work, including a report on the history of Kansas during the Glacial Period, which is nearly ready for publication by the Kansas University Geological Survey. He celebrates this year the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation at Oberlin College, O.

It was incorrectly stated in the issue of SCIENCE of June 8 that Dr. George Dock, of St. Louis, had received the French war cross for service in France. The item, which in some way became distorted in the daily and medical press, should have referred to Dr. Dock's son, George Dock, Jr., a Dartmouth graduate of 1916, who has been in the American Ambulance for more than a year and was for many months in the vicinity of Verdun. There, in the words of the citation, "s'est distingué ... par son mépris du danger et son entrain remarquable. Les 18 Septembre et 28 Decembre, 1916, s'est depensé pour des evacuations difficiles et particulièrement pénibles sur des routes sans cesse bombardées."

DR. ALEXANDER LAMBERT, of New York, has been ordered to France as medical adviser to the War Relief Commission of the Red Cross during the war. Dr. Tom A. Williams, of Washington, goes to France at the end of this month to fill an appointment as neurologist in the French Service de Santé.

MR. GEORGE P. ENGELHARDT, curator of invertebrates, and Mr. Jacob Doll, curator of Lepidoptera in the Brooklyn Museum, have undertaken an expedition to the plateau regions of southwestern Utah and northern Arizona. The objects of the field work will be general, though particular attention will be given to lepidoptera, small mammals and reptiles. The expedition was made possible through the generosity of Mr. B. Preston Clark, of Boston.

THE University of Pennsylvania Museum Expedition to study the Eskimos of Bering Straits and of the northern coast of Alaska, has left Seattle, Wash. It is financed by John Wanamaker and headed by Lieutenant Van Valin, who for three years was in the government service as an inspector of schools in Alaska.

Ar the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of Pennsylvania held on the grounds of Mr. Robert Le Boutillier, Wayne, Pa., on Saturday, May 5, 1917, Dr. C. Stuart Gager gave an address on The aims and objects of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden."

THE annual congress of the Southeastern Union of Scientific Societies was held in London, in the rooms of the Linnean Society, on June 6-9. Dr. William Martin, formerly general secretary of the union, the president, had as the subject of his address "The application of scientific method."

THE eighth Halley lecture was delivered at the University of Oxford, on June 12, by Professor Arthur Schuster. The subject was "Terrestrial magnetism: past, present and future."

SIR ALEXANDER R. BINNIE, the distinguished English civil engineer, died on May 18, at seventy-eight years of age.

M. JOSEPH RIBAN, honorary professor of the faculty of sciences of Paris, known for work on organic and applied chemistry, has died at the age of eighty years.

WE learn from the London Times that it has been decided to take over a part, at least, of the Victoria and Albert Museum for the accommodation of the Board of Education and their staff. The Imperial Institute, which had been selected for this purpose, is to be devoted to other uses. The Trench Warfare Department, which occupied part of the Board of Education's premises in Whitehall, is to find a place in the building in Millbank of the British-American Tobacco Company, who, upon being informed of the needs of the government, immediately offered to surrender their headquarters on the understanding that other premises should be found for their staff. Arrangements are being made with an hotel to supply the necessary accommodation.

THE National Museum has recently received as a gift from Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt the botanical specimens and books of the Biltmore Herbarium, the well-known botanical institution established and maintained for many years by the late George W. Vanderbilt

at Biltmore, North Carolina. During the disastrous floods of last July the Herbarium was largely inundated, suffering a loss of about three fourths of the botanical specimens and injuries to a considerable portion of the library. The uninjured specimens, chiefly phanerogams, number about 25,000, and will be of great value to the National Herbarium in augmenting its representation of southeastern plants. The collection contains, also, a large series of Crataegus specimens, including the types of many species described by Mr. C. D. Beadle, curator of the herbarium and an authority in this difficult genus. The library includes complete sets of several important botanical and horticultural publications, as well as many botanical works not hitherto in the National Museum.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

A COMMITTEE of the Massachusetts Medical Society, consisting of Samuel B. Woodward, chairman, Dr. E. H. Bradford, Dr. Edward C. Streeter, Dr. Arthur N. Broughton, Dr. Peer P. Johnson and Dr. Philemon E. Truesdale, has been appointed to further the establishment of a department of military medicine, surgery and hygiene in the Harvard Medical School. It is proposed to raise an endowment fund of $100,000.

