finely ground and extracted 
by macerating at room temperature with 80 per 
cent., aleohol slightly acidified with HCl. The 
alcohol was driven off by boiling in vacuo and the 
residual solution quantitatively precipitated with 
Mayer’s reagent. The precipitate washed and de- 
composed with HS, filtered, and the filtrate ex- 
tracted with chloroform which removed the alka- 
loid as the hydriodede. On evaporating the solvent 
the salt remained as lemon yellow needle crystals, 
mpt. 246°. It could be recrystallized from water 
or alcohol. The alkaloid, prepared by treating 
the salt with silver oxide, was colorless and 
amorphous and resisted attempts to crystallize it. 
A preliminary analysis indicated that the formula 
was probably C,,H;,N,Oj;HI, which does not corre- 
spond with the formula of any alkaloid hitherto 
isolated from lupines. Also the common European 
varieties when subjected to the same treatment 
failed to yield any body of a similar nature. It, 
therefore, seems reasonable to conclude that it is 
a new alkaloid. It is intended to continue work 
on it when more material can be procured. 


On the histology and chemistry of secretory and 
nectary glands of the cotton plant: A. VIEHOEVER 
and E. E. Sranrorp. The occurrence, distribu- 
tion, and histology of secretory as well as nectary 
glands has been established. Microphotographs 
have been prepared which show clearly the struc- 
ture and lysigenetic character of the secretory 
glands. The chemistry of these glands is under 
investigation, and while not yet completed, very 
interesting results have been obtained. The glands 
located in parts not exposed to light, especially in 
seeds and roots, contain gossypol, while those of 
insolated parts, namely, stems, leaves, bolls and 
flowers, contain querimeritrin and anthocyans. 
Other genera belonging together with Gossypium 
to Hibisceae have been studied in regard to the 
presence of secretory glands. While some of the 
genera did not show them, others, especially Thur- 
beria (wild cotton) showed these glands very con- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1196 


spicuously and very similarly arranged as in the 
case of cotton plants. 


Studies on edible and poisonous beans of the 
Lima type (Phaseolus lunatus) : A. VIEHOEVER, C. 
O. Ewine and M. G. Mastin. Work on cyano- 
genesis consisted of the investigation of poisonous 
and edible beans of the Lima type, Phaseolus 
lWwnatus. Examination of a considerable number 
of domestic Lima beans disclosed the fact that 
they all yield hydrocyanic acid under certain con- 
ditions, the amount of which, however, does not 
exceed 10 mg. per 100 gm. of beans. Foreign 
beans of the same type, imported from the Orient 
or South America, were found to contain in cer- 
tain instances a considerably higher amount. As 
a result of these findings a large number of 
shipments of such beans, especially Rangoon or 
Burma beans, were excluded from import. The 
glucoside, yielding hydrocyanic acid, has been 
isolated and its characteristics determined. This 
facilitated the working out of a satisfactory re- 
liable method for obtaining the maximum avail- 
able amount of hydrocyanie acid from the beans. 
It also assisted in experiments concerning the re- 
moval of the glucoside from the bean. 


Oxalic acid in foods and spices: A. VIEHOEVER, 
W. F. KunkE, and M. G. Mastin. A large num- 
ber of common foods and spices have been exam- 
ined for the presence of oxalic acid and its salts. 
In some instances this has been supplemented by 
quantitative determinations, namely: Rhubarb 
stalks, contained 0.39 per cent. of oxalic acid and 
rhubarb leaves contained 0.84 per cent., in the form 
of soluble oxalates and insoluble calcium oxalate. 
These amounts were found in fresh material ob- 
tained on the market. In the dried root of rhu- 
barb, used as a drug, the amount of oxalie acid 
was 10.77 per cent., being present in the form of 
calcium oxalate. No soluble oxalates were found. 
The amount found in spinach was 0.82 per cent., 
and that in sweet potatoes 0.10 per cent. In beets, 
0.17 per cent., and in dried figs 0.21 per cent. 
Dasheen contained 0.49 per cent., and the common 
bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) 0.4 per cent. Acheen 
pepper, containing usually a varying amount of 
more or less undeveloped fruit, showed 1.61 per 
cent. oxalic acid in the solid, almost developed 
fruits, and 3.39 per cent. in the fruits which were 
more or less empty. The amount of oxalic acid 
found in ground pepper can possibly be used to 
detect the presence of added pepper shells. 


(To be continued) 


SCIENCE 


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SCIENCE 


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CONTENTS 


The Chemical Basis of Axial Polarity in Re- 
generation: Dr. JACQUES LOEB ........... 547 
Comments on the Theories of the Structure of 
Matter: Drs. K. Grorce Fak ANnpD J. M. 
INDURTY Ls ongcbonaubenodadconuedb don odo 551 
The Possibility of using Gravity Anomalies in 
the Search for Salt-dome Oil and Gas Pools: 


EUGENE WESLEY SHAW 553, 


Field Trip of the American Association of 


State Geologists: W. O. HorcHKIss 556 


Scientific Events :— 


The Late. Dr. Richard Weil; Medical In- 
spection of Camp Wheeler; The Use of the 
McKay Bequest to Harvard University; 
Annual Meeting of the American Ornith- 
ologists’ Union; General Announcement of 
the Permanent Secretary of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science. 557 


Scientific Notes and News ...............5> 561 


University and Educational News .......... 564 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Methods for preparing Animal Material to 
be dissected: Proressor R. M. Strone..... 564 


Scientific Books :— 


McClendon’s Physical Chemistry of Vital 
Phenomena: Proressor RaupH §S. Lime. 565 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- 

ences: PROFESSOR EDWIN BIDWELL WILSON. 567 


Special Articles :— 


A Relation of Atomic Weights to Atomic 
Numbers and a Suggested Structure of 
Atomic Nuclei: Dr. JoHN Q. Stewart. 
The Aerobic Culture of Anaerobes at Higher 
Temperatures: LILLIAN JORDAN ELLEFSON, 
IV7.iyy (OF Belin Sapna pobanadoD SLU odondeE 
The Boston Meeting of the American Chemical 

Society 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review shoula be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. £. 


THE CHEMICAL BASIS OF AXIAL 
POLARITY IN REGENERA- 
TION 


I 


WHEN a piece of a stem is cut out from 
a plant one or more new shoots will usually 
arise at the apical, and roots at the basal 
end of the piece. This phenomenon of axial 
polarity was explained by the older botan- 
ists as being due to a flow of shoot-forming 
substances to the apex and of root-forming 
substances to the base. The gathering of 
these substances at opposite ends of the 
piece was believed to be responsible for the 
phenomenon of polarity in regeneration. 
While this may or may not be correct, the 
writer has recently found facts which sug- 
gest an additional or a different mechanism 
for this polarity, namely, that the apical 
bud suppresses the growth of the buds situ- 
ated more basally in the stem by sending 
out inhibitory substances in a basal direec- 
tion. 

The experiments were made on Bryo- 
phyllum calycinum. Each node of the 
stem of this plant has two leaves in an oppo- 
site position, and in the axil of each leaf is 
found a dormant bud capable of giving rise 
to ashoot. The line connecting two buds of 
one node is at right angles to the line con- 
necting the two buds of the next node. 

Experiment I—A piece of stem, contain- 
ing six or more nodes, is eut out from a 
plant, all the leaves are removed and the 
piece is put into a horizontal position with 
the line connecting the two buds of the 
most apical node vertical. In this ease 
both buds in the apical node may begin to 
grow, but as a rule only the upper bud will 
continue to grow, while the growth of the 
lower bud will soon stop altogether or will 


A conial i f 
MA \S rel] 
/, ow\* Ox. 


.* 
oS 


r 


548 


be considerably retarded. None of the 
buds in the other nodes will grow out. 
Roots will grow chiefly on the under side 
of the stem, but in the last node and at the 
cut end they may form on the upper side as 
well as on the lower side of the stem. 

Experiment II. is the same as Experi- 
ment I., except that the upper apical bud 
is cut out. In this case the lower apical 
bud will grow rapidly, but in addition one 
or both of the buds of the node next to the 
apical will grow out. These buds never 
grow out when the upper apical bud is pre- 
served and healthy. 

Experiment III. is the same as the pre- 
vious experiment except that the lower 
apical bud is removed, while the upper one 
is preserved. In this case, the upper apical 
bud will grow out, but none of the others. 

It follows from these experiments that the 
upper apical bud inhibits or retards the 
growth of the lower apical bud as well as 
that of the rest of the buds; while the 
lower apical bud can not suppress the 
growth of the buds in the node behind. 
The writer has repeated these experiments 
in many modifications, among which those 
on longitudinally split stems are the most 
striking. The results were uniform. 

All these observations are intelligible if 
we assume that a bud when it begins to 
grow produces and sends out inhibitory 
substances toward the base of the stem. 
These substances flow in the conducting 
vessels in the same half of the stem where 
the bud lies; when one apical bud is above 
and one below, the two buds in the next 
node are in a lateral position between the 
upper and lower half of the stem. Hence 
the inhibitory substances sent out by the 
upper apical bud can reach the two buds 
in the next node behind and inhibit their 
growth, since these buds lie directly below 
or on the lower level of the conducting ves- 
sels from the upper apical bud; while in- 
hibitory substances sent out by the lower 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1197 


apical bud can not reach the buds in the 
node behind in large quantity, since these 
buds are on the upper level or slightly 
above these conducting vessels. When the 
two lateral buds grow out they will inhibit 
the growth of all the buds behind, each bud 
covering a territory of one half stem. 

The alternative hypothesis assumes that 
since the apical bud is the first to grow out 
it will absorb all the shoot-forming ma- 
terial.1. If we assume that the shoot-form- 
ing material has a tendency to rise this 
hypothesis may explain the facts also. But 
the following experiment, which seems 
erucial, decides in favor of the other as- 
sumption. 5 

A piece of stem containing a number of 
nodes is suspended horizontally, as in the 
previous experiments, with the two apical 
buds in a vertical line. AIl the leaves are 
removed with the exception of those at the 
apical node. Here the petioles of the leaves 
are left attached to the stem, the leaves 
having been cut off. The petioles will wilt 
in a week or ten days, but until then will 
prevent or retard the growth of the apical 
buds in their axils. The buds in the next 
node will begin to grow out and as soon as 
the petioles have fallen off the apical buds 
will also begin to grow. 

The next step is decisive for testing the 
two hypotheses. If the inhibiting effect of 
the apical buds on the more basal buds is 
due to the fact that the buds which grow 
out first attract all the material from the 
basal part of the stem, the buds in the node 
behind the apical one, which grew out first, 
should continue to outstrip in growth the 
apical buds which began to grow out later. 
But if the inhibiting effect is due to an in- 


1This form of inhibition exists apparently in 
the leaf where the shoots which grow out first 
prevent other notches in the leaf from giving rise 
to shoots by absorbing the material needed for 
shoot formation. ScieNcE, 1917, XLV., 436; 
XLVI., 115; Bot. Gaz., in print. 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


hibitory substance being sent in the direc- 
tion toward the base by the growing bud, 
the most apical bud should soon outstrip in 
growth those situated in the next node be- 
hind, although the latter had an earlier 
start. For according to this theory, the 
most apical buds should be sending sub- 
stanees toward the base which inhibit the 
growth in the next bud; while the most 
apical buds receive no such inhibitory sub- 
stances. The results of the experiment are 
quite clear. As soon as the petioles at the 
apex fall off the axillary buds at the apex 
begin to grow out and soon not only out- 
strip in size those of the next buds behind 
but actually retard or stop the growth of 
the latter. This phenomenon seems intel- 
ligible only on the assumption that a grow- 
ing bud sends out substances toward the 
base of the stem which directly inhibit the 
growth of the other buds. 


Il 


If the inhibition of shoot formation is 
due to special inhibitory substances it 
should be possible to show that the inhibi- 
tion varies quantitatively with the mass of 
inhibitory substances produced in the 
growing bud, or with the mass of the latter. 
While the bud is too small for convenient 
quantitative experimentation, it can be 
carried out satisfactorily with the leaf. In 
a former paper the writer had shown that 
the leaf of Bryophyllum sends out ma- 
terial toward the base of the stem which 
favors root formation; and it also seemed 
possible that the leaf might send out sub- 
stances in a basal direction which inhibit 
shoot formation. The sap from the leaf 
flows in conducting vessels situated in the 
same half of the stem where the leaf is at- 
tached. 

When we suspend a stem of Bryophyllum 
with six or more nodes horizontally, and 
remove all the leaves except the two in the 


SCIENCE 


549 


apical node, the stem will form no shoots as 
long as the leaves are alive, but an abund- 
ance of roots is produced in the stem. The 
two leaves, therefore, inhibit all the shoot 
formation in the buds situated basally 
from the leaf. When we remove one of the 
two apical leaves the axillary bud of this 
leaf will grow out and it will have the same 
inhibiting effect as the leaf in the previous 
experiment. We now make the following 
experiment. 

Twelve long stems from which all leaves 
except one of the two apical ones have been 
removed are suspended horizontally, and 
the free axillary bud opposite the leaf is 
also cut out. Six stems are suspended with 
the leaf above, six with the leaf below. 
There is a striking difference in the two 
sets. When the leaf is below, shoots will 
develop either in the two lateral buds of 
the first node behind the leaf, or on the 
upper side of the second node behind the 
leaf. When the leaf is above, no shoots will 
develop in the next node behind the leaf 
but one shoot may grow in the second node 
behind the leaf, on the lower side alone. 
These shoots will develop more slowly than 
those in the stems whose leaf is on the 
lower side. 

This is exactly the result which we should 
expect if the leaf sends out substances in- 
hibiting shoot formation toward the base 
of the stem. These substances, being iden- 
tical with or accompanying the root-form- 
ing substances, flow on that side: of the 
stem where the leaf is, but have naturally 
a tendency to flow downward and not to 
flow upward. Hence, when the leaf is be- 
low it is possible for shoots to form in some 
(about 50 per cent.) of the stems in the 
first node behind the leaf, in which case 
the buds are on the upper level of the flow- 
ing sap; while when the leaf is above it is 
impossible for the buds in the first node 
behind the leaf to grow because they are 
on the lower level of the sap flow from the 


500 


leaf. The bud on the lower side of the sec- 
ond node behind the leaf (when the latter 
is on the upper side of the stem) is outside 
the sap flow and hence it may develop. 

When we work with a large apical leaf 
attached to a short stem (the free apical 
bud opposite the leaf is always removed in 
these experiments) containing only two 
nodes behind the leaf, everything is as de- 
scribed for long stems. When, however, 
the piece of stem behind the leaf is smaller, 
containing only one node, no shoot can grow 
on this stem even when the leaf is below. 
The mass of inhibitory substance sent out 
by a large leaf will flood the buds in this 
node with inhibiting material. Occasion- 
ally a bud starts to grow but stops before 
a leaflet has time to unfold. Such a stem 
will form an abundance of roots at the 
base. If, however, we reduce the size of 
the apical leaf by cutting away nine tenths 
of its mass, most or practically all the 
stems will form shoots in the node behind 
the leaf; but roots in such stems either do 
not develop at all or only with long delay. 

The leaf, therefore, sends substances to 
the basal part of the stem which inhibit 
shoot formation and favor root formation, 
and the mass of these inhibitory substances 
decreases with the mass of the leaf, and ap- 
parently parallel with the mass of root- 
forming substances sent to the base of the 
stem. 

Another experiment is equally instruc- 
tive. We have seen that when long stems 
having all but one apical leaf removed 
(and the opposite free apical bud also re- 
moved) are suspended horizontally, with 
the leaf above, no shoot will form on the 
upper side of the stem. When we reduce 
the size of the leaf sufficiently this inhibi- 
tion ceases. 

Again the objection might be raised that 
the inhibiting effect of the leaf on shoot 
formation in the region behind the leaf is 
due not to an inhibitory substance being 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1197 


sent out by the leaf but by nutritive sub- 
stances needed for the growth of shoots 
being sent into the leaf by the stem. This 
is highly improbable not only on the basis 
of our knowledge of these processes but 
also on account of the following fact. 
When we cut off a leaf without its petiole, 
leaving the latter in connection with the 
stem, the petiole will dry out and fall off in 
a week or less. If, however, the petiole is 
detached from the stem but left attached 
to a leaf, it will not wilt, but remain fresh 
and green as long as the leaf is alive, which 
may be many months. This shows that nu- 
tritive material is furnished by the leaf to 
the stem, and not vice versa. 


aang 


While these experiments show that the 
inhibiting influence of an apical bud on the 
erowth of the more basal buds is due to 
one or more inhibitory substances being 
sent toward the basal end of the stem, the 
other main fact of polarity remains unex- 
plained; namely, how it happens that the 
most apical bud grows out first. The 
writer is inclined to offer the following 
suggestion: In the normal plant, the sub- 
stances inhibiting shoot formation are con- 
stantly flowing from the growing region 
toward the root of the plant. When we cut 
out a piece of stem and remove the leaves 
these substances will at first exist in every 
node, but will continue to flow toward the 
base. Hence the most apical node will be 
the first one to be free from these inhibitory 
substances and the bud or buds situated 
here can now begin to grow out. As soon 
as they grow out they will maintain a con- 
stant flow of inhibitory substances toward 
the base which will suppress the growth of 
buds in the more basal part of the stem. 

The experiments, therefore, seem to prove 
that axial polarity in the regeneration of 
a stem is due to the fact that the apical bud 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


(as well as an apical leaf) send out sub- 
stances toward the base of a stem which 
inhibit the buds from growing out. These 
inhibitory substances may be identical with 
or may accompany the root-forming hor- 
mones. The most apical bud in an excised 
piece of stem will grow out first since it 
will be the first to be free from these inhib- 
itory substances. 

In a former paper the writer had pointed 
out that a leaf sends out substances, in an 
apical direction through the stem, which 
favor shoot formation. 

Jacques Lors 

THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR 


MepDIcAL RESEARCH, 
New YorE 


SOME COMMENTS ON THE THEORIES 
OF THE STRUCTURE OF MATTER}?! 
Proressor Lewis in his paper raised the 

question of valence. From the point of view 

of chemistry, valence has a definite meaning 
which can not be overlooked and which 
may be emphasized here. The conception 
of valence developed from a study of the 
regularities observed in the composition of 
substances, and is fundamentally purely de- 
seriptive. It is a classification which shows 
regularities in the capacity of certain atoms 
for combination, or for holding a definite 
number of atoms or their equivalents in 
combination. The continued study of 
chemical composition has, as a matter of 
course, extended the classification. The 
phenomena of oxidation, the ionization of 
substances in solution and otherwise, and 
similar properties, have brought forward 
the view that, choosing a suitable element 
or state of an element as the zero or neutral 
point, the valence of an element in a given 

combination may be denoted either by a 
1 This discussion was presented by Dr. Falk at 

the ‘‘Symposium on the Structure of Matter,’’ 

held at the meeting of the American Association 


for the Advancement of Science in New York City, 
December, 1916. 


SCIENCE 


551 


positive number or a negative number. 
This view was adopted for individual cases 
some time ago by different chemists, but 
became of general interest when J. J. Thom- 
son, using corpuscles, showed how this could 
be pictured readily, and applied in a simple 
manner. 

A few words may be devoted to the fact 
that the classifications given by valence 
should involve no considerations of meas- 
ures of relative stabilities of substances, al- 
though the existence of compounds depends 
upon stabilities and rates of decomposition. 
Stability discussions should not enter di- 
rectly into questions of valence, but unfor- 
tunately this fact is often overlooked and 
much confusion has resulted. 

The question of so-called polar and non- 
polar valence is one raised by Professor 
Lewis. At the present time the view that 
only non-polar bonds exist is probably held 
by no chemist. The electron conception of 
valence, based upon a study and compari- 
son of organic and inorganic compounds, 
postulates polar valence only; in other 
words, each valence linking is equivalent 
to one atom functioning with a negative 
charge, and the other atom with a positive 
charge. The electrostatic view does not in- 
volve at first sight such questions as distri 
bution of electrons within the atom, ete. 

At the present time there are a number 
of chemists who advocate both polar and 
non-polar valences, even assuming both to 
be present in a molecule at the same time. — 
The reasons for assuming the existence of 
non-polar valences appear to be negative 
ones. If direct evidence is lacking, or if 
ignorance is manifested with regard to the 
reactions of certain groups, or if these 
groups do not take part in the desired re- 
action with sufficient velocity, the existence 
of polar valences is denied. A strong argu- 
ment in favor of assuming polar valences 
in organic compounds is, that if they are 


502 


not assumed, two different types of oxida- 
tion reactions become necessary, and these 
two types would be contradictory. This 
was pointed out several years ago.” 

Direct evidence for the polar nature of 
valences involved in the Grignard reactions 
is given by some recent experiments.* 
Without going into details, these results 
may be quoted. 


RESISTANCE IN OHMS. (ORDINARY CONDUCTIVITY 


APPARATUS) 

TANNER! soobododouoodsbadodNOeOO abovel Xx 107 
Ether containing ethyl bromide.. abovel XX 107 
Ether containing 1.2 gm. magnes- 

jum as Grignard reagent 

(MgC.H,Br) per 100 ce...... 7.1 xX 108 
Same with 0.3 mg. magnesium. . 1. 0 X 105 
1/50 M KCl aqueous solution... . 1.26 < 102 


A cell constructed with magnesium and 
platinum electrodes, and a dry ethereal so- 
lution of ethyl bromide containing a small 
amount of previously prepared Grignard 
reagent as solution gave electromotive 
forces of from 0.5 to 1.5 volts. 

These results are of the greatest signifi- 
cance with regard to the question of polar 
and non-polar valence and indicate that the 
valence or linkings of organic compounds 
are of the same character as those of inor- 
ganic compounds. They bear out the ex- 
planation of the Grignard reaction on the 
basis of the electron conception of valence 
published several years ago, and in addi- 
tion will unquestionably throw light on the 
processes operating in solutions, aqueous 
and otherwise. 

With regard to Professor Jones’s work 
on electromerism, some interesting develop- 
ments may be presented. As we under- 
stand the term, electromerism means elec- 
tronic tautomerism and includes substances 
structurally identical, but mutually trans- 
formable by an exchange of negative elec- 
trons between atoms composing the mole- 

2Falk and Nelson, Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc., 36, 


209 (1914). 
3 Nelson and Evans, ibid., 39 (1917) (January). 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1197 


ecules. Thus ammonium nitrate, NH,NO,, 
and hydroxylamine nitrite, NH,OH NO,, 
while mutually transformable by a suitable 
exchange of negative electrons, since as far 
as the charges on the atoms are concerned 
they differ only in the valence of the ni- 
trate and nitrite nitrogen atoms, are not 
structurally identical and would not, there- 
fore, be classed as electromers. 

Professor Jones in his paper considered 
electromeric nitrogen compounds. In elec- 
tromers, the states of oxidation of certain 
atoms in the structural isomers are differ- 
ent. A number of years ago we showed 
that the explanation of the isomerism of a 
number of structurally identical organic 
compounds may be referred to the state of 
oxidation or the valence of certain atoms. 
The compounds referred to are generally 
known as geometrical or cis-trans isomers. 
Direct evidence based upon the ionization 
constants of organic acids‘ showed that the 
isomerism of maleic and fumaric acids is 
due to phenomena now included under 
electromerism while addition reactions of 
unsaturated carbon compounds lead to 
similar conclusions.® The evidence in de- 
tail is given in the published papers and 
need not be repeated here. It is possible 
to go somewhat farther. Werner and 
Pfeiffer? have placed in parallel the so- 
called geometrical isomerism of double 
bonded carbon atoms and the isomerism due 
to plane configuration of certain cobalt, 
chromium and platinum compounds: 


Ry ® Ry NG a es 
G C Pt Pt 
RN 3¢//INR RL cx 

(Pt(NH)Cleé&e) 


4 Falk, Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc., 33, 1140 (1911). 

5 Nelson and Falk, School of Mines Quarterly, 
30, 179 (1909); Falk and Nelson, Jour. Amer. 
Chem. Soc., 32, 1637 (1910). 

6 Werner, ‘‘Neuere Anschauungen auf dem 
Gebiete der anorganischen Chemie’’ (1913), pp. 
348, 345; Pfeiffer, Ztschr. physik. Chem., 48, 40 
(1904). 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


Whatever explanation is accepted for 
the double bond isomerism, the same expla- 
nation will apply to the isomerism of the 
platinum compounds. Werner considers 
that the explanation of the spatial configu- 
ration applies to both. On the other hand, 
if the double bond isomerism is due to the 
directions of the valences which is the 
same as the distribution of the negative 
electrons in the acids, then the explanation 
of the isomerism of the platinum com- 
pounds should be based upon the distribu- 
tion of the electrons in the platinum atom. 
There is, however, only one atom involved 
here, so that it appears as if this isomerism 
would furnish a method for showing the 
distribution or arrangement of the electrons 
in an atom, or perhaps the spatial configu- 
ration of the atom, different arrangements 
of electrons giving rise to possibilities of 
the existence of isomeric compounds. It is 
even possible, and perhaps very probable, 
that the different arrangements of the elec- 
trons might control the spatial positions of 
the combined groups. The spatial configu- 
rations deduced by Werner and others, then 
would exist, but would actually be an effect 
of the arrangement of the electrons. The 
positions of the combined atoms therefore 
would be a result of the isomerism and not 
its cause. 

These platinum and similar metal com- 
pounds would then belong to the class of 
electromeric substances. Since this expla- 
nation means that the spatial arrangement 
of atoms or groups around a central atom 
depends primarily upon the spatial ar- 
rangement of the valence and also other 
electrons of that central atom, a further 
logical deduction would inelude all optically 
active isomers in organic and inorganic 
chemistry in the group of electromers. The 
spatial arrangements of the atoms or groups 
here would also be governed or controlled 
primarily by the arrangement of the elec- 


SCIENCE 


553 


trons of the atom showing the optical ac- 
tivity. 
K. George FALE, 
J. M. Netson 
HARRIMAN RESEARCH LABORATORY, 


RoosEvELT Hospirat, 
CoLuUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


POSSIBILITY OF USING GRAVITY 
ANOMALIES IN THE SEARCH 
FOR SALT-DOME OIL AND 
GAS POOLS 


THE immense masses of common salt that 
have foreed their way up toward the surface of 
the earth in Louisiana, Texas and other low 
plains regions where there is no hard rock 
within several thousand feet of the surface, 
seem to afford all the fascination and baffling 
questions that can be desired by the structural 
geologist, though thrilling encounters with 
such questions are usually sought in moun- 
tainous regions. Recorded and available notes 
on experiences in the sinking of the thousands 
of wells that have been put down on salt domes 
in the search for oil is dishearteningly scant, 
and yet sufficient to give a fair idea of the 
common extents, positions and shapes of the 
upper portions of the salt cores. If as much 
were known concerning their lower portions it 
might not only be possible to determine their 
cause and mode of growth with a fair degree 
of certainty, but to devise means of discover- 
ing by gravity observations, hidden domes, for 
some are scarcely evident from the surface, 
and perhaps many unsuspected ones with val- 
uable oil and gas pools are scattered through 
the coastal portions of Louisiana, Texas and 
other regions. 

Are the salt domes due to some process re- 
lated to voleanic action? The domed form of 
the strata, which is much more commonly seen 
than the core itself, is such as might have been 
produced by a rising plug of igneous rock and 
even the masses of salt and associated second- 
ary deposits might apparently have been pro- 
duced indirectly by intrusions. On the other 
hand, though many very deep wells have been 
drilled in salt domes, igneous rock has rarely 
if ever been touched. Since there are numer- 
ous varieties of salt domes—some making a 


504 


conspicuous hill, some through recent solu- 
tion of the salt making a depression, and some 
having little or no effect on the surface, the 
salt core of some lying at slight depth and of 
others at great depth—it would appear that if 
they are due to intrusion, the igneous rock 
should have been found in some of them. 

Furthermore, in areas of igneous activity in- 
trusions have various forms, dikes being com- 
mon, but salt domes are sharply localized, 
more or less equi-dimensional laterally, in 
length and breadth rarely measuring over two 
or three miles or less than one half mile. <A1- 
though in an area underlain by a great thick- 
ness of unconsolidated strata intrusions may 
differ somewhat from those of other areas, still, 
since the country rock, being unconsolidated, is 
more likely a body of water than if it had been 
cemented into stone, it seems quite unreason- 
able to assume that either intrusions or sec- 
ondary deposits made by circulating waters or 
gases emanating from them would be similar 
in form and size and short in lateral dimen- 
sions. The fact that salt domes are found on 
the northwest and southwest coasts of the Gulf 
of Mexico, and that, due perchance to more 
consolidated rock, igneous intrusions are com- 
mon in territory between, invites investigation 
to determine whether or not gradation phases 
may be found between salt domes and intru- 
sions. Such phases, however, seem to be poorly 
developed and the series, if there is one, in- 
complete. Also, although intrusions have 
made dome structures and hills on the sur- 
face in many parts of the world, no evidence 
of an overlying salt core seems to have been 
found. 

Are the domes due, as has also been sug- 
gested, to forces of crystallization acting in 
some such way as they do in the growth of 
concretions, the salt being taken from satu- 
rated solutions and collected around some nu- 
cleus by molecular attraction? Ordinarily 
salt does not seem to behave in this way and 
the associated great deposits of dolomite, gyp- 
sum and other secondary substances would 
seem too much to ascribe to a kind of mass ac- 
tion not controlled by some other set of forces 
operating at or underneath the locus of salt- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1197 


dome growth. The apparent lack of concentric 
structure and of small salt concretions, and 
the presence of certain minerals, such as 
sulphur and copper ores, seems to point to a 
deep-seated cause for the domes. 

May the salt domes be due to a buckling and 
flowage of one or more beds of rock salt lying 
at great depth, as has been suspected concern- 
ing European salt domes or more indirectly 
to some process of isotatic adjustment? If 
so some of the salt cores should be connected 
below with the parent stratum or strata of 
rock salt, and the average mass of salt per- 
haps much greater than if it had developed in 
some other way. However, since the country 
rock is largely unconsolidated, and, on the 
whole, homogeneous, and the surface is smooth 
and horizontal, it would seem rather improb- 
able that the bodies of salt could have been pro- 
duced through differential pressure, though it 
must be admitted that a small stress difference 
operating for a very long time may accomplish 
a great deal, and once started the process might 
be somewhat self-accelerating. Also the asso- 
ciation of salt, dolomite, gypsum, sulphur, 
copper, etc., suggests a Permian source. As a 
matter of fact, however, the few determina- 
tions of specific gravity of the country rock 
that have been made indicate that it weighs in 
its natural wet state no more than salt, if in- 
deed as much, and it seems very improbable 
that there has been any considerable horizon- 
tal thrust pressure. 

In any case from what has been learned by 
deep boring and from the various conceivable 
possibilities as to salt dome origin, it seems 
probable that the known upper portions of 
salt cores are underlain with (a) more salt, 
(b) clay and sand, or (c) igneous rock. Al- 
though it is possible that the clay and sand 
strata through which the salt rises, differ more 
or less markedly from it in specific gravity, 
the surprisingly little information available on 
the subject indicates that in their natural state 
the salt is appreciably the heavier. The writer 
has tested seven samples of common sandy clay 
and clayey sand from the Gulf Coast region, 
and the results indicate that although the spe- 
cific gravity varies considerably, it is not far 


DrceMBER 7, 1917] 


from that of salt. There is a real possibility, 
however, that the difference is great enough 
so that large bodies of rock salt not far from 
the surface can be detected by determinations 
of the intensity of gravity. 

While investigating the “mud lumps” at 
the mouths of the Mississippi a few years ago 
the writer had occasion to study isostacy a little, 
for it seemed probable that the “mud lumps” 
were due to gravity—induced internal flowage 
of the delta. The question arose, may not the 
salt domes be due to some such solid or semi- 
solid flowage? and another question immedi- 
ately arose, namely, may not the domes have a 
perceptible effect on gravity? The domes of 
southern Texas and Louisiana are in a region 
that is very flat, and although some domes are 
marked by knolls from two to three to thirty 
feet or more in height, some domes that are 
very high structurally have little or no effect 
on the surface. Whether this indicates that 
many domes are antecedent to the surface de- 
posits has not been determined. In any case 
the means now available for finding domes not 
marked by a hill or basin on the surface seem 
to be limited to scant and irregularly devel- 
oped secondary deposits at the surface, such 
as the curious “ paraffin earth” which is ap- 
parently a new compound, though containing 
possibly both gelatinous silica and some hydro- 
carbon. 

Since the domes are in a flat region under- 
lain by comparatively homogenous sand, silt 
and clay, it seems more than likely that the 
salt, dolomite, gypsum, sulphur, compressed 
clay and possibly igneous rock of the domes 
would together have a specific gravity notice- 
ably different from that of the country rock in 
which they occur, and within the range of 
possibility that the difference could be de- 
tected by gravity observations. In other 
words it seems possible that hidden salt domes, 
with the immensely valuable pools of oil and 
gas that are commonly associated, can be dis- 
covered through the help of gravity observa- 
tions, which will thus reduce to a greater or 
less extent the cost of finding the oil pools. 

The intensity of gravity varies with altitude, 
latitude, topography and the varying density 


SCIENCE 


555 


of the materials composing the earth, partic- 
ularly near the points where the observations 
are made. 


A mass weighing 200 pounds at sea level at the 
equator will weigh [on a spring balance] approxi- 
mately 201 pounds at sea level at either pole. A 
mass weighing 400 pounds at sea level will weigh 
approximately 399 pounds at an elevation of 5 
miles at the same latitude; and a given mass will 
weigh less at the top of a sharp mountain peak 
than if it were at the center of a broad plateau of 
the same elevation as the peak. . . . The measure- 
ment of the force of gravity at a station to be ac- 
ceptable must not have a probable error greater 
than one part in two hundred thousand. An actual 
error of one part in two hundred thousand corre- 
sponds to an error of only one one-millionth of a 
second in the period of oscillation of the pendu- 
lum.1 


The method of observation, consists essen- 
tially in determining the effect of gravity on 
the rate of swing of a pendulum. The instru- 
ment “is placed on a solid concrete floor or an 
especially prepared brick or concrete pier.” 
With the interferometer, vibrations of the case 
“due to the passing of a team a city block 
away or a team a mile away are easily de- 
tected.” 

The average probable error in the gravity 
observations of the Coast and Geodetic Survey 
is said to be in general about .002 or .003 of a 
dyne. 

If we assume that the force of gravity at the cen- 
ter of a section [square mile] which is underlain 
with sand one mile deep at a specifie gravity of 
2.50 is 980,000 dynes, then if the [cubic mile of] 
sand were replaced by limestone at a specific grav- 
ity of 2.75 the force of gravity would be increased 
to about 980.005 dynes. Similarly, if the same 
were replaced by basalt at a specifie gravity of 
3.00 the force of gravity would be increased to 
about 980.010 dynes. The change in the force of 
gravity at the center of the adjacent section due to 
these changes in specific gravity would be about 
one fifth as much as in the section affected.2 


Apparently, if a cubie mile of clay and sand 
with a specific gravity of 1.80-2.00 immediately 

1U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey, Spec. Pub. No. 
23, pp. 48 and 50, 1916. 

2Letter to writer from acting superintendent 
Coast and Geod. Survey, April 4, 1916. 


906 


underlying the surface were replaced by com- 
mon salt with a specific gravity of 2.10 or 2.20, 
the effect on the intensity of gravity might be 
observable. If a still heavier mass made up 
of salt, dolomite, igneous rock, etc., having a 
specific gravity of 2.50 to 2.75 were intruded 
the rate of swing of the pendulum would be 
very perceptibly increased. If, however, only 
a quarter of a cubic mile of the clay and sand 
were replaced with the lighter or heavier sub- 
stances, the effect would scarcely be observ- 
able, and if the intrusion occurred several 
thousand feet below the surface it might not 
be possible to locate the position with the 
gravity instrument. Other instruments have 
been devised for measuring the intensity of 
gravity that do not make use of the pendulum, 
and it seems within the range of possibility 
that in time an instrument of some sort will 
be perfected by which more delicate observa- 
tions can be made. 

The writer has found but one published 
statement suggesting the use of gravity anom- 
alies in the search for oil, and this was not in- 
tended to apply in the way here outlined. 
Edtvos,? in 1913, suggests that it may be pos- 
sible to find water, ore, coal, salt, oil and gas 
by using gravity anomalies. David White+ 
has, however, studied the relationships be- 
tween gravity anomalies and character of 
rocks. 

On account of the slight variations in alti- 
tude and latitude in southern Louisiana and 
Texas and other regions where salt domes 
occur, it seems possible that a considerable 
part of the calculations made in connection 
with the occupation of stations for other pur- 
poses may be eliminated. The use of gravity 

3 Hétviés, Roland, Ungarn. Bericht tiber Ar- 
beiten mit der Drehwage ausgefiihrt im Auftrage 
der Kén. Ungarischen Regiergung in den Jahren 
1909-1911: Internat. Erdmessung, 17 Allg. Conf., 
Hamburg, 1912, Beilage A, XL., pp. 427-438, 
1913. 

4 White, David, ‘‘Discussion of Gravity Anoma- 
lies from the Stratigraphic Standpoint’’ (no ab- 
stract). Discussed by William Bowie: Washing- 
ton Acad. Sci. Jour., Vol. 7, No. 10, p. 312, May 
19, 1917. Meeting of Geol. Soc. of Washington.on 
March 14, 1917. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1197 


observations in the search for salt, domes 
would then consist essentially in determining 
at many points the number of beats in a unit 
of time of a pendulum so constructed and en- 
cased as to reduce the friction to the lowest 
point possible. If the material in many of 
the domes will perceptibly affect the number 
of beats then it may be that gravity anomalies 
can be used profitably in searching for hidden 
domes, the observations for most points in a 
county or group of counties being uniform, 
while at a few points a perceptible departure 
can be observed. The increasing value of oil 
and the keen interest in prospecting make it 
seem possibly worth while to make some prac- 
tical tests with the gravity instrument on a 
known salt dome and surrounding country, 
especially since many wells are being sunk at 
random in the region. To be sure, some salt 
domes are known which do not seem to have 
oil pools, and others are known which have not 
yet been fully tested, but the number of insufii- 
ciently tested domes is rapidly decreasing, and 
with the keener interest in the search for oil 
the time will no doubt soon come when it will 
be profitable to spend a great deal of money 
searching for salt domes, for they seem to be 
much more likely to contain oil than the sur- 
rounding country. 
Eucene Wesiey SHAW 
U. S. GroLogicaL SURVEY 


ANNUAL FIELD TRIP OF THE AMERI- 
CAN ASSOCIATION OF STATE 
GEOLOGISTS 


THE American Association of State Geolo- 
gists made a very pleasant and instructive trip 
through Oklahoma, October 12 to 16. At the 
winter meeting in Albany, in December, 1916, 
it was decided to hold the summer field meeting 
in Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma Geological 
Survey accordingly made very comprehensive 
plans for the entertainment of the association. 

The declaration of war and the consequent 
interest of the geologists in war materials 
lead to the combination of the first part of the 
field trip with the meeting of the American 
Institute of Mining Engineers. 

After the meeting of the American Institute 
of Mining Engineers ended at Drumright the 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


State Geologists’ Association left the Ameri- 
can Institute and continued the excursion 
outlined by the Oklahoma Geological Survey. 
The association was fortunate in having with 
it Mr. A. A. Snietkoff and Ivan C. Goubkin, 
members of the Russian Commission, and A. 
Stepanoff, their secretary and interpreter, and 
also Mr. David White, chief geologist of the 
U. S. Geological Survey. 

The party arrived in Oklahoma City, where 
they were dinner guests of the Oklahoma Geo- 
logical Survey. At this dinner President and 
Mrs. Brooks of the university honored the 
association with their presence. The next 
morning the party went to Lawton, where the 
Businessmen’s League conducted them on an 
automobile trip through the Ft. Sill Military 
Reservation, Medicine Park and through the 
Wichita Mountains to the United States For- 
est and Game Preserve. The hospitality ex- 
hibited on this occasion will long be remem- 
bered by every one of the party. On the fol- 
lowing morning automobiles were again used 
for a trip through the Lawton oil and gas field, 
where some new gas wells with enormous ca- 
pacity have recently been brought in. By 
courtesy of the owners, the Keys well No. 2 
was opened in order that the visitors might 
have the opportunity of seeing one of the 
largest gassers ever drilled in the state. The 
capacity of this well is estimated at 60,000,000 
cubie feet per day and the rock pressure is in 
excess of 1,000 pounds, so large, indeed, that 
great difficulty is experienced in controlling 
the well. From this field the trip was con- 
tinued by automobile through Waurika and 
Ringling to the Healdton oil field and the Fox 
gas district. After visiting the many interest- 
ing sights of this field the party was taken to 
Ardmore for the night, and in the evening 
were the guests of the Ardmore Chamber of 
Commerce at a concert. 

The following morning the Chamber of 
Commerce provided machines to take the 
party north of the city inte the Arbuckle 
Mountains. About two miles above Turner 
Falls the machines left the party and the trip 
was made on foot down to Turner Falls and 
across the mountains to Price’s Falls, where 


SCIENCE 


557 


they were again joined by the machines. The 
wonderful beauty of the Travertine Falls in 
this district was enjoyed by all members of 
the party, and it was particularly enjoyable 
because of the fact that a new bulletin by the 
Oklahoma Geological Survey on these phe- 
nomena had just been received that morning 
from the printer. The automobiles then took 
the party to Davis, where the Santa Fe train 
was taken for home. The party finally dis- 
banded after dinner at the Harvey House, at 
Purcell. 

A few members of the association stopped 
over at Norman and visited the State Univer- 
sity before continuing to their homes. 

W. O. Horcukiss, 
Secretary 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
THE LATE DR. RICHARD WEIL 


The following minute has been adopted by 
the board of trustees of the New York Me- 
morial Hospital: 


Dr. Richard Weil, Major in the Medical Reserve 
Corps, U. S. A., died while on active duty at Camp 
Wheeler, Macon, Ga., November 19, 1917. By his 
death the Memorial Hospital loses one of the most 
highly trained and successful workers of its med- 
ical staff, and American cancer research one of 
its recognized leaders. Since 1906 Dr. Weil has 
been an active member of the staff of the Hunt- 
ington Fund, and throughout this period of eleven 
years he was constantly engaged in the problems 
of cancer research. His contributions in the field 
of the serology of cancer and in the general prob- 
lems of immunity gained for him an international 
reputation. He was one of the founders of the 
American Association for Cancer Research, and 
largely through his efforts was founded the Jour- 
nal of Cancer Research, of which he was editor-in- 
chief. At the reorganization of the Memorial 
Hospital in 1913, Dr. Weil assumed the position of 
assistant director of cancer research and attending 
physician to the hospital, and in this capacity he 
labored energetically to establish an efficient or- 
ganization of the routine and research work of the 
hospital. In 1915 he resigned the position of as- 
sistant director upon his appointment as professor 
of experimental medicine in Cornell University, 
but he continued without interruption his experi- 
mental work in cancer. Upon the declaration of 
war he was among the first to offer his services to 


558 


the government, and spent the summer at Fort 
Benjamin Harrison in the Medical Officers’ Train- 
ing Corps. Quite recently he was detailed to take 
charge of a large military hospital at Camp 
Wheeler, Macon, Ga., and here in the performance 
of strenuous military service he fell a victim to 
pneumonia. During his brief but brilliant career 
he attained eminence as a devoted laboratory 
worker, a skilful experimenter, a broadly trained 
clinician, and a forceful writer, while his untimely 
death places his name among the first on his coun- 
try’s honor roll in the great war. 


MEDICAL INSPECTION OF CAMP WHEELER 


Masor-GeneraL Winiiam CO. Goreas, surgeon 
general of the army, has returned from an in- 
spection trip to Camp Wheeler, Macon, Ga. 
His report to the chief of staff is in full as 
follows: 


In my recent inspection of Camp Wheeler at 
Macon, Ga., I found conditions as had been indi- 
cated by reports. There had been a sharp epi- 
demic of measles, some 3,000 cases, and, as always 
occurs with measles, a certain number of cases of 
pneumonia. At the time of my visit, there were 
some 300 cases of pneumonia in the hospital. 
While the hospital was crowded, the right of way 
was given the pneumonia cases, and they were 
being well cared for. 

In the past month there have been about 60 
deaths from pneumonia. The height of the 
measles epidemie was passed some 10 days ago, 
and at the time of my visit the epidemic was 
markedly on the decline, but the pneumonia does 
not develop until a week or 10 days after the inci- 
dence of the measles. 

We can therefore expect a considerable number 
of deaths from pneumonia. 

The camp is well situated and was in generally 
good condition. I think the reason for the measles 
affecting so severely this particular camp is the 
fact that the men came from the surrounding 
southern states which are sparsely settled and 
therefore the inhabitants do not, as a rule, have 
measles in childhood. 

A large proportion of the cases of pneumonia 
were evidently contact cases, and I am anxious on 
this score, fearing that we may be beginning here 
an epidemie and septic pneumonia, We have had 
a few cases of meningitis, a few cases of scarlet 
fever and some cases of mumps. 

Whatever the original cause of the epidemic and 
the present conditions, all these evils are accentu- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1197 


ated by the crowded condition of the camp. The 
tendency to pneumonia has no doubt been increased 
by the fact that the men have generally been ex- 
posed to the cold weather of the past month with 
no other protection than their summer clothing. 
Clothing is now rapidly coming into camp, and 
about two thirds of the men are supplied with 
woolen garments. 

I recommend that it be insisted upon that all 
men in the camp have 50 feet of floor space each 
and, to accomplish this, that such additional 
shelter be supplied as may be necessary; that no 
fresh men be brought into the camp until the 
epidemic has subsided; that an observation camp 
be established; and that all new men be kept 
under observation until the main camp is free from 
infection. 


Accompanying General Gorgas were Colonel 
Dean C. Howard, of the Regular Army, re- 
cently health officer at the Canal Zone, where 
he was in charge of civil sanitation; Major 
Victor C. Vaughan, Marine Officers’ Reserve 
Corps, professor of hygiene at the University 
of Michigan, dean of its medical faculty and 
president of the Michigan State board of 
health; Major William H. Welch, Marine Off- 
cers’ Reserve Corps, professor of pathology at 
John Hopkins University and dean of its 
school of hygiene; and Major Theodore C. 
Janeway, Marine Officers’ Reserve Corps, pro- 
fessor of medicine at Johns Hopkins. 

Steps have already been taken to separate 
the men to a greater degree. By the use of 
tents which were held for new men due to be 
called to the camp and with 1,000 additional 
tents immediately shipped, the number of men 
per tent can be reduced from nine to five. As 
new men come other tents will be provided for 
them. All the new arrivals will be kept away 
from men who have been some time in camp 
to minimize the danger of contagion. This 
carries out Gen. Gorgas’s recommendation that 
an observation camp be established for new 
men. 

The supplying of sufficient clothing has been 
delayed by the necessity of equipping first 
those divisions in northern latitudes and those 
which have been sent abroad. The men at 
Camp Wheeler now have a good supply of 
warm underwear and heavy outside clothing 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


was shipped some days ago. It should be 
arriving at the camp now, but congestion of 
railroad traffic has caused some delay in its 
delivery. 

There are over 22,600 men at Camp Wheeler. 


THE USE OF THE McKAY BEQUEST TO 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


Harvarp University can not share the Gor- 
don McKay bequest with the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, according to the de- 
cision by the full bench of the Supreme Court 
which declares invalid the agreement between 
the two institutions under which Harvard sus- 
pends its instruction in applied science and 
devotes three fifths of the income of the 
McKay endowment to the maintenance of the 
engineering departments at the Institute. 
The decision is on the petition of Harvard to 
have the court ratify the agreement. It 
means that Harvard, which abolished the Law- 
rence Scientific School to merge its scientific 
courses with those at Technology, will have to 
reestablish a school of applied science under 
its administration. The court, in its decision, 
written by Judge DeCourcy, says: 

We are constrained to instruct the plaintiff cor- 
poration that it can not lawfully carry out this 
agreement between it and the institute, as far as 
respects the property received by the university 
under the deeds of trust and the will of Gordon 
McKay. 

