"black earth." Soon a rumor spread that this black earth was gold ore. Frobisher himself is thought to have believed it.

In the excitement that ensued, another expedition was formed. Queen Elizabeth loaned The Aid, a larger naval vessel, to Frobisher, and gave him £1,000 to finance the quest. Men of prominence in the court also invested in the hope of recovering large fortunes. In July, 1577, Frobisher, with The Aid, and the two vessels he had previously, and 120 men, sailed again. Mining equipment was carried and miners and refiners were included among the men. The following autumn the expedition returned to England with 200 tons of the "ore." While assaying, delayed in various ways, was going on, excitement mounted higher, and a third expedition was organized, with fifteen ships. Plans were made to leave 100 of the men to establish a permanent settlement in the barren land, which had solemnly been taken possession of in the queen's name. The fleet sailed May 31, 1578.

After arrival in Frobisher Bay, dissensions arose, and the idea of the settlement was abandoned. The fifteen ships, all laden to capacity with ore, returned to England in October, only to find that the assay, since completed, had determined that the ore contained nothing but "fool's gold," or iron pyrites.

Dr. Strong reports also having investigated what were believed by some explorers to be Norse ruins in Labrador and Baffin Land, but states all he has seen thus far are Eskimo in origin. Further search is to be made for evidences of a landing by the Vikings in the region.

Skeletons of three Labrador Eskimos from old stone graves, other contents of the graves, various specimens from ancient camp sites and many specimens of Eskimo handiwork in bone and stone implements have been collected for the museum.

Dr. Strong is now making preparations for a trip during the coming winter. While other members of the expedition are working at the scientific station established at Nain, Labrador, he will go, with a native interpreter and a team of dogs, into the interior to mingle with and study the primitive Naskapi Indians. These tribes, of which little is known at present, are one of the most primitive of extant peoples. They are reported to be surly and untrustworthy and disinclined to welcome white intruders.

RESEARCH IN MINING AND METALLURGY

FIFTEEN different research studies in mining and metallurgy are being carried on this year at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in cooperation with the United States Bureau of Mines and two advisory boards of mining engineers, metallurgists, steel operators and chemists, according to an announcement.

Thirteen of the problems are being investigated by college graduates appointed as research fellows, one by a research engineer and another by an analyst.

This year's work, it is announced, is a continuation of the program that has been in effect for several years. Each research fellow is making his studies under the direction of a "senior investigator" representing the Bureau of Mines and a member of the faculty of the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Four of the fellowships are financed this year by the institute. Other organizations contributing to the expenses and the fellowship funds are the American Gas Association, the New York Edison Company, the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company, the National Coal Association, the International Combustion Engineering Corporation, and twenty-six companies representing the metallurgical industries. The latter group is financing six of the investigations.

As in former years, it is announced, the results of the studies will be published in bulletin form for distribution at the close of the college year. Assignments of problems to the research fellows have been made as follows:

Equilibrium between manganese, iron and sulphur, by Hershall V. Beasley, University of Tennessee.

Synthesis, testing and application of warning agents for manufactured gas, by Harry A. Brown, Lehigh University.

Formation and identification of inclusions, by John M. Byrns, Case School of Applied Science.

Coal ash fusibility as related to clinker formation, by Clarence L. Corban, Rose Polytechnic Institute.

Methods of determining inclusions, by John F. Eckel, University of Kansas.

Distribution of iron oxide between slag and metal, by Hyman Freeman, Georgia School of Technology.

Base exchange in relation to decay and peat formation, by Raymond C. Johnson, Monmouth College.

Safety, costs and efficiency of distribution of electric power in coal mining, by Donald C. Jones, research engineer.

Physical chemistry of steel making, by Frank Morris, analyst.

Relation between composition and oxidizability of coal, by Harold M. Morris, Cornell College.

Viscosity of open-hearth slag, by Frank G. Norris, Purdue University.

Composition of oils and heavy tar from distillation of coal at low temperature, by Robert N. Pollock, University of Washington.

