gienic Laboratory, Public Health Service, Treasury Department, is vacant, and that, in view of the importance of the position in the field of medical, chemcal and public health research, and to insure the Appointment of a thoroughly qualified man for the work, the qualifications of candidates will be passed ipon by a special board of examiners, composed of Dr. G. W. McCoy, director of the Hygienic Laboraory; Dr. Charles L. Parsons, chemical engineer, Mills Building, Washington, D. C.; Dr. Julius Stieglitz, head of the department of chemistry, University of Chicago; Dr. Charles H. Herty, Chemical Foundation, New York City; Dr. Reid Hunt, Harvard Medical School, and A. S. Ernest, examiner of the United States Civil Service Commission, who will act as chairman of the committee. The duties of this position will consist of planning, conducting and supervising researches in the field of chemistry as it relates to the public health. The incumbent will have full charge, as chief, of the Division of Chemistry and as such will be responsible for the administration, personnel and scientific work of that division. The entrance salary of this position is $6,000 a year.

THE Maryland section of the American Chemical Society will act as host to the Washington, Philadelphia, Virginia, Delaware and South Jersey sections at an intersectional meeting to be held at the University of Maryland on November 26. At that time the university's newly-erected chemistry building will be dedicated. The new laboratory is a four-story structure, erected at a cost of $250,000. Additional funds for the purchase of furniture and equipment have been donated by friends of the institution as follows: Organic, Dr. H. A. B. Dunning, of Hynson, Westcott and Dunning; Analytical, Dr. Samuel W. Wiley, of Wiley and Company, Inc.; General Chemistry, Dr. and Mrs. M. L. Turner; Physical, Dr. Alfred R. L. Dohme, of Sharpe and Dohme; Colloid, Mr. C. G. Campbell, of the Kewaunee Manufacturing Company; Industrial, The Chemical Alumni of the University of Maryland. The dedicatory exercises, to which the public is invited, will be held at 10:00 A. M. Dr. Edgar F. Smith, of the University of Pennsylvania, will be the principal speaker. A special luncheon has been arranged. The afternoon session will be devoted to the intersectional program. A series of papers have been arranged under each of the following sections: Physical and inorganic, organic and biological, industrial and agricultural and the chemical education. Dr. C. H. Herty will deliver an address at an informal dinner which will be held in the evening. It is essential that the committee know, not later than November 18, how many plan to be present. It is desired that those attending the meeting notify Dr. N. E. Gordon, University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

ACCORDING to Museum News the Mid-West Museums Conference is to hold its annual meeting at St. Paul and Minneapolis on November 18 and 19. One of the features of the sessions will be the joining in of the newly formed Michigan-Indiana Museums Association. This group was organized at a meeting held at the Chamberlain Memorial Museum, Three Oaks, Michigan. Announcement of intentions to affiliate themselves with the Mid-West Conference was made by the organizers and the newly elected officers. George R. Fox, director of the Chamberlain Museum, was elected president of the new association. Edward M. Brigham, curator of the Museum of Natural History of the Battle Creek Public Schools, was named secretary.

WOMEN planning to attend the meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be interested in knowing that lodging can be obtained at the dormitory of the Peabody College for $2.00 per day. The Peabody and Vanderbilt Universities will be used for the meetings and there are eating places near at hand. Application should be made to W. N. Porter, convention secretary, Chamber of Commerce, Nashville, Tennessee.

THE fiftieth anniversary of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers will be celebrated during the week beginning April 7, 1930. This date marks the anniversary of the organization meeting of the society which was held at Stevens Institute of Technology. While plans for the proposed celebration have not been completed, the tentative arrangement provides concurrently for an international engineering congress of outstanding nature which will not only mark the achievements of the engineering profession for the past fifty years, but will point the way for future growth and development. It is expected that this fiftieth anniversary meeting will be held in Washington, D. C., thus giving it a national and inter

national character.

Ar the invitation of the American Hospital Association, representatives of eleven countries met on September 19, at the League of Red Cross Societies. in Paris, to discuss an international hospital convention. The meeting was composed of representatives from the International Council of Nurses and the League of Red Cross Societies, also representatives from Belgium, Czecho-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Hispana-America, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Sweden and the United States. At this meeting it was decided that the first International Hospital Congress should meet in the United States in June, 1929, and that the invitations extended by various European cities be taken into consideration for the second congress.

