War Department Office of Engineers, P. B. Fleming Air Service, W. R. Davis and R. L. Walsh Chemical Warfare Service, C. R. Alley The importance of maintaining a high morale among the scientific force and its bearing on the results achieved was emphasized. Two factors influence the morale generally—reclassification and appropriations. These factors create an uncertainty about tenure of office on the one hand and permanence of activities on the other. It was the sense of the conference that morale among the scientific personnel must be strengthened and that adequate provisions for promotion of both financial and honorary nature, as well as the stabilization of research by safeguarding it against the effects of retrenchment, would go far towards accomplishing this end. Dr. Cottrell suggested the advisability of having some agency set up as a trustee of accumulated funds. Contingent assets to the government might be used for such a cause. He then cited the patent situation as an illustration and pointed out that a simple article might be turned out which might have tremendous returns, whereas a serum of great importance to the human race would yield little financial return. He suggested that profits from the exploitation of the one might be used in the production of the other. He called attention to the fact that the proposed patent bill had a clause providing for the creation of an organization to handle profits from patents and distribute them in rewarding inventors. In other words, it is his idea that we should look forward to the time when a fund derived from revenue will go a long way towards making fundamental research self-sustaining. He was asked to put his ideas in tangible form for presentation at the next meeting of the conference. General Smither appointed the following committee to study the manner of stabilizing the sinews of research in the government service with relation to the appropriation of money by the congress: Surgeon General H. S. Cumming, chairman, G. K. Burgess, F. G. Cottrell and George Otis Smith. The matter of medical aides in the scientific units of the government service was next discussed. It was the consensus of opinion that some provision should be made for adequate medical attendance at government bureaus where work of a general hazardous nature is being conducted. Surgeon General Cumming was asked to devise some plan whereby ways and means may be found, either by legislative enactment or otherwise, to give him the authority to assign medical aides to such bureaus. The next conference will be called in September. THE BRUSSELS MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF RESEARCH AT the General Assembly of the International Council of Research held at Brussels, July 7 to 9, 1925, the agenda consisted principally of propositions submitted by Denmark, Holland and Switzerland to amend certain statutes of the International Research Council. The effect of the original statutes was the exclusion of the Central Powers. Article I (1) based membership in the new organizations upon the Resolution of London (Oct., 1918), namely: "Les nouvelles Associations reconnues utiles au progrès des sciences et de leurs applications seront établies, dès maintenant, par les Nations en guerre avec les Empires Centraux, avec le concours éventuel des Neutres." Article III (3) names the countries originally admitted or admissible. The proposition to let down the bars was presented on the part of Holland by Professor Lorentz. The delegates from the United States were Vernon Kellogg, chairman, W. W. Campbell and Charles E. St. John, who had been instructed by the National Research Council to favor and to work openly for making its councils and unions international in fact as well as in name. The vote upon one proposition is instructive and very illuminating as it illustrates the extent to which political rather than scientific considerations controlled. It is needless to say that there was great disappointment over the outcome and that there were grave fears for the future of a scientific association international only in name. Near the close of the last session Professor Gullstrand, president of the Royal Society of Sweden, expressed clearly his deep sense of the danger that faces the present international scientific organizations if the situation is not relieved in the very near future. Similar expressions of disappointment and apprehension were voiced by Kellogg of the United States, Knudsen of Denmark, Lyons of England, Vegard of Norway and Lorentz of Holland, expressions received with approval by the majority of nations represented. It was the general opinion that the statutes of the International Council of Research should be amended at the earliest possible date, so that a change in the statutes would not require a two thirds majority. The absurdity of the present condition becomes apparent when it is noticed that a unanimous vote at the assembly would not have been sufficient to effect a change in the statutes. Several procedures are open for accomplishing the ends sought. That which seemed to find favor was action by the Executive Committee in calling a special assembly at an early date or a vote by letter-ballot conducted by the executive committee at the request of one third of the weighted membership. The other item on the agenda, the appointment of a committee for the study of the relationships between solar and terrestrial phenomena, received favorable action. The composition of the committee is S. Chapman (chairman), G. Abetti, C. G. Abbot, H. Deslandres, G. Ferrié, C. E. St. John, G. C. Simpson and C. Störmer. CHARLES E. ST. JOHN THE JOHN T. SCOPES SCHOLARSHIP FUND THE scientists who were ready to testify in behalf of Mr. Scopes, recently convicted under the anti-evolution law of Tennessee, are sponsoring the raising of a scholarship fund which