A touching appeal for the cause of microbiologic research was recently made by Dr. Charles Nicolle, director of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis, in a letter published in the Temps. He had just completed a stay of two months in France, and he returned appalled at the conditions which he found. The country which has produced Pasteur, Duclaux, Laveran and Roux, to mention only a few of the more illustrious scientists, and which received Metchnikoff with open arms, without the least compunction is permitting the decline of a science that has given France a large part of her past glory and from which she has always derived the first benefits.

Nicolle admits that it would be unfair to demand that the state support the laboratories, especially at the present time. However, he thinks that it is not the teaching laboratories from which we should expect to see great discoveries come forth: he who teaches is an erudite, while the mentality of the research worker is entirely different, and it is through other than teaching institutions that all real progress in microbiology must come. The typical institution of this kind in France and the one most widely known is the Pasteur Institute of Paris, the parent establishment whose offspring may be found in France, the colonies and abroad. The Pasteur Institute is a private establishment and does not serve as a teaching medium. The members of its staff devote all their efforts to scientific investigations, and in the thirty-five years of their endeavors they have shown marked ability. The institute derives its income from the sale of biologic products and from donations, and to-day neither of these sources furnishes ample means. Not having the inexhaustible resources of the gov ernment back of it, it is now merely vegetating, and it is only by a miracle that more can be accomplished.

Nicolle, therefore, addresses to the public an appeal for support of the microbiologic laboratories, pointing out that the matter should be of special interest to the farmers, for instance, for it makes possible a continuation of the researches on aphthous fever, a disease that has been responsible for the loss of millions and constitutes a permanent menace to agriculture. On the other hand, Nicolle calls attention to the difficulty of inducing young men to enter the laboratories, for the small budgets make a career in a laboratory anything but profitable.

THE BRITISH MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE Nature states that changes are announced at the British Ministry of Agriculture, the effect

of which is the promotion of Mr. F. C. L. Floud to be permanent secretary and the liberation of Sir Daniel Hall from office work so that he will be able to keep in close personal touch with agricultural developments and devote his whole time to the organization of agricultural education and research. The scheme now in operation comprises four essential parts: (1) Research institutions, where knowledge is gained and agricultural science systematically developed and put into such form that teachers and experts can use it. At first this work was distributed among a number of university departments, but of recent years there has been a tendency to concentrate it at a few institutions owing to the necessity for bringing individual workers into closer personal contact with each other and with the largescale problems of the farmer. (2) Agricultural colleges, where experts and large farmers will be trained, receiving a three years' course of instruction of university character. Most of these colleges are associated with universities which award degrees in agriculture; for students who do not wish to take degrees there is a diploma course requiring a high standard of technical work. (3) Farm institutes for small farmers and farm-workers who can not spare three years for college, but have some practical knowledge and are unable or unwilling to go through the ordinary college course. These institutes aim at giving sound courses of instruction on soil, manure, crops, animal husbandry, etc., but it is usually presumed that the student will take up farming in the area served by the institution, and for which the instruction is specially appropriate. (4) Advisory officers. In each county arrangements are made whereby farmers, smallholders, and others may consult the agricultural expert appointed by the county authority in regard to any difficulties they may meet with in their work. The expert is in a position somewhat similar to that of the general medical practitioner, and usually finds that he can deal with a large number of the cases presented to him. He is, however, in touch with the colleges, research institutions, etc.,

and can always obtain expert advice in any particular problem of special difficulty.

COLLECTION OF BIRDS FOR THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

ANOTHER Well-known ornithological collection has been added to the rapidly increasing collections in the Museum of the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California-the W. Otto Emerson collection.

Mr. Emerson began his bird studies in California some forty years ago, at that time laying the foundation of one of the most complete local collections of birds assembled in this state. His studies have been maintained in his spare time to the present date, and the results of his bird studies and observations are apparent in his notes and carefully selected series of specimens of local species. As Mr. Emerson has lived at Hayward, Alameda county, California, practically all of this period, his collection and notes have especial value from the standpoint of local occurrences, distribution, changes, etc.

