Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

under this instruction a student must be enrolled in an O.T.C. and fulfil after enrolment the conditions of efficiency laid down for medical cadets. (7) Protected students delaying qualification unnecessarily, or otherwise not satisfactorily pursuing their studies, are to be referred to the director of National Service. (8) Protection will be withdrawn from a student who has been requested in writing by the Ministry of National Service to offer himself as a surgeon probationer, R.N., and has not within twenty-one days applied for enrolment as such. The remaining paragraphs of the instruction-which supersedes all previous instructions relating to the protection of medical students now in civil life-deal with formalities to be observed in the matter of certificates and of applications to tribunals in respect of medical students not hitherto called up but now no longer protected.

WAR WORK OF THE U. S. COAST AND
GEODETIC SURVEY

UNDER the provisions of section 16 of an act approved May 22, 1917, and regulations established in accordance therewith, any of the vessels, equipment, stations or personnel of the survey may be transferred by the President in time of national emergency to the service and jurisdiction of the War Department or the Navy Department, and the same may be retransferred to the service and jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce by the President when the necessity for such service no longer exists.

By executive order dated September 24, 1917, the steamers Surveyor, Isis and Bache, their crews and 38 commissioned officers of the survey were transferred to the Navy Department, and 29 commissioned officers and 10 members of the office force were transferred to the War Department with military rank corresponding to their grade in the survey.

Some changes were made in the assignments of these officers; some were rejected for physical or other reasons and were returned to the survey by executive order and others were afterwards assigned in a similar manner. Some members of the crews of the vessels declined to enroll in the Naval Reserves and their

places were filled by the Navy Department. Some employees of the office force and hands in field parties were drafted and others enlisted voluntarily in the Army or Navy. On March 1, 1918, 65 commissioned officers of the survey, 17 members of the office force, 5 ships' officers, 67 seamen and other employees of vessels and 21 hands from field parties, a total of 175 persons, were serving in the Navy or Army.

In conformity with the wishes of the Navy Department, after the beginning of the war all of the topographic, hydrographic and wiredrag work of the survey was directed so as to meet the most urgent military needs of the Navy Department. The work done comprises wire-drag surveys on the New England coast and coast of Florida; hydrographic surveys on the South Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico; the beginning of a survey of the Virgin Islands; the investigation of various special problems for the Navy Department; wire-drag surveys, current observations, and special work on the Pacific coast; and surveys in the Philippine Islands.

The work undertaken for the War Department by the field parties of the Coast and Geodetic Survey was intended to furnish points and elevations for the control of topographic surveys for military purposes. To expedite this work an allotment was made from the appropriation for the War Department to cover the expenses of the field parties employed. The chief of the division of geodesy was authorized to confer with officers of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, and officials of the Department of the Interior in regard to the proper coordination of the various operations.

Extensive surveys were undertaken, including primary triangulation, primary traverse, precise leveling and determination of differences of longitude, and good progress has been made, and the results of previous surveys have been made available by copies or in published form as promptly as possible. From April, 1917, to January, 1918, 80 per cent. of the time of the office force of the geodetic division was devoted to war work. At the request of the War Department tables were computed for

the construction of maps on the Lambert projection. The Chart Division has done much work in the compilation of maps, furnishing copies of original sheets, and supplying information of various kinds required for military

purposes.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

THE University of California has conferred the degree of LL.D on Professor George F. Swain, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, who this year delivered the Hitchcock lectures at the University.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY has conferred the degree of D. Sc., on Professor W. C. M' Intosh, for many years professor of natural history in the University of St. Andrews.

THE Paris Academy of Sciences has elected M. Flahaut of Montpellier to take the place of the late M. Gosselet. He has been the correspondent of the academy for the section on botany since 1904.

SIR J. J. DOBBIE, British government chemist, has been elected a member of the Athenæum Club for eminence in science.

We learn from Nature that an Entomological Society of Spain has lately been founded, with its center for the present at St. Saviour's College, Saragossa. Dr. Hermenegildo Gorría, of Barcelona, is the president for 1918, and the Rev. R. P. Longinos Navás, S.J., the secretary.