THE Henry Herbert Wills Physics Laboratory, an imposing addition to the buildings of the University of Bristol, was formally declared open on October 21, by Sir Ernest Rutherford, president of the Royal Society. The laboratory is one of the finest and best equipped in the world. It stands on the Royal Fort Estate, overlooking the city. The late Mr. H. H. Wills was the donor, his gift amounting to £200,000. The opening ceremony took place in the main lecture theater of the laboratory, and the chancellor of the university, Lord Haldane, who presided, was supported by officers of the university and academic staff and by a group of distinguished physicists who visited Bristol for the occasion. Subsequently the chancellor admitted to the degree of doctor of science honoris causa Professor Max Born (Göttingen), Sir William Bragg (Royal Institution, London), Professor A. S. Eddington (Cambridge), Professor Alfred Fowler (Imperial College of Science and Technology, London), Professor P. Langevin (Paris) and Sir Ernest Rutherford (Cambridge).

A FIVE years' program of scientific studies in the physical chemistry of steel making to be carried out. by the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the U. S. Bureau of Mines and an advisory board of Pittsburgh steel executives and metallurgists has been launched. Twenty-six steel companies located east of the Mississippi River will cooperate in the work. Pledges of support in undertaking the research program were given by 65 representatives of the 26 cooperating steel companies at a dinner given for them and members of the advisory board by President Thomas S. Baker at the Carnegie Institute of Technology on October 19. The dinner meeting was preceded by inspection in the afternoon of the metallurgical laboratories of the Bureau of Mines and the laboratories of the department of metallurgy and the bureau of metallurgical research at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Speakers at the meeting included Dr. Thomas S. Baker, president of the Carnegie Institute of Technology; Dr. John Johnston, director of the department of research and technology, United States Steel Corporation; Scott Turner, director, U. S. Bureau of Mines, and Dr. C. H. Herty, Jr., head of the ferrous metallurgical section of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, who gave a progress report on the cooperative research.

THE Captain Marshall Field Brazilian Expedition, which left Chicago in June, 1926, ended with the return to the Field Museum of Natural History on October 27 of Colin C. Sanborn, the last of its members to remain in the field. The zoological section of the expedition originally included in its personnel, besides Mr. Sanborn, George K. Cherrie as leader, Mrs. Marshall Field, Curzon Taylor and Karl P. Schmidt.

These other members returned at various times afte completing the particular branches of the work the were interested in. They obtained for the muse 4,333 specimens of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphi ans, fishes, insects and other creatures. The origin expedition also had a botanical division in charge c Dr. B. E. Dahlgren, acting curator of botany, and geological division headed by Henry W. Nichols, asso ciate curator of geology, which obtained valuable ad lections for those departments of the museum.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NOTES

AN anonymous gift of $150,000 has been made t Princeton University for the establishment of a chi of geography to be known as the Knox Taylor pr fessorship.

THE Harvard Medical School has been made f beneficiary of a sum amounting to $150,000 by th will of the late William A. Purrington. The beques is made "for research work in the field of medicine. with special reference to the application of medi knowledge to the department of dentistry."

DR. ERNEST SHAW REYNOLDS has been appoint. professor of plant physiology in the Henry Sha School of Botany of Washington University at. physiologist to the Missouri Botanical Garden. D J. M. Greenman, curator of the herbarium, Missour Botanical Garden, and professor of botany in Washington University, has been placed in charge of grace ate work in the Henry Shaw School of Botany. Dr Roland V. L. La Garde has been appointed researc assistant on the staff of the Missouri Botanical Garden

RALPH L. SHRINER has resigned his position as asso ciate in research at the New York Agricultural Exper ment Station, Geneva, N. Y., to accept an assista professorship in organic chemistry at the Universit

of Illinois.

DR. CHARLES L. SWISHER, professor of physics North Dakota College, and Dr. John E. Pomeroy formerly of Bethany College, have been appointe assistant professors in the department of physics a Yale University.

