general military medical research work in France, including special methods of recognition and study of diseases among soldiers.

This action followed a report from the Red Cross Commission in France to national headquarters as follows:

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 conclusions, 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 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.

The foregoing recommendation, like all others of a medical nature from the commission in France, was submitted to an advisory medical board in France composed of leading American doctors working with our own forces in that country. They approved it.

This advisory board is headed by Dr. Joseph A. Blake, with whom are associated:

Colonel Ireland, of General Pershing's staff; Dr. Livingston Farrand, president of the University of Colorado; Dr. Alexander Lambert, professor of clinical medicine, Cornell Medical School; Dr. John M. Finney, professor of clinical surgery at the Johns Hopkins University; Drs. Richard P. Strong and W. B. Cannon, professors at Harvard University; Major George W. Crile, head of the Cleveland Base Hospital Unit; and Dr. Hugh H. Young, professor at Johns Hopkins University.

The committee in charge of this research work in France, headed by Dr. W. B. Cannon, professor of physiology at Harvard, includes:

Dr. Blake, Dr. Crile, Colonel Ireland, Dr. Alexander Lambert, Dr. Richard P. Strong, Dr. Kenneth Taylor, Dr. W. B. Cannon, professor of physiology at Harvard; Dr. Harvey Cushing, professor of surgery at Harvard; Dr. James A. Miller, professor of clinical medicine

at Columbia; Dr. William Charles White, associate professor of medicine at Pittsburgh; and Dr. Homer F. Swift, professor of medicine at Cornell.

The question has been raised as to whether the appropriation for medical research was not outside the proper scope of Red Cross activity.

The answer is simple. The supreme aim of the Red Cross is to relieve human suffering growing out of war. The War Council was advised from the ablest professional sources available that an immediate appropriation for medical research would contribute toward that end. The War Council could not disregard such advice.

There are many unsolved medical questions of great importance in this war. Numerous problems relating to the treatment of wounds, the eradication of lice, fleas, and scabies, the treatment of trench nephritis, trench heart, war neurasthenia, exhaustion, lethal gases, shell concussion, wound infection, compound fracture, and a great variety of other diseases and injuries are still to be worked out. The solution of such problems will contribute not only toward the relief of suffering but toward more effective prosecution of the war. Scientific experience is conclusive that the most rapid possible approach to such solution is through medical research.

To safeguard expenditures under this appropriation it has been arranged that all applications for grants from it shall be made through the chief medical officer of the American Expeditionary Forces, Brigadier-General A. E. Bradley, and such recommendation is essential to consideration of such expenditure.

The following cablegram, signed by 41 medical officers on duty in France, was received by the American Red Cross:

We believe the Red Cross has properly expended its funds because it is the duty of the Red Cross to care for sick and wounded American soldiers, and to use funds to prevent those soldiers from being infected with the various diseases met with in their peculiar Army life. There are several diseases, the exact nature of which is still undetermined, as they are new and peculiar to this war and must be studied now to aid our troops. We

stand on the principle that Red Cross funds should back such work rather than secure special funds for that purpose.

The medical department of the United States Army is in full accord with all the Red Cross is doing in this regard. It is cooperating and assisting in every way in research matters, and is counting upon our help in this regard. It has asked the Red Cross to help it study the many problems of preventive medicines and of medical and surgical diseases, against which the Army Medical Corps must struggle. The research committee assists the Red Cross in the management of its funds and its experiments, and controls the type and kind of experimentation. The research commitee, whose names you have, controls fully its research work, against which the antivivisectionists are protesting.

English medical authorities are vigorously cooperating with the Red Cross in research work. We feel that any one endeavoring to stop the Red Cross from assisting in its humanitarian and humane desire to prevent American soldiers from being diseased and protecting them by solving the peculiar new problems of disease with which the Army is confronted is in reality giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Research work so far undertaken includes studies on anesthesia, shell shock and trench fever, which last will be the main line of investigation this winter. We are also investigating trench nephritis and foot-wound infections, including gas gangrene and tetanus. The animals used are principally guinea-pigs, rabbits and white rats. If operations causing pain to animals are performed anesthesia is used. Actually very few animals have been used for this work.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS DR. CHARLES DOOLITTLE WALCOTT, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at Washing ton, has been elected corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences in the section of geology in place of Sir Archibald Geikie, who has been elected foreign associate.

PROFESSOR ARTHUR N. TALBOT, of the University of Illinois, has been elected president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. PROFESSOR WILLIAM TRELEASE, of the University of Illinois, who was chairman of the organization committee of the Botanical Society of America in 1893 and its first president in

1894, has been elected president for the year 1918.

CHANCELLOR SAMUEL AVERY, of the University of Nebraska, has been given leave of absence in order that he may go to Washington to accept the position of chemist with the National Council of Defence.