THE Bureau of Standards has announced the appointment of Samuel S. Wyer, a consulting engineer of Columbus, Ohio, and Mr. Willard F. Hine, chief gas engineer of the Public Service Commission of the First District, New York State, as consulting engineers on its staff.

DR. SAMUEL A. TUCKER, of Columbia University, Dr. H. R. Moody, of the College of the City of New York, and J. M. Moorehead, of Chicago, have been added to the personnel of the chemical section of the War Industries Board.

DR. JOHN LYON RICH, of the department of geology at the University of Illinois, has been

commissioned a captain in the National Army. He is assigned to Washington, D. C., for service in the Intelligence branch of the army as a specialist in geography.

CAPTAIN R. G. HOSKINS, of Northwestern University Medical School, Captain L. A. Congden, Lieutenant F. A. Cajori and Lieutenant A. G. Hogan, have completed a month's study of army nutrition at Camp Zachary Taylor, Louisville, Ky. They comprise a "Nutritional Survey Party" from the office of the Surgeon General of the Army.

DR. W. A. CANNON, of the Department of Botanical Research of the Carnegie Institution, sailed in April to Australia and will be away from the United States about twelve months. He will visit certain of the more arid portions of West and South Australia where he will make field studies of the desert plants with especial reference especial reference to root habits.

WE learn from The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry that Dr. Yogoro Kato, professor at the Tokyo College of Technology and director of the Nakamura Chemical Research Institute in Tokyo, is visiting the United States for professional purposes and Mr. T. F. Chin, of Pekin, China, principal technical expert of the Chinese Ministry of War, is in this country with the Chinese mission to make purchases for the outfitting of an extensive chemical laboratory at Pekin for his government.

PROFESSOR T. L. HAECKER, of the University of Minnesota, who has been asked for several successive years to continue his experiments in animal nutrition, despite the fact that he has passed the usual age for retiring from service, will retire at the close of this college year, July 31, 1918, and provision will be made for completing the work upon which he is engaged and for tabulating the results.

DR. EUGENE R. KELLEY, Boston, has been appointed state commissioner of health to succeed Dr. Allan J. McLaughlin, who has been called back into the federal public health service.

DR. BUFORD JENNETTE JOHNSON, Ph.D. (Hopkins '16), has resigned her position as assist

ant psychologist in the Laboratory of Social Hygiene, Bedford Hills, N. Y., and has accepted an appointment as research assistant in the Bureau of Educational Experiments, New York City.

DR. OLIVER W. H. MITCHELL has resigned as head of the city laboratories at Syracuse, N. Y., and is succeeded by Dr. Augustus J. Gigger, formerly bacteriologist for the Rhode Island State Department of Health.

THE firm of Waddell and Son, which has offices in Kansas City and New York City, has recently become incorporated. The new firm of Waddell and Son, Inc., includes, besides Dr. J. A. L. Waddell and N. Everett Waddell, their former assistant engineers, F. H. Frankland, Shortridge Hardesty, and L. C. Lashmet.

Ar a recent meeting of the scientific staff of the Bureau of Biological Survey, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Dr. C. Hart Merriam, founder and former chief of the bureau, now consulting biologist, U. S. Department of Agriculture, and research associate on the Harriman Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, delivered an address on the “Origin and Early History of the Biological Survey."

PROFESSOR E. V. MCCOLLUM, of the Johns Hopkins University, on April 12 addressed the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society on "The Biological Analysis of Food."

A MEETING of the Botanical Society of Washington was held at the Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C. on April 2. The program

was

"The Grain Sorghums: The Botanical Grouping of Cultivated Varieties" (with lantern), by C. R. Ball; "The Shaw Aquatic Gardens" (with lantern), by F. V. Rand.

THE first "Silvanus Thompson Memorial Lecture," founded by the Röntgen Society, London, in memory of its first president, was delivered by Sir Ernest Rutherford on April 9.

THE annual meeting of the American Association of Museums will be held at Springfield, Mass., on May 20, 21 and 22.