In substance the plan agreed upon between 
Harvard and the Institute of Technology devotes 
three fifths of the endowment to an engineering 
school, which is not only located at the institute 
but is conducted and controlled by the institute 
instead of by the university. We can not assent to 
the assertion of counsel that ‘‘the school of ap- 
plied science on the Charles River embankment is 
a Harvard school, a department of Harvard Uni- 
versity.’’ 

Education and research in the five branches coy- 
ered by the agreements are to be transferred from 
the university to the institute, and there conducted 
under the provisions of the agreement as part of 
the latter’s curriculum. The Harvard professors 
associated with those courses shall become mem- 
bers of the faculty of the institute, and the prop- 
erty and equipment which the university may hold 
for the promotion of instruction in industrial sci- 
ence shall be devoted to the courses so conducted. 


SCIENCE 


509 


The faculty which determines the conditions of 
entrance, prescribes the courses that lead to de- 
grees, largely shapes and carries to practical appli- 
cation the instruction and discipline of the school, 
and mainly influences the appointment of pro- 
fessors, is the faculty of the institute, notwith- 
standing that 14 of its 120 members come from the 
university. 

The effective instrument is the deed of trust 
executed October 30, 1891, and confirmed by a 
codicil November 5, 1891. McKay was then sev- 
enty years of age. He had been a successful manu- 
facturer and inventor of machinery. He was a 
man of artistic tastes, a lover of music and had 
traveled extensively in Europe. From 1864 or 
1865, for more than twenty years, his home was in 
Cambridge, near the college yard; he took a lead- 
ing part in supporting the Symphony concerts in 
Sanders theater and was brought into friendly re- 
lations with many of the college teachers and stu- 
dents. He appreciated the advantages of com- 
bining training in the exact sciences with liberal 
culture in the atmosphere of the university. Dur- 
ing all those years there was a close personal inti- 
macy between him and the late Professor Shaler, 
long connected with the university and appointed 
dean of the Lawrence Scientific School in 1891; 
and with the latter McKay discussed his scheme 
for the disposition of his fortune. 

The income of the MeKay endowment must be 
administered according to the intention of the 
founder, Gordon McKay, even though it be at 
variance with our views of policy and expediency. 

Reading this instrument in the light of the cir- 
cumstances already referred to it seems reasonably 
clear from its expressed provisions and implied 
limitations that Mr. McKay intended that not only 
the investment of the endowment fund, but the 
education which his endowment was to make pos- 
sible should be under the control and direction of 
the university, its government and administration. 

He selected as a trustee to carry out his pur- 
pose a great educational institution, one whose 
ability adequately to carry out his plans he was 
familiar with, and with whose historic name he de- 
sired to associate his own in perpetual memory. 

In our opinion this intention of Gordon McKay 
is not in fact carried out in the agreement in con- 
troversy, as we have construed its provisions in 
their practical operation. 


ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
ORNITHOLOGISTS’ UNION 
Tue thirty-fifth annual meeting of the 
American Ornithologists’ Union was held in 


560 


Cambridge, Mass., from November 12 to 16. 
The election resulted in the choice of the fol- 
lowing officers for the ensuing year: John H. 
Sage, Portland, Conn., President ; H. W. Hen- 
shaw and Dr. Witmer Stone, Vice-Presidents ; 
Dr. T. S. Palmer, 1939 Biltmore St., Wash- 
ington, D. C., Secretary; and Dr. Jonathan 
Dwight, Treasurer; the members of the council 
were all reelected. The single vacancy in the 
list of fellows was filled by the election of P. 
A. Taverner; two additions were made to the 
list of honorary fellows, Dr. A. H. Evans, of 
Cambridge, England, and W. L. Sclater, of 
London; and Dr. F. E. Beddard, of London, 
was elected a corresponding fellow. R. H. 
Beck, W. S. Brooks, James B. Chapin, Francis 
Harper, and Winsor M. Tyler, were elected 
members and 113 associates were added to the 
rolls. 

The public meetings which were held in the 
Museum of Comparative Zoology were well at- 
tended and the program was more varied than 
usual. Papers were presented on the birds of 
several distinct parts of the world, including 
northern Canada, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, 
British Guiana, Peru, Chile, Falkland Islands, 
China and Africa. In addition to the regular 
program the social features of the meeting 
included an informal reception at the Boston 
Society of Natural History, the regular sub- 
scription dinner, and an outing to the Ipswich 
sand dunes where the Ipswich sparrow and 
other characteristic birds were observed. The 
members also had an opportunity to examine 
the collections of the Boston Society of 
Natural History and the Museum of Compara- 
tive Zoology, including the celebrated Lafres- 
naye collection of foreign birds, and to visit 
some of the historic points about Boston and 
Cambridge. ; 

The next meeting will be held in New York 
City. 


GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE PERMA- 
NENT SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN 
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE- 
MENT OF SCIENCE 

Tue seventieth meeting of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, 
and the sixteenth of the “ Convocation week ” 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1197 


meetings, will be held in Pittsburgh from De- 
cember 28, 1917, to January 2, 1918. 

The Council will meet Friday morning, De- 
cember 28, and each following morning, in the 
Council Room, Hotel Schenley, at 9 o’clock. 

The opening general session of the Associa- 
tion, with address of retiring President Van 
Hise, on the Economie Effects of the World 
War in the United States, will be held at 8 
o’clock p.M., on Friday, December 28 (not 
Thursday, as was at one time proposed), in the 
Carnegie Music Hall, followed by a reception 
in the foyer, tendered by the University of 
Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Institute to mem- 
bers of the association and affiliated societies, 
with accompanying ladies. 

Hotel rates, railroad rates, facts concerning 
affiliated society meetings, and other informa- 
tion will be found in the preliminary an- 
nouncement. 

For all matters relating to the local arrange- 
ments, hotel and boarding house accommoda- 
tions, not explained in the following pages, ad- 
dress Dr. S. B. Linhart, secretary, local execu- 
tive committee, American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, University of Pitts- 
burgh. 

Nominations to membership and letters re- 
lating to the general business of the Associa- 
tion should be sent to the Permanent Secretary 
at Washington. It is strongly urged that each 
member should at least make an effort to 
secure the nomination of some desirable new 
member. Owing to the lateness in the year, 
those proposed may, if desired, have their 
membership date from January 1, 1918; but 
they will be entitled to all privileges at the 
coming Pittsburgh meeting. The payment of 
the $8 fee should be mailed to the Permanent 
Seeretary’s office, Washington, prior to De- 
cember 18, so that membership cards and an- 
nouncement may be mailed promptly, or the 
member may make payment in person during 
the meeting-week at the Registration Desk, 
Main Building, Carnegie Institute. 

Official receipts for dues are mailed to mem- 
bers on the same day that their payments reach 
the office of the permanent secretary. For 
their own comfort, members are urged to send 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


their dues to the permanent secretary so far 
in advance of the meeting as possible. In this 
way they will receive their cards by mail at 
once and avoid the necessity of waiting in line 
to make payment at the meeting. Do not for- 
get to bring your white Registration Card to 
Pittsburgh. 

Members who have not previously paid their 
dues for the Pittsburgh meeting will please 
call at the office of the permanent secretary, 
Main Building, Carnegie Institute, after 9 
o’elock on Friday, December 28, to receive 
their members’ tickets. The office of the 
permanent secretary will be used throughout 
the week for registration purposes. Members 
will register and receive their badges after 
paying their dues. 

All members of affiliated societies who are 
not also members of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science are earnestly 
requested to register their names at the desk 
provided for that purpose in the office of the 
permanent secretary, in the Main Building, 
Carnegie Institute, in order that an estimate 
may be made of the number of persons in at- 
tendance at the meetings. 

Attention is called to the following rule re- 
lating to members’ families and other as- 
sociates : 

Every member of the association shall have the 
privilege of registering members of his family as 
associates (not including men over twenty-one 
years of age) by paying the sum of three dollars 
for each person so registered, and shall receive 
for them badges which will entitle the holder 
thereof to such privileges as may be extended to 
the members generally by the local committee for 
the meeting. 

Members of scientific societies whose meetings 
are contemporaneous with or immediately subse- 
quent to that of the association, and which are 
recognized by votes of the council as ‘‘affiliated 
societies,’’ may become associate members for 
that meeting on the payment of three dollars. 
They shall be entitled to all the privileges of 
membership except voting or appointment to office, 
but their names shall not appear in the list of 
members printed in the report. 

All dues and admission fees must be paid 
at the office of the permanent secretary, and 
the annual dues for 1918 should be paid before 


SCIENCE 


561 


registering and receiving the association badge 
and program. 

As changes of address in the printed list of 
members are made only by request of a mem- 
ber, members will please be particular in re- 
porting any changes of permanent address, also 
the decease of other members, at the office of 
the permanent secretary. 

The register for the Pittsburgh meeting will 
be open on Friday, December 28, and succeed- 
ing days, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.M., in the perma- 
nent secretary’s office, Main Building, Car- 
negie Institute. 

L. O. Howarp, 
Permanent Secretary, A. A. A. S. 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Dr. Witttam Gitson Fartow, professor of 
botany at Harvard University, has been elected 
a corresponding member of the French Acad- 
emy of Sciences. 


Prorrssor Vernon Keioce has accepted an 
invitation to give the annual address to the 
Entomological Society of America, at the an- 
nual meeting in Pittsburgh, on December 29. 


Mr. Dovetas Stewart, assistant director of 
the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, is chair- 
man of the Committee on Scientific Exhibits 
for the meeting of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science in Pittsburgh, 
December 28, 1917, to January 2, 1918. Those 
interested in these exhibits are requested to 
correspond with Mr. Stewart. 


Tue de Morgan medal of the London Mathe- 
matical Society has been awarded to Professor 
W. H. Young, of the University of Liverpool 
and the University of Calcutta. 


Sir J. J. TuHomson has been nominated by 
the council of the Royal Society for reelection 
as president. Other officers nominated by the 
council are as follows: Treasurer, Sir A. 
Kempe; Secretaries, Professor A. Schuster 
and Mr. W. B. Hardy; Foreign Secretary, 
Professor W. A. Herdman; Other Members of 
the Council, Dr. H. K. Anderson, Sir G. T. 
Beilby, Professor G. C. Bourne, Professor A. 


562 


R. Cushny, Dr. M. O. Forster, Professor P. F. 
Frankland, Dr. J. W. L. Glaisher, Professor 
B. Hopkinson, Mr. J. H. Jeans, Professor W. 
H. Lang, Major H. G. Lyons, Dr. W. H. R. 
Rivers, Professor C. S. Sherrington, Professor 
R. J. Strutt, Mr. J. Swinburne and Professor 
W. W. Watts. 

THE July number of the Observatory con- 
tained a letter from Professor H. G. v. de 
Sande Bakhuyzen explaining the present posi- 
tion of the association, whose convention ex- 
pired on December 31, 1915, the majority of 
the belligerent states having refused to con- 
tinue their support under the existing conven- 
tion. The death of General Bassot, the presi- 
dent; of Dr. Backlund, the vice-president, and 
of Professor Helmert, director of the Central 
Bureau, has left Professor H. G. v. de Sande 
Bakhuyzen the sole survivor of the committee 
of the International Geodetic Association. He 
had, in December, 1915, appealed to the mem- 
bers of the permanent commission of the asso- 
ciation in the neutral states of Europe and in 
the United States, and had obtained from them 
sufficient support to keep the association alive 
until a date two years after the conclusion of 
peace. M. Raoul Gautier, of Geneva, has been 
elected president, and General Madsen, of 
Copenhagen, vice-president. Professor Bak- 
huyzen retains the office of secretary. 

Dr. RicnHarp M. Pearce, professor of re- 
search medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 
has been made director of the recently estab- 
lished bureau of medical service of foreign 
commissions of the American Red Cross. 


Dr. Reston STEVENSON, assistant professor 
in charge of physical chemistry in the College 
of the City of New York, has been commis- 
sioned a captain in the Sanitary Corps of the 
Army. As one of a group of five selected men 
he will shortly go to France, where he will be 
assigned to a French laboratory for special 
work, preliminary to its extension among the 
other chemists attached to the U. S. Army. 

At the University of Michigan leaves of 
absence have been granted to Professor John 
D. Rue, who becomes captain in the Ordnance 
Officers’ Reserve Corps; to Dr. Peter Field, 
who is captain in the United States Coast 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1197 


Artillery; to Dr. R. A. McGarry, instructor 
in dermatology, who leaves to take up military 
service; to Dr. Orlow B. Snyder, instructor 
in anatomy; Winthrop R. Wright, who has 
aecepted a temporary position in connection 
with War work in the Bureau of Standards 
at Washington; and Assistant Professor C. 
W. Cook, of the department of geology, now 
engaged in special advisory work with a large 
steel corporation. 

Proressor L. D. Rowe, of Purdue Univer- 
sity, has been commissioned a captain in the 
Engineer Officers’ Reserve Corps and is now 
in active duty as the recorder of the Board of 
Engineer Troops, Washington, D. C. 


Guy R. McDots, assistant in soils in the 
University of Minnesota and formerly re- 
search assistant in agricultural chemistry in 
the University of Nebraska, has enlisted in 
the Gas and Flame Regiment (Thirteenth 
Engineers), and has left for his new work. 


Mr. Dante, WiLuarp, of Baltimore, trustee 
of Johns Hopkins University and chairman of 
the advisory commission of the Council of Na- 
tional Defense, has been appointed to serve as 
chairman of the War Industries Board. 


Proressor GeorcEe B. THomas, of Colorado 
College, is on a year’s leave of absence, during 
which time he will work with the Western 
Electric Company along lines of interest to 
the military authorities. 


Mr. Joun W. Gitmore, professor of agron- 
omy in the University of California, is carry- 
ing on a wheat campaign in California— 
handling the problems of proper seed, varieties 
for different regions, time of planting and re- 
lated topics. Mr. Charles F. Shaw, professor 
of soil technology in the university is in charge 
of the soil survey in California, and is carry- 
ing on a state campaign for increasing the 
acreage of wheat lands now in pasture or idle. 

Proressor W. S. Forp, of Cornell Univer- 
sity, who had charge of the senior electrical 
laboratory work, has left to accept a position 
as superintendent of power with the Vacuum 
Oil Company, Paulsboro, N. J. 

Proressor H. P. Barss, plant pathologist of 
the Oregon Experiment Station, presented an 


DEcEMBER 7, 1917] 


address before the California State Horticul- 
tural Commission on November 19, on the bac- 
terial gummosis of stone fruits with special 
reference to the serious outbreak along the 
Pacific coast this year. 


We learn from Nature that at the annual 
general meeting of the London Mathematical 
Society, held on November 1, the following 
were elected as officers for 1917-18: President, 
Professor H. M. Macdonald; Vice-Presidents, 
Professor H. Hilton, Professor E. W. Hobson, 
and Sir J. Larmor; TJreasurer, Dr. A. E. 
Western; Secretaries, Dr. T. J. VA. Bromwich 
and Mr. G. H. Hardy; Other Members of the 
Council, Professor W. Burnside, Dr. S. Chap- 
man, Mr. A. L. Dixon, Miss H. P. Hudson, 
Mr. A. E. Jolliffe, Mr. J. E. Littlewood, Pro- 
fessor A. E. H. Love, Major P. A. MacMahon, 
and Professor J. W. Nicholson. 


Mr. W. Duppett, F.R.S., past-president of 
the Réntgen Society and of the Institution of 
Electrical Engineers, died on November 4, 
aged forty-five years. 

Sm Davi C. McVan, professor of clinical 
medicine in St. Mungo’s College, Glasgow, 
from 1889 to 1906, and author of contributions 
to physiology, died on November 4 at the age 
of seventy-two years. 


THE deaths are also announced of Dr. J. 
Rambousek, professor of factory hygiene at 
the University of Prague, and an authoritative 
writer on industrial poisonings; of P. Ma- 
lerba, professor of physiological chemistry at 
the University of Naples, and of M. E. Huet, 
one of the pioneers in electrology in France. 


Ty connection with or in response to the call 
of the President for volunteers, the attention 
of all technical men, 7. e., men skilled in any 
line of science or mechanical or electrical or 
chemical or ordnance or explosives or mining 
or ship-building or railroad or motors or metal- 
lurgy or building of aeroplanes or water sup- 
ply or sanitation, ete., is especially invited to 
the need of the Army for such men—aged 
eighteen to forty—in sundry branches of the 
technical troops. Information may be ob- 
tained from Major J. E. Bloom, U. S. A., 266 
Market Street, Newark, N. J. 


SCIENCE 


563 


A number of American military surgeons 
arrived in England during the fortnight prior 
to September 22, and took up duty in a num- 
ber of hospitals in London and the provinces, 
and also in France, to which country about 
fifty of the seventy-five had been sent. These 
will only attend the military patients in the 
institutions to which they have been assigned, 
and have been so allotted that a number of doc- 
tors may be released for work among the civil 
population. There are now over 900 Ameri- 
can medical men serving with the British 
forces in Great Britain and France. 


A JAPANESE medical corps of one hundred 
men has gone to Rumania to help in the effort 
to control the epidemic of typhus fever in that 
country. The corps is divided into three sec- 
tions—internal diseases, surgery and epidem- 
ics—each with its own chief. The headquar- 
ters of the corps will be at Jassy. 


Wittarp E. Cass, of Auburn, N. Y., has 
made a gift to the New York Electrical Society 
the amount of which has not yet been made 
public, but which is sufficient to defray all the 
liabilities of the society and leave a substantial 
sum for the carrying on of its special work. 


Tue fifth annual Pennsylvania Welfare and 
Efficiency Conference was held in the House 
of Representatives, Harrisburg, on November 
21 and 22. These conferences are held an- 
nually for the purpose of stimulating discus- 
sions on the problems of industries and labor, 
with special reference to the reduction of the 
enormous number of diseases and deaths, and 
the numerous industrial accidents. The fifth 
conference of industrial physicians and sur- 
geons was held at Harrisburg, on November 
20. At the morning session the medical and 
surgical problems of the staff of the largest in- 
dustries representative of Pennsylvania were 
considered, and in the afternoon the question 
of industrial diseases was taken up. 


CHILDREN in various parts of Great Britain 
are now busy collecting the horse chestnuts re- 
quired for the manufacture of war munitions. 
The nuts have ripened more quickly in some 
districts than in others, and in some parts of 


564 


London the collection is well forward. It 
should again be pointed out that every ton of 


nuts gathered means a saving of half a ton of . 


grain. Present indications are that at least 
25,000 tons of nuts will reach the Ministry of 
Munitions, but this is only about one eighth 
of the estimated crop for the country. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


A BEQUEST of $200,000 is left to Yale Uni- 
versity by the terms of the will of the late 
Richard P. Sewell of Boston. 

H. P. Woop, head of the department of elec- 
trical engineering at the Georgia School of 
Technology, Atlanta, Ga., has been appointed 
president of the Academic Board of the 
United States Army School of Military Aero- 
nautics, which has been established at the 
Georgia School of Technology. 

Proressor J. F. Witson, who during the 
past year was professor of electrical engineer- 
ing at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 
has been appointed assistant professor of elec- 
trical engineering at the University of South- 
ern California, Los Angeles. 

Dr. Joun Epwarp Marr, F.R.S., fellow of 
St. John’s College since 1881, university lec- 
turer in geology at Cambridge University, has 
been elected to the Woodwardian professorship 
of geology in succession to the late Professor 
Hughes. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
METHODS FOR PREPARING ANIMAL MATE- 
RIAL TO BE DISSECTED 
PossiBLy the most common fixing and pre- 
serving fluid used for dissecting material is 
formalin. It is relatively inexpensive and 
especially convenient for collecting expedi- 
tions where a concentrated fluid is desirable. 
Animals preserved in it have rigid joints, 
however, and every one is familiar with the 
disagreeable characteristics of such material 
during dissection. Alcohol is much better 
from the standpoint of the dissector, but it has 

limitations when used alone. 
Some of the “embalming fluid” mixtures 
used in preparing human cadavers for dissec- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1197 


tion are also splendid for smaller animals. 
Those containing phenol, alcohol and glyc- 
erine with no formalin give relatively flexible 
joints and pliable tissues. They also render 
the material resistant to a large amount of 
drying in the open air of a laboratory during 
dissection. Phenol is a relatively non-volatile 
antiseptic, and glycerine is very effective in 
preventing drying. Alcohol counteracts the 
action of the phenol in the solution, on the 
hands of the dissector. A good and much 
used solution consists of equal parts of phenol, 
alcohol and glycerine. Another less expensive 
fluid with arsenic and considerable water added 
to the above was described by Dr. W. C. Lusk 
some years ago! with an excellent discussion 
of principles involved in preparing cadavers 
for dissection. 

As penetration by such fluids is slow, the 
mixture should be injected through some large 
artery, a femoral or carotid in the case of 
mammals. Small animals may be placed in 
solutions of about 80 per cent. alcohol in 
water when it is not practicable to inject 
them. In such cases, the usual practise of ma- 
king a slit, at least in the ventral abdominal 
wall, should be followed. After all the tissues 
have been fixed, the material may be removed 
to a’ container which holds an “ embalming 
fluid,” such as I have mentioned, much diluted 
with water. Ten or more parts of water to 
one of the “embalming fluid” may be used. 
In fact, I have kept material which had al- 
ready been thoroughly fixed in either formalin 
or alcohol, for several years in a solution con- 
sisting of water with 1 to 2 per cent. of phenol 
and 5 to 10 per cent. glycerine, with or without 
a little alcohol. Single specimens thus pre- 
served have been used in dissection for many 
months without deterioration, so long as they 
were not kept out of the solution for more 
than a few hours or so at a time. 

It is customary in human anatomy to leave 
cadavers on the dissecting tables for months 
without soaking. The glycerine in their tis- 
sues is wonderfully effective in checking dry- 
ing. Nevertheless, unless the atmosphere of 
the room is very moist a good deal of drying 


1 Anat. Record, Vol. 3, No. 1. 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


does oceur. According to my experience, it is 
worth the trouble to give even such large 
bodies as the human, as much soaking occa- 
sionally as is practicable, in such a solution 
as I have just described. This should be done 
between class periods, at least twice a week, 
when the air of the room is at all dry. 

When material comes to my hands already 
filled with formalin, I soak it in running 
water, for a number of hours, according to its 
size, to get rid of the formalin, before trans- 
ferring it to a phenol-glycerine solution. 

Material which has been thus prepared with 
a phenol-glycerine solution can be stored or 
shipped in airtight wrappings with no sur- 
rounding solution. In an important article on 
methods for preserving and storing cadavers 
Keiller? has described methods for preparing 
wrappings. 

I have adopted the practise of shipping ma- 
terial, which has been thoroughly soaked in 
the dilute embalming fluid described in this 
article, in packages well wrapped and packed 
in excelsior. No fluid except that in the 
specimen is needed for a number of weeks, 
even in summer, if the packing is well done. 
There is much economy in weight, and expen- 
sive containers are not needed. 

In some medical schools, cadavers are 
stored in airtight chambers with no fluid ex- 
cept for a dish of aleohol which keeps the at- 
mosphere of the chamber saturated with alco- 
hol fumes. This is the best of all storage 
methods that have come to my attention, for 
properly embalmed bodies, and it works well 
with other large vertebrates. I have found it 
successful in a warm climate, and I have never 
heard any criticism of the method by people 
who have tried it. 

Much trouble from drying of material in 
the dissecting room can be avoided by keeping 
the air of the room very humid. Professor S. 
W. Ranson, Northwestern University Medical 
School, has called my attention to a device 
which he has found efficient in maintaining a 
humid atmosphere and which eliminates the 
drying troubles. This is the “Steamo Air 

2 Philadelphia Medical December 29, 
1900. 


Jour., 


SCIENCE 


565 


Moistener,” which can be obtained from “ The 
Air Moistener Co.,” 28 North Market St., 
Chicago. It is attached to steam radiators of 
various types. Directions are furnished for 
maintaining any desired percentage of hu- 
midity. 

R. M. Srrone 


ANATOMICAL LABORATORIES, 
VANDERBILT UNIverSITY Mrpicat SCHOOL 


/ 
SCIENTIFIC aie 
Physical Chemistry of Vital Phenomena for 

Students and Investigators in the Biological 

and Medical Sciences. By J. F. McCienpon, 

Assistant Professor of Physiology in the 

University of Minnesota. Princeton Uni- 

versity Press, 1917. 

In this concise book of less than 200 pages of 
text Professor McClendon describes and dis- 
cusses briefly some of the more recent applica- 
tions of physical chemistry to the analysis of 
vital phenomena. The field, although no 
longer new, is very large and calls for much 
further investigation; hence finality is scarcely 
possible at present, and the author describes 
his purpose as largely practical and tentative: 
“to develop a tool for physiological research,” 
rather than to produce a systematic treatise on 
the subject. The space assigned to the differ- 
ent topics under discussion is very unequal; 
many of these are presented in the barest sum- 
mary, with little attempt to reconcile conflict- 
ing statements or to reach unifying conclu- 
sions; while others, particularly those in which 
the author’s own chief researches have been 
made, are treated in considerable detail. The 
book is intended for advanced students and 
presupposes more than elementary biological 
and chemical knowledge in the reader; conden- 
sation is carried to an extreme, and in many 
places one receives the impression of a suc- 
cession of abstracts, in which both the selec- 
tion and the omission of material seem arbi- 
trary. In the later chapters, which deal with 
the more specifically biological topics (ame- 
boid movement, tropisms, cell-division, fertili- 
zation, muscular contraction, oxidation, pro- 
duction of light and heat), the space is quite 
insufficient for adequate discussion, and the ac- 


566 


count is condensed to a bare outline of the 
facts and points of view which the author con- 
siders important. At the end there is an ap- 
pendix on the general chemical composition of 
organisms, followed by a large and varied liter- 
ature list and an index of topics with the 
names of the authors of the chief papers. 
Much of the book thus forms a summary of 
recent research, and will be valuable to those 
desiring a record of progress in this field and a 
guide to the literature of its various depart- 
ments. 

The most original chapters are those relat- 
ing to the determination of hydrogen-ion con- 
centrations and the electromotor and osmotic 
properties of partitions, and here there is 
much that is ingenious, independent and sug- 
gestive. The author’s improved methods for 
determining the H-ion concentration of blood 
are described in detail, with figures of appa- 
ratus and a useful chart for converting poten- 
tials into H-ion exponents. The use of indi- 
eators and buffer mixtures is also explained, 
and many valuable data are given in con- 
venient form. The account of semi-permeable 
and porous partitions is especially timely and 
interesting; the phenomena of membrane-po- 
tentials, negative osmose and cell-permeability 
are described, and their relations to the physio- 
logical processes of secretion, absorption and 
stimulation are discussed in a clear and defi- 
nite manner. The author supports the view 
that the bioelectric variations of potential are 
primarily the expression of variations in the 
osmotic and hence the electromotor properties 
of the protoplasmic surface-layers or plasma- 
membranes. Agents like salts, anesthetics and 
cytolytic substances are regarded as producing 
their characteristic effects by modifying the 
condition of the plasma-membranes. 

As a whole the book exhibits the defects as 
well as the merits of its extreme brevity and 
condensation. The author evidently wishes to 
be as concise as possible, and largely for this 
reason his discussion and statements of fact 
frequently appear dogmatic and lacking in 
much-needed qualifications. Certain explana- 
tions are incomplete or otherwise open to criti- 
cism. Thus to regard negative osmose as es- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1197 


sentially a case of electrical endosmose seems 
inaccurate; in true electrical osmose both the 
solution and the porous partition are inter- 
posed as parts of an electrical circuit, and the 
energy for the transport is derived from a bat- 
tery or other external source; while in nega- 
tive osmosis the water passes spontaneously 
through the porous partition from the more 
concentrated to the more dilute solution. Cer- 
tain diffusion processes offer a closer analogy; 
recent investigation has shown that when the 
partition consists of negatively charged ma- 
terial like porcelain negative osmose occurs in 
the case of those electrolytes whose anions dif- 
fuse more rapidly than their cations; and it 
seems preferable to regard the positively 
charged layer of water adjoining the surfaces 
of the pores as acting like a layer of cations 
and as being carried after the rapidly diffusing 
anions by electrostatic attraction. The phe- 
nomenon seems indeed to afford further evi- 
dence of the hydration of ions in solution. Ex- 
ception may also be taken to the following 
statements: suspensoids do not exert osmotic 
pressure (p. 72); monovalent and bivalent ca- 
tions are antagonistic to each other in the pre- 
cipitation of colloids (p. 77); surface-active 
substances are repelled by water molecules (p. 
66) ; in anesthesia adsorption is at the basis of 
the whole matter (p. 140. N. B.: this seems 
contradicted by the positive temperature-coeffi- 
cients of narcosis with chloral and alcohol as 
observed by Meyer); the sperm need only 
scratch the egg-surface to make it segment (p. 
158); local reduction of surface-tension pro- 
duces protrusion of the affected surface (p. 
148). This last statement especially needs 
qualifying; it can be true only when the sur- 
face-tension equilibrates some other force 
(such as gravity), which of itself tends to 
cause outflow or protrusion of fluid. The force 
of surface-tension acts tangentially, hence the 
surface-layer of fluid must always tend to be 
drawn toward the regions where the tension is 
highest; this removal of fluid from the areas of 
lower surface-tension must (unless otherwise 
compensated) cause there depression instead 
of protrusion, as seen for instance in the case 
of a layer of water to which ether or alcohol 


DrEceMBER 7, 1917] 


is locally applied. In the case of any curved 
surface, e. g., of a suspended drop of fluid, the 
tangentially acting force due to surface-ten- 
sion must similarly tend to draw the surface- 
fluid away from any area where the tension is 
locally lowered; for geometrical reasons this 
lateral traction is necessarily greater than the 
externally directed force acting on the surface- 
fluid at the same area—due to the radial com- 
ponent of surface-tension which compresses 
the drop and tends to cause outflow at that 
area; hence in this case also the surface-layer 
of fluid will tend to be withdrawn from regions 
of lower and heaped up at regions of higher 
surface-tension. If the drop is in contact with 
a solid, such displacements may by reaction 
cause movements of the drop as a whole. The 
author’s account of the mechanics of amceboid 
movement and cell-division needs to be recon- 
sidered, since he assumes throughout that pro- 
trusion or outflow always takes place at re- 
gions of lowered surface-tension. 

The whole subject, however, is full of de- 
batable questions, and in his preface the author 
expressly defers judgment upon most of these, 
urging that the present need is for further in- 
vestigation rather than for theoretical discus- 
sion. Most of us will readily grant this, and 
it is as an aid to investigation that the present 
manual will find its chief usefulness. 

The reviewer feels bound to point out that 
the book suffers greatly from carelessness in 
composition and proofreading. The responsi- 
bility for this is not the author’s alone. A 
University Press should be careful to maintain 
high standards in such matters. 


Rareu 8. Line 


THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL 
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 


THE seventh number of Volume 8 of the 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- 
ences contains the following articles: 

The Cayleyan Curve of the Quartic: Teresa 
Cohen, Johns Hopkins University. 

A Search for an Hinstein Relativity-Gravi- 
tational Effect in the Sun: Charles E. St. 
John, Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, Car- 
negie Institution of Washington. A series of 


SCIENCE 


567 


observations stretching over several years 
indicates that the Einstein effect does not ex- 
ist. 

Triads of Transformations of Conjugate 
Systems of Curves: Luther Pfahler Eisen- 
hart, department of mathematics, Princeton 
University. 

The Molecular Weights of the Triaryl- 
methyls: M. Gomberg and C. S. Schoepfle, 
Chemical Laboratory, University of Michigan. 
After discussing factors influencing dissocia- 
tion and the relation between dissociation and 
the nature of the aryl groups, seven triphenyl- 
methyls are investigated in detail and various 
inferences are drawn from the graphs of their 
dissociations against their concentrations. 

Sea-Determination and Seu-Differentiation 
in Mammals: Frank R. Lillie, department of 
zoology, University of Chicago. Discussion 
of the results of studies of the anatomy of 
twenty-two fetal free-martins ranging in size 
from 7.5 to 28 em. Sex determination in 
mammals is not irreversible predestination; 
with known methods and principles of physiol- 
ogy we can investigate the possible range of 
reversibility. 

The Crystal Structure of Magnesium: A. 
W. Hull, Research Laboratory, General Elec- 
tric Company, Schenectady. The structure 
is analyzed by means of X-ray. 

The Structure of High-Standing Atolls: 
W. M. Davis, department of geology, Harvard 
University. Attention is drawn to the rela- 
tion of atoll limestones to their supposed 
foundation of voleanie rocks. The relative 
merits of the glacial-control theory and of 
Darwin’s theory are discussed. 

Studies of Magnitude in Star Clusters, VII. 
A Method for the Determination of the Rela- 
tive Distances of Globular Clusters: Harlow 
Shapley, Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, 
Carnegie Institution of Washington. The 
median magnitude of short period variables is 
constant in each cluster and may be used to 
determine the distance of the cluster which, 
with one or two exceptions, is found to be 
greater than 30,000 light-years. 

The Principal Axes of Stellar Motion: H. 
Raymond, Dudley Observatory, Albany, New 


568 


York. Three principal axes are determined 
along which the various groups of stars show 
markedly unequal motion. 


The eighth number of Volume 38 of the Pro- 
ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 
contains the following articles: 


Relation of Preferential Motion and of the 
Spectral-Class and Magnitude Velocity Pro- 
gressions to Proper Motion: O. D. Perrine, 
Observatorio Nacional Argentino, Cérdoba. 

Growth of Isolated Sporophytes of Antho- 
ceros: Douglas Houghton Campbell, depart- 
ment of botany, Leland Stanford University. 
The young sporophyte of Anthoceros Pear- 
Soni, separated from its association with thé 
gametophyte, is capable of limited growth in 
length and is able to mature normal spores 
and elaters from the young sporogenous tissue. 

The Mesa Verde Types of Pueblos: J. 
Walter Fewkes, Bureau of American Ethnol- 
ogy, Washington, D. OC. A morphological 
study of Far View House and other types of 
prehistoric buildings. 

A Determination of the Ratio of the Spe- 
cific Heats of Hydrogen at 18° and — 190° C.: 
Margaret C. Shields, Ryerson Physical Lab- 
oratory, University of Chicago. The value 
1.4012 closely in accord with kinetic theory 
and different from previous determinations at 
18° C. is obtained; the value 1.592 is found at 
— 190° C. 

Note on the Coefficient of Total Radiation of 
a Uniformly Heated Enclosure: W. W. Cob- 
lentz, Bureau of Standards, Washington, D. C. 
The value 5.72210 is found by direct 
measurement and agrees with that calculated 
by Millikan on the basis of his values for h 
and e. 

The Development of a Source for Standard 
Wave-Lengths and the Importance of their 
Fundamental Values: Charles E. St. John 
and Harold D. Babcock, Mount Wilson Solar 
Observatory, Carnegie Institution of Wash- 
ington. It is necessary to examine for pole 
effect; the problem of wave-length determina- 
tion is not one of routine but one for real in- 
vestigation. 

On the Presence of Albumoses in Extracts 
of the Posterior Lobe of the Hypophysis 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1197 


Cerebri: John J. Abel and M. C. Pincoffs, 
Pharmacological Laboratory, Johns Hopkins 
University. Secondary albumoses and _ pos- 
sibly peptones were found to be present in all 
the therapeutically used extracts of the pos- 
terior lobe of the hypophysis cerebri that were 
examined. The “ Hypophysin” of the Farb- 
werke-Hoechst is not, as claimed for it, a solu- 
tion of the isolated active substances of the 
pituitary gland but a mixture of albumoses 
with varying and unknown amounts of active 
and inactive constituents of the gland. 

On the Réle of the Thymus in the Produc- 
tion of Tetany: Eduard Uhlenhuth, Rocke- 
feller Institute of Medical Research, New 
York. It would seem that thymus contains the 
substances which cause tetany and _ secretes 
them into the body from which they are re- 
moved by the parathyroids. Extirpation of 
the latter would thus cause tetany. 

Evidence of Assortive Mating in a Nudi- 
branch: W. J. Crozier, Bermuda Biological 
Station for Research, Agar’s Island, Bermuda. 
Mating pairs of the nudibranch Chromodoris 
zebra are found to exhibit a rather high de- 
gree of correlation between the sizes of the two 
members. This is due to assortive mating, 
which may constitute an important influence 
tending to increase the numbers of larvee. 

Coral Reefs of Tutuila, with Reference to the 
Murray-Agassiz Solution Theory: Alfred 
Goldsborough Mayer, Department of Marine 
Biology, Carnegie Institution of Washington. 

National Research Council: Suggestions re- 
lating to the new National Army by the 
Anthropology Committee of the National Re- 
search Council; First Report of Committee on 
Botany; Meetings of the Executive Committee. 

Notices of Biographical Memoirs. 

Epwin BipwetL Witson 


MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE oF TECHNOLOGY, 
CAMBRIDGE, MAss. 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


A RELATION OF ATOMIC WEIGHTS TO ATOMIC 
NUMBERS, AND A SUGGESTED STRUCTURE 
OF ATOMIC NUCLEI 

THE writer has plotted, for all the elements, 
ratios of atomic numbers to the corresponding 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


atomic weights against square roots of atomic 
weights. Although the values for successive 
elements vary somewhat irregularly, if aver- 
ages are taken for successive groups of ten or 
twelve elements each it appears that there ex- 
ists an approximate general linear relation of 
the form 


W — 0.520 —0.0088yW. (1) 
Ww 

NV is the atomic number, and W is the atomic 

weight. The average deviation in N/W from 

this straight line, regardless of sign, is 0.008. 

Hydrogen alone was not included in this aver- 

age. 

The relation between NV/W and any other 
power of W, such as W3 or W3, is not so nearly 
linear. Furthermore, if values of N/W are 
plotted against \/ W for the odd-numbered and 
even-numbered elements separately, it is found 
that a number of curious and nearly exact 
linear relations exist. Unless these are acci- 
dental, equation 1 must express no mere em- 
pirical relation, but an actual tendency of 
atoms. 

If atoms have the structure called for by 
Rutherford’s theory, equation 1 must repre- 
sent a property of the atomic nucleus. If the 
nucleus is built up of positive and negative 
electrons, equation 1 can be accounted for if it 
has a surface shell of positive charge and a vol- 
ume distribution of negative charge. The 
values of the coefficients in (1) seem to indi- 
cate that the negative electrons in the nucleus 
are packed together like solid spheres; to each 
negative electron on the surface of the nucleus 
two positive electrons are attached, on the 
average. (A positive electron is very much 
smaller, and hence much more massive, than 
a negative electron. This is a common as- 
sumption in electron theory.) If the number 
of positive electrons (hydrogen nuclei) in the 
nucleus is p, and if p is numerically equal to 
W, then n, the number of negative electrons in 
the nucleus, is 0.480 W + 0.0088 W;. (It was 
this three to two ratio of the exponents of W 
that suggested the assumed structure of the 
nucleus.) The first term in the equation just 
given may be supposed to equal the number of 


SCIENCE 


569 


negative electrons in the surface layer of the 
nucleus; then the second term is the number 
of negative electrons crowded inside. The lat- 
ter are held together by the external positive 
shell; it is assumed that this shell tends to 
contract, perhaps under electromagnetic forces. 

In very heavy atoms the number of negative 
electrons inside the nucleus is so large that 
they can not be held together by the positive 
contractile shell against their mutual repul- 
sions. Hence there is an upper limit to atomic 
weights, and immediately below this limit 
atoms are unstable. 

The nucleus-model described also is capable 
of illustrating isotopism. Those elements 
which have atomic weights not whole numbers 
may, as has been suggested by Harkins and 
Wilson, each be a group of isotopes—in which 
case their atomic weights are averages. (This 
suggestion was first made by Soddy.) For 
those atomic weights at which the number of 
negative electrons inside the nucleus increases 
by unity one might expect that two stable sys- 
tems could exist. Such atomic weights, as 
calculated by the equation for n given above, 
are 23, 37, 49, 59; for these values the number 
of negative electrons inside the nucleus is 1, 
2, 3, 4, respectively. These values of W, then, 
should be critical values near which isotopes 
can exist most readily. It is at least interest- 
ing to note that, of the four atomic weights 
less than 60 which differ from integers by more 
than 0.16, the values of three are 24.32, 35.46, 
58.68 (Mg, Cl, Ni), while Si—28.3. It is 
known, moreover, that isotopes occur at neon, 
with atomic weights 20 and 22. 

The atomic weights of elements heavier than 
nickel show no tendency to approximate to 
whole numbers, according to Harkins and Wil- 
son. This is to be expected; because for those 
elements the number of negative electrons in- 
side the nucleus increases more rapidly with 
the atomic weight, so that almost every heavy 
element is near a “critical” value of W. 

JoHN Q. Stewart 

PALMER PHYSICAL LABORATORY, 

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 


1 Harkins and Wilson, J. Am. 
XXXVII., pp. 1383-1396, 1915. 


Chem. Soc., 


570 


A NOTE ON THE AEROBIC CULTURE OF AN- 
AEROBES AT HIGHER TEMPERATURES 

A POSSIBLE inverse relation between the 
temperature and oxygen tension require- 
ments of bacteria has been indicated by 
Rabinowitch! who showed that the minimum 
temperature requirement of certain  sup- 
posedly ortho-thermophilic organisms refus- 
ing to grow aerobically below 50° Q. could be 
reduced at least to 87° CO. by anaerobic culture. 
Her results account for the finding of thermo- 
philic bacteria as parasites in the human in- 
testine by MacFadyen and Blaxall.2 

We have had no occasion to confirm the 
work of Rabinowitch as to the anaerobic growth 
of thermophilic aerobes as lower temperatures 
but we have taken advantage of the opportu- 
nity afforded in a collection of obligative an- 
aerobes to test the converse possibility, that is 
the aerobic growth of anaerobes at a higher 
temperature. A successful result would per- 
haps have provided a simple means of surface 
culture for purposes of isolation in certain 
cases but the results were clearly in the nega- 
tive. 

It does not matter for this purpose that some 
of these cultures are as yet incompletely iden- 
tified. The list, showing sources and the 
identity of the known forms, is to be published 
shortly in the Journal of Bacteriology in a 
paper describing our work on the inhibitory 
action of gentian violet and its application in 
preventing spurious presumptive tests due to 
these organisms in the bacteriological examina- 
tion of water. Cultures of B. botulinus, B. te- 
tanus, B. chauvei, B. edematis maligni and 
the Ghon Sachs bacillus, were included among 
the twenty-one. All were free from erobic 
contamination, as shown by tests on agar 
slants at 37° C. although we can by no means 
be certain that some of the unidentified cul- 
tures do not consist of more than one species 
of anaerobic microorganism. 

Media containing 1 per cent. glucose, 1 per 
cent. peptone and 3 per cent. agar were used 

1 Rabinowitch, ‘‘Ueber die thermophilen Bak- 
terien,’’ Zeitschr. f. Hyg., 1895, XX., 154. 

2 MacFadyen and Blaxall, ‘‘Thermophilic Bac- 
teria,’’ Jour. Pathology and Bacteriology, 1896, 
III., 87. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1197 


both for the anaerobic controls inoculated as 
shake cultures for incubation at 37° C., and 
the erobic tests slanted for streak inoculation 
and incubation at 54° ©., in a constant tem- 
perature acetone bath. Three per cent. agar 
was necessary to withstand the latter tempera- 
ture for the period of the test, fifteen days. 
Three separate trials were made as follows: In 
the first, subcultures were made from stock 
cultures several days old in deep sterilized beef 
brain. These could not be considered cer- 
tainly negative due to the resemblance of the 
transferred brain to surface growth. In the 
second trial, subcultures were made from 24- 
hour glucose broth cultures in the constricted 
tube and marble device for anaerobiosis.3 
Nothing developed on the surface of the 
slanted agar incubated at 54° ©. which could 
be considered a bacterial growth. This test 
was repeated with identical results. 

In a fourth test, 24-hour glucose broth cul- 
tures in constricted tubes were transferred in 
quantities of 1 c.c. per tube to melted glucose 
2 per cent. agar at 42° CO. and hardened in the 
upright position as shake cultures. It was 
thought that if the premise of this study were 
true, the greatest growth should occur nearer 
the surface in the test at 54° ©. than in the 
control incubated at 37° C. But no growth oc- 
curred aerobically or anaerobically at 54° C. 
This test was duplicated in method and re- 
sults. 

The controls at 87° C. gave vigorous growth 
within 48 hours in every case as evidenced by 
the distinct and characteristic colonies or 
opacity and all but four produced abundant 
gas. The freedom of the control tests from 
erobic contamination was also proven by fail- 
ure of growth on plain agar subplants at 
87° CO. 

Lintian Jorpan ELLerson, 
Tvan C. Haut 


DEPARTMENT OF PATHOLOGY AND 
BACTERIOLOGY, 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 


3 Hall, ‘‘A New Aerobic-Anaerobie Culture 
Tube,’’ Univ. of Calif. Pub. in Pathology, 1915, 
II., 147. 


DECEMBER 7, 1917] 


BOSTON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY. II 


FERTILIZER DIVISION 


J. E. Breckenridge, Chairman 
F. B. Carpenter, Secretary 


A new fertilizer: ALFRED H. Cowes and AL- 
FRED W. ScHEmT. Mr. Cowles referred to a paper 
read by him before the World’s Congress of 
Chemists in 1912 entitled ‘‘ Alumina, hydrochloric 
acid, caustic alkalis and cement by a new process 
from salt, clay and lime’’ and explained that a 
product of that process that he had been intended 
to convert into cement, has proven itself of greater 
value as a fertilizer than calcium hydrate. This 
increased value being due to a discovery made by 
him that silica in soluble form when either added 
to the soil by itself or added to the soil as a 
calcium silicate proved itself to be an essential 
fertilizer. He explained why clay and zeolitie 
minerals in the soil would lock up in insoluble 
form silica when added to the soil in the form of 
soluble alkali silicates, while the silica would not 
be thus locked up or bound in insoluble form when 
added as a soluble type of silica or as an alkali 
earth silicate. Mr. Cowles gave the quantitative 
results of a very large number of experiments 
showing very large gains in luxuriance of growth 
in a great majority of the plants experimented 
with, thus confirming the discovery made by Mr. 
Cowles and his theoretical explanation of the 
same. 


Potash production in United States: H. A. 
Huston. The American production for 1916 was 
3.6 per cent. of the imports in 1913. The agricul- 
tural effect of impurities in some of the potash 
from American sources is mentioned. 


The synthesis of ammonia by the Haber proc- 
ess: R. O. E. Davis and Harry Bryan. The use 
of a catalytic reagent to bring about the union of 
hydrogen and nitrogen under pressure and at in- 
ereased temperature is the fundamental idea 
underlying the Haber process. About one third 
of the ammonia used in Germany at present is re- 
ported to be produced by this method. This is a 
preliminary report of the study of the process 
undertaken in the laboratories of the Bureau of 
Soils, U. 8S. Department of Agriculture. The 
apparatus devised for the work is deseribed. This 
consists essentially of a heating chamber contain- 
ing the catalytic reagent through which the mix- 


SCIENCE 


571 


ture of hydrogen and nitrogen is passed, a con- 
densing chamber for the removal of the ammonia 
formed by liquefaction and a circulating pump 
for the return of the non-combined gases to the 
reaction chamber. Granular iron reduced by hy- 
drogen is one of the best and most convenient 
eatalyzers. 


Effect of fertilizers on composition of straw- 
berries: H. A. Huston. Experiments on six vari- 
eties of strawberries. Analyses are given show- 
ing the effect of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and 
potash on the density of the juice and on the 
percentage of acid, invert sugar and sucrose. 


The recovery of potash as a by-product in the 
cement industry: Wi~LIAM H. Ross and ALBERT 
R. Merz. Analysis of samples of raw mix and of 
cement from 113 cement plants in the United 
States and Canada shows that the potash in the 
raw mix varies from 0.20 to 1.16 per cent., and 
that the percentage of potash volatilized in the 
different plants varies from 24.5 to 95.9 per cent. 
From the results thus obtained it has been caleu- 
lated that the potash escaping from the kilns of 
these plants ranges from 0.35 to 5.14 pounds per 
barrel of cement produced, with an average for 
the plants of this country of 1.93 pounds. On the 
basis of an average production of 90,000,000 bar- 
rels, the total potash escaping from the cement 
plants of this country amounts to about 87,000 
tons annually. It has been demonstrated com- 
mercially that 90 per cent. of the potash escaping 
in the dust is recoverable, and from experiments 
made in this laboratory it would appear that 95 
per cent. of the recoverable potash is, or may be 
made, available. The recoverable potash in the 
cement industry therefore amounts to approxi- 
mately 78,000 tons and the available recoverable 
potash to 75,000 tons, or to 71,000 tons when 
plants losing less than 1 pound of potash per 
barrel of cement are omitted. 


