ment of Agriculture, to succeed the late Dr. C. Gordon Hewitt, whose death occurred in February last.

DR. THOMAS F. HUNT, dean of the college of agriculture at the University of California, has been appointed a member of the permanent committee of the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, Italy.

MR. PAUL MOORE, director of the Information Bureau of the War Trade Board, has been appointed secretary of the Division of Research Extension of the National Research Council.

MR. R. M. WILHELM, chief of the thermometer laboratory of the Bureau of Standards, resigned in September to accept a position with the C. J. Tagliabue Manufacturing Company, of Brooklyn, New York, manufacturers of thermometric apparatus.

ROBERT HALL CRAIG, formerly sanitary engineer with the surgeon general of the army and later sanitary and hydraulic engineer with the Construction Division of the Army, Washington, D. C., and Henry Ward Banks, 3d, formerly research chemist with the Harriman Research Laboratory, New York City, and the National Biscuit Company, have formed a partnership under the name of Banks and Craig, consulting engineers and consulting chemists, with offices in New York City.

THE Iowa Physics Research Board, an organization allied with the Iowa Academy of Science, has been formed as a result of the annual meeting of the Iowa Academy held last May at the University of Iowa, at Iowa City. About twenty-five college physicists are members of the board, which is organized to give mutual help in aiding research work in physics in the state. Three members serve as an executive committee. These are Professor D. W. Morehouse, of Drake University, Profssor Roy D. Weld, of Coe College, and Professor G. W. Stewart, of the University of Iowa. Professor Stewart is the secretary of the committee.

DR. HENRY A. CHRISTIAN, Hersey professor of the theory and practise of physic

at the Harvard Medical School, has returned to his position at the medical school and as physician-in-chief of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston, after a year's leave of absence spent in Washington as chairman of the Division of Medical Sciences of the National Research Council. From June 25 to July 2, 1920, he delivered five lectures at the University of Washington, Seattle, and he will deliver an address before the Mississippi Valley Medical Association at Chicago,

October 27.

DR. EDWARD PHELPS ALLIS, JR., of Palais de Carnolès, Mentone, Maritime Alps, France, well known for his basic researches in com

parative anatomy, is now in America, and is expected to spend three or four months in the United States previous to returning to the Allis Laboratory to resume his work.

PROFESSOR C. W. HEWLETT, of the department of physics of the University of Iowa, has returned to the university for the work of the academic year after spending the summer in the research laboratory of the General Electric Company, at Schenectady, N. Y.

HOWARD E. SIMPSON has returned to the chair of geographic geology at the University of North Dakota after a semester's leave of absence. During the leave he served as visiting professor of geology and geography in the University of Southern California.

PROFESSOR HOMER R. DILL, director of the vertebrate museum at the University of Iowa, has returned to the university after spending the summer making collections for the museum in the Hawaiian Islands and in the Billy Goat Pass region of Washington.

A GROUP of twelve physicians of the Mayo Foundation has organized the "Osler Society for the Study of Medical History." Dr. William C. MacCarty, associate professor of pathology, has been chosen president.

COOPERATIVE work has been worked out by Professor Frank Schlesinger, professor of astronomy at Yale University, between the government Observatory at Wellington, New Zealand, and the observatory of Yale University. This plan, which has received the approval of

the university corporation, involves the sending to New Zealand by the university of apparatus to photograph the stars of the southern hemisphere for compiling zone catalogues.

As has been noted in SCIENCE, a special conference was called together by the Royal Society to consider the future of the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature. We learn from Nature that the conference held its first meeting at Burlington House on September 28, Sir Joseph Thomson in the chair. The following is the list of delegates: Sir David Prain, Sir Arthur Schuster, Mr. J. H. Jeans, Professor H. E. Armstrong, Dr. F. A. Bather, and Dr. P. C. Mitchell, representing the Royal Society; Professor M. Knudsen, Denmark; M. A. Lacroix, France; Dr. G. van Rijnberk, Holland; Professor R. Nasini and Comm.-Ing. E. Mancini, Italy; Dr. H. Nagaoka, Japan; Mr. R. Laache, Norway; Baron Alströmer, Sweden; Dr. H. Escher, Dr. M. Godet and Dr. H. Field, Switzerland; Dr. R. M. Yerkes, Dr. L. E. Dickson, Mr. L. C. Gunnell and Dr. S. I. Franz, U. S. A.; Sir Henry Hayden and Dr. S. W. Kemp, India; Sir Thomas Muir, South Africa; Sir Edward Parrott, Queensland; Professor E. W. Skeats, Victoria; Mr. C. B. Rushton, Western Australia; and Professor A. Dendy, New Zealand. The delegates were the guests of H. M. Government at a dinner at the Carlton Hotel on September 29.

