biology or agriculture will be eligible candidates. Appointees are expected to register in the graduate department at the University of Virginia and to take work leading towards a higher degree. ANTICIPATING the federal quarantine against the importation of nursery stocks which becomes effective in 1930, the New York Legislature has appropriated $18,850 for comprehensive investigations on nursery stock production at the State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva. Part of the appropriation is made immediately available in order that work on the project may begin at once. H. B. Tukey, for several years in charge of the horticultural investigations of the Geneva Station in the Hudson River Valley, has been designated to take over the nursery work at Geneva and will enter upon his new duties at an early date. THE U. S. National Museum has recently received the collection of Lepidoptera, made some years ago by Mr. Henry F. Schoenborn, of Washington, D. C. Mr. Schoenborn was born in Suhl, Thuringia, Germany, in 1833, and died in Washington in 1896. He was one of the early amateur entomologists of Washington. The collection includes to a large extent the local fauna with the addition of a considerable series from Europe, all well mounted and in fine condition. The gift is a donation of the surviving daughter and son, Miss Theresa F., and William E., Schoenborn. ATTEMPTS to break the will of the late R. J. McDonald, who left a bequest of $1,125,000 to the University of Texas, have been unsuccessful. The money is to be used for the construction and equipment of an astronomical observatory, plans for which are in charge of Dr. H. Y. Benedict, dean of the college of arts and sciences. AN allotment of $130,000 has been made the University of Oregon Medical School by the General Education Board. This fund is to be used for traveling expenses, the improvement of equipment, additional salaries and volumes for the school library and such expenditures as are not provided for by the state legislature. AN appropriation of $60,000 has been made by the State of Montana for the establishment of a new entomological laboratory to be located at Hamilton. Approximately $25,000 per year has also been appropriated to carry on research on Rocky Mountain spotted fever. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY will receive $15,000 under the will of the late Dr. Henry Koplik, specialist in children's diseases, to be used for the establishment of a scholarship for the study of children's diseases. ACCORDING to a cable to the New York Times, Edmond de Rothschild has donated 30,000,000 francs to be used in establishing a French foundation patterned after the Rockefeller Foundation in America. It will be known as the Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology. Four well-known scientists will form the first board of directors. They are Jean Perrin, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics, Professor Job, of the Sorbonne, Professor Mayer, of the College of France, and Pierre Girard, director of the School of Higher Studies at the Sorbonne. THE Army Medical Department has been notified that the gold medal of the international committee of the Red Cross had been awarded to it in the competition of "wound cards" recently held at Geneva in connection with the meeting of the International Standardization Committee. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL CORNERSTONES for two new scientific buildings to cost $2,000,000, an engineering building and a chemical laboratory, were laid at Princeton University on May 12. AN additional gift of $250,000 to the University of Chicago for building the George Herbert Jones laboratory of chemistry has been made by Mr. Jones. This brings Mr. Jones's total gift to $665,000, the sum of $415,000 having been given by him last December. THE Scott bill providing a total appropriation of $4,234,500, including one million dollars for new buildings and plant repairs for the Pennsylvania State College, was given approval by the state legislature in the closing days of its session. The funds provided in the bill, in addition to the building item, include $2,181,000 for general college maintenance, $403,500 for agricultural research and $650,000 for agricultural and home economics extension. THE establishment of the William Allan Neilson chair of research at Smith College is the gift of friends and admirers of Dr. Neilson in honor of the tenth year of his presidency. The chair will be held five years by Professor Kurt Koffka, of the University of Giessen, who is at present visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin. DR. JOHN BOWLER has been elected dean of the Dartmouth Medical School. DR. HOMER L. DODGE, head of the department of physics of the University of Oklahoma, has been appointed dean of the graduate school, succeeding Dr. A. H. Van Vleet, who was dean from 1909 until his death in 1925. DR. EDWARD