DIVISION OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY 


T. J. Bryan, Chairman 
Glen. F. Mason, Secretary 


The influence of season upon the deterioration 
of food samples: C. A. Browne. The influence of 
season upon the deterioration of raw sugar and 
butter-fat is discussed. The deterioration of sugar 
is due to microorganisms, among the most active 
of which are the budding fungi, such as the 
Torule and Monilie, which exert their activity 
only when the temperature maximum is above 20° 


572 


C. This temperature for New York City is from 
about May fifteenth to October first; from Oc- 
tober to May deterioration is quiescent. The de- 
terioration of butter-fat is not due to microor- 
ganisms but to auto-oxidation, in which the un- 
saturated fatty acids act as oxygen carriers. The 
process is most active for samples exposed to day- 
light between March and September, when there is 
a gain in weight; from September to March there 
is a loss in weight due to volatilization of decompo- 
sition products. Chemical action of light, which 
is greatest about June twentieth, is a pronounced 
factor in auto-oxidation, although temperature 
and humidity also play an important part. 


DIVISION OF WATER, SEWAGE AND SANITATION 
EK. H. 8. Bailey, Chairman 
H. P. Corson, Secretary 


The diffusion of sea water in the Puget Sound 
and Lake Washington Canal: E. Victor Smiru 
and THos. G. THompson. The canal was con- 
structed between Puget Sound and Lakes Union 
and Washington to give a fresh-water harbor to 
Seattle. A dam built to control the flow of water 
during the cutting of the canal was swept away 
twice, permitting sea water to enter Lake Union. 
Three years after the second breaking of the dam 
this lake showed a chlorine content varying from 
5,200 parts per million at the bottom, 50 feet, to 17 
parts at the surface. Six months later tests 
showed a decided reduction of chlorine in the 
upper 40 feet of Lake Union. The difference is 
due to the inflow of fresh water from Lake Wash- 
ington and control of tide-water by the lock sys- 
tem. From considerable data authors conclude 
that an apparently efficient means has been intro- 
duced by the government engineers which will pre- 
vent the diffusion of sea water into the fresh- 
water lakes. 


On the bactericidal efficiency of soap solutions 
in power laundering: H. G. ELuepee and W. E. 
McBribe. An investigation of the above men- 
tioned subject conducted by the Mellon Insti- 
tute in behalf of the Laundry Owners’ National 
Association resulted in the following conclusions: 
The results of these experiments indicate that an 
infusion-method for testing the bactericidal ef- 
fect of any agent on an inoculated piece of cloth 
must not be considered to give more than a rela- 
tive indication of the actual number of organisms 
present; that a count on the effluent from any 
washing bath does not give a true indication of the 
quantity of organism remaining in the clothes be- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1197 


ing washed; and that plating a portion of the 
cloth in question in agar gives a more positive in- 
dication. They also show that soap solutions at a 
temperature of 40° ©. have a real bactericidal 
value. Considering the omnipresence of organ- 
isms that, under certain conditions, may be con- 
sidered pathogenic, it appears absurd to demand 
that a clothes-washing process should render fab- 
ries absolutely sterile; but it has been demon- 
strated that such results are actually obtained in 
the case of all garments that are finished by iron- 
ing or drying at high temperatures, and that, in 
the case of those not so treated, the washing with 
soap produces a bactericidal efficiency comparable 
to that obtained by pasteurization. 


Manganese in water supplies: J. W. Satz. The 
water supply of Pierre, South Dakota, contains 2.3 
to 3.0 milligrams per liter of manganese and 0.07 
milligrams per liter of iron. Water mains in the 
vicinity of the well become clogged with a deposit 
of oxids of manganese in a short time. Solubility 
of the deposit in carbonated water is given. Lab- 
oratory experiments on removing the manganese 
are described and the general subject of man- 
ganese in water supplies is discussed. 


RUBBER SECTION 


L. E. Weber, Chairman 
John B. Tuttle, Secretary 


The Rubber Section of the American Chemical 
Society held its meeting on September 12, the 
program being as printed in the regular program 
of the society. About 90 members and guests were 
present. The meeting authorized the chairman and 
secretary of the section to appoint an executive 
committee, the purpose of this committee to be of 
assistance to the officers in the preparation of 
programs, meetings and such other matters as may 
arise. It was decided that a committee should be 
appointed, to investigate the subject of the poison- 
ing effect of the organic accelerators used in the 
vulcanization of rubber, the report of this com- 
mittee to cover a list of such substances, with a 
description of their effect on the workmen who 
come in contact with it, and the precautions which 
should be adopted in the mills to prevent fatal or 
even serious injury. 

Effect of copper on crude rubber: Cuas. P. Fox. 
Reviews the work done along this line. Shows by 
exhibit of specimens results of experiments with 
copper acetate on crude rubber. Sustains the work 
of Dr. Morgan, director of the Rubber Planters’ 
Association, Federated Malay States. 


SCIENCE 


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SCIENC 


Fray, DrecemBer 14, 1917 


CONTENTS 


The Carnegie Institution and the P wdiie> 
PRESIDENT RopertT S. WoopDWARD | 


Scientific Events :— 


Conjoint Board of Scientific Studies; 1 
less Time Service in the Philippine I 
Professor W. A. Noyes and the 
Chemical Society; The Annual 


Lire 
stands? 
American 
Meetings of 
_he Section of 
umn Association at 


the Biological Societies; 7 
Agriculture of the Ameri- 


JERRY oocoecnoos 
Sod Vonocndgoood snd 581 
Scientific Notes and 
CN CWDBS Serevere ciasctsiove erisietee 584 
University and 
« Hducational News .......... 585 
Discussiv 
So fn Gnd Correspondence :— 
eiedad Cientifica Antonio Alzate: Dr. 
GHOorGE F. Kunz. The Talking Machine and 
the Phonograph: Proressor J. VouNEy 
NGE WLS bare crtitttsie te citys eee em aaron te 586 
Scientific Books :— 
Wells on Mental Adjustments: PRoressor 
ApoLr Mryrr. Brunt on the Combination of 
Observations: Prornssor H. L. Rrerz .... 587 
Special Articles :— 
The Production of Gaseous Ions and their 
Recombination: Proressor P. B. PerKins. 589 
The Boston Meetings of the American Chemical 
WOCCY st LTT ca saineun sks oe oo 596 


MSS. intended for publication and books, ete., intended for 
review shoula be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION AND» 
THE PUBLIC}! % 
RECIPROCITY or P gbATions 
Im 1s ore Oey asserted and more 
often Lace ASSureed that an endowed al- 
Artatte o¥ganization actiiag under a state 
oY a national charter may proceed without 
restriciions in the development of its work. 
This, in accordance with this view, the in- 
stitution is frequently congratulated on its 
supposed freedom from governmental con- 
trol and on its supposed immunity from 
social restraint. But this view is neither 
consonant with fact nor consistent with 
sound public policy. All such organiza- 
tions are properly subject not only to the 
literal constraints of their charters but 
also to the commonly more narrow though 
unwritten limitations imposed by contem- 
porary opinion. The ideal to be sought by 
them in any tase consists in a reciprocity: 
of relations between the individual endow- 
ment on the one hand and the vastly larger 
and more influential public on the other 
hand. This. ideal, however, like most: 
idéals, is rarely fully attainable. Its. exist- 
énce and importance are, indeed, almost as. 
rarely recognized. Hence, any new altru- 
istic organization is apt to find itself oscil: 
lating between two extreme dangers: the: 
one arising from action on the part of the 
organization prejudicial] to public inter- 
ests; the other arising from public expec-. 
tations impossible of attainment and there-. 
fore prejudicial to_the organization. 
Happily for the institution, neither of © 
these extreme dangers has been. seriously 


1 Extract from the Report of the President of 
the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D,.C., 1917. _ 


574 


encountered. Its evolution has proceeded 
without surpassing charter limitations and 
without permanent hindrance from an ag- 
eregate of expectations certainly quite un- 
paralleled in the history of research estab- 
lishments. But while thus far it has been 
practicable to steer clear of the rocks and 
the shoals toward which enthusiastic 
friends even of the institution would have 
it head, and to demonstrate the inappro- 
priateness, the futility, or the impossibil- 
ity of a large number of recurring sugges- 
tions for application of the institution’s in- 
come, there remains a multitude of sub- 
jects and objects of omnipresent impor- 
tunity for which the institution has fur- 
nished and apparently can furnish only 
general disappointment. Some references 
have been made occasionally in previous 
reports to these matters, but in general 
they have been ignored for the reason that 
they tend to waste energy in the produc- 
tion of nothing better than heat of con- 
troversy. A full enumeration and discus- 
sion of them would require nothing short 
of a volume, which would be of value prob- 
ably only to our successors. There are two 
classes of them, however, presenting widely 
different aspects, which appear worthy of 
special mention in this connection and at 
the present unusual epoch in the intellec- 
tual development of mankind. These two 
classes find expression respectively in the 
perennial pleas of humanists for a larger 
share of the institution’s income and in the 
more persistently perennial pleas of aber- 
rant types of mind for special privileges 
not asked for, and not expected by, the 
normal devotees to learning. 


CLAIMS OF HUMANISTS 


Whenever and wherever the rules of 
arithmetic are ignored, then and there will 
develop vagaries, misunderstandings, and 
errors of fact that only the slow processes 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1198 


of time can correct. Hence it was not 
simply natural but necessary that in the 
evolution of the institution something like 
conflict surpassing the bounds of generous 
rivalry should arise between claimants 
whose aggregate of demands for applica- 
tion of income has constantly exceeded the 
endowment from which income is derived. 
Indeed, if the evidences of experience are 
to be trusted, there is scarcely a province 
in the world of abstract and in the world 
of applied knowledge which has regarded 
its needs as incommensurable with that en- 
tire income. It was an inevitable conse- 
quence, therefore, of inexorable conditions 
that a majority of the commendably en- 
thusiastic workers in these numerous proy- 
inces should fail to get from the institution 
all the aid they desired. It was a similarly 
inevitable consequence of those conditions 
that some of these enthusiastic workers 
should attribute their disappointment to 
wrong causes. And it might likewise have 
been predicted with certainty that the 
largest share of the resulting disapproba- 
tion visited upon the institution should 
come from the province of the humanists, . 
not because they possess any property of 
superiority, of inferiority, or any other sin- 
gularity, but, firstly, for the reason that 
they are more numerous in the aggregate 
than the devotees of all other provinces 
combined; and, secondly, for the less ob- 
vious but more important reason that the 
subjects and objects of their province are 
more numerous, more varied, more com- 
plex, and in general less well defined than 
the subjects and objects of any other proy- 
ince. 

Concerning all these matters humanistic 
which have agitated academic circles es- - 
pecially for centuries, the administrative 
office of the institution is naturally called 
upon to share in an extensive cérrespond- 
ence. Some of this is edifying, most of it 


DrcEMBER 14, 1917] 


is instructive, but a large if not the greater 
part of it appears to have been relatively 
fruitless in comparison with the time and 
the effort consumed. Why is this so? Or, 
is it only apparently and not actually so? 
May it not be due to the proverbially nar- 
row, or possibly ‘‘materialistic,’’ tenden- 
cies sometimes attributed to administrative 
officers? Much attention has been given 
to these inquiries with a view to securing 
answers free from personal bias and inde- 
pendent of administrative or other ephem- 
eral restrictions. Essentially correct an- 
swers are furnished, it is believed, by the 
voluminous correspondence referred to, 
since it has supplied the data required for 
application of the objective methods of ob- 
servation and experiment as well as the 
data for application of the subjective 
methods of a priori reasoning and _his- 
torico-eritical congruity. 

An appeal to that correspondence shows, 
in the first place, that there is no con- 
sensus of opinion amongst professed human- 
ists as to what the humanities are. It is 
well known, of course, by those who have 
taken the trouble to reflect a little, that 
the words humanistic and humanist are 
highly technical terms, more so, for ex- 
ample, than the term ‘‘moment of iner- 
tia,’? the full mechanical and _ historical 
significance of which can only be under- 
stood by consulting Euler’s ‘‘Theoria 
Motus Corporum Solidorum.’’  Technic- 
ally, the humanist is not necessarily hu- 
mane, though fortunately for the rest of 


us he generally possesses this admirable . 


quality ; he needs only to be human. The 
distinction is well illustrated at one ex- 
treme by what Greg called the ‘‘false mo- 
rality of lady novelists,’’? which could 
doubtless be surpassed by the falser mo- 
rality of male authors of fiction; and at 
another extreme by the merciful réle of the 
physician in saving lives, or the equally 


SCIENCE 


575 


merciful réle of the engineer who builds 
bridges that will not fall down and kill 
folks, whose works, nevertheless, are often 
relegated by the humanist to the limbo of 
technology. 

But these finer shades of verbal distine- 
tion which, with more or less elaboration, 
have come down to plague us from the 
days of the illustrious Aleuin and Eras- 
mus, but with no such intent on their part, 
are less disconcerting than other revela- 
tions supplied by this expert testimony. It 
shows, in the second place, the surprising 
fact that some few humanists would re- 
strict this field of endeavor to literature 
alone. From this minimum minimorum of 
content the estimates of our esteemed cor- 
respondents vary with many fluctuations 
all the way up to a maximum maximorum 
which would embrace all that is included 
in the comprehensive definition of anthro- 
pology to be found in the Standard Dic- 
tionary. Thus some eminent authorities 
would exclude from the humanities all of 
the ancient classics even, except their lit- 
eratures. To such devotees philology, lit- 
erary or comparative, has no interest; 
while archeology, classical or cosmopoli- 
tan, is of no more concern to them than 
comparative anatomy, which latter, by the 
way, is held in certain quarters to com- 
prise the whole of anthropology. Equally 
confident groups of enthusiasts, on the 
other hand, animated by visions held es- 
sential to prevent our race from perishing, 
would, each in its own way, have the in- 
stitution set up boundaries to knowledge 
within which the humanities, as always 
hitherto, would play the dominant part 
but whose appropriateness of fixation 
would be immediately disputed by other 
groups. There would be, in fact, only one 
point of agreement between them, namely, 
that the institution’s income is none too 
large to meet the needs of any group. It 


576 


should be observed in passing, however, 
in fairness to our friends the humanists, 
that they are not alone in their regressive 
efforts to establish metes and bounds for ad- 
vancing knowledge. Contemporary scien- 
tists have likewise pursued the same ignis 
fatuus with similarly futile results, as is 
best shown by the arbitrary and often 
thought-tight compartments into which 
science is divided by academies and royal 
societies. A sense of humor leads us to 
conclude that these likenesses between 
groups and assemblages thereof, still more 
or less hostile at times to one another, serve 
well to prove that the individuals con- 
cerned are human if not humanistic and 
that they all belong to the same genus if 
not to the same species. 

In the third place, there is included in 
the extensive correspondence on which this 
section is mainly based a special contri- 
bution of letters furnished mostly by uni- 
versity presidents and professors and by 
men of letters selected with a view to ex- 
cluding all those who might be suspected 
of any non-humanistic predilections. 
These letters were received as replies to a 
communication issued first during the 
year 1910, and occasionally since then, so- 
liciting counsel from those well qualified 
to assist the institution in determining 
how it may best promote research and 
progress in the humanities and how it may 
be relieved of the charge of unfairness to- 
ward them-in the allotment of its income. 
The essential paragraphs in this communi- 
cation are the following: 

Amongst other suggestions arising naturally in 
this inquiry -is that of the desirability of some- 
thing like a working definition of the term hu- 
manities. To the question What are the humani- 
ties? one finds a variety of answers, some of which 
seem much narrower than desirable. 

In order to get additional information on this 


subject and in order to make this part of the in- 
quiry as concrete and definite as possible, I am 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1198 


sending copies of the inclosed list of publications 
to a number of friends requesting them to mark 
those entries of the list which they, as individuals, 
would consider works falling properly in the 
fields of the humanities. I shall esteem it a great 
favor, therefore, if you will kindly examine this 
list, indicating by some sort of check-mark what 
works, if any, may be rightly so classed, and then 
mail the same in the inclosed stamped envelope. 
It will be of service also, to indicate to me, if you 
care to do so, the lines of distinction which may 
be drawn between the humanistic sciences and the 
physical sciences. I am sure you will agree with 
me that it will be a decided aid to all of us to se- 
cure something like common definitions for these 
boundaries of knowledge. 


About thirty distinguished authors have 
participated in this symposium; and their 
frank and generous expressions of opin- 
ion would be well worthy of publication 
if they had not been assured that their re- 
sponses would not be used for such a pur- 
pose. The identities and details of their 
letters must therefore be retained, for the 
present at any rate, in the archives of the 
institution. But since many of them have 
offered to relieve the solicitor of this ob- 
ligation, and probably all of them would 
do so on request, it is believed that no 
confidence will be violated in stating the 
two following statistical facts, which not 
only agree with one another but strongly 
confirm also the inductions referred to 
above, drawn from the more miscellaneous 
correspondence of the institution: 

1. The definitions of the term humani- 
ties vary from the exclusiveness of litera- 
ture alone to the inclusiveness of the more 
recent definitions of anthropology, with a 
noteworthy tendency toward inclusiveness 
rather than the reverse. 

2. To the concrete question What works, 
if any, already published by the institution 
fall in the humanities, the answers vary 
from 2 to 33, the number of publications 
up to 1910 being 146. 

The correspondent who assigned the 


DECEMBER 14, 1917] 


largest number of publications to the hu- 
manities took the trouble also to count up 
the totals of the numbers of pages of all 
the works issued by the institution up to 
that time. His count gave: for the hu- 
manities, 10,813 pages; for all other 
branches of knowledge, 21,700 pages. 

In connection with these statistical data, 
it is appropriate to add the corresponding 
figures for the publications of the institu- 
tion brought down to date, namely, Oc- 
tober, 1917. In deriving these there are 
ineluded under the humanities works in 
archaeology, folk-lore, international law, 
history, literature, and philology. Of a 
total of 88 volumes, 58 octavos contain 
19,921 pages and 30 quartos contain 10,718 
pages, the total number of pages being 
30,639; but four of the volumes are still 
in press and their pagination is not in- 
eluded. 

Since the total number of pages of 
printed matter issued by the institution up 
to date is 98,565, it appears that the shares, 
if such a term may be used, allotted to 
the humanities and to all other fields of 
learning combined are in round numbers 
one third and two thirds respectively. 
Whether this is one of fairness and fitness 
will doubtless remain for a long time a dis- 
puted question, since it seems to be one to 
which the dictum of Marcus Aurelius ap- 
plies with peculiar emphasis. In the mean- 
time, while waiting for a diminution in 
the diversity of opinion which calls that 
dictum to mind, it appears to be the duty 
of the institution to proceed, as it has 
sought to proceed hitherto, in a spirit of 
sympathy and equity based on merit to- 
wards all domains of knowledge, with a 
full appreciation of the necessary limita- 
tions of any single organization and with 
a respectful but untrammeled regard for 
the views, the sentiments, and the suffrages 
of our contemporaries. 


SCIENCE 


577 


ABERRANT TYPES OF MIND 


If words and phrases drawn out of the 
past may obscure thought and supplant 
reason in the domains of the less highly 
developed sciences, like the humanities, for 
example, they are by no means free from 
difficulties when used as media for the com- 
munication of ideas in the domains of the 
more highly developed sciences. The dif- 
ferences between the ambiguities and the 
obseurities of the two domains are mainly 
in degree rather than in kind. It is a 
truism, of course, that in general it is much 
easier to discover errors and to improve 
uncertain verbal expression in the definite 
than in the indefinite sciences. Erroneous 
statements and interpretations of fact may 
be often corrected by the facts themselves 
or by means of a knowledge of their rela- 
tions to underlying principles. Precision 
and correctness of language are also 
greatly increased in any department of 
learning when it becomes susceptible to 
the economy of thought and of expression 
characteristic of the mathematico-physical 
sciences. The perfection of these latter is, 
indeed, so great that novices working in 
them are often carried safely over hazar- 
dous ground to sound conclusions without 
adequate apprehension of the principles in- 
volved and with only erroneous verbal 
terms at command to designate the facts 
and the phenomena considered. 

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that 
the terminology of what commonly passes 
for science as well as the terminology used 
frequently even by eminent men of science 
is sadly in need of reformation in the in- 
terests of clear thinking and hence of un- 
equivocal popular and technical exposi- 
tion. To realize the vagueness and the in- 
appropriateness in much of the current 
use of this terminology one needs only to 
examine the voluminous literature avail- 
able in almost any subject called scientific. 


578 


It is so much easier to appear to write well, 
or even brilliantly, than it is to think 
clearly, that facile expression is often mis- 
taken for sound thought. Thus, to illus- 
trate, while in physics the terms force, 
power and energy have acquired technical 
meanings entirely distinct and free from 
ambiguity, they are commonly used as 
synonyms, and quite too commonly to 
designate properties, sentiments, and in- 
fluences to which their application is mean- 
ingless. The ‘‘forces,’’ the ‘‘powers,’’ and 
more recently, the ‘‘energies’’ of ‘‘nature”’ 
are frequently appealed to in popular lit- 
erature; and a familiar bathos consists in 
equipping them solemnly with the now 
vanishing stable furniture ‘‘for the benefit 
of mankind.’’ Science is disfigured and 
hindered also by much inherited antithet- 
ical terminology for which reasons once 
existent have now disappeared or are dis- 
appearing. Instances are found in such 
terms as metaphysics, natural history, and 
natural science, the two latter of which ap- 
pear to have come down to us without sen- 
sible modification, except for a vast in- 
crease in content, since the days of Pliny 
the Elder. The diversification and the re- 
sulting multiplication of meanings of the 
terms of science are everywhere becoming 
increasingly noticeable and _ confusing. 
One of the most recent manifestations is 
seen in the phrase ‘‘scientific and indus- 
trial research,’’ which probably means 
about the same thing as the equally uncer- 
tain phrase ‘‘pure and applied science’’; 
while both phrases have been turned to ac- 
count in setting up invidious distinctions 
inimical to the progress of all concerned. 
This looseness in the use of terminology 
inherited from our predominantly literary 
predecessors and the prevailing absence of 
any exacting standards of excellence in ex- 
position make it easy for that large class 
here designated as aberrant types to take 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1198 


an unduly prominent part in the evolution 
of any establishment founded for the pro- 
motion of “‘research and discovery and the 
application of knowledge for the improve- 
ment of mankind.’’ These types are nu- 
merous and each of them presents all gra- 
dations ranging from harmless mental in- 
capacity up to aggressive pseudo-science, 
which latter often wins popular approval 
and thus eclipses the demonstrations of 
saner counsels. ‘The representatives of 
these types are variously distinguished in 
common parlance as cranks, quacks, aliens, 
charlatans, mountebanks, ete. Some of the 
most persistent types are known as are- 
trisectors, circle-squarers and perpetual-mo- 
tion men and women. They are not of re- 
cent development; they are coextensive 
with our race; but they have been little 
studied except in the cases of extreme di- 
vergency from the normal. One impor- 
tant work, however, has been devoted to 
the intermediate types of this class with 
which the present section of this report is 
concerned. This is the profoundly learned 
book entitled ‘‘A Budget of Paradoxes,’’2 
by Augustus De Morgan, who gave a sur- 
prising amount of attention, extending 
through several decades, to these people, 
whom he ealled ‘‘paradoxers.’’ 

It ought to be well known, but evidently 
is not, that the institution has had to deal 
with, and must continue to be harassed by, 
great numbers of these aberrant types. 
The happy phrase of the founder concern- 
ing the ‘‘exceptional man’’ has worked out 
very unhappily both for them and for the 
institution, since it has only inevitable dis- 
appointment to meet their importunate de- 
mands, while they in turn have only in- 

2 This was published originally in 1872. A sec- 
ond edition in two volumes, edited by Professor 
David Eugene Smith, has recently (1915) been 


issued by the Open Court Publishing Company, of 
Chicago and London. 


DrcemMBerR 14, 1917] 


evitable animadversion to visit finally upon 
the institution. Deluded enthusiasts and 
designing charlatans entertain alike the il- 
lusion that here at last is an establishment 
that will enable them to realize their wildest 
dreams of fame and fortune. But in the 
end the hopes of these people are either 
rudely shocked or wrecked, not because the 
institution would disturb them in their fan- 
cies but because they compel the institution 
to decline to approve their theories and to 
subsidize their projects. Many individuals 
of this class are extraordinarily clever, in 
literary capacity especially, although they 
are almost all notably deficient in critical 
faculties. In the initial stages of corre- 
spondence with them they are wont to at- 
tribute superhuman qualities to the ad- 
ministrative officer concerned, but if he be- 
comes at all exacting they are wont to 
suggest a speedy degeneracy for him 
towards inhuman qualities. The absurd- 
ities, the arrogance and the audacity (often 
pushed to the extreme of mendacity) of 
their claims are generally Iudicrous 
enough, but these claims are often founded 
also on recondite fallacies which present 
pathetic as well as humorous aspects. Two 
illustrations drawn from the older and 
hence more impersonal sciences may suffice 
to indicate the nature of the daily experi- 
ence here in question: 

1. A teacher of youth in a publie school 
desires assistance in securing letters-pat- 
ent for a new proof of the Pythagorean 
theorem. And why not, since we read 
every day in the public press and in the 
debates of legislative bodies of ‘‘principles’’ 
being patented ? 

2. Quite recently it has been ‘‘discoy- 
ered’’ that the air and the ether contain 
«free energy.’’ If this is so, if energy like 
urbanity is free, why should it not be rend- 
ered available at the expense of the insti- 
tution for the improvement of mankind? 


SCIENCE 


579 


Study and reflection concerning these 
aberrant types and an intimate association 
with them beginning thirty years before 
the foundation of the institution, all point 
to the conclusion that responsibility for 
their undue prominence must be attributed 
in large degree and in the last analysis to 
a prevalent inadequate development of 
critical capacity even amongst the best edu- 
cated classes of contemporary life. Many 
representatives of these latter regard the 
eccentric individual as thereby worthy of 
special attention. He is often referred to 
as a sprite or as a male witch, but com- 
monly, of course, under the more familiar 
designations of our day as ‘‘a genius’’ or 
as ‘‘a wizard.’’ Thus it is quite easy for 
obvious charlatans and ignoramuses, as 
well as for those in pursuit of Sisyphean 
paralogisms and anachronisms, to secure 
letters of introduction and commendation 
to the institution from distinguished people, 
who pass the applicants along on the 
theory apparently that no harm can result 
from an effort to assist in the laudable 
work of extending learning. It is assumed 
that a research establishment must have ef- 
fective facilities for utilizing the necro- 
mantic capacities attributed to those in 
particular to whom the terms genius and 
wizard are by common assent applied. 
Such introductions and commendations are 
generally held to be equivalent to ap- 
provals which may not be lightly set aside. 
The suggestion of tests of the pretensions 
and of checks on the deductions of these 
applicants is repulsive to them. What 
they desire is not diagnosis but indorse- 
ment. In all these matters there is revealed 
likewise a widely diffused misapprehen- 
sion concerning the meanings of the terms 
science and research. The first may mean 
anything from occultism to the steam en- 
gine or to the telephone and thence up to 
those rarely appreciated principles of which 


580 


the law of conservation of energy is one of 
the most conspicuous examples. The other 
term has a similarly wide range of mean- 
ing, but it stands most commonly either 
for a secret process which leads to riches 
by way of patent offices or for enterprises 
in which the institutton is supposed to act 
as a complaisant disbursing agency. 

In dealing with these aberrant types 
there are encountered certain other fallacies 
of a more specious and hence of a more 
troublesome character. They arise out of 
the prevailing innocence of, if not con- 
tempt for, the doctrine of probabilities. 
The simplest of these fallacies is seen in 
the common belief that one mind is as likely 
as another to make discoveries and advances 
in the realms of the unknown. Thus it is 
assumed that research establishments 
should maintain experts, or corps of them, 
for the purpose of promoting the efforts of 
tyros, amateurs and dilettanti, or, in other 
words, perform the functions of elementary 
schools. A subtler fallacy is expressed in 
the more common belief that a research or- 
ganization should occupy itself chiefly in 
soliciting and in examining miscellaneous 
suggestions. It is held that if these are re- 
ceived in large numbers and if they are 
read long enough and hard enough, the 
possibilities of knowledge will be completely 
compassed. This has been elsewhere called 
the process of ‘‘casting dragnets in the wide 
world of thought ... with the expectation 
that out of the vast slimy miscellanies 
thus collected there will be found some 
precious sediments of truth.’’ It is, in- 
deed, a metaphysical method of extracting 
truth out of error. The worst of all these 
fallacies is found in the not unpopular no- 
tion that if experts could be set at work 
under the direction of inexperts great 
progress could be achieved. This is the 
fallacy so often used to justify placing 
technical work under the administration of 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1198 


politicians and promoters rather than 


under the charge of competent men. It 


finds frequent expression also in sugges- 
tions to the institution that its corps of in- 
vestigators might avoid the dangers of 
“respectable mediocrity’’ by yielding to 
the requests of the less conservative and 
more brilliant advocates of advancing 
knowledge. 

But what, it may be asked, are the char- 
acteristics which differentiate these pseudo- 
scientists from normal investigators? 
They are well defined and not numerous. 
The pseudo-scientist is in general excess- 
ively egoistic, secretive, averse to criticism, 
and almost always unaware of the works 
of his predecessors and contemporaries in 
the same field. He displays little of that 
eaution which is born of adequate knowl- 
edge. He is lacking especially in capacity 
to discover and to correct his own mistakes. 
He is forever challenging others to find 
errors in his work. He has an overween- 
ing confidence often in formal logic, but is 
unable to see that this useful device may 


play tricks by bringing him, for example, 


simultaneously to right and to wrong con- 
clusions by reason of wrong premises. His 
worst defect is manifested in asking for 
and in expecting to get more lenient con- 
sideration in the forum of demonstration 
than that accorded to his more modest but 
more effective competitors. 

How inadequate are the hasty popular 
estimates of these exceptional individuals 
is sufficiently witnessed in the extensive ex- 
perience of the institution. In the brief 
interval of its existence it has had to deal 
with about 12,000 of them. Many of these 
have been commended to the institution in 
terms well calculated to set aside the laws 
of biologic continuity and thus to elevate 
the aspirants abruptly from irreproach- 
able respectability to questionable fame. 
To some of them have been attributed quali- 


DECEMBER 14, 1917] 


ties worthy of the mythological characteris- 
tics conceived by the unrestrained imagi- 
nations of men in prescientific times. Not 
a few of them have proved to be obvious 
fakers, schemers or incompetents masque- 
rading in the name of learning with the 
confident expectation that the institution 
would indorse, finance or otherwise pro- 
mote their objects under the guise of re- 
search. But, as might have been pre- 
dicted, the history of all this varied experi- 
ence is a history of futility clouded here 
and there by manifestations of the baser 
traits‘of mankind and lighted up only ocea- 
sionally by flashes of wit, wisdom or humor 
in the prevailing pathologie cast. 
Ropert S. WoopwarpD 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


CONJOINT BOARD OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES IN 
GREAT BRITAIN 


Tue first annual report of the Conjoint 
Board of Scientific Studies, established at the 
instance of the Council of the Royal Society 
in June, 1916, has been issued. As reported 
in the British Medical Journal, the objects of 
the board are to promote the cooperation of 
those interested in pure or applied science; to 
supply means by which the scientific opinion 
of the country on matters relating to science, 
industry and education, may find effective ex- 
pression; to promote the application of sci- 
ence to industries and the service of the na- 
tion; and to discuss scientific questions in 
which international cooperation seems advis- 
able. The chairman of the board, which con- 
sists of representatives of numerous societies, 
is the president of the Royal Society. Among 
the constituent societies are the Royal Anthro- 
pological Institute, the Royal Colleges of 
Physicians and Surgeons in England, the 
Royal Society of Medicine, the Pharma- 
ceutical Society of Great Britain, the Psycho- 
logical, Linnean, Zoological, Biochemical, and 
Psychological Societies, the Institute of Chem- 
istry, the Society of Chemical Industry, the 
Chemical Society, and the Royal Institute of 
British Architects. There is a small execu- 


SCIENCE 


581 


tive committee, of which Sir Joseph J. Thom- 
son, president of the Royal Society, is chair- 
man, and Dr. W. W. Watts, professor of geol- 
ogy in the Imperial College of Science and 
Technology, secretary; among the other mem- 
bers are Sir Alfred Keogh and Sir Ray Lan- 
kester. The board has appointed a number 
of sub-committees, some of which appear to 
have got to work during the year, including 
The International Catalogue Subcommittee 
which has obtained information regarding the 
extent of the use made by sciéntific men of 
the present International Catalogue of Scien- 
tific Literature; the Watching Subcommittee 
on Education, of which Sir Ray Lankester is 
convener, the Metric System Subcommittee, 
and the Anthropological Survey Subcommittee. 
The last named consists of Major Leonard 
Darwin (convener), Professor A. Keith (sec- 
retary), Dr. James Galloway, Dr. P. Chalmers 
Mitchell, and Professors G. Elliot Smith, Karl 
Pearson and Arthur Thomson. It has pre- 
sented a report on the need of a physical 
survey of the British people, and intends to 
institute further inquiries before drafting re- 
commendations. On its advice the executive 
committee asked the Board of Education, the 
Local Government Board, and the Registrar- 
General’s Office to nominate representatives on 
the subcommittee, and Sir George Newman, 
Sir Arthur Newsholme, and Dr. T. H. C. 
Stevenson, have been appointed. The Watch- 
ing Subcommittee on Education has held a 
conference with the Council of Humanistic 
Studies, and has made a report to the Conjoint 
Board, in the course of which it recommended 
that both natural science and literary subjects 
should be taught to all pupils below the age of 
16, and that afterwards specialization should 
be gradual and not complete. It points out 
that in many schools of the older type more 
time, which can often be obtained by economy 
in the time allotted to classics, is needed for 
instruction in natural science, but that in 
many schools more time is needed for instruc- 
tion in languages, history and geography. 
The opinion is also expressed that while it is 
impossible and undesirable to provide instruc- 
tion in both Latin and Greek in all secondary 


582 


schools, provision should be made in every area 
for teaching these subjects. The subcom- 
mittee also transmitted to the Government 
Committee on Science in the Educational 
System of Great Britain two recommenda- 
tions on which it was unanimous; one is that 
in order to secure teachers able to give inspir- 
ing and attractive courses in science adequate 
salaries should be paid, and the other, that 
while prime importance must be attached to 
provision for laboratory work it was essential 
that there should be instruction also in the 
romance of scientific discovery and its applica- 
tions. Every pupil should not only receive 
training in observational and experimental sci- 
ence, but should be given a view of natural 
science as a whole, the object being to evoke 
interest in science in relation to ordinary life, 
“rather than to impart facts or data of sci- 
ence presented by an examination syllabus, or 
even to systematize their rediscovery.” 


WIRELESS TIME SERVICE IN THE PHILIPPINE 
ISLANDS 


THE progress in the time service of the 
Philippine Islands is made evident from the 
fact that since October 1, 1917, the Cavite 
Radio Station, cooperating with the Bureau of 
Posts and the Manila Observatory, sends out 
time signals of the 120th meridian East of 
Greenwich at 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. every day, 
Sundays and holidays inclusive. Manila 
holds an enviable position in the Pacific and 
the interests of shipping companies making 
Manila a port of call are too prosperous to be 
overlooked. Accurate time signals and wise 
typhoon warnings are of immense value to 
the units of the United States Asiatic Fleet, 
to Army transports and in general to oversea 
shipping. 

For the purpose of sending time signals, the 
transmitting clock of the Manila Observatory 
is connected with the Cavite wireless station 
through the Bureau of Posts. Manila Ob- 
servatory time signals begin at 10:55 a.m. and 
9:55 p.m., standard time of the 120th meridian 
East of Greenwich; and continue for five 
minutes. During this interval every tick of 
the clock is transmitted, except the 28th, 29th, 
54th, 55th, 56th, 57th, 58th and 59th of each 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1198 


minute. Experiments made on board the U. 
S. Wilmington, Monterey, Sheridan, Merrit 
and the commercial steamer Colombia, of the 
Pacific Mail, gave satisfactory results. 


PROFESSOR W. A. NOYES AND THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY x 


ReEsotutTions on the services of Professor 
W. A. Noyes to the American Chemical So- 
ciety have been passed, as follows: 

Wuereas, Dr. William A. Noyes is soon to 
terminate his service as editor of the Journal 
of the American Chemical Society, to which 
for fifteen years he has, with unceasing devo- 
tion and conscientious care, given a large por- 
tion of his time; and : 

Wuereas, During these years he has by his 
effective conduct of the Journal raised it to a 
scientific publication of the very first rank, in 
which is now published by far the greater part 
of the best chemical research carried on in 
this country, and 

WuereEas, He was the leading spirit in the 
organization and detailed planning of the 
Abstract Journal of the Society, which has 
made available to American chemists in an 
exceptionally comprehensive and satisfactory 
form the current chemical research of the 
world; and 

Wuereas, He has thus contributed in a vital 
way to the phenomenal increase in member- 
ship and scientific activity of the Society dur- 
ing the last two decades, in which the success 
of its journals has been one of the most im- 
portant factors; now, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the Council of the Society 
expresses its keen regret that other tasks have 
compelled the resignation of Dr. Noyes from 
the editorship of the Journal, and records its 
high appreciation of his services to the Society, 
especially of his ardor in developing the So- 
ciety’s journals, which will remain a splendid 
monument to the success of his work. 

(For the Council) Signed by 

Witper D. Bancrort, 

Marston T. Bocsrt, 

Joun H. Lone, 

ArtHur A. NovEs, 

Turopore W. Ricuarps, Chairman 


DrceMBER 14, 1917] 


THE ANNUAL MEETINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL 
SOCIETIES 


Tue annual scientific meetings of the Bio- 
logical Societies (The Federation of Ameri- 
can Societies for Experimental Biology, The 
American Association of Anatomists and The 
American Society of Zoologists) will be held in 
the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 
Minnesota, December 27, 28 and 29. 

The Hotel Radisson will be headquarters for 
all the societies. Arrangements will also be 
made with fraternity and boarding houses for 
those desiring them. 

The federation has arranged to hold a day 
session at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Min- 
nesota, on December 29. For this purpose ar- 
rangements have been made to have sleeping 
cars leave Minneapolis on the night of the 28th 
in order that no time shall be lost. The 
Mayo surgical hospitals will be visited, as will 
also the experimental laboratories and at the 
afternoon session a scientific program will be 
presented. Members of the federation should 
have their tickets from the east routed from 
Chicago to Minneapolis and from the west 
through Omaha or Kansas City to Minneapo- 
lis. Tickets for the return trip should be 
routed from Minneapolis over the Chicago 
and Great Western Railway to Rochester and 
from Rochester to Chicago for the east, and to 
Omaha or Kansas City for the west. Mem- 
bers of the Anatomical and Zoological Socie- 
ties are cordially invited to attend this Ro- 
chester meeting if they care to do so, although 
programs for these societies have been ar- 
ranged for the same date in Minneapolis. 

There will be a joint dinner in the Gold 
Room, Hotel Radisson, on Thursday at 6:30 
P.M. at $1.50 per plate, also, a joint smoker 
will be held at the Teco Inn, Hotel Radisson, 


at 8:15 p.m. on Friday. Fifty-cent luncheons — 


will be served at 1 P.M. in the Minnesota 
Union, University of Minnesota, each day 
throughout the meetings. 

After full consideration by the executive 
committees and councils of the societies con- 
cerned, it has been decided to hold the meet- 
ings in Minneapolis on December 27, 28 and 
29, as voted one year ago. This action is taken 
on the ground that it would be disastrous to 


SCIENCE 


583 


the progress of research and the best interests 
of the biological sciences if no annual meetings 
for the reporting of investigations, for the 
exchange of ideas and for mutual encourage- 
ment should be held. 

The local committee at Minneapolis cor- 
dially endorses this decision on the part of the 
authorities of the several societies and de- 
sires to emphasize in addition the impetus 
that can be given to science in the northwest 
by a successful meeting at the University of 
Minnesota. To this end they are planning for 
a program of unusual interest. Not only will 
scientific papers of value be presented before 
the various societies—papers which in many 
instances will deal with matters pertaining to 
the war—but also visitors will have an oppor- 
tunity to see the recent new laboratories of 
the University of Minnesota and especially to 
visit under the best of conditions the Mayo 
Clinic at Rochester and become acquainted 
with the research work going on there under 
the Mayo Foundation. 

On behalf, therefore, of the University of 
Minnesota and with the cordial concurrence of 
its president and board of regents we invite 
you to attend these meetings. We urge you 
as a duty to science to help make the gathering 
a success. We believe that it is incumbent 
upon every scientific man to support the cause 
to which he has devoted his life, the cause of 
scientific progress. We, therefore, most re- 
spectfully and earnestly urge you to attend 
these meetings, to contribute to the programs, 
to take part in the discussions and to bring to 
the support of science the same loyalty and 
sacrifice that America is giving to every other 
basic principle of our civilization. 

We also ask that you inform young scientists 
of your staff and acquaintance who are not 
yet members of the societies, concerning these 
meetings, and invite them to be present. 

L. G. Rowntree, 
Chairman, Local Committee 


SECTION M (AGRICULTURE) OF THE AMERI- 
CAN ASSOCIATION AT PITTSBURGH 


Tue Section of Agriculture will hold ses- 
sions on Friday and Saturday, December 28 
and 29. A symposium on the topic “ Factors 


084 


concerned in an increased agricultural produc- 
tion ” will be held on Friday afternoon, De- 
cember 28, at 2 o’clock, the subject to be con- 
sidered under the following five heads: 

Present status of production, Dr. John Lee Coul- 
ter, dean of agriculture, West Virginia University. 

Feasibility of increasing production, Dean HE. 
Davenport, college of agriculture, University of 
Illinois. 

Obstacles to enlarged production, Professor W. 
D. Hurd, assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture. 

Limiting factors in production, Professor Chas. 
EK. Thorne, director of the Ohio Experiment Sta- 
tion. 

The human element, Mr. Herbert Quick, member 
of the Federal Farm Loan Board. 


The address of the retiring vice-president of 
the section, Dr. W. H. Jordan, director of the 
New York State Experiment Station, upon 
“The future of agricultural education and 
research in the United States,” will be given 
on Saturday morning, December 29, at 11 
o’clock. The sessions will be presided over by 
Dr. H. J. Waters, president of the Kansas 
State Agricultural College. They will be held 
in Room 105, Thaw Hall, University of 
Pittsburgh. : 

The symposium deals with a subject of the 
first importance to agriculture and to the wel- 
fare of the nation. It will be treated in a 
semi-popular manner, having in mind the 
broad general interest relating to it. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Tue Royal Society has conferred Royal 
medals on Dr. John Aitken, for his researches 
on cloudy condensations, and on Dr. Arthur 
Smith Woodward, for his researches in verte- 
brate paleonteology, and the Copley medal on 
M. Emile Roux, for his services to bacteriol- 
ogy and as a pioneer in serum therapy; the 
Davy medal on M. Albin Haller, for his re- 
searches in organic chemistry; the Buchanan 
medal on Sir Almroth Wright, for his con- 
tributions to preventive medicine; and the 
Hughes medal on Professor C. G. Barkla, for 
his work on X-ray radiation. 


Dr. CHristopHER ADDISON, minister of re- 
construction in Great Britain, has been ap- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1198 


pointed minister of public health, and hopes 
to carry a bill through parliament before 
Christmas, forming a new ministry to forward 
a place for the nationalization of the medical 
profession with free medical attendance for 
every one. 


Masor Benepict Crowett, of Cleveland, an 
engineer officer, now in charge of the Wash- 
ington office of the Panama Canal, has been 
appointed assistant secretary of war to suc- 
ceed William Ingraham, who has become sur- 
veyor of the Port of Portland. 


Drawn Kuen, of the veterinary department 
of the University of Pennsylvania, is at pres- 
ent in France, having been sent by the gov- 
ernment on a special mission to General Persh- 
ing to consult him regarding the organization 
of the Veterinary Corps, and to make a survey 
of the situation in France. 


Dr. R. B. Owens, secretary of the Franklin 
Institute, now in France on leave of absence, 
acting as head of the Army Intelligence 
Bureau, has been elevated to the rank of major. 
He is serving under General Pershing. 


Mr. Grorce E. How, research assistant in 
the division of agricultural biochemistry of the 
University of Minnesota, has been commis- 
sioned first heutenant in the Sanitary Corps. 
He will be assigned to investigational work in 
the Gas Defense Service. 


Dr. Cuartes L. Reese, chemical director of 
the du Pont Powder Company, has been elected 
a member of the board of directors of that 
company. 


Mr. F. G. Mosss has been appointed hydro- 
metallurgist in the U. S. Bureau of Mines, 
with headquarters at Salt Lake City station. 


J. W. TuRRENTINE is directing the work of 
the government’s experimental kelp-potash 
plant at Summerland, near Santa Barbara, 
Cal. The plant is in operation and is pro- 
ducing crude potash. Apparatus is now being 
installed which will make possible the produc- 
tion of refined potash and by-products, par- 
ticularly iodine, for both of which chemicals 
there is a large demand for industrial and 
military purposes. 


DrcEMBER 14, 1917] 


Proressor H. E. Grecory, of Yale Univer- 
sity, has left for the Hawaiian Islands, where 
he plans to spend a few months in geological 
investigation. 


Proressor ©. C. Nurtinc, who will lead a 
party of Iowa scientific men in an expedition 
to the West Indies next summer, has received 
word that the English government buildings 
on the Pelican islands, which will be the base 
of the expedition, will be turned over to the 
explorers without cost. Some of the men who 
intended to go with this expedition at first 
have since entered war service, but plans are 
going forward rapidly and the outlook is 
promising. Professor Nutting made a prelim- 
inary visit to the islands last summer and re- 
ported that he had never seen a place where 
the opportunity for scientific research was 
greater. 


PRESENT StIEGLITZ, of the American Chem- 
ical Society, has appointed the following com- 
mittee on the supply of organie chemicals for 
research during the war: EK. Emmet Reid, 
Chairman, Roger Adams, H. L. Fisher, J. W. 
E. Glattfeld, Wm. J. Hale. 


At the annual meeting of the Cambridge 
Philosophical Society held on October 29 the 
following were elected officers of the society 
for the ensuing session: President, Professor 
Marr; Vice-presidents, Professor Newall, Dr. 
Doneaster and Mr. W. H. Mills; Treasurer, 
Professor Hobson; Secretaries, Mr. A. Wood, 
Mr. G. H. Hardy and Mr. H. H. Brindley; 
New Members of Council, Sir J. Larmor, Pro- 
fessor Eddington and Dr. Marshall. 


At the anniversary meeting of the Minera- 
logical Society, held on November 6, the fol- 
lowing were elected officers: President, Mr. 
W. Barlow; Vice-presidents, Professor H. L. 
Bowman and Mr. A. Hutchinson; Treasurer, 
Sir William P. Beale, Bart.; General Secre- 
tary, Dr. G. T. Prior; Foreign Secretary, 
Professor W. W. Watts; Editor of the Jour- 
nal, Mr. L. J. Spencer. 


At Yale University, Director Russell H. 
Chittenden and Professor Irving Fisher have 
delivered the first two of the special Univer- 
sity Lectures on Food Conservation, and 


SCIENCE 


585 


Frederic C. Walcott, ’91, of Mr. Hoover's staff, 
will give the third lecture, on “ Governmental 
aspects of food conservation,” in January. 


Atonzo Dorus Metyin, chief of the Bureau 
of Animal Industry, since 1905, known for his 
work on animal diseases and their bearing on 
human health, died at his home in Washing- 
ton, aged fifty-five years. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


Tue Harvard University Corporation has 
announced the receipt of securities to the 
value of $89,946.50 from James Byrne, ’77, of 
New York City, to establish the “ Byrne pro- 
fessorship of administrative law.” The securi- 
ties are the first payment towards a total 
foundation of $150,000. 