DR. RAYMOND PEARL, director of the department of biometry and vital statistics, school of hygiene and public health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, will give a course of Lowell lectures in Boston beginning on December 1. The subject is "The Biology of Death," and the subjects of the separate lectures are: (1) Senescence and death; (2) The chances of death; (3) The causes of death; (4) Correlation of death rates; (5) Inheritance of life duration; (6) The trend of mortality and some of its consequences.

THE following course of public lectures on the "History of Science" is being given at Yale University under the auspices of the Gamma Alpha Society: "History of mathematics," Professor E. W. Brown; "History of

chemistry," Professor John Johnston; "History of biology," Professor L. L. Woodruff; "History of psychology," Professor R. P. Angier; "History of physics," Professor H. A. Bumstead; "History of geology," Professor H. E. Gregory, and "History of astronomy," Professor Frank Schlesinger.

PRESIDENT E. A. BIRGE, of the University of Wisconsin, gave an address at the dedication of the biological buildings which have been erected at Fairport, Iowa, by the Bureau of Fisheries.

A JOINT meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Section of the Society of Chemical Industry, the New York Section of the American Chemical Society and the New York Section of the American Electrochemical Society, was held at the Chemists Club in New York City on October 15. The subject of the evening was "Proposed new departures in government chemical work," and the meeting was addressed by Dr. S. G. Cottrell, director of the Bureau of Mines, and Dr. Carl Alsberg, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, Department of Agriculture.

THE regular October meeting of the Physics Club of Philadelphia is to be held on Friday evening, October 29, at the Randal Morgan Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania. It will be addressed on the work of the Bureau of Standards by Dr. F. C. Brown, assistant to the director.

DR. RUDOLF EUCKEN, recently retired from the chair of philosophy at the University of Jena and at one time German exchange professor at Columbia University, will give lectures during the winter semester at the University of Helsingfors.

DR. ISADORE DYER, dean of the medical school of Tulane University, known for his work on leprosy and malignant skin diseases, died at his home in New Orleans, on October 12.

THE United States Civil Service Commission announces for November 23, 1920, an open competitive examination for superntendent and director in the Bureau of Fisheries. Two vacancies exist, one for duty at Key

West, Florida, at $1,800 a year, and the other at Beaufort, N. C., at $1,500 a year, each with a possible bonus of $20 a month. Competitors are not required to report for examination at any place, but will be rated on physical ability, education and experience. Further information may be obtained by application to the Civil Service Commission, Washington, D. C.

Natural History, the journal of the American Museum of Natural History, says the largest and most mysterious land animal known in the world to-day has been named Baluchitherium osborni by its discoverer, C. Forster Cooper, now curator in the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, England. The animal is like neither an elephant, nor a rhinoceros, nor a titanothere, nor a moropus. Mr. Cooper writes that the ankle bone is certainly that of a perissodactyl and seems nearer to the rhinoceros than anything else. A giant primitive rhinoceros tooth, ten centimeters across, has been found, which indicates the presence of rhinoceroses of gigantic size in the Bugti beds of Baluchistan in Oligocene times, which was a strange faunal period. The Baluchitherium, if a rhinoceros, certainly had a very long neck, more like that of a gigantic giraffe than that of a horse. Two of the anterior vertebræ of this monster have recently been received in the American Museum and have been compared with all our large land animals, living and extinct, with no result. These neck vertebræ dwarf those of all the largest land animals. The Bugti beds, which have been explored by Cooper and by Pilgrim, also yield a hornless rhinoceros, Paraceratherium, in which the lower incisor teeth are turned downward; a hippopotamus that is typical except that it lacks front teeth; and a beautiful anthracothere called Gelasmodon. This gives us a glimpse into the still unknown mammalian life of southwest India.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