will enable Mr. Scopes to continue his scientific training as soon as possible. It is Mr. Scopes's desire to undertake graduate work in some branch of natural science. At present, however, he is without a teaching position or other means of obtaining the necessary money. Although he has been offered numerous lucrative lecture and stage engagements which would net him many thousands of dollars, he has refused them, wishing to avoid even the appearance of self-exploitation. Impressed with Mr. Scopes's intellectual qualities and modesty, and believing that he is entitled to some substantial recogniiton for the trying experiences that he has undergone in the service of science, and of liberty of thought and speech generally, the scientists who were associated with the defense have organized a committee to raise a scholarship fund of $5,000 to enable Mr. Scopes to undertake graduate work at an institution of higher learning of his own choosing during the next few years. Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf, of Oberlin College and the Johns Hopkins University, the first scientist to testify in Mr. Scopes's behalf, has consented to act as chairman of the scholarship fund committee; Dr. Kirtley F. Mather, of the Harvard Geological Museum, Cambridge, Mass., is vicechairman, and Watson Davis, managing editor of Science Service, Washington, D. C., will act as secretary-treasurer. Other scientists who came to Dayton to testify for the defense include: Professor William A. Kepner, University of Virginia; Dr. Jacob G. Lipman, director Agricultural Experiment Station, New Brunswick, N. J.; Dr. Charles H. Judd, University of Chicago; Dr. Fay-Cooper Cole, University of Chicago; Wilbur A. Nelson, Tennessee state geologist; Dr. Winterton C. Curtis, University of Missouri; Dr. W. M. Goldsmith, Southwestern University; Dr. H. H. Newman, University of Chicago; Dr. Frank Thone, Science Service. It is hoped that a sufficiently large portion of the fund can be raised within a week or two so that Mr. Scopes can make his plans to enter upon his graduate work this fall. Contributions can be sent to any member of the committee and they will be promptly acknowledged. Scientists who will act as chairmen for various regions of the country will shortly be designated and will have charge of the raising of the fund in their particular geographical location. SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS CORRESPONDING members of the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain have been elected as follows: Senor Don Luis Cubillo, director of the Geographical Institute, Madrid; The Reverend Father Josef Fischer, S.J., of Feldkirch, Austria; Mr. A. P. H. Hotz, C. B. E.; Professor Emmanuel de Martonne, professor of geography at the Sorbonne, Paris; Professor Eugenius Romer, professor of geography at the University of Lwów, Poland; General Nicola Vacchelli, director of the Military Geographical Institute, Florence, and president of the International Geographical Union; Dr. F. C. Wieder, librarian to the University of Leiden. SIGNOR DE GIUSEPPE DE MICHELIS, commissioner general of emigration, has been appointed president of the International Institute of Agriculture. He was minister of agriculture in the Nitti and Giotti cabinets. C. THURSTON HOLLAND was elected president of the International Congress of Radiology, recently held in London. GUSTAVE ANDRÉ, professor in the National Institute of Agronomy, has been elected to the section of rural economy of the French Academy of Sciences. PROFESSOR BOHUSLAV BRAUNER, director of the Chemical Institute of the Charles University of Prague, has been elected an honorary member of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, Leningrad. MRS. CLARA E. SPEIGHT-HUMBERSTONE, of Toronto, has been elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of France. THE Royal Spanish Academy of Medicine conferred a degree on Dr. Charles H. Mayo, Rochester, at a recent meeting in Madrid. A STATUE of John Frank Stevens, of New York City, who planned and carried out the construction of the railway through the Rocky Mountains, was unveiled by his grandson with appropriate ceremonies on July 22. The statue, which is bronze and of heroic size, is placed on the crest of the Continental Divide at Summit, Montana. Mr. Stevens, who is now seventy years old, received this year the award of the John Fritz medal. THE pupils of Dr. y Alvarez E. Pinerúa, who retired some months ago from the professorship of chemistry at the University of Madrid, recently presented to him at a formal session in the assembly hall of the National Academy of Medicine a volume containing a reprint of his works. The session was attended by prominent representatives of the schools of medicine, pharmacy and science. A SPECIAL meeting of the South Jersey Section of the American Chemical Society was held at the du Pont Club, Carneys Point, N. J., on June 9 in honor of Mr. Arthur G. Green, F.R.S., the English authority on dyes. R. A. CATTELL, formerly superintendent of the petroleum experiment station at Bartlesville, Okla., has been put in charge of the helium division of the U. S. Bureau of Mines. Five units will be set up within the helium division, to be under the direction of the following men: H. S. Kennedy, natural gas section; C. F. Cook, production section; Dr. Stewart, general section; C. W. Kanolt, research section, and C. W. Seibel, repurification section. H. H. HILL, chief petroleum engineer, has been placed in charge of the petroleum division of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, and will have supervision of all petroleum investigations conducted by the bureau. E. D. GARDNER, mining and explosives engineer, will serve as acting superintendent of the Southwest Experiment Station of the Bureau of Mines, Tucson, Arizona. DR. W. A. NOYES, of the University