Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. It has been alleged that the United State government is about to remove the restrictions on pelagic sealing and that great activity will soon be witnessed in the outfitting of vessels for carrying on the work. A newspaper has recently published an item which purports to give minute details. The statements therein are so misleading in character as to give rise to the impression that they were fabricated solely for the purpose of creating a sensation or of encouraging uninformed persons to engage in an illegal enterprise.

The truth of the matter is that pelagic sealing in the North Pacific Ocean, north of the thirtieth parallel of north latitude and including the seas of Bering, Kamchatka, Okhotsk, and Japan, is prohibited by an international agreement entered into in 1911 by the United States, Great Britain, Japan and Russia. The agreement is in perpetuity unless one or more of the parties thereto dissent. With the well-demonstrated benefits which accrue to all the governments concerned from the rational management of the fur-seal herds, there is little likelihood that any one will permit its citizens or subjects to resume at any time in the future the disastrous practise of pelagic sealing.

The United States and Canada cooperate fully in patrolling and protecting the Alaska fur-seal herd. U. S. Coast Guard vessels are ever on the alert to detect violations of the international agreement, and it is safe to say that any clandestine operations would come to grief in short order.

In the fiscal year 1920 the revenue to the United States government from the sale of fur-seal skins was $1,457,790. Aside from the revenue to this government, the governments of Great Britain and of Japan share in the annual take of Alaska fur-seals to the extent of 15 per cent. each.

THE PROPOSED CALIFORNIA ANTI-VIVISECTION LEGISLATION

THE board of regents of the University of California and the trustees of Stanford University have united in a protest against the anti-vivisectionist initiative. They say:

The advance of sanitation, modern medicine and physiology and the teaching of biology all rest on animal experimentation. The control of epidemic diseases, the management of surgical operations and of childbirth, and the certification of milk and water supplies would be impossible without the knowledge gained by such studies. In fact, the whole structure of the present-day protection of the public from disease rests upon animal experimentation.

The University of California and Stanford University are vitally interested in this initiative measure since its passage would stop the research work now going on in their medical schools, hospitals and laboratories, and in the Bureau of Animal Industry. The studies on botulism in olives, which will not only save the ripe olive industry of the state, but many lives, would cease, as would likewise the manufacture of serum for the prevention of hog cholera, the preparation of vaccine for anthrax, and the various other measures that annually save millions of dollars and prevent great suffering among domestic animals. Even feeding on animals would be impossible.

No worse attack on the welfare of the state and on the right of the university to seek and teach the truth could be made. Every man, woman and child, every unborn babe, every domestic animal in the state will be affected if this measure becomes a law. It is unnecessary special legislation due to prejudice and misinformation. No one will tolerate cruelty to animals. The present laws of the state are drastic and quite sufficient to control any abuse. We know that there is no cruelty to animals in the laboratories of the universities. They are in charge of men and women of the highest character, who are unselfishly working to better the lot of their fellow men. Anesthetics are always used for animals in the laboratory in exactly the same way that they are used by surgeons in the operating room. The real object of the antivivisectionist is not the prevention of cruelty to animals, but the prevention of progress in science and medicine.

THE SIXTEENTH ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND INTERCOLLEGIATE GEOLOGICAL EXCURSION

THE sixteenth annual New England Intercollegiate Geological Excursion will be held in the vicinity of Middletown, Connecticut, October 8 and 9, 1920. There will be two parts to the excursion. Friday afternoon the Strickland pegmatite quarry, Collins Hill, Portland,

will be visited. The quarry has produced in recent years a greater variety of interesting minerals than any other in this locality, and is always an attraction, to visiting mineralogists.

Saturday the party will devote its attention to the faulting within the Triassic valley. The fault-line between the Lamentation Mountain block and the Hanging Hills block will be the particular study. Step faults and drag dips are frequent along the fault-line and give clear evidence of the magnitude of the faulting movements.

On Friday evening Professor W. M. Davis will speak on the Connecticut Triassic area as a whole. Professor W. N. Rice will then outline the details of the Saturday excursion and Professor W. G. Foye discuss the pegmatite quarries in the vicinity of Middletown. Immediately before these talks a luncheon will be served to the visiting geologists by Wesleyan University.