Tue following telegram was sent by Dr. 
Hollis Godfrey, December 5, to presidents 
of all institutions giving degrees in technical 
courses: “I have just been authorized by the 
Secretary of War to request you to inform all 
your technical students that if they wait until 
drafted they can, upon summons to the draft 
camp, take with them a letter from you stating 
their special qualifications, such letter to be 
filed with occupational census questionnaire of 
the War Department. Under authority of this 
authorized telegram, the Secretary of War also 
authorizes me to say that every effort will be 
made to use each student’s special training in 
connection with specialized occupations in the 
army, so as to afford technical students of 
draft age fully as great an opportunity through 
the draft as if they enlisted now.” 


THE annual meeting of the American Mathe- 
matical Society will be held in New York City 
on- Thursday and Friday, December 27-28. 
The fortieth regular meeting of the Chicago 
Section will be held at the University of Chi- 
cago on Friday and Saturday, December 28— 
29. Friday afternoon will be devoted to a 
joint meeting with the Mathematical Associa- 
tion of America, at which Professor W. B. 
Ford will deliver his retiring address as chair- 
man of the section. 


586 


Mr. L. O. Howarp, consulting engineer of 
Salt Lake City, has been appointed dean of 
the School of Mines of the State College of 
Washington at Pullman. 


Ar the Stevens Institute of Technology, L. 
A. Hazeltine has succeeded the late Professor 
Ganz as acting professor of electrical engi- 
neering in charge of the department. 


James H. Enuis, research associate in phys- 
ical chemistry at Throop College of Technol- 
ogy, Pasadena, Cal., has become a member of 
the physies department of the college as in- 
structor in electrical measurements. 


Mr. I. L. Muse, of Indiana University, 
has been appointed professor of mathematics 
in Carthage College. 


Proressor A. S. Leyron has resigned the 
chair of pathology and bacteriology of the 
University of Leeds. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
SOCIEDAD CIENTIFICA ANTONIO ALZATE 
For those who have been led by a perusal 

of the daily papers to suppose that Mexico 

was in a progressive state of disorganization, 
the recent issues of the “ Memorias” of the 

“ Sociedad Cientifica Antonio Alzate,” of Mex- 

ico City, will afford good proof that their 

hasty judgment had been erroneous. 

The thirty-sixth volume of the Memorias of 
this Society, which has just appeared, and 
comprises 740 pages of text with 82 plates, is 
entirely devoted to a monograph on the State 
of Puebla by Sefior Enrique Juan Palacios.+ 
His study falls into three main sections, the 
first of which regards the ethnology, geology 
and climatology of the state, the second, its 
flora and fauna, its industries, its mineral 
resources, and its commerce and means of 
communication; the third section treats of the 
political divisions of the state, and of its 


1‘‘Memorias y Rivista de la Sociedad Cientifica 
Antonio Alzate,’’ published under the direction of 
the perpetual secretary, Rafael Aguilar y Santillan, 
Tomo 36, 2 parts, Mexico, June, 1917. 740 pp., 82 
plts., 8°, ‘‘ Puebla, su territorio y sus habitantes,’’ 
by Enrique Juan Palacios. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1198 


history, embracing a description of its prin- 
cipal communities, chief among which is of 
course the city of Puebla, consisting of about 
100,000 inhabitants. 

The area of the state is given by the writer 
as 33,653 square kilometers, or about 14,000 
square miles, and its population as nearly 
1,100,000, showing a density of nearly 80 to 
the square mile. In population it ranks third 
among the Mexican states. The white race 
numbers 86,000, the population of mixed race 
826,000 (three quarters of the whole), and the 
Indians, nearly 200,000. Within its territory 
is the highest peak in North America, with the 
exception of Mount McKinley. This is the 
mountain bearing the Indian name Citlaltépal, 
or “Smoking Mountain,” though often called 
Orizaba. It rises to a height of 5,675 meters, 
or 18,614 feet, and is an extinct, or at least 
an inactive voleano. 

The fossil remains found in the state of 
Puebla are of considerable importance. Among 
them are bones of Hlephas Columbi Falconer, 
found at San Jeronimo, in the district of 
Tehuacan, and also in the region about the 
city of Puebla. Within the limits of its mu- 
nicipality, at Molino de Santa Barbara, fossil 
elephant tusks have been unearthed; masto- 
don tusks have also been discovered in the 
state, as well as teeth of Elephas primigenius 
(pp. 54, 55). 

Ample space has been devoted to the min- 
eral resources of Puebla and to their exploita- 
tion. While the principal interests of the 
state are agricultural and industrial, there 
were, according to the statistical report of 
1907, as many as 29 mines then in operation 
(copper, iron, gold, silver and lead), the num- 
ber of persons employed being 1,068; the pro- 
duction was valued at 1,168,428 Mexican 
dollars. Most of these mines must have been 
small undertakings, since Southworth in his 
Mining Directory for 1908 only notes three 
mines as in active operation, that of San 
Lucas (gold and silver) in the district of 
Tehuacan; that of Tetala, an English com- 
pany organized in 1904, with a capital of 
£100,000, ‘lay Aurora, Olin 
Tezuitlan, an enterprise dating from 1905, 


and the mine 


DECEMBER 14, 1917] 


and having resources put at 10,000,000 Mex- 
ican dollars. 

Of what might be called precious-stune ma- 
terial there is very little signalized; some opal 
is found at Tecali and Tlatlauqui, and azurite 
occurs in Acatlan. The so-called “ Mexican 
Onyx” (an aragonite) of the district of Tecali 
in the state of Puebla is well known, and was 
already used by the Aztecs for ornamental 
purposes. 

In the State College in Puebla, where courses 
of law, medicine and engineering are given, 
besides the customary preparatory studies, 
there are excellent collections illustrating 
physics, chemistry, bacteriology and histology, 
and also radiographic and radioscopic instal- 
lations, as well as apparatus for wireless tele- 
graphy. There is also a well-furnished na- 


tural history collection and an important. 


museum. 
The few items presented here may give a 
little idea of the quality of this monograph, 
though insufficient to indicate the wide field 
it so ably covers. It certainly merits to be 
consulted by all who are seeking information 
regarding one of the principal states of the 
Mexican Federation. Grorce F. Kunz 
New Yorr City 


THE TALKING MACHINE AND THE 
PHONOGRAPH 


To tHe Eprror or Science: Professor Peck- 
ham’s interesting account of the talking ma- 
chine, as distinguished from the phonograph, 
in Science of November 9, closes with this 
statement: 

It is not probable that any one had thought of 
a phonograph in the sense in which we use the 
term as early as 1772. Knowledge of electricity 
was not sufficiently advanced at that time. 

This, I presume, is a mere slip of the pen, 
the writer thinking perhaps of the telephone 
while writing of the talking machine and the 
phonograph. Otherwise some of us who are 
engaged in other fields of science, and hence 
can lay claim to no special knowledge of phys- 
ics, would like to have pointed out to us the 
connection between electricity and the ubi- 
quitous phonograph. 

J. Votney Lewis 


SCIENCE 


587 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
Mental Adjustments. By Freprrick Lyman 

We tts, Ph.D. New York & London: D. 

Appleton & Co., 1917. 

F. L. Wells wrote his book with a rather 
unusual background. Trained in the experi- 
mental school of Cattell and Woodworth, Wells 
took up his work at the McLean Hospital in 
1907, where he returned after one year’s work 
with Dr. August Hoch on Ward’s Island and 
with considerable contact with Dr. Charles 
Macfie Campbell, to whom the book is dedi- 
cated. Coming from a school which might be 
frankly dynamic and objective, if it had the 
necessary philosophical courage combined with 
a desire for consistency, Wells found most 
valuable opportunities at the McLean Hospital 
owing to the excellent tradition established 
there by Dr. Hoch in the study of an uncom- 
monly interesting type of patients; and even 
before he went to Ward’s Island he had been 
concerned with association experiments and 
with problems which were bound to bring him 
into touch with the sphere of ideas of Freud 
and Jung. His studies of the last few years 
have shown a growing mastery of the psycho- 
pathological problems and the present book 
gives ample evidence of earnest and able col- 
laboration along lines very characteristic of 
modern American psychopathology. 

Eight chapters constitute this book of 331 
pages. In “Mental Adaptation” he gives 
illustrations of types and problems of adapta- 
tion and in a way a forecast of the book. The 
discussion of “Use and waste in thought and 


‘conduct ” leads the reader, in one of the best 


organized chapters of the book, to a very direct 
understanding of fundamental adaptive trends 
and their adjustments and supplements, many 
times crossing the boundary between the 
“motor” and “mental” varieties of behavior, 
“oranting, indeed, that such a boundary 
exists.” He gives a very good picture of the 
role of fancy and autistic thinking (7. e., 
primitive faney unconcerned about reality) 
and especially of the réle of word-plays and 
of rationalization. He sums up the discussion 
by saying that “realistic thinking contributes 
mainly to making it possible to exist, and 


588 


autistic thinking to making it worth while to 
live.” 

Pages 71 to 113 are devoted to Symbolic As- 
sociation, in a chapter showing a remarkably 
wide range of resources of reading, and lead- 
ing from the symbolisms of language and of 
normal waking life to those of dreams. 

The discussion of emotion is given the title 
“The continuity of emotion,” and deals with 
“affective displacement’? (a somewhat ques- 
tionable term for affective diffusion and dis- 
proportions) and affective compensation. The 
more specific types of “ affective displacement ” 
are exemplified by a number of “ unaccount- 
able” dislikes and in the use of contrast and 
exaggeration in humor. “Loaded” experi- 
ences and transference are reduced to the prin- 
ciple that emotions are to be viewed as reac- 
tions, which are switched in and out accord- 
ing to the principle of associated reflex and 
conditioned and associated responses. The 
switching off of the affect is spoken of as a de- 
emotionalizing and siphoning process. The 
role of various complexes and affective sym- 
bolism is illustrated by many examples. The 
phrase “Objekt vergeht, Affect besteht” ex- 
presses the meaning of the title of the chapter. 

The discussion of “ Types. of Dissociation ” 
is more clearly systematic than most of the 
rest of the book and is a valuable survey for 
the student, although perhaps somewhat 
heavily loaded with varieties and subvarieties 


for those readers who have but little concrete 


experience, and who might have a desire for 
principles rather than for details. Chapter 
VI. (pp. 204-226) takes up the dynamic im- 
portance of factors which determine repres- 
sions and its various degrees. Chapter VII. 
takes us into the field of available experi- 
mental approaches, with a discussion of vari- 
ous types of intelligence tests, the association 
method, and those involving what is called 
measurements by relative position (the “ better 
or worse’’), free association, the schedule of 
personality study; and a final chapter dealing 
with “ Balancing Factors ” gives a valuation of 
various trends for life and the quest of happi- 
ness and application to education. 

It is, I suppose, both a merit and a draw- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1198 


back of the book that it resists a brief sum- 
marizing survey. Clearness of principles and 
the ease of reading might readily gain by 
moderation in the amount of illustration and 
in the use of metaphors, or, since most of 
these are really well chosen, by paragraphs of 
orientation. The few paragraphs of this char- 
acter certainly do much to make one more 
receptive. 

Wells puts forth as his aim not to tell us 
things, but to enable us to see for ourselves 
what we would otherwise miss. He does, in 
fact, tell us so many things that one feels very 
much the importance of what he himself ealls 
“strategic regrouping,” of the author’s treas- 
ure of reading and of observation. Every 


“reader of the replete volume must be willing 


to do his share; those who do so will certainly 
find a rich material and ample work. How 
readily the book would lead one not already 
experienced in the field will have to be tried 
out. The reviewer can not help feeling that 
medical responsibilities with the cases and the 
material might have added a kind of practical 
simplicity and directness where the reader 
might be apt to lose himself in the detail. 
Wells does, however, make it clear that the 
normal and the abnormal are made of much 
the same material, and his book, with its soft- 
ened rendering of Freudian conceptions, will 
be a stimulus and a help along sane and useful 
lines. ApotF Mryrr 


The Combination of Observations. By Davin 
Brunt, M.A. (Cantab.), B.Sc. (Wales), Lec- 
turer in Mathematics at the Monmouthshire 
Training College, Czrleon, Mon. Cam- 
bridge University Press. 1917. Pp. x-+- 
219. 

This book gives an elementary treatment of 
the methods of adjusting observations. The 
normal or Gaussian law of error is derived 
from Hagan’s hypotheses regarding the nature 
of errors, and the presentation in this connec- 
tion is very attractive. The book gives a brief 
and simple treatment of certain important 
parts of the theory of statistics. This includes 
Pearson’s generalized frequency curves first 
published in the Philosophical Transactions of 


DrceMBER 14, 1917] 


the Royal Society, 186 A, p. 843. These curves 
include six types besides the normal curve, but 
the book makes no reference to the five addi- 
tional types of curves recently published by 
Pearson. The book presents a treatment of 
the correlation of two systems of variates. The 
treatment is, in general, clear, and should 
serve a useful purpose in making better known 
to persons who are applying these methods to 
data the nature of some of the limitations that 
underlie the interpretations of correlation co- 
efficients. However, the reviewer has one 
criticism to offer. On p. 155, using r for the 
correlation coefficient, we are told that “it 
seems doubtful whether any serious meaning 
can be attached to values of r which are less 
than .5.” It seems to the reviewer that this 
statement should be modified. To be sure, the 
statement would hold if the correlation coeffi- 
cient r were calculated from such a small num- 
ber of observations that the probable error of r 
is not particularly small compared to r. But 
when the conditions under which the formula 
for probable error of r is derived are well satis- 
fied, r may be much smaller than 0.5 and have 
decided significance if derived from large 
enough number of observations to make its 
probable error small in comparison to the value 
of r. 

A useful chapter is devoted to harmonic 
analysis from the standpoint of least squares, 
including an interesting section on a practical 
method of investigating periodicities. The 
last chapter deals with the periodogram, in- 
cluding a treatment of hidden periodicities. 

H. L. Rrerz 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


THE PRODUCTION OF GASEOUS IONS AND 
THEIR RECOMBINATION 


GASEOUS ionization has played a large part in 
recent advances in both physics and chemistry. 
In the ordinary college- and _ high-school 
courses given in these subjects little, if any, 
attempt is made, however, to demonstrate 
methods of producing gaseous ions or of meas- 
uring their recombination or diffusion con- 


1 Phil. Trans., 216 A, p. 429. 


SCIENCE 


589 


stants. Practically no laboratory work along 
these lines by elementary students is attempted. 
This may be explained in part by the fact that 
most investigators in this field of research have 
made use of the electrometer, an instrument 
well adapted for demonstration purposes but 
inappropriate for use by the inexperienced stu- 
dent. An electroscope of very simple design 
has, however, proved entirely satisfactory in 
place of the more cumbersome and possibly less 
sensitive electrometer. 

Some elementary experiments are suggested 
in the first part of this paper using apparatus 
involving little or no expense and which may 
be assembled by any high-school student. This 
is followed by a description of some results ob- 
tained in verification of the law governing the 
recombination of the ions of a gas. 


PART I 


The type of electroscope used is shown in 
Bigs il. 


A brass rod passes through a sulphur plug 
into the hollow cylindrical chamber (CC) 12 


em. high and of 4 cm. radius. On this rod is 
mounted a flat brass strip which supports the 
gold leaf. The top of this mounting projects 
through a large opening in the square metal 
box surrounding the gold leaf to permit the 
electroscope to be charged by removing the 
metal cap (D). (B) is a brass tube approxi- 
mately 2 meters long the radius of which will 
depend upon the laboratory facilities for pro- 
viding a suitable current of gas. If air ioniza- 
tion is to be studied and compressed air is not 
available, a suction pump attached to a water 
faucet will provide a convenient velocity for 
carrying ionized air through (B) if its radius 
is of approximately 3 cm. diameter. 


ee 


590 


The velocity of the ions and consequently 
the time taken for their passage over a given 
distance may be obtained by measuring the 
volume of air passing in a given time. A 
common gas meter (JM) provided with a dial 
one turn of which registered one half of a 
cubic foot was used in these experiments. The 
air passing through the tube may be dried by 
calcium chloride and ions prevented from en- 
tering with the air stream by a plug of cotton 
wool placed at (#). Lead screens (9) should 
be erected to shield the electroscope from direct 
radiation. Provided radium salt be used as 
ionizing agent at a short distance from the 
electroscope, these screens will need to be sev- 
eral centimeters thick. 

The gas passing through the tube may be 
ionized by X-rays or Y-rays shot through a slit 
(f) cut in the tube and covered by a thin mica 
sheet, or the ionizing source may be placed in- 
side the tube. A 2 or 3 mm. spark between 
the secondaries of an induction coil sealed into 
the tube provides a convenient source of ioniza- 
tion for demonstration purposes. X-rays also 
produce powerful ionization effects. A 2-inch 
X-ray bulb run at dull luminescence by a coil 
capable of producing a 4 cm. spark will pro- 
vide sufficient ionization for the experiments 
described below. 

A Nernst lamp is more suitable for project- 
ing the gold leaf on a screen than the ordinary 
lantern. For laboratory work a low powered 
microscope with a divided scale in the eye 
piece is used for measuring the rate of fall of 
the gold leaf. 

An electroscope of the type shown in Fig. 1 
may be made of comparatively small capacity. 
If the leaf be charged to a relatively high po- 
tential, it becomes an instrument of- high 
sensibility. Owing to the extremely small 
mass of the gold leaf it will rapidly alter its 
rate of deflection as the number of ions swept 
into the chamber changes. 

Place the X-ray bulb directly over the*elec- 
troscope and charge the gold leaf, by means of 
an ebonite rod, till it shows large divergence. 
Run the bulb for an instant and the gold leaf 
at once drops a distance proportional to the 
ionization produced in the electroscope by di- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1198 


rect radiation. If the charging cap is not re- 
placed before starting the bulb, the sudden 
drop takes place as before, but the leaf instead 
of stopping its motion as suddenly as it be- 
gan gradually slows up with time. This effect 
is produced by the ions in the air surrounding 
the electroscope rapidly diffusing into it, the 
number diminishing as recombination takes 
place. Some idea of the rapidity with which 
the leaf comes to rest may be obtained from 
Table I. The numbers represent readings on 
the scale between the intervals stated in the 
first column. The readings with 3 second in- 
tervals were observed and recorded without as- 
sistance. Shorter intervals required assistance 
in making the record. 


TABLE I 
Interval Exp. 1 | Exp. 2 | Exp. 3 | Exp. 4 | Exp. 5 | Exp. 6 
9 | 17 7a esta aie es 
Weep ce. Ian | 7a 
Se ene nO EI 5. | 76 
SON aly 36. il 22100 153i ea 
31.5 | 38.2 | 24 | 55.5 | 48.5 | 81.2 
32.5 | 39.5 | 248 | 57 | 49.2 | 81.8 
We Tea es ae. |) a9 
ee Le cal es. |) ae 
TO ee IE IAN on || aa6 
EE Te om bee ica es | aaa 
74.8 | 60.5 | 88.5 93.8 
94.5 
ae Nee tae GS. || GA || sa8 
74.5|79 | 79.6 | 71 | 68 | 365 
764| 82 | 80 | 72.3| 70 | 39 
1.67 sees.) 774 | 83 | 0.8 | 73.5 | 71.6 | 40 
84.2 | 81.2 73 
84.6 73.6 


Place the X-ray bulb over the slit as indi- 
cated in Fig. 1 and start the suction pump. 
When the radiation passes through the slit 
large quantities of positive and negative ions 
are produced in the air stream directly be- 
neath. If the bulb is but a short distance 
from the electroscope and the air velocity is 
high, a large proportion of the ions originally 
produced will be swept into the chamber caus- 
ing a rapid rate of fall of the gold leaf. The 
remainder have either recombined or diffused 
to the side of the tube. Since the negative 
ions diffuse more rapidly than the positive, the 


DrceMBER 14, 1917] 


tube should be earth connected. When the 
bulb or spark gap is 2 or 3 meters from the 
electroscope and the air velocity is diminished, 
a considerable time will elapse before any of 
the ions can reach the electroscope and these 
will be but a small percentage of the number 
originally present. 

As the first ions arriving are swept into the 
chamber of the electroscope the leaf begins to 
move and its rate of fall increases and finally 
reaches a constant value which is maintained 
until a short time after the X-rays (or spark) 
is stopped, following which the rate of leak 
slowly reduces to zero. The apparent slow- 
ness of the leaf in starting and stopping is 
largely due to the effect of friction between 
the air and the inner surface of the tube. 
This appreciably diminishes the velocity of 
the air in that region, so that on starting, ions 
passing through the central portion of the 
tube arrive first. After the rays are stopped, 
ions near the surface trail along behind, grad- 
ually decreasing in number as recombination 
and diffusion proceed. The effect will of 
course vary with the length, diameter and 
material of the tube and the velocity of the 
air. It will later be shown that this irregular 
distribution of ions in the tube may affect 
the value obtained for the recombination con- 
stant. For high velocity and a short length 
of tube the leaf starts at once with a uniform 
rate of deflection and stops abruptly. Using 
a spark gap 2 meters from the electroscope 
and a slow air current, a relatively large rate 
of leak was observed after 85 seconds had 
elapsed between the stoppage of the spark and 
the arrival of the first ions in the chamber. 

The rapidity with which gaseous ions dif- 
fuse may be- well illustrated by inserting a 
compact bundle of tiny, thin-walled metal 
tubes inside the tube near the slit. These 
should be soldered together and make good 
contact with the inner surface of the tube. 
Diffusion takes place so rapidly, as the ions 
pass through the tubes, that with the same air 
velocity and ionizing source, the number of 
ions reaching the electroscope is enormously 
diminished. 

The effect of water vapor or dust particles 


SCIENCE. 


591 


in increasing the ionization, where otherwise 
the conditions of experiment remain un- 
changed, is easily demonstrated. 


PART II 


Experimental Proof of the Law of Recom- 
bination 

Rutherford has shown that the rate of re- 
combination, at a given instant, of the ions 
produced in gases exposed to X-rays! and the 
radiation from uranium? is proportional to 
the square of the number present at that in- 
stant, from which it follows that 

= —_— += at, 
where V and n are the number of ions present 
in the gas at the beginning and end of time 
t, respectively. This law has also been verified 
for gases exposed to X-rays by McClung? also 
by McClelland‘ using ares and flames as the 
ionizing agents. 

The method most generally employed when 
large quantities of the gas are available has 
been to pass the ionized gas through an 
earthed metal tube with constant velocity and 
measure the saturation currents at different 
points along the tube by means of an electrom- 
eter. A gas meter was used to measure the 
velocity through the tube as already intimated. 

The deflection of the electrometer indicates 
the number of ions in a certain portion of 
the tube at a given instant. The fall of the 
gold leaf of an electroscope is, however, an in- 
tegrating process like that of the gas meter 
and continues over a considerable time for 
each reading. 

If the ionizing agent or the velocity of the 
ions themselves should undergo slight changes, 
the rate of fall of the gold leaf would give a 
good indication of the average number of ions 
passing at a given time. The sensibility of 
the electroscope will also remain fairly con- 
stant over long intervals and is readily tested. 
. In the course of some work involving the 
use of X-rays and Y-rays from radium salt, it’ 

1 Rutherford, Phil. Mag., V., 44, p. 422, 1897. 

2 Rutherford, Phil. Mag., V., 47, p. 142, 1899. 

s McClung, Phil. Mag., VI., 3, p. 283, 1902. 

4 McClelland, Phil. Mag., V., 46, p. 29, 1898. 


592 


was necessary to measure their relative ioniz- 
ing effects at a given point in air. This was 
accomplished by sucking the ionized air from 
the vicinity of the given point through a metal 
tube into the chamber of an _ electroscope 
placed at some distance, as shown in Fig. 1. 
By noting the rate of deflection of the gold 
leaf for different air velocities curves corre- 
sponding to decay curves were plotted, using 
ionization in divisions per minute as ordi- 
nates and the times of passage of the ions 
through the tube as abscisse. By contin- 
uing these curves back to zero time an ap- 
proximation was obtained of the relative 
ionization originally present. A more exact 
estimate was made by obtaining the recom- 
bination constants for the two ionizing agents 
and, assuming the square law, calculating the 
original ionization when the ionization after 
a given time was known. This work sug- 
gested a further study of the recombination 
constants by this method, using various ion- 
izers, and an examination of the recombina- 
tion constants for ions produced by “hard” 
X-rays or the more penetrating Y-rays as com- 
pared with these values for the softer and less 
penetrating radiations. 

Before using the electroscope as an indi- 
eator of the number of ions present at any 
instant, it was necessary to determine the de- 
flection to which the gold leaf must be charged 
in order to obtain saturation conditions for 
the maximum velocity utilized. This was 
found by passing the ionized gas through the 
chamber of the electroscope to be used, then 
through the chamber of a second electroscope 
of high sensibility in close proximity to the 
one to be tested. The gold leaf of the latter 
was then charged to a potential sufficient to 
give no leak in the auxiliary electroscope. 
For lower potentials ions escaped into the 
second electroscope and the rate of leak of 
the first did not give a true indication of 
the number of ions passing into it. When the 
potential to which the leaf is charged is con- 
siderably lower than that necessary for satu- 
ration the decay curves obtained may show a 
maximum point, since there may be a critical 
velocity at which a maximum number of ions 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1198 


will give up their charges to the electroscope. 
At such a velocity the gain in the. number 
entering the chamber will be counterbalanced 
by the number escaping without giving up 
their charges. 

The order of experiment was then as fol- 
lows: Determine the saturation potential 
necessary for a given position of an ionizing 
agent at the maximum velocity to be used. 
Obtain the natural leak of the electroscope 
when the ionizing agent was present, but with 
no current passing through the tube. Obtain 
rates of deflection of the leaf in divisions per 
minute for each of as large a number of dif- 
ferent velocities as time and the capacity of 
the suction pump would permit. The leaf 
was charged to a given deflection and allowed 
to leak over the same number of divisions 
for each reading. The mean of several ob- 
servations was taken at each velocity. Succes- 
sive times for the flow of .5 cubic foot of gas 
through the meter at a given velocity were 
also recorded. These values were then plot- 
ted using ionization in divisions per minute 
as ordinates and cubic feet per minute as 
abscisse. From the smooth curve thus ob- 
tained a number of points were chosen and 
the time of decay of the ionization to these 
given amounts calculated from the rates of 
flow. Two of the ionization values were then 
selected as representing N and 7 in the for- 
mula 

1 1 

Se oe 
where ¢ was the difference between the cal- 
culated times of decay for the values chosen. 
Thus assuming the recombination law, a the 
recombination constant was calculated in ar- 
bitrary units. Using this value for a, a num- 
ber of values for n were computed and com- 
pared with the experimental values. The ion- 
izing agent was then placed at different dis- 
tances from the electroscope and similar de- 
cay curves plotted as a series of checks and 
with the purpose of obtaining a better idea 
of the part played by diffusion. This was 
repeated for brass tubes of different diameters, 
using X-rays, Y-rays, electric sparks and black 


DrceMBER 14, 1917] 


oxide of uranium as exciting agents. Air, 
earbon dioxide and oxygen were used as 
sources of ions. Decay curves were also ob- 
tained, using the arrangement shown in Fig. 2. 

Air, oxygen or carbon dioxide under pres- 


SCIENCE 


593 


.22 div. per min. with no ionizing agent pres- 
ent. With velocities of 2 cu. ft. per min. 


through the tube the leak of the electroscope 
due to ions escaping through (#) was less 
than .04 div. per min. 


Fie, 2. 


sure was passed into a large metal cylinder 
(A) approximately 2 meters long, thence 
through two Wolff bottles (7) and (£) con- 
taining sulphuric acid and cotton wool, re- 
spectively, into the tube (B). The acid was 
used as a drying agent and the cotton wool 


4S 


iN 


6 


AIR CURRENT. CU. FT. PER. MIM. 
a 


w& 


re) 


10 75 
TIME IN SECONDS 
Fie. 3. 


to remove the ions produced by bubbling. 
This experimental arrangement permitted 
large velocities through tube (B). 

The natural leak of the electroscopes used 
throughout this work varied between .18 and 


In some preliminary work it was found 
that, at a given velocity, ions passed through 
the tube in a shorter time than the time cal- 
culated from the rates of flow would indicate. 


125 


s 
S) 


N 
QO 


50 


No 
an 


JONISATION /N DIVS. PER. MIN. . 


T/ME /N SECS. 
Fig. 4. 


Spark gaps were sealed into the tube at differ- 
ent distances from the electroscope and times 
elapsing between the starting of the spark and 
the beginning of the motion of the gold leaf 
were measured by a stop watch. For short 


594 


distances, the difference between observed and 
calculated times was negligible; for greater 
distances at slow velocities, the calculated 
times were considerably greater. In Fig. 3 
curves are given, using rates of flow in cu. ft. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1198 


radiation from uranium is 30 easily absorbed 


-by air that the recombination constant ob- 


tained for this cylinder when placed in the 
tube of 2.95 diameter was .0099, a value evi- 
dently too large owing to the diffusion of the 


per min. as ordinates and time in secs. as ab- ions which were largely produced near the 
scisse. surface of the tube. 
TABLE IT 
| { 1 
aes Dist. of Ionizing Drying 
Curve | Ionizing Agent Source of Ions Weeutreontrisce Diam. of Tube ateent 
VAN IT Vipera! mg. rad. salt inside tube Air under pressure 16.8 cm. 2.95 em. H2SO4 
Beatie | .114 mg. rad. salt inside tube Air suction pump 16.8 cm. 2.95 cm. CaCle 
C......| .300 mg. rad. salt above slit Air suction pump 27.7 cm. 2.95 cm. CaCl 
ID) 50 | ..300 mg. rad. salt above slit Air suction pump 93.1 cm. 2.95 cm. CaCle 
E.....| .114 mg. rad. salt inside tube CO: under pressure 16.8 cm. 2.95 em. H2S04 
F......| .113 mg. rad. salt 1 em. above slit Oxygen 29.0 cm. 2.95 cm. HeSO04 
Gas X-rays Air suction pump 125.3 cm. 2.95 em. CaCle 
léf oo | Uran. cylinder Air under pressure 40.5 cm. 5:2) ‘ems HeS0O4 


Curves A and A, are plotted, using the cal- 
culated and observed times, respectively, for 
ions to pass 121.4 em. through a brass tube of 
5.4 cm. diameter. Curves B, B,; C, C,; D, D, 
are plotted, using calculated and observed 
times for ions to pass 246 cm., 109 em., and 
95.4 cm., respectively, through a brass tube 
9.95 cm. in diameter. For a brass tube 1.12 
em. in diameter, with the spark gap placed 
226. cm. from the electroscope, for rates of 
flow greater than .25 cu. ft. per min. the dif- 
ference between the calculated and observed 
times was less than .1 sec. 

Sample decay curves are shown in Fig. 4. 
Observed times of passage of the ions through 
the tube were used as abscisse rather than 
the times calculated by means of the meter 
from the rate of flow. Experimental condi- 
tions under which these curves were obtained 
are recorded in Table II. 

The radium salt used in these experiments 
was contained in tiny aluminum tubes .7 mm. 
thick and approximately 2 em. long. These 
were sealed into thin glass tubes to prevent 
leakage of radium emanation, and when used 
inside the brass tube were suspended at its 
axis by silk threads. The uranium cylinder 
referted to under H in Table II. was a hollow 
paper tube 5 em. long and 2.9 cm. in diameter, 
with a coating of black oxide of uranium 
glued on the inside. This cylinder was sus- 
pended in the middle of the tube. The a 


McClung? has shown that the recombination 
constant does not change with the pressure 
of the gas. Under the experimental arrange- 
ment of Fig. 2 the number of ions produced 
would change with the gas pressure and intro- 
duce a small correction for large capacities. 
Investigation showed that this change, if 
assumed to be linear, would be negligible for 
all capacities used. 


% 
3 


& 
oe 
= 
Oo 
= 
<0 
BS 
S 
eS Ss 
a 
& 
qs} 6 9 12 45 
A/R CURRENT IN CU. FT. PER MIN. 
We. 5. 


Fig. 5 shows the pressures in tube B for 
various air currents. The barometer reading 
was 75.85 em. At 1.6 cu. ft. per min. the 
curve shows the correction to be .2 per cent. 

Table IIT. contains the observed ionizations 
in divisions per minute for the above curves 
of Fig. 4, also the calculated values obtained 


5 Loe. cit. 


DECEMBER 14, 1917] 


SCIENCE 595 


TABLE III TABLE IV 
Vel. in Tube} Exp. Toni- | Cale. Toni- Vel. in Tube | Exp. Ioniza- | Cale. Ioniz R 
c inicim’ zationin | zationin | Recombination Cn. ae Es ? 285 Scone 
Be cacrell evinal |ioveiva!|ptcemanc «| | Gu | Cen bive| eaters | ia con 
re a 26.2 #294 224 
BR ee 42 *40.9 41.1 
28 38.0 384 | | 22 182 182 
22 35.8 35.6 | | Mean value fy 150 149.2 -0099 
16.5 32.8 32.5 0105 re “121 121 
14.0 30.8 30.4 neve 105 101 
12.5 29.8 29.2 ed 90 98 
IB iets: 32 *44.0 44.0 
25 40.9 41.2 i = 
ae Saris ani onlen An attempt was made to see if the recom 
14 33.6 33.9 bination constant was a function of the qual- 
12 31.8 31.8 ity of a given radiation. X- or Y-rays were 
C 30 ¥*121 121 us 
er ta 94.5 89.0 shot through the slit, first bare, then covered 
19 83.4 79.3 waey by foils or sheets of lead. A series of decay 
he F ee ee ae curves were thus obtained and the recombina- 
14, 53.0 59.8 | tion constants calculated. Values were ob- 
D.... a “188 103.8 tained with the slit bare at the beginning and 
eS a ke end of the series to check the constancy of 
22 74.6 72.0 wart eae ; 
19 *60.6 60.6 : the sensibility of the gold leaf. The slit was 
ma oaks eee covered at all times by a mica sheet .03 mm. 
Whooosll | 24/ *79.8 79.8 thick. 
45.3 74.8 74.4 TABLE V 
27.6 *64.0 64.0 -0071 
20.7 59.5 58.5 jl 
m8 ||) eso) |. B77 | soles of |, Vel tn |Fsp: Tenth Cte roe Recon 
1 OB heoe ae - *54.0 54.0 Slit per Sec. per Min. | per Min. ‘| Constant 
7. 47.2 46.7 ————_ 
22 *42.0 42.0 -0094 Slit bare.... 30.0 *121.0 121.0 
19.3 38.4 39.2 24.0 94.5 89.0 
16.6 34.5 35.8 19.0 83.4 79.3 -0097 
Gates 30.4 *105.5 105.5 17.0 76.5 70.0 
24.8 69.0 65.5 0088 16.5 *65.5 65.5 
19.4 44.5 43.0 i alliiieonaghe 27.6 *76.0 76.0 
16.6 *32.4 32.4 22.0 62.0 59.8 
lelaelsc 24.1 *53.9 53.9 19.3 56.3 55.3 -012 
18.4 50.1 50.3 16.6 *48.4 48.4 
15.3 47.0 46.7 -0057 13.8 42.5 43.6 
11.5 41.4 40.7 -20'mm...... 30.0 *79.6 79.6 
10.3 *38.3 38.3 27.6 72.4 71.3 
: ae 20.7 54.0 55.0 .0147 
4 16.6 *43.0 43.0 
by assuming the square law. The effect of 13.8 37.3 39.5 
diffusion at the lower velocities is well shown -40™™....-- Be eae ee 
by the way in which the observed values fall 24.8 55.0 52.0 ( | 0164 
below the corresponding calculated results. 14.6 *40.7 40.7 
5 . 2 nis byaters 16 J 
The values used in each experiment for cal- 1?™™-°- Ss fae eae | 
culating the recombination constant are 22.1 40.8 PV ( oo 
marked by an asterisk. oa Bae een ate | 
ee PILL INL olslaliol vis: de 7 oo. | 
In Table IV. the observed and calculated 22.1 42.9 40.0 oo 
values are given for X-rays as an ionizing 19.3 37.0 36.1 pest 
: 16.6 *30.8 30.8 } | 
agent ata distance 27.7 em. from the electro- git hare....| 30.4 +#133.0 133.0) | 
scope for an air current through a brass tube 20.7 86.0 84.31 | oo96 
2.95 em. in diameter, using the arrangement 19.3 80.4 80.5 | 
16.6 *69.0 69.0 


of Fig. 1. 


596 


Table V. contains the results of such a test 
for air as the source of ions in a brass tube 
of 2.95 em. diameter and .300 mg. of radium 
salt as the ionizing agent placed at a distance 
27.7 em. from the electroscope and approxi- 
mately 1 cm. above the slit. 


TABLE VI 
Thickness of |Vel. in Tube) EXP: Ioni- | Cale. Ioni- |Recombi- 
Lead Over in Cm. per | 28tion in zation in nation 
SHt Sec. Divs. per Divs. per Con- 
Min. Min. stant: a 
Slit bare..... 24.8 *210 210 
19.4 150 156 
16.6 *121 121 -0086 
15.2 105 108 
13.8 90 102 
-05 mm...... 24.8 *98.2 98.2 
19.4 68.0 68.0 015 
15.2 *46.2 46.2 i 
13.8 40.1 42.6 


Table VI. gives results obtained for X-rays 
as ionizing agent, the slit being placed 277.7 
em. from the electroscope, with an air velocity 
in the brass tube of 2.95 em. diameter. Table 
VII. records values for an X-ray ionizing 
source at 125.3 cm. from the electroscope, 
other experimental conditions remaining the 
same. 


TABLE VII 
Thickness of |Vel. in Tube| EXD- Toni- | Cale. Ioni- |Recombi- 
Lead over in Cm. per | 28tion in zation in nation 
Slit Sec. Divs. per Divs. per Con- 
Min. Min. stant: a 
Slit bare..... 30.4 *105.5 105.5 
24.8 69.0 65.5 
19.4 44.5 DB |( | AUBE 
16.6 *32.4 32.4 
05 mm...... 31.8 *68.2 68.2 
26.3 52.4 48.0 
19.4 *33.2 33.2 -00923 
18.0 28.5 29.4 
15.2 21.8 235%) 
Tp mom ees 21.8 43107, 31.7 
26.3 24.7 26.7 
23.5 20.3 20.2 -020 
18.0 *14.9 14.9 
16.6 13.8 13.5 
Slit bare..... 30.4 *102.5 102.5 
23.5 63.2 59.5 
18.0 438.8 38.8 ADO 
15.2 27.2 30.8 


The lack of saturation in the electroscope 
for large ionization currents would tend to 
give too small a value for the recombination 
constant, while diffusion effects at the smaller 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1198 


velocities through the tube would increase it. 
Neither of these causes, under the experi- 
mental conditions, would appear to be suffi- 
cient to explain the larger values obtained 
for the recombination constant for the more 
penetrating radiations. 

I am indebted to the Providence Gas Co. for 
the gas meter which was used, also for its care- 
ful calibration before and after the experi- 
ments. 

P. B. Perkins 

Brown UNIVERSITY, 

June 28, 1917 


BOSTON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY. III 
DIVISION OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY 
C. L. Alsberg, Chairman 

I, K. Phelps, Vice-chairman and Secretary 

The relation of the dissociation of hydrogen to 
enzymatic activity: Howard T. GRABER and J. W. 
M. BunKer. It was demonstrated that the enzyme 
‘‘pepsin,’’ in agreement with the other enzymes, 
invertin and catalase, has an optimum at a definite 
H. ion concentration and that the presence of 
other ions exerts an influence which is not measur- 
able, yet not negligible. It was shown that in the 
case of the weakly dissociated organie acids the 
buffer effect of the protein added has a marked 
effect upon the dissociation of the acids, but that 
when ‘the concentration of the H ions was made 
equal to that of 3 per cent. HCl by considering 
temperature and protein the organic acids are 
equal to 3 per cent. HCl as activators for peptic 
digestion. 


° 


On the origin of the humin formed by the acid 
hydrolysis of proteins III. Hydrolysis in the pres- 
ence of aldehydes II. Hydrolyis in the presence 
of formaldehyde: Ross AIKEN GORTNER and 
GrorGe E. Houm. Hydrolysis in the presence of 
formaldehyde completely alters the nitrogen distri- 
bution obtained by Van Slyke’s method. Black 
insoluble humin is formed from tryptophane and 
no other known amino acid is concerned in the re- 
action. The primary reaction of black humin for- 
mation involves only the indole nucleus and not the 
a amino group of the aliphatic side chain of trypto- 
phane. Formaldehyde forms a soluble humin with 
tyrosine which is precipitated by Ca(OH)... Hy- 
drolysis in the presence of formaldehyde causes 
enormous increases in the ammonia fraction, but 
the increase is not due to ammonia, but to volatile 


‘DecemsBer 14, 1917] 


alkaline compounds. The detailed paper will ap- 
pear in the Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc. 


The effect of prolonged acid hydrolysis on the 
nitrogen distribution of fibrin, with especial refer- 
erence to the ammonia fraction: Ross AIKEN 
GorTNER and Grorce E. Houm. Fibrin was 
boiled with 20 per cent. HCl for varying periods 
of time ranging from 1 hour to 6 weeks, the am- 
monia fraction increases continuously, showing a 
150 per cent. increase at the end of six weeks over 
that obtained at the end of twelve hours. This in- 
erease in ammonia comes almost entirely from the 
deamination of mono amino acids. The ammonia 
fraction of a twenty-four- or forty-eight-hour hy- 
drolysate can not be taken as an absolute measure 
of amide nitrogen, for some ‘‘deamination’’ ni- 
trogen is undoubtedly present, the amount depend- 
ing both upon the particular protein and the length 
of hydrolysis. The paper will appear in the Jour. 
Amer. Chem. Soc. 


Comparative analyses of fibrin from different 
animals: Ross AIKEN GORTNER and ALEXANDER 
J. WuERTzZ. Fibrin has been prepared from the 
blood of cattle, sheep and swine and the nitrogen 
distribution determined by Van Slyke’s method. 
No differences significantly greater than the ex- 
pected experimental errors were found. It would 
thus appear that fibrin from any of these three 
sources can be used interchangeably in experi- 
mental work without invalidating the results. 
Whether or not this is true for fibrins from other 
sources remains still an open question. 


The nitrogen distribution in protalbinic and 
lysalbinie acids: Ross AIKEN GoRTNER and Cor- 
NELIA KENNEDY. Lysalbinie and protalbinie acids 
were prepared from egg albumen by Paal’s method 
and their nitrogen distribution, together with 
that of the original egg albumen, determined by 
Van Slyke’s method. No marked difference was 
observed in any of the fractions, although both 
of the derived products show a somewhat greater 
apparent lysine content. This is probably due to 
ornithine derived from arginine. The analyses 
furnish no evidence as to whether or not these 
‘‘acids’? are true chemical compounds or as to 
whether or not their structure is more simple than 
is that of egg albumen. The paper will appear in 
the Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc. 


On the relative imbibition of glutens from 
strong and weak flours: Ross AIKEN GORTNER 
and EvereTT H. Donerty. The gluten was washed 
from both ‘‘strong’’ and ‘‘weak’’ flours and the 
hydration capacity of the colloids measured by im- 


SCIENCE 


597 


mersing weighed disks in different concentrations 
of certain acids, allowing them to remain a defi- 
nite length of time and again weighing. Lactie 
and acetie acids produced greatest imbibition, the 
form of these hydration curves being very differ- 
ent from those of hydrochloric and oxalie acids 
which produced much less hydration. The gluten 
from a ‘‘weak’’ flour has a much’ lower rate of 
hydration and a much lower maximum hydration 
capacity than has the gluten from a ‘‘strong’? 
flour. Gluten from a ‘‘weak?? flour changes from 
a gel to a sol at a much lower degree of hydration 
than does that from a ‘‘strong’’ flour. There is 
an inherent difference in the colloidal properties 
of the glutens from ‘‘strong’’ and ‘‘weak’? flours 
and these glutens would not be identical even if 
the flours had originally had the same salt and 
acid content. The paper will be published in 
Jour. Agr. Res, 


ORGANIC DIVISION 
J. R. Bailey, Chairman 
H. L. Fisher, Secretary 
Joint Session with Physical and Inorganic Di- 
vision 

The composition of oil of cassia. II: Francis 
D. Dovar. In a previous paper, the writer and A. 
E. Sherndal have reported the examination of the 
alkali-soluble portion of the oil of cassia, binding, 
as new constituents, coumarin, salicylic aldehyde, 
salicylic and benzoic acids, and a liquid acid, not 
identified. The writer has recently examined the 
aldehydes present in the oil, and has identified, as 
minor constituents, benzaldehyde and methyl-sali- 
cylaldehyde, The latter was isolated as the oxime, 
melting at 90°, and identified by conversion into 
methyl salicylie acid. No positive indication of 
the presence of hydrocinnamic aldehyde was found. 

Molecular rearrangements in the camphor 
series. The decomposition products of the methyl 
ester of the isoaminocamphonanic acid. A new re- 
action involving the formation of the methyl 
ether of a hydroxy acid: Wituiam A. Noyes 
and GLENN S. Skinner. Several years ago L. R. 
Littleton and one of us were engaged upon the 
study of the decomposition of isoaminoecampho- 
nanie acid with nitrous acid. Cis-camphonololac- 
tone was the only product identified. We have 
undertaken the study of the decomposition of the 
methyl ester with the intention of separating the 
products by fractional distillation under diminished 
pressure. The products that would be normally 
expected are a methyl ester of a hydroxy (trans- 
camphonolic) acid with hydroxyl in place of the 


598 


amino group and a methyl ester of a A, unsatu- 
rated acid containing a gem methyl. Neither of 
these compounds has been found, but, instead, at 
least six compounds involving rearrangements. 
Our results show that the methyl ether and methyl 
ester of cis-camphonolie acid and the methyl esters 
of lauronolie acid, 1, 2, 2, trimethyl 1-carboxy 
eyclopentene-4, cis 1, 2, 3 trimethyl 2-hydroxy 1- 
cyclopentanoic acid, and a secondary (#-hydroxy 
acid are formed. The method of preparing the 
materials and a more detailed discussion of the 
work are reserved for publication in the Jour. 
Amer. Chem. Soc. 


The synthesis of certain terpene homologs from 
1, 4-diisopropyl cyclohexane: M. T. BocErt and C. 
P. Harris. Three new homologs of the terpenes 
have been prepared from 1, 4-diisopropyl cyclohex- 
ane. These new terpene bodies contain two olefin 
side chains in para position and represent hydro- 
carbons of a somewhat different type from any 
hitherto described. One is a derivative of an ordi- 
nary benzene nucleus, one of a dihydro- and the 
other of a tetrahydro benzene nucleus. Various 
properties of these substances are described. 


Further studies of o-uraminobenzoic acid, 
benzoylene urea and related compounds: M, T. 
Bocert and G. ScatcHarD. Experiments are re- 
corded with 5-nitro anthranilic acid, o-uranimo- 
benzoie acid, dinitro uranimobenzoie acid, benzoy- 
lene urea and various derivatives of the above. 


The synthesis of certain substituted pyrogallol 
ethers derived from syringic acid: M. T. BoGErt 
and J. EuruicH. These new compounds include a 
dimethoxy phenacetine whose physiological proper- 
ties are now being studied at the College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons, and which is at least no more 
toxic than ordinary phenacetine, and possibly less 
so; and also a homoantiarol, which is of interest 
from the fact that it is a homolog of the so-called 
antiarol isolated from antiaris toxicaria. 


A substance which in the liquid phase exhibits 
a minimum of solubility in an unstable region: M. 
T. Bogert and J. Euruicu. A study of the solu- 
bilities in water of monohydrate of 2.6-dimethoxy- 
acetphenetidide discloses the interesting fact that 
the liquid hydrate is unique in that it exhibits a 
minimum of solubility in an unstable region. 