DR. W. F. WENNER and Dr. L. A. Brown have bee appointed to assistant professorships in zoology & the State University of Iowa.

DR. MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS, lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University, has joined the facul"; of Northwestern University.

Dr. J. Duesberg, professor of anatomy at the fac ulty of medicine of Liége, who, during the war, served

in the Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore, has been appointed rector of the University of Liége for the period 1927-1930.

PROFESSOR H. VILLAT, of the University of Strasbourg, has been appointed to the newly established chair of the mechanics of fluids at the Sorbonne.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE TILDEN METEOR, AN ILLINOIS DAYLIGHT FALL

ON the afternoon of July 13, 1927, at about 1:00 P. M. central standard time, a stony meteor, hereafter referred to as the Tilden meteor, fell near Tilden, Illinois, about forty-five miles southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. The meteor fell in an area roughly two by seven miles, and four stones have been recovered, three of which weigh, respectively, one hundred and ten, forty-six, and nine pounds. The fourth is a small piece weighing a fraction of a pound.

The meteor came from the southeast, its path being inclined at an angle of perhaps fifty degrees to the horizontal, and with a velocity equal to, or slightly in excess of, the parabolic. Its brilliancy was such that at a distance of more than a hundred miles it appeared as “a piece falling off the sun." At a height of fifteen or twenty miles it burst, showing green and then purple, and after a second bursting was invisible to persons at a distance. A cloud of smoke was visible near the point of fall, but the falling pieces quickly had their velocity reduced so that they were no longer luminous by daylight, and only one piece was actually seen while falling. It was seen as “a dark streak, like smoke, for an instant."

The sky was partly cloudy in the vicinity of the fall, so few there saw anything, although nearly every one was looking, after the house-shaking blasts of the detonations. Following the detonations a roar like a tornado, or an earthquake, rolled to the southeast and died away in the distance. The meteor travelled with a velocity greater than that of sound, so the roar from the more distant portions of the path was heard after the detonations of the bursting in the nearer portion. This helped in evaluating the stories of the few who saw anything, for every one heard the sound rolling toward the southeast and assumed the meteor was travelling in that direction. The stones were actually seen to fall, and the smoke to roll, in the opposite direction.

The falling stones made a hum like an airplane flying high. The two larger stones could both be heard over considerable territory and at one place five men were out in a group straining their eyes to see an aviator who “flew over and passed out of hearing in the northwest, then came back flying much lower and landed a little to the north of the group."

The three larger pieces were heard to strike, the largest a few seconds after the blasts, the forty-sixpound piece "perhaps three minutes after," and for the nine-pound piece we have two careful estimates, "three to five minutes" and "five to eight minutes." The fact that for even the largest stone the thud of striking the earth was heard after the detonations of the bursting meteor shows that the average velocity of the fall from the point of bursting to the earth must have been less than the velocity of sound. Since the velocity of this meteor was twenty-five to thirty miles per second in the upper atmosphere, and sound travels at the comparatively leisurely rate of a mile in some five seconds, we have a striking illustration of the tremendous resistance of the lower atmosphere to bodies travelling at high velocities.

The soil of the territory is rather a stiff clay, and it was very hard because of no rain for weeks. The largest piece struck on the edge of a field of cow-peas, and went down three feet ten inches. The forty-sixpound piece went down fifteen inches in a clover pasture. The nine-pound piece went down five inches in grass in a back yard, and the small piece was found lying on a lawn. The fall was nearly vertical at the last, the largest stone departing about six inches from the vertical in penetrating three feet ten inches. The impact in no case noticeably scattered the soil; the holes were simply driven into the ground. The ninepound stone was easily lifted out of the hole. For the forty-six-pound piece a little digging with a pocket knife was necessary; and the removal of the one hundred and ten-pound stone required two hours' hard work for two men with spade, pick and crowbar. It was wedged "as if it were set in concrete."

The meteorites are composed of a light gray stone, and show small silvery globular aggregates, presumably of nickel-iron. The surfaces show typical pittings and a typical black crust, being blackened and pitted in fairly uniform fashion. From a preliminary study of the literature available, this fall appears to be the first recorded from the state of Illinois, and the one hundred and ten-pound stone ranks among the largest seen to fall and preserved reasonably intact. Plaster casts will be made of the larger stones of this fall.