of Illinois, spent the week beginning June 28 at the Western State College of Colorado, at Gunnison, giving a series of non-technical lectures on scientific topics. The lectures given included the following subjects: "Religion and authority," "The beginnings of accurate knowledge," "The discovery of the composition of water," "Atoms, matter and energy," "The conquest of disease," "International scientific relations," "Who have paid the costs of the war?" DR. FREDERICK W. SEARS, district state health officer at Syracuse, N. Y., has been invited to give one of the De Lamar lectures at the School of Hygiene and Public Health of Johns Hopkins University during the coming season. PROFESSOR KURT KOFFKA, of the University of Giessen, Germany, lectured at the University of Iowa on Friday, July 10, on "The psychology of the cinematograph." On the following day at a roundtable conference he discussed the "Psychology of Gestalt." M. LE DUC DE BROGLIE, who has for a number of years taken a leading part in physical research in France, delivered the eighth Silvanus Thompson Memorial Lecture in London on July 1. THE announcement of British Civil List Pensions granted during the year ending March 31, 1925, has been issued. It includes pensions of £100 to Miss Maria Birch, in recognition of the services rendered by her father, the late Dr. Walter de Gray Birch, to the science of archeology, and to Joseph Thomas Cunningham, in recognition of his services to zoological science and economic zoology. A pension of £50 is given to Mrs. Emily Rambaut, in recognition of the services rendered by her husband, the late Dr. A. A. Rambaut, to astronomical science. A MONUMENT, consisting of a bas-relief by the T sculptor R. Bénard, in honor of the 500 French doctors and medical students who lost their lives during the war, was unveiled on June 14, at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, in the presence of the president of the French Republic, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine and a large and distinguished audience. DR. J. CROSBY CHAPMAN, professor of educational psychology at Yale University, was drowned on July 15. Dr. Chapman was thirty-six years old. DR. B. E. MOORE, professor of physics at the University of Nebraska, died on July 15, aged fifty-nine years. DR. ALBERT JOHN OCHSNER, the well-known surgeon of Chicago, a former president of the American College of Surgeons, died on July 25, aged sixtyseven years. DR. LUCIUS ELMER SAYRE, since 1891 dean of the school of pharmacy of the University of Kansas, died on June 20, aged seventy-eight years. THE death is announced of Charles W. Eaton, of Haverhill, Mass., from 1884 to 1890 professor of civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Eaton was later in private practice, his most important works being the construction of San Juan Harbor, Porto Rico, and the dredging of Mobile Bay. THE death is announced at the age of seventy-six years of Dr. Felix Klein, professor of mathematics at Göttingen and editor of the Mathematische Annalen. PROFESSOR GUSTAV MULLER, formerly director of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam, died at Berlin on July 9 at the age of seventy-five years. THE U. S. Civil Service Commission has announced the following open competitive examinations: Medical officer of various grades from junior to senior, to fill vacancies in all branches of the service, at entrance salaries ranging from $1,860 to $5,200 a year; Nautical assistant in the hydrographic office of the Navy Department, at an entrance salary from $1,320 to $1,680 a year; specialist in cotton classing, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Department of Agriculture, at an entrance salary of $3,800 a year, or higher; junior meteorologist, Weather Bureau, at an entrance salary of $1,860 a year; biometrician, Bureau of Dairying, Department of Agriculture, at $3,800 a year; veterinarian and physiologist, Bureau of Dairying, Department of Agriculture, at an entrance salary of $3,800 a year. Full information and application blanks may be obtained at the office of the Civil Service Commission, 1724 F St., Washington, D. C. DR. A. L. BAKKE, acting secretary, writes that the 11. first summer meeting of the American Society of Plant Physiologists was held with the American Society of Agronomy at East Lansing, Michigan, on July 10 and The first day was spent with the agronomists while the second was given over to a program of invitation papers and a business session. Professor Charles A. Shull, of the University of Chicago, called the meeting together and presented the new president, Dr. R. P. Hibbard, of Michigan State College. Dr. Burton E. Livingston, of the Johns Hopkins University, is vice-president, and Dr. Wright A. Gardner, of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, continues as secretary. The attendance and the interest shown in the program were very good. AT a recent meeting of the executive committee of the Highway Research Board of the National Research Council it was decided to hold the fifth annual meeting of the board at Washington, D. C., on December 3 and 4. Reports on progress received from the chairmen of the research committees show that they are conducting important studies on almost every phase of highway development, including finance, design, construction and maintenance, thus assuring a successful annual meeting. The program for the fifth annual meeting is now being prepared and will soon be announced. It is planned to hold in Rome an International Forestry Congress under the auspices of the International Institute of Agriculture, the Italian government and the American Tree Association. Mr. Charles Lathrop Pack, of the Tree Association, is a member of the committee of arrangements. THE Swiss Society of Natural History will hold its hundred and sixth annual meeting, under