THE financial board of the University of Cambridge has issued a report on the estimated income and expenditure for the year 1917. Although the common university fund, which is derived from assessments of colleges, is slightly greater than in 1913, the university chest, which is largely derived from capitation fees, examination fees, etc., has fallen from £53,400 to £23,900. The board estimates that the normal expenditure on the university chest will be £36,200, as against an estimated income of £20,400, leaving a deficiency of £15,800. Towards this they are able to provide the sum of £12,700, leaving a deficiency of £3,100.

THE archeological and ethnological collections of the late Dr. J. William White, of Philadelphia, have been presented to the University Museum by Mrs. White.

Ar the University of Virginia Dr. Theodore Hough, acting dean, has been made dean of the medical school; Dr. James A. Wardell, associate professor, has been appointed professor of pharmacology and materia medica, and Dr. John H. Neff, instructor, adjunct professor of genito urinary surgery.

Ar Harvard University Earnest A. Hooton has been appointed instructor in anthropology, Clarence E. Kelley and Harlan T. Stetson, instructors in astronomy, William E. Brown, instructor in public health administration, Raymond E. Merwin, associate in Central American archeology, and Willis A. Boughton, assistant director in the chemical laboratory.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR W. M. CARRUTH, of the department of mathematics at Hamilton College, has been promoted to a professorship.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE AN INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Referring to the proposal of an institute for the history of science and civilization, as outlined in a recent issue of SCIENCE,1 the attention of all interested in this project is invited to the fact that the resources of precisely such an institution as has been proposed are indispensable to the full performance of its duties by the United States Patent Office, and to the fact that the resources of this office, inadequate as they now are, should in turn be at the disposal of the proposed institute, for the attainment of its separate purposes.

The suggestion is accordingly made that to the published list of important possible activities, there might most advantageously be added a sixth the facilitation of prompt and reliable judgments upon all questions of novelty arising in connection with the administration of the patent laws, thereby aiding in the placing of the administration of such laws upon a secure scientific foundation. Surely the attainment of this additional purpose would be of sufficient public importance to deserve separate enumeration, and the furtherance of it

1 SCIENCE, No. 1160, p. 284.

would constitute a most persuasive argument for the location of the new institute in Washington-within reach also of the Smithsonian Institution, the Bureau of Standards, the Bureau of Mines, the Department of Agriculture, the Geological Survey, the Medical Museum, the Carnegie Institution and the Library of Congress.

If any combination of circumstances can lead to united practical efforts toward common or related purposes on the part of those who seek a perfecting of the patent system, and those whose interests as scientists and educators extend beyond all current technical applications, it would seem past doubting that notable results must follow promptly.

In this connection attention is invited to the fact that the Patent Office is now admittedly unable to make an adequate application even of its present resources. The point here made is not that a surplus from the collection of fees is required to be turned over to the federal treasury, while the needs of the office for literature, laboratories, and men remain unprovided for. It is that the accumulation of patent grants has reached to such limits (about one and one quarter million grants), that, in the absence of adequate appropriations for the work of reclassification, the office is unable to find the needles in its own haystack. To quote from the current report of the Commissioner of Patents, Thomas Ewing:

In 1890 there were 189 members of the examining corps, of whom 30 were examiners. The assistant examiners (who make the searches) numbered 159. Each assistant had to report on 251 applications per year.

In 1916 the corps numbered 367, of whom 43 were examiners and 324 assistant examiners.

ber of applications to be passed upon by each assistant has been reduced since 1890 by seventeen per cent. The number of available patents through which search must be made is now two hundred and forty per cent. of what it was in 1890. The force relative to the work which it has to do is therefore less than fifty per cent. to-day what it was in 1890.

