at Tulane University, New Orleans. Students from Tulane who wish to carry on research in certain fields of tropical medicine will be sent to the Ross Institute and research workers from there will come to Tulane. The arrangement was made by Professor Aldo Castellani, who is honorary director of the Ross Institute and head of the department of tropical medicine at Tulane.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NOTES

GEORGE PARMLY DAY, treasurer of Yale University, has announced that although the date set for the opening of the $20,000,000 endowment fund drive was still three weeks away, gifts and pledges to the university have already reached a total of $9,500,000.

GIFTS and bequests amounting to $206,841.38 have been received by New York University in the last eight months.

By the will of Judge Madison W. Beacom, his entire estate was left to Oberlin College. It is estimated that the estate is approximately $75,000.

THE University of St. Andrew's, Scotland, has received from an anonymous donor the sum of £100,000. PROFESSOR RALPH H. CURTISS has been made director of the observatory and chairman of the department of astronomy in the University of Michigan, in succession to the late Professor William J. Hussey. Professor Curtiss has been assistant director of the observatory of the University of Michigan since 1911 and in charge of astrophysical research since 1907.

DR. LEONARD CARMICHAEL, assistant professor of psychology at Princeton University, has been appointed associate professor of psychology and director of the psychological laboratory at Brown University.

DR. FRANK A. WILDER has been elected to the professorship of geology at Grinnell College. Dr. Wilder was at one time state geologist of Iowa, but for the last twenty years has been president of the Southern Gypsum Company, at North Holston, Va.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ALAN D. CAMPBELL, of the University of Arkansas, has been appointed associate professor of mathematics in Syracuse University.

AT the University of London, Dr. Hamilton Hartridge has been appointed to the university chair of physiology and Mr. W. E. Le Gros Clark to the university chair of anatomy, both tenable at St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College.

DR. H. H. WOOLLARD, assistant professor of anatomy and subdean of the faculty of medical sciences at University College, London, has been appointed to the chair of anatomy vacated by Professor Wood Jones at the University of Adelaide.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

ABOLITION OF THE BUREAU OF
CHEMISTRY

IN regard to the notice of a special examination to be held to select a chief of the new Bureau of Chemistry and Soils (SCIENCE, March 4, p. 224), I think the readers of SCIENCE will be interested in knowing why Dr. C. A. Browne, eminent carbohydrate chemist, at present chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, has been legislated out of office.

I am an admirer of Dr. Browne's ability and his splendid career in his profession. I did all I could to persuade him to accept the position of chief of the Bureau of Chemistry at a very considerable financial loss. I will tell the story of this amazing legislation in as few words as possible. The Bureau of Chemistry is the legitimate successor of the first scientific profession named in the organic act establishing the Department of Agriculture in 1862. It is, therefore, the oldest scientific bureau of the department. The Bureau of Chemistry was extremely active in the agitation beginning in 1883 looking to the enactment of the Food and Drugs Law. It was charged specifically by Congress with the duty of enforcing that law. I can not enter into the discussion of the motives which provides for the abolition of the Bureau of Chemistry at midnight on June 30, 1927. I can only tell how this legislation was secured.

Evidently all the principal officials of the Department of Agriculture were in sympathy with this movement. There was a right and a wrong way of doing it. In my humble opinion a bureau which had rendered the eminent services to this country such as the Bureau of Chemistry has done should have had at least some consideration before being led to the guillotine. Nevertheless the program of this execution was prepared with more or less secrecy. There was no noise made about it. The scheme was hatched in the Budget Bureau with the full approval of the high officials of the department. It was submitted to the House of Representatives, with the budget estimate for the Department of Agriculture. There is a rule which reads that no new legislation can legally be placed in an appropriation bill if a single member of the House of Representatives objects to it on a point of order. The high officials of the Department of Agriculture are all aware of this rule. This proposed legislation repealed one of the fundamental parts of the Food Law by abolishing the bureau which Congress had charged with its enforcement. Approximately two thirds of the appropriations for the Bureau of Chemistry were used in the enforcement of this act. This part of the bureau was bodily moved over to a new unit which is

designated in the proposed legislation as "The Food and Drugs Administration." The gamble taken by the authorities was successful. Not a single member of the House raised a point of order. They passed an Enabling Act, transferring the administration of the law to this new unit and abolishing the Bureau of Chemistry absolutely. The mangled remains of the Bureau, fastigia rerum, as Virgil would call them, were transferred to the Bureau of Soils, and a new Bureau of Chemistry and Soils was created. This left Dr. Browne high and dry, sine officio. The new chief of the bureau, according to the article in SCIENCE, is to be handpicked in a kind of examination heretofore unheard of. I have not seen the legislation which authorized the Civil Service Commission to appoint a board of special examiners for this purpose.