THE Council of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology has decided, on ac

count of the general situation and of the number of members of the society who are engaged in various forms of national service, to abandon the annual meeting scheduled to be held at Peabody College, Nashville, this spring.

THE Committee on botany of the National Research Council urges throughout the country to aid in securing data in reference toimportant crop diseases. In connection with what may be called the "barberry campaign," the following information is desired from as many regions as possible: (1) prevalence of barberry, (2) amount of infected barberry, (3) the neighboring grass flora, (4) amount of back rust on these grasses, (5) proximity of infected barberry and grasses to grain fields, (6) relative susceptibility of the different varieties of barberry (including Mahonia). Such information should be reported to Professor E. C. Stakman, University Farm, St. Paul, Minn., who will organize and distribute the data.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

SEVERAL gifts and bequests were announced at the recent meeting of the corporation of Yale University. Mrs. James Wesley Cooper, of Hartford, has given $5,000 for the establishment of a publication fund in memory of her husband, who graduated from the college in 1865, and who was a member of the corporation for over thirty years. The widow of the late William A. Read, of New York, has made a memorial gift of $5,000 to assist the work of the Yale University Press. Two bequests have been received, one of $10,000 from the late Samuel J. Elder, '73, for the college, and one of $5,000 from the widow of Amory E. Rowland, '73 S., for the benefit of the Sheffield Scientific School.

Ir is stated in Nature that an anonymous donor has given Oxford University £500 towards the fund for the endowment of the professorship of forestry, and that the University of Liverpool has recently received a gift of £2,000 from Mrs. and Miss Holt as a

contribution towards the cost of equipment of the new department of geology.

HAROLD ERNEST BURTT has been appointed instructor in psychology at Harvard University.

THE first incumbent of the newly founded chair of phthisiology at the University of Edinburgh is Sir Robert W. Philip, professor of clinical medicine, said to be the founder of the first antituberculosis dispensary.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE EVIDENCE FROM ALASKA OF THE UNITY OF THE PLEISTOCENE GLACIAL PERIOD TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In an article entitled Frozen Muck in the Klondike District, Yukon Territory, Canada," by J. B. Tyrrell, of the Canadian Survey, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Series III., 1917, Volume XI., pages 39-46, there is a remarkable collection of facts seeming to prove the unity and continuity of the Pleistocene Glacial Period. It is true that there was no extension of moving glacial ice over the Klondike region, but there is abundant evidence of a change of climatic conditions corresponding to that of the generally glaciated region of the continent. During the warmer climate of the Tertiary period the streams had built up extensive gravel deposits over the bottoms of many of the valleys. For a long period "the climate had been temperate, or at all events, not arctic, and large numbers of animals, such as bison, mammoth, elk, moose, horse, etc., had roamed over the country.

Suddenly, a new set of climatic conditions began to prevail. The Glacial Period began, and, while the vast sheets of ice which covered so large a portion of Canada during that Period never extended over the Klondike district, the cold undoubtedly became very intense, and as a consequence the ground became permanently frozen. With the freezing of the soil and of the underlying rock the processes of oxidation and disintegration of this rock were no longer possible, and the small tributary brooks which flowed over the frozen land into the main streams were no longer able to collect and wash down sand and gravel from it. The supply of sand and gravel having

been thus cut off, it could no longer be distributed by the main streams over the alluvial flats as it had been distributed before, but nevertheless the sand and gravel flats themselves were not worn away by the streams as they would have been under normal conditions, for they were cemented into very resistant masses by a matrix of ice.

The sand and gravel so deposited and preserved on the alluvial flats is now overlain by a deposit of vegetable material locally known as "muck,'' which may have a thickness of ten, twenty, thirty, or even as much as one hundred feet. The plane of separation between the gravel and "muck" is usually sharp and well defined, though occasionally little layers of "muck" may be found included in the upper beds of the gravel. The general impression that a person gets from a study of the deposits, however, is that of a sudden change from gravel to "muck" (pp. 40, 41).