It should be said that the information in this note was obtained by personal interview, the writer visiting people, not only in the vicinity of the fall, but more than a hundred miles from that point. CHARLES CLAYTON WYLIE

etiology of the disease to B. alvei, which is almost invariably found in large numbers in infected larvae, much work has been done to corroborate their results. In no case, however, has an isolated culture of B. alvei been known to produce the disease. On the other hand, G. F. White and others have refuted the claim of Cheshire and Cheyne and ascribed infection in this disease to B. pluton. Owing to their inability to cultivate and isolate the organism, however, their claim has remained hypothetical; for it could not be determined whether this organism was itself merely a secondary invader-as they said was B. alvei-or whether the infection was mixed, or whether, indeed, these organisms played any pathological rôle in the disease.

It has been the writer's fortune, however, to develop a medium admirably suitable for the growth of B. pluton (White). An 0.15 per cent. concentration of agar, together with certain nutrients, is employed as an enrichment medium; and a concentration of 1.5 per cent. agar for the isolation of the organism at 37° C. By this method pure cultures of B. pluton can be readily obtained, provided the larvae used contain a preponderance of this organism.

The writer has obtained infection in a healthy colony of black bees in four days, using as inoculum cultures of the organism derived from isolated colonies. The symptoms of the diseased larvae accorded with those observed in naturally infected larvae, and the microscopical picture was typical-B. alvei forms being also present, though only in small numbers. The organism has been reisolated successfully.

Morphological studies thus far suggest the identity of the two organisms. While the results in this are not yet complete, cultures of B. pluton have been observed to change to B. alvei form, resembling biologically the B. alvei isolated from infected larvae. This further corresponds very closely with the changes observed in brood naturally infected, where the ratio of B. alvei to B. pluton generally increases as the putrefaction of the larvae progresses, so that B. pluton is almost eliminated. The more conclusive substantia

tion of this is anticipated, and its accomplishment should lead to the demonstration of important relations between the pathogenicity of microorganisms

and their life stages.

OTTAWA, CANADA

DENIS R. A. WHARTON

NOTE ON A SECOND OCCURRENCE OF THE MOSASAURIAN REPTILE, GLOBIDENS

IN 1912 (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 41, p. 479) the new genus and species, Globidens alabamaensis Gilmore, was established on a rather meager specimen from the Upper Cretaceous of Alabama. The unusual

globular form of the teeth as contrasted with the pointed, sharp-cutting teeth of other Mosasaurian made this an outstanding genus on which Dollo has subsequently founded a distinct family, the Globiden sidae.

Recently I have received for examination the crowns of two teeth collected from the Selma Chalk in the vicinity of Saltillo, Lee County, Mississippi, by a student of Prof. J. M. Sullivan, of Millsaps Co lege, Jackson, Mississippi.

The crowns of these teeth show no evidence of wear and this fact, in conjunction with their relativel small size, would indicate that they were probably germ teeth which had not yet come into use. The globular form of their crowns, with wrinkled enareled surfaces, however, are in perfect accord with the teeth of the type specimen.

The fragmentary character of the specimen eontributes nothing new to our knowledge of this littl known Mosasaurian, but it is of interest as recording a new occurrence, and especially in definitely locating! its geological occurrence as being in the Selma Chalk CHARLES W. GILMORE

U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM

MORE AND BETTER ETHICS FOR SCIEN. TIFIC MEN

THAT the code of ethics1 adopted at the Santa Fé meeting of the Southwestern Division, American As sociation for the Advancement of Science, has beet found by Dr. Kempton2 a subject for genial mirth, seems to call for comment from some other quarter than that immediately involved, the members of the Southwestern Division having, one might say, cramped their style in controversy by the adoption of Rule 4 Thus, as so often, a new law works hardship first upon the law-abiding.

