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THE BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY AND
DR. L. O. HOWARD

AFTER more than thirty-three years of service as chief entomologist of the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Leland O. Howard retired on October 17 as the chief of the Bureau of Entomology, and was succeeded by Dr. C. L. Marlatt, a member of the department since 1888 and who for the past five years has been associate chief in charge of the regulatory work of the bureau, and also chairman of the Federal Horticultural Board.

Dr. Howard is now in his fiftieth year of government service, having joined the entomological branch of the Department of Agriculture in 1878, soon after his graduation from Cornell University. He retires as chief at his own request, but this does not mean retirement from service. He has passed his seventieth birthday, and has asked to be relieved of the administrative duties of his office, but proposes to devote his full energies to the field of entomological research, in which he has long been recognized as a most distinguished investigator. His special fields are medical entomology and parasitology.

Dr. Howard was placed in charge of the entomological work of the department on June 1, 1894. In the thirty-three years that have followed, the science of entomology has greatly broadened and Dr. Howard has guided numerous activities which have been of great service to the American public.

Two campaigns with which Dr. Howard has been identified are especially widely known. He was a leader in the mosquito crusade. As early as 1892 he published results of experiments showing that certain types could be controlled by the use of kerosene, and when the mosquitoes were identified as disease carriers he was able to recommend methods of control. His publications on the house-fly dating from 1896 to his book "The House-Fly Disease Carrier" in 1911, were largely responsible for the anti-house-fly crusades all over the world in the last twenty years.

Dr. Howard is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was permanent secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for twenty-two years, and its president in 1920-21. He has been made honorary member of many foreign scientific societies and is the only American honorary member of the Academy of Agriculture of France, and received several decorations, among which are the Cross, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, and the Cross, Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite agricole. He has been a delegate to many international assemblies and an officer of six scientific gatherings. In addition to bachelor's and master's degrees from Cornell, his doctorates include Ph.D. (Georgetown, 1896), M.D. (George Washington, 1911), LL.D. (Pittsburgh, 1911), and Se.D. (Toronto, 1920). The bibliography of his publications includes 941 titles.

Dr. Marlatt, who succeeds Dr. Howard, joined the Department of Agriculture in 1888 and has been closely associated with Dr. Howard's administration. When Dr. Howard was made chief Dr. Marlatt became assistant chief, and in 1922 associate chief in charge of regulatory work. He was instrumental in promoting the passage of the plant quarantine act of 1912 and was appointed to administer it. Dr. Marlatt's specialities have been studies of scale insects, sawflies and periodical Cicadas, known as locusts.

Dr. Marlatt holds the degrees of B.S., M.S. and D.Sc., all from the Kansas State Agricultural College.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. HOMER LEROY SHANTZ, for the past year head of the department of botany at the University of Illinois and previously senior physiologist in the U. S. Bureau of Plant Industry, has been elected president .of the University of Arizona, his appointment to be effective in September, 1928. Dr. Byron Cummings, head of the department of archeology, who has been acting president since the resignation of Dr. C. H. Marvin last February, has been named president of the university for the present year.

THE John Fritz gold medal of the Engineering Foundation has been awarded to General John J. Carty, vice-president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, in recognition of having “done more than any other man toward the development of modern telephone engineering."

THE Leslie Dana gold medal, awarded annually to the person who has done most for the conservation of vision during the preceding year, was presented on October 18 to Dr. Lucien Howe, of Buffalo.

DR. WILLIAM LISPENARD ROBB, dean of electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y., has been awarded a 35-year service medal by the Hartford Electric Light Company, having entered the service of the company in 1892 in an advisory capacity and continuing to perform this service.

DR. JOHN M. T. FINNEY, professor of clinical surgery of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, will be guest of honor of the Medical Club of Philadelphia on October 28 at a reception at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel.

DR. JOHN STEWART, dean of the faculty of medicine at Dalhousie University, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation on October 6, when a dinner was given in his honor in the Halifax Hotel. During the dinner Dean Stewart was presented with an address and a purse of gold.