The identity of cyanuric acid with the so-called 
““tetracarbonimide’’: E. H. WALTERS and Lovis 
E. Wise. The so-called ‘‘tetracarbonimide’’ pre- 
pared by Scholtz by the oxidation of uric acid in 
alkaline solution with hydrogen peroxide is in fact 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1198 


eyanurice acid. A nitrogenous compound isolated 
from a number of soils and believed at first to be 
tetracarbonimide has been shown to be cyanuric 
acid. Cyanurie acid has been isolated from the 
following soils: (1) 12 samples of sandy soils 
taken from different locations in Florida; (2) 
Norfolk sandy loam from Virginia; (3) lawn soil 
from the grounds of the U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, Washington, D. C.; (4) Elkton silt 
loam from Maryland; (5) Scottsburg silt loam 
from Indiana; (6) Caribou loam from Maine, 
and (7) a Susquehanna fine sandy loam from 
Texas. It is apparent that cyanuric acid or its 
precursor is widely distributed in soil. 


Use of prussic acid in glacial acetic acid: 
J. R. Batmuey and R. H. Prircuetr. Preparation 
of benzalhydrazinophenylacetonitrile, C,H,CH = 
N—NHCH(C,H;)CN, by treatment of benzalazine, 
C,.H,CH = N—N = CHC,H,, in glacial acetie acid 
with solid KON.  Benzalhydrazinophenylaceta- 
mide, made from the nitrile, adds on HONO, giv- 
ing benzalearbamylhydrazinophenylacetamide, 


C,H,CH = N—N(CONH,) CH(C,H,) CONH:, 


which can be converted to 1-benzalamino-5-phenyl- 
hydantoin, 


¢,H,CH = N—N——CH—C,H, 


bo bo 
Nn 


By eliminating benzaldehyde from the latter sub- 
stance 1-amino-5-phenylhydantoin, 
NH.—N——CH—C,H, 
do do 
N77) : R 
is obtained. 
Testing of nitrocellulose materials: H. C. P. 

WesER. A report of work done at the Bureau of 
Standards in connection with the stability, par- 
ticularly on cellulose plastics (such as celluloid, 
pyrolin) although reference is made to explosives. 
The limits of decomposition, its rate and character, 
the products resulting, inflammability, explosiveness 
are taken up with a view to defining the conditions 
under which such materials become a source of 
danger. Charts showing the results graphically 
are given. With the exception of a report pub- 
lished some time ago in a foreign country, very 
little comprehensive work on this particular phase 
is available. A government bulletin covering this 
matter is in preparation. 

(Lo be continued) 


SUlENCE | 


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SCIENCE 


=— 


Fripay, DecemBrER 21, 1917 


CONTENTS 

The Story of Cosmological Theory: Dr. Wi- 

LIAM HarvEY McNairn ...............- 599 
Work of the Department of Agriculture ..... 607 
Scientific Events :— 

Amazon Exhibits at the University of Penn- 

sylvania Museum; The Chemical Industries 

of the United States; The American Metric 

PAISSOCURELON H ereret-ficiehe Acloietatet telat rebetete ie ctstavels 610 
Scientific Notes and News ..........+.-+e0. 612 
University and Educational News .......... 615 
Discussion and Correspondence :-— 

A Texas Meteor: Dr. J. A. UppEN. On the 

Colloid Chemistry of Fehling’s Test: 

MOULSBROSENBERGiepiiselaicieriteociieeikoc ere 616 
Scientific Books :— 

Gager on the Fundamentals of Botany: 

PROFESSOR E. C. JEFFREY ................ 617 
Special Articles :— 

Why Chloroform is a more Powerful and 

Dangerous Anesthetic than Ether: Dr. W. 

FSP URGE eve siete cris ioc fale sgsrel tetera tisieraiaiaisi 618 
The American Association of Variable Star 

OB Servers) oi sctae a tte cs oot Eteyercieis 620 
The Boston Meeting of the American Chem- 

RCALSOCLETY | Salefetsiole clon tcicieie aatietchele’s cisice es 621 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review shoula be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. ¥. 


THE STORY OF COSMOLOGICAL 
THEORY1 
I 


Ir may be that primitive man felt none 
of the 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized. 
For him, perhaps it was enough to taste 
the joy of living, to watch the rising and 
the setting of the sun, to gaze upon the 
mountain, the river and the restless sea, 
and never to ask himself the question 
“what is this world in which I live, and 
how did it come into being?’’ But this 
problem eventually presented itself, for 
there has been implanted within the human 
breast that which distinguishes its possessor 
from the beasts which perish, the passion 
for knowledge, the deep longing for 
Authentic tidings of invisible things, 
Of ebb and flow and ever-during power: 


And central peace subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation. 


And so there arose those questions about 
himself, about the visible universe in which 
he dwelt, and that invisible world about 
which he dreamed, from which have sprung 
all that we now call science and philosophy. 

How slow and laborious have been the 
steps by which knowledge has been at- 
tained, and how childish and even grotesque 
the answers to these first questionings. 
But to have any theory at all for the first 
causes of things is very much better than 
to have none, and these crude products of 
primitive man, and the refined deductions 
of the modern scientist are the same at 

1 Opening lecture of the year, delivered at the 


Autumn Convocation, MeMaster University, To- 
ronto. 


600 


heart. Alike they seek to deduce from 
known facts the underlying principles of 
nature. If the modern hypothesis appears 
to lie much nearer to the truth, it is be- 
cause the facts upon which it is based are 
more numerous and more completely veri- 
fied. Nor should we forget that it has had 
the advantage of a long series of tentative 
explanations, which it now replaces. All 
our advances have been made over the re- 
mains of discarded theories. 

It is here proposed to trace in outline 
the history of the theories which from time 
to time have been suggested to account for 
the way in which the earth was formed. 
It will be seen that we have here three 
stages in human intellectual development. 
In the first the world was conceived to be 
due to the literal handicraft of a beast, a 
demigod or a divinity. In the second it 
was realized that a nobler origin must be 
sought, but methods of scientific criticism 
had not been perfected sufficiently to put 
the theories to the test. In the third, every 
one had to be submitted to the most rigid 
dynamical analysis. 


oo 

In order that these primitive theories 
may have an unprejudiced hearing it is 
well for us to try and put ourselves in the 
place of their authors. Let us view the 
world as seen through the eyes of the an- 
cients. 

At the time of the dawn of consciousness, 
man found himself on what appeared to be 
a flat and circular earth. As he extended 
his wanderings this way and that, although 
great ranges of mountains occasionally 
stood in his way, they could eventually be 
crossed, but sooner or later he seemed al- 
ways to come to the shores of the impas- 
sable sea. So he concluded that the disc- 
shaped land was completely surrounded 
by the ocean, which flowed like a mighty 
river around the earth. Above him was a 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1199 


great dome, forming a lid to it all. This 
was evidently of solid material, glass or 
some metal, possibly brass. Some claimed 
that it must be transparent, others, that it 
was perforated by windows, for at night 
the light of the celestial regions shone 
through, and he ealled these bright objects 
stars. The Egyptians had a slightly dif- 
ferent explanation, for, according to them, 
the stars were lamps hanging down from 
the ceiling of the world on the end of 
chains. Over this dome he saw passing, 
with wonderful regularity, various bright 
objects, notably the sun, and he soon ob- 
served, in addition to its regularity, that it 
had a very rapid motion, for it came up 
from beyond the River Oceanus, probably 
through a great door, in the morning, and 
in about twelve hours had crossed the dome 
of the heavens and was at the door of the 
evening, ready for its return journey 
through the upper world down to the gate 
of the morning once more. This rapid 
journey, in the days before steam or gaso- 
line, could be explained only by the use of 
swift animals, and what animals are so 
swift as horses. 

Above the dome of the heavens there 
seemed to be another ocean, for ever and 
again the roof leaked and showers of rain 
fell upon the earth. It was evident also 
that there must be beings there who con- 
trolled the activities of nature, and prob- 
ably they could occasionally climb down 
by way of the sides of high mountains, 
whose tops, inaccessible to man, undoubt- 
edly touched the sky, and indeed, prob- 
ably helped to support it. 

Now all the mysterious and terrifying 
forces of nature were to be explained in a 
perfectly naturalistic way, by the inter- 
vention of these beings from the upper 
world. Was the oak under which our fore- 
father had taken refuge in a storm, shat- 
tered by the lightning, it was because one 
of the gods had hurled a flaming dart. 


DECEMBER 21, 1917] 


Was he unfortunate enough to receive into 
his veins the poison of malaria, it was be- 
cause an evil spirit had entered into him 
and had to be induced to come out by a 
bribe, or driven out by the use of mystic 
combinations of words which were calcu- 
lated to cast a spell over it. So when the 
author of creation was thought of it was 
in the form of an animal like those he 
hunted, but much bigger. <A turtle, swim- 
ming in the primeval ocean, dives down, 
as he had often seen it, and, coming up, 
bears upon its back some of the mud from 
the bottom, and on this, trees grow and 
living creatures move and among them 
all, himself. At times the load grows 
heavy, and the turtle moves, and the 
earth quakes, and perhaps some day the 
whole will slip again beneath the waves. 
Or, again, a number of animals have es- 
caped the destruction of a previous earth 
onaraft. They float for many days upon 
the face of the waters and find no place 
for the soles of their feet to rest. They 
take turns at diving in order to bring up 
some earth from the bottom, but it is not 
until several of them had essayed the task 
that a grain of sand is recovered. From 
this they mold the new earth, and then 
disembark and a new era commences. 
These simple theriomorphic tales are 
found among the less advanced races. In 
the minds of those who had observed more 
carefully, and thought more deeply, pro- 
founder ideas began to prevail. To the 
thinker of Neolithic times, as indeed to 
him of to-day, one of the most wonderful 
things in nature is an egg. Within this 
thing, apparently so simple in its consti- 
tution, there is developed, and that in the 
course of a very short time, all the com- 
plexity of structure of reptile or bird. 
Perhaps even he dimly realized that all 
things living proceed from an egg. It was 
evident also that the order of nature is 
from the simple to the complex, and the 


SCIENCE 


601 


world, in its marvelous complexity, is no 
doubt, he thought, a living thing. What 
would be more natural, then, than that the 
world itself is the final product of the de- 
velopment of an egg? This theory is 
found again and again in the mythologies 
of ancient races, persisting even among 
the stories of a nobler cosmogony. Thus 
in the Book of Manu, in Indian Classies, 
we read ‘‘the self-existing lord, with a 
thought, created the waters, and deposited 
in them a seed which became a golden egg, 
in which egg he himself is born as Brahma, 
the progenitor of the world.’’ 


Ii 


We have now come to the stage in hu- 
man development when it was no longer 
necessary to explain the origin of the 
world in terms of beasts or demigods. A 
new theory now had to be formulated in 
the light of increased knowledge and 
broader mental grasp. To some it may 
have appeared that things had always ex- 
isted as they are, but the philosophical ne- 
cessity for an explanation of origins early 
impressed itself upon the minds of the 
Greeks, who were the first to devote them- 
selves to such speculations. 

Two alternatives formed the founda- 
tions for the theories of two opposing 
schools of thought, the one of monism, the 
other of dualism. To Leucippus and 
Democritus and their disciples the world 
appeared to have been the result of a for- 
tuitous concourse of atoms. Behind it all 
they saw no plan, no intelligence. This 
was the underlying concept of the great 
poem ‘‘De Rerum Natura’’ of the Latin 
poet Lucretius, who lived in the first cen- 
tury B.c. He tells us: 

Nam certe neque concilio primordia rerum 

ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente locarunt 

(5: 419), 
which may be translated: 

For verily not by design did the first- 


602 


beginnings of things station themselves 
each in its right place by keen intelli- 
gence. 

To Plato and his school, on the other 
hand, the orderly course of nature can be 
explained only as the incarnation of a di- 
vine plan. So he conceived of the uni- 
verse before the creation as consisting, on 
the one hand, of chaos and disorder, mat- 
ter without plan or qualities; on the other 

‘hand, of the eternal plan or soul of the 
world existing in the mind of God. Then 
the creator, taking this inert nothingness, 
impressed upon it the eternal idea and the 
whole becomes an organic unity. 

Thus the universe was created, un- 
changing, unchangeable, and this idea, as 
modified by Aristotle, became the current 
coin of the intellectual world. Nearly 
twenty centuries passed before the next 
advance came with the realization that the 
world did not spring into existence full 
grown, but that its present state is the re- 
sult of a long series of changes. 


IV 

Before this idea: of progressive develop- 
ment could be attained, it was necessary 
that certain hoary fallacies should be cast 
aside and correct notions substituted. Un- 
til it was realized that the earth and the 
other celestial bodies are spheres, and that 
the sun, and not the earth is the center of 
our own system, the progress of astronomy 
and cosmology were slow and imperfect. 
But these were concepts of very gradual 
growth. 

In the early part of the fifth century 
B.c., Parmenides, of Elea, wrote a short 
poem on Nature, of which we still possess 
a few fragments. In this he refers to the 
spherical form of the earth, a truth which 
he appears to have been the first of all 
mankind to enunciate. Around the earth 
as a center he conceived a series of con- 
centric spheres on which were fixed the 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1199 


heavenly bodies, an idea which was not 
without its supporters during the following 
two thousand years. <A little later it 
seems to have been taught by Pythagoras. 
From it his disciples and successors 
framed their interesting theory of the 
Cosmos, which was believed to consist of 
the ‘‘central fire,’ the ‘‘hearth of the 
universe,’’ round which were ten concen- 
tric spheres. There must be ten, for the 
system is perfect, and according to their 
idea, ten is the number of perfection. 
These spheres bear in succession the fixed 
stars, the five planets, the sun, the moon, 
the earth and another celestial body, which 
they called the ‘‘antichthon’’ and which 
served as a screen between the earth and 
the central fire. Around this blazing pivot 
revolved the earth once in 24 hours, al- 
ways facing outwards, and so bringing into 
view the various parts of the heavens in 
succession. Consequently the back of the 
earth must always be dark. Therefore, if 
one were to travel past India, there he 
would find a land of perpetual twilight, 
where neither the blessed light of the sun 
nor the rays from the central fire could 
ever penetrate. 

The spherical form of the earth was sub- 
sequently taught by Plato, who, like all 
that followed for two thousand years, 
placed it in the center of the universe, and 
finally, by Aristotle, who became, until the 
Renaissance, the dominating figure in Eu- 
ropean thought. 

But the development of correct cosmolog- 
ical ideas was not destined to continue un- 
interruptedly. In 389 the great library of 
Alexandria was destroyed. Shortly after 
came the fall of the Western Empire and 
the long, dark night of the middle ages set 
in. Most of the gains which science had 
made during the previous centuries were 
forgotten, and the Church, which then be- 
came the custodian of all that was thought 
worthy of preservation, set its face firmly 


DECEMBER 21, 1917] 


against the learning of the pagan Greeks. 
A new theory of the universe, according to 
a plan which would follow their interpre- 
tation of the Holy Seriptures, consequently 
appeared to be a desideratum. The great 
task of inventing this fell to Cosmas, sur- 
named, on account of his extensive travels, 
Indicopleustes, the Indian voyager. Ac- 
cording to him, since the Epistle to the He- 
brews expressly declares that the inner 
tabernacle was a pattern of the Kingdom 
of Heaven, it follows that, if we would 
understand the construction of the uni- 
verse, we can find it epitomized in the 
description of its antetype in the Book of 
Exodus. The table of shewbread with its 
wavy border represents the earth sur- 
rounded by the ocean. Therefore the 
earth is rectangular, twice as long as it is 
broad, its longer dimension extending east 
and west. Beyond the ocean, as is clearly 
proved by the existence of an outer border 
to the table, hes another land where is situ- 
ated the earthly paradise. That other was 
the home of mankind until the flood, and 
then Noah sailed across. But since that 
day the return journey has become impos- 
sible, owing to the tempestuous weather 
which ever prevails upon the ocean. We 
who actually live in trans-oceanic lands 
may be permitted to disagree on some 
points with the learned theologian, for we 
have found neither the terrestrial paradise 
nor the tree of life which it contained. At 
the edges of this other earth were erected 
the walls of heaven topped by a roof 
shaped like half a cylinder. But it is a 
two-storied building, is the universe, and 
the firmament forms the division which is 
at once the roof of the world and the floor 
of heaven. Above the firmament are the 
abodes of the blest. 

The motions of the heavenly bodies are 
to be explained by the activities of the 
angels. They carry the stars in orderly 
succession over the heavens. They also 


SCIENCE 


603 


carry the sun. Now the northern part of 
the earth is very high, in fact rising to an 
exceeding lofty mountain, and on their re- 
turn journeys the sun by night and the 
stars and moon by day are borne by the 
angelic host behind the mountain and so 
are not seen. In winter they go with the 
sun near the base, and night is long; in 
summer near the top and night is short. 

This famous system of Cosmas, the 
crowning absurdity of medieval science, 
the culminating flower from seeds of wilful 
ignorance, was indeed the climax of the 
anti-scientific spirit. After this the old 
ideas of the constitution of the universe 
once more began to be eritically studied, 
and once more the wheels of progress, for 
many centuries almost stationary, began 
to move. 

For the first hypothesis of a universe 
which revolves around the sun, we must go 
back many ages. In the third century be- 
fore Christ, Aristarchus of Samos first 
conceived this great truth. How he ar- 
rived at this he has left us no explanation. 
A century later a Babylonian named 
Seleukis reaffirmed the diurnal motion of 
the earth, but for the most part, for 1,700 
years, the voice of Aristarchus was as of 
one erying in the wilderness. 

Then came Copernicus, one of the 
world’s great geniuses. In the work of his 
predecessors one must search diligently to 
find the grain of truth among much chaff, 
but with him the system of the universe 
was revealed with great clearness. This, 
substantiated by the work of Kepler, of 
Galileo and of Newton, has formed the 
basis of all subsequent progress. 


v 


When once the nature of the sun had be- 
gun to be understood, and the stars were 
seen to be, like it, fiery orbs, it was nat- 
ural that men should begin to think that 
the earth itself, now seemingly cold, might 


604 


have been a fiery mass. This idea was first 
suggested by Descartes in his ‘‘Principia 
Philosophiz,’’ published in 1644. Accord- 
ing to him, the earth, like every other celes- 
tial body, was formed by the aggregation 
of primitive particles of matter which 
have an inherent whirling motion. The 
resultant sphere, after it has changed from 
the gaseous to the molten condition, cools 
and becomes covered by a solid crust. But 
the central portion still retains its hot and 
plastic condition, which is manifested by 
the phenomena of mountain-building and 
vuleanism. 

Leibnitz, thirty-six years after, in his 
““Protogea,’’ which, however, was not 
published until after his death, followed 
an almost identical hypothesis, conceiving 
the earth to have been built up of an aggre- 
gation of whirling ultimate elements or 
“‘monads’’ of matter. But while Descartes 
looked upon the motion as being due to the 
momentum supposed to be present in con- 
stant amount in the universe, Leibnitz be- 
lieved it to be due to the force which ac- 
companied the separation of light from 
darkness. 

Later this doctrine was carried a step 
farther by the philosopher Kant, and 
finally by Laplace in his theory so mod- 
estly put forward, which has since become 
so famous under the name of ‘‘the Nebular 
Hypothesis.”’ 

Briefly stated this hypothesis predicates 
the origin of our solar system in a great 
fiery mass of incandescent vapor, similar 
to the nebula, which are among the most 
wonderful objects revealed to us by the 
telescope. The parent nebula of our sys- 
tem must have extended far past the pres- 
ent orbit of the outermost planet, Neptune, 
then undiscovered. In order to fill this 
space the matter available must have been 
spread out extraordinarily thin; in fact, 
the density would be one millionth of that 
of the air we breathe. The whole was sub- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No, 1199 


ject to a rotary motion. As time passed, 
heat was radiated into space, and, as the 
tenuity was maintained by heat, the mass 
became cooler and denser. Particles on 
the circumference would thus steadily 
move closer in to the center. Now the ve- 
locity of any such particle would remain 
unchanged, while the distance it would 
have to travel in order to complete the jour- 
ney around the center, would steadily grow 
less. It follows that it would be whirling 
around the axis at an ever-increasing 
rate, and consequently, with an ever-in- 
creasing tendency to fly off into space. At 
the same time the pull of gravity, since the 
particle is closer to the center, is constantly 
growing greater. It is then subject to two 
steadily increasing forces, one of which 
tends to throw it off, the other to drag it 
down. A time will come when these two 
forces will just balance and the particle 
will go up neither nor down, but remain re- 
volving in an orbit. The total result of 
this on all the particles of the outer zone 
would be to leave them in the form of a 
ring of gas. Similarly, the same process 
would be followed in the case of another 
zone, until the whole would resolve itself 
into a central spherical nebula surrounded 
by a series of rings. Hach ring in turn 
would soon break, and the gas of which it 
was composed would come together in a re- 
volving sphere, which might give rise to 
other rings. The system is constantly 
cooling, and the spheres of gas, finally 
solidifying, give rise to the planets and 
satellites. 

The simplicity and grandeur of this 
theory fire the imagination. It is no 
wonder that it took firm root. For sev- 
eral generations it was received without 
reservation. Gradually, however, serious 
defects began to be seen. For instance, if 
we calculate the rate of motion of the mole- 
ecules of such a system, the temperature 
and rate of rotation of the whole being 


DrEceMBER 21, 1917] 


known, it can be proved that this motion 
would be so great that the force of gravity, 
even of so great a mass, could not prevent 
them from flying off into space and so be- 
ing lost. 

Again, it can be calculated from the 
facts at our disposal, where the rings 
would be left by such a cooling nebula. It 
is then found that the first ring, instead of 
being in the position of the present orbit 
of Neptune, would be inside the orbit of the 
inmost planet, Mercury. Where fact and 
theory do not agree, so much the worse for 
theory. 

These are typical of the numerous and 
insuperable objections to the acceptance of 
the hypothesis. Within the last few years, 
the belief has been gaining ground among 
astronomers and geologists that this theory, 
so long the accepted one, must in its turn 
be discarded. 

The cogeney of the difficulties which 
have presented themselves whenever the 
theory of Laplace has been critically stud- 
ied cleared the way for the meteoritic 
theory as presented by Lockyer and modi- 
fied by Darwin. But here again the ob- 
jections raised are so many and so reason- 
able that it stands on no surer a founda- 
tion than its predecessor. 

Of recent years, the Planetesimal 
Theory of Chamberlin has been gaining 
ever-increasing support. Like the authors 
of preceding theories, he scanned the heay- 
ens for facts which might have a bearing 
upon the problem in hand. He saw, like 
them, the brilliant masses of ‘‘star dust’’ 
which we call nebulew, but he saw also the 
importance of the fact that there are two 
distinct kinds of nebule. One kind, 
sometimes spherical, sometimes irregular 
in shape, is composed of incandescent gas; 
the other, consisting of two tightly coiled 
spiral arms, is evidently made up of solid 
particles. In the latter only do we find in- 


SCIENCE 


605 


dications of the important metallic elements 
which occur in the earth. 

This suggested to him that the parent 
nebula of our solar system was probably 
one of the spiral type, and his first prob- 
lem was to account for the origin of such a 
nebula. An occurrence, famous in the 
history of astronomy, has an important 
bearing upon this. Nearly 350 years ago 
(November, 1572), Tycho Brahe, the fa- 
mous Danish astronomer, was very much 
astonished to observe a new star in the con- 
stellation Cassiopeia. An hour before he 
had scanned that part of the heavens and 
saw nothing, and when he looked again 
there it stood, a star of the first magnitude. 
From night to night it grew in magnifi- 
cence, surpassing in turn the fixed stars, 
the planets, even Venus at her brightest, 
until it could be seen at noonday. It had 
now become the most glorious and brilliant 
orb in the heavens, giving, it has been cal- 
culated, 100,000 times as much light as our 
sun. Then this strange luminary slowly 
faded away, nightly becoming less bril- 
liant, until, after the lapse of 17 months, 
it sank into final darkness. 

How is this astonishing phenomenon to 
be explained? The general belief is that it 
was probably due to the collision of two 
great celestial bodies. Their energy of 
motion was changed into molecular energy, 
and the elements melted with fervent heat. 
So hot indeed did they become, that a 
great cloud of incandescent gas was the re- 
sult, whose molecules were moving at such 
rapid rates that they were whirled away 
into space and so disappeared. Other stars 
of this kind have frequently been observed 
since then, but never has one so brilliant 
been recorded. 

Now it may be that we have here a 
typical example of the formation of a 
gaseous nebula, though but a temporary 
one. Had the impact been less violent it 
might have been permanent. But what 


606 


would have been the result if the bodies in 
question had not actually collided, but had 
passed very close to one another? It can 
be demonstrated mathematically that such 
an approach would entail the formation of 
two prominences, on each body one at the 
point of least distance apart, and one dia- 
metrically opposite. If the approach be 
close enough, these prominences may be 
drawn out into the form of two long arms 
composed of discrete particles. As these 
bodies pass, each, by the pull of its grav- 
ity, will communicate to the other a rota- 
tory motion which will result in the coil- 
ing of the arms. These will be composed 
of large numbers of comparatively small 
particles, each of which is revolving in a 
regular orbit around the central nucleus 
of the system. These particles, resembling 
in their constitution meteorites, have been 
named planetesimals, and hence the name 
of the hypothesis. 

Now, while the whole is rotating and has 
the form of a spiral swarm, the tendency 
will be for the planetesimals to come to- 
gether and form a series of nuclei in the 
arms, which, as they grow by accretion, be- 
come solidified and form the planets. In 
our present stage, most of them have been 
gathered in. A few are still falling as 
meteors, but the addition from this source 
to the size of the earth is quite insignifi- 
cant. 

This is the famous Planetesimal Theory. 
It explains the phenomena better than any 
other which has yet been suggested. But 
it may be that this, too, will eventually go 
the way of past theories, and its place 
taken by another newer one. It is too 
much to believe that we have now reached 
finality, and that our hypothesis outlines 
the actual physical facts of our earth’s 
history. 

Certain recent observations already 
suggest a somewhat different organization 
of the universe than that on which this 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1199 


theory is based. It has been pointed out 
by Campbell that while the gaseous neb- 
ule are to be found mainly in the direc- 
tion of the Milky Way, the spiral nebule 
are never seen in these parts of the heay- 
ens but are numerous in directions at right 
angles. Now the stellar system is looked 
upon as being of a discoidal shape, and 
what we call the Milky Way is merely the 
direction of greatest depth and conse- 
quently of closest distribution of the stars. 
It follows that at right angles to this we 
look through the stellar system and out 
into infinite space, and it may be that the 
spiral nebule which are to be seen in these 
directions are not within our stellar sys- 
tem at all. Measurements of their motion 
towards and away from us indicate that 
they are moving at very rapid rates, prob- 
ably as great as 500 miles per second, a very 
much greater speed than that of any 
known star. And yet, when their relative 
positions in space are compared with those 
they occupied fifteen years ago, scarcely 
any change can be observed. That is to 
say, the nebule are either all moving di- 
rectly towards or away from the earth, 
which is incredible, or, although they have 
a lateral motion of enormous rapidity, 
they are so far away that the distance 
traveled in fifteen years is imperceptible to 
us. How great their distances may be we 
can not comprehend, even though it were 
expressed in figures. From here to the ut- 
most confines of our stellar system is esti- 
mated as being of the order of 15,000 light 
years, that is the distance light will travel, 
going at the rate of 186,400 miles per sec- 
ond, in 15,000 years. And if this theory be 
correct, the nebule are so far away that, 
though as large probably as our stellar 
system, they seem to us scarcely larger 
than one of the planets. We may there- 
fore look upon them as other stellar sys- 
tems like our own. And if there be on a 
planet within one of these spirals, astron- 


December 21, 1917] 


omers and telescopes such as we have, to 
them our stellar system would appear as 
a spiral nebula, a scarcely visible point of 
light in the starry heavens. 

Now Campbell would carry us one step 
further in our search for the true theory 
for the origin of the world. At a certain 
point within the great spiral, a subsidiary 
whirl was developed within which grew, 
by the infall of planetesimals, as sug- 
gested by Chamberlin, our solar system, 
including the infinitesimal speck of matter 
upon which we live our unquiet lives. 


vI 

I have now traced the growth of man’s 
idea of the origin of the planet on which 
he lives from the crude cosmogony of prim- 
itive ages up to the scientific theories of 
the twentieth century. Notwithstanding 
periods of intellectual stagnation and even 
of retrogression, this represents a continu- 
ous broadening of his grasp upon the reali- 
ties of his physical environment. But we 
have not yet attained finality. The great 
mysteries of knowledge are as yet un- 
fathomed. 

But one thing we have learned. 


The spirit of eternal change, 
Which is the soul of nature 


is all pervading. What we see is but an 
evanescent phase in an endless series of 
changes. There was a time when they did 
not exist; there will come a day when the 
thousands of fiery suns which we see in the 
heavens to-night will, each one, have cooled 
down to darkness and death. To our finite 
minds the life of a sun, measured as it must 
be by hundreds of millions of years, seems 
ineonceivably long, but to ‘‘the spectator 
of all time and all existence’’ to borrow 
Plato’s noble expression, it is but as a 
momentary flash. Now although it is be- 
lieved that there are a great many dark 
bodies in the heavens, most of the stars are 


SCIENCE 


607 


still alight. Together they came into be- 
ing, together their fires will disappear. 


They shall all grow old as doth a garment, and 
as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up. 


WiuiAm Harvey McNamrn 


WORK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF 
AGRICULTURE 

ReEvIEWING the progress of the campaigns for 
increased production to meet war demands 
and conditions, David F. Houston, Secretary 
of Agriculture, in his annual report states that 
the farmers of the nation, patriotically re- 
sponding to the appeals of agricultural and 
other agenices, have produced more than 54 
billion bushels of cereal food crops—exceeding 
by 1,000,000,000 bushels the five-year average 
for cereals—record crops of Irish potatoes and 
sweet potatoes, large crops of beans and sugar 
beets, and an unusually large crop of perish- 
ables. Authentic figures for meat, poultry, 
dairy products, and vegetable oils are not 
available for 1917, but rough estimates indi- 
cate that the quantity for the year is slightly 
greater than for either 1916 or 1915 and ex- 
ceeds the five-year average by two or three 
billion pounds. 

It must be borne in mind, however, the sec- 
retary says, that the 1917 cereal crops are 199 
million bushels below the yield of 1915; that 


‘the carry-over of cereals from last year was 


much below the normal; that the percentage of 
soft corn of the 1917 crop—which can not be 
used for food—is unusually high; and that, 
with the destruction of live stock in Europe 
and the great demands from there for meats 
and fats, with consequent greatly increased ex- 
ports from the country, the supply of meats 
and fats will not be adequate to meet the do- 
mestic needs and those of the nations with 
which we are cooperating. 

“That the farmers of the nation have gen- 
erously responded to the appeals for increased 
production, and that much has already been 
done to insure a large supply of foods and 
feedstuffs, justifies no let-down in their actiyi- 
ties or in those of all agricultural agencies,” 
the secretary says. “On the contrary, even 
greater efforts must be put forth in the coming 


608 


months if we are to meet satisfactorily the 
domestic demands and the needs of the nations 
with which we are associated in this struggle. 
There must be no breakdown on the farms, no 
failure of foods, feedstuffs, or clothing. I can 
not emphasize too strongly the urgent neces- 
sity of doing everything possible to bring 
about a still further increase in the production 
of all essential commodities, particularly of the 
staple crops and live stock. 

The yields in 1917 of the major food crops 
are as follows, the secretary reports, according 
to unrevised estimates : 3,191,000,000 bushels of 
corn, 659,797,000 of wheat, 1,580,000,000 of 
oats, 201,659,000 of barley, 56,000,000 of rye, 
16,813,000 of buckwheat, 33,256,000 of rice, 
73,380,000 of kafir, 439,686,000 of Irish pota- 
toes, 84,727,000 of sweet potatoes, 15,957,000 of 
commercial beans, 42,606,000 of peaches, 11,- 
419,000 of pears, 177,733,000 of apples, and 
7,621,000 tons of sugar beets. 

“The actual increase in the acreage of crops 
sown this fall can not be accurately determined 
at this time,” the secretary says. “There is 
every indication, however, that the farmers in 
the sections where fall grains can be profitably 
raised have patriotically responded to the na- 
tion’s call for more breadstuffs. Reports made 
to the Bureau of Crop Estimates in August, 
before the campaign for increased acreages 
was well under way, indicated an intention on 
the part of farmers to increase their sowing 
of winter wheat by about 10 per cent., and of 
rye by about 3 per cent. If these intentions 
are realized, it will result in the planting of 
44,100,000 acres of wheat and about 4,340,000 
acres of rye. Reports received since August 
are to the effect that the fall-sown acreage of 
these two crops has been increased in nearly 
every state, although the drought in the South- 
western States and in portions of Washington 
has made it impracticable fully to carry out 
the planting program. The official estimate of 
the acreage of winter wheat and rye will be 
issued on December 19 after the planting of 
winter grains is completed in the South. 
Similarly, it is too early to determine the per- 
centage of germination of seed actually sown, 
and therefore any prophecy at this time as to 


SCLENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1199 


the actual harvest of winter wheat to be ex- 
pected in 1918 would be merely a guess.” 

The report outlines the efforts of the depart- 
ment of agriculture to increase the meat 
supply and sums up the live-stock situation as 
follows: 

“The number of milch cows and other 
eattle has shown an increase during the last 
four or five years, the estimate for the former 
for the present year being 23,906,000, as 
againts 22,768,000 a year ago and 20,497,000 in 
1918, before the European war began, while 
that for the cattle is 43,291,000, as against 40,- 
849,000 a year ago and 36,030,000 in 1918. 
Unfortunately, the number of sheep continues 
to decline; the estimate for 1917 is only 46,- 
059,000, as against 48,488,000 a year ago and 
51,482,000 in 1918. It is estimated that the 
number of hogs, which during recent years has 
shown an upward tendency, decreased over 4,- 
000,000, or from 67,453,000 to 62,747,000. 
However, it is greater than it was at the begin- 
ning of the European war. The number of 
hogs varies from year to year more widely than 
that of the larger meat animals. . . . The mere 
statement that the population has steadily in- 
creased in this country—the gain in the 10 
years from 1908 to 1917 being 13,000,000— 
with an absolute decrease in the live stock for 
the same period, would sufficiently emphasize 
the seriousness of the situation if conditions 
were normal and the demands for meats and 
fats were not so urgent.” There is a close 
relationship, the report says, between the pro- 
duction of live stock and the supply of feed- 
stuffs, and the large production of these neces- 
saries during the present season should con- 
duce to more satisfactory conditions for the 
producers of live stock. 

Nation-wide campaigns to increase the meat 
supply are in progress, the report shows. As 
hogs and poultry yield the quickest returns, 
urgent efforts are being made to increase their 
production. Funds have been set aside from 
the appropriation made by the food production 
act to employ a force of 32 additional special- 
ists to give their time to the task of increasing 
the number of hogs, 39 to encourage poultry 
raising, and 6 to assist producers of cattle. 


DrceMBeER 21, 1917] 


By the end of October field agents of the de- 
partment had assisted in the transfer of 100,- 
000 cattle from localities where there is a 
shortage of feed to areas where feedstuffs are 
relatively abundant. This work has resulted 
in the saving to the nation of large numbers 
of animals. 

Every effort has been and is being made to 
protect crops and live stock from diseases and 
pests. The force of experts dealing with these 
matters has been greatly increased and they 
are maintaining constant vigil and asissting in 
combating outbreaks in their early stages. 
Forty additional expert entomologists will be 
placed in the field to cooperate with the exten- 
sion forces, and specialists familiar with seed 
treatment for the prevention of smuts of 
wheat, barley, oats, and rye, which alone cause 
losses of from 50 to 60 million dollars a year, 
have been assigned to prevention work in 
Oregon, Ohio, New York, Tennessee, Indiana, 
Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, and 
California. 

Under the food production act, the facilities 
of the Bureau of Animal Industry for dealing 
with live-stock diseases have been further ex- 
tended. Forty-six workers have been added to 
the force combating cattle ticks in the South. 
Fifty-one per cent. of the original infested 
territory has now been cleared of the tick. 
Hog cholera losses decreased 30 per cent. dur- 
ing the last year, and 65 additional veterinar- 
ians have been assigned to the work of con- 
trolling the disease. In 12 states an inspector 
has been detailed to assist in combating tuber- 
culosis of cattle and swine and of abortion of 
cattle, and it is proposed to increase the num- 
ber to 19. Other specialists are engaged in 
the work of controlling blackleg of cattle and 
anthrax of domestic animals. 

Calling attention to the fact that the nation 
was facing an unsatisfactory situation with re- 
spect to its supply of foodstuffs and feedstuffs 
when the existence of a state of war was de- 
clared, the secretary outlines some of the 
efforts of the department and its cooperating 
agencies to increase the production of these 
commodities eyen before the entrance of the 
United States into the conflict. He then de- 


SCIENCE 


609 


seribes the steps taken to bring about more 
effective organization and closer coordination 
of the agricultural agencies of the nation, be- 
ginning with the conference with the official 
agricultural representatives of the various 
states, which was held at St. Louis, Mo., on 
April 9 and 10. States east of the Rocky 
Mountains were represented at the meeting 
and a similar conference for the states west of 
the Rockies was held at Berkeley, Cal., on 
April 13. 

As an indication of the assistance which the 
bureaus of the department of agriculture have 
rendered and are rendering to the War and 
Navy Departments and to other branches of 
the government in connection with war prob- 
lems, the annual report of the secretary of agri- 
culture cites the following: 

The Bureau of Animal Industry is cooperat- 
ing in the reinspection of meats and meat food 
products at 27 naval stations and at various 
army camps, cantonments, forts, and other 
places. The dairy specialists of the depart- 
ment have investigated local situations and 
made suggestions to insure sanitary milk sup- 
plies for the army cantonments and naval sta- 
tions and also have inspected large quantities 
of butter for the navy. Supplies of vegetables 
purchased and loaded on the naval supply 
ships are being inspected by representatives of 
the Bureau of Markets. The Office of Home 
Economics has studied the rationing question 
for the army, navy, and coast guard service. 
The Bureau of Chemistry has prepared speci- 
fications for army and navy foods and has 
analyzed products offered for inspection. This 
bureau also has assisted in standardization of 
army and navy food supplies and is conduct- 
ing research investigations on the antiseptic 
qualities of some important compounds. 

The Bureau of Entomology has placed its 
experts, as well as all information on camp 
sanitation in its possession, at the disposal of 
the Medical Corps. The Bureau of Soils has 
cooperated with the War Department in in- 
vestigations relating to fixed nitrogen and sul- 
phurie acid. Experts of the Office of Public 
Roads and Rural Engineering have been de- 


610 


tailed to assist the War Department in road 
building at the 16 cantonments. 

The Forest Service has given assistance to 
the War and Navy Departments and to other 
national agencies in locating new sources of 
wood and in seasoning the product, has as- 
sisted in the organization of a regiment of 
engineers for forestry work abroad, and is now 
cooperating with the War Department in the 
organization of a second regiment. The 
Weather Bureau, in addition to furnishing 
weather information to the army and navy, 
has assisted the War Department in the or- 
ganization of its aerological observation work! 
and of a regiment for gas and flame service. 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 


AMAZON EXHIBITS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF 
PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM? 


THERE is now on public exhibition at the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum a large 
share of the collections which Dr. Wm. C. 
Farabee made during his three years’ explora- 
tions of the Amazon, from which he returned 
last year. It has taken him a year to go over 
and catalogue his collections carefully, to label 
them and to install them in the galleries on 
the first floor of the museum. 

During his three years in South America 
Dr. Farabee made his headquarters at Para, at 
the mouth of the Amazon, from which all of 
his various trips into the interior were made. 
The first journey was a thousand miles up the 
Amazon to Manaos, thence almost directly 
north into the highlands which divide Brazil 
from the Guianas, thence several hundred miles 
westward until it was no longer possible to 
travel by water, from which point he started 
eastward overland through the southern por- 
tion of British Guiana, spending many months 
among the Carib and Arowak, most of whom 
had never before seen a white man. 

Tt was here that Dr. Farabee did some of his 
most important scientific work, since here 
were grouped a number of entirely distinct 
tribes of Indians, all of whom are rapidly di- 
minishing in population and some of which 
are on the verge of extinguishment. From 


1From Old Penn. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1199 


this point, having sent his collection down the 
Amazon, he made the terrible journey across 
the divide and down the Corentyne, during 
which he lost most of his equipment, all of his 
food and medicine, was obliged to live on 
monkeys and alligator meat, when even those 
were available, suffered terribly from fevers 
and finally reached the coast more dead than 
alive. Thence he went to the island of Barba- 
dos, where he met Colonel Roosevelt just re- 
turning from his trip through Brazil. 

Dr. Farabee’s second tour was up to the head 
waters of the Amazon River into the lower 
hills of the Andes in eastern Peru. Unfortu- 
nately, about the time he reached this section 
news of the great European war had come up 
the river and utterly dislocated all of his ar- 
rangements, making it impossible to get money 
or bring up supplies, so that he was obliged to 
return to Para, but not until after he had made 
some highly interesting and important re- 
searches and had secured a great number of 
the finest specimens of Conebo pottery in ex- 
istence, which he managed to bring down with 
him and which are now on exhibition. 

Subsequent trips were up some of the south- 
ern affluents of the Amazon, marching across 
from one great river to another, and investi- 
gating country never before trodden by a white 
man. Another series of explorations were to 
the north of the Amazon, not many hundred 
miles from the coast, where he also found 
hitherto unknown tribes and where he made 
collections, especially of large pottery animals 
used for burial urns. These were deep in the 
Amazon wood. 

The results of all these journeyings are now 
on exhibition on the first floor of the museum. 
The room to the left is occupied with ancient 
and modern pottery and those whoever they 
were that made this pottery had a very much 
higher culture than any existing Indians in 
South America. It is doubtful if the Ineas 
themselves at any time reached as fine a de- 
velopment in the making of pottery, but there 
is not the slightest clue as to who these people 
were, whence they came, when nor how they 
disappeared. None of the Indians who now 
occupy that portion of the country have even 


DrceMBER 21, 1917] 


any myths about it, and this is the more re- 
markable because primitive races, as a rule, re- 
tain some shadowy recollection or myths of 
antecedent peoples for a great many centuries. 
Nowhere else in South America has there been 
the slightest trace discovered of a culture re- 
sembling this, or of several cultures, and it is 
very unfortunate that just now there does 
not seem to be any material at hand to solve 
the mystery. These colossal funeral jars are 
the most important features of this part of 
the exhibit. Some of them are large enough 
to admit two entire bodies seated side by 
side. 

On the other side of the room in which 
this ancient pottery is shown Dr. Farabee 
has installed a great collection of several 
hundred pieces of the Conebo pottery. This 
is entirely modern and is the most striking 
pottery of the kind to be found anywhere in 
the world, and in fact only a few specimens 
of the smaller kind are to be found in any 
museum. About half a dozen of these jars 
are four feet high and about the same diam- 
eter, but resting on a very small base and 
having the general appearance of an in- 
verted, truncated cone. They will hold sey- 
eral barrels each and are used by the natives 
to hold the beer, which they greatly enjoy. 


THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED 
STATES 


Tue annual report of Franklin K. Lane, 
Secretary of the Interior, gives the data on the 
growth of the chemical industries in the 
United States since 1914. Not only have 
factories sprung up to manufacture products 
formerly imported but great expansion has 
taken place to supply the increased demand for 
all chemical products. The country now 
manufactures practically everything required 
along chemical lines. 

The increase in capital invested in chemical 
industries was, in 1915, $65,565,000; in 1916, 
$99,244,000; and up to September, 1917, $65,- 
861,000 over the preceding year. New chem- 
ical industries are now being opened up at an 
unprecedented rate, owing to war needs and 
the energy of American chemists and physi- 
cists. 


SCIENCE 


611 


Before the war 90 per cent. of the artificial 
colors and dyes were imported, five or six con- 
cerns with 400 operatives producing 3,300 short 
tons per year. Now there are over 90 enter- 
prises, each making special colors, and 100 
concerns making crudes and intermediates. 

Sulphurie acid, the chemical barometer, has 
doubled in production. In 1916, 6,250,000 tons 
of 50° Bé. were produced. The estimate for 
1917 is much greater, and the production for 
1918 will again greatly increase. 

By-product coking doubled its capacity in 
the last three years, yet in 1918 the United 
States will make half her coke in beehive 
ovens. Light oil, which contains the benzene 
and toluene needed for explosives, jumped 
from 7,500,000 gallons in 1914 to 60,000,000 
gallons in 1917, and is again being largely 
increased. Ammonia production has increased 
100 per cent. in three years and the visible 
supply is insufficient to meet demands. 

Gasoline production has increased from 35,- 
000,000 to 70,000,000 barrels per annum since 
1914. 

Potash importation from Germany was 
stopped by the war, which has stimulated pro- — 
duction in this country. The production from 
January to June, 1917, was 14,023 short tons 
of potash. This is a small production, but 
sodium salts have been substituted for almost 
all purposes except agriculture. Shortage of 
labor and coal is seriously interfering with the 
potash-brine evaporation in Nebraska, which 
was yielding about 90 tons per day. 

The production of explosives and consequent 
consumption of nitric acid has increased 
enormously. The nitric acid is still almost en- 
tirely made from Chili saltpeter, but synthetic 
nitrogen plants are under process of construc- 
tion, and we have large quantities of coal-tar 
ammonia which can be used for munitions if 
necessary. 

Before the war 40,000 tons of barite were 
imported from Germany for the manufacture 
of lithopone. Now five companies are produc- 
ing this article from deposits in Tennessee, 
Kentucky, Virginia, and Missouri. 

The smelting of all metals, iron, 
copper, antimony, tin, mercury, ete., and their 


zine, 


612 


alloys has increased to meet the country’s 
needs. 

Domestic supplies of manganese and pyrite 
have been augmented. 

These are but a few instances of our chem- 
ical progress. The matter can be summar- 
ized by saying that American chemists have 
met the country’s needs as ably and com- 
pletely as did the chemists of Germany. We 
can go forward with every confidence of no 
serious shortage of the many chemical prod- 
ucts required for domestic consumption. 


THE AMERICAN METRIC ASSOCIATION 

THE association will meet in Pittsburgh on 
December 28 and 29 under the presidency of 
Dr. George F. Kunz, of New York. The 
first two sessions are to be held in conjunc- 
tion with the Section on Social and Kco- 
nomic Science of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science. The pro- 
gram will be as follows: 


FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28 


2 pm. Mr. George W. Perkins, of New 
York, and Mr. J. W. McEachren, of the 
Crane Company, Chicago, will present papers 
for discussion. 

Friday evening will be free for the opening 
session and reception of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, 
with which the American Metric Associa- 
tion is affiliated. 


SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29 


10 a.m. The officers will render their an- 
nual reports. These will be followed by Dr. 
William C. Wells, chief statistician of the 
Pan-American Union; Mr. Henry D. Hub- 
bard, of the United States Bureau of Stand- 
ards, and others dealing with the general prob- 
lem of international standards and their appli- 
cation to important industries in the United 
States and Canada. 

29 pm. Dr. John A. Brashear, past presi- 
dent of the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers, will introduce the speakers who 
have prepared papers for the Standards Com- 
mittee of the American Metric Association. 
Engineers and business men are especially re- 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1199 


quested to attend this session. Technical 
problems in connection with the general use 
of metric weights and measures will be given 
special attention at this time. 

6.30 p.m. An informal “Metric Dinner” 
will be served at the Hotel Schenley. The 
charge will be two dollars per cover, and those 
who desire to attend are asked to leave their 
names at the hotel office. 

8p.m. The final session in the Hotel Schen- 
ley, at which time officers for the ensuing 
year will be elected, and necessary business 
disposed of. The present rapid metric prog- 
ress and the best methods for final success will 
be discussed by leaders in the metric move- 
ment. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 


Tue secretary of agriculture has announced 
the appointment of Dr. John Robbins Mohler 
as chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry of 
the United States Department of Agriculture. 
Dr. Mohler sueceeds the late Dr. Alonzo D. 
Melvin, who died on December 7. Dr. Mohler 
has been in the service of the Bureau of Ani- 
mal Industry since 1897, and has been as- 
sistant chief of the bureau since July 1, 1914. 
During the long illness of Dr. Melvin, Dr. 
Mohler performed the duties of acting chief as 
well as those of chief pathologist. 