In this collection are some most useful series of ducks in the first stage of juvenile plumage, carefully identified, which, added to such material as is adready in the academy collection, will be of much value for comparisons, and the study of plumage. Besides the series of birds of especial local value, there are a good series of warblers from various parts of the United States, and some rare records from California in the line of warblers, and some original record specimens for the state of several species of sparrows, etc.

The academy suffered the loss of its very valuable collection of birds in the fire of 1906, and, while the series of sea and shore birds has been more than replaced, the land birds have had but little effort expended upon them. The addition of the Emerson and Mailliard collections, which consist principally of land birds, has very materially assisted in bringing the academy collection nearer to its old basis. In addition to the collection of bird skins, some valuable manuscripts of Dr. James G. Cooper, such as those of "The Ornithology of California, Land Birds, 1870," and "The Birds of Washington Territory, 1860-65," to

gether with some of Dr. Cooper's note books, dating back to 1853, have accompanied the collection.

THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

THE thirty-third annual meeting of the Geological Society of America will be held Tuesday to Thursday, December 28 to 30, at Chicago by invitation of the University of Chicago and in affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The scientific sessions will be held in Rosenwald Hall on the university campus.

The address of the retiring president, Dr. I. C. White, will be delivered in the Reynolds Club building at 8 o'clock P.M., Tuesday, December 28, 1920. The annual subscription smoker will be held at the Reynolds Club at the conclusion of President White's address. Tickets, $1.00 each. The annual subscription dinner will be held at the Chicago Beach Hotel, 51st Street and Lake Michigan, Wednesday evening, December 29, at 7 o'clock. Hotel headquarters will be established at the Chicago Beach Hotel.

The Paleontological Society will hold its twelfth annual meeting at Chicago in conjunction with the Geological Society of America. Full information regarding this meeting may be obtained, as usual, from the society's secretary, Dr. R. S. Bassler, U. S. National Museum, Washington, D. C.

The Mineralogical Society of America will hold its second annual meeting at Chicago in conjunction with the Geological Society of America. Full information regarding this meeting may be obtained from the society's secretary, Mr. H. P. Whitlock, American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

The Society of Economic Geologists will hold its initial meeting at Chicago in conjunction with the Geological Society of America. For further information regarding this meeting, address Professor J. Volney Lewis, secretary, New Brunswick, N. J.

EDMUND OTIS HOVEY,
Secretary
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY,
NEW YORK,

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

ACCORDING to a cablegram from Stockholm to the daily press, Charles Edouard Guillaume Breteuil, head of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for 1920 on November 11 by the Swedish Academy of Science. The prize in chemistry has been awarded to Professor Adolf Ossian Aschan, of Helsingfors University in recognition of his researches in connection with the production of synthetic rubber. The award of Nobel prizes to Professor Jules Bordet, of Brussels, and Professor August Krogh, of Copenhagen, has been recorded in SCIENCE, but, following a press despatch, the subject of Professor Krogh's work was incorrectly given. He is professor of animal physiology at the University of Copenhagen and was a pioneer in the study of the forces governing gas exchange in the lungs and other parts of the body. Professor Bordet is now lecturing in this country on immunology and anaphylaxis. He has given the Herter lectures at the Johns Hopkins University, the Cutter lecture at Harvard University, a Hanna lecture at Western Reserve University and will give shortly a course of Hitchcock lectures at the University of California.

DR. THOMAS F. HUNT, dean of the college of agriculture of the University of California, Leon M. Estabrook, statistician and chief of the Bureau of Crop Estimates of the United States Department of Agriculture and Harvey J. Sconce, of Sidell, Ill., were appointed delegates from the United States to the general assembly of the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, November 3-15. Dean Hunt, who has been appointed permanent delegate to succeed David Lubin, is in Europe on sabbatical leave from the university, and reached Rome in time to take part in the meeting.

