DR. SIMON FLEXNER, of the Rockefeller Institute, lectured at Wellesley College, on March 9, on "The Physical Basis of Immunity."

THE Cutter lecture on preventive medicine and hygiene will be given by Dr. Ludwig Hektoen, director of the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases, Chicago, on April 3, at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hektoen will discuss "Poliomyelitis in the Light of Recent Observations."

PROFESSOR H. S. JENNINGS, of the Johns Hopkins University, is delivering a series of four Westbrook lectures on Heredity and Evolution at the Wagner Institute, Philadelphia.

GRADUATE seminars will be offered in the coming summer session of the University of California by Professor E. C. Franklin on "Non-Aqueous Solutions" and by Professor J. H. Hildebrand on "The Theory of Solubility."

ON March 8 Dr. Haven Metcalf, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, delivered an address before the department of plant pathology of the University of Wisconsin "The White Pine Blister Rust: An Example of the Imported Plant Disease."

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PROFESSOR FREDERICK C. FERRY, dean of Williams College, gave, on March 1, an address on "Present Problems of Mathematics Teachers in Secondary Schools," before the Mathematics Club of Vassar College.

JAMES ALTON JAMES, chairman of the board of graduate studies and professor of history at Northwestern University, delivered an illustrated lecture on 66 The Conservation of Historic Sites in Illinois" at a meeting of the Society of the Friends of our Native Landscape on the evening of March 20, at Fullerton Hall, Art Institute, Chicago.

PROFESSOR ROBERT F. GRIGGS, of the Ohio State University, lectured on March 17 before the University Club of Chicago on "The Valley of the Ten Thousand Smokes."

THE fifth annual conference of the American Association of Agricultural Editors will be held at Cornell University on Thursday and

made up of the editors of the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, and meets annually to exchange ideas. Among the institutions represented are the state universities of Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Mississippi and Minnesota; the state agricultural colleges of Iowa, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Georgia, Oklahoma and Kansas; Clemson College and Purdue and Cornell universities.

DURING the year 1916-17 the graduate courses in chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University have included a series of lectures on selected topics by chemists from other institutions. The subjects chosen have been generally of a physical-chemical nature. Those who have thus far participated in these lectures are: Professor Gilbert N. Lewis, of the University of California, who gave three lectures on the subject of free energy; Professor Harry N. Holmes, of Oberlin College, whose subject was the formation of crystals in gels; Dr. Irving Langmuir, of the General Electric Company, the structure of liquids and solids; Dr. Walter A. Patrick, of Syracuse University, who gave five lectures on colloidal chemistry.

THE Morison lectures before the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh were delivered on March 5 and 9 by Dr. Edwin Bramwell, the subject being The Neurology of the War. The first lecture dealt with gunshot wounds of the peripheral nerves, and the second with shell shock and some effects of head injuries.

THE Huxley lecture at the University of Birmingham is to be delivered by Professor D'Arcy W. Thompson, whose subject is "Shells."

THE death is announced at seventy-four years of age of Professor J. G. Darboux, permanent secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences and professor of mathematics at the Sorbonne.

R. H. TIDDEMAN, from 1864 to 1902 geologist of the British Geological Survey, died on February 11, at the age of seventy-five years.

GEORGE MASSEE, for many years head of the cryptogamic department of the Herbarium of the Kew Gardens, distinguished for his work in mycology, died on February 17, at the age of sixty-seven years.

M. JULES COURMONT, professor of hygiene at Lyons, died on February 24.

W. H. H. JESSOP, a well-known English ophthalmic surgeon, died on February 16, at the age of sixty-four years.

THE death is announced of G. Paladino, professor of histology and general physiology at the University of Naples, senator of the realm, president of various scientific societies and member of numerous others in various countries, aged seventy-five years.

It is planned to dedicate the completed laboratory building and plant houses of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on April 19-21. There will be formal exercises, followed by a reception, on Thursday evening, April 19. Sessions for the reading of scientific papers will be held on Friday morning and afternoon, and on Saturday morning. On Friday evening there will be a popular scientific program in the lecture hall, and on Saturday afternoon a conference for teachers to consider how the Botanic Garden may become most useful to the public and private schools of the city. The public is cordially invited to the sessions on Friday and on Saturday morning.