DR. KARL SICK, professor of surgery at Hamburg University, has been nominated an honorary professor by the Turkish government for his help in the organization of medical education in Turkey.

AT the International Dental Congress recently held at Copenhagen the executive committee awarded the Miller prize, founded in 1910, to Professor Wilhelm Dieck, director of the Dental Institute of the University of Berlin.

THE University of Rome has conferred on Professor Fernando Perez, ambassador of Argentina to the king

of Italy, the degree of doctor of medicine and surgery honoris causa.

Ar the annual meeting of the trustees of the Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory the following officers were elected: Dr. Hermon Carey Bumpus, president; Professor Duncan S. Johnson, vice-president; Mrs. Louise DeKoven Bowen, treasurer; Dr. H. V. Neal, secretary. Dr. Neal was reelected director of the laboratory.

AT the meeting of Sigma Xi at the University of Virginia on October 17, the officers for the year 1927-28 were elected as follows: Wilbur A. Nelson, professor of geology and state geologist of Virginia, president; L. G. Hoxton, department of physics, vicepresident, and Bruce D. Reynolds, department of biology, secretary-treasurer.

DR. IRVING CUTTER, dean and associate professor of medicine, Northwestern University Medical School, was elected president of the Phi Rho Sigma Medical Fraternity at the fifteenth biennial convention in Montreal from September 14 to 17.

DR. FREDERICK P. GAY, professor of bacteriology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia

University, has been made a member of the commission appointed to make a world survey of epidemic encephalitis.

LAURENCE LA FORGE has resigned as geologist in the U. S. Geological Survey.

WILLIAM G. HOUSEKEEPER has resigned from the technical staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., of New York, N. Y.

ELMER O. KRAEMER has resigned from the assistant professorship in colloids, which he held at the University of Wisconsin, and has joined the staff of the Experimental Station of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., Wilmington, Del.

Ş. F. SCHAIRER, graduate student in the department of chemistry at Yale University, has joined the staff of the geophysical laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington.

PROFESSOR WILLIAM M. CLAY, of the biology department of Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, has been appointed curator of the Transylvania Museum of Natural History.

W. A. MATHENY has been appointed director of the University of Ohio Museum.

SIDNEY B. HASKELL, director of the Massachusetts Agricultural Station and acting head of the division of agriculture at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, has resigned. He will assume a position with private interests in New York City.

M. BARRY WATSON has resigned from the position of director of engineering in the Toronto Technical Schools and is entering consulting practice.

THE staff of the University of Michigan Southern Observatory in South Africa has been increased by the addition of Mr. Morris K. Jessup and Mr. Henry F. Donner, who will assist Professor Richard A. Rossiter there in the study of double stars.

DR. ANDREW W. SELLARDS, assistant professor of tropical medicine at the Harvard Medical School, has been granted leave of absence for the academic year 1927-28 and will go to West Africa to make a study of yellow fever and other tropical diseases.

CHARLES W. CUNO has resigned his position at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., and is to be at Göttingen, Germany, for the coming year as visiting professor, lecturing on "American Practice in Industrial Chemistry and Metallurgy."

DR. CHARLES L. SWISHER, professor of physics at the North Dakota Agricultural College, has been granted a leave of absence for the coming year, in

dt order to fill an appointment of assistant professor of dphysics at Yale University.

IN response to invitations from the International Office of Museums and the British Royal Commission on Museums, Laurence Vail Coleman, director of the American Association of Museums, sailed for Europe on October 15.

DR. C. G. ABBOT, of the Smithsonian Institution, has returned to Washington after the summer's fieldwork at Mt. Wilson, California.

DR. EUGENE R. WHITMORE, professor of parasitology and pathology at Georgetown University medical and dental schools, returned to Washington in time to take up his class work on the opening of school, after spending the summer in the West Indies and Central America studying malaria and blackwater fever.