DR. J. H. WHITE, assistant surgeon general and Surgeon G. N. Guiteras have been designated by Surgeon General Cumming to represent the United States at the sixth International Sanitary Conference to be held at Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 19 and 20.

SURGEON-GENERAL M. W. IRELAND, U. S. Army, has been appointed a member of the Council on Medical Education, of the American Medical Association to succeed the late Dr. Isador Dyer, of Tulane University.

THE appointment of T. W. Norcross as chief engineer of the Forest Service is announced by Colonel W. B. Greeley, head of the service. Mr. Norcross succeeds Mr. O. C. Merrill, who resigned to become executive secretary of the Federal Power Commission.

MR. F. R. COLE, of Stanford University, has been appointed associate curator in dipterology, and Mr. Chase Littlejohn, of Redwood City, California, assistant curator in ornithology, in the Museum of the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.

ACCORDING to the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences Mr. P. C. Holdt has been appointed research associate at the Bureau of Standards, by the American Paint and Varnish Manufacturers' Association, and Mr. E. J. Ruh by the International Nickel Com

pany.

DR. NORAH E. DOWELL, instructor in geology at Smith College, has been appointed assistant geologist in the U. S. Geological Survey for duty as office geologist and research assistant in the Ground Water Division.

JOHN W. CALVIN, professor of chemistry at the University of Nebraska and associate chemist in the station, has become chemist in the experiment station of the Dominican Republic.

J. C. MCNUTT has resigned as head of the department of animal husbandry in the Massachusetts College to become eastern representative of the American Shorthorn Breeders' Association, with headquarters at Amherst.

DR. DOUGLAS R. SEMMES, professor of geology at the University of Alabama, has resigned his work at the university and accepted the position of assistant chief geologist of the Compañia Mexicana de Petroleo, "El Aguila," and will be located permanently at the company's headquarters in Tampico.

AFTER twenty-five years of active service in teaching and research work in applied chemis

try and chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. William H. Walker has tendered his resignation as director of the Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research to take effect on January 1. He will resume his consulting practise which was interrupted in 1917 by his entering the service, and, although no longer officially connected with the institute, will maintain his interest in the development of the division and will closely cooperate with it in the fulfilment of the contracts under the Technology Plan already existing. This division acts for the Institute of Technology in the administration of its obligation incurred under the Technology Plan by which over 200 of the most prominent industries of the country have made contracts involving annual retainer fees of over a quarter million dollars. He will be succeeded by Professor Charles L. Norton, professor of industrial physics at the institute and director of the Research Laboratory of Industrial Physics.

THE Journal of the American Medical Association quoting from the Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift states that the Vienna physiologist, Professor E. Steinach, is intending to remove to Stockholm, where he will continue his research on physiology and biology.

THE Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences reports the following foreign visitors to Washington: Dr. R. J. Tillyard, director of the Cawthron Institute of Scientific Research at Nelson, New Zealand; Dr. T. Harvey Johnston, of Queensland, who is on a mission to various parts of North and South America for the purpose of studying the cactus and means of controlling it, and Mr. A. K. Haagner, director of the zoological park at Pretoria, South Africa, who came to the United States in charge of a shipload of African animals which had been collected at Pretoria during the war for various American zoological parks.

DR. W. E. S. TURNER, secretary of the Society of Glass Technology, the University of Sheffield, England, and forty members of

the society recently made a tour of the glass centers in America.

W. P. WOODING with a party from the United States Geological Survey have left for Haiti to conduct a reconnaissance geologic examination of the Republic of Haiti at the request of that government.

THE University of California has secured Mr. Bert A. Rudolph, a pathologist in the United States Department of Agriculture at Washington and a graduate of the State University, to develop further tests of control of apricot brown rot by spraying in the spring. The work will be carried on at the deciduous fruit station of the university and at Mountain View.