Determination of relative ignitibility of low temperature coke compared with coal, by Donald L. Reed, University of Washington.

Study of cause and control of abnormality in case carburized steel, by Alfred W. Sikes, University of Illinois.

Physical chemistry of steel-making (field studies), by R. W. Stewart, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

PROFESSOR ALBERT A. MICHELSON, of the University of Chicago, left on September 24 for Pasadena, with the object of repeating at the Mount Wilson Observatory the Michelson-Morley experiment. Dr. Michelson will also make a further study of the speed of light.

Ir is reported in the London Times that English scientific men attending the International Congress of Physics, held at Como in celebration of the Volta centenary, included Dr. F. W. Aston, of the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge; Professor A. S. Eddington, Sir Edward Rutherford and Sir J. J. Thomson, of the University of Cambridge; Professor W. L. Bragg, of the University of Manchester, and Dr. J. A. Fleming and Professor O. W. Richardson, of the University of

London.

In honor of an investigation on the measurement of the efficiency of the output of a dynamo, the results of which were reported to the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia fifty years ago by Dr. Elihu Thomson and E. J. Houston, then of the Central High School, Philadelphia, the institute and the General Electric Company plan to hold a celebration in March. Dr. Thomson and Dr. Charles F. Brush, of Cleveland, Ohio, will be the guests of honor.

DR. HERBERT E. IVES will demonstrate his invention of television in an address before the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia on November 16. He has been awarded a John Scott Medal.

DR. EDWARD R. WEIDLEIN, director of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, University of Pittsburgh, and president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, has been elected an honorary member of the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa.

DR. G. R. MANSFIELD, of the U. S. Geological Survey, has been placed in charge of the combined sections of areal geology and the geology of non-metalliferous deposits. Dr. H. D. Miser is in charge of the section of the geology of fuels.

MRS. CARL AKELEY, widow of the explorer, has been appointed adviser in the development of the new African hall of the American Museum of Natural History.

SIR MURDOCH MACDONALD has been elected president of the British Junior Institution of Engineers in succession to Engineer Vice-Admiral Sir Robert B. Dixon. Sir Murdoch will take office at a meeting to be held on November 18, when he will deliver his presidential address.

AT the meeting of the International Electrotechnical Commission, which opened at Bellagio on September

12, officers were elected as follows: President, C. Feldmann, Delft, Holland; honorary president, Guido Semenza, of Italy, the retiring president; honorary secretary, Kenelm Edgcumbe, of Great Britain, vice Sir Richard Glazebrook, resigned. The next meeting will be held in the United States in September, 1928. In 1930 the conference will go to Stockholm.

PROFESSOR M. H. INGRAHAM, of the University of Wisconsin, was appointed assistant secretary of the American Mathematical Society, in charge of arrangements for western meetings of the society, at the recent meeting of the organization in Madison. Professor Ingraham succeeds Professor Arnold Dresden, who for the past eleven years has served as assistant secretary of the society. Professor Dresden leaves the University of Wisconsin this autumn to become head of the department of mathematics at Swarthmore College. The society commended Professor Dresden's work during his term of office in resolutions adopted at the closing business session.

GRANTS made by the Committee on Scientific Research of the American Medical Association include $500 to Dr. Helen Bourquin, professor of physiology in the University of South Dakota, to continue her study of experimental diabetes insipidus; and $500 to Dr. C. W. Apfelbach, Chicago, to study some of the functional alterations of the kidneys of dogs following infarction of glomeruli, and $300 to Dr. Roy H. Turner to enable him to continue his researches into the gastro-intestinal microbiology in pellagra and sprue.

DR. G. B. L. ARNER, agricultural statistician of the division of statistical and historical research of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, tendered his resignation effective on September 1 after five years' service in the bureau. He has accepted a position as the chief of the bureau of vital statistics of the Department of Public Health, for the State of Pennsylvania. H. ATHERTON LEE, pathologist at the Experiment Station of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association in Honolulu, has resigned to accept the position of director of research for the Philippine Sugar Association in Manila, P. I. He will take up his new duties on November 16.