Dr. Kempton, as a resident of the Atlantic coastal plain, can hardly be expected to understand the dis tressing conditions prevailing in scientific and educa tional circles in outlying provinces west of the Appalachian Highland. It is a source of deep gratification

to us in the West to learn that the conditions

non

deprecated in the resolutions mentioned are existent in the East, which we have so long been taught to look to as the home of culture, truth and grace. The writer is glad to be corrected in his evidently erroneous assumption that Rule 10, for example, might, in the awkward gambols of its play

1A Code of Ethics for Scientific Men,'' SCIENCE, Vol. LXVI, No. 1700, pp. 103-104, July 29, 1927. 2 Kempton, J. H., "Scientors appear in the Southwest." Ibid., Vol. LXVI, No. 1711, pp. 354-355, Oct. 14, 1927.

ful youth, tread upon as many corns east as west of the Mississippi River. Be that as it may, if the wild scientists of the woolly west desire to pass resolutions to protect themselves from outside aggression and internecine strife, we should expect such ambition for self-improvement to be lauded rather than condemned by the cultured exponents of an older civilization east of the Alleghany Mountains.

In defense of the southwest code, we note first that it is specifically stated to be "tentative." We take this to mean that any of the rules may be altered or stricken out to which there is sufficient objection at home or abroad. Furthermore, it appears that the code is intended by members of the Southwestern Division to apply only to themselves; as we understand it, they have no intention-and probably no hope of applying their reforms to scientists at large. There is, therefore, no occasion for immediate alarm, unless it be on the part of individual eastern scientists who intend, for climatic or other reasons, to migrate to the Southwest.

Now it would be invidious to intimate that Dr. Kempton would personally violate, or condone the violation of, any of the rules in question. We interpret his attitude rather as a kind of Menckenese objection to the appearance of anything savoring of a Rotarian philosophy among scientific men. this point of view there is much to be said. But as between the two extremes of super-sanctity and subMenckenism we plead for a carefully weighted mean.

For

We should like to believe that scientific men as a class are above the need of a code of ethics. But the enthusiasm with which we commonly refer to an admired colleague as a gentleman and a scholar seems to involve a tacit admission that the virtues connoted by these two terms may exist separately as well as in combination.

It may be urged that, if a scholar be not already a gentleman, he can not be made one by any array of rules or resolutions. Alas, too true! But it would appear advantageous at any rate to have a definite code, by which one might decide for himself whether or not he is a gentleman, instead of depending on his colleagues to tell him, which sometimes causes lasting embarrassment on both sides. Then, too, even if it be antecedently improbable that anything can be done about the ethics of the present generation, there is the coming generation to consider the nascent Ph.D.'s and innocents yet unborn. Is it not our duty to provide that they may learn by precept what it is not wholly certain we can teach them by example?

If, in view of these weighty arguments, it should seem desirable to follow the lead of the physicians, southwestern scientists and other groups of professional men in semi-public service, and to adopt a

code of ethics to apply to scientists at large, we propose that, somewhere near the bottom of the list of needed reforms, the following be included:

Rule 160z. Scientific men shall be restrained from flailing each other through the medium of the press. The following penalties shall be provided:

(a) For gentle sarcasm the offender shall be given n black marks, in a large book to be kept by the Secretary of the National Research Council.

(b) For open satire he shall be given black marks to the number of 2n + 1.

(e) For burlesquing or lampooning colleagues, he shall receive a number of black marks to be represented by the expression

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

Les Physiciens Hollandais et la Methode Experimental en France au XVIIIème Siècle. Par PIERRE BRUNET, Paris, 1926.

An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. BY CLAUDE BERNARD, translated by HENRY COPLEY GREENE and LAURENCE J. HENDERSON. New York, Macmillan Co. 1927.

THERE never was a time when man did not use the experimental method of investigating his environment. There never has been a time when man did not form hypotheses on observations made thus and in other ways. An editor of Bacon's Novum Organum more than a hundred years ago remarked that Sir Isaac Newton had a very extraordinary method of making discoveries. When he was engaged in his famed inquiries about light he seemed first to have imagined in his mind how things were and afterwards contrived his experiments. Newton boasted he made no hypotheses, but no mind will work without hypotheses. There can be no doubt Newton made hypotheses both before and after he contrived his experiments on light or gravitation either. It is remarkable there was once a majority of scientific men who, less than a hundred years ago, talked about the experimental