PROFESSOR R. TRIPIER, formerly of the University of Lyons, has bequeathed to the university the sum of $40,000, the income of which is to be used to encourage works on operative medicine and pathologic anatomy. He also left a similar sum to the city of Lyons for the purchase every fifth year of some work of art.

A BILL has been introduced in the Minnesota legislature requiring the board of regents to terminate the arrangement between the University of Minnesota and the Mayo foundation.

ACCORDING to the British Medical Journal the city of Paris has adopted the policy of erecting in the garden of its hospitals huts for men discharged from the army suffering from tuberculosis. Some 660 beds have already

been provided in this way, and huts for 1,500 more are being put up as fast as the scarcity of labor permits. A sum of £200,000 has been voted for construction, and the expense of maintenance is estimated at £120,000 a year.

THE German Congress of Internal Medicine will be held in April, 1917, under the chairmanship of Professor Minkowski. The most important subjects for discussion will be: (1) Nutrition during the war, by M. Rubner (Berlin) and F. von Müller (Munich), (2) Constitutional diseases, by F. Kraus (Berlin) and A. Steyrer (Innsbruck), (3) The rare infectious diseases of the war. War experiences in the field of internal medicine will also be discussed.

SEVERAL research fellowships in the department of preventive medicine and hygiene at Harvard University are available for the scientific investigation of food poisoning. The work may at the same time be credited towards the doctor of public health degree. Candidates should apply to Dr. M. J. Rosenau, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

LAST year Dr. Charles McIntire resigned the secretaryship of the American Academy of Medicine after twenty-five years of service. In appreciative commemoration the American Academy of Medicine decided to raise a fund, the income of which should be expended in accordance with Dr. McIntire's suggestions. As a consequence the academy now announces two prize offers, the prizes to be awarded at the annual meetings for 1918 and 1921, respectively. The subject for 1918 is "The Principles Governing the Physician's Compensation in the Various Forms of Social Insurance." The members of the committee to decide the relative value of the essays awarding this prize are: Dr. John L. Heffron, dean of the College of Medicine, Syracuse University; Dr. Reuben Peterson, professor of obstetrics and diseases of women, University of Michigan, and Dr. John Staige Davis, professor of pediatrics and practise of medicine, University of Virginia. The subject for 1921 is "What Effect Has Child Labor on the Growth of the Body?" The members of the committee to award this prize are: Dr. Thomas S. Arbuthnot, dean of

the medical school of the University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, professor of physiology, Northwestern University, and Dr. James C. Wilson, emeritus professor of the practise of medicine and of clinical medicine, Jefferson Medical College.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

"GILMAN HALL" has been decided upon as the name of the first unit, now being built at a cost of $220,000, of the future group of permanent buildings for chemistry at the University of California. This name was chosen by the regents in honor of Daniel Coit Gilman, president of the University of California from 1872 to 1875, to whose initiative was due the organization of the college of chemistry of the university, and who in his later career as president of Johns Hopkins University did such notable service to the development of opportunities in the American universities for training for scientific research.

GOUCHER COLLEGE has announced the completion of a Supplemental Endowment Fund" of $1,000,000, one fourth of which was conditionally subscribed by the General EduIcation Board. Nearly half of the entire amount has already been paid in.

A BILL introduced into the Illinois legislature proposes expenditures for the medical department of the University of Illinois amounting to $2,000,000 during the next decade.

MRS. ALEXANDER F. MORRISON, formerly president of the National Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, has given $1,500 to the University of California for the purchase of an ophthalmological library of 486 volumes for the University of California medical school.

MRS. ROSCOE R. BELL, of Brooklyn, has given the valuable library on comparative and veterinary medicine belonging to the late Professor Roscoe R. Bell, to the Alexandre Liautard Library of New York University.

DR. ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON, who resigned from Yale University several years ago to devote his entire time to research work, will become officially connected with the university again next year as a research associate in

geography. Dr. Huntington will make his headquarters in New Haven and will give every year a course of lectures on his investigations, which cover a broad field that has to do particularly with the effect of climatic changes on the course of civilization.