MILTON E. RYBERG, formerly of the division of agricultural biochemistry of the University of Minnesota, has taken up work at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Inc., at Yonkers, N. Y., and is working on the volatile constituents of plants attacked by the European corn borer.

PROFESSOR EDWARD W. BERRY has returned to Baltimore after spending three months in geological studies in Ecuador and Peru.

DR. A. S. HITCHCOCK, custodian of grasses in the National Herbarium, has returned from a trip to Washington, Oregon and California. In cooperation with the Forest Service he traveled through Cascade, Deschutes and Umpqua Forests of the Cascade Mountains and the Siskiyou Forest of the Coast Range. He also visited Mount Hood and The Dalles.

DR. REID BLAIR, director of the New York Zoological Park, is in London on a mission to study the recent installations in the London Zoological Garden.

DR. W. V. BINGHAM, president of the Psychological Corporation and director of the Personnel Research Federation, sails with Mrs. Bingham on The Leviathan, on October 1, for Paris to participate in the Fourth International Congress of Techno-Psychology. Before returning to New York in November he plans to visit the J. J. Rousseau Institute and the International Labor Office in Geneva, the psycho-technical laboratory of The Philips' Glowlampworks at Eindhoven, Holland, and the National Institute of Industrial Psychology in London.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR A. E. EMERSON, of the department of zoology of the University of Pittsburgh, who represented the university at the International Congress of Zoologists at Budapest, returns from a year's study in Italy and Sweden.

Ar the University of Pittsburgh, leaves of absence for one year have been granted to Professor S. H. Williams, zoology, for study and research in Germany, and to Assistant Professor K. S. Tesh, chemistry, for study and research at the University of Illinois.

A MEMORIAL tablet has recently been unveiled in the naval hospital of St. Anne at Toulon in honor of Dr. Louis Tribondeau, an eminent clinician and bacteriologist, who has given his name to a well-known stain. He died of influenza at Corfu in 1918.

Industrial and Engineering Chemistry reports that a Priestley Medallion has been presented to the Priestley Memorial Museum, Northumberland, Pennsylvania, by Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, Ltd., of Etruria, England. The portrait is in white on the usual Wedgwood blue background and is 12 x 9 inches. It is mounted in a deep walnut frame and the inscription on the back reads as follows: "Presented to the Priestley Museum by Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, Ltd., Etruria, England. This replica has been made from the original mould still in the possession of the firm. January, 1927." Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the firm presenting the medallion, was a friend of Dr. Priestley and many letters passed between them.

It is proposed to establish an Adami research fellowship in pathology in the University of Liverpool

in memory of John G. Adami, F.R.S., who was vicechancellor of the university during the last years of his life. For this purpose it is proposed to collect the sum of £3,000. Should the sum collected be insufficient, an alternative proposal is the endowment of an Adami Library of Pathology in connection with the medical library.

FRANK SPRINGER, a lawyer of New Mexico, known for his work in invertebrate paleontology, died on September 22, aged seventy-nine years.

CHARLES MCMILLAN, professor emeritus of civil engineering at Princeton University, died on September 19 in his eighty-seventh year. He was the oldest member of the Princeton faculty and of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

DR. CLARENCE HOFFMAN, associate professor of anatomy at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, died suddenly on September 1.

SIR ARTHUR EVERETT SHIPLEY, F.R.S., the zoologist, master of Christ's College and from 1917 to 1919 vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, England, died on September 22 at the age of sixty-six

years.

THE death is announced at the age of fifty-three years of Professor Rudolf Magnus, who held the chair of pharmacology at Utrecht.