In order that such a situation may be met at all it is absolutely essential that the best method of classification should be adopted, the classification completed and kept up to date. Yet when I laid all of these facts before Congress and pointed out, as indicated in an earlier section of this report, that at the present rate of reclassification now going on it could not be completed under twentyfive years I succeeded in obtaining no relief whatsoever. Every recommendation that I made during the past year has been refused.

If there could be established in the national capital an institute devoted to a study of the development of pure and applied science, is it not important that, even though incidentally to other great consequences, there might be created in both the legislative and administrative branches a new appreciation of the work, the responsibilities, and the opportunities, of an existing establishment, charged under the constitution, "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts"? Certainly those who are now engaged upon the performance of this duty are not all insensible of their limitations, nor of the services of stimulation and cooperation which could be rendered by disinterested and competent men of science.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

BERT RUSSELL

A CURE FOR SHOCK?

AT a meeting of the Massachusetts Medical

per year.

The extent of the field of search is fairly represented by the United States patents granted and the available foreign patents. In 1890 there were 443,000 United States patents and 635,000 available foreign patents, making a total of 1,078,000. At the close of 1916 there were more than 1,210,000 United States patents and 1,690,000 available foreign patents, totaling 2,900,000.

From these figures it will appear that the num

Walter B. Cannon, Shattuck lecturer in lieu of Dr. R. P. Strong (although both are now in France), detailed the probable physiology of traumatic and surgical shock, and suggested a possible cure. Dr. Cannon sees the essential primary condition in shock to be the vasomotor trapping of too much of the body's blood by the splanchnic veins-capacious enough to contain all the life-blood of the or

ganism. On one side are the myriad strongly constricted arterioles and, preventing the blood's escape, the capillaries of the liver intervening between the veins and the vena cava. Dr. Cannon's plan to restore this essential blood to the systematic circulation, including that of the dying central nervous system, is to inject into the peritoneal cavity a properly adapted solution of some powerful vaso constrictant, preferably pituitrin. The expectation is that the hormone will osmose from the outside of the omenta through the thin connective tissue coverings of the veins and, by forcing the constriction of the latter, impel a liter or more of necessary blood into the badly depressed vital organs.

Dr. Cannon is in France, with his assistant, putting this theory into humane use. The whole world will wish him the best of success. G. V. N. D.

CAMBRIDGE

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS The Mosquitoes of North and Central America and the West Indies. By L. O. HOWARD, H. G. DYAR and F. KNAB. (Carnegie Institution of Washington.) Vol. III. 1915. Vol. IV.. 1917.

The final part of this great work has at last been issued, amid general rejoicings from those interested in medical entomology, since it contains a full account of the malaria-organism carrier, Anopheles. The two parts containing the descriptive matter and synonymy total 1,064 pages, and the treatment is as full and exact as it could be made. Under each species is a full list of references to literature, followed by copies of the original description and the descriptions of the synonyms, if any. Then comes a detailed new description of the adult insect, and of the early stages when known, followed by a full list of the localities from which specimens have been received or recorded. Finally, there is a discussion of the synonymy and relationships. The yellow-fever mosquito alone takes over sixteen pages. The reader finds before him practically all that is known of the species treated, and the book will stand

as a model of exhaustive discussion and clear presentation.

Some difference of opinion will exist regarding the names of some of the species. The most troublesome case is that of the yellow-fever mosquito. This important insect has generally been known as Stegomyia fasciata, or simply as Stegomyia, which has almost become an English word. The name fasciata being preoccupied, the name Stegomyia calopus was substituted; but Dyar and Knab regarded Stegomyia as part of Aedes, and called the species Aëdes calopus. As such it appears in the work reviewed, but a footnote is added, pointing out that Culex argenteus, proposed in 1787, is the oldest name. Hence we are to write Aëdes argenteus. Mr. F. W. Edwards, of the British Museum, maintains Stegomyia as a genus, and according to this plan it will be Stegomyia argentea (Poiret). It is admitted that Stegomyia is very different from the type of Aëdes, and evidently the question whether it should be generically separated is one concerning which there may be legitimate difference of opinion. Under these circumstances, in view of the general usage by medical authorities, it would seem better to recognize Stegomyia.

