going in and out of his office apparently on the usual errands connected with registration, etc.

The University of Moscow expected to open in September but did not, and had not yet opened when I left Moscow early in October. I learned that the salaries and food ration of the Moscow men had been notably increased but did not learn details as I did at Kazan.

The salaries and "paiok" of the professors in the University of Kazan had been so meagre that not a man was able to live on them, and every professor was meeting his family's need for food by doing something besides regular university work. The means for keeping himself and family alive were various, but in almost all cases they included the successive sacrificing of personal and household belongings. One professor of biology told me that he made shoes, and that his wife baked little cakes and sold them in the city market. He had sold all of his own and his wife's simple jewels and trinkets and one of his two microscopes. Yet this man, who has not been able to see any books or papers published later than 1914, has struggled along with his special researches and has actually achieved two pieces of experimental work on vitamines which seem to me, with my little knowledge of the subject, to contribute certain definite new knowledge concerning these interesting substances.

But, beginning in August, there had been a material increase in salary and in food ration. The monthly food ration had been put, in August, on the following basis: dark (mostly rye) flour, 30 lb.; dried peas, 5 lb. ; cereal grits, 15 lb.; sweets (not cane or beet sugar), 21/2 lbs.; tobacco, 3/4 lb.; butter, 6 lbs.; meat, 15 lbs.; fish, 5 lbs.; tea 1/4 lb.; white flour, 5 lbs. The items from dark flour to tobacco, inclusive, had been received; the rest of them, promised but not received. About 250 professors and instructors receive this ration. The university buildings are so cold that some of the men do all their work, except lecturing, in their homes. About 5,000 students had registered, but only about

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

GRANTS FOR RESEARCH OF THE AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT
OF SCIENCE

THE Committee on Grants of the association will hold its annual meeting during Christmas week, 1921, and will probably have at its disposal about four thousand dollars for grants in support of investigation in the different sciences. The committee especially invites suggestions from scientific men as to suitable places for small grants. Suggestions or applications should be sent before December 15 to the member of the committee in whose field the work lies, or to the secretary. The present personnel of the committee is Robert M. Yerkes, chairman; Henry Crew, C. J. Herrick, A. B. Lamb, George T. Moore, G. H. Parker, Joel Stebbins, David White. JOEL STEBBINS,

Secretary of the Committee on Grants URBANA, ILLINOIS

MAP OF THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN

A NEW base map of the North Pacific Ocean on the transverse polyconic projection has been prepared by W. E. Johnson, cartographer, of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey of the Department of Commerce, and is now available for distribution. It is published in clear form and convenient size (dimensions 14 by 41 inches) for desk use.

This map is designed primarily as a base on which statistical data of various special kinds may be shown. In consequence of this purpose only features of major importance are shown on it and these features are emphasized to an extent not possible on a map which

contains the vast amount of detail usually included.

In addition to the foregoing specific value this map is of general interest at present as showing the relation between the United States, its possessions, and the Far East and as including those areas around which present problems in the North Pacific Ocean are centered. It extends from New York and Panama to Singapore and Calcutta, from Alaska and Siberia to the Hawaiian Islands and includes a part of South America and a portion of Australia. Through its lateral center it extends over 180°.

The distinctive feature of the map is that these localities are here pictured in practically their true relation as to distances, areas, and comparative angular direction of coast line. The property of true scale along a great circle tangent to the forty-fifty parallel of north latitude at the central meridian of the map was chosen. This great circle is approximately the shortest distance between San Francisco and Manila, and in close proximity to it lie practically all the important points of interest such as the Panama Canal, Mexico, our Pacific Coast, Alaska, the Philippine Islands, Japan, and the coast of China. This is accomplished through the use of the transverse polyconic projection, which is the regular polyconic or American projection turned from its normal vertical axis to a lateral great circle axis.

