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lacking in exactness. Each author has gathered historical material as an incident to other work, but the problem is deserving of intensive and continued effort. The human interests involved are considerable, for in these areas of small population every meadow and every small area of good pasturage is important. The investigator is ever confronted with questions: Has the formation of arroyos been wholly adverse to man or productive of good? If desirable, can former conditions be restored? How can existing property, fields, buildings and even towns be best protected against encroachment of the ever-widening channels? A proper solution of the practical problem will rest on considerations based on our theory of the cause of this erosion. If overgrazing or other artificial factors are the cause, regulation and a few simple structures may restore the conditions of the past. If erosion is the result of climatic change, a swing in the climatic cycle may at some future time restore the alluvial floors of the valleys without human intervention. The present need is for more facts in order that one or another of the proposed theories may be established. With the date at which cutting began definitely fixed and the date of introduction of livestock also fixed, a much better judgment as to the influence of overgrazing can be made. These historical data must be gathered locally for the many individual streams, and it is hoped that the large group of scientists interested will collect and publish the facts.

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

KIRK BRYAN

FRANCIS HENRY PARSONS

THE death of Francis Henry Parsons on July 25 at the age of seventy years removes one who had a lifelong interest in the advancement of science. Though he left no written contribution to scientific literature, his work as librarian successively of two scientific collections is of undoubted importance.

His fifty-two years of government service comprised work in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, the United States Naval Observatory, and the Library of Congress. While in the Coast Survey, 1873-1894, he was made chief of library and archives, and assembled, from the scattered field parties and vessels, a library of from 12,000 to 15,000 volumes which is especially valuable for its source-material.

As assistant in charge of the Smithsonian Division of the Library of Congress, 1900-1925, he augmented the collection of transactions of learned societies and academies already gathered there, until, at the time of his retirement, it comprised 450,000 volumes. The significance of the collection is not, however, in the

number of volumes, but in the nature of the material to be found there, which is unequalled in this country, in resources for the research student.

While others will build upon this foundation and will make it more widely known, Mr. Parsons's years of earnest and constructive work will remain a contribution of permanent scientific value.

H. W. PIERSON

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL PHYTO

GEOGRAPHIC EXCURSION

The

IN 1908, at the International Geographic Congress in Geneva, A. G. Tansley, of England, proposed that the plant geographers and other interested botanists should get together for an extended field trip. British vegetation committee, which was approached with the proposition, favored it. They made plans to receive the visiting botanists and in 1911 conducted them through England, Scotland and Wales on what was officially called the "First International Phytogeographic Excursion" (I. P. E.).

The second excursion was held in the United States in 1913. Then came the war and the third was not held till 1923. A neutral country, Switzerland, was chosen as the field.

The fourth International Phytogeographic Excursion was held this past summer from July 2 to August 24 in Sweden and Norway. The excursion began in Lund (South Sweden) on July 2 and continued northeasterly for eight days toward Stockholm. On July 10 began the excursion through Middle and North Sweden. In Middle Sweden interest centered upon the vegetation of the Archipelago off Stockholm, the coniferous forests and the moors. The scientific institutions in Stockholm and Uppsala were also visited and the places associated with the work and life of Linnaeus.

The route from here lay northward to Abisko (Lat. 68° N.), where five days were spent at this most northerly station in Sweden. At this point commenced the Norwegian section of the trip which lasted for three weeks and ended on August 22 in Oslo. On this date the party left for Sweden and after two days spent in and around Gothenburg, adjourned for the summer on August 24.

The Swedish botanists were hosts for the excursion and under their able secretary, G. Einar Du Rietz, should be congratulated on the efficiency with which the excursion was conducted. The Swedes set an example as guides and hosts which other nations must find hard to equal.

Twenty-eight botanists representing the following 15 countries (exclusive of Sweden) were present for all or a part of the excursion:

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A COOPERATIVE COURSE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF

TECHNOLOGY

WITH the opening of the fall term, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took another step in carrying out its policy of maintaining the closest possible contact with the industries of the country. Arrangements have been completed with the Bell Telephone System by which a limited number of students in electrical engineering will be given an opportunity to get thorough first-hand knowledge of the manufacture, operation and development of the most modern electrical systems of communication including wire and wireless telephony and telegraphy.

By this new arrangement, a carefully selected group of students who have successfully completed the first two years of the regular course in electrical engineering at the institute, or the equivalent at other institutions, will be sent to New York. For four months they will be under the direction of the Bell Telephone System. During part of this time they will be put to work in the Western Electric Company's plant at Kearney, N. J., learning the actual details in the manufacture of telephone appliances. The remainder of the time will be spent in the work of installing and conditioning telephone switchboards in the vicinity of New York City.