WINTHROP P. HAYNES, associate professor of geology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, is on leave of absence for a year and is with the foreign production department of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. He will spend most of the winter with a geological surveying party in Mexico.

DR. A. C. TROWBRIDGE, professor of geology at the State University of Iowa, gave an address, November 3, as retiring president of the Iowa Chapter of the Society of Sigma Xi, "On the importance of sedimentation: a neglected phase of geological investigation."

DR. RAYMOND PEARL, of the Johns Hopkins University, on November 11, gave the Gross Lecture before the Philadelphia Pathological Society on Some biological aspects of human mortality."

PROFESSOR ULRIC DAHLGREN, of Princeton University, delivered a lecture, on November 1, before the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, on "The production of motion by animals."

DR. NELLIS B. FOSTER, of the Cornell Medical College, will deliver the third Harvey lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine, Saturday evening, November 20. His subject will be "Uræmia"

It is announced in Nature that a course of three public lectures on "Present Tendencies of Philosophy in America," at King's College,

London, beginning on October 28 with a lecture on "New realism: its background and origin," was given by Professor W. P. Montague, professor of philosophy in Columbia University, New York City. The two other lectures were entitled: "New realism: its implication and promise," and on November 1, Professor J. E. Boodin, professor at Carleton College, Minn., gave a lecture on "Pragmatism: its right and left wings."

THE University of Bologna and the Royal Academy of Sciences held a joint commemoration service for the late Professor Righi on November 1, when an address was delivered by Professor Luigi Donati.

A GOLD medal, studded with diamonds, but valued chiefly because it had been "presented to Dr. S. D. Gross by his medical friends in commemoration of his fifty-first year in the profession, April 10, 1879," was recently given to Dr. J. Chalmers DaCosta, S. D. Gross professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College, to be placed in the Jefferson College Museum.

PROFESSOR SAMUEL HANAWAY, who retired on account of health in 1916 from the department of mathematics in the College of the City of New York, has died at the age of 66.

M. H. P. STEENSBY, professor of geography at the University of Copenhagen, who was forty-five years old, died suddenly on board the liner Frederik VIII., while returning from America, where he had been in connection with his investigations into the voyages of the old Norsemen to the coast of North America.

THE College of Physicians of Philadelphia announces that the next award of the Alvarenga Prize, amounting to about $250, will be made, July 14, 1921, provided that an essay deemed worthy of the prize shall have been offered.

PROFESSOR W. C. ALLEE, secretary-treasurer, of the American Society of Zoologists, writes that the committee on hotel accommodations for the Chicago meetings have assigned the American Society of Zoologists to the Congress Hotel, Michigan Blvd. and Congress St. The rates range from $3.00 to $9.00 for single rooms and from $7.00 up for double rooms.

THE publication of World Agriculture as the official organ of the American E. F. Farmers' Club and the World Agricultural Society, is announced in the Experiment Station Record. It will be issued quarterly from Amherst, Mass. The purposes of the magazine are announced as follows: To further a sympathetic understanding among all nations in matters relating to the production, distribution and consumption of the products of the soil; to encourage study of the principles which should control the agricultural policies of the world to the end that every individual may do his full duty and may enjoy his rightful share of the results; to aid in the application of these principles through the dissemination of information, the exchange of students and teachers between educational institutions, and the rendering of practical assistance in the agricultural regions devastated by the world war and wherever such assistance is needed; to promote the correlation on world lines of all agencies concerned in rural improvement, technical, scientific, economic and social, and a greater appreciation of the possibilities of the country for the development of the highest types of individual and social life. In addition to the World Agriculture Society the journal expects to print official items regarding the International Institute of Agriculture, the American E. F. Farmers' Club, American Country Life Association, the International Live Stock Breeders' Association, the Beaune Committtee on World Cooperation in Agriculture and Country Life, the International Association of Agricultural Missions, the Agricultural Club of the North Carolina College, and the Agricultural Society of France. The June issue contains the officers of these organizations; reports of the Beaune conference of 1919, and