THE STEAMER " ALBATROSS "

THE Fisheries Service reports that the steamer Albatross has been taken to Woods Hole (Mass.) and on October 29 was there put out of commission, the naval crew being released. This action was made necessary by a lack of sufficient funds to operate the vessel on a scale that would yield results commensurate with the basic cost of maintenance. It is hoped that by another year it may be possible to restore the vessel to active service and assign her to work on fishing grounds on the Atlantic coast awaiting attention.

The Albatross, which for nearly forty years has been an important unit of the Bureau

of Fisheries, was the first vessel especially designed for deep-sea exploration and was equipped with the most approved apparatus and appliances for the work. These have been renewed, modified, or extended as the occasion arose. The vessel was built under the supervision of Commander Z. L. Tanner. United States Navy, from designs prepared by the naval architect, Charles W. Copeland. She was launched at Wilmington, Del., in 1882, and, excepting brief interruptions, has been constantly employed until the present time. The fact that after all these years she is now in excellent condition is a tribute to her construction, the quality of the material used, and the care which she has had.

The Albatross was engaged in investigations off the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to the West Indies until 1888, when she was sent through the Straits of Magellan to the west coast, and during the next 30 years was engaged in investigations, surveys, etc., in the Pacific Ocean, particularly in Alaska. During the long period of the fur-seal controversy the Albatross formed part of the naval patrol of Bering Sea and was used by the commission created for the investigation of the fur seals. In 1891 the vessel was employed in surveying a cable route to the Hawaiian Islands, in 1899 and 1900 in a voyage to the tropical Pacific and Japan, in 1902 in investigations about the Hawaiian Islands, and from 1907 to 1910 in a comprehensive survey of the fisheries and aquatic resources of the Philippine Islands. In the War with Spain and in the World War the Albatross was taken into the naval service, returning to the Atlantic coast in 1917.

MULFORD EXPLORATION IN BOLIVIA THE latest message received from Dr. Rusby, the director of the Mulford Exploration, was dated August 30 and was written from Huachi on the Bopi River in Bolivia. Dr. Rusby arrived at Huachi on August 23 and he and his party spent some time making collections in the vicinity and making excursions into surrounding territory. During their stay there four members of the party made a trip up the Cochabamba River.

Dr. Rusby states that the journey from Espia, at the head of navigation on the Bopi River, down to Huachi, was accomplished successfully except for the loss of five boxes of provisions and ammunition. The loss of their ammunition leaves the party in a rather precarious condition as they were depending on it for obtaining not only museum specimens of rare birds and small mammals but also to supply the camp with fresh meat.

Among botanical collections are included specimens of the "tree of life." This name is a literal translation of the Spanish name "Arbol de la Vida," given to the "Boldo plant, so called because of its use by the natives for medicinal purposes. Photographs were made of what Dr. Rusby considers the largest true cactus in the world, which rises to the height of a good-sized tree and with a limb spread of forty feet or more.

Many forms of insect life have been collected. With these, as in the case of plant life, specimens collected in one of these deep Andean valleys may differ entirely from those of a similar valley very closely adjacent.

The party expected to arrive at Rurrenabaque, Bolivia, about October 1 and by this time are probably forcing their way into the depths of the Bolivian jungle in the vicinity of Lake Rocagua.

THE ECLIPSE EXPEDITIONS TO CHRISTMAS ISLAND

ACCORDING to an article in the London Times, with the aid of the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is sending an expedition to Christmas Island to observe the total eclipse of the sun which will occur on September 21 next year.

The Greenwich party will consist of Mr. H. Spenser Jones, Chief assistant, and Mr. P. J. Melotte, the discoverer of the eighth satellite of Jupiter. They will leave England early in February for Singapore, whence they and their equipment will be conveyed to the island by a steamer belonging to the Christmas Island Phosphate Company, which is giving valuable help to the project.

A joint Dutch and German expedition, the personnel of which will include Professor Voute of Batavia University and Professor Freundlich of Germany, will also go to Christmas Island, and it is possible that Professor Einstein will himself be present to observe the eclipse.