AT the autumn meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers in Columbus, Ohio, which will be held from October 12 to 15, two days will be devoted to the discussion of the Mississippi Flood Problem, and its various phases will be treated by eminent authorities from both official and private life. Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis and Major-General Edgar Jadwin, chief of engineers, will present the views of the War Department. Other government departments cooperating will include U. S. Geological Survey, through Nathan C. Grover, chief hydraulic engineer; the Mississippi River Commission, through Colonel C. W. Kutz, and the Interior Department through Elwood Mead, commissioner of reclamation. Many other students of flood problems will contribute to the discussion, such authorities as Arthur E. Morgan, of Dayton, Ohio; John F. Coleman, of New Orleans; Colonel William Kelley, of Buffalo, and C. E. Grunsky, of San Francisco.

THE sixth International Congress of the History of Medicine was held at Leyden in July, under the presidency of Dr. J. G. de Lint, lecturer on the history of medicine in the University of Leyden. According to a report in Nature there were over eighty papers on the program. Dr. C. A. Crommelin gave an address illustrated by portraits of Huyghens, the Musschenbroeks and other contemporary Dutch scientific workers. Addresses illustrated by kinemato

graph films were given by Drs. A. Scherbeck and W. H. van Seters on the work of Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam. Lectures were also given on the history of the treatment of nervous and mental diseases, by Dr. C. O. Ariëns Kappers; the doctor in caricature, by Mr. C. Veeth; and the bier of the surgeons and druggists preserved in the church at Wokkum, by Dr. J. B. F. van Gils. An exhibition was arranged in the Municipal Museum at Amsterdam consisting of pictures by Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Teniers and other works from various Dutch galleries, sculpture, books and incunabula illustrating the history of medicine. An exhibition of instruments made by famous Dutch physicists in the seventeenth, eighteenth and commencement of the nineteenth centuries was held at the physical laboratory of the University of Leyden. The next congress will be held at Rome in 1930, but the International Society of the History of Medicine will form a section in the Congress of the History of Science to be held next year at Oslo.

THE International Congress of Hygiene will be held in Paris from October 25 to 28, under the chairmanship of Professor Léon Bernard, director of the Institut d'Hygiène of the Faculté de Médecine of Paris. The following topics have been chosen for discussion: (1) The relations of social insurance systems to the public health; speakers, Kuhn, Copenhagen; Holtzmann, Strasbourg, and Briau, Paris; (2) factors influencing the recrudescence of smallpox throughout the world, and the means of combating them; speakers, Professors Ricardo Jorge, Lisbon; Jitta, The Hague, and Camus, Paris; (3) the hygiene of instruction camps, speaker, Médecin-Inspecteur Sacquepée, professor at École d'Application du Val-de-Grâce. Addresses will also be delivered by Professor Madsen, president of the committee on hygiene of the League of Nations, on "The International Organization of Hygiene"; Professor Nuttall, of the University of Cambridge, on "The Relations of Parasitology to Hygiene," and Professor Ottolenghi, professor of hygiene, University of Bologna, on "The Question of Vitamins from the Hygienic Point of View."

A MR. C. SPIERER, of Geneva, Switzerland, has been an experimenter and inventor of ultra-microscopes for colloidal investigation and has devised an ultramicroscope involving a new principle of double illumination. Dr. Ellice McDonald, of the University of Pennsylvania, has been in correspondence with Mr. Spierer for several years in regard to the application of his instruments to colloidal research in cancer and

has applied Mr. Spierer's methods. This has finally resulted in a gift by Mr. Spierer for use in research of all his microscopic equipment to Dr. McDonald and Professor Seifritz, of the University of Pennsylvania.

PROTECTING the sea-front along the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, assembly bill 368 has been passed by both houses of the legislature and signed by Governor Young. This bill creates a biological reserve along the shore-line of the institution, and prevents all fishing and collection of marine life to a mean low tide depth of six feet, which includes outlying rocky ledges. This action was taken because of the threatened extinction of many kinds of marine animals in these waters.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NOTES

By the will of the late Eldridge R. Johnson, formerly president of the Victor Talking Machine Company, the University of Pennsylvania receives $800,000 for the establishment of the "Eldridge R. Johnson Foundation for Research in Medical Physics." It is stipulated that a sum not exceeding $200,000 may be expended for a building and equipment for the foundation. Any income from the balance will go to further the "study and development of physical methods in the investigation of disease and in its cure; the study of the important physical agencies or properties, such as heat, light, electricity, sound, etc., in their varied relations to the life of man, and to carry out investigations for the improvement of the instrumental applications of such agencies to medical purposes."