A collection of minerals from the pegmatites including one of the largest known collections of uraninites in the country will be on exhibition.

A cordial invitation is extended to all teachers and graduate students of geography and geology in the high schools, normal schools and colleges of New England.

LECTURES ON ASTRONOMICAL SUBJECTS AT THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES THE first course of lectures to be offered this year by the California Academy of Sciences has been arranged and will consist of four or more lectures on astronomical subjects. Each lecture will be illustrated. The course will be as follows:

September 26. Dr. W. W. Campbell, director, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Calif. Subject: "The solar system."'

October 3. Dr. A. O. Leuschner, dean of the graduate division, University of California. Subject: "Comets."

October 10. Dr. R. G. Aitken, astronomer, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Calif. Subject: "The binary stars."

October 17. Dr. J. H. Moore, astronomer, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Calif. Subject: "The nebulæ.”’

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. LEO S. ROWE, assistant secretary of the treasury and formerly professor of political science in the University of Pennsylvania, has assumed the directorship of the Pan-American Union at Washington, succeeding Dr. John Barrett, who has retired after fifteen years as head of the union.

AT a meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry in New York City on September 27, the Grasselli medal was conferred on Dr. Allen Rogers, of the Pratt Institute. The presentation address was made by Professor M. T. Bogert.

PROFESSOR FREDERICK HAYNES NEWELL, head of the department of civil engineering at the University of Illinois and formerly director of the United States Reclamation Service, has resigned and will go to California.

DR. ERNEST W. BROWN, professor of mathematics in Yale University, is on leave of absence during the first half of the current academic year and is sailing for England early in October to be away for a couple of months. His address there will be Christ's College, Cambridge.

PROFESSOR CHARLES A. KOFOID, of the University of California, has returned to Berkeley from a tour of the British and French institutes of parasitology and tropical medicine. He delivered addresses at the British Association for the Advancement of Science on "Hookworm and human efficiency" and on "The neuromotor system of flagellates and ciliates and its relation to mitosis and the origin of bilateral symmetry." He was elected vice-president of the Zoological Section of the association and received the honorary degree of doctor of science from the University of Wales.

MR. E. C. LEONARD, of the division of plants, U. S. National Museum, who accompanied Dr. W. L. Abbott to Haiti in February for botan

Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. It has been alleged that the United State government is about to remove the restrictions on pelagic sealing and that great activity will soon be witnessed in the outfitting of vessels for carrying on the work. A newspaper has recently published an item which purports to give minute details. The statements therein are so misleading in character as to give rise to the impression that they were fabricated solely for the purpose of creating a sensation or of encouraging uninformed persons to engage in an illegal enterprise.

The truth of the matter is that pelagic sealing in the North Pacific Ocean, north of the thirtieth parallel of north latitude and including the

seas of Bering, Kamchatka, Okhotsk, and Japan, is prohibited by an international agreement entered into in 1911 by the United States, Great Britain, Japan and Russia. The agreement is in perpetuity unless one or more of the parties thereto dissent. With the well-demonstrated benefits which accrue to all the governments concerned from the rational management of the fur-seal herds, there is little likelihood that any one will permit its citizens or subjects to resume at any time in the future the disastrous practise of pelagic sealing.

The United States and Canada cooperate fully in patrolling and protecting the Alaska fur-seal herd. U. S. Coast Guard vessels are ever on the alert to detect violations of the international agreement, and it is safe to say that any clandestine operations would come to grief in short order.

In the fiscal year 1920 the revenue to the United States government from the sale of fur-seal skins was $1,457,790. Aside from the revenue to this government, the governments of Great Britain and of Japan share in the annual take of Alaska fur-seals to the extent of 15 per cent. each.