A portrait of Professor Thomas C. Cham- 
berlin, head of the department of geology and 
paleontology at the University of Chicago, has 
been presented to the university by graduates 
and former students of the department. 


Dr. Ligotner Witmer, professor of psychol- 
ogy in the University of Pennsylvania and 
director of the psychological laboratory and 
clinic, sailed last week for Europe. He ex- 
pects to have the direction of social service 
work in a foreign country under a commis- 
sioner appointed by the War Council of the 
American Red Cross, and has been granted 
leave of absence by the university for the re- 
maider of this year. During Dr. Witmer’s ab- 
sence, Dr. Edwin B. Twitmyer will be acting 
director of the psychological laboratory and 
clinic. 


DECEMBER 21, 1917] 


Proressor Anton JuLius Carson, chair- 
man of the department of physiology, at the 
University of Chicago, has been assigned to 
the Sanitary Corps of the United States Army 
and is expected soon to be in France. 


Assistant Prorrssor Freperick E. Breir- 
HuT, in charge of municipal chemistry in the 
department of chemistry in the College of the 
City of New York, has been appointed di- 
rector of food conservation by the United 
States Government Food Commission, to cover 
the territory of Greater New York City. 


Dr. Huco Dimmer, major in the ordnance 
department, U. S. R., is in charge of the Ord- 
nance Inspection at Lowell, Mass., including 
accountability for all materials of United 
States property, production progress, shipping, 
and ballistic inspection. 


ArtHur H. Norton, vice-president, and 
head of the department of mathematics of 
Elmira College, has been granted a leave of 
absence for the remainder of the year. He 
sailed for France on December 12 to take 
charge of a Young Mens’ Christian Association 
base camp. 


Proressor ArtHuUR W. Browne, of the de- 
partment of chemistry of Cornell University, 
has been appointed chemical expert of the Ord- 
nance Department. He will continue his 
work at Cornell University. 


Mr. RatpH McBurney, instructor in the de- 
partment of bacteriology of Oregon Agricul- 
tural College, has been commissioned as first 
lieutenant in the Sanitary Corps of the 
United States Army. According to orders he 
has reported at Letterman Hospital, San Fran- 
cisco. 

To Dr. Edwin F. Hirsch, of the department 
of pathology, of the University of Chicage, has 
been given leave of absence for service on the 
medical staff of the Officers’ Reserve, United 
States Army. 


Dr. CHartes W. Stizes, of the United 
States Public Health Service, has been given 
jurisdiction over sanitary affairs in the zone 
about Camp Hancock, near Augusta, Ga., and 


SCIENCE 


613 
will work in cooperation with the health forces 
already in operation there. 

Dr. Gustay F. Ruepicer, for the last three 
and a half years director of the Hygienic In- 
stitute for LaSalle, Peru, and Oglesby, Illi- 
nois, has resigned that position to become 
director of the State Hygienic Laboratory of 
Nevada, University of Nevada, Reno. 

Proressor C. L. McArruur, bacteriologist, 
University of Arkansas, has been appointed to 
be assistant bacteriologist in the department 
of bacteriology at Oregon Agricultural Col- 
lege. 

Tue council of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers of Great Britain has made the fol- 
lowing awards for papers published in the 
proceedings without discussion during the 
session 1916-17: A Watt gold medal to Major 
H. 8S. B. Whitley (Neath); Telford premiums 
to W. C. Popplewell (Manchester), H. Car- 
rington (Woodley, Stockport), Dr. A. A. Stod- 
dard (Bournemouth), A. E. L. Chorlton (Lin- 
coln), and B. M. Samuelson (Rangoon); the 
Manby premium to R. Bleazby (Perth, W.A.); 
the Webb prize to J. B. Ball (London), and 
the Howard Quinquennial prize to Dr. W. C. 
Unwin. 


Section K of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science has arranged for 
a symposium at Pittsburgh on the “ Medical 
lessons of ‘the war.” Lieutenant George 
Loewy, of the French Army, is expected to 
give the principal paper. 

Tue third annual meeting of the Mathe- 
matical Association of America will be held 
at the University of Chicago on Thursday and 
Friday, December 27-28, 1917, in conjunction 
with the Chicago Section of the American 
Mathematical Society which meets on Friday 
and Saturday of the same week. The program 
reports of standing committees will be pre- 
sented as follows: 

1. Committee on Mathematical Requirements. 
‘‘Scientific investigations of the committee,’’ Pro- 
fessor A, R. Crathorne, University of MTlinois. 
““The work of a committee representing the Cen- 
tral Association of Science and Mathematics 
Teachers,’’? Mr. J. A. Foberg, Crane Junior Col- 
lege, Chicago. 


614 


2. Committee on Libraries. Discussion opened 
by Professor H. EH. Slaught, University of Chicago. 

3. Committee on Mathematical Dictionary. Pre- 
liminary report by the chairman, Professor E. R. 
Hedrick, University of Missouri. 

At a meeting of the teachers of physics in 
Indiana colleges held at Bloomington, Indi- 
ana, on December 10, steps were taken toward 
an organization of the physics research work 
throughout the state. Dr. A. L. Foley, head 
of the physics department of the University 
of Indiana and chairman of the Scientific Re- 
search Committee of the State Council of De- 
fense, was chosen as director of this move- 
ment. It is hoped that this organization will 
survive the war period and prove a valuable 
aid in developing research work in physical 
science in Indiana. 


Proressor GEORGE SArTON, lecturer on phi- 
losophy at Harvard University and editor of 
Isis, gave at the University of Chicago a 
public lecture, with illustrations, on Decem- 
ber 7, his subject being “ Science and civiliza- 
tion at the time of Leonardo da Vinci.” 

Dr. Wiu1M Curtis FaraBEE, curator of 
the American section of the University of 
Pennsylvania Museum, lectured on “ Explora- 
tion in the valley of the Amazon,” before the 
Geographic Society of Chicago on December 
14. 

Ricuarp Swan Lutt, professor of vertebrate 
paleontology at Yale University, gave an il- 
lustrated lecture on the Luther Lafilin Kellogg 
Foundation, under the auspices of the Phi 
Beta Kappa Society at Rutgers College, on 
December 7. His subject was “The pulse of 
life.” 

THE governors of the West Ham Municipal 
Central Secondary School, London, plan to 
call the institution “The Lister School,” to 
perpetuate the association of Lord Lister with 
the borough. 


Tue death is announced at the age of fifty- 
seven years of Dr. Ramon Guitaras for many 
years professor of surgery in the New York 
Post Graduate Hospital. 


Wiui1am McKnicut Ritter, the astronomer, 
formerly connected with the Nautical Almanac 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1199 


Office and there closely associated with the 
work of George W. Hill, died on November 6, 
at his home in Pottsgrove, Pa., at the age of 
seventy-one. In his earlier astronomical 
career he became, through Professor Watson, 
of Ann Arbor, greatly interested in the com- 
putation of orbits for minor planets, and dur- 
ing the later years he devoted special study to 
the problem of the general perturbations of 
these planets. 


Dr. Ami Jacques Maentn, chief surgeon of 
the American hospital at Neuilly, died sud- 
denly on November 25. 


Dr. J. Pryrot, professor of surgery at the 
University of Paris and senator, has died at 
the age of seventy-four years. 


F. C. Barraza, professor of organic chem- 
istry at the University of Buenos Aires, has 
died, aged fifty-five years. 


We learn from Nature that the death is an- 
nounced, while leading his platoon during one 
of the recent advances in France, of Second 
Lieutenant F. Entwistle, second assistant at 
the Observatory, Cambridge, aged twenty-one 
years. Mr. Hartley, first assistant at the 
Cambridge Observatory, was killed on the 
Vanguard on July 9. The double tragedy ex- 
hausts the staff of the observatory, as distinct 
from the Solar Physies Observatory, except for 
the director. 


In view of the many unusual conditions due 
to the war, it has been deemed inadvisable to 
hold a meeting of the Association of American 
Geographers this year, and the meeting 
planned for Chicago has been abandoned. 
Professor Robert DeC. Ward’s presidential 
address, entitled “ Meteorology and aviation: 
some practical suggestions,” will be published 
in the near future. This, and other papers 
prepared for the meeting, will appear in the 
Annals for 1918. 


AFTER serious consideration and correspond- 
ence with all exhibitors, the managers of the 


’ Chemical Exposition have decided to abandon 


plans to hold a Chemical Exposition in Chi- 
cago in the Spring. This action was taken 
because of insufficient support secured to make 


DrcEeMBER 21, 1917] 


a large and representative exposition, all the 
exhibitors wishing to confine their efforts 
toward making the Fourth National Exposi- 
tion of Chemical Industries in New York, 
week of September 23, 1918, the greatest event 
in the history of American Chemical Industry. 


Tue directors of the Fenger Memorial Fund 
announce that the sum of $500 has been set 
aside for medical investigation, the money to 
be used to pay a worker, the work to be done 
under direction in an established institution, 
which will furnish the necessary facilities and 
supplies free. It is desirable that the work 
should have a direct clinical bearing. Ap- 
plications with full particulars should be ad- 
dressed to Dr. L. Hektoen, 637 S. Wood St., 
Chicago, before January 15, 1918. 


A NATIONAL institute of malariology is about 
to be established in Italy; it will be a part of 
the department of agriculture. Its objects are 
to investigate the relations between malaria 
and agriculture; to study experimentally and 
otherwise the direct and indirect causes of the 
unhealthiness of malarial districts; and to or- 
ganize and direct a campaign against those 
causes, and particularly against the Anopheles. 


Mr. Hoper, British minister of pensions, re- 
ceived on September 17, a private deputation 
from the Roehampton Hospital Committee 
regarding the proposal to establish a national 
experimental laboratory for the purpose of de- 
signing and controlling the manufacture of 
artificial limbs for disabled soldiers. By ex- 
periments, and by making full use of the ex- 
perience of men who had been fitted with arti- 
ficial limbs, it was hoped, the deputation sug- 
gested, to improve greatly the types of limbs 
supplied at present. Mr. Hodge declared his 
intention of taking immediate steps to seek 
the necessary funds for the establishment of a 
National Experimental Laboratory which 
might ultimately become a national factory 
for manufacturing limbs. For the present, 
however, he was opposed to the establishment 
of a national factory. It was, in his view, es- 
sential that the committee of management of 
the National Laboratory should be small, rep- 
resentative of surgeons and mechanical experts, 


SCIENCE 


615 


and distinct from any committee managing 
hospitals for limbless men. The laboratory 
committee would be directly responsible to the 
Ministry of Pensions, and would be empow- 
ered to ensure that the improvements which 
they recommended should at once be intro- 
duced into the manufacture of artificial limbs. 


Ir was proposed to submit a plan for estab- 
lishing a central organization of engineers and 
educationists to a conference of engineers 
from all parts of the country which was held 
at the British Institution of Civil Engineers 
on October 25. Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice, 
president of the institution, presided and the 
honorary organizers of the movement are Mr. 
A. P.M. Fleming (British Westinghouse 
Company, Trafford Park, Manchester) and 
Mr. A. E. Berriman (chief engineer, Daimler 
Company, Coventry). The plan suggested, 
which includes the reinstatement of the best 
ideals of the old system of apprenticeship, pro- 
vides for the setting up by engineering firms 
of a central bureau for the better coordination 
of engineering training and the appointment 
of a representative committee of engineering 
and educational interests to initiate action. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 


A GENERAL Science Hall, erected at a cost of 
$60,000, is under construction at Defiance Col- 
lege, Defiance, Ohio. It will be a three story 
building and is expected to be completed by 
next July. 


Tue Provost Marshal General has sent the 
following telegram to the governors of all 
states: 


Under such regulations as the Chief of Engi- 
neers may prescribe a proportion of the students, 
as named by the school faculty, pursuing an engi- 
neering course in one of the approved technical 
engineering schools listed in the War Department, 
may enlist in the Enlisted Reserve Corps of the 
Engineer Department and thereafter, upon pre- 
sentation by the registrant to his local board of a 
certificate of enlistment, such certificate shall be 
filed with the Questionnaire and the registrant shall 
be placed in Class 5 on the ground that he is in the 
military service of the United States. 


616 


Dr. Cuartzs T. P. FENNEL, for fifteen years 
state chemist in Ohio, and later professor of 
chemistry in the Cincinnati College of Phar- 
macy, has been appointed to the chair of 
materia medica at the University of Cincin- 
nati to fill the vacancy created by the death of 
Dr. Julius Eichberg. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
A TEXAS METEOR 


On October 1, at about 10:30 Pp. M., an un- 
usually bright meteor appeared over the cen- 
tral part of Texas. The undersigned promptly 
made arrangements to secure information on 
its appearance throughout the state, while the 
phenomenon was yet fresh in the memories 
of those who saw it. Notes from some three- 
score observers have been secured. From 


_ SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1199 


servers agree that at first the light of this 
meteor was small. Increasing rapidly in 
brillianey, it terminated abruptly with an ex- 
plosion at some considerable distance above 
the ground. To the most distant observers it 
appeared to reach the horizon. Over an area 
of some 150 miles in diameter, north of Ban- 
dera County, sounds like that of thunder were 
heard from three to five minutes after the 
meteor disappeared. At Brady and at one or 
two other places, these sounds are reported to 
have been strong enough to shake buildings 
and to cause dishes and windows to rattle. 
The light in the same region is likened to 
strong lightning and it is said to have been 
blinding to some observers. The usual thin 
cloud of dust high in the sky was noted by 
several parties, who say it could be distinctly 
seen for 40 minutes after the fall. 


Weak moonlight e- 
Bright moonligt os 
Daylight e- 
Brtght daylight @> 
Thumder Sounds @> 


hs, 


these it appears that the place where this 
aerolite fell must be somewhere in or near 
Kimble County. The observed directions all 
converge toward this county. Evidently the 
path this meteor followed was at a consider- 
able angle to the horizon and had a course 
from northeast to southwest. Nearly all ob- 


The meteor was observed over the entire 
state, from the Gulf to the Panhandle and 
from the northeast counties to the far moun- 
tains west of the Pecos, a distance of nearly 
six hundred miles. Several parties who saw 
the bright body at a distance of about 200 
miles or less, report hearing a swishing or 


DECEMBER 21, 1917] 


buzzing sound, which seems to have been 
simultaneous with the appearance of the 
light. This communication is prompted chiefly 
by a desire to learn if such sounds have been 
previously reported as being connected with 
meteoric falls. Several circumstances in the 
present case indicate that this sound was real, 
and not psychological. May it have been the 
indirect result of some form of electric 
energy? One observer seems to refer this 
sound to objects attached to the ground. 
J. A. Upprn 
AUSTIN, TEXAS, 
October 22, 1917 


ON THE COLLOID CHEMISTRY OF 
FEHLING’S TEST 


To tHe Eprror or Scrmnce: Fischer and 
Hooker make the following statement in their 
article “On the Colloid Chemistry of Feh- 
ling’s Test,” page 507, Scmncr: 

Formaldehyde reduces Fehling’s solution not 
only to the ordinary cuprous oxide, but to the 
metallic copper. The copper comes down in col- 
loid form, but as this happens, a second reaction 
ensues in which the metallic copper acts upon the 
formaldehyde and decomposes it with the libera- 
tion of hydrogen. The liberation of hydrogen con- 
tinues for hours, until either all the formaldehyde 
has been decomposed or all the copper salt has 
been reduced. 


In a study on the preparation of colloidal 
gold solutions by Dr. J. H. Black and myself 
(which is being reported by Dr. Black at 
the present meeting of the A. M. A. at New 
York), question arose regarding the probable 
explanation of the mechanism by which neu- 
tral sols are obtained although distinctly al- 
kaline (to alizarine) sols should result from 
the proportions of reagents employed. I sug- 
gested the hypothesis that the colloidal gold 
acted as a catalytic agent to oxidize the free 
formaldehyde to formic acid, which latter 
reacted with the potassium carbonate respon- 
sible for the alkalinity. 

It occurs to me therefore that it would be 
better to picture the colloidal copper func- 
tioning as a catalytic agent which oxidizes 
the HCHO in part, the remaining part serving 
to reduce the copper salt. The idea advanced 


SCIENCE 


617 


by them that colloidal copper is produced is 
certainly reasonable; it is very difficult to 
understand how formaldehyde would liberate 
hydrogen. Louis RosrEnBERG 
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY, 
Bayior MEDICAL COLLEGE 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
The Fundamentals of Botany. By C. S. 

Gacrr. Philadelphia, P. Blakiston’s Sons 

& Co. 

We are fortunate in the United States in 
having a number of excellent elementary bo- 
tanical text-books, written from different 
points of view. Professor Coulter has fur- 
nished an admirable beginners’ book conceived 
from the standpoint of the head of a botanical 
department in a large university, who is at the 
same time an educational expert. From the 
hands of Mr. Bergen, whose recent demise we 
all deplore, we have had a succession of well- 
approved texts, written by one thoroughly in 
touch with instruction in the secondary 
schools. Professor Ganong has put forward 
from time to time books which reflect the 
outlook of the teacher in college work. The 
present volume comes from one who is the 
director of one of the most important botanic 
gardens in the country and who has, at the 
same time, made it his business to get into 
touch with his community, primary and sec- 
ondary schools as well as the general public, 
in the closest possible manner. There can be 
little doubt, particularly at the present junc- 
ture, when the general public under the spur 
of patriotism and necessity, has largely aban- 
doned its usual attitude of indifference 
toward plants, that Dr. Gager’s book will 
prove extremely useful. 

The relation of the author to his subject is 
admirable, as is shown by the following cita- 
tion (p. 192). 

. .. In faet, we may say that our ignorance of 
life-processes greatly exceeds our Iknowledge. 
Very much more remains to be ascertained than has 
already been found out; for example, what is 
protoplasm? Nobody really knows. We have 
analyzed the substance chemically, we have care- 
fully examined and tried (but without complete 


618 


success) to describe its structure. We know it is 
more than merely a chemical compound. It is a 
historical substance. A watch, as such, is not. 
The metal and parts of which a watch is made, 
have, it is true, a past history; but the watch 
comes from the hands of its maker de novo, with- 
out any past history as a watch. But not so the 
plant cell. It has an ancestry as a cell; its proto- 
plasm has what we may call a physiological mem- 
ory of the past. It is what it is, not merely be- 
cause of its present condition, but because its an- 
eestral cells have had certain experiences. We 
can never understand a plant protoplast merely by 
studying it; we must know something of its gene- 
alogy and its past history. 


It will be noted that although a physiolo- 
gist in outlook, he has properly emphasized 
the historical and structural point of view so 
often and so deplorably neglected by the cul- 
tivators of disembodied plant physiology. 
The author obviously considers that living 
matter is to be studied in vita rather than in 
vitro (whether in glass models or merely in 
chemical glassware). By his broad outlook 
he has avoided the narrows which lead, on the 
one hand, into the ancient Scylla of syste- 
matic botany, or, on the other, into the more 
modern Charybdis of plant physiology. 

The book is admirably printed on thin 
paper, so that its more than six hundred 
pages and well over four hundred illustrations 
make a conveniently thin and flexible volume, 
which is rendered still more useful by soft 
covers and rounded corners. The illustra- 
tions, whether original or borrowed, are for 
the most part good, and in some instances are 
of striking excellence. An adequate amount 
of space is given to the important themes of 
genetics and evolution, while the historical 
side is not neglected. Dr. Gager’s work 
should be in the hands of every teacher of 
botanical science, and by its broadness and 
balance is admirably adapted for use in 
schools where the one-sided teaching of the 
facts of botany is by necessity and common 
sense excluded. The general text is accom- 
panied by a laboratory guide, which is in- 
geniously contrived to avoid repetition and 
equally emphasizes structure and function. 

E. C. JEFFREY 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1199 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


WHY CHLOROFORM IS A MORE POWERFUL 
AND DANGEROUS ANESTHETIC 
THAN ETHER 


ANY one accustomed to administering an- 
esthetics has observed that the amount of 
chloroform necessary to produce deep narcosis 
is less than that of ether; also that the period 
between slight and deep anesthesia is shorter 
and the lethal dose smaller with chloroform 
than with ether. These differences in the 
effects of ether and chloroform led Hewitt to 
state in his book on “ Anesthetics” that 
chloroform is seven or eight times more power- 
ful as an anesthetic than ether. In chloro- 
form poisoning it is known that many of the 
organs, particularly the liver, are very seri- 
ously injured, while it is more difficult, or im- 
possible in many instances, to produce such 
injuries with ether. 

It is now recognized that in both chloroform 
and ether anesthesia oxidation is decreased or 
rendered defective, as is indicated by the de- 
creased oxygen intake and carbon dioxide out- 
put and the appearance of certain incompletely 
oxidized substances such as B-oxybutyrie and 
diacetie acids, and acetone. The decreased 
oxidation in anesthesia with resulting acidosis 
is much more likely to occur and to a much 
greater extent with chloroform than with 
ether. 

Using practically all the means by which it 
is known that oxidation can be increased in 
an animal, as, for example, by food, by in- 
creasing the amount of work, by fight, or by 
thyroid feeding, we have found that there is 
always an accompanying increase in catalase, 
an enzyme in the tissues which possesses the 
property of liberating oxygen from hydrogen 
peroxide. We have also decreased, or rendered 
defective, the oxidative processes in animals, 
as, for example, by decreasing the amount of 
work, by starvation, by phosphorus poisoning, 
or by extirpation of the pancreas, thus pro- 
ducing diabetes, and have found that there is 
always a corresponding decrease in catalase. 
From these results it was concluded that it is 
probable that catalase is the enzyme in the 
body principally responsible for oxidation. 


DECEMBER 21, 1917] 


The object of the present investigation was 
to determine if catalase is decreased more 
quickly and more extensively during chloro- 
form anesthesia than during ether anesthesia 
parallel with the greater decrease in oxida- 
tion and the quicker and more powerful ac- 
tion of chloroform. Cats were used in the 
experiments. The anesthetics were admin- 
istered by bubbling air through ether or chloro- 
form in a bottle which was connected by a 
rubber tube to a cone adjusted to the snout of 
the animal. The catalase content of the blood, 
taken from the external jugular vein, was de- 
termined before the administration of the an- 
esthetic and at intervals of 15 minutes during 
the administration. The determinations were 
made by adding 0.5 e.c. of blood to 250 e.e. of 
hydrogen peroxide in a bottle at 22° C. and 
as the oxygen gas was liberated it was con- 
ducted through a rubber tube to an inverted 
graduated cylinder previously filled with water. 
After the volume of gas thus collected in ten 
minutes had been reduced to standard atmos- 
pherie pressure, after resulting volume was 
taken as a measure of the amount of catalase 
in the 0.5 e.c. of blood. The bottles were 
shaken in a shaking machine during the de- 
terminations at a rate of about 180 double 
shakes per minute. 

The average amount of oxygen liberated by 
the blood of three cats previous to the admin- 
istration of ether was 812 ¢.c.; that liberated 
after the animals had been under ether for 15 
minutes was 740 cc.; that after 30 minutes of 
ether anesthesia, 630 cc.; that after 45 min- 
utes, 475 cc.; that after 60 minutes, 480 cc.; 
after 75 minutes, 400 cc.; and that after 90 
minutes, 380 ce. It will be seen that the cata- 
lase of the blood was gradually decreased dur- 
ing the 90 minutes of ether anesthesia, as is 
indicated by the gradual decrease in the 
amount of oxygen liberated, and that at the 
end of 90 minutes the catalase had been de- 
creased by about 54 per cent., as is indicated 
by the decrease in the amount of oxygen 
liberated from 812 ce. to 380 ec. 

Similarly determinations were made of the 
catalase of the blood of cats previous to chlo- 
roform anesthesia and at intervals of 15 min- 


SCIENCE. 


619 


utes during the anesthesia. The average 
amount of oxygen liberated by the blood of 
three cats previous to the administration of 
chloroform was 900 ¢c.c; that liberated after 
the animals had been under chloroform anes- 
thesia for 15 minutes was 525 e.c.; that after 
380 minutes, 325 ¢.c.; that after 45 minutes, 
334 c.c.; that after 60 minutes, 320 c.c.; after 
75 minutes, 3380 ¢.c.; and that after 90 min- 
utes, 310 c.c. It will be seen that the chlo- 
roform produces a very abrupt decrease in the 
catalase of the blood during the: first fifteen 
minutes of the administration as is indicated 
by the decrease in the amount of oxygen liber- 
ated from 900 to 525 c.c., and that at the end of 
90 minutes the catalase had been decreased by 
about 65 per cent., as is indicated by the de- 
crease in the amount of oxygen liberated from 
900 to 310 e.c. 

By comparing the decrease in the catalase 
produced by ether and by chloroform it will be 
seen that the ether produced a gradual de- 
crease as is indicated by the gradual decrease 
in the amount of oxygen liberated by 0.5 e.c. 
of the different samples of blood from hy- 
drogen peroxide, whereas chloroform produced 
a very abrupt decrease during the first fifteen 
minutes of narcosis as is indicated by the 
great decrease in the amount of oxygen liber- 
ated from 900 to 325 e. ¢. 

We have shown that small amounts of chlo- 
roform or ether added to blood in vitro destroy 
the catalase of the blood very rapidly. We 
have also shown that the liver is the organ 
in which eatalase is formed, given off to the 
blood carried to the tissues. 

The explanation that suggests itself for the 
decrease in the catalase of the blood produced 
during chloroform and ether anesthesia is the 
direct destruction of the catalase of the blood 
by the anesthetic and the decrease output of 
the catalase from the liver brought about by 
injury of the liver by the anesthetic. The 
more powerful and dangerous effect of chlo- 
roform as an anesthetic is attributed to the 
fact that chloroform is more potent than ether 
in producing a decrease in catalase, both by 
direct destruction of the catalase of the blood 
and by injuring the liver, thus decreasing the 


620 


output.of catalase from this organ with re- 
sulting decrease in oxidation. In fact it is 
probable that the cause of anesthesia is to be 
found in the decrease in the oxidative proc- 
esses particularly of the nervous system pro- 
duced presumably by the destruction of the 
catalase by the anesthetic. The specific action 
of anesthetics on the nervous system, accord- 
ing to this hypothesis, is due to the greater 
solubility of the lipoids or fat-like substances 
of nervous tissue which facilitates the entrance 
of the narcotic into the nerve cell and thus 
exposes the contained catalase more directly to 
the destructive action of the drug. 


W. E. Burce 
PHYSIOLOGICAL LABORATORY OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF 
VARIABLE STAR OBSERVERS 

Tue formal organization meeting of the Ameri- 
can Association of Variable Star Observers was 
held at the Harvard College Observatory, Cam- 
bridge, Mass., on November 10th and was attended 
by 25 or more members, almost all of whom are 
active participants in the observation of variable 
stars. The meeting was called to order by Wm. 
Tyler Olcott, who for the past six years has acted 
as secretary of the informal association, and A. B. 
Burbeck was appointed temporary chairman. A 
carefully drawn up constitution was read and ac- 
cepted and then the officers and council members 
of the association were duly elected. D. B. Pick- 
ering, of Hast Orange, N. J., was elected president; 
H. C. Bancroft, Jr., of West Collingswood, N. J., 
vice-president; W. T. Oleott, of Norwich, Conn., 
secretary, and A. B. Burbeck, of North Abington, 
Mass., treasurer. The four members of the coun- 
cil are Professor Anne 8, Young, of Mt. Holyoke 
College Observatory, J. J. Crane, of Sandwich, 
Mass., for two years, and Miss H. M. Swartz, of 
South Norwalk, Conn., and C. Y. McAteer, of 
Pittsburgh, Pa., for one year. 

While waiting for the result of the election to 
be announced by the tellers, a general discussion of 
the most suitable size of telescope for the use of 
the observers was opened up, and later, a discus- 
sion of plans for the most systematic observation 
of the 300 or more variable stars under research 
was also freely indulged in. 

In taking the chair as the first president of the 
association, Mr, Pickering reviewed, in a few 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1199 


words, the past achievements of the Variable Star 
Observers, and mentioned their aims for the fu- 
ture. 

Tea was kindly served by the director of the ob- 
servatory in the afternoon, and then lantern slide 
exhibits were given, one by Miss A. J. Cannon, 
showing some of the celestial wonders as revealed 
in the photographic telescopes, and another by Mr. 
Leon Campbell, illustrating the progress of the 
study of the star SS Cygni and what attempts are 
being made to fathom its seemingly irregular vari- 
ations, both in light and period. 

While an inspection of the work of the observ- 
atory was being made, the more experienced mem- 
bers observed this same SS Cygni in the comfort- 
able 12-inch Polar Telescope, all under like condi- 
tions, and the result of the estimates of the 17 
observers was that the star was then of the mag- 
nitude 11.21, with a probable error of 0.12 magni- 
tude. 

At a short meeting of the council, three noted 
variable star observers were elected to honorary 
membership, Professor EH. C. Pickering, director 
of the Harvard Observatory; Rev. J. G. Hagen, 
director of the Vatican Observatory, Rome, and 
Professor J. A. Parkhurst, of the Yerkes Observa- 
tory. Professor Pickering was also elected as the 
first patron of the association. 

The council also elected nine members to life 
membership and the total membership therefore 
numbers 84, of which 72 are active; 9, life, and 3 
are honorary members, with 1 patron. 

A sumptuous banquet was served in Boston that 
evening at which 20 members and four guests were 
present. Interesting after dinner speeches were 
made by Professors Pickering and Bailey, and Miss 
Cannon and Mr, Olcott, Mr. Campbell acting as 
toastmaster. 

The meeting was considered the climax of all 
those yet held and marks the successful launching 
of a full-fledged association in America for the 
regular observation of variable stars by a group 
of amateur and professional astronomers, which has 
been doing excellent work along this line for some 
years past, and which bids fair to be even more 
useful to science in the near future. 

Several committees were appointed by the presi- 
dent to consider the matter of telescopes, charts 
and schemes of work, and it was voted by the 
council to hold the spring meeting at Hast Orange, 
N. J., on May 6, 1918, at the invitation of Presi- 
dent Pickering. 

For those members who remained in Boston 
until the next day, an excursion was arranged to 


DECEMBER 21, 1917] 


visit the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, 
where Professor MeAdie was most attentive and 
explained in detail the investigations he is carry- 
ing on there. 

The opportunity for interested parties to enroll 
themselves as charter members remains open until 
December 31, 1917, and all such persons are invited 
to join the association, to whom copies of the con- 
stitution will be sent upon application to the sec- 
retary, Wm. Tyler Olcott, 62 Church Street, Nor- 
wich, Conn. Ibs 


BOSTON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY. IV 


DIVISION OF PHYSICAL AND INORGANIC CHEMISTRY 
H. P. Talbot, Chairman 
E. B. Millard, Secretary 

Joint Meeting with Division of Organic Chemis- 
try, Wednesday Morning 

1. Two new laboratory instruments: ARTHUR JOHN 

HOPKINS. 
(a) A buret-micrometer. 

A reading device which permits of correct read- 
ings to .001 e.c. 

(b) A balance for first-year students. 

A three-arm balance with non-removable riders 
in a glass and aluminum ease. A distinctive arrest. 
The bearings are of stellite and the arms of invar 
tape. The ratio of the arms is such that the 
weight used is to the load as 4:1. 


2. Water-lag in a buret: ARTHUR JOHN HopxKIns. 

A study of the amount of pure water clinging 
to the sides of a buret, under different speeds of 
discharge. The rule is deduced that, in order that 
comparable readings may be obtained, the dis- 
charge should not be faster than 12 to 15 seconds 
per cubic centimeter. 

Limits of individuality in chemistry: N. T. 
Bacon. The chances for variation become less and 
less as complexity of structure is reduced, but now 
that we recognize atoms as being composed of 
many parts is it not proper to recognize that at 
least the individual molecule, if not the atom 
itself, may have an individuality? Probably each 
atom would have a normal arrangement of the 
multiplicity of parts going to build up the atom, 
but the question is raised whether it is not prob- 
able that owing to imperfect elasticity these fre- 
quently stand out of the normal position with ref- 
erence to each other and reducing their tendency to 
combine so that frequently many times as many 
collisions are necessary before completion of com- 
bination as would be called for by theory. 


SCIENCE. 


621 


A new hydrate of lime: H. W. CHaRuTon. 
This hydrate of lime possesses marked plasticity, 
and differs from the ordinary CaO.H,O in contain- 
ing a considerably less amount of water. Its 
method of formation precludes the possibility of 
its being a mixture of CaO and CaO-H,0. One ex- 
ample of its formation comprises digesting 
CaO.H.O with ten times its weight of water at 
225 pounds pressure for a couple of hours. The 
resulting plastic material contains but slightly 
more than 15 per cent. water of combination 
while it originally contained over 24 per cent. and 
its specific gravity is but 1.95, while that of 
CaO.H.O is about 2.078. This is remarkable as 
it would naturally be supposed that the specific 
gravity would lie some place between that of 
CaO.-3.25 and that of CaO.-2.078. 


An investigation of the reaction between anti- 
mony and the solutions of sodiwm in liquid am- 
monia: EDwarD B. Peck. Solutions of sodium in 
liquid ammonia of concentrations from 0.0049 to 
1.2482 gm. atoms of sodium per liter of liquid 
ammonia were sealed in glass bombs with an ex- 
cess of antimony and allowed to react at room 
temperature for from two months to a year. A 
dark-brown, slightly soluble compound first 
formed, after which a dark-red solution appeared 
and the precipitate dissolved. The ratio of anti- 
mony to sodium in the solution does not corre- 
spond to a small integral number and changed 
with the concentration of sodium. The ratio 
Sb/Na changed very rapidly in dilute solutions 
from a value of Sb/Na=1.98 to a maximum of 
Sb/Na = 2.333 at a sodium concentration of about 
0.4N, after which there was a slight decrease to a 
value of Sb/Na=2.254 at a concentration of 
1.248. Two plots of the results were shown, one 
the ratio Sb/Na against the concentration of 
sodium, and another the log. of the sodium con- 
centration against the ratio Sb/Na. In both these 
plots the results lay on a smooth curve. The appa- 
ratus for carrying out this work was described in 
detail. Weighed amounts of sodium were put up 
in small glass capsules. These capsules were 
placed across a tube provided with an electro- 
magnetic hammer in the inside, which could be 
actuated by a solenoid outside. The reaction tube 
containing metallic antimony was sealed on to 
this tube. The tube was also connected to a 
supply of pure ammonia and to a vacuum pump. 
After evacuating the apparatus, ammonia was 
condensed in the reaction tube by surrounding it 
with a bath of liquid ammonia. The sodium was 


622 


then introduced into the solution by breaking the 
capsule in two with the electro-magnetic hammer. 
As soon as the reaction was well started, the 
bomb was sealed off and allowed to react at room 
temperature. The bomb consisted of two com- 
partments. When the reaction was completed, 
the solution was poured off from the excess anti- 
mony, and the antimony washed by distilling the 
solvent over from the solution. The analysis was 
completed by distilling off the solvent into 
weighed water bottles and weighing the anti- 
mony left behind. Electrolyses of these solutions 
were carried out at the temperature of boiling 
ammonia. The electrolyses showed that the com- 
pounds in solution are electrolytic in nature and 
that more than one atom of antimony is associ- 
ated with each negative carrier. Both the analyses 
and electrolyses showed that there are at least 
two compounds involved in the final equilibria, 
one haying more than two atoms and one having 
less than two atoms of antimony for each negative 
charge. These compounds are in some ways simi- 
lar to the polyiodides. A detailed exposition of 
this investigation will be offered for publication 
to the Journal of the American Chemical Society. 


The effect of acid concentration on the photo- 
chemical oxidation of quinine by chromic acid: G. 
S. Forses and R. S. Dean. In a previous investi- 
gation of this reaction by Luther and Forbes, the 
acid concentration had been constant. In the 
dark, with concentrations of CrO, and purified 
quinine constant, the velocity varies as the square 
of the acid concentration. A shallow cylindrical 
dish was bisected by a glass partition, and re- 
volved under a quartz mercury lamp. Provisions 
were made for stirring, cooling and temperature 
measurement. Solutions as described above were 
compared in pairs. After correction had been 
made for the dark reaction, the velocity of the 
photochemical reaction was found independent of 
acid concentration. It was also proved that 
quinine solution exposed to light does not retain 
its activation for long in the dark. 


The temperature coefficient of the distribution 
ratio: G. S. Forpes and A. 8. Cooniper. Solubili- 
ties in two and three component systems involving 
water, ether and succinic acid were determined or 
redetermined at 15°, 20° and 25°, also the distri- 
bution ratio of the succinic acid between two 
ether-water phases. An equation was derived 
and verified showing the temperature coefficient of 
the distribution ratio, with excess of the acid, as a 
function of the temperature and mutual solubil- 
ity coefficients of each substance in each layer. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1199 


The distribution ratio, when caleulated on the 
basis of ether-water phases in which the ratios 
ether to water are constant, is by no means inde- 
pendent of the concentration of succinie acid. 
Evidence was secured that the average degree of 
association of water dissolved in ether at these 
temperatures is somewhat less than two. 


The application of palladium as an indicator for 
silver titrations: LL. SCHNEIDER. A very dilute so- 
lution of palladous nitrate, dissolved in an excess 
of nitric acid, is added to the silver nitrate solu- 
tion which is then titrated with potassium iodide. 
The silver nitrate is precipitated by the potassium 
iodide and the least excess of potassium iodide is 
converted by the palladous nitrate to palladous 
iodide which is visible to the extent of one part in 
a million. For very dilute solutions, this method 
gives better precision than the Volhard method. 
The size of the plus and minus errors have been 
determined. The constant plus error in concen- 
trated solutions is due to the palladous iodide be- 
ing carried down by the silver iodide at the end- 
point, whereas the negative error is caused by the 
absorption of silver nitrate by silver iodide. The 
standard method for overcoming these errors has 
been applied with such effect that not only good 
precision but satisfactory accuracy has been ob- 
tained. The ease and rapidity with which the 
standard solution and the indicator can be pre- 
pared recommend this new method. Also the pal- 
ladous nitrate method can be used to better ad- 
vantage than Volhard’s in cases where the silver 
nitrate solutions are colored pink or yellow. Ni- 
trous acid interferes and must be boiled off before 
titrating. 


The application of the thermodynamic methods 
of Gibbs to equilibria in the ternary system 
H,0-K.,S8i0,-SiO,: GEORGE W. Morey and ERSKINE 
D. WiuuiamMson. A discussion of Gibbs’s deriva- 
tion of the phase rule and the application of 
Gibbs’s thermodynamic methods to various types 
of heterogeneous equilibria occurring in the ter- 
nary system H.O-K,SiO,-SiO,. The slopes of the 
various P-T curves which proceed from a quin- 
tuple point are discussed, with special reference to 
the dependence of the slope of a given curve on 
the composition of the phases which coexist along 
it. The change in slope with change in composi- 
tion of phases of variable composition is dis- 
cussed in detail. Conclusions reached in the above 
discussions are applied to typical cases in the ter- 
nary system H.O-K.SiO,-SiO.. 


(To be continued) 


SCIENCE 


New SERIES SINGLE CoPIEs, 15 CTs, 
VoL. XLVI. No. 1200 FRIpAy, DEcEMBER 28, 1917 ANNUAL SUBSORIPTION, $5.00 


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Any regular microscope can be used with the apparatus. The 
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SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


THE 
PRINCIPLES OF 
STRATIGRAPHY 


BY 


AMADEUS W. GRABAU, S.M., S.D. 


PROFESSGR OF PALEONTOLOGY IN 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


°° Should be on the reference shelf of every col- 
lege, normal echool, and large high school in the 
United States.”—Journal of Geography, Vol. XIII, 
Jan. 1915. 


8vo, 1150 pages, 264 illustrations. Price, $7.60 


Descriptive Circular Sent upon Request 


A. G. SEILER & CO. 
NEW YORK CITY 


A DICTIONARY FOR 
EVERY LIBRARY 


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Pronounced-=Defined==Derivation 
Includes the words of allied sciences 


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Publishers PHILADELPHIA 


Catalogue of the Hemiptera of 
America North of Mexico 
Excepting the 
Aphididae, Coccidae ad Aleurodidae 


By Edward P. Van Duzee................5 Cloth, $5.50 | 


A New Dendrometer, by Donald Bruce................cc:cc00-0 10 | 


Toxic and Antagonistic Effects of Salts on’Wine Yeast 
(Saccaromyces ellipsoideus)Sby jS.{iK.§Mitra............ 45 


Relationships of Pliocene Mammalian Faunas from 
the Pacific Coast and]JGreat {Basin [Provinces of 
North America, by J.C. Merriam......-.....0ccccccccccecereee 25 


New Foss!! Corals from the Pacifie Coast, by Jorgen 
OPONoml and: Se uA ay ane ie eae aeey aa 05 


The University of California issues publications in the following 
series among others:$Agricultural Sciences;}American{_Archae- 
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“UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 
Berkeley, California 280 Madison Ave., New York 


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A fellowship of the value of one thous- 
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for study and research in physics, chem- 
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SCIENCE 


Frmay, December 28, 1917 


CONTENTS 
The Modern Systematist: Dr. L. H. Baitry.. 623 


Patent Reform Prospects: H. J. JEWETT, 


BER TURUSSELUM meter etteratercisrstonerelorerete 629 
Scientific Events :— 

Free Public Medical Lectures; War-time 

Work of the Forest Service; War Activities 

of the Geological Sunvey 22.2.6 ..2- 020s 632 
Sctentific Notes and News ....+.....--..... 634 
University and Educational News .......... 638 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 

To Members of the American Association for 

the Advancement of Science: PROFESSOR 

THEODORE W. RicHarps. Antarctic Re- 

search and the Problems of the Ice Age: 

MarspEN Manson. LF fficient Laboratory 

PAGHUNG|s2Wi Mw ATWOOD 2.0112 2 emcee 638 
Scientific Books :— 

Lusk’s Elements of the Science of Nutrition: 

Proressor LAFAYETTE B, MENDEL. Papers 

from the Museum of Zoology of the Univer- 

sity of Michigan: T. BARBOUR ............ 641 
Special Articles :— 

The Influence of the Age of an Organism in 

maintaining its Acid-base Equilibrium: Dr. 

WAM DEB MAGNIDER J... ieee cca ccs 643 
The Boston Meeting of the American Chem- 

PCAUS OCTET YI Fave ass) ckaus, scars tonerane eee eee isles 645 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 
review shoula be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 
Hudson, N. Y. 


THE MODERN SYSTEMATIST?1 

WE are still engaged in exploring the 
earth, that we may understand it. We can 
not understand any part of the surface of 
the earth until at least three persons have 
studied the area carefully: the geologist, 
the physiographer, the recording biologist. 
We shall never cease to explore the earth, 
in old places as well as new. We can never 
dispense with the recorders. 

The older systematic zoology and syste- 
matic botany fell into disrepute with the 
competition of the exacter studies in mor- 
phology and physiology, and they have been 
overshadowed by the interest centering in 
evolution and its derivative subjects. On 
the botanical side, the naming of specimens 
as an exercise in education in schools and 
the making of a so-called herbarium of 
snips of plants, have still further discred- 
ited whatever seems to be related to syste- 
matic work. 

Although it is not the purpose of this 
paper to discuss the educational aspects of 
the subject, it may nevertheless be said 
that, so far as one can determine, this 
school herbarium work did not make botan- 
ists, on the one hand, nor lead to an appreci- 
ation of nature, on the other, and it would 
be difficult to trace contributions to science 
from its suggestion. As an educational 
method it was faulty because it did not 
connect plants with either function or en- 
vironment, nor call for continued applica- 
tion on the part of the pupil. The inten- 
sive laboratory course that succeeded it 
developed exacter methods, more sustained 


1 Before National Academy of Sciences, Phila- 
delphia, November 20, 1917. 


624 


application, closer scrutiny or observation 
and related the exercises to function. It has 
failed, however, in not educating in terms 
of the vegetable kingdom. We now see that 
the best educational procedure for botany 
in schools is a good combination of inten- 
sive laboratory work indoors, with carefully 
planned field and systematic work. The 
field naturalist contributes the factor of 
leadership in addition to drill with sub- 
ject-matter; under his care, the environ- 
ment of both men and other organisms be- 
gins to express itself. This, of course, is as 
true in zoology as in botany; in fact, good 
field work is both zoology and botany. 
This kind of field and collecting work pro- 
vides the best approach to nature. To 
know a cell or a spore is of much less sig- 
nificance to the major part of mankind 
than to know a plant. 

Some of the disdain of descriptive and 
taxonomic effort is due to the feeling, which 
is not without justification, that much of 
the so-called systematic work is little more 
than the personal naming and re-naming 
of specimens, without the addition of new 
knowledge or the expression of new mean- 
ings; the work is therefore likely to be dis- 
regarded, as irrelevant and not worth the 
while. 

The systematist has also lost sympathy 
with many of his compeers because of the 
controversies over nomenclature. The im- 
pression has gone abroad that he deals 
only with names. The controversies in this 
field issue from two mistaken premises on 
the part of nomenclatorialists—the as- 
sumption that nomenclature can be codi- 
fied into invariable law, and the practise of 
making rules retroactive. Varying prac- 
tises in language tend in these days toward 
agreement and unification, the persisting 
variations being mostly in minor matters; 
as soon, however, aS any superimposed au- 
thority undertakes to enforce rigidity, re- 


SCIENCE 


LN. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1200 


bellion is invited and differences are likely 
to be organized into counter codifications. 
It is probably not even desirable to have 
rigidity in binomial nomenclature for 
plants. The reactionary nature of the 
rules is their greatest fault, however, and 
is responsible for most of the mischief. It 
upsets good practise, on which the litera- . 
ture rests, even as far back as Linneus. 
Acts of legislatures, regulations of govern- 
ment, ordinances, entrance requirements to 
colleges and other enactments, become opera- 
tive at a specified future date. The names 
of plants are vested rights to the users of 
them in literature, and there is no moral 
warrant for changing those of times past 
merely that they may conform to a rule of 
the present. If the practise were in the 
realm of enacted law involving property, 
any court would declare it illegal. I intro- 
duce this discussion to say that the changes 
in nomenclature are not a necessary part 
of systematic work except in so far as they 
result from changed biological conceptions 
of genera and species. 


THE WORK OF THE SYSTEMATIST 

With this preface, I may enter my sub- 
ject, which is the place of the systematist 
in present-day natural history. I shall 
naturally speak in terms of plants, but I 
trust that some of you will make the exten- 
sion to terms of animals. 

To know the forms of life is the primary 
concern of the biologist. This knowledge 
is the basis of all study in morphology, 
physiology, heredity and phylogeny. Un- 
doubtedly much of the looseness of state- 
ment and incorrect inference in writings on 
variation and heredity are due to the very 
inexact definition of the forms about which 
we talk. Much of the non sequitur lies 
here. Literature is undoubtedly full of 
examples. Every discouragement of the 


DECEMBER 28, 1917] 


systematist reacts on the conclusions of 
those who cite the names of plants. 

So fundamental is this contribution of 
the systematist that we should now be very 
cautious in talking of heredity in plants at 
all until we have redefined their forms. 
The records of variation, as such, do not 
constitute definitions, but only departures 
from assumed norms. 

The definitions of the systematist, who 
eritically surveys a wide range of material 
for comparison rather than for divergence, 
apply not only to the assemblages we know 
as species, but also to the minor forms that 
seem to have descriptive unity. If I were 
now working with any group of plants in 
an experimental way touching develop- 
ment and evolution, I should want first to 
turn the whole group over to a conservative 
systematist for careful review. 

I had hoped that, in the beginning of 
the plant-breeding studies, the breeder 
would also be a pronounced systematist 
that he would aid us in the definition of 
the forms of plants, and bring his experi- 
mental studies to bear in tracing the prob- 
able course of evolution up to this epoch, 
that is, that he would contribute more freely 
to the knowledge of origins. I still think 
that we shall find the experimenter relating 
his work more closely to systematic botany 
as soon as the systematist takes cognizance 
of the plant-breeder, and the plant-breeder 
is satisfied that he must analyze his meas- 
urements in terms of biological definition 
and classification. I doubt the adequacy of 
some of the biometrical computation, and I 
regret the frequent neglect of herbarium 
studies whereby vegetation-factors rather 
than measurement-factors may be strongly 
emphasized. 