It is hoped to confirm the results obtained by the British expeditions at Principé and Sobral during the eclipse of May, 1919, when Einstein's prediction as to the value of the deflection of a ray of light passing through a gravitational field was verified by measurements of the position of start in the immediate neighborhood of the sun during totality. It has been arranged that the Greenwich expedition, which will have erected its instruments by May, shall carry out an extensive program of photometric work. Based on the Harvard standard sequence of stars at the North Pole comparisons will be made of areas in South Declinations 30 deg. and 45 deg., with areas in North Declination 15 deg. Magnitudes of stars in the latter zone have already been determined at Greenwich in direct comparison with those in the North Polar area, and the photographs to be taken at Christmas Island will enable work on these lines in the northern and southern hemispheres to be linked up and carried on to the South Polar area by southern observatories. The equipment to be taken by the British party will include the 13 in. astrographic telescope used in the making of the Greenwich sections of the international photographic chart of the sky.

The path of totality will begin in Abyssinia, pass over the center of Italian Somaliland and across the Maldive Islands, where Mr. J. Evershed, the director of the Kodaikanal Observatory (India), will be stationed. At the Maldives the duration of totality will be 4 min. 10 sec. with the sun 34 deg. abɔve the horizon. At Christmas Island the duration will be only 3 min. 42 sec., but the sun will be 78 deg. above the horizon. The maximum duration, nearly 6 min., occurs over the Indian Ocean where no observing station exists. After leaving Christmas Island the

path of totality crosses Australia in latitudes which, except in Queensland and in a corner of New South Wales, are to the north of the inhabited regions of the continent, and ends near Norfolk Island in the Pacific. It is possible that an Australian expedition will observe the eclipse from the neighborhood of Cunnamulla.

Christmas Island is an isolated island lying to the south of Java in Lat. S. 10° 25', Long. E. 105° 42'. It is about 12 miles long and nine broad and rises to a height of over 1,100 ft. The population of the settlement, called Flying Fish Cove, after the warship which discovered the anchorage, is about 250, consisting of Europeans, Indians, Malays, and Chinese. The island is attached to the Straits Settlements administration and was annexed by the United Kingdom in 1888.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS CHARLES R. CROSS, professor emeritus of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died on November 16 in Brookline aged seventy-three years.

DR. W. J. MAYO delivered the John B. Murphy memorial address before the meeting of the Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons in Phildelphia at which meeting honorary fellowships in the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland were conferred upon him and on Dr. C. H. Mayo.

C. O. MAILLOUX, chairman of the International Electrotechnical Commission, has been invited by the President of the French Republic to deliver on November 24, the address of eulogy on Ampère. The ceremony will take place at the Sorbonne in Paris.

THE magnetic-survey yacht Carnegie, under the command of J. P. Ault, returned to Washington on Thursday, November 10, thus satisfactorily completing her two years' world cruise. Dr. Bauer, director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, joined the vessel at Panama and remained with her until the arrival at Washington. Although considerable rough weather was encountered, it was found possible with the special appli

ances aboard the Carnegie, to make satisfactory magnetic and electric observations daily.

EIGHT medical investigators, five Americans and the other three British, sailed from New York on November 16 on the Santa Teresa for Peru, where they will undertake studies of the physiological changes which enable people to live permanently at high altitudes. The party will make their headquarters at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, situated in the Andes at a height of over fourteen thousand feet. The American members of the party are Dr. Alfred C. Redfield, assistant professor of physiology at the Harvard Medical School; Dr. Arlie V. Bock, M.D., of the Massachusetts General Hospital; Dr. Henry S. Forbes, now engaged in research in industrial medicine at Harvard; Dr. C. A. L. Binger, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, and Dr. George Harrop, late of the Presbyterian Hospital, New York.