THE Norman medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers has been awarded to Benjamin F. Groat, hydraulic engineer of Pittsburgh, by the board of direction of the society. The medal is of gold and is awarded to a paper which shall be judged worthy of special commendation for its merit as a contribution to engineering science. The title of the paper for which the award was made is 66 Chemihydrometry and its application to the precise testing of hydroelectric generators." It appeared in the Transactions of the society for 1916. The name (6 Chemihydrometry" is one that was suggested by Mr. Groat in SCIENCE for June 11, 1915.

THE Royal Dublin Society has presented its Boyle medal to Professor J. A. McClelland, F.R.S., in recognition of his work in science, especially on ionization.

DR. HENRY JACKSON WATERS, for eight and a half years president of the Kansas State Agricultural College, resigned this position on December 31, to become managing editor of the Kansas City Weekly Star. During his administration, the college has progressed notably in the fields of education and research and has gained materially in financial support. Dr. Waters leaves the institution to enter a field in which he believes that there is a large opportunity for service to agriculture and one in which, at present, his talents can be used more effectively. Pending the election of a new president, Dean J. T. Willard, of the division of general science, will be acting president at the college.

CAPTAIN ANTON J. CARLSON, Sanitary Corps, National Army, now at the Army Medical School, Washington, D. C., has been directed to proceed to Ottawa, Canada, for the purpose of conferring with the surgeon general of the Canadian forces concerning the nutrition of

the Canadian Army. He will visit Montreal and Toronto to observe the food conditions of the concentration camps and will later inspect camps in the United States.

MAJOR FRANK BILLINGS, M.R.C., professor of medicine in the University of Chicago, who was appointed medical adviser to the governor of the state of Illinois, in the creation of the medical advisory boards, and who has been acting in this capacity, is now relieved from this duty and assigned to the Provost Marshal General's Office, Washington, D. C. It is understood that Major Billings' work in Washington will be that of adviser to the Provost Marshal, in connection with the medical problems under the Selective Service Law. Major Billings will report in Washington on February 1.

DR. EDWIN OAKES JORDAN, head of the department of bacteriology of the University of Chicago, returned on January 12, from Fort Sill., Okla., where has has been making a study of epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis.

DR. L. B. BALDWIN, superintendent of the Hospital of the University of Minnesota, has been commissioned as a major in the medical reserve corps of the U. S. Army, and assigned to the personnel division of the Surgeon General's office at Washington, D. C.

LAWRENCE MARTIN, professor of geography in the University of Wisconsin, has been commissioned a first lieutenant in the National Army.

THE University of Chicago has granted

leave of absence to Associate Professor Carl Kinsley, of the department of physics, for work in the Radio Division of the Signal Corps of the United States Army, and to Professor Henry Gordon Gale, of the same department, who is now a captain of infantry in the United States Army.

DR. C. A. MAGOON, assistant professor of bacteriology at the State College of Washington, has resigned to accept a position in the Bureau of Plant Industry at Washington, D. C. His new field will be bacteriological in

vestigations in connection with the problems of food preservation.

THE secretary for Scotland has appointed Mr. Charles Weatherill to be secretary to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, in place of Mr. H. M. Conacher, who has been appointed a deputy commissioner of the board.

MR. WORTHINGTON G. SMITH, known for his publications on and especially for his illustrations of British fungi, died on November 1.

SIR WILLIAM H. LINDLEY, known for his work on municipal engineering, died on December 30, aged sixty-four years.

MAJOR HARRY CLISSOLD, teacher of natural science at Clifton College, England, has been killed in action.

THE annual meeting of the New York State Breeders' Association was held at Syracuse on January 8, 9 and 10. Addresses were given by President J. G. Schurman, of Cornell University, on "Food Problems, National and State"; by Dr. V. A. Moore, dean of the New York State Veterinary College, on "Control of Hog Cholera," and by Professor Mark J. Smith of the New York State College of Agriculture, on "Farm Flock Husbandry," and by Ernest I. White, of Syracuse, president of the New York State Association of Horsemen, on "Horse breeding and the war."

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

DR. THOMAS F. KANE, president of Olivet College, has been elected president of the University of North Dakota, to succeed President Frank L. McVey.

DR. CARROL G. BULL, of the Rockefeller Institute, who is now in France demonstrating with the French armies his newly discovered cure for gangrene, has been named as associate professor of immunology and serology in the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

THE board of regents of the University of Minnesota at their meeting on January 18, elected Dr. W. A. Riley, of Cornell University, professor of parasitology and chief of the di

vision of economic zoology. Professor A. G. Ruggles was, at the same time, appointed station entomologist, which position carries with it the office of state entomologist. At the December meeting of the board Professor F. L. Washburn, who has held the position of state entomologist in Minnesota for nearly sixteen years, asked and obtained permission to be relieved of that position and its attendant police duties, and the action of the board on the eighteenth was necessary to fill the vacancy thus caused.

MR. D. C. DUNCAN, assistant professor of physics at Purdue University, has resigned his position to accept appointment in a similar capacity at the Pennsylvania State College.