THERE has been appointed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a committee of the faculty to consider ways of improving the methods of instruction and Dr. Charles R. Mann has been called to the institute to be chairman of the committee. Dr. Mann is professor of physics in the University of Chicago, but for the past two years has been on leave of absence to make a report on engineering education under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

IN a recent paper Briggs, Jensen and McLane1 discuss the situation with regard to "mottle-leaf" in citrus trees based on certain observations which they have made on orchards located in southern California. The

undersigned has read their statement with the greatest interest and desires in the friendly spirit of a scientific colleague to make some comments thereon by way of broadening the discussion.

1. In reviewing the causes which have been given in the past for the production of "mottle-leaf" conditions, the authors above named mention the theories of Smith and Smith and of Thomas but say nothing of that promulgated in 1914 by the undersigned which still seems to me to be the most definite and reasonable hypothesis for explaining the conditions in question in citrus trees.

2. Briggs, Jensen and McLane have pointed out that about half of the "mottling" is associated with soil conditions in which humus is

1 Jour. Agr. Res., Vol. 6, No. 19, p. 721, August, 1916.

2 Calif. Agr. Expt. Sta. Bull., No. 218, pp. 1139

1911.

8 Calif. Agr. Expt. Sta. Circ., 85, 1913.

4 SCIENCE, N. S., Vol. 39, No. 1011, p. 728, May, 1914.

deficient, but this, it seems to me, gives no justification for the following statement, which I quote from their paper:

An impartial statistical study of the data from the individual orange groves shows that approximately one half the mottling can be accounted for by the low humus content of the soil.

3. That all or nearly all citrus soils in southern California are deficient in organic matter has long been known. But to state that half of the mottling "can be accounted for " by deficiencies of the soil in humus when the other half of the mottling is not at all accounted for seems to me to be an unusual procedure.

4. Moreover, the method employed by Briggs, Jensen and McLane for determining humus, upon which much of their discussion depends, has already been pointed out by Gortner to be insecure if not entirely inaccurate. In the writer's laboratory it has also been found that intensity of color is no criterion of the amount of humus. Moreover, no one has yet proved, and there is no justification for believing that the humus portion of the soil organic matter, as determined by any of the arbitrary methods in vogue, is of any greater value to plants or to soils than the rest of the soil organic matter.

5. That as the paper under discussion points out the total nitrogen content of soils is not related to the amount of mottling should be no cause for surprise since it is the amount of available" nitrogen as the writer has on many occasions pointed out rather than the amount of total nitrogen that should reasonably be assumed to affect plant growth. This is especially true under arid soil conditions, in which, moreover, the term "available" possesses more than the usual significance.

6. It seems to the writer that we need a theory or theories on some definite and specific cause of "mottle-leaf" in citrus trees and not a description of some general condition like a deficiency of organic matter which can affect soils in many different ways, not always in the 5 Italics mine.

"Soil Science," Vol. 2, No. 5, p. 395, November, 1916.

same direction, and which besides is universally recognized to constitute the most undesirable feature of arid soils.

7. As Briggs, Jensen and McLane point out, however, something which affects chlorophyll formation in the leaves of the citrus tree is responsible for the trouble. That factor, in my opinion, is a lack of usable nitrogen, and in view of the peculiar mineral conditions of our soils, it may in many instances also be due to a lack of usable iron.

8. The writer does not wish to be understood as denying the effectiveness of a lack or of a sufficiency of organic matter in the production or eradication, respectively, of mottle-leaf in citrus trees. He does desire, however, to deny that there is anything specific about the organic matter factor, since it can affect plants in one of so many different ways; that the portion of the soil organic matter known as humus is any criterion as to the activity and value of the soil organic matter; that the "mottling of orange trees has been definitely correlated with the low humus content of the soil per se; and that soluble organic matter placed in the zone of the feeding roots promises any better for the eradication of "mottleleaf" than the practise of green manuring which, to put it mildly, has thus far fallen far short of the expectations originally entertained

for it.