S. ROBINSON, of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, has been appointed professor of psychology at Yale University. DR. J. M. D. OLMSTED, assistant professor of physiology at the University of Toronto, has been appointed associate professor of physiology at the University of California. DR. GEORGE H. KIRBY, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and professor of clinical medicine in the department of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, has been appointed professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. Kirby sailed for Europe on April 23 to visit neuropsychiatric clinics and hospitals. Dr. DR. VIRGIL H. MOON, head of the department of pathology in the Indiana University School of Medicine, has been appointed head of the department of pathology at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and will assume his duties in June. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE HUMIDITY AND CHRONOMETRY MANY of those interested in well-regulated timepieces have doubtless noticed the tendency of watches to run fast in winter and slow in summer. This variation is in the direction to be expected from incomplete temperature compensation, but most watches are kept nearly as warm in winter as in summer. The indoor humidities however vary from about 30 to 80 per cent. from winter to summer. Being interested in adsorbed films it occurred to me to investigate the effect of varying humidities on the amounts of water adsorbed by metals in relation to watch rates. Through the courtesy of Mr. George P. Luckey, of the Hamilton Watch Company, a dozen balance wheels were obtained for test. These weighed 5.13035 grams after exposure to a saturated atmosphere, 5.1302 at 40 per cent. humidity, 5.1300 at 5 per cent. humidity and 5.1291 grams with the moisture completely removed. The total surface exposed was approximately 8 sq. cm, hence the moisture was adsorbed to a depth of 1.6 microns or about 4,000 molecular diameters. The relative change in mass was as 1:1.00025 for all the adsorbed water and about a tenth as much for the range of indoor humidities ordinarily met with. A gravity pendulum is of course not affected by such variations in mass since force and mass vary in the same proportion. But in watches and chronometers, the force applied by the activating spring is independent of the mass moved and a variation in that mass produces a first order effect on the rate. Since (t1/t2)2= I1/I2 = m1/m2, a change in rate of 1 second per day would be produced by a change in mass from 1 to 1.000023. Removal of all the adsorbed moisture from the balance wheel of a watch or ship chronometer would therefore cause it to gain about 10 seconds per day. Variations in humidity from 30 to 80 per cent., other things being equal, would cause changes in rate of 20 to 30 seconds per month. The rating of a ship chronometer in a dry winter land laboratory could not hold for protracted humid conditions. Since the adsorbed moisture layer decreases rapidly in thickness with rise of temperature, thermal expansion and moisture adsorption tend to compensate each other in chronometers. Control of humidity within the case should not be difficult. The adsorption of the vapors of lubricating oils is relatively much less and this too could be brought under control if necessary. P. G. NUTTING U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, WASHINGTON, D. C. SIXTY-ONE NAMES UNDER CONSIDERATION FOR INCLUSION IN THE OFFICIAL LIST OF GENERIC NAMES THE secretary of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has the honor to invite attention of the zoological profession to the fact that the following 61 generic names (with genotypes in parentheses) are under consideration for insertion in the Official List of Generic Names. Announcement of final vote will be delayed until about April 1, 1928, in order to give persons interested in these names opportunity to express their opinions. PROTOZOA: Bursaria (truncatella), Eimeria (falciformis), Laverania (malariae so. falcipara), Plasmodium (malariae), Sarcocystis (miescheri). CESTODA: Ligula (avium). NEMATODA: Filaria (martis), Heterodera (schachtii), Rhabditis (terricola), Strongylus (equi = equinum), Syngamus (trachealis so. trachea). OLIGOCHAETA: Enchytraeus (albidus). HIRUDINEA: Haemadipsa (zeylanica), Limnatis (nilotica). CRUSTACEA: Armadillidium (vulgare so. armadillo), Astacus (astacus), Cancer (pagurus), Daphne (pulex), Diaptomus (castor), Gammarus (pulex), Homarus (gammarus marinus), Nephrops (norvegicus), Oniscus (asellus), Pandalus (annulicornis), Penaeus (monodon), Porcellio (scaber). = XIPHOSURA: Limulus (polephemus). ARANEAE Seu ARANEIDA: Avicularia (avicularia), Dendryphantes (hastatus), Dysdera (punctoria), Latrodectus (13-guttatus), Segestria (florentina). ACARINA: Cheyletus (eruditus), Chorioptes (ca prae), Demodex (folliculorum), Dermanyssus (gallinae), Glyciphagus (domesticus), Polydesmus (complanatus), Psoroptes (equi), Rhizoglyphus (robini), Trombidium (holosericeum). THYSANURA: Lepisma (saccarhina), Podura (plum bea). ORTHOPTERA: Blatta (orientalis), Ectobius (lapponica), Gryllus (campestris), Periplaneta (americana). ISOPTERA: Termes (fatale). CORRODENTIA: Atropos (lignarium). ANOPLURA: Pediculus (humanus), Phthirus (inguinalis so. pubis). HEMIPTERA: Anthocoris (nemorum so. sylvestris), Corixa (striata = geoffroyi), Nabis (vagans so. ferus), Nepa (cinerea), Notonecta (glauca), Reduvius (personatus), Triatoma (gigas = rubrofasciatus). DERMAPTERA: Forficula (auricularia). CH. W. STILES, Secretary. CURIOSITIES OF ANTHECOLOGY KNUTH'S "Handbuch der Blütenbiologie" consists of Band I, 1-400, 1898; Band II, Teil 1, 1-697, 1898, Teil 2, 1-705, 1899; Band III, Teil 1, 1-570, 1904, Teil 2, 1-601, 1905. It is the most important general work on anthecology that has ever been published, summarizing all the literature down to 1903. It gives abstracts of all my flower and insect papers and gives the insect visits of all the species mentioned in them. Band II, Teil 1, 2, contains European and arctic results. Band III, Teil 1, 2, contains results from the rest of the world. I have the satisfaction of knowing that those who ignore my papers also ignore Knuth's work. Davis' "Knuth's Handbook of Flower Biology" is another thing. Vol. II is Band II, Teil 1, of Knuth's work. Vol. III is Band II, Teil 2. Band III, Teil 1 and Teil 2 have not been translated. It is remarkable how persons not really interested in this matter should feel impelled to write about it. In the Botanical Gazette we read, "The third volume of the English translation of Knuth's 'Handbuch der Blütenbiologie' has just appeared and completes the work.". In the American Bee Journal we find, "A survey of the whole subject may be obtained from the English translation of 'Knuth's Handbook of Flower Pollination,' three volumes published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1906. This admirable treatise has a splendid summary of the more important work done along the lines of pollination up to the year 1906." In a Carnegie publication, with two authors, it is stated, "No previous floral study of Rubus has been made in America, but several European species have received much attention (Knuth, 1908: 352)" and "The pollination of the rose appears to have received no attention in this country, but several species have been studied in Europe (Knuth, 1906: 348)." But Knuth, 1904, Band III, Teil 1, 340, 344, gives abstracts of Rubus occidentalis and villosus, Rosa humilis and setigera and cites my "Rosaceae and Compositae" of 1894. Another paper with two authors says: "Doubtless some of the papers dealing with flowers and bees have been overlooked." This article of 1920 repeats 385 and overlooks 259 of the cases recorded by me, all of them given by Knuth in 1905, Band III, Teil 2. A paper with two authors involves a trinity, one, the other and both. A fine point of cooperation would be to combine with some one who would do the work and take the blame for any error, while you take the credit. In "Flowers and Insects" (XXI, Bot. Gaz. 73: 148), I made a fuss about Knuth's volume II repeating Mueller's lists for the third time, while his volume III merely summarizes American lists. The joke is that Davis' "Knuth's Handbook" repeats Mueller's lists for the fourth time, while all mention of American lists is suppressed. In a letter of December 8, 1919, the Oxford University Press, American Branch of the Clarendon Press, says, "Replying to your letter of Nov. 25th, we beg to say that the 4th and 5th Volumes of Knuth's 'Flower Pollination' have not yet been published, and we regret we have no information as to when they will be ready." It is evident that the authors cited above as referring to the work thought that all of it had been translated, and that all who bought the first volumes thought that the rest would be translated. CARLINVILLE, ILLINOIS CHARLES ROBERTSON AN EARLY BOOK ON ALGOLOGY A COPY of one of the rarest botanical works in America has recently been found at Rutgers University. This is "The Algae and Corallines of the Bay and Harbor of New York," published by Mr. C. F. Durant in 1850, said to be the first book on algology published in America. Only two other copies are known to be in existence, one each at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the New York Botanical Garden. The work is unique in that every plant described in the text is illustrated by an actual dried specimen, the little cards bearing the plants being pasted on blank pages, thus forming a very original Icones Algarum. The history of the book has been described by Hollick1 and interesting excerpts are given by him from Durant's notes, which now form an invaluable commentary on the floristic (and faunistic) communities of New York Harbor and Raritan Bay before pollution had destroyed them. It is possible that still other copies are hidden away in our older libraries and can yet be retrieved. ARTHUR