It is not unlikely that the ecologist falls 
into false comparisons by earelessness in 
identification, or by inattention to critical 
differentiations. It really matters very 


SCIENCE 


625 


much whether a given distribution repre- 
sents one specific type, or two or more very 
closely related types; in fact, the signifi- 
cance of an ecological study may depend 
directly on allied taxonomic relationships. 

Certain phases of the intermediate field 
between taxonomy and genetics I discussed 
two years and more ago in this city before 
the American Philosophical Society, and 
suggested a definite program of combined 
systematic and experimental work; there- 
fore I shall not enlarge on this subject here, 
although it merits further attention. It 
may be noted in passing, however, that the 
more enthusiastic definition of forms de- 
mands a refined and more exact art of 
phytography, and it should lead also in the 
direction of classification. The marked 
variations may well find place in a taxo- 
nomic treatment rather than to be studied 
merely as separates. The remarkable mu- 
tations of Nephrolepis, for example, af- 
ford excellent material for systematic de- 
seriptive study. 

Much of the earth is yet to be explored 
for the forms of life. There are fertile re- 
gions yet untouched. One collection in 
Papua yielded some 1,100 new orchids. 
Remarkable collections of novelties con- 
tinue to come to our herbaria, many of 
them from regions not very remote. Not 
nearly all the plants of the globe are 
known. The systematist must continually 
be better trained, for he has the task of 
understanding the older accumulations as 
well as adjudging the new. He makes in- 
ereasing contributions to plant geography 
and distribution, and gives us an enlarged 
judgment on the character of the countries 
of the earth as indicated by their vegeta- 
tion. In fact, we never understand a coun- 
try before we know its plant life. The con- 
tributions made recently by Forrest, Wil- 
son, Purdom and others to the geography 


626 


and resources of western China are good 
examples. 

Yet it is in the old regions as well as in 
the new that novelties still come to the 
hand of the systematist. Every edition of 
the manuals of the plants of the northeast- 
ern United States, for example, contains 
large additions. These acquisitions are in 
some part the result of new introductions, 
running wild; in an important part the dis- 
covery of species heretofore overlooked; in 
large part, also, the results of redefinition, 
known as ‘‘splitting’’ of species. 

This splitting is not alone the result of a 
desire to ‘‘make new species,’’ but is the 
operation of a new psychology. In every- 
thing we are rapidly becoming particu- 
larists. In the time of Gray we studied 
plants as aggregates, trying to make them 
match something else; now we study them 
as segregates, trying to make them differ 
from everything else. This diversity in 
process accounts for the extension of 
(@nothera, Carex, Rubus, Malus, Crategus. 
Whatever may be said of the relative ranks 
of the newly described species in a scheme of 
coordination, we should thereby neverthe- 
less understand the forms better than here- 
tofore and refine both our discrimination 
and our definition. Probably we do not yet 
really understand any one of the more rep- 
resentative genera of plants of the north- 
eastern United States. 

In making these remarks I am not com- 
mending the practise of those who would 
divide and redivide minutely, and who 
would carry descriptive botany to such a 
point of refinement that only the close 
specialist can know the forms. Under 
such circumstances, systematic work de- 
feats its own ends. 

It is, after all, to the plants of the older 
lands that the systematist must constantly 
bring his closer observation, new meas- 
urements, accumulation of facts, keener 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1200 


judgments, truer interpretation of environ- 
ment, profounder estimation of relation- 
ships that can be expressed by classifica- 
tion. He is not merely a deseriber of 
novelties, giving new names; he discrimi- 
nates, re-defines, applies the results of latest 
collateral science, suggests new meanings. 
His studies, as any others, must be kept 
alive and up to date. He must continually 
better serve any student of plants. There 
is no more end to the work of the systema- 
tist than to that of the geneticist. 

Every large or variable group needs to 
be reworked at least every twenty-five 
years. In fact, it is an advantage to have a 
group worked simultaneously by separate 
monographers, that we may have more 
than one method and more than one judg- 
ment brought to bear on the problem. We 
must outgrow the idea that there is any 
finality in even the best monograph. Fre- 
quent review and sifting of evidence are as 
necessary in systematology and taxonomy 
as in morphology. 

We do not realize that there is now ap- 
pearing the modern systematist, who is not 
an herbarium hack, but a good field man, 
an evolutionist and plant geographer, one 
highly skilled in identification, and rein- 
forced by much collateral training of a 
highly specialized character. This man 
has come quite unaware to most of us. 
Among the phytographers are those who 
are primarily cataloguers, sorters and bib- 
liographers, of great skill; but the real 
systematist is a highly trained scientist. 

I regret that the contribution of this man 
is frequently so little evidenced in the proc- 
esses of college teaching. Graduates may 
be sent forth to instruct in botany so inno- 
cent of kinds of plants and of the means of 
finding them out as to be lost when placed 
in a strange country, wandering blankly 
among the subjects they are supposed to 
teach. 


DrceMBeER 28, 1917] 


I have said that the systematist is spe- 
cially needed in the older lands. I wish 
now to press this remark still farther by 
saying that he is much needed in the oldest 
and best known genera. What are known 
as the older species, as well as older genera, 
are likely to be least understood, for knowl- 
edge becomes traditional and they pass un- 
challenged. It is exactly in the old and 
supposedly well-known species that we are 
now making so many segregates. 

It may be difficult, in any given monog- 
raphy, to express these different aptitudes 
of the systematist. Some subjects or prob- 
lems do not exhibit the features that I have 
suggested nor admit of the application of 
such broad and deep investigations, even 
though the study and publication of them 
may be very much worth doing. Yet, the 
field of systematic work may be indicated, 
as an aim. 


THE SITUATION IN THE CULTIVATED FLORA 


No plants go unchallenged so completely 
as those of widespread, common and an- 
cient cultivation. The treatment of them 
is particularly traditional. 
no ‘‘types’’ representing them in herbaria. 
Origins may be repeated, perhaps even from 
the days of the herbalists. Statements are 
passed on from book to book and genera- 
tion to generation. The plants are taken 
for granted. Yet when we come to study 
them eritically we find that they may con- 
tain ‘‘new species,’’ those that have passed 
all this time unrecognized. Any field that 
has been long neglected is sure to yield new 
harvests. The cultivated plants now pro- 
vide some of the best botanizing grounds. 

A few examples will illustrate what I 
mean. As a very simple illustration I may 
cite the case of the plant cultivated as 
Malvastrum capense. The species (as 
Malva capensis) was founded by Linneeus. 
The description in the books has been cor- 


SCIENCE 


There may be. 


627 


rect; but when the horticultural material 
was critically examined in 1908 it was found 
be an unrecognized new species, although 
cultivated for more than a century. It is 
now uamed WMalvastrum hypomadarum 
Sprague. Another new species has re- 
cently been separated by Sprague in the 
material commonly grown in greenhouses 
as Manettia bicolor. The cultivated stock 
is clearly of two species, M. bicolor being 
Brazilian, and the new WM. iflata being 
Paraguayan and Uraguayan. A case may 
be cited also in one of the commonest 
abutilons. The plant grown as A. striatum 
Dicks, is found to be really A. pictum 
Walpers, with the true A. striatum prob- 
ably not in cultivation; and part of the 
greenhouse material, long cultivated, was 
separated as a new species, A. pleniflorum, 
as late as 1910 by N. E. Brown. Moreover, 
the plant still grown as A. Thompsoni is 
found to be not that plant, the material 
now cultivated in England under that name 
being recently described as A. striatum var. 
spurium, and that in America being appar- 
ently of several unidentified forms. In the 
meantime, the original A. Thompsonii ap- 
pears to have been practically lost. Now, 
this situation directly involves the integ- 
rity of the so-called bigeneric graft-hybrid 
Kitaibelia Lindemuthii, one of the parents 
of which is recorded as Abutilon Thomp- 
soni. 

These are cases of erroneous determina- 
tion and of confusion in forms, representing 
one of the commonest kinds of puzzles in 
the study of cultivated plants. The diffi- 
culty lies in the fact that systematists have 
not taken the trouble to look the cases up, 
accepting the plants from literature, and 
also in the fact that herbaria usually do 
not adequately represent such plants. The 
student may search in vain for authori- 
tative early material of most long-culti- 
vated plants, even in the best herbaria. 


628 


One of the present necessities is to collect 
the cultivated plants in their different 
forms from many localities, and repre- 
senting the stocks of different dealers, in 
precisely the same spirit in which feral 
plants are taken for herbaria. Without 
such sourees of information, we can neither 
understand the systematology of the plants 
themselves or bring the best aid to the stu- 
dent of heredity. 

[The speaker here mentioned the lack of 
record material in studies of the systema- 
tology of Coleus and other groups; and ex- 
plained also the unsatisfactory practise on 
which descriptions of large numbers of cul- 
tivated species still must rest.] 

Excellent illustration of the confusion in 
cultivated plants, even of relatively recent 
introduction, is afforded by the velvet- 
beans now grown in the southernmost states. 
These plants have been referred indiscrim- 
inately to Mucuna pruriens, long cultivated 
in the tropics. On careful recent study, 
however, the American planted material is 
found to be so different from Mucwna as 
to necessitate generic separation, and the 
genus Stizolobium has been revived to re- 
ceive it. The common cultivated velvet- 
bean is found by Bort to be an undescribed 
species, probably of oriental origin, and it 
has been named and described Strzolobiwm 
Deeringianum. Subsequently other species 
have been newly described in the cultivated 
stocks. One need not go far for many 
comparable illustrations of the confusion 
in which eultivated plants have lain. 
Americans are now specially active in re- 
solving these complexities. As a running 
random comment may be cited the work of 
Rose in the cacti, Swingle in Citrus, Rehder 
in Wisteria, oriental Pyrus and others, 
Wilson in Japanese cherries, Safford in 
Annonacee. It is not too much to say that 
any of the important groups of cultivated 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Von. XLVI. No. 1200 


plants will fall to pieces as soon as touched 


by the competent modern systematist. 

The systematist who works in these do- 
mesticated groups must first make large 
collections of new information and mate- 
rial. It is becoming a habit with him to 
travel extensively to study the plants in 
their original countries, and to bring his- 
tory and ethnography to bear on the prob- 
lem. He is not content until he arrives at 
sources. 

[The speaker discussed, and illustrated 
with herbarium material, the recent studies 
in the cultivated poplars, whereby the sub- 
ject has been opened for discriminating in- 
vestigation. | 

Nor does the confusion lie only with 
plants of ancient domestication or with 
those native to countries which have not 
yet been well explored. The horticultural 
blackberries have been brought into eulti- 
vation from American wild stocks within 
seventy-five years or less, they have been 
accorded careful study by several special- 
ists, yet no one is ready to name the spe- 
cies from which the different forms have 
come. A number of systematists are work- 
ing on them, and yet they are in need of 
further study, both in the wild and in culti- 
vation. In Prunus is a comparable ease, 
horticultural forms in many named vari- 
eties of native plums having come into ecul- 
tivation within fifty years. It fell to my 
hand to attempt the first critical taxonomic 
writing of these native plants, in 1892; but 
in 1915 Wight completely recast the treat- 
ment, in the light of accumulated experi- 
ence. This illustrates my earlier remark 
that every group should be newly mono- 
graphed at frequent intervals. 

Perhaps we do not sufficiently realize 
the great numbers of species of plants now 
in cultivation. We may have in mind the 
247 species studied by DeCandolle in his 


DECEMBER 28, 1917] 


“Origin of Cultivated Plants.’’? These are 
only food plants, and the treatment does 
not pretend to be complete. In the Stand- 
-ard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, the entries 
of plants described in cultivation exceeds 
20,000, although not nearly all these spe- 
cies are domesticated. About 40,000 Latin 
names are accounted for. This treatment 
does not cover the cultivated plants of the 
world, but those of the United States and 
Canada and those readily drawn from the 
European trade, with the most prominent 
species in the island dependencies of the 
United States. Probably never have spe- 
cies new to cultivation been introduced so 
rapidly as within very recent years. For 
example, in the treatment of Primula in 
the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture 
in 1901, I described twenty-seven species ; 
in the Standard Cyclopedia in 1916, I de- 
seribed 200. All this phalanx comprises in 
itself a large section of the vegetable king- 
dom, perhaps as much as nearly one sixth 
of the Spermatophyta, and it demands 
the attention of the best phytographie and 
taxonomic investigation. 

The long-repeated statements of origins 
of cultivated plants are challenged when- 
ever the systematology is seriously attacked, 
or when the subject is examined under bo- 
tanical investigations. The case of maize 
is a striking example; although always 
explained on the basis of American origin, 
the reported pre-Columbian references in 
China need further investigation. The 
same kind of puzzle associates with many 
plants, wild as well as domesticated, that 
are prominent subjects in early travels 
and writings. Thus Fernald concludes 
that the wine-berries of the Norsemen were 
not grapes found on the shores of the pres- 
ent New England, as we have always as- 
sumed, and that they were probably moun- 
tain cranberries found in Labrador or the 


SCIENCE 


629 


St. Lawrence region. The result of con- 
temporaneous studies is that, from both the 
historical and biological sides, the founda- 
tions are being shocked. Most of my life I 
have given special attention to the botany of 
the domesticated flora, yet I should not now 
care to hazard a pronouncement from this 
platform on the specific natural-history 
origin of any one of the more important 
widespread species of cultivated plants. 


THE SYSTEMATIST IS A BIOLOGIST 


Whether he works with feral or domestic 
floras, the systematist of whom I speak is a 
real investigator. He studies the living 
material so far as he is able, perhaps grow- 
ing it for this purpose; tries to understand 
the influence of environment, the rdle of 
hybridization and mutation, and preserves 
his records in the form of ample herbarium 
sheets. He relates his work to morphology, 
and desires to arrange it as an expression 
of lines of development. He may study 
his material for years before he ventures 
to describe. It follows that the systema- 
tist necessarily, in these days, becomes a 
specialist; and it further follows that we 
should encourage, in addition to the few 
very large and comprehensive establish- 
ments, the making of many herbaria and 
growing collections strong in special lines. 


L. H. Bamry 


PATENT REFORM PROSPECTS 


Tue Patent Office Society is permitted to 
announce that a composite committee has been 
created, upon request, by the National Re- 
search Council, to make a preliminary study 
of the problems of the U. S. Patent Office and 
its service to science and the useful arts. This 
committee, which is expected to meet in Wash- 
ington shortly after the middle of December, 
is understood to comprise, at the outset, the 
following: Leo H. Baekeland, Wm. F. Durand, 
Thos. Ewing, Frederick P. Fish, Robert A. 


630 


Millikan, Michael I. Pupin and 8. W. Strat- 
ton. 

The action of the National Research Coun- 
ceil in forming a committee of this sort is 
understood to be in conformity with the 
wishes of Commissioner of Patents J. T. New- 
ton and Secretary of the Interior F. K. Lane, 
and to be in accord also with the following 
resolutions originally adopted by the Patent 
Office Society and concurred in by Mr. Ewing 
while commissioner of patents: 


WHEREAS a section of the charter of the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences provides that ‘‘The 
academy shall, whenever called upon by any de- 
partment of the government, investigate, examine 
and report upon any subject of science or art,’’ 

AND WHEREAS, at the request of the President of 
the United States, the academy has organized a 
National Research Council, to bring into effective 
cooperation existing governmental, educational 
and other research organizations, 

AND WHEREAS the National Research Council is 
now perfecting its organization for the perform- 
ance of the above duties, 

AND WHEREAS a fundamental activity of the 
Patent Office is research upon questions of novelty, 
‘“in order to promote the progress of science and 
the arts’’ by the prompt issuance of proper grants 
and the refusal of improper grants of patent 
monopolies, 

Now therefore be it resolved by the Patent 
Office Society: 

1. That in its judgment a request for coopera- 
tion, advice and assistance should be promptly 
forwarded to the National Research Council, at- 
tention being called to such problems as ade- 
quacy of force, adequacy of space, adequacy of 
library, adequacy of facilities for test and dem- 
onstration, adequacy of classification, adequacy of 
organization, adequacy of scientific, legal and pro- 
fessional standards, adequacy of incentives and op- 
portunities, simplification of procedure, responsive- 
ness to present national and international re- 
quirements and to the important advances that 
might be expected either from an independent 
study of the above by the National Research 
Council or from an early effort on its part to co- 
ordinate, in the interest of an improved public 
service, the endeayors of the various national so- 
cieties, manufacturing interests, patent bar asso- 
ciations, and all others aiming at genuine pat- 
ent reform. 

2. That the coneurrence of the Commissioner of 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


Patents and the Secretary of the Interior in these 
resolutions be solicited. 

3. And that a copy hereof be forwarded to the 
National Research Council with some expression of 
the appreciation of this society for the interest 
already shown, and some appropriate assurance of 
the determination of this society to render every 
possible assistance and support to the work of the 
National Research Council. 


The implied determination of the Patent 
Office Society to do its part in an effort to 
improve the work and conditions of the Pat- 
ent Office, and to gain therein all possible sup- 
port on the part of scientists, engineers and 
manufacturers, is further indicated in the ac- 
companying resolutions relating to the pro- 
posed Institute for the History of Science, for 
which a Washington location is by it advo- 
cated—this latter proposal being already ac- 
corded the invaluable support of the Wash- 
ington Academy of Sciences. 


RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE PATENT OFFICE SO- 
CIETY, BY ITS AUTHORIZED EXECUTIVE 
COMMITTEE 


That the attention of all interested in the 
possibilities of the proposed Institute for the His- 
tory of Science be ealled to the advantages of 
such a location and organization for that insti- 
tute, whenever it shall be established, as shall 
render its resources easily available not only to 
highly trained specialists but also to practising 
engineers, to examiners of patents, and, so far as 
practicable, to the general public. 

That, in the judgment of the Patent Office So- 
ciety, the present moment of prominence of 
American ideals and of recognized dependence 
upon the facts and principles of science is none 
too early for preliminary steps toward the estab- 
lishment in this country of an Institute of the 
general character already proposed (by George 
Sarton, and others, in Science, March 23, 1917), 
such institute to be independent, liberally endowed 
and adequate not only to the requirements of our 
present national life, but also to that great era of 
internationalism and general enlightenment upon 
which even the avoidance of war may hereafter 
depend. 

That the special committee in hand relations 
with the National Research Council be directed to 
emphasize to that body the foregoing conclusions 
as perhaps pertinent to purposes shared by it; to 


DEcEMBER 28, 1917] 


solicit the concurrence therein of both the local 
and the national scientific and engineering so- 
cieties, and to publish the same generally, or in 
its diseretion, always with careful regard to the 
aims of those to whom the project is due. 


The following questions raised in a report 
made to the Patent Office corps by a special 
committee charged to cooperate with the per- 
sonnel committee of the National Research 
Council will indicate something of the tend- 
ency of measures for which it is hoped to 
gain early consideration: 


What does the Patent Office need besides men 
and materials? 

Feeling that the time is at hand when the Pat- 
ent Office must enter upon either a period of very 
rapid decline or else upon a period of revitaliza- 
tion and expansion, shall we not test the notion 
that it may actually be easier, and in every re- 
spect better, for the office, exhibiting a new vi- 
sion of its task, to ask a great deal more, rather 
than to continue its petition for the very, very 
little that has so often been denied it? 

Relying upon the assistance of the composite 
committee generously formed by the National Re- 
search Council— 

Can assistance be got, even now, in the making 
of a genuine advance in the indispensable work of 
reclassification of patents and of literature? 

Can all who are employed in the work of exami- 
nation be in any way further encouraged and aided 
to become specialists in one or another of the 
branches of applied science—rather than mere 
rule-parrots and picture-matchers? And would a 
proposed departmental organization of the office 
aid to this end? 


Can these gains against dilatory prosecution , 


made under the energetic efforts of Commissioner 
Ewing be rendered secure for the future by (e. g.), 
dating the terms of patent monopolies from the 
date of filimg—in order to create an incentive for 
diligent rather than dilatory prosecution? 

Could any adjustment of extra fees for extra 
claims discourage the ‘‘fog-artists’’ and create an 
incentive for a more genuine effort on the part of 
attorneys to find the meat of the coconut—instead 
of putting it up to the office, the courts or the pub- 
lie to do so? 

Can any elevation of the standards of practise 
(effected perhaps with the assistance of the pat- 
ent bar) relieve the office at the same time from an 
undue burden of editorial work and from any 
suspicion of complicity in the wholesale netting of 


SCIENCE 


631 


““suckers’’ by men who indulge in misleading ad- 
vertisements or contingent prosecution? 

Can the divisions of the office advantageously be 
grouped into departments, each comprising sev- 
eral divisions handling analogous problems—a 
chemical department, an electrical department, an 
“‘instrument’’ department, a motive power de- 
partment and the like, each under some expert of 
distinction in a particular field, and this body of 
experts having not only authority within their re- 
spective departments, but exercising collectively 
an enlightened and final appellate jurisdiction? 

Can the salaries of these proposed department 
heads (constituting an enlarged and strengthened 
board) and the salaries of chiefs of divisions, and 
of others, be made such as to justify able and 
provident men in remaining for a much longer 
average term within this branch of the service? 

Could the establishment in Washington of some 
great related institution, such as the proposed In- 
stitute for the History of Science, aid materially 
by an assembling, in this vicinity, of permanent 
exhibits genuinely illustrative of the advance of, 
é. g., the chemical arts, the electrical arts, the mo- 
tive power arts, the transport arts, ete., with a 
corresponding assembling and arrangement of 
pertinent literature from all the world, and with 
such an administrative organization as_ shall 
supplement the resources of this office, among 
others, sustaining its standards, while at the same 
time providing, in support of those who can main- 
tain their scholarly interests and professional in- 
stincts, something of the stimulus and the oppor- 
tunities of a true national university? 


The mentioned special committee of the 
Patent Office Society takes this means of urg- 
ing upon all interested the forwarding of any 
patent reform suggestions at once to Dr. Wm. 
IF. Durand, National Research Council, Wash- 
ington, D. C. It is not expected that patent 
reform can claim primary consideration dur- 
ing the continuance of the war, but it is felt 
that the time is ripe for at least a study of 
conditions and a renewed consideration of 
certain fundamentals from which it is felt that 
the office—charged “to promote the progress 
of science and the useful de- 
parted through lack of information and sup- 
port. 


arts ”’—has 


Bert Russe, Secretary, 
H. J. Jewert, Chairman, 
Special Committec, Patent Office Section 


632 


SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 
FREE PUBLIC MEDICAL LECTURES 


Tur faculty of medicine of Harvard Uni- 
versity offers a course of free public lectures 
on medical subjects to be given at the medical 
school, Longwood Avenue, Boston, on Sunday 
afternoons at four o’clock, beginning January 6 
and ending April 21, 1918. 


January 6. Social hygiene and the war, Dr. Wm. 
F. Snow, major, Medical Reserve Corps, U.S. A. 

January 13. Surgical shock, Dr. W. T. Porter. 

January 20. Teeth and their relation to human 
ailments; a plea for conservation, Dr. G. H. 
Wright. 

January 27. Home nursing, with demonstra- 
tions, Elizabeth Sullivan. 

February 8. Child welfare during the war, Dr. 
Richard M. Smith. 

February 10. Child welfare, Miss Mary Beard. 

February 17. Shoes and structure of the foot, 
Dr, E. H. Bradford. 

February 24. Social infection and the com- 
munity, Bishop Lawrence. 

March 3. The deformed mouth of a child; its 
effect on the child’s future, Dr. L. W. Baker. 


March 10. Food: how to save it, Dr. L. J. 
Henderson. 

March 17. What to eat during the war, Dr. F. 
W. White. 

March 24. Some aspects of fatigue, Dr. Percy 
G. Stiles. 

March 31. Camp sanitation and control, and 


hospital administration at Camp Devens, Dr. Glenn 
I. Jones, major, Medical Corps, U. 8. A. 

April 7. Accident and injury, first aid (with 
simple demonstrations), Dr. J. Bapst Blake. 


April 14. Immunity to contagious disease, Dr. 
E. H, Place. 

April 21. Hay fever and asthma, Dr. I. Chand- 
ler Walker. 

April 28. Food administration during the war, 


Dr. Julius Levy (under the National Food Commit- 
tee). 


THE POPULAR MEDICAL LECTURES TO BE GIVEN AT 
THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL 
DURING JANUARY, FEBRUARY AND 
MARCH, 1918 

The program is as follows: 


January 4. The control of vice diseases among 
troops through civil and military cooperation, Col- 
onel L. U. Maus, U.S. Army. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


January 18. 
Leo Hloesser. 

February 1. Industrial fatigue, Professor EH. G. 
Martin. 

February 15. Food poisoning from canned 
goods, Dr. E. C. Dickson. 

March 1. Recent experiences of a medical man 
in the war zone, Dr. William P. Lucas, professor of 
pediatrics, University of California. 

March 15. Circulation of the blood, Dr. A. A. 
D’Ancona. Illustrated with moving pictures. 


Surgery of the present war, Dr. 


WARTIME WORK OF THE FOREST SERVICE 


How the work of the Forest Service was 
realigned to meet war conditions is described 
in the Annual Report of the Forester, which 
in the absence of the head of the service is 
made by Acting Forester A. F. Potter. The 
report also states that practically every form 
of use of the forests was greater than ever 
before, that the receipts again touched a new 
high level with a total of $3,457,028.41, and 
that the increase in receipts over the previous 
year was $633,487.70. 

“When the grazing charge has been ad- 
vanced to cover the full value of the grazing 
privilege,” says the report, “the income from 
the national forests will be close to the cost 
of operation. The present annual cost is 
about $4,000,000.” An increase equal to that 
of the last fiscal year “‘ would close the gap.” 

The Forester, Henry S. Graves, is now 
serving with the American Expeditionary 
Forces in France, with a commission as lieu- 
tenant colonel, in connection with the forest 


’ work for the supply of the needs of our over- 


seas troops and those of the Allies. A num- 
ber of other members of the Forest Service 
reeived commissions in the Tenth Engineers 
(Forest) while many more entered the ranks. 

Wood and other forest products have al- 
most innumerable uses in modern warfare. 
Never before has the demand for exact knowl- 
edge been so urgent. “In the work relating 
to forest utilization and forest products, the 
resources of the service have been employed to 
the limit of their capacity since the war be- 
gan in rendering assistance to the War and 
Navy Departments, the Emergency Fleet 
Corporation, various committees of the Coun- 


DrcEeMBER 28, 1917] 


cil of National Defense, and manufacturers 
of war orders. The peace-time program has 
been largely discontinued. The force and the 
work have been centered in Washington and 
Madison. Every effort has been made to 
bring available knowledge to the attention of 
the organizations which have need for it and 
to assist in anticipating their problems.” 

Much of the work has concerned aircraft 
material. It has included also problems con- 
nected with the construction of wooden ships 
and of vehicles. Assistance has been given 
to hardwood distillation plants in order to in- 
crease the production of acetone and other 
products needed for munition making. A 
commercial demonstration has shown that 
eosts of producing ethyl alcohol from wood 
waste can be materially reduced. Methods 
have been developed by which walnut and 
birch can be kiln-dried in a much reduced 
time with comparatively little loss. In gen- 
eral, the report says, “much assistance has 
been given on a great variety of war problems 
relating to forest resources and the manu- 
facture, purchase, and most efficient use of 
wood and other forest products.” 

Tn spite of the many new demands upon the 
Service and the entrance upon military duties 
of a considerable number of its men, the ad- 
ministrative and protective work on the na- 
tional forests was continued without disor- 
ganization. “Upon request of the War De- 
partment the preliminaries of recruiting and 
officering the Tenth Engineers (Forest) were 
handled. Increase of crop production in and 
near the forests was stimulated and the forage 
resource of the forests was made available for 
emergency use up to the limit of safety. In 
the latter part of the summer a fire season of 
extreme danger, made worse in some localities 
by an unusual prevalence of incendiarism, 
was passed through with relatively small loss 
of property and with no reported loss of life.” 


WAR ACTIVITIES OF THE GEOLOGICAL 
SURVEY 


THE activities of the Geological Survey, De- 
partment of the Interior, during the fiscal year 
1916-17 have been concentrated on investiga- 
tions connected with military and industrial 


SCIENCE 


633 


preparedness, as shown by the Annual Report 
of the director of the survey, just made public. 
These activities have included the preparation 
of special reports for the War and Navy De- 
partments and the Council of National De- 
fense, the making of military suveys, the print- 
ing of military maps and hydrographic charts, 
and the contribution of engineer officers to the 
Reserve Corps. 

The survey’s investigations of minerals that 
have assumed special interest because of the 
war have been both expanded and made more 
intensive. Special reports giving results al- 
ready at hand, the product of years of field 
and office investigation, have been published 
for the information of the general public or 
prepared for the immediate use of some official 
commission, committee or bureau. Geologic 
field work has been concentrated on deposits of 
minerals that are essential to the successful 
prosecution of the war, especially those of 
which the domestic supply falls short of pres- 
ent demands. Every available oil geologist is 
at work in petroleum regions where geologic 
exploration may lead to increased production. 
Other geologists are engaged in a search for 
commercial deposits of the “war minerals ”— 
manganese, pyrite, platinum, chromite, tung- 
sten, antimony, potash and nitrate. 

The war not only diverted practically all 
the activities of the topographic branch of the 
survey to work designed to meet the urgent 
needs of the war department for military 
surveys, but led to the commissioning of the 
majority of the topographers as reserve officers 
in the Corps of Engineers, United States 
Army. 

A large contribution to the military service 
is made by the map-printing establishment of 
the survey. This plant has been available for 
both confidential and urgent work, and during 
the year has printed 96 editions of maps for 
the war department and 906 editions of charts 
for the navy department. Other lithographic 
work, some of it very complicated, was in 
progress at the end of the year. 

During the year the survey published 203 
scientific and economic reports, and at the end 
of the year the survey members holding ap- 


634 


pointments from the secretary numbered 934, 
an increase of 62. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 

Tue American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science begins its annual meet- 
ing at Pittsburgh on the day of issue of the 
present number of Science. The address of 
the retiring president, Dr. Charles R. Van 
Hise is given this evening, his subject being 
“Economie Effects of the World War in the 
United States.” It is expected that the meet- 
ing of the association and of the national 
societies meeting at the same time will be 
smaller than usual, and that scientific prob- 
lems of national concern at the present time 
will occupy most of the programs. Careful 
consideration was given to the desirability of 
holding the meeting. It. was decided that the 
service it could render to science and the 
nation was far greater than any drawbacks. 
This was the opinion both of scientific men 
and of the officers of the government who 
were consulted. 

Sm ArcHIBALD GEIKIE, who. has long been a 
correspondent of the Paris Academy of Sci- 
ences, has now been elected an associate mem- 
ber of the academy. 

Dr. WituiamM W. Keen, of Philadelphia, has 
declined the renomination of president of the 
American Philosophical Society, after serv- 
ing ten years in that capacity. 

Dr. ALEXIS CarREL, having been detained in 
America by official duties, the Harben lec- 
tures he was to have delivered in England at 
the end of this month have been postponed. 

Gitpert N. Lewis, professor of physical 
chemistry and dean of the college of chem- 
istry in the University of California, has been 
granted leave of absence for the half year 
beginning January 1, 1918, to serve as major 
in the Ordnance Department of the U. S. 
Army. He is to go at once to France. 

Mr. Cuartes 8. Winson, state commis- 
sioner of agriculture of New York, has been 
reappointed to that office by the newly organ- 
ized Council of Farms and Markets at AI- 
bany. His original appointment was made 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


almost three years ago by the governor. Mr. 
Wilson was then professor of pomology in 
the State College of Agriculture at Cornell. 


Dr. Frank C. HammMonp has been appointed 
a member of the Philadelphia Board of Health 
to serve during the absence in France of Dr. 
Alexander C. Abbott. 


A NUMBER of additional members of the 
University of California faculty have entered 
Army service, including Joel H. Hildebrand, 
associate professor of chemistry, now a cap- 
tain in the Ordnance Department; Dr. A. L. 
Fisher, assistant in orthopedic surgery, now 
a captain in the U. S. Medical Reserve, at- 
tached to Base Hospital No. 30; and W. F. 
Hamilton, A. R. Kellogg, and J. B. Rogers, 
of the department of zoology, now in the 
Forestry Reserves. 

F. G. Tucker, assistant professor of physics 
at the State College of Washington, has been 
granted leave of absence to take up his duties 
as second lieutenant in the U. S. Coast artil- 
lery. 

THE council of the Royal Meteorological So- 
ciety has awarded Dr. H. R. Mill the Symons 
gold medal for 1918 “for distinguished work 
in connection with meteorological science.” 


Tue following letter has been received by the 
Duke of Connaught, President of the Royal 
Society of Arts from Mr. Orville Wright, of 
Dayton, Ohio. 

I have the pleasure of acknowledging the re- 
ceipt of your Royal Highness’s letter and the Al- 
bert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, which 
were forwarded to me through the British Am- 
bassador at Washington. I wish to express my 
appreciation of the honor conferred upon me by 
the Royal Society of Arts as a recognition of the 
work of my brother Wilbur and myself towards the 
solution of the problem of flight. I appreciate with 
the utmost gratification the honor of being placed 
by your society among such men as those to whom 
this coveted medal has been awarded in years past. 


Proressor FREDERICK Starr, of the depart- 
ment of sociology and anthropology at the 
University of Chicago, who has been in the 
Orient for the past year on leave of absence, 
will renew his work at the university with the 
winter quarter, giving courses in prehistoric 


DECEMBER 28, 1917] 


archeology and general anthropology. Pro- 
fessor Starr has been conducting special an- 
thropological investigations in Korea and has 
published a book of some five hundred pages in 
Japanese. He has also published a paper on 
“Korean Coin Charms,” which is issued by the 
Korean branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 
Before leaving Japan Professor Starr gave two 
public addresses, one before the Tokyo Anthro- 
pological Society and one before the Asiatic 
Society of Japan. 


Proressor CHARLES BASKERVILLE, professor 
of chemistry and director of laboratories of the 
College of the City of New York, delivered a 
lecture at the Royal Canadian Institute, To- 
ronto, Canada, on December 8, the subject 
being, The Hydrogenation of Vegetable Oils. 


Dr. E. O. Hovey, of the American Museum 
of Natural History, delivered a public address 
on “ Two years in the far North” at Syracuse 
University on December 7, under the auspices 
of the Sigma Xi Society. 


Proressor O. D. von ENGELN, of Cornell 
University, addressed the Physiographers’ 
Club of Columbia University on November 238 
on “Types of Alaskan glaciers and features 
of the associated deposits.” 


Sir ArtHuR NEWSHOLME gave this year the 
Lady Priestley Memorial Lecture of the Na- 
tional Health Society. The subject was “ The 
child and the home.” 


Dr. Louis Pope Gratacap, for the last 
twenty-seven years curator of mineralogy and 
a member of the staff of the American Mu- 
seum of Natural History for forty-one years, 
died at New Brighton on December 19, aged 
sixty-seven years. 


Dr. CHartes M. MansrFietp, scientific as- 


sistant in the Biochemie Division of the U. 
S. Bureau of Animal Industry, died at his 
home in Washington, D. C., on December 17. 
Dr. Mansfield was an accomplished photog- 
rapher and had contributed several articles 
to the photographie journals. 


Tue death is announced at the age of 43, 
of Dr. J. Rambousek, professor of factory 
hygiene, and chief state health officer, Prague. 


SCIENCE 


635 


Lizut. Cyrm Green, known for his work 
in plant ecology and the physiological an- 
atomy of water plants, was killed on the 
Palestine front early in November. He had 
been a member of the staff of the department 
of botany of the University College, London. 
Since the outbreak of the war he had been 
appointed head of the department of botany 
in the new Welsh National Museum at Car- 
diff, a position which was to have been held 
open for him until the conclusion of hos- 
tilities. 

Tue death is announced on November 4 
of M. R. Nichéls, professor of geology in the 
University of Nancy. 

Tue Society of American Bacteriologists 
will hold its annual meeting in Washington, 
D. C., on December 27, 28 and 29. The morn- 
ing and afternoon sessions will be held in the 
new National Museum. The president is Dr. 
Leo F. Rettger, New Haven, Conn.; the sec- 
retary, Dr. A. Parker Hitchens, Glenolden, 
eas 


Av their recent annual meeting the board of 
trustees of the Carnegie Institution of Wash- 
ington accepted from Mrs. E. H. Harriman the 
gift of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold 
Spring Harbor. This gift comprises about 80 
acres of land, the office building with its records 
and other contents, the large residence and 
other buildings. In addition Mrs. Harriman 
has given to the trustees of the institution 
securities yielding an annual income of $12,- 
000, as a fund for the office. The total valua- 
tion of the gift is about half a million dol- 
lars. The transfer has been made by Mrs. 
Harriman in order to ensure the permanent 
continuation of the work of the Eugenics 
Record Office. Except that the former board 
of scientific directors is dissolved the imme- 
diate management and personnel of the office 
have not been affected by the transfer. 

Tue regular monthly meeting of the Cali- 
fornia Academy of Sciences was held on De- 
cember 19, when a lecture was given by Pro- 
fessor J. C. Bradley, Cornell University, on 
“The Okefinokee” (illustrated). Following 
the lecture Dr. Barton W. Evermann spoke 


636 


briefly concerning the establishment of Federal 
Fisheries Experiment Stations. The course of 
popular scientific lectures is being continued 
on Sunday afternoons at 3 o’clock in the audi- 
torium of the Museum in Golden Gate Park. 
Announcements are made as follows: 


December 16, The growth and transforma- 
tion of insects (illustrated): Professor HE. O. 
Essig, College of Agriculture, University of 
California. 

December 23, The distribution of plants in 
California (illustrated): Professor Douglas 
Campbell, Department of Botany, Stanford 
University. 


December 30, A fiesta of Indian summer: 
Professor O. L. Edwards, Director of Nature 
Study, Los Angeles Schools. 


January 6, Midwinter birds of Golden Gate 
Park (illustrated): Professor Joseph Grin- 
nell, Director of the Museum of Vertebrate 
Zoology, University of California. 


January 13, Fish and game in California 
(illustrated by motion pictures): Dr. H. C. 
Bryant, Game Expert, California Fish and 
Game Commission. 


Tur next meeting of the Botanical Society 
of Washington will be held at the Cosmos 
Club, Washington, D. C., January 3, 1918. 
Abstracts of the papers presented will be pub- 
lished in the Journal of the Washington 
Academy of Sciences. The program is as 
follows: 

The botany and economics of the tribe Phaseolee, 
C. V. Piper. 

Morphological characters and food value of soy- 
bean varieties, W. J. Morse. 

Fermented soy-bean products, Dr. Chas. Thom. 

The American species of the genus Phaseolus, Dr. 
D. N. Shoemaker. 


Tur Journal of the British Medical Asso- 
ciation reports that at a meeting of the Société 
Internationale de Chirurgie in Paris on No- 
vember 3, 1917, which was attended by dele- 
gates from Belgium, France, Great Britain, 
Serbia, and the United States, it was resolved 
to dissolve the society after the publication 
of the volume of Transactions of the meeting 
held in New York on April 14, 1914. It was 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


further resolved that, should there be any 
assets after the publication of this volume, the 
money shall be divided pro rata amongst the 
members, so that each member of the Ger- 
mano-Austrian group shall receive his share, 
but that the shares belonging to members of 
other nations shall be retained and applied to 
some object of scientific reparation in Belgium. 
The meeting then determined that a new so- 
ciety shall be formed after the war on a basis 
similar to that of the Société Internationale de 
Chirurgie. It will be called the Société In- 
teralliée de Chirurgie, but will be open also to 
such surgeons of neutral countries as may be 
nominated for election by the general com- 
mittee. : 

A NEw journal of neurology and psychiatry 
in German, French and Italian has recently 
appeared under the direction of C. Von Mona- 
kow, professor of neurology in the University 
of Zurich, with the collaboration of all the 
well known Swiss neurologists and psychia- 
trists. The assistant editors in neurology are 
Dr. Bing (Basel), Dr. Minkowski (Zurich), 
and Dr. Naville (Geneva) ; in psychiatry, Pro- 
fessor Dr. Weber (Geneva) and Professor Dr. 
Maier (Zurich). 

Dr. F. W. Cuiarke, chairman of the Interna- 
tional Committee on Atomic Weights, writes 
in the Journal of the American Chemical So- 
ciety that on account of the difficulties of 
correspondence between its members, due to 
the war, the International Committee on 
Atomic Weights has decided to make no full 
report for 1918. Although a good number of 
new determinations have been published dur- 
ing the past year, none of them seems to de- 
mand any immediate change in the table for 
1917. That table, therefore, may stand as 
official during the year 1918. 

Tue Science Club of the University of Ore- 
gon recently elected the following officers for 
the ensuing year: President, Dr. W. D. Smith, 
of the department of geology; Secretary, Dr. 
C. H. Edmondson, of the department of zool- 
ogy. The following program has been arranged 
for the year: 

November.—‘ ‘Symposium on research,’’ 
fessor O. F. Stafford, chairman. 


Pro- 


DrcemBer 28, 1917] 


December.—‘‘Some research among northwest 
Indians,’’ Mr. Frank Hall, curator, Washington 
State Museum, University of Washington. 

January.—‘‘ The relation of physical to mental 
growth,’’ Dr. B. W. DeBusk. 

February.—‘‘Thermo-electrie properties of al- 
loys,’’? Dr. A. E. Caswell. 

March.—‘ ‘Investigations relating to the conser- 
vation and utilization of our fish resources,’’ Pro- 
fessor H. B. Torrey, Reed College. 


April—‘A rational map of Europe,’’ Dr. 
Rebee. 
May.—‘‘ Biologie investigations in southern 


California,’’ Mr. Shelton. 


THE chief signal officer requests that help 
be given to the Signal Corps of the army to 
obtain lenses enough for cameras for the fleet 
of observation airplanes now being built. The 
need is immediate and of great importance; 
the airplanes are the eyes of the army and 
the camera lenses are the pupils of those eyes. 
German lenses can no longer be bought in the 
open market. England met this difficulty in 
the earlier stages of the war by requiring lens 
owners to register lenses and requisitioning 
those needed. The Bureau of Standards of 
the United States Department of Commerce 
is now perfecting a substitute for the German 
“crown barium” glass used for lenses and 
will later be able to meet the needs, and 
special lenses are being designed for this work. 
The situation now, however, is that, with air- 
planes soon to be ready for service, suitable 
lenses can not be bought. Hundreds are 
needed at once. Possessors of the required 
types are urged to enlist their lenses in the 
army. They are asked immediately.to notify 
the photographie division of the Signal Corps, 
United States Army, Mills Building Annex, 
Washington, D. C., of lenses of the following 
descriptions which they are willing to sell, 
stating price asked: Tessar anastigmat lenses, 
made by Carl Zeiss, Jena, of a working aper- 
ture of F. 3.5 or F. 4.5 from 83 to 20 inches 
focal length. Bausch & Lomb Zeiss tessars, 
F. 4.5, from 83 to 20 inches focal length. 
Voigtlander Heliar anastigmat lenses, F. 4.5, 
83 to 20 inches focal length. 

SroreTary Lang, of the department of the 
interior, on August 16, formally authorized the 


. SCIENCE 


637 


establishment of a new mining experiment sta- 
tion under the jurisdiction of the school of 
mines at the University of Minnesota. Min- 
nesota is one of two institutions to be so desig- 
nated. The other bureau was established at 
Columbus, Ohio, the recognized center of the 
elay-working industries of the United States. 
In recommending the University of Minne- 
sota to Secretary Lane for the site of one of 
the proposed stations, Director Manning, of 
the bureau, said that at the present rate of pro- 
duction the high grade ores of Minnesota will 
become almost exhausted the next thirty years 
and it will be the duty of the bureau to en- 
deavor to show the way to utilize the huge de- 
posits of low-grade ores if the industry is to 
continue to prosper. The station is to work 
in a cooperative way with the University of 
Minnesota, an agreement to that effect having 
been signed by both parties. 

Durine the past summer, Professor C. H. 
Edmondson, of the department of zoology of 
the University of Oregon, has been conducting 
a survey of the shellfish resources of the north- 
west coast, under the direction of the U. S. 
Bureau of Fisheries. The survey is a part of 
the general conservation of food campaign 
undertaken by the federal government. In the 
course of the work the coast of Oregon has 
been traversed from about five miles south of 
Bandon to the mouth of the Columbia River 
and the Washington coast north to Gray’s 
Harbor. All the important bays and inlets 
were visited and the species and relative abun- 
dance of the edible clams noted. The purpose 
of the survey, however, is not merely to de- 
termine the location of the edible shellfish, but 
to aid in all possible ways the increase of this 
type of food supply and to encourage the 
general public to make greater use of clams 
and mussels as a partial substitute for the 
higher priced meats. Few realize the abun- 
dance of food represented by the immense 
quantities of shellfish distributed along this 
coast or how cheaply edible clams may be 
obtained from the towns of Marshfield, Flor- 
ence, Newport or Tillamook. In view of the 
fact that little is known of the life history of 
any of these shellfish of our coast, Professor 


638 


Edmondson has initiated experimental work at 
Florence, Newport and Tillamook for the pur- 
pose of determining the rapidity of growth, 
the age, the spawning season and the condi- 
tions under which certain of the edible clams 
best thrive. These experiments will be carried 
on throughout the year or until satisfactory 
results are obtained. 


A QUESTIONNAIRE was recently circulated 
among the members of the Chartered Institute 
of Secretaries of Great Britain for the pur- 
pose of obtaining opinions in regard to the 
adoption of a decimal system of coinage in 
the United Kingdom, and the substitution of 
the metric system for the existing United 
Kingdom weights and measures. Of the re- 
plies received 85 per cent. considered that a 
change to a decimal system of coinage would 
be favorable to the business in which they 
were engaged, and 66 per cent. favored a £1 
basis of coinage in preference to the “ Im- 
perial Crown” or dollar basis. In regard to 
weights and measures, 86 per cent. favored a 
change to the metric system, 53 per cent. of 
whom already used that system in their busi- 
ness. One member expressed the opinion that 
a strong commission of able men should be 
asked to’ decide whether the continental sys- 
tem, which was forced upon countries at a 
time when violence, rather than reason, pre- 
vailed, had been really satisfactory. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
NEWS 

In honor to Andrew S. Hallidie, inventor 
of the use of the cable railway for passenger 
traffic in cities, who was a regent of the Uni- 
versity of California from 1878 to 1900, the 
regents of the university have given the name 
“ Hallidie Building” to a building which they 
are now erecting in San Francisco as an in- 
vestment of University endowment funds. 


W. J. Spituman, chief of the office of farm 
management, U. S. Department of Agricul- 
ture, has accepted the deanship of the newly 
created college of agriculture at the State 
College of Washington. He will take up his 
new duties April 1, 1918, after he has com- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


pleted a survey of the farm labor situation in 
the United States, upon which he is engaged 
as an emergency war measure. 


A DEPARTMENT of plant pathology has been 
created by the regents of the State College of 
Washington, Dr. F. D. Heald, formerly pro- 
fessor of plant pathology, has been made head. 


Proressor F. L. WasHBurn of the Univer- 
sity of Minnesota has been relieved of his 
present position in the Agricultural College 
and station and as state entomologist, and has 
been given the title of professor of economic 
vertebrate zoology, to take effect on Febru- 
ary 5. 

Dr. A. L. Tatum, professor of pharmacol- 
ogy in the University of South Dakota, has 
been appointed assistant professor of pharma- 
ology and physiology in the University of 
Chicago. 

Mr. Roy Ricuarp DEeNstow, assistant tutor 
in the department of chemistry, College of 
the City of New York, has been appointed in- 
structor in Smith College. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
THE PITTSBURGH MEETING OF THE AMERI- 
CAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE- 
MENT OF SCIENCE 


[The following letter was delayed in the 
mails and reached ScrENcE just too late for 
publication in the last number. ] 

To THe MemBers OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIA- 
TION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE: 
Wuen the American Association for the 

Advancement of Science and all similar so- 

cieties planned their winter meetings, the 

present situation could not have been fore- 
seen. We had not even entered the war, and 

did not dream of a congestion of transporta- 

tion such as now exists. When the present 

situation had developed, it was (in the opin- 
ion of a majority of the committee having 
power) too late to postpone our meeting. 