SIR ROBERT WOOD, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, Sir William Taylor, ex-president of the same organization, and Professor Shoemaker, of The Hague, visited the Mayo Clinic on November 1, 2, and 3. A meeting was held in their honor in the lobby on November 2, at which time Sir Robert Wood gave a brief talk on education in Ireland; Sir William Taylor discussed the organization of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, and Professor Shoemaker spoke on operations on the stomach and colon which he had originated.

A DELEGATION of Serbian physicians, guests of the Rockefeller Foundation, visited the Mayo Foundation on October 27 and 28. The delegation is composed of Dr. G. J. Nikolitch, under-secretary and first medical officer of the Ministry of Health of Serbia; Dr. G. Joannotitch, professor of pathologic anatomy, and Dr. R. Stankovie, professor of internal medicine, in the Belgrade Medical School. Mr. Frank B. Stubbs, of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Dr. Henry John, of Cleveland, accompanied the delegation.

CHARLES E. WEAVER has resumed his professorship of geology in the University of Wash

ington, after a three-years' leave of absence which he spent in Central and South America as geologist for the Standard Oil Co.

DR. WILLIAM CROCKER, director of research of The Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Yonkers, New York, sailed on the Olympic on October 15, for a three- or four-months' stay in Europe. He will visit England, France, Germany, Austria and other European countries for the purpose of acquiring materials for the library and of studying the organization, equipment and activities of the principal biological institutions of Europe.

PROFESSOR C. C. NUTTING, head of the department of zoology at the University of Iowa, who has conducted expeditions to the Bahama Islands and to Barbados and Antigua in the interests of scientific research work at the university, has been invited by Colonel Fell, secretary for the Fiji Islands, to bring an expedition there. Secretary Fell was formerly governor of the Barbados Islands, where he was stationed when the Iowa Expedition visited there in 1918.

M. Y. WILLIAMS, professor of paleontology in the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, is one of a party sent out by the Canadian Geological Survey to make a survey of the Mackenzie River district.

PROFESSOR N. I. VAVILOV, of the Petrograd Agricultural Institute, who can be addressed in care of W. P. Anderson, 512 Fifth Ave., New York, states that the first Russian Eugenics Society was founded in Petrograd and Moscow two years ago; and that the president of this society, Dr. N. K. Koltzon, requests American eugenicists to send their publications to the society through Professor Vavilov. Scientific literature has not reached Russia for the past four years.

PROFESSOR JACQUES CAVALIER, rector of Toulouse and a widely known authority on metallurgical chemistry, is in America as the result of arrangements for an annual exchange of professors of engineering and applied science between French and American universities. Professor Cavalier, who is now at Columbia, will divide his time during the academic year

among the cooperating institutions, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania. The American universities have, as has been already noted here, selected as their representative for the first year Dr. A. E. Kennelly, professor of electrical engineering at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

DR. HAWLEY O. TAYLOR, associate physicist at the Bureau of Standards, has resigned to take charge of the electrical department, Division of Rehabilitation, Franklin Union, Boston. Dr. Taylor was formerly radio engineer of the Signal Corps of the U. S. Army; research physicist of the National Electric Signaling Co., Brooklyn; and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

JOHN MILLS, for ten years a member of the Research Laboratories of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Western Electric Company, has been appointed assistant personnel manager in charge of educational promotion in the engineering department of the Western Electric Company.

PROFESSOR R. C. ARCHIBALD, of Brown University, has been granted leave of absence for the second half of the academic year. He expects to spend it in visiting mathematicians at universities of Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia and Great Britain.

DR. C. C. LITTLE, research associate, of the Station for Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, will deliver the second Harvey Society Lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine Saturday evening, November 26. His subject will be The relation of genetics to cancer research."

PROFESSOR F. E. ARMSTRONG, professor of Mining at Sheffield University, has died at the age of forty-two years.

THE death is reported from Paris, at the age of seventy-two years, of the French engineer, M. Albert Sarpiaux, who had long been connected with the scheme for the construction of a tunnel under the French Channel.