P. KELLEY RUTGERS UNIVERSITY SCIENTIFIC BOOKS Manual of Meteorology, Vol. I. By SIR NAPIER SHAW, with the assistance of ELAINE AUSTIN. Cambridge University Press, 1926, pp. XX + 340, 121 illustrations. Price 30s. net. THIS volume is part of the monumental work planned by Sir Napier Shaw when he retired from the directorship of the Meteorological Office. That the last shall be first receives a striking confirmation in the issue of the four volumes constituting the work, for the final volume (IV) was handed to the printer on Armistice Day, and duly made its bow to the reading public in 1919. It dealt primarily with wind and pressure; though perhaps pressure should come first, since difference in pressure initiates air flow or wind. Volume I now appears, and from a personal letter we know that Vol. III is ready for the press. Vol. IV bad 166 pages; the present volume (I) has just double that number, and naturally the price also is doubled; but the increase will not be grudged. The present volume carries as sub-title "Meteorology in History"; and the text justifies the heading. The author gives his viewpoint when speaking of what was expected of him as his bit, during the World War. He says, "It became my duty to supply or alternatively to train officers for various meteorological services." The director was working in an environment "which contained within its own experience or on its shelves almost all that there is to know about the weather"; yet he had to send responsible officers into the services, "with a formula by which they could carry on in place of the knowledge that would enable them to become a part." This and the feeling that the atmosphere should be studied as a whole led to the conception of a compendium of what had been done by workers in many lands. Furthermore, there lurks in the author's 1 Hollick, Arthur. "A Quaint Old Work on Seaweeds," Proc. Staten Island Assoc. Arts Sci., vol. 5, parts III and IV, 1915. mind a feeling that the study of the atmosphere, that is, aerography, should be thrown open to amateurs, whereas it is now to all intents and purposes limited to a professional few in official harness. He says truly that the study of weather, "which in so far as it is specialized is devitalized," ought to be an attractive subject for amateurs. It is to furnish amateurs with the necessary historic background that this big piece of work was attempted. The present volume has fifteen chapters, and in every chapter there is plenty that is filling and on the whole easily digestible. The menu ranges from Aristotle's Meteorologica to the equipment of a modern observatory, including radio-integrators, pyranometers and pyrgeometers. The illustrations are abundant and, considering the age of many of the originals, have come out well. The personal touch is shown in photographs of some of the international meteorological congresses. The pioneers in meteorology were all good-looking men, although running largely to whiskers. In the Paris conference photograph not one of the thirtyfour faces is clean shaven. How fashion changes! To-day in a group of fifty airmen there would not be a single face adorned with excess pilosity. There is one American meteorologist whose face is missing; that is William Ferrel, due probably to Ferrel's modesty. Langley and Maury are present; but Franklin and that earliest explorer of the upper air, Dr. John Jeffries, are missing. Robert Boyle might have been included, for certainly the author of the "Spring of the Air" did a lot to advance knowledge of air pressure. There is little to criticize in the book, for it is evident that the utmost care has been taken to get dates, names and facts correct. A reviewer can only applaud the author and those who assisted him, for both quality and quantity of work. The type work is excellent, and the Cambridge University Press lives up to its high standard. The book contains 121 illustrations, 95 of which are cloud photographs. No one interested in aerography, the science of the air, can afford to be without the book. ALEXANDER MCADIE An Outline of a Reclassification of the Foraminifera. By JOSEPH A. CUSHMAN. Contributions from the Cushman Laboratory for Foraminiferal Research, Vol. 3, pt. 1, 1927, pp. 1-105, 21 plates. Published by the author at Sharon, Mass. DR. CUSHMAN's latest work upon these important micro-organisms will be welcomed by all students of this class and particularly by those employed in economic geology. In a former article, issued by the Smithsonian Institution in 1925, Cushman dealt with the methods of study and other features of general interest in addition to presenting a bibliography of the most useful works and descriptions and illustrations of important genera. The present article, which in an outline preliminary to a larger treatise, aims to bring order out of the former classifications and to arrange the many genera in natural grouping. Cushman is particularly well fitted for this task, with his twenty-five