Transportation is now so greatly overtaxed 
that necessaries of life can barely be carried; 
the railways should be spared every extra 
burden. Great simultaneous pilgrimages on 
important trunk lines are especially to be 
avoided, since they demand extra trains, need- 


DECEMBER 28, 1917] 


ing extra locomotives and coal, and causing 
much confusion. Therefore, in my opinion it 
behooves every patriotic and unselfish mem- 
ber ‘to consider very seriously whether he can 
really serve his country by attending the 
meeting, or whether he can not better serve 
in this fateful time by staying at home, espe- 
cially during a period of highly congested 
travel, when many of our soldiers may wish 
to take leave of their families before departing 
for the front. I believe that only those persons 
bringing really important contributions to 
the problems of the war should attend such 
meetings now. All others, in my opinion, 
should conserve their money for Liberty 
bonds and for those in distress, and should 
save their strength for action in this time of 
extraordinary crisis. For these reasons, with 
great regret, I have decided not to attend the 
meeting at Pittsburgh. 

So far as I have been able to ascertain, all 
the responsible authorities at Washington 
concerned with transportation agree with me 
as to the importance of avoiding unnecessary 
journeys in such a crisis. 

The very great usefulness of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science 
is not dependent upon the unbroken continuity 
of its social meetings. 

Science is inealculably important, indeed 
indispensable, in this world-wide cataclysm. 
The excellent work of the association in the 
past is now bearing fruit; but this moment 
demands action rather than general discussion. 
We must devote all our energies to winning 
the war. Let us all make every endeavor to 
apply our knowledge and strength in our 
country’s noble cause. 

TueroporeE W. RicHarps 

CAMBRIDGE, MASss., 

December 15, 1917 


THE BEARING OF THE FACTS REVEALED BY 
ANTARCTIC RESEARCH UPON THE PROB- 
LEMS OF THE ICE AGE? 


Recent Antarctic explorations and _ re- 
searches have yielded significant evidence re- 
1 This term as used by the writer refers to the 


Great Ice Age of Pleistocene Time. He holds that 
the occurrences of ice as a geologic agent of mag- 


SCIENCE 


639 


garding the problems of the Ice Age, and, of 
the similarity of the succession of geological 
climates in polar with those in other lati- 
tudes.? 

These researches have been prosecuted to 
the ultimate limit of courage, devotion to duty 
and enduranece—the noble sacrifice of lfe— 
as in the cases of Captain Scott, R.N., and 
his devoted companions and members of the 
expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton. 

The data secured by these expeditions are 
alone sufficient to establish the following 
premises : 

1. That Antarctic ice, although covering 
areas several times larger than all other ice 
covered areas, is slowly decreasing in extent 
and depth. 

2. That the same succession of geological 
climates have prevailed in Antarctic as in 
other latitudes.® 

So vital are these evidences of the retreat 
of Antarctic ice that it may be well to briefly 
quote or refer to the most prominent in- 
stances: 


All these evidences and many others which 
space will not allow me to mention lead up to 
one great fact—namely, that the glaciation of the 
Antarctie regions is receding.t 

The ice is everywhere retreating.5 

The high level morains decrease in height above 
the present surface of the ice, the débris being 
two thousand feet up near the coast and only two 
hundred feet above near the plateau. 

(Scott’s lecture on the great ice barrier.*) 


nitude during eras preceding the Pleistocene were 
not ‘‘world wide’’ nor as ‘‘phenomenal,’’ nor were 
they preceded, accompanied nor followed by con- 
ditions as significant as corresponding phenomena 
of the Ice Age. (Compte Renda du XI ieme Con- 
grés Géologique International, p. 1105. Stock- 
holm, 1910.) 

2“‘Seott’s Last Expedition,’’ Vol. II., p. 206. 

3 This part of the evidence is not considered in 
this paper except inferentially as bearing upon 
the general subject. 

4Scott, ‘‘The Voyage of the Discovery,’’ Vol. 
II., page 416. See also pp. 423-24-25, and sketch 
map of ice distribution, p. 448. 

5 Scott, ‘‘National Antarctic Expedition, 1900- 
1904,’’ Vol. I., p. 94. 

6 “¢Secott’s Last Expedition,’’ Vol. II., p. 294. 


640 


This observation applies to an ice-covered 
area of over 116,000 square miles. 

Mr. Griffith Taylor notes the recession of 
Dry Valley Glacier twenty miles from the sea 
below Taylor Glacier.? 

Mr. Taylor also notes and speaks with con- 
fidence of the passage of the Ice Age from 
Antarctica.8 

In speaking of the evidence of ice retreat 
over Antarctic areas explored by him, Sir 
Ernest Shackleton said: 

Some time in the future these lands will be of 
use to humanity.9 

This impressive and conclusive evidence is 
corroborated by the greater and still more im- 
pressive evidences of the comparatively recent 
uncovering of temperate land areas,?° and the 
progressive retreat of the snow line to higher 
elevations in temperate and tropical latitudes 
and towards the poles at sea level, being far 
greater in Arctic than in Antarctic regions. 
We are therefore confronted with the con- 
clusions: 

1. That the disappearance of the Ice Age is 
an active present process and must be ac- 
counted for by activities and energies now at 
work, and that the use of assumptions and 
hypotheses is not permissible; 

2. That the rates and lines of retreat are 
and have been determined by exposure to 
solar energy and the temperatures established 
thereby; and by the difference in the specific 
heat of the land and water hemispheres; 

3. That the lines of the disappearance of 
ice are not conformable with those of its dep- 
osition, and mark a distinctly different ex- 


7Ib., p. 286. 

81b., p. 288. 
286 and p. 292. 

® Address to the Commonwealth Club, San Fran- 
cisco, Calif., November 7, 1916. 

10 Slight fluctuations in the retreat of the small 
residual glaciers in temperate latitudes are noted 
in the reports of the Commission on Glaciers 
of the International Geological Congress by 
Professor Harry Fielding Reid. But the great 
measures of the progressiveness of glacial retreat 
are in the past disappearance of the Pleistocene 
ice fields of temperate latitudes and the present 
retreat in the Antarctic and Arctic regions. 


See also photograph following p. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


posure and climatic control from that which 
prevailed prior to the culmination of the Ice 
Age. 

4. This retreat also marks a rise in mean 
surface temperature along these new lines, 
manifestly due to recently inaugurated ex- 
posure to solar radiation and also the inaugu- 
ration of the trapping of heat derived from 
such exposure; which process is cumulative 
and has a maximum not yet reached. 

The researches under the direction of Cap- 
tain Seott and Sir Ernest Shackleton have 
therefore very rigidly conditioned any inquiry 
as to the causes of glacial accumulation and 
retreat. These conditions are CORRECTIVE and 
DIRECTIVE—corrective, in that they have en- 
tirely removed any doubts as to the alternate 
glaciation of the poles under the alternate 
occurrence of aphelion and perihelion polar 
winters by the precession of the equinoxes, as 
advanced by Croll; directive, in that they 
have imposed an appeal to energies now active 
as causes of retreat, and divested the problem 
of resorts to the fascinating but dangerous 
uses of suppositions and hypotheses. 

They have, moreover, pointed out with un- 
erring accuracy the vital conclusion that the 
same energies which have but recently con- 
verted the glacial lake beds of Canada into 
the most productive grain fields of the world 
will in time convert the tundras of to-day 
into the grain fields of to-morrow.14 

The bearing of this conclusion upon the 
ultimate development of the human race is 
so far-reaching in its consequences that the 
great sacrifice of life attendant upon the 
prosecution of these researches stands forever 
as a memorial in the correction of the erro- 
neous and wide spread conception that the 
earth is in a period of refrigeration, desic- 
cation and decay; and establishes the con- 
clusion that it is in the spring time of a new 
climatie control during which the areas fitted 
for man’s uses are being extended and that 
the moss of polar wastes will be replaced by 
rye and wheat. Marspen Manson 

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 

11 See also Compte Rendi du XIiéme Congres 
Géologique International, p. 1102. Stockholm, 
1910. 


DECEMBER 28, 1917] 


EFFICIENT LABORATORY LIGHTING 

SEVERAL notes have appeared in Science the 
past few years relative to the development of 
glass through which a proper spectroscopic cor- 
rection could be secured for microscopic pur- 
poses. There are also on the market various 
microscope lamps designed to furnish a cor- 
rected artificial light for laboratory study. 

These devices, though very satisfactory for 
small advanced classes, are in many ways un- 
desirable for large classes of elementary stu- 
dents, and sitting, as they usually do, on the 
laboratory table, are more or less subject to 
breakage when used by large numbers of stu- 
dents. 

The dark winter days during a part of the 
school year made it imperative that the large 
classes in agricultural botany at Oregon Agri- 
cultural College be provided with a light which 
would yield relative daylight values with tem- 
porary mounts and stained prepared sections. 
This has been attained most efficiently by the 
use of the General Electric Company’s Ivanhoe 
Truetint Unit No. 748, known as the “ Noon 
Sunlight” grade. This is a large, apparently 
blue shade, designed to cover the high-power 
nitrogen-filled Mazda lamp. Experience has 
shown that one of these units suspended two 
feet above the laboratory table and equipped 
with a one-hundred-watt bulb gives a superior 
light for four students. In this way, forty 
students at one time are being handled with 
ease on dark days, the illumination being 
ample even for the high-power dry or the oil 
immersion objectives. 

The cost of the entire installation is ap- 
proximately the same for four men as that of 
the usual microscope lamp designed for one 
person. To secure a fixture which would be 
near the table without obstructing it for 
laboratory work, the shade holders were sus- 
pended by nickel chains from the ceiling over 
the center of each table. The lack of rigidity 
of the fixture thus equipped is of special ad- 
vantage in the elimination of breakage. 


W. M. Atrwoop 
Dept. oF BOTANY AND PLANT PATHOLOGY, 
OREGON AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 


SCIENCE 


641 


SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
The Elements of the Science of Nutrition. 

Third Edition. By Granam Lusk. Phila- 

delphia, W. B. Saunders Co., 1917. Pp. 641. 

It is sometimes said that the sciences and 
the fine arts are international in the broadest 
sense of the word; they do not recognize na- 
tional boundaries or racial limitations. Ney- 
ertheless a nation may well be concerned about 
the accomplishments of its citizens in the pur- 
suit of knowledge. “Knowledge once won,” 
Gowland Hopkins has recently written in a 
commendable essay on medicine and experi- 
mental science, “is of no country; it is the 
common guerdon of mankind; but he who 
cares nothing as to where it grows seems to 
lack an element of patriotism.” 

From this standpoint American science 
need not be dissatisfied with the contributions 
which the workers in this country have made 
to the study of nutrition in the past decade. 
Lusk’s “Science of Nutrition,” which has 
established itself as a stimulating and com- 
prehensive text-book, discloses the names of 
more than one hundred American investigators 
whose labors have helped, probably in larger 
measure than those of any other country, to 
bring new facts and permit new viewpoints in 
nutrition during the interval that has elapsed 
since the earlier (1909) edition of the book. 
Its size has been expanded from 400 to 600 
pages not by the mere accretion of incidental 
observations but by the addition of carefully 
considered novelties which the later develop- 
Ment seems to warrant as worthy of consid- 
eration. 

The style and mode of treatment of the 
problems of nutrition remain essentially un- 
changed in the new edition. The historical 
method has been followed in a way that can 
not fail to interest those who are more fa- 
miliar with the subject-matter, and that ought 
to enthuse the beginner. There is something 
almost inspiring in following the story from 
its beginnings in the days of Lavoisier down 
to the ingenious contrivances for respiration 
study and calorimetry so highly developed in 
the university laboratories and research in- 


642 


stitutes of the United States. A special new 
chapter is devoted to some of this modern 
technique that has furnished such helpful 
measurements of the basal metabolism of man 
and the domestic animals. 

The novelties must be sought on every page; 
for the new edition is not an expedient of 
bookmaking but a record of progress. Among 


the major accessions are elaborate discussions 


of the possible processes of intermediary meta- 
bolism. To those who learned their physiology 
with a former generation the newer chemical 
language may seem almost incomprehensible. 
But Lusk properly remarks (p. 175): “One 
must know the life history of sixteen amino- 
acids in order to be familiar with the meta- 
bolism of protein. Though the extension of 
knowledge may have been at the cost of 
simplicity, yet order is being wrought out of 
apparent complexity. It is often difficult for 
an older generation to think in terms of the 
knowledge of a new. The author’s father was 
a student at Heidelberg at the time when the 
modern chemical formule were introduced, 
when H—O became H,O, and he recalled the 
distracted exclamation of one of the univer- 
sity professors, ‘Ach Gott! wie kann man so 
lernen!’” 

A new chapter on The Nutritive Value of 
Various Materials used as Foods develops the 
history of the latest standpoints which are 
threatening to upset so many of the currently 
taught doctrines. “It is evident from the 
material presented in this chapter,’ Lusk 
writes (p. 878), “that the science of nutrition 

- includes something more than the production 
of energy from fat, carbohydrate and protein. 
There must be certain salts and certain quali- 
ties of protein in the diet, and there must be 
minute amounts of ‘vitamins.’ The chemical 
composition of the latter will some day be 
known, even as the chemical composition of 
epinephrin is known. -Epinephrin, an essen- 
tial of life, is present in the blood to the ex- 
tent of 1 part in 100,000,000. In like manner, 
vitamins which are present in meat, milk, 
fresh green vegetables and grains are essential 
to the harmonious correlation of the nutritive 
functions of animals. 


SCIENCE 


[N. S. Von. XLVI. No. 1200 


Nephritis, cardiac disease and other condi- 
tions involving acidosis are also considered in 
their relation to metabolism. A highly inter- 
esting and exceptionally timely chapter on 
Food Economies concludes the volumes. A 
few brief excerpts will suffice to indicate some 
of the attitudes of the author.. After urging 
the sale of food by calories and not by pounds 
Lusk adds (p. 569): “ The main objection that 
has been encountered to the sale of food on 
the calorie basis has been the sensitiveness of 
the business world to the introduction of a 
new and unknown quantity. Why not leave 
well enough alone? A more highly educated 
generation will, however, demand that its ex- 
penditure of thousands of millions of dollars 
for food shall not continue to take place in 
unfathomable depths of darkness.” Again (p. 
571): “The housewife should know about 
cooking, and both she and her husband should 
know something of the value of food. The 
sum wasted for alcoholic beverages would fre- 
quently be sufficient to turn the scale in favor 
of the proper nutrition of the family. Cheaper 
milk for the babies of the poor and adequate 
nourishment for school children are important 
factors in the situation. . : . As this book goes 
to press it seems that America herself is cer- 
tain to face a food shortage before very long. 
This can be remedied by increasing the num- 
ber of milch cows and by reducing the live- 
stock raised for meat. The latter would free 
arable land for the production of grain and 
potatoes and save, for human consumption, 
grain fed to steers. It is quite certain that 
meat in the quantity it is consumed to-day is 
entirely unnecessary, and it is susceptible of 
scientific proof that mechanical work is more 
efficiently and economically derived from car- 
bohydrate food than from meat.” 

When the author expresses his conviction 
that “in another decade the development of 
scientific knowledge will probably permit the 
formulation of the subject from the stand- 
point of physical chemistry” the reviewer is 
less sanguine regarding the complete domi- 
nance of a single mode of attacking the prob- 
lems of nutrition. Against the author’s pub- 
lished statement that he has no intention of 


DECEMBER 28, 1917] 


again revising his book, protests are already 
being heard even from across the Atlantic. 
Success entails responsibilities. 


Larayerte B. MENDEL 
SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, 
YALE UNIVERSITY, 
Nrw HavEN, CONN. 


Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, 
University of Michigan. Nos. 1-85, 1913- 
17 (each separately paged). Ann Arbor, 
published by the University. 

Dr. A. G. Ruthven, the Director of the 
Museum of Zoology of the University of Mich- 
igan, is heartily to be congratulated upon the 
appearance of the first volumes of these “ Oc- 
easional Papers.” Nowadays when every one 
is continually receiving requests to subscribe 
to some new journal or other, this series 
comes as a refreshing delight; it is not pub- 
lished for sale! We learn that the papers are 
issued separately to libraries and specialists, 
and, when sufficient matter has accumulated, 
a title page and an index—an excellent index 
by the way—is prepared and the volume is 
sent forth. 

The contents will appeal especially to the 
modernized systematist, who tries, at any rate, 
to take interest in ecology, zoography and the 
careful noting of life histories. We find 
notices not only of such astonishing novelties 
as Lathrogecko, Pseudogonatodes and Callis- 
cincopus among reptiles, and of Crypto- 
brachus and Geobatrachus among amphibia, 
but of more general interest are the very in- 
teresting observations upon the egg-laying 
and hatching of several South American spe- 
cies of amphibia, of varied genera, in all of 
which some significant and peculiar adaptation 
or modification is recorded. The series is not, 
however, for the herpetologist alone. Reig- 
hard and Cummins have a model description 
of a new Ichthyomyzon with notes and fig- 
ures of its appearance and customs. Other 
writers discuss crustacea, insects of various 
groups, trematodes, as well as birds and mam- 
mals. 

That these articles were not chosen for the 
collection but simply represent the natural 


SCIENCE 


643 


output for this comparatively new and hitherto 
little-known museum indeed augurs happily 
for the future of the series and for that of the 
museum as well. Workers in the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology at Harvard are perhaps 
naturally more sympatico than others and 
when they review their own museum’s past it 
is not difficult for them to foresee the swift 
growth of another great university museum 
of similarly unrestricted interest and endeavor 
at Ann Arbor. 
T. Barpour 


SPECIAL ARTICLES 


CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF THE AGE OF 
AN ORGANISM IN MAINTAINING ITS 
ACID-BASE EQUILIBRIUM 


THE importance of the maintenance on the 
part of the blood and tissue juices of a hy- 
drogen ion concentration within certain nar- 
row limits of variation has been established 
through the work of J. S. Haldane and L. J. 
Henderson. Recent investigations have not 
only served to emphasize the importance that 
the organism should maintain a certain acid- 
base equilibrium for its physiological life, but 
have also shown that when the mechanism 
which regulates this equilibrium is interfered 
with so that the hydrogen ion concentration 
of the blood is increased and maintained for 
an adequate time, the organism no longer 
functionates normally, but becomes patholog- 
ical in certain of its reactions. 

It is not the object of this note to enter into 
a discussion of the factors concerned in main- 
taining a normal acid-base equilibrium, nor 
to discuss those pathological conditions in 
which a variation from the normal is fre- 
quently observed. The object is to call atten- 
tion to the influence of the age of the organ- 
ism in controlling the mechanism by which 
the acid-base equilibrium is kept within the 
bounds of normality. 

Some years ago, while conducting a series 
of experiments in which uranium nitrate was 
employed as the toxic agent to induce an 
acute nephritis, the observation was made that 
this substance was more toxic for old animals 


than for young animals.t This variation in 
1 MacNider, W. deB., ‘‘On the Difference in the 


644 


degree of toxicity was expressed by the older 
animals becoming both albuminurie and gly- 
cosuric at an earlier period following the use 
of uranium than was the case with the young 
animals. Furthermore, the quantitative out- 
put in the urine of both albumin and glucose 
was greater in the old animals than in the 
young animals. When the kidneys of these 
animals were studied histologically there was 
found to exist more evidence of kidney injury 
in the organs from old animals than in those 
from young animals... In so far as the kidney 
was concerned in the reaction, uranium was 
more toxic in an old animal than in a young 
animal. 

In a later series of experiments? in which 
the age of the animals was taken into account, 
animals following an intoxication by uranium 
gave evidence of developing an acid intoxica- 
tion much earlier than did the younger ani- 
mals. The experiments also demonstrated 
that the acid intoxication in the older animals 
was of a severer degree than in the young ani- 
mals. The evidence for the development of an 
acid intoxication in these animals of different 
ages consisted in noting the time of appear- 
ance and quantitative output in the urine of 
acetone bodies, and in determining the rela- 
tive degree of tolerance for an alkali by the 
two groups of animals. The old animals 
showed an earlier appearance in the urine of 
acetone bodies, a greater quantitative output 
of these bodies, and a greater tolerance for an 
alkali than did the younger animals. 

In these experiments it was furthermore 


shown, that by the intravenous use of an alkali ° 


in a young animal the kidney could be success- 
fully protected against the toxic effect of an 
anesthetic while in the older animals the diffi- 
culty of furnishing this protection increased 
with the age of the animal. 


Response of Animals of Different Ages to a Con- 
stant Quantity of Uranium Nitrate,’’ Proc. Soc. 
Exp. Biol. and Med., Vol. XI., 159, 1914. 

2MacNider, W. deB., ‘‘The Inhibition of the 
Toxicity of Uranium Nitrate by Sodium Carbon- 
ate, and the Protection of the Kidney Acutely 
Nephropathie from Uranium from the Toxie Ac- 
tion of an Anesthetic by Sodium Carbonate,’’ 
Jour. Exp. Med., Vol. XXIII., 171, 1916. 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


In a recent study? of the relative toxicity 
of uranium nitrate in animals of different 
ages, the observation has been made that the 
old animals not only show a severer grade of 
acid intoxication as indicated by the appear- 
ance of acetone bodies in the urine than do 
the younger animals, but these old animals 
also show a more marked increase in the hy- 
drogen ion concentration of the blood, which is 
associated with a more rapid depletion of the 
alkali reserve of the blood and a greater re- 
duction in the tension of alveolar air carbon 
dioxide. Associated with this change in the 
acid-base equilibrium of the blood there de- 
velops a kidney injury which is histologically 
more marked in the old animals than in the 
young animals. 

In a final series of experiments‘ it has been 
found possible to maintain in some measure 
the functional capacity of the kidney and the 
response of this organ to various diuretic sub- 
stances by employing a solution of sodium 
carbonate to restore the alkali reserve of the 
blood and maintain an acid-base equilibrium 
of the blood which approaches in degree the 
reaction of normality. The ease with which 
the acid-base equilibrium of the blood can be 
restored and maintained in an animal intoxi- 
eated by uranium, and the degree of protection 
which is furnished the kidney is dependent 
upon the animal’s age. The acid-base equi- 
librium is more easily restored and can be 
maintained for a longer time in a young ani- 
mal than in an old animal. The protection of 
the animal against the toxic effect of uranium 
is more perfect in a young animal than in an 
old animal. 

From the experiments which have been 
cited it would appear that there is a definite 
association between the toxic effect of uranium 
and its ability to induce an acid intoxication 


3 MacNider, W. deB., ‘‘A Consideration of the 
Relative Toxicity of Uranium Nitrate for Animals 
of Different Ages,’’ I., Jour. Exp. Med., Vol. 
XXIV., p. 1, 1917. 

4 MacNider, W. deB., ‘‘The Efficiency of Vari- 
ous Diuretics in the Acutely Nephropathie Kidney, 
Protected and Unprotected by Sodium Carbonate,’’ 
Jour. Exp. Med., Vol. XXIV., 19, 1917. 


DECEMBER 28, 1917] 


and that the age of the animal very largely 
determines the rapidity of development and 
the severity of this intoxication. 

When animals of different ages are intoxi- 
cated by this metal the factor of the age of the 
organism in the reaction is expressed by an 
inability of the senile animal to maintain 
with the same degree of perfection a normal 
acid-base equilibrium as is the case with the 
younger animal. Wm. vEB. MacNiprr 

THE LABORATORY OF PHARMACOLOGY, 

THE UNIversity or Norta CAROLINA 


BOSTON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY. V 

On the mechanism of the potassiwm chlorate- 
manganese dioxide reaction: RAYMOND F. Bacon 
and R. W. Miter. As the result of their experi- 
mental investigation of the mechanism of the so- 
called potassium chlorate-manganese dioxide reac- 
tion, the authors conclude that: (1) Avoiding local 
heating, potassium chlorate and manganese dioxide 
begin to react at 255° C. The most vigorous reac- 
tion oceurs at 310° C. (2) The potassium chlorate 
oxidizes the manganese dioxide at the lower tem- 
perature to form a higher unstable oxide, which 
is decomposed later into manganese dioxide. It is 
impossible to isolate this intermediate oxide on 
account of the great velocity of the reaction. (3) 
This initial oxidation generates heat, and this, 
coupled with the heat applied, causes the reaction 
to go, with a very rapid rise in temperature. This 
high temperature causes certain secondary reac- 
tions to oceur. (4) The first of these seconaary 
reactions between the potassium chlorate and 
manganese dioxide results in the formation of 
manganous chlorate, which decomposes into man- 
ganous chloride, chlorine and oxygen. The man- 
ganous chloride is partially oxidized to manganese 
dioxide and chlorine. Potassium oxide reacts 
with manganese dioxide, in the presence of oxygen, 
to form potassium manganate, which is changed 
by some of the chlorine to potassium permanga- 
nate, The excess of chlorine escapes. Of the po- 
tassium chlorate used, only 0.503 per cent. enters 
into tlrese changes. (5) An average of 5.428 per 
cent. of manganese dioxide is used up in this re- 
action. Almost all of this loss is accounted for 
from the soluble manganese compounds produced 
in the secondary reactions. (6) The manganese 
dioxide serves as an interacting catalyst in this 
reaction, hastening the speed of the change by 
actually reacting with the potassium chlorate, to 


SCIENCE 


645 


form an intermediate oxide, which sets free the 
manganese dioxide again before the conclusion of 
the reaction. 


The measurement of the compressibilities of 
solids under hydrostatic pressure up to 12,000 
megabars: Lrason H. Apams and ErsKINE D. 
WILLIAMSON. The compressibilities of the follow- 
ing metals under hydrostatic pressures from two 
to twelve megabars have been measured by a com- 
parative method—silver, bismuth, copper, zine, 
brass, tin, cadmium, lead, gold, aluminium, tin- 
bismuth alloy. The results are accurate to about 
1 per cent. of their values. In the case of the 
more compressible metals an estimation of the 
falling off of the compressibilities at higher pres- 
sures is obtained. 


Compounds formed by the alkali oxides K.O and 
Na,O with the trioxides of alwminum and iron: 
Grorce W. Morey. A deseription of the prepara- 
tion and properties of some alkali aluminates and 
ferrites. 


Sulfuric acid as an acidimetric standard: Mars- 
TON LovELL HAMLIN and CHarLEs BLAKE CLouD. 
The preparation and use of 100 per cent. H.SO, 
for a primary acid: nitric standard is described, 
previous work is cited, comparison of results with 
standardizations by other methods is given. 


The production of ozone in the corona: F. O. 
ANDEREGG. One of the methods for the fixation of 
nitrogen is its ‘‘burning’’ in the electric are, the 
combination being due chiefly to the ions. The 
laws that govern the important relationships be- 
tween ionization and chemical action are still ob- 
secure. To simplify the problem the study with a 
single gas has been begun with the formation of 
ozone in the corona which is probably the simplest 
form of electrical discharge occurring at atmos- 
pherie pressure. Opposed to the ozonizing effect 
there is a deozonizing effect with a resulting equi- 
librium, 


Some properties of the oxides of lead: L. H. 
Apams and H. E. Merwin. The oxides PbO and 
Pb,O, were prepared in well crystallized form and 
their densities and optical properties determined. 
The monoxide exists in two polymorphic modifica- 
tions having an enantiotropie inversion point at 
about 570°. Some interesting effects of pressure 
on -erystals of the yellow form of PbO are de- 
seribed. 


A new illuminator for microscopes: ALEXANDER 
SILVERMAN. The illuminator consists of a small 
circular tube lamp surrounding the objective, and 


646 


operated by a six-volt storage cell. It may be 
lowered into a hollow object, the lamp being at- 
tached to the microscope tube and moving with 
it. Especially convenient for the study of enam- 
els, alloys, opaque objects and substances con- 
tained in opaque vessels. A model will be ex- 
hibited in operation. 


The qualitative separation and detection of gal- 
lium: PuHintie EH. Brownine and Lyman E. 
Porter. A study of the occurrence of the element 
shows it to be most closely associated with Pb, Al, 
Fe, Mn, Zn and In. Analytically it falls into the 
Al group, its hydroxide being precipitated by 
NH,OH in the presence of NH,Cl and being sol- 
uble in an excess of NaOH. The chief analytical 
problem is its separation from Al and two methods 
are studied, both of which give satisfactory re- 
sults. First, the method of de Bois Vaudran, pre- 
cipitating Ge,(FeC,N.), by K,FeC,N, in the pres- 
ence of strong HCl to about one third the volume 
of the liquid. Second, saturating a solution with 
HClga in the presence of ether, which throws out 
the AlCl; and keeps the Ga in solution. 


The qualitative detection of germanium and its 
separation from arsenic; PHILIP E. BRowNING 
and SEWELL E. Scorr. A study of the occurrence 
of the element shows it to be most closely associ- 
ated with Ag, Pb, Hg, Cd, As, Sn, Zn, Ti and Cb. 
It falls in the analytical group with As and Sn 
since its sulphide is soluble in (NH,).S. It is 
separated from Sn by treating the sulphides with 
(NH,).CO,, GeS, being soluble. From As it may 
be separated by treating a solution of the sulpho 
salts with ammonium acetate, acidifying with 
acetic acid and passing H.S. As.S, is precipi- 
tated and Ge remains in solution. The following 
modification of Buchanan’s method was devised 
for the separation and detection of Ge. The 
germanium material was dissolved in strong hydro- 
chlorie acid (5-10 em.*) in a test tube some 
KMn0O, added, to keep arsenic if present in the 
higher condition of oxidation and distilled into 
another test tube kept cool in water. After dis- 
tilling about one half volume the Ge is found in 
the distillate by means of H.S. 


Silver anion: H. C. P. WEBER. It is customary to 
think of silver as a strictly monovalent element, 
which forms in solution a positive ion. When a 
solution of a silver salt is electrolyzed at high 
current density a black deposit is formed at the 
anode which has been variously described as silver 
peroxide and as silver peroxynitrate, the formulas 
ascribed varying but tending to indicate the pres- 


SCIENCE 


[N. 8. Vou. XLVI. No. 1200 


ence of trivalent silver. It is now shown that in 
this compound we have silver which in transference 
experiments acts as an anion, probably trivalent, 
a very unstable and intensely active oxidizing 
agent. It is not derived from hydrogen peroxide 
but rather of the permanganate type. The com- 
pound is of great interest in connection with the 
valence of silver in particular, and valence in 
general. 


The fixation of nitrogen with the silent electric 
discharge: FARRINGTON DANIELS and OLIVER R. 
Wutr. The oxidation of nitrogen by the silent or 
cold electric discharge has been proved. No 
energy is lost as heat, and under the proper con- 
ditions nitrogen pentoxide instead of nitrogen 
peroxide is formed. This should simplify the ab- 
sorption towers. Pressure favors this reaction 
but not the reaction which gives nitrie oxide. 
Practical applications have failed because the re- 
action is too slow. A search for a catalyzer was 
unsuccessful. Experiments with various types of 
discharge chambers look hopeful. 


The displacement of nitric by carbonic acid in 
silver nitrate solutions and the relation of this re- 
action to the inclusion error in the silver voltam- 
eter: A. 8S. McDanien and H. D. Hinexine. It 
has been shown that carbon dioxide reacts slowly 
with silver nitrate in aqueous solution forming a 
carbonate of silver and liberating free nitric acid. 
Crystals of the carbonate have been isolated and 
identified. The nitric acid liberated has been 
estimated by titration with iod-eosin and its 
amount compared with the silver contained in the 
crystals of silver carbonate. The reaction is be- 
lieved to be as follows: 


Ag NO, + H,CO, = Ag HCO, + HNO. 


About one one-hundredth of one per cent. of the 
silver nitrate is converted to the carbonate. In 
the silver voltameter a clear solution of silver ni- 
trate which has been saturated with CO, gives a 
deposit about 0.4 per cent. too heavy. This effect 
was first shown by Rosa Vinal and McDaniel, but 
it was thought by them that the amount of CO, 
normally present in air has no appreciable effect 
upon the mass of deposit. In the present investi- 
gation a few direct measurements have been made 
of the effects produced by une to ten times the 
normal amounts of CO, present in the air and 
while the results are incomplete they indicate that 
the effect of the normal amount of CO, in the air 
is not negligible and indeed may be larger than 
the inclusion error in normal deposits. : 
(To be continued) 


SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS i 


An Important Contribution to the Literature of Science 


A Short History of Science 


BY 
W. T. SEDGWICK, H. W. TYLER, 
Professor of Biology Professor of Mathematics 


at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 


The history of science is as engrossing as the history of 
Greece and Rome and gives as sure an indication of the 
growth of civilization as does the history of philosophy, art, 
literature, or music. 


The literature of science has always been more or less 
technical both in the subject matter and the form of its presen- 
tation, and Professors Sedgwick and Tyler have rendered a 
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writing a history of the development of science from its re- 
motest period, through the romance of Mediaeval astrology 
and alchemy to the tremendous achievements of the last 
centuries. 


“A Short History of Science” is one of the first books 
of its kindin English and is the result of the authors’ many 
years of joint teaching of the subject. It is a book which 
will prove of the greatest value to Universities, Colleges, 
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to general reading and reference. 


With Appendices and Illustrations. Cloth, 8vo, $2.50 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 


i SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY 
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SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS iii 


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A ‘‘ Dodge Design ’’ Rheostat may be used on the voltage for which it is rated, with a load of 
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The above, and other types of ‘‘ Jagabi’’ Laboratory Rheostats, are illustrated and described in 
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SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
MEDICAL COLLEGE 
In the City of New York 


Holders of a Baccalaureate degree or Seniors 
who can present a degree before entering the 
Second Year, who also present the requisite 
courses in Chemistry, Physics, and Biology, 
are admitted from recognized Colleges or Scien- 
tific Schools. The Session opens on the last 
Wednesday in September. The first year is 


devoted to Anatomy, Chemistry, and Physiol- 
ogy and may be taken either in Ithaca or New 
York City. The last three years are chiefly 
Clinical and must be taken in New York City. 


For further information and catalogue address 


THE DEAN, CORNELL UNIVERSITY 


MEDICAL COLLEGE 
(Department 8.) 


First Ave. & 28th St. New York City 


Syracuse University College of Medicine 


: Two years of a recognized course in arts 
BAER) or in science in a registered college or 
Requirements School of Science, which must include 


German, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. 
Six and seven years’ combination courses 


are offered. 
i are spent in mastering by laboratory 
The First Two methods the sciences fundamental to 
Years clinical medicine. 
i is systematic and clinical and is devoted to 
The Third Year inoestias of the natural history of disease, 
Course to diagnosis and to therapeutics. In this 
year the systematic courses in Medicine, 
Surgery and Obstetrics are completed. 
The Fourth isclinical. Students spend the entire fore- 


noon throughout the year as clinical clerks 
in hospitals under careful supervision. The 
clinical clerk takes the history, makes the 
physical examination and the laboratory 
examinations, arrives at a diagnosis which 
he must defend, outlines the treatment 
under his instructor and obseryes and 
records the result. Incase of operation or 
of autopsy he follows the specimen and 
identifies its pathological nature. Two gen- 
eral hospitals, one of which is owned and 
controlled by the University, one special 
hospital and the municipal hospitals and 
laboratories are open to ourstudents, The 
afternoons are spent in the College Dispen- 
sary and in clinical work in medical and 
surgical specialties and in conferences. 


Year Course 


Summer School—A summer course in pathology covering 
a period of six weeks during June and July will be given in 
case there is a sufficient number of applicants. 


Address the Secretary of the College, 
307 Orange Street SYRACUSE, N. Y, 


Vv 
Washington University 
Medical School 


REQUIREMENTS FOR ADMISSION 


Candidates for entrance are required to have completed at 
least two full years of college work which must include English, 
German, and instruction with laboratory work in Physics, 
Chemistry and Biology. 


INSTRUCTION 


Instruction begins on the last Thursday in September and 
ends on the second Thursday in June, Clinical instruction is 
given in the Barnes Hospital and the St. Louis Children’s Hos- 
pital, affiliated with the medical school, the St. Louis Mullanphy 
Hospital, the St. Louis City Hospital, and in the dispensaries 
connected with these institutions. 


COURSES LEADING TO ACADEMIC 
DEGREES 


Students who have taken their premedical work in Wash- 
ington University, are eligible for the degree of B.S. upon the 
completion of the first two years of medical work. 


Students in Washington University may pursue study in 
the fundamental medical sciences leading to the degree of A.M. 
and Ph.D, 


TUITION 


The tuition fee for undergraduate medical students is $150 
per annum. 


The catalogue of the Medical School and other information 
may be obtained by application to the Dean. 


Euclid Avenue and Kingshighway St. Louis 


Tulane University of Louisiana 


COLLEGE OF MEDICINE 
(Established in 1834) 


School of Medicine— 


After January 1, 1918, all students entering the Fresh- 
man Class will be required to present credits for two 
years of college work, which must include Biology, 
Chemistry and Physics, with their laboratories, and one 
year in German or French. 


Graduate School of Medicine— 

A school for physicians desiring practical clinical oppor= 
tunities, review, laboratory technic or cadaveric work in 
surgery or gynecology. Excellent facilities offered in all 
special branches. 


& 
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, including 
Preventive Medicine— 
Systematic courses offered, leading to certificates in 
Public Health, diploma in Tropical Medicine, and to the 
degree of Dr. P. H. Laboratory, Clinic and Field Work. 


School of Pharmacy— 

Admission : Three years of high school work, or 12 
units. Two years for Ph.G. degree. Three years for 
Ph.C. degree. 

School of Dentistry— 

Admission : Four years of lugh school work, with 15 
units. Thorough, practical, as well as comprehensive 
technical training in dentistry. 


Women admitted to all Schools on the same terms ag 
men. 


For catalogs and all other information, address 


TULANE COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, 
P. O. Box 770, New Orleans, La, 


SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


tary Legislation, and Personal and General Hygiene. 


_ The full course extends over one academic year. Special subjects in the course may be taken by any one possessing 
suitable preliminary qualifications. For details address Director of Laboratory of Hygiene. 

(3) From the opening of each term to about February 1 courses in Tropical Medicine are open to graduates in Medi- 
cine, comprehending instruction in Medical Climatology and Geography, Hygiene of Tropics {and of Ships, Tropical 
Medicine, Bacteriology, Protozoology, Entomology, Helminthology, and General Medical Zoology, Pathology, Skin 
Diseases, Eye Diseases, and Surgery of Tropical Affections. s 

(4) During the academic session special courses in any of the branches of the medical curriculum are open to grad- 
uates of this or other regular schools of Medicine, both in the clinical subjects and in laboratory studies. 
hospital facilities offered by the University Hospital, the neighboring Philadelphia General Hospital and other institu- 
tions with which the members of the staff of instruction are connected, guarantee exceptional opportunities for clinical 


observation. 


TUITION FEE: Undergraduate study, $200 annually ; fees for special courses on application. For detailed infor- 
DEAN OF SCHOOL OF MEDICINE 


Mation or catalogue address 


! University of Pennsylvania 


University of Alabama 


School of Medicine 
Mobile, Alabama 
Entrance Requirements 


The satisfactory completion of two years 
of study, in an institution of collegiate grade, 
to include Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and a 
reading knowledge of French or German. In 
addition to four year High School diploma. 


Combined Course 


The Combined Course which is now ofiered 


by the University in connection with its Med- 
ical Department gives to the student the op- 
portunity of obtaining the B.S. and M.D. de- 


grees in six years. This course is recom- 
mended to all intending students. 

The equipment of the schoo! is complete. 
The clinical facilities ample. Eight full time 
teachers. 

For catalog and any desired information, 
address 


Tucker H. Frazer, M.D., Dean 
School of Medicine 


St. Anthony and Lawrence Sts., 
MOBILE, ALA. 


1765 School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania 
The One Hundred Fifty-third Annual Seasion\c of ents anstieuson will open September 27, 1918, and continue 
une , . 


The First and Second Year Classes are ordinarily limited to 100 students; during the period of the war this limitation 
will not be strictly enforced. Application for admission should be in the hands of the Dean before July 1st. 


REQUIREMENTS FOR ADMISSION: Candidates must have successfully completed the work prescribed for the 
Freshman and Sophomore Classes in colleges recognized by this University, which must include at least one year of 
college work in Physics, General Biology or Zoology and Chemistry (Qualitative Analysis is required; Organic Chemistry 
is recommended, and in 1919 will be required), together with appropriate laboratory exercises in each ofthese subjects, 
and either French or German of more than elementary grade. 

UNDERGRADUATE COURSE: The course of instruction ‘extends over four annual sessions, the work so graded 
that the first and second years are largely occupied by the fundamental medicalsubjects. The third and fourth years are 
largely devoted to the practical branches, prominence being given to clinical instruction, and the classes sub-divided into 
small groups so that the individual students are brought into particularly close and personal relations with the instructors 
and with the patients at the bedside and in the operating room. After graduation further hospital work is un- 
dertaken by the members of the class; and more than 90 per cent. attain by competitive examination or by appoint- 
ment positions asinternes in hospitals in this city or elsewhere. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Medical Education and 
Licensure requires of applicants for license a year spent in an approved hospital. 

POST GRADUATE WORK: (1) Any graduate possessing a baccalaureate degree may pursue work in Anatomy, 
Physiology, Physiological-Chemistry, Bacteriology,,Pathology, Pharmacology, Research Medicine and Mental Diseases 
with view of obtaining the higher degrees of Master of Arts or Science and of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate 
School of the University. For information address Dean of Graduate School, University of Pennsylvania. 

(2) Courses in Public Hygiene (inaugurated in 1906) leading to diploma (Doctor“of ‘Public Hygiene, Dr. P.H.), are 
open to graduates in medicine who have had a preliminary education similar to that required for admission to the Med- 
ical School. . The subjects comprehended in the course are: Bacteriology, Medical Protozoology and Entomology, Chem- 
istry, Sanitary Engineering, Sanitary Architecture, Meat and Milk Inspection, School Inspection, Vital Statistics, Sani- 


1918 


For detailed information send for catalogue. 


he excellent 


Philadelphia, Pa, 


University of Georgia 
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT 
Augusta, Georgia 


The eighty-sixth session begins September 12, 1917; 
closes May 29, 1918 


ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS 
Candidates for entrance this session must have com- 
pleted one full year of work in an approved college in 
addition to four years of high school. The college work 
must have included Physics, Chemistry, Biology and 
French or German. Beginning in 1918 two years of 
college work will be required. 


INSTRUCTION 


The course of instruction occupies four years. The 
first two years are devoted to the fundamental sciences, 
and the third and fourth to practical clinic instruction 
in medicine and surgery. All the organized medical and 
surgical charities of the city of Augusta and Richmond 
County, including the hospitals, are under the entire 
control of the Board of Trustees of the University. 
This arrangement affords a large number and variety 
of patients which are used in the clinical teaching. 
Especial emphasis is laid upon practical work both in 
the laboratory and clinical departments. 


TUITION 
The charge for tuition is $150.00 a year except for 
residents of the State of Georgia, to whom tuition is free. 
For further information and catalogue address, 
The Medical Department, University of Georgia 
AUGUSTA, GEORGIA 


SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


Vii 


SCIENCE 


A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 
Entered in the post-office at Lancaster, Pa., as second class matter 


Published every Friday by 


TEE. SCIENCEZERESS 


LANCASTER, PA. GARRISON, N. Y. 
SUB-STATION 84: NEW YORK 


The American Academy 


of Arts and Sciences 
28 Newbury Street, Boston, Mass. 


Just issued. Proceedings, Vol. 52, Nos. 9, 10, 11. 


52. 11. Crozier. W. J.—On the Pigmentation of a Poly- 
clad. _ Pp. 723-730. 1col. pl. May, 1917. 40 cents, 


. 10. Thaxter, Roland—New Laboulbeniales, chiefly 
Dipterophilous American Species, Pp. 647-721. May, 1917. 
$1.00. 


52. 9. Bridgman, P. W.—The Electrical Resistance ot 
Metals under Pressure. Pp. 571-646, February, 1917. 90 cents. 


Other recent issues of the Proceedings 

52. 8. Wheeler, William Morton.—The Mountain Ants 
of Western North America, Pp. 455-569. January,1917. $1.25. 

52. 7. Hitchcock, Frank Lauren.—A Classification of 
Quadratie Vectors. Pp. 369-454. $1.25 

52. 6. Wilson, E. B., and Moore, C. L. E.—Differential 
Geometry of Two Dimensional Surfaces in Hyperspace. Pp. 
267-368. November, 1916. $1.50. 


52. 5. Walton, A. C.—The ‘Refractive Body’ and the 
‘Mitochondria’ of Ascaris canis Werner. Pp. 253-266. 2 pls, 
October, 1916. 40 cents. 


52. 4. Pierce, George W.—Theoretical Investigation — 
the Radiation Characteristics of an Antenna, Pp. 189-254, 
October, 1916. $1.00. 


52. 38. Bridgman, P. W.—Polymorphism at High Pres- 
sures. Pp. 89-187. July, 1916, $1.00. 


52. 2. Bridgman, P. W.—The Velocity of Polymorphic 
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52. 1. Thaxter, Roland.—New or Critical Species of 
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Teacher Wanted 


A man with Doctor's degree for Physical and Or- 
ganic Chemistry, theoretical work; a University position 


for January 1st. Salary $2000. Address 


The Interstate Teachers’ Agency 
Macheca Bldg. New Orleans, La. 


Rush Medical College 


IN AFFILIATION WITH 


The University of Chicago 


Curriculum.—The fundamental branches (Anatomy, Physiol- 
ogy, Bacteriology, etc.) are taught in the Departments of 
Science at the Hull Biological Laboratories, University of 
Chicago. The courses of the three clinicalyears are given 
in Rush Medical College and in the Presbyterian, the 
Cook County, The Children’s Memorial, the Hospital for 
Destitute Crippled Children, and other hospitals. 

Classes Limited.—The number of students admitted to each 
classis limited. Applications for admission next Autumn 
quarter should be made now. 

Hospital Year.—The Fifth Year, consisting of service as an 
interne under supervision in an approved hospital, or of 
advanced workin one of the departments is prerequisite 
for graduation for students entering the summer quarter, 
1914, or thereafter. 

Summer Quarter.—The college year is divided into four 
quarters, three of which constitute an annual session. 
The summer quarter, in the climate of Chicago is advan- 
tageous for work. 

Elective System.—A considerable freedom of choice of courses 
and instructors isopen to the student. 

Graduate Courses.—Advanced and research courses are 
offered in alldepartments. Students by attending summer 
quarters and prolonged their residence at the University 
of Chicago in advanced work may secure the degree of 
A.M.,8.M., or Ph.D., from the University. 

Prize Scholarship.—Six prize scholarships—three in the first 
two years and three in the last two (clinical) years—are 
awarded to college graduates for theses embodying orig- 
inal research. 


The Winter quarter commences January 2, 1918. 


TUITION—$60.00 per quarter, no laboratory fees. 
Complete and detailed information may be secured by addressing 


THE MEDICAL DEAN 
The University of Chicago, CHICAGO, ILL 


The Graduate School 


of the University of Minnesota 


offers 


Graduate Instruction in 
Medicine on a University Basis 


In The Medical School of the University and in 
The Mayo Foundation for Medical 
Education and Research 


Fellowships with living stipends. Desirable op- 
portunity for military ineligibles. 


For details as to requirements for admission, 
residence, etc., address 


The Dean of the Graduate School 


University of Minnesota 
Minneapolis, Minn. 


The Mayo Foundation for Medical 


Education and Research 
Rochester, Minn. 


vill SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


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A View in Our Glass Engraving Shop. 


We have devised new methods and have designed and constructed in 
our own shops, new machines for engraving laboratory glassware. 
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SCIENCE—ADVERTISEMENTS 


For filtering metastannic acid 


and other fine precipitates 


that ordinarily are difficult to filter, try WHarman No. 
42. For such purposes this grade is highly endorsed by 
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Nos. 1 to 5 for Qualitative work : Single-washed grades 
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There’s a grade to suit your preference. 
Order from your dealer 


H. REEVE ANGEL & CO., INC. 
120 Liberty Street, New York 


Sole Representatives for U. 8. and Canada 


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