If

The proper way to have gone about this thing would have been the introduction of a bill abolishing the Bureau of Chemistry, establishing a new Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, and creating a new unit of administration for the Food and Drugs Law, with a repeal of that part of the Food Law which charged the Bureau of Chemistry with its enforcement. this proposition had come before the Congress of 1906, which enacted the Food and Drugs Law, I I doubt if it would have received an affirmative vote in either house. Numerous attempts were made during the pending legislation for the law to take the administration away from the Bureau of Chemistry, but every one of these attempts was overwhelmingly negatived. The only persons, then, who really wanted to see the Bureau of Chemistry divorced from the Food and Drugs Act were the adulterators of foods and drugs.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

HARVEY W. WILEY

10,300,000 VACCINATIONS FOR SMALLPOX WITHOUT ONE SINGLE REPORTED CASE OF SYPHILIS1

IT has come to the attention of the undersigned that false statements are being circulated, that have caused some people to believe or fear that vaccination against smallpox may cause syphilis. Since the activities under our charge furnish direct evidence in refutation of this idea we have considered it our duty to issue a statement that syphilization as a result of vaccination does not occur.

Before the discovery of smallpox vaccine, the only protection against the dangers of smallpox was by inoculating a person intentionally with the disease and 1 The original signed copy of this statement is on file at the Office of the Surgeon General, United States Public Health Service, Washington, D. C.

thereby producing, in general, a milder attack than that contracted when smallpox was caught in a natural manner. In this way the inoculation of syphilis along with smallpox, or even of syphilis instead of smallpox, was possible. This possibility also existed when vaccination first supplanted smallpox inoculation, and was performed, as was smallpox inoculation, from the arm of one human subject to another. Cases of syphilis following inoculation or vaccination with human vaccine were, nevertheless, extremely rare. Syphilis, however, is a disease confined in nature to the human species alone, and as soon as the use of calf vaccine instead of human vaccine became universal the possibility of transferring syphilis by vaccination was entirely done away with.

Since 1917 the United States Army has vaccinated approximately 4,700,000 members of its personnel; the United States Navy has vaccinated approximately 950,000 members of its personnel; and of these 5,650,000 persons, not one of them ever developed syphilis as a result of vaccination. In not one of them was there ever any suspicion of syphilis in connection with vaccination. During this same period, the United States Public Health Service has also vaccinated 2,918,748 persons in carrying out its quarantine, immigration and hospital work. While the service has not always had the opportunity of following up these vaccinations, as is carefully done in the Army and Navy, no one has ever alleged that any particular individual vaccinated by the Public Health Service has contracted syphilis as a result of vaccination.

During the past ten years more than 2,000,000 persons, including school children, have been vaccinated by state and local health authorities in cooperation with the United States Public Health Service, making a grand total of 10,568,748 vaccinations recorded by the government medical services, and not one of the undersigned has ever received an allegation or a statement charging that any particular individual of this number has contracted syphilis as a result of vaccination. In fact, there has never been reported anywhere a case of syphilis attributable to vaccination following the use of bovine smallpox vaccine.

Smallpox vaccine is a standard medicinal produet, the quality of which is prescribed by the "United States Pharmacopeia" and as such is subject to the provisions of the pure food and drugs law. Furthermore, smallpox vaccine, together with other vaccines and serums for human use, has been deemed of such importance by the government that its production for sale within the jurisdiction of the United States has been under the special protection of an act passed July 1, 1902, antedating even the pure food and drugs law. Under this law all establishments producing smallpox vaccine for interstate sale must be licensed

by the secretary of the treasury upon the recommendation of the United States Public Health Service, and the production is controlled by regulations drawn up by a board composed of the undersigned. These regulations provide for repeated inspections of the producing laboratories, for proper labeling, and for all safeguards which may be thrown about the making of such an important product. At present even the placing of the vaccine in the small tubes and the sealing of these tubes is required to be done in such a way that no hand, even though sterile, touches the vaccine. Repeated examinations of the product, for safety, are required.