The significant thing is that this layer of muck whose formation started in a period of great cold in early glacial times, has gone on continuously and uninterruptedly accumulating down to the present time. The bones of the extinct animals above enumerated "are found in large numbers in the underlying gravels and in the bottom of the muck; but the climate would seem to have soon become too inhospitable for them, and their remains are very scarce in the higher portions of the muck and finally disappear from it altogether" (p. 45). Dr. Tyrrell believes "that a critical study of the plant remains from the various layers of the muck might furnish much interesting information as to the character and climate of that portion of the world, in which there has been a continuous formation of vegetable beds from the beginning of the Glacial Period down to the present" (p. 46). The bearing of all this upon the unity of the Pleistocene Glacial Period is too evident to need statement. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT

OBERLIN,

DRAWINGS ON LANTERN SLIDES

IT often occurs that one wishes to interpose diagrams or line drawings in a classroom lecture which is being illustrated by lantern slides, and one has to either forego the point entirely, or turn on the lights and use a chart, or put the necessary diagram or

drawing on the blackboard. In the first case the good teacher usually feels there is a failure of full elucidation on his part, while in the second case valuable time is lost, and a break is made in the lecture.

It

To overcome this difficulty the writer recently devised a simple plan to make line drawings and diagrams on glass slides to be used as regular lantern sides. Clean lantern slide covers are taken, and on them the objects desired are drawn with a "china marking pencil." One must not lift the pencil from the glass while drawing, or else use great care at the points where the pencil is lifted and the same line then continued. is not necessary to make an absolutely black line, as any mark shows plainly. A few trials will show how sharp one's pencil should be for the best results. As wide a margin must be left as in making ordinary slides. If a mistake is made it can be erased with the finger or a blunt piece of wood. The mark does not rub out too easily, consequently the slides can be used without the further trouble of covering if they are to be of a temporary nature. However, they can be fixed permanently by finishing them in the usual way with a clean cover slip and bound with tape.

As the "china marking pencils " come in at least three colors, black, blue and red, and as their cost is slight (15 cents) and the whole process is simple and short, their use in this way is practicable and inexpensive. The pencils can be purchased at any good stationery store.

HORACE GUNTHORP

DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

A SUGGESTION FOR MAKING THIN SECTIONS FOR BRYOZOAN SLIDES

In making thin sections for bryozoan slides it has been noted by the writer that many of them have a frosty, crystalline appearance when they have been ground to the desired thickness. In the process of grinding, numerous small particles of calcium carbonate are forced into the openings, obscuring the structure. As these fine particles have relatively large surface exposure, they will dissolve much

more readily than the rest of the fossil when treated with dilute hydrochloric acid. It is best to let the acid act for only a very short time and then wash it off quickly, repeating the treatment several times, if necessary, until the structure stands out clearly.

CHARLES E. DECKER

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

A NATIONAL FLORAL EMBLEM

Now that America is engaged in the grim business of war for the defense of democracy, we are tempted in our zeal to forget the things which are purely sentimental because of the pressing needs of the things practical.

But with the dreaded arrival of casualty lists, the great heart of the nation has been deeply stirred, the grief of America stands in yearning need of sentiment. And so sentiment-pure sentiment-sponsors the thought that the American people have a real need for a recognized national floral emblem.

When the cherished day of peace arrives, how shall we greet our boys returning from the front? With flowers? Of course, but how with flowers? Goldenrods? Daisies? Violets? Yes, with all of these, but national sentiments might well be crystallized on single national symbolic flower.

[ocr errors]

The rose of old England, the Fleur-de-lis of France, the thistle of Scotland, the chrysanthemum of Japan; all these remind us that America at present does not possess a floral emblem to epitomize the things that are noble and good in the nation.

Why should not all that is best in the American nation be symbolized in a flower as a national emblem? The very mention of such a symbol should stir the depths of patriotism in the breast of every true American. Surely Germany is the loser by not having a wellknown floral emblem. In Europe, America has been criticized for being too material-would not the adoption of a national flower be an esthetic step in the right direction?

If, then, it is agreed that America will be benefited by possessing a recognized national floral emblem, the selection of a suitable flower is a difficult task indeed. The flora of the country is so rich that the choice

کہا

« ElőzőTovább »