PLANS are now being prepared for a new building for the department of chemistry of

Yale University, which has hitherto carried on its work partly in the Kent Chemical Laboratory and partly in the Sheffield Chemical Laboratory. According to present plans, the new building will be located on the PiersonSage Square, just north of the Sloane Physics Laboratory. It will have a total floor area of 100,000 square feet; and, in addition to the usual laboratories and recitation rooms, will include an ample number of rooms for research work.

DR. GEORGE BLUMER, who resigned last spring from the deanship of the Yale Medical School, will serve for this year as clinical professor of medicine. Dr. Wilder Tileston will be associated with him with the same title, and Dr. Edward H. Hume, the dean of the medical school of Yale-in-China, who is on leave of absence in this country, will serve as visiting professor of medicine.

DR. G. H. WOOLLETT, of the University of Minnesota, has been elected associate professor of chemistry at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Woollett was formerly connected with the University of Mississippi. Dr. Victor A. Coulter, who served as a gas officer in France, has been elected assistant professor of chemistry in the same institution.

AFTER serving for twenty-five years as head of the department of horticulture and entomology, and eleven years as head of the department of entomology, of Purdue University and Experiment Station, Professor James Troop now relinquishes his position in the experiment station and will devote his time to teaching in the school of agriculture. Professor John J. Davis, formerly with the United States Bureau of Entomology is now head of the department at Purdue.

AT the University of Chicago Dr. Lester R. Dragstet has been appointed assistant professor of physiology and William Berry instructor in psychology.

DR. A. B. MACALLUM, administrative chairman of the Research Council of Canada, has been elected to the new chair of biochemistry

in McGill University, Montreal, to date from October 1. Dr. Macallum will continue his work as chairman of the Research Council until a successor has been named.

MR. FLORIAN A. CAJORI, formerly captain in the food section of the Sanitary Corps and on duty in Jugo-Slavia with the American Relief Administration, has completed his graduate work at Yale University and accepted a position as instructor in physiological chemistry at Leland Stanford, Jr., University, in California.

PROFESSOR J. T. WILSON, F.R.S., Challis pro

line spectrum. The second, a diffuse distinctly greenish glow filling the whole bulb, took place at higher temperatures and was visible until a temperature in the neighborhood of 200° C. was reached. The spectrum of this latter type showed a continuous band with superimposed lines, an appearance similar to that described by Professor Child, but at the higher temperatures only the line 5461 was visible. The writer's observations agree with those of Kowalski, who compares the appearance he observed with an exactly similar one recorded by A. Kalahne.2

Professor Child states that the "radiators"

has been appointed to the chair of anatomy at the University of Cambridge.

DR. WILHELM WEIN, professor of physics at Würzburg, has been appointed to succeed Professor Wilhelm Röntgen, who recently retired from the chair of physics at the University of Munich.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

THE SPECTRUM OF MERCURY VAPOR

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In your issue of September 10, Professor C. D. Child calls attention to a greenish glow discharge through mercury vapour whose spectrum shows a continuous band throughout the greater part of the visible spectrum, with the ordinary lines superimposed. This summer, in experimenting on the electrodeless discharge of certain vapors, the writer observed a similar appearance. The method used was one previously employed by Kowalski.1 A small quantity of mercury was introduced into a highly exhausted Pyrex bulb some 12 cm in diameter. The bulb, surrounded by the primary coil of a Tesla high-frequency outfit, was placed in an electric oven and the appearance of the discharge (if any) observed as the temperature was gradually increased.