This vaccine was used in the vaccination of the millions mentioned in the above table and is exactly the same as that used by doctors in private practice in the vaccination of the general public throughout the United States.

M. W. IRELAND,
Surgeon General, U. S. Army,
E. R. STITT,

Surgeon General, U. S. Navy,
H. S. CUMMING,

Surgeon General, U. S. Public Health Service.

FACTS AND THEORIES IN GEOLOGY As a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for more than one decade, may I be allowed to reply briefly to various people who have expressed themselves adversely regarding my "New Geology, a Text-book for Colleges"?

Professor Edwin Linton's second communication (SCIENCE, Vol. LXIV, No. 1665, pp. 526-7) is the latest of this kind that I have noticed. He looks upon my book as a "transcendent absurdity," though in reality the one point wherein it differs from other text-books on this subject is that it endeavors to make a clear distinction between geological facts and geological theories. Why is not this sharp distinction between facts and theories just as essential for text-books on geology as for text-books on physics or chemistry or astronomy? That I have stated some theories of my own which are not generally accepted is a very small matter; the real peculiarity of my book is that I have endeavored to make this separation, so that the student may have some chance for his intellectual freedom of choice. If I have not always succeeded in making this separation, that would be cause for just criticism; but that this book should try to make this separation hardly entitles it to be called a "transcendent absurdity." I do not think that Bacon or Newton, Linnaeus or Agassiz would look upon it in that light.

Three ideas are outstanding in this text-book and in my various other books:

(1) An emphasis on the fact that uniformitarianism is at best only a theory, to be evaluated according to the facts of modern discoveries, like any other theory.

(2) The fact, as stated by T. H. Huxley, that "All that geology can prove is local order of succession"; and "the moment the geologist has to deal with large areas, or with completely separated deposits," there is danger of "incalculable mischief" in confounding similarity of stratigraphical arrangement with "synchrony" or identity of date; hence that "not proven and not provable' must be recorded against all the grand hypotheses of the paleontologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe. ''1 If this has become a "transcendent absurdity" in this year 1927, I should like to know wherein we have outgrown the "methods" which Huxley condemned in 1862. (3) That monophyleticism should be frankly and openly repudiated; and we should just as openly and frankly affirm, as Dr. Leo S. Berg, of the University of Leningrad, has done in his recent notable book, that "not only do phyla, classes, and orders not infrequently prove to be polyphyletic, but such is often the case with lesser taxonomic divisions. ''2

As I have been contending for this last idea for many years, it is some satisfaction to see Dr. Berg declaring that "Organisms have developed from tens of thousands of primary forms" (p. 406). E pur si muove.

May I call attention to two other works that I have not yet seen noticed in the columns of SCIENCE? One is "The Case against Evolution," by Dr. Geo. Barry O'Toole, issued two years ago by the Macmillan Company. It devotes some twenty pages to endorsing wholeheartedly my geological argument. The other is "The Dogma of Evolution," by Professor Louis T. More, delivered as a series of lectures at Princeton University, in the spring of 1925. This book is issued by the Princeton University Press, and is handled here in England by the Oxford University Press. When works like these are loftily ignored by the official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is there not danger that we may degenerate into a mere mutual admiration society?

I do not have the space to reply to my other critics, like Arthur M. Miller and Edwin Tenney Brewster. Dr. Chas. Schuchert's professedly formal review of "The New Geology" appeared shortly before I left America. He makes merry over his straw man; for 1"Lectures and Lay Sermons," pp. 29, 30, London,

1913.

2"'Nomogenesis," p. 244, London, 1926.

his "review" is a sheer burlesque of what my book contains. He also complains because I have stolen some of his thunder; in other words, he says I have "appropriated" over two dozen more illustrations from his text-book than the few which his publishers authorized me to use. In this Dr. Schuchert is quite mistaken. He seems to forget that I and my publishers may possibly have access to the same original sources for illustrations that he himself had.