PROFESSOR C. T. BRUES, of the Bussey Institution, Harvard University, has returned from an excursion into Nevada, Utah and eastern California, where he spent the summer in an investigation of the fauna of

the hot springs in this region. He was accompanied by Mrs. Brues, who made observations on the grass flora associated with the thermal springs, and by their

son, who secures data on the characteristics of the thermal waters.

C. E. RESSER and R. S. Bassler, of the department of geology, U. S. National Museum, have returned from two months' field-work in the Rocky Mountain region of both the United States and Canada, where they obtained certain stratigraphic information necessary to complete an extended work upon the region by Dr. Charles D. Walcott.

DR. M. O. MALTE, chief botanist of the National Museum, Canadian Department of Mines, who accompanied the 1927 expedition to the Canadian Arctic archipelago, has returned with a large collection of botanical material.

W. F. FOSHAG and HARRY BERMAN have completed a trip to mining districts in northern Mexico, conducted under the auspices of the U. S. National Museum and the mineralogical museum of Harvard University, for the purpose of collecting exhibition specimens of the minerals of the region.

DR. JEAN DUFINOY, of Arcachon, France, has been sent to Cornell University by the Rockefeller Foundation for special study in the department of plant pathology.

DRS. PAUL ALEXANDROFF (Moscow) and Heinze Hopf (Berlin), holders of International Education Board fellowships for 1927-28 for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the work of American mathe

maticians in the field of analysis situs, are now at Princeton University and will go to Harvard University later.

DR. PAUI. WALDEN, professor of chemistry at the University of Rostock, holder of the George Fisher Baker non-resident lectureship in chemistry this term at Cornell University, opened his course on October 5 with a discussion of modern chemistry's relation to ancient alchemy.

PROFESSOR ALEXANDER SILVERMAN, head of the department of chemistry of the University of Pittsburgh, gave an illustrated lecture on "Glass" before the Akron Section of the American Chemical Society on September 29.

DR. RAOUL BLANCHARD, professor of geography in the University of Grenoble, France, lectured on October 19, at Columbia University, under the auspices of the Institute of Arts and Sciences.

PROFESSOR GARWOOD, F.R.S., gave his presidential address, "The Development of River Meanders,” to

the Westminster and Central London branch of the

Geographical Association on October 12, at University College.

SIR JOHN ROSE BRADFORD, president of the Royal College of Physicians, will deliver an introductory address on "The Study of Medicine" at the opening of the winter session of the Durham College of Medicine, Newcastle-on-Tyne, on October 11.

FRIENDS and colleagues of the late Professor Adrian Stokes have decided to establish a memorial in recognition of the man and his work, through the establishment of a Stokes research fellowship or studentship, at the medical school of Guy's Hospital, London.

THE Helminthological Society of Washington, of which Eloise B. Cram is president and Mabelle B. Orkman corresponding secretary, has passed the following resolution: "The members of the Helminthological Society of Washington learn with profound regret of the death of Dr. Henry J. Nichols. His death is a distinct loss to science and medicine, in which fields he was a distinguished and able worker, as well as the loss to us of a highly esteemed friend. We extend our sincere sympathy to his family in their bereavement and to the Army Medical Corps in the passing of a beloved comrade."

DR. FREDERICK CHARLES NEWCOMBE, professor emeritus of botany and former head of the department of botany at the University of Michigan, died in Honolulu, T. H., on October 1, aged sixty-nine years. Dr. Newcombe was taken ill aboard ship while return

ing from a trip to the mainland and died the morning after arrival in Honolulu.

PROFESSOR PERLEY F. WALKER, dean of the school of engineering of the University of Kansas since 1913, committed suicide on October 17. Dr. Walker was fifty-two years of age.

DR. FRANK SHEARMAN MEARA, professor of clinical medicine at the Cornell University Medical College, died on October 9, aged sixty-one years.