During this time the students are on the pay roll of the Bell System and must turn out their day's work like other workmen, but as fast as they master one job they are transferred to another. The new course requires these students to attend regular institute classes while they are on the practical assignment and since they can not come to the institute, the institute goes to them by maintaining an instructing staff in New York. The class hours will be in the evening in order not to interfere with the practical work. The subject matter will be almost equally divided between electrical theory, and such cultural subjects as the writing and delivering of technical papers and reports and study of contemporary English literature and drama.

At the end of the four months this group of stu

dents returns to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in time to join their schoolmates in starting the second term's work, and another group takes their place in New York. They will spend the alternate terms at the institute and on the job in New York City where they will complete their practical experience by doing actual telephone operating in the various plants of the New York Telephone Company and getting familiar with the technical and practical problems of maintaining plant and equipment.

A final cooperative period will be spent in the Bell Telephone Laboratories carrying on research and studying the design and development of engineering processes and apparatus for both wire and radio systems.

Because of the advanced nature of the instruction and the research work of the last year, the higher degree of master of science in electrical engineering as well as that of bachelor of science is conferred upon those who successfully complete the course. Students are subject to the usual requirements applying to the employees of the cooperating company. The compensation paid by the company to students in this cooperative course, exclusive of the allowance for expenses incidental to changes in residence, amounts approximately to a total payment of fifteen hundred dollars during the cooperative periods. The working week ranges between thirty-nine and fortyeight hours depending on the character of the work assigned.

NEW HALL OF REPTILE AND AMPHIBIAN LIFE AT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

OF NATURAL HISTORY

EARLY in the coming year a new hall of reptile and amphibian life will be opened at The American Museum of Natural History, occupying the entire third floor of the east wing, according to Museum News.

Here for the first time the groups prepared under the direction of the late Mary C. Dickerson-groups characterized by the curator of the department, G. Kingsley Noble, as "perhaps the finest series of reptile and amphibian habitat groups ever produced"-will be seen unconfused with an incongruous overflow from the Hall of Mammals; and with them will be shown a whole series of new groups.

An effort has been made to arrange the material within the hall so that the various types of visitors may readily discover what interests them without wearying themselves in fruitless staring at what does not. The synoptic series of models and the systematic and "biological diagrams" illustrating principles or facts of importance to the technical student are to be found in the main body of the hall. In a cloister

along the west wall are arranged the fascinating series of habitat groups, many of them shown for the first time. The series of local reptiles and amphibians, of great interest to school children and amateur naturalists, is installed in an alcove at the far end of the hall. Among the artistic and strikingly life-like groups to be seen through the windows of the cloister may be mentioned the Galapagos Island group depicting the life of land and sea iguanas, material for which was secured by William Beebe; the Florida cypress swamp, largest and last of the groups built under Miss Dickerson's supervision; the Sphenodon group; the giant tree frogs, and the new Gila monster group in a setting of cactus-strewn Arizona desert.

AWARDS FROM THE MILTON FUND AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ANNOUNCEMENT has been made at Harvard University of the second series of awards in accordance with the provisions of the Milton Fund for Research. Allotments are made at present for not more than two years, and twenty-seven awards are made at this time, amounting to something over $41,000 for 19251926 and $15,500 for 1926-27.

The Milton legacy yields an annual income of about $50,000. A committee was appointed to advise the corporation in making a selection among the investigations proposed by members of the instructing, scientific or administrative staff of the university. The committee has consisted of Frank B. Jewett, electrical engineer, of New York, chairman; Professor Edwin F. Gay, of the department of economics at Harvard, and Professor W. J. V. Osterhout, formerly of the department of botany at Harvard.

The awards include the following to members of the scientific faculty:

Earnest Albert Hooton, assistant professor of anthropology; for the purchase of a machine, recently developed in the psychological laboratory of Princeton, for calculating coefficients of correlation in research in the anthropological laboratory.

Harlow Shapley, Paine professor of practical astronomy and director of the Harvard College Observatory; to purchase apparatus providing automatic temperature controls and comparison spectrum accessories for two stellar spectographs at the observatory.

Gregory Paul Baxter, Theodore William Richards professor of chemistry; for two years, for research connected with the determination of atomic weights through the density and compressibilities of gases. Results obtained with oxygen and helium have proved very valuable, and it is hoped that in the immediate future the studies may include experiments on hydrogen, nitrogen and some of the rare gases.

George Shannon Forbes, associate professor of chemistry; for supplies used in a research connected with the oxidation potentials in liquid ammonia.

Grinnell Jones, associate professor of chemistry; to purchase apparatus and supplies for an electrochemical investigation of the properties of solutions of salts.

Walter Fenno Dearborn