E. G. WOODWARD, formerly head of the dairy department at the University of Nevada, has been made head of the dairy division, State College of Washington.

I. D. CHARLTON, professor of agricultural engineering at the State College of Washington, has resigned to accept a similar position at the University of Minnesota.

DR. WILSON GEE, professor of biology in Emory University, has resigned to become assistant director of agricultural extension work in South Carolina. His successor is Dr. R. C.

in the University of Mississippi.

PROFESSOR F. DE QUERVAIN has been appointed to the chair of surgery in the University of Berne in succession to the late Professor Kocher.

the investigator, an appreciation of the rôle of vitamines has made and will make much progress in nutrition possible and in every way more complete, but from the standpoint of the people as a whole it is questionable if the possibility of a lack of vitamines in the diet is of more serious import than that of the lack of suitable proteins or mineral constituents.

Vitamines as a class are now acceptably divided into a fat soluble and a water soluble type. Both are absolutely essential in a complete diet and both vary considerably in their occurrence. Individually many foods are deficient in one or both of them, but safety has undoubtedly been assured to the consumer by his desire for variety. It is scarcely to be doubted that in the American diet there is probably no danger of a lack of sufficiency of the water soluble vitamine, but with the fat soluble type the case is not so clear. Up to the present, studies on its occurrence are limited to a few seeds and leaves, and fats of plant and animal origin. While butter fat is richer in this dietary essential than butter substitutes, it is still too early to predict if in the aggregate this special property of butter fat warrants its taking a superior place in the mixed diet. The fat soluble vitamine has re

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

VITAMINES AND NUTRITION

In this national food crisis when people are scrutinizing the make-up of their diet for patriotic, economic and physiologic reasons the proper selection of food materials looms up as a problem of no mean proportions. Especially is this true with those who, having attempted to keep abreast of the most recent developments in nutrition, have had their faith in former practises shaken by a smattering of knowledge of the importance of vitamines in the dietary. Truly, from the standpoint of

H. STEENBOCK LABORATORY OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

A FLOOD IN THE VALLEY OF THE ORISKANY CREEK, NEW YORK

ON Monday, June 11, 1917, there occurred in central New York a flood which was remarkable in respect to the damage done in a very limited area, and the control of the waters by physiographic conditions.

Oriskany Creek rises in the southern part of Oneida county, flows south for three and one half miles, following the normal direction of the Chenango River drainage across the Madison county line, and one and one quarter miles west of the village of Solsville is diverted abruptly to the northeast, eventually emptying into the Mohawk River.

For the distance of a mile west, south and east of Solsville the main valley is a nearly level plain consisting of two glacial terraces, through which Oriskany Creek flows for nearly two miles in a narrow valley about fifty feet below the terrace level.

From Solsville to Oriskany Falls-nearly four miles-the stream is constricted within a valley only a few hundred yards wide for the greater part of the way, choked with kames which expand to the east and north into one of the larger kame areas of central New York. The stream is utilized extensively for water power, one pond being situated at Solsville and two others within a distance of a mile and a half to the east. The track of the Utica division of the New York, Ontario and Western Railroad follows the stream bed in this part of its course.

Due to severe and continued rain on the night of June 10, the three ponds mentioned broke their dams almost simultaneously about four o'clock the following morning. A wave of huge proportions rolled down the narrow valley destroying buildings and ruining crops in its path.

The village of Oriskany Falls is situated in the valley between a steep rock hill on the north and a large kame on the south. Fortunately the inhabitants were warned of the impending disaster by telephone. However, two persons were drowned. Leaving the village street the flood followed the sharp turn of the creek to the southeast, the waters in part flowing along the railroad track between a row of buildings and the kame, and washing away the railroad embankment near "the falls." At this point the railroad track was suspended in mid air for at least 100 feet to the bridge. The area devastated was estimated as one eighth of a mile wide in the village.

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

Laws of Physical Science. By EDWIN F. NORTHRUP, Ph.D. J. B. Lippincott Co. 210 pp.

The author of this volume has proposed to collect in compendious form the principal facts and relations that have been established in the study of physical science. The book does not pretend to be a text-book or to go but the attempt has been made to present into the discussion of the principles stated, all the more important laws and principles of physics in such form that they may be easily referred to by a student or worker in the subject, and to give in each instance references to sources where a fuller discussion may be found.

The plan has left the author great freedom of choice and he has browsed about, gathering here and there not only the more formal laws and wider generalizations, but facts, relations. and even definitions from all domains of physics including physical chemistry. No attempt is made to connect them into a systematic body or treatise beyond the arrangement of the various topics under the main divisions of the subject in something like logical grouping.

The large number of laws and relations given-there are about five hundred separate topics-makes it necessary for each statement to be brief and clear-cut, leaving the detailed explanation to be looked up by the student in the text-book or treatise to which reference is made. The demands of condensation have been met for the most part very successfully in statements which though compact are clear and correct. In a few instances, however, the