Possibly it may interest Dr. Edwin Linton and my other critics to know that the latest example of a "transcendent absurdity," issued by me, is entitled "Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism," and that it was published only a few months ago. GEORGE MCCREADY PRICE

STANBOROUGH Park, WATFORD, ENGLAND

LONG RANGE WEATHER FORECASTS IN a review of "Man and Weather," SCIENCE (Vol. LXV, No. 1681, p. 281), March 18, 1927, some personalities may be passed without remark; but the attitude of the reviewer on the problem of long range forecasting should not pass without comment. He holds that such forecasts are not possible at present and by implication that there is little prospect of accomplishment. "No one," he says, "is in position to forecast for California or any other part of the country the distribution of atmospheric pressure even a week ahead, to say nothing of a month or season." Yet he admits "a fair degree of success in seasonal forecasting" in India; and concedes that "we are on the eve of attaining similar success in parts of California."

Years ago this relationship was pointed out in California; and it is our understanding that forecasters on both sides of the Pacific, Okada in Japan, Feals, Bowie and Reed on this side, utilize knowledge of the intensity and extent of the Aleutian infrabar and other pressure distributions in long period forecasts. Across the Atlantic similar procedure is followed. The reviewer has overlooked that in Shaw's "Forecasting Weather," 2nd Edition, p. 181, is a pressure chart on which a forecast for 14 days was issued by the Meteorological Office.

Weather maps covering a hemisphere are now available with an increasing number of kite and balloon stations. It is not so difficult now to outline and watch the development of major pressure systems as it once was.

The reviewer will doubtless agree that there is room for improvement in forecasting. The present synoptic map remains substantially the same as fifty years ago. It tells what has happened but not what will happen. If we may not scrap it, we at least should

modify it-to tell of the advance of cold-dry and warm-moist fronts, and the interpenetration of strata. It is the conflict of air streams that means accurate anticipating of rain areas and their duration. Winds are initiated by pressure differences, hence the significance of major pressure distributions, controlling the paths and constancy of the fronts. It is gratifying to note a growing appreciation of these points by official bureaus abroad and at home.

ALEXANDER MCADIE

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

The Insects of Australia and New Zealand. By R. J. TILLYARD, F.R.S., etc. Sydney, Angus and Robertson. 1926. 560 pp.

THE insects of the Antipodes claim our attention for numerous reasons. From Australia came the dreaded Cottony-cushion scale (Icerya purchasi), which at one time threatened the destruction of the orange industry of California. From Australia also came the ladybeetles, of diverse species, which have proved invaluable in checking the Icerya and other coccid pests. From Australia, Froggatt described the extraordinary archaic giant termite Mastotermes darwiniensis, close relatives of which have since been found fossil in Europe. The fauna of New Zealand amazes us by its poverty of types, but it is rich in certain groups. These southern lands have not only furnished many entomological surprises, but they will afford new wonders for many years to come. Nowhere else is there such a good chance for the discovery of relicts of an early fauna, now exterminated in other parts of the world.

In 1907, Mr. W. W. Froggatt, entomologist of New South Wales, published an excellent book of 449 pages, entitled "Australian Insects." In it he gave a readable account of the leading or more conspicuous forms, with very good figures. Those of economie importance were discussed quite fully. Now, after twenty years, Dr. Tillyard gives us a new and more comprehensive book, including also the insects of New Zealand. In this interval, the additions to our knowledge have been very numerous, and very much has been done to arrange and systematize what was known before. Among all the discoveries and additions we must place first the revelation of a wealth of fossil insects of great antiquity, which as elaborated by Tillyard, throw new light on the origin and relationships of the various orders.

Tillyard's book is actually much more than its title might seem to indicate. It is a great contribution to the classification of insects in general, and as such will necessarily be at the elbow of the working entomologist everywhere. We note the extraordinary wealth of

detail, the abundance of figures showing structure, the beautiful colored plates by Mrs. Tillyard, the introduction of the evidence from fossils to elucidate phylogeny. Necessarily, a work of this sort has to be largely a compilation, but few have shown so many evidences of originality. The comparison which comes to mind is with that great classic, Westwood's Modern Classification of Insects. As we remember that when engaged in writing his book Tillyard was during a large part of the time seriously ill, we think of Darwin, and wonder whether ill health is a circumstance favorable to scientific production.