IT is announced from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh that a second International Conference on Bituminous Coal will be held there during the week of November 19, 1928. Decision to call a second congress of world scientists and fuel technologists has been made as a result of the interest aroused by the first conference on bituminous coal held at the institute in November, 1926. Although no definite program plans for the second conference have been made, it is expected that the session will cover the latest developments in obtaining substitutes for gasoline from coal, power from coal, low and high temperature distillation processes, smokeless fuel, gasification of coal, utilization of coal tar products, coal as a source for fertilizer and coal in relation to the production of fixed nitrogen. Dr. Thomas S. Baker, president of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, who called the first conference, visited Europe this past summer for the purpose of discussing phases of the second conference with eminent scientists in France and Germany. He plans to pay another visit to Europe in 1928 to invite speakers and delegates.

MEMBERS of the American Association of Variable Star Observers met on October 22 at the Harvard College Observatory for their sixteenth annual meeting. Miss Alice H. Farnsworth, of Mt. Holyoke College, vice-president, presided. The president, C. C. Godfrey, of Stratford, Conn., died in August. It was announced that he had left all his astronomical instruments to the association. The council elected D. B. Pickering, of East Orange, N. J., president, and reelected Miss Farnsworth, vice-president, Mr. Olcott, secretary, and M. J. Jordan, of Boston, treasurer.

UTILIZATION of cut-over lands for reforestation will be discussed at a conference of business interests of the country called under the auspices of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce on November 16 and 17. Possibilities of using the 29,000,000 acres of forest area in the Middle Atlantic region in order to assure the industrial East a continuous source of wood supply from its own natural resources will be considered. The meeting, the first of its kind to be held, will bring together representatives from all sections of the country.

AT the International Congress of Plant Sciences (Fourth International Botanical Congress) held at Ithaca, New York, in August, 1926, an invitation was conveyed from British botanists for the fifth International Botanical Congress to be held in England in 1930. The invitation was accepted by the botanists assembled at Ithaca, and arrangements are now being made for the congress to be held at Cambridge about the middle of August, 1930. The Journal of the New York Botanical Garden states that an executive committee has been formed to make arrangements for the congress, consisting of Dr. F. F. Blackman, Professor V. H. Blackman, Dr. E. J. Butler, Professor Sir John Farmer, Professor F. E. Fritsch, Professor Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, Dr. A. W. Hill, Professor W. Neilson Jones, Sir David Prain, Dr. A. B. Rendle (treasurer), Professor A. C. Seward (chairman), Professor W. Stiles and Professor A. G. Tansley. It has been decided to organize the congress in the following seven sections: Morphology (including anatomy), paleobotany, plant geography and ecology, taxonomy and nomenclature, genetics and cytology, physiology and mycology and plant pathology. Mr. F. T. Brooks, the botany school, University of Cambridge, England, and Dr. T. F. Chipp, Royel Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, have been appointed honorary secretaries of the congress, and any communications with regard to the congress should be addressed to one or other of the secretaries.

THE courses of lectures at the Royal Institution during November and December will begin on November 1 with the annual course of three Tyndall lectures, which will be delivered by Sir Herbert Parsons on the subject "Light and Sight." These will be followed on November 22 by four lectures by Sir William Bragg on "A Year's Work in X-ray-crystal Analysis." Mr. James Kewley will give two lectures on "Petroleum Natural Gases and their Derivatives." The Saturday lectures will include two lectures by Dr. F. J. M. Stratton on "Recent Developments in Astrophysics." The 102nd course of Christmas lectures for juveniles will be delivered by Professor E. N. da C. Andrade on "Engines," beginning on December 29.

THE auxiliary yacht Carnegie, a ship that has very little iron or steel in its construction and is almost totally non-magnetic, left New York on October 12 under tow for Washington, where preparations for the seventh scientific cruise will be completed. The boat, which is owned by the Carnegie Institution, will leave next May on a three-year trip which is expected to cover all the oceans of the world, collecting data on ocean currents, magnetic phenomena and similar subjects.