In common with Kowalski the writer observed two distinct types of discharge. The first, a dazzling white ring discharge occurred at temperatures several degrees above and below 90° C., and showed the ordinary bright 1 J. Kowalski, Physik. Zeit., 15, 225, 1914.

charged, and suggests that the source of this type of radiation has to do with the formation of clusters of two or three atoms which may be formed when mercury vapor is condensing. Professor Kowlaski ascribes the two appearances noted above to two ionization stages ("Ionisierungsstufe"). It would seem that a possible explanation is the following. At the lower temperatures, because of the greater mean free path, even in the case of an electric field of relatively small intensity, sufficient energy is communicated to an atom on collision to produce ionization. During recombination the line spectrum is emitted. At the higher temperatures, because of the relatively small mean free path (the vapor pressure of mercury at 160° is roughly twenty-five times that at 90°), but little energy is communicated on collision and but little, if any, ionization occurs. The line spectrum accordingly is feeble or absent. Some electrons, however, are displaced from their normal orbits, and in their return to their normal positions, radiation is emitted. Normally such a radiation would also give rise to spectral lines, but we may assume that in the case of the mercury atom with its numerous electrons, the frequent atomic impacts occurring at high temperatures alter the natural periods to such an extent that the emission is continuous over a wide range.

The writer has under way an extended study of the electrodeless discharge of certain 2 A. Kalahne, Wied. Ann., 65, 815, 1898.

AUTOPSY OF A BLACK FISH

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: On July 5, 1920, a large female Blackfish, Globocephalus malas, a species of whale sixteen feet long came ashore near Woods Hole, Mass., and was brought to the Fish Commission Laboratory at this place for autopsy. The task was new to all present and when a large sac capable of holding a pailful or two was seen near the posterior end of the body, it was at once recognized as probably the empty bladder. This, however, proved to be incorrect for the empty urinary bladder was found near as a hard, flesh-colored organ contracted to the size of a man's large elongated fist. The sac when more closely examined was found to be a recently delivered uterus, completely relaxed, upon the inner surface of which the site of the placenta could be plainly made out and with its open mouthed sinuses capable of receiving the tips. of a little finger. This therefore was probably an unique case of death from post-partum hemorrhage, damp bed and absence of a marine accoucheur with his ergot. A few days later the history of the case was completed by the finding of the infant, a youngster about three feet in length, also cast ashore near where the body of the mother was found.

There is no doubt the character of the case would certainly have been undiagnosed had there not been present at the post-mortum, an old general medical practitioner who recognized first that the body of the animal showed an almost exsanguine state, corroborated later by the condition of the relaxed uterus.

WOODS HOLE, MASS., July 26, 1920

G. A. MACCALLUM

QUOTATIONS

THE NATIONAL BOTANIC GARDEN

THE plan for the creation of a national Botanic Garden and arboretum that will be comparable with government gardens in other

countries, and with public gardens in cities of the United States, should not be allowed to rest. There is force and sound argument in the proposal and no contrary argument. The present national Botanic Garden is national only in its name and in the fact that it is maintained at a slight cost to the nation. It is not national in its exhibit of plant forms. It was a pleasing little spot when the capital was a village. It carries one's thought back to when the mighty Library of Congress was housed in one small room in the Capitol. The Botanic Garden has made little growth in fifty years because it could not expand outside of its tall iron fence. Now the little space within that fence is being dedicated to monuments.

The weight of opinion among government and private botanists and landscape architects is that the Mount Hamilton tract should be the site of the great new and really national Botanic Garden. It fronts on one of the main boulevards. It is already accessible by steam and electric railroads. It adjoins the vast public park which the government is building up from the bottom, the marshes and the margins of the Eastern branch. It thus fits into and becomes a part of the park system. These are among the reasons which botanists urge to bring the matter into public favor. But to them the strong reasons are that in this tract of land are high hills, steep slopes, gentle slopes, thick woods with many varieties of timber, deep ravines, meadows, marshes, brooks and rivulets, and about all kinds of soil which all kinds of American plants pick out for home.

It is a great idea that the United States should have a Botanic Garden of which all Americans could say, "It is the greatest thing of its kind on earth."-Washington Evening Star.

A NEW BIOLOGICAL JOURNAL DURING the past two decades the development of ecological studies in this country has been rapid. Five years ago, as a result of continued and insistent demand, the Ecological Society of America was organized and at once included in its membership botanists