the presidency of Dr. P. Steinmann, in Aarau from August 8 to 12. The conference meets in three sections—mathematics, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, petrography; geology, geophysics, meteorology, petrography; and medical biology, the history of medicine and science, botany, zoology, including entomology, anthropology and ethnology. TERMS of the John Horsley Memorial Prize in surgery have been announced by the University of Virginia. This prize was established by Dr. J. Shelton Horsley, of Richmond, Va., a distinguished alumnus of the university, as a memorial to his father, and consists of two years' interest on $10,000, presumably $1,000, to be awarded every two years by a committee of the medical faculty of the university for a thesis upon some subject in general surgery. All graduates of the medical department of the University of Virginia, of not more than fifteen years' standing, are eligible for this prize. The prize is to be awarded biennially at the final exercises of the university, beginning in June, 1927, by a committee consisting of the dean of the medical school and the professors of pathology, physiology, biochemistry, histology, embryology and surgery. TRUSTEES of the estate of the late Sir William Dunn have allotted $10,000 a year for five years for cancer research, which has been assigned to the extension of experiments with filtrable viruses following the recent discovery of Dr. William E. Gye and Dr. J. E. Barnard. The British Medical Association, heard Dr. Gye's report on his cancer discovery and the subsequent debate behind closed doors. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NOTES THE University of Pennsylvania has plans in preparation for the erection of a new laboratory for physiological chemistry to cost about $1,000,000, with equipment. The work will be carried out in connection with an extensive building program at the institution, including an anatomical laboratory, for which foundations are being laid, to cost approximately $1,300,000. THE board of administrators of the Tulane University of Louisiana has decided to reorganize completely the Graduate School of Medicine. A committee has been appointed to work out the plans of reorganization, and it is expected that the school will be fully organized and ready for work by the beginning of the 1925-1926 college year. DR. JOHN J. KEEGAN, a member of the faculty of the College of Medicine of the University of Nebraska, at Omaha, has been appointed dean of the college to succeed Dr. Irving S. Cutter, who recently accepted appointment as dean of the Medical School of Northwestern University. AT the University of California the professorial title of Dr. C. B. Lipman has been changed from professor of plant nutrition to professor of plant physiology and dean of the graduate division. DR. A. G. WORTHING, for fifteen years a physicist at the Nela Research Laboratory, has become professor of physics in the University of Pittsburgh and head of the department, succeeding Dr. L. P. Sieg, dean of the college. Dr. Sieg retains a professorship in the department. THE National Research Council announces the following appointments of holders of fellowships under the council: Dr. (Minnie) Jane Sands (M.D., Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania), who has been studying since October, 1923, at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, Cambridge, England, and at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, professor of physiology at the Woman's College of Medicine, Philadelphia. Dr. Clifford S. Leonard, Ph.D. (Wisconsin), since October, 1923, at Yale University, instructor in pharmacology at Yale University. Homer W. Smith, D.Sc. (Johns Hopkins), who for the past two years has been working at the Harvard Medical School, acting professor of physiology at the University of Virginia. Dr. Louis N. Katz, M.D. (Western Reserve), who has been studying at the University of London since August, 1924, senior instructor in physiology in Western Reserve University. MAYNARD F. JORDAN, instructor of astronomy in Harvard University, has been appointed associate professor of astronomy at the University of Maine. DR. ALFRED P. LOTHROP, professor of chemistry at Queen's University, Ontario, has been appointed associate professor of chemistry at Oberlin College. DR. T. F. WALL has been appointed head of the department of electrical engineering in the University of Sheffield. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE SIZE OF SEA WAVES A PHOTOGRAPH of a large sea wave was published in the New York Times of December 7, 1924. This picture so impressively indicated the enormous size of the wave that the writer made special inquiries to ́establish the authenticity of the picture, realizing that the wave shown was far out of the ordinary even in great storms. The photograph was taken from on board the S. S. Leviathan and shows a wave advancing upon the bow of the ship and towering high above it. The top of the wave appears to be higher than the position of the camera. A special request brought the following letter: I have made an exhaustive inquiry concerning the making of this photograph which was published in the New York Times of December 7. I hope that the information I am able to give you will prove of some value. The photographer made this picture from "B" deck of the Leviathan, 60 feet above the waterline of the vessel and 224 feet from the bow. He informs me that at the moment the exposure was made the Leviathan's bow was in the trough of the wave and that he shot down at an angle to get the picture, the wave breaking immediately after the exposure was made. The photographer is not sure of the day on which the picture was taken, but he believes it to be Thanksgiving Day or the day following. At that time the Leviathan was encountering full gales, |