9. As I have pointed out in the papers above cited, we shall probably be compelled not only to supply sufficient available nitrogen to eradicate the physiological troubles of our citrus and other crops, but we shall have to make it usable by some method of soil protection which will make it possible for roots of plants to make use of the surface soil. The most promising method of soil protection now seems to be complete straw mulching.

CHAS. B. LIPMAN

SOILS RESEARCH LABORATORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LORD LISTER ON THE VALUE OF VIVISECTION TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: The enclosed rough draft of a letter to "Dr. Keen" (as the envelope was endorsed) was found among the late Lord Lister's papers by his nephew and

biographer, Sir Richman J. Godlee and is published by his consent.

W. W. KEEN

My dear Sir: I am grieved to learn that there should be even a remote chance of the Legislature of any state in the Union passing a bill for regulating experiments upon animals.

It is only comparatively recently in the world's history that the gross darkness of empiricism has given place to more and more scientific practise, and this result has been mainly due to experiments upon living animals. It was to these that Harvey was in large measure indebted for the fundamental discovery of the circulation of the blood, and the great American triumph of General Anesthesia was greatly promoted by them. Advancing knowledge has shown more and more that the bodies of the lower animals are essentially similar to our own in their intimate structure and functions; so that lessons learnt from them may be applied to human pathology and treatment. If we neglect to avail ourselves of this means of acquiring increased acquaintance with the working of that marvelously complex machine, the animal body, we must either be content to remain at an absolute standstill or return to the fearful haphazard ways of testing new remedies upon human patients in the first instance which prevailed in the dark ages.

Never was there a time when the advantages that may accrue to man from investigations on the lower animals were more conspicuous than now. The enormous advances that have been made in our knowledge of the nature and treatment of disease of late years have been essentially due to work of this kind.

The importance of such investigations was fully recognized by the commissioners on whose report the act of Parliament regulating experiments on animals in this country was passed, their object in recommending legislation being only to prevent possible abuse.

In reality, as one of the commissioners, the late Mr. Erichsen, informed me, no single instance of such abuse having occurred in the British Islands had been brought before them at the time when I gave my evidence and that was toward the close of their sittings.

Yet in obedience to a popular outcry, the government of the day passed an act which went much further than the recommendation of the commissioners. They had advised that the operation of the law should be restricted to experiments upon warm-blooded animals; but when this bill

was considered in the House of Commons, a member who was greatly respected as a politician, but entirely ignorant of the subject matter, suggested that Vertebrate" should be substituted for 'warm blooded" and this amendment was accepted by a majority as ignorant as himself.

The result is that, incredible as it may seem, any one would now be liable to criminal prosecution in this country who should observe the circulation of the blood in a frog's foot under the microscope without having obtained a license for the experiment and unless he performed it in a specially licensed place.

It can readily be understood that such restrictions must seriously interfere with legitimate researches.

Indeed for the private practitioner they are almost prohibitive; and no one can tell how much valuable work is thus prevented.

My own first investigations of any importance were a study of the process of inflammation in the transparent web of the frog's foot. The experiments were very numerous, and were performed at all hours of the day at my own house. I was then a young unknown practitioner; and if the present law had been in existence it might have been difficult for me to obtain the requisite licenses; even if I had got them it would have been impossible for me to have gone to a public laboratory to work. Yet without these early researches which the existing law would have prevented I could not have found my way among the perplexing difficulties which beset me in developing the antiseptic system of treatment in surgery.

In the course of my antiseptic work, at a later period, I frequently had recourse to experiments on animals. One of these occurs to me which yielded particularly valuable results, but which I certainly should not have done if the present law had been in force. It had reference to the behavior of a thread composed of animal tissue applied antiseptically for tying an arterial trunk. I had prepared a ligature of such material at a house where I was spending a few days at a distance from home, and it occurred to me to test it upon the carotid artery of a calf. Acting on the spur of the moment, I procured the needful animal at a neighboring market; a lay friend gave chloroform, and another assisted at the operation. Four weeks later the calf was killed and its neck was sent to me. my dissecting it, the beautiful truth was revealed that the dead material of the thread, instead of being thrown off by suppuration, had been replaced under the new aseptic conditions by a firm

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