years of experience in active work upon fossil and recent foraminifera from all parts of the world. This is the first complete classification of the formaminifera based purely on the study of the ontogeny and phylogeny in conjunction with the geologic history. The form of the adult test has been used as the basis in most previous classifications, but this is not alone sufficient because it is only the earlier stages that give the true relationships. Even then these stages should be observed in the microspheric form, as this is retrospective, repeating in its young many of the ancestral stages. The megalospheric specimens skip many of these earlier stages, thus arriving earlier at adult development and even assuming later characters undeveloped in the microspheric form. These two forms of the same species, the microspheric, with the small initial chamber reproducing asexually, and the megalospheric, with large initial chamber producing zoospores which fuse as in sexual reproduction, have caused much confusion in earlier work. Instead of the ten families used in recent years, Cushman employs forty-five, due to a stricter limitation resulting in more concise grouping. The number of genera recognized has also increased, but the closely defined genera will be more easily identified than the nine inclusive groups hitherto recognized, which often contain remotely related forms. The work of many writers on the group in the past twenty years has been adopted wherever possible and the author's own studies have been largely drawn upon. The development from simple undivided forms to chambered ones is followed and the chitinous and arenaceous species are recognized as primitive, as has been done by many writers in recent years. The paper is illustrated by a table and twenty-one plates of drawings showing the relationships of the families and genera. The publication of similar outlines of classification in all branches of biology would be not only a great stimulus to the study of natural history but also a corresponding relief to the specialist burdened with nomenclatorial problems. U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM R. S. BASSLER SPECIAL ARTICLES NOTES ON THE MECHANISM OF FER ΜΕΝΤΑΤΙΟΝ1 INVESTIGATIONS in recent years have cleared up important parts of the chemical processes in which different fermentations are concerned. Without having found final explanations, Harden and Young or L. Iwanow, for instance, have proved the necessity of the presence of phosphoric salts in the case of alcoholic fermentation. On the other hand, in 1910 O. Neubauer was in a position to show, on the basis of experiments, that in a later phase of the breaking down of sugar, which is initiated by enzymes, pyruvie acid appears to be an intermediate product. However, several years earlier Magnus Levy indicated that acetaldehyde is a probable product of the disintegration of sugars. In fact, the acetaldehyde could be intercepted and fixed by the process of Connstein and Lüdecke," furnishing in the following years, espe cially through the activities of several investigators,' and recently by Willaman and Letcher, significant analytical insight into the mechanism of the breaking down of carbohydrates by means of enzymes and different microorganisms. However, none of these investigators have given an account of the processes which are doubtlessly indispensable in explaining the physico-chemical mechanism which is involved. Probably assuming that the combination of the hexoses with inorganic salts, which is supposed to initiate the real decomposition of the sugar molecules, takes place outside of the cell, Paine, in the laboratory of Harden, investigated the permeability of yeast cells to hexosephosphates. These experiments have been interpreted very differently and very strangely by different workers. According to Harden, himself, "the yeast cell is at all 1 From the Division of Agricultural Biochemistry, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minn. Presented before the meeting of the Minnesota Section, Society for Experi mental Biology and Medicine, on December 15, 1926. 2 German patent, No. 298593/120 (1915); German patent, No. 298594-6/120 (1916). 3 Comp., F. F. Nord, Die Naturw., 7, 685 (1919). 4 F. F. Nord, Chem. Rev., 3, 60, 76 (1926). (This paper on "Chemical Processes in Fermentations'' contains a bibliography to which the reader is referred for many of the literature citations used in the present paper. There was expressed in the same paper (p. 69) the opinion that in view of the assumed relations between thyroxin and bios the reduction of carbonyl- and other compounds by means of fermenting yeast (Lintner, Lüers, Neuberg, Nord and others) could be explained by an intermittent interaction between bios and this compound. In the meantime the former formula of thyroxin and according to a private communication from Dr. Edward C. Kendall the analysis of bios were found to be in disagreement with the facts. |