Another sort of difficulty arises from the mistakes of identification which have resulted from the poor descriptions of early authors. Thus the common species described at great length as Culex territans Walker, and so referred to in numerous works, is now said by Mr. Edwards, who examined Walker's type, to be actually quite distinct. It takes the name Culex saxatilis, and the real territans is what has gone as Culex restuans of Theobald. The result of this correction will be that when Culex territans is referred to, it will be difficult to tell which of the two species is intended, and confusion must follow. Walker's description was quite insufficient for determination, and under these circumstances it would seem proper to sink the name as unrecognizable. The two insects concerned will then stand as C. saxatilis and C. restuans.

The Anopheles quadrimaculatus of authors is also involved in difficulties. It is described

under this name in the book, but at the end of the account the opinion is expressed that Say's quadrimaculatus was really the species described as Anopheles occidentalis. This is determined from Say's locality, "North-west Territory." Accordingly we are told that Anopheles guttulatus Harris should be adopted, although it was published without any description. This seems inadmissible, and we turn to the next available name, A. annulimanus, which "is said " to belong here. But after all, the quadrimaculatus of authors occurs as far northwest as Wisconsin, and it does not appear perfectly evident that it is not Say's insect. A. annulimanus was also from Wisconsin.

The full citation of localities is much to be commended. It might have been still fuller, but for the unfortunate habit of a former curator, of throwing away what he regarded as duplicates. The present reviewer eagerly turned to this mass of information for light on a practical problem in which he is interested. In the course of the war, it will be necessary to establish large camps and hospitals, partly for training purposes, partly for wounded and invalided soldiers, partly, no doubt, eventually for prisoners. It will be desirable to place these camps or hospitals near distributing centers, but also in regions where the climate is favorable and the malaria mosquito is absent. In the presence of Anopheles, men carrying malaria organisms in their blood will constitute a menace to other soldiers and to the civilian population. The exact distribution of Anopheles accordingly becomes a matter of importance. On mapping the recorded distribution from the new volume, it was found that records were lacking from Quebec, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Ohio, Alabama, Iowa, Oklahoma, Nebraska, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana and Saskatchewan. Obviously in the majority of these cases the absence of records is due to lack of sufficient collections. Ohio, Delaware, etc., certainly possess the same Anopheles as all the surrounding states. There is, however, a real blank on the map, covering Montana, Wyom

ing, the eastern part of Colorado, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa and Minnesota. It is not to be supposed that Anopheles is actually absent over all this area, but it must be relatively scarce, and over a considerable region is probably altogether lacking.

In New Mexico, the southern and Pacific A. pseudopunctipennis gets as far north as Las Vegas Hot Springs. In Colorado, A. quadrimaculatus comes over from Utah as far as Delta County, on the western slope. This same insect is common eastward, in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, etc., and it may occur right across the country. More exact investigations, which are planned, may be expected to determine whether this is the case.

In order to form an opinion whether the apparent lack of Anopheles in the region just cited was wholly due to the absence of collections of mosquitoes, I listed all the reported species of the states involved. Montana has no less than ten recorded species, Colorado six, North and South Dakota each three, Nebraska two, Iowa seven, Minnesota and Wyoming one each. Evidently collecting is greatly needed in several of these states, and the apparent absence of Anopheles requires confirmation. It is to be remarked, however, that if it should prove to be scattered here and there over the western plains and valleys, it will probably be absent in several localities, and often when present so localized that it can readily be exterminated

It is a singular thing that there seems to be an almost total absence of any endemic mosquito fauna in the central arid region. The few species found are mostly widespread, the only partial exceptions being a few Aëdes. A. nigromaculis is peculiar to the arid westerncentral regions, south to the Mexican State of Chihuahua. A. fletcheri belongs to the prairies of western Canada and adjacent United States. A. idahoensis is from Idaho, Montana and Nevada, and A. aldrichi so far from Idaho only. There is no series of peculiar forms, such as Dyar found in the mountains of California, or such as occurs in parts of Canada.

The total number of species described from