THE PROPOSED CALIFORNIA ANTI-VIVISECTION LEGISLATION

THE board of regents of the University of California and the trustees of Stanford University have united in a protest against the anti-vivisectionist initiative. They say:

The advance of sanitation, modern medicine and physiology and the teaching of biology all rest on animal experimentation. The control of epidemic diseases, the management of surgical operations and of childbirth, and the certification of milk and water supplies would be impossible without the knowledge gained by such studies. In fact, the whole structure of the present-day protection of the public from disease rests upon animal experimentation.

The University of California and Stanford University are vitally interested in this initiative measure since its passage would stop the research work now going on in their medical schools, hospitals and laboratories, and in the Bureau of Animal Industry. The studies on botulism in olives, which will not only save the ripe olive industry of the state, but many lives, would cease, as would likewise the manufacture of serum for the prevention of hog cholera, the preparation of vaccine for anthrax, and the various other measures that annually save millions of dollars and prevent great suffering among domestic animals. Even feeding on animals would be impossible.

No worse attack on the welfare of the state and on the right of the university to seek and teach the truth could be made. Every man, woman and child, every unborn babe, every domestic animal in the state will be affected if this measure becomes a law. It is unnecessary special legislation due to prejudice and misinformation. No one will tolerate cruelty to animals. The present laws of the state are drastic and quite sufficient to control any abuse. We know that there is no cruelty to animals in the laboratories of the universities. They are in charge of men and women of the highest character, who are unselfishly working to better the lot of their fellow men. Anesthetics are always used for animals in the laboratory in exactly the same way that they are used by surgeons in the operating room. The real object of the antivivisectionist is not the prevention of cruelty to animals, but the prevention of progress in science and medicine.

THE SIXTEENTH ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND INTERCOLLEGIATE GEOLOGICAL EXCURSION

THE sixteenth annual New England Intercollegiate Geological Excursion will be held in the vicinity of Middletown, Connecticut, October 8 and 9, 1920. There will be two parts to the excursion. Friday afternoon the Strickland pegmatite quarry, Collins Hill, Portland,

will be visited. The quarry has produced in recent years a greater variety of interesting minerals than any other in this locality, and is always an attraction to visiting mineralogists.

Saturday the party will devote its attention to the faulting within the Triassic valley. The fault-line between the Lamentation Mountain block and the Hanging Hills block will be the particular study. Step faults and drag dips are frequent along the fault-line and give clear evidence of the magnitude of the faulting movements.

On Friday evening Professor W. M. Davis will speak on the Connecticut Triassic area as a whole. Professor W. N. Rice will then outline the details of the Saturday excursion and Professor W. G. Foye discuss the pegmatite quarries in the vicinity of Middletown. Immediately before these talks a luncheon will be served to the visiting geologists by Wesleyan University.

A collection of minerals from the pegmatites including one of the largest known collections of uraninites in the country will be on exhibition.

A cordial invitation is extended to all teachers and graduate students of geography and geology in the high schools, normal schools and colleges of New England.

LECTURES ON ASTRONOMICAL SUBJECTS AT THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES THE first course of lectures to be offered this year by the California Academy of Sciences has been arranged and will consist of four or more lectures on astronomical subjects. Each lecture will be illustrated. The course will be as follows:

September 26. Dr. W. W. Campbell, director, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Calif. Subject: "The solar system.”

October 3. Dr. A. O. Leuschner, dean of the graduate division, University of California. Subject: "Comets."

October 10. Dr. R. G. Aitken, astronomer, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Calif. Subject: "The binary stars."

October 17. Dr. J. H. Moore, astronomer, Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Calif. Subject: "The nebulæ."

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS DR. LEO S. Rowe, assistant secretary of the treasury and formerly professor of political science in the University of Pennsylvania, has assumed the directorship of the Pan-American Union at Washington, succeeding Dr. John Barrett, who has retired after fifteen years as head of the union.

Ar a meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry in New York City on September 27, the Grasselli medal was conferred on Dr. Allen Rogers, of the Pratt Institute. The presentation address was made by Professor M. T. Bogert.

PROFESSOR FREDERICK HAYNES NEWELL, head of the department of civil engineering at the University of Illinois and formerly director of the United States Reclamation Service, has resigned and will go to California.