An interesting feature is the census of the Australian and New Zealand species under each family. It can of course only represent existing information. Yet as it stands it brings out most strikingly the great difference between the faunae of the two countries. A few examples will make this clearer. Buprestidae, Aus. 766, N. Z. 2; Mutillidae, Aus. 197, N. Z. 0; Thynnidae, Aus. 438, N. Z. 0; Bombyliidae, Aus. 80, N. Z. 1; Dolichopodidae, Aus. 20, N. Z. 45; Empididae, Aus. 50, N. Z. 110; Tipulidae, Aus. 250, N. Z. 500; Syntomidae, Aus. 52, N. Z. 0; Hesperiidae, Aus. 92, N. Z. 0; Pieridae, Aus. 30, N. Z. 0; Culicidae, Aus. 100, N. Z. 8.

In these statistics, species known to have been introduced by man are omitted. In view of such facts as these, we look with grave doubt upon records of species of bees or other insects, other than strong flying or migratory forms, said to be common to Australia and New Zealand. All such statements should be critically investigated, and it will probably appear that in most cases the determinations were erroneous, in others that the species have been introduced into one of the countries by human means. Sometimes, perhaps, the locality labels will be found to be wrong. Errors are easily made and too faithfully perpetuated by succeeding generations of writers.

A very extraordinary fact is the lack of plant-lice (Aphididae). There are no native species described from Australia; but a single one, apparently native, has recently been described by Laing from New Zealand. The place of the plant-lice is taken by the Psyllidae (Aus. 80, N. Z. 6).

New Zealand is very poor in bees, but Australia extremely rich. Some of the Australian species are minute; Tillyard remarks that "Euryglossa" (should be Euryglossina) chalcosoma, barely 3 mm long, is the smallest of all Australian bees. However, Turnerella gilberti is still smaller, only 2.5 mm.

It is a pity that Tillyard did not know Morrison's important paper (1922) on the Maskell genera of Coccidae. Consequently the subfamily Phenacoleachiinae, from New Zealand, is omitted.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

T. D. A. COCKERELL

SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS AND

LABORATORY METHODS

RAPID DETERMINATION OF SOIL MOISTURE BY ALCOHOL

IN the issue of December 31, 1926, of this journal there appeared a brief article proposing alcohol as a very rapid means of determining the moisture content of soils and possibly of some other materials. Since the publication of this paper a great number of letters have been received asking for more detailed information as to the technique, kind of hydrometer used, etc. In view of this large number of inquiries, it has seemed advisable to publish in advance of the main report the directions for executing a moisture determination and other essential information concerning the method.

The alcohol method, as far as it has been investigated, seems to be able to determine the moisture content of soils very rapidly and quite accurately. The rapidity depends somewhat upon the type of soil, which affects the rate of filtering; the time, however, varies from about three to fifteen minutes. In comparison with the oven method the results of the alcohol method run a little lower, not much more than about one per cent. in the heaviest soils. It seems that the alcohol takes out all the water that exists in a physical form. The only kind of water that probably it does not take out is the so-called chemically bound water, and according to the results the magnitude of this form of water is probably not very high. If it is, then it would seem that the alcohol probably extracts some of it, probably the more loosely bound.

For the employment of the alcohol method, as has been worked out thus far, the following apparatus is necessary (1) alcohol hydrometers made especially for this work. The hydrometers come in a pair. One has a range of from 90 to 100 per cent. alcohol and the other from 80 to 90 per cent. They have a very small volume. They are handled by Eimer and Amend and cost about two dollars apiece. It would be advisable to ask for hydrometers according to the writer's specifications when ordering. (2) An ordinary 25 cc graduated cylinder having an inner diameter of 2 cm. This cylinder is used in measuring the specific gravity of the liquid. (3) An ordinary 100 cc graduated cylinder. (4) A 100 cc funnel. (5) A liter beaker filled with sand. The sand is used to stand in the 25 cc cylinder so that it will be easily adjusted to stand absolutely upright when hydrometer floats. The base of the 25 cc cylinder can be broken off so that the latter can be more easily inserted into the sand. (6) A rod about one half centimeter in diameter. This is used in stirring up soils, such as badly puddled or hardened clays which refuse to slack or crumble easily when coming in contact with