Nature states that the Albert Agricultural College, Glasnevin, Dublin, which has been engaged in agricultural teaching and research since 1851, has recently been reorganized so as to accommodate the enlarged Agricultural Faculty of University College, Dublin (National University of Ireland), and will henceforth be under university control. The following appointments have been made: director and professor of agriculture, Professor J. P. Drew; professor of plant pathology, Dr. P. A. Murphy; lecturer in animal nutrition, Mr. E. J. Sheehy; lecturer in agricultural chemistry, Mr. Geo. Stephenson; lecturer in agricultural botany and bacteriology, Mr. M. J. Gorman; lecturer in plant breeding, Mr. M. Caffrey; lecturer in horticulture, Mr. G. O. Sherrard.

DR. HENRY HARTMAN, professor of pathology, University of Texas School of Medicine, Galveston, has been appointed dean of the medical school, succeeding Dr. William Keiller. Dr. Hartman for many years has been a teacher in the college and since March, 1926, has been the acting dean.

DR. PAUL D. FOOTE, late of the Bureau of Standards at Washington, has been appointed to a senior fellowship in the Mellon Institute and a lectureship in the department of physics of the University of Pitts

burgh. Dr. Robert T. Hance, of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, has been appointed professor and acting head of the department of zoology. Professor F. L. Bishop retires as dean of the Schools of Engineering and Mines to devote full time to the department of physics. Dr. W. E. Baldwin, instructor in chemistry, goes to the Johnstown Junior College of the university as assistant professor and director of the department of chemistry.

DR. G. L. FOSTER, assistant professor of biochemistry in the University of California Medical School, at Berkeley, has resigned to become associate professor of biochemistry in the Medical School of Northwestern University.

R. B. GREEN, who has held the position of lecturer in anatomy at the College of Medicine, Newcastle-onTyne, for the past five years, has been elected professor of anatomy in the University of Durham, in succession to Professor R. Howden.

DR. WILHELM TRENDELENBURG, who was recently called from the professorship of physiology at Tübingen to the University of Berlin, has been succeeded at Tübingen by Dr. Armin Tschermak von Seysenegg, of the German University at Prague.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

ARSINE FROM FUSED GLASS RECENTLY while drawing a large tube of borosilicate glass to capillary size a very pronounced garliclike odor was observed. After a number of failures to duplicate the conditions it was found that the odor could be noticed only during the process of drawing the glass and thus while continuously forming a fresh surface.

The

The experimental procedure was as follows. The center portion of a short length of tubing was fused to a thick mass in an oxygen-natural gas flame. If the fused mass was held close to the nose no odor could be detected until the glass was stretched when at once the odor of garlic was noticed.

The experiment was repeated with a second leadfree borosilicate glass. This glass had a somewhat higher melting point and the odor could not be detected in this case unless the fused glass, after removing from the flame, was allowed to cool until it could be stretched only with difficulty. Several samples of so-called soft glasses gave negative results.

The odor was so striking that it was compared with that of arsine from an arsine generator. Several observers agreed that the odors from the fused glasses and of the arsine were identical. Since the two glasses giving positive results were found on analysis to contain in one case 0.5 per cent. and in the other

If reaction (4) takes place only to a very slight extent when arsenic is heated in air we can readily explain the similarity of its odor to that of arsine. In dry air reaction (4) may even be delayed until contact of the arsenic vapor with the moist mucous membrane of the nostrils.

It is therefore suggested, first, that the odor of arsenic vapor is due to the presence of arsine; second, that under the proper conditions arsine is formed in the fusion of glass containing arsenic compounds. H. M. ELSEY

WESTINGHOUSE RESEARCH LABORATORY,
EAST PITTSBURGH, PA.

1 Ipatier and Nikolajev, Ber. 59 (B), 595 (1926).