DR. ERNEST W. BROWN, professor of mathematics in Yale University, is on leave of absence during the first half of the current academic year and is sailing for England early in October to be away for a couple of months. His address there will be Christ's College, Cambridge.

PROFESSOR CHARLES A. KOFOID, of the University of California, has returned to Berkeley from a tour of the British and French institutes of parasitology and tropical medicine. He delivered addresses at the British Association for the Advancement of Science on "Hookworm and human efficiency" and on "The neuromotor system of flagellates and ciliates and its relation to mitosis and the origin of bilateral symmetry." He was elected vice-president of the Zoological Section of the association and received the honorary degree of doctor of science from the University of Wales.

MR. E. C. LEONARD, of the division of plants, U. S. National Museum, who accompanied Dr. W. L. Abbott to Haiti in February for botan

ical explorations, returned to Washington on July 30.

PROFESSOR JOSEPH F. ROCK, formerly professor in the College of Hawaii, Honolulu, has left Washington upon an extended trip of agricultural exploration in eastern Asia for the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, U. S. Department of Agriculture, with which he has recently become connected.

AT the congress of physiologists held in Paris last July under the presidency of Professor Charles Richet, the Americans in attendance were Professor G. N. Stewart, Western Reserve University; Professor Frederic S. Lee, Columbia University; Professor Graham Lusk, Cornell University; Dr. L. J. Henderson, Harvard University; Professor J. J. R. Macleod, Toronto University, and Professor Fraser Harris, Dalhousie University.

SIR WILLIAM MACEWAN has been elected president of the International Society of Surgery, whose next meeting will probably be held in London during the summer of 1923.

THE following officers of the Pacific Division of the Phytopathological Society of America have been elected and will hold office for two years: President, Dr. H. S. Reed, Riverside, California; Vice-president, Dr. J. W. Hotson, University of Washington, Seattle; SecretaryTreasurer, Dr. S. M. Zeller, Oregon Agricultural College, Corvallis, Oregon.

J. J. DAVIS has resigned as agent in charge of the Japanese beetle control project at Riverton, New Jersey, to accept a position as head of the departments of entomology of Purdue University and the Indiana Agricultural Experiment Station, effective on October 1.

MR. R. M. OVERBECK, geologist, has resigned from the U. S. Geological Survey to accept a position with an oil company.

THE Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences states that while in charge of a Coast and Geodetic Survey subparty working in New Mexico, Mr. R. L. Schoppe was struck by lightning and seriously burned, but is recovering.

ACCORDING to the Berlin correspondent of the London Times Professor Einstein is so much disgusted by attacks made upon him by certain of his anti-semitic scientific colleagues that he may leave Berlin altogether. The Tageblatt makes a strong protest against the annoyance to which Professor Einstein has been subjected, which it describes as disgraceful. It says: "It is the duty of the Berlin University to do all in its power to keep Professor Einstein. Every one who desires to maintain the honor of German science in the future must now stand by this man." Professor Einstein himself makes a reply in the Tageblatt to his assailants. He ends by saying that it will make a singularly bad impression on his confrères to see how the theory of relativity and its originator are being traduced in Germany.

THE botanists of America have sympathized deeply with the eminent French bryologist, M. Jules Cardot, whose house at Charleville was wrecked and the most valuable part of his library and collections destroyed by the German invaders. Not only was this done, but M. Cardot's fortune was so impaired by the loss of property due to the war that, for the present at least, he has given up his studies and entered the service of the French Government of Indo-China. A portion of M. Cardot's library and collections valued at 10,000 francs has been acquired by the French National Museum at Paris. The museum contributed 5,000 francs, English bryologists and botanists 2,500 francs and members of the Sullivant Moss Society in excess of the other 2,500 francs. The success of the American subscription was due largely to the efforts of the secretary of the society, Mr. Edward B. Chamberlain.

ARMAND GAUTIER, long professor of biological and medical chemistry in the Paris School of Medicine and distinguished for his contributions to these subjects, has died at the age of eighty-two years.

DR. D. P. VON HANSEMANN, professor of pathologic anatomy at Berlin, has died at the age of sixty-two years.