CASH prizes totalling $6,000 are being offered to freshmen in American colleges for essays on subjects related to chemistry by the American Chemical Society, with the endorsement of Mr. and Mrs. F. P. Garvan, of New York City. The essays must be on the relation of chemistry to health and disease, to the enrichment of life, to agriculture or forestry, to national defense, to the home or to the development of an industry. A contestant may submit only one essay and this must not exceed 2,500 words in length. The essays must be handed in to the Secretary, Committee on Prize Essays, American Chemical Society, 85 Beaver Street, New York City, before March 1, 1928.

THE first exhibition of material collected by the recently returned John Borden-Field Museum Expedition to Alaska is now open to the public at Field Museum of Natural History. The exhibit consists of a wide variety of ethnological specimens representative of the life of the Eskimos of Alaska and northern Canada, and illustrates their fine craftsmanship, artistic skill and practical ingenuity. The exhibit is a selection from a total of 533 pieces brought by the Borden party. Other material, consisting of bows and arrows, snowshoes, stone cooking vessels, lamps, fishing equipment, etc., will be used later in reinstalling the entire Eskimo collections of the museum.

THE production of fur-bearing animals in Alaska is to be studied under a cooperative agreement recently made between Governor George A. Parks, of Alaska, and the U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey. Dr. Earl Graves, veterinarian, has been selected to conduct the study. He will go into the problems incident to the production of fur for commercial purposes and advise fur farmers of Alaska in matters pertaining to the breeding and care of fur-bearing animals and the prevention and cure of diseases among them. The study will be carried on in cooperation with the Alaska Game Commission, the United States Forest Service, fur farmers' organizations and other agencies. The sum of $15,000 has been appropriated by the Territory for expenditure in the project in 1927 and 1928, in addition to funds that may be

allotted by the Biological Survey from its regular

appropriations.

As part of the plan to put all available data of interest to engineers into a convenient published form for use in connection with various engineering projects, the magnetic declinations in each state are being published by the United States Coast and Geodetic survey, according to an oral statement made to a representative of the United States Daily, by the editor, Roy Griffith. The publications will appear by states. The volumes for Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and North Carolina are already available, and

those for California and Nevada are now in the press. These volumes give the variations of the magnetic needle from the true north and enable local surveyors to correct their compass readings according to the latest scientific findings. Descriptions and elevations of tidal bench marks in coastal states are also being published. Separate volumes for New York, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia have been printed and the tables for Connecticut are in the press. These books give the elevations above sea level necessary in such work as harbor construction and city planning.

A TRACT of thirty-nine acres of spruce-covered land on the westerly side of Watatic Mountain in Ashburnham, Mass., recently bought by the Associated Committees for Wild Life Conservation, has been formally turned over to the Commonwealth as a gift from the committees, to be used as a wild life sanctuary for all time. It adjoins the land which was given to the state by the Federation of Bird Clubs of New England. Announcing receipt of the land the State Division of Fisheries and Game says: "These gifts further emphasize the splendid work which the federation and the allied committees have done in bringing about the establishment of wild life sanctuaries. To the thinking conservationists of the country it has been apparent for some years that our only hope to maintain a permanent and sufficient stock of desirable forms of wild life is through the establishment of such permanent sanctuaries."

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NOTES

LAFAYETTE COLLEGE has received from Mr. John Markle, of New York, $500,000 for the construction and endowment of a building for the engineering department.

GROUND was broken for the new building of the Neurological Institute on October 19, adding another unit to the Columbia University medical center being constructed at 168th Street, New York.

University of Utah will be laid early this month. The

THE cornerstone of the Mines Building of the

building, costing $50,000, will be used exclusively by the research department of the mining division of the university and by the intermountain station of the United States Bureau of Mines.

Ar the Armour Institute of Technology, Professor Donald F. Campbell has resigned and Associate Professor C. I. Palmer has been promoted to a full professorship of mathematics. Professor Palmer is also acting dean of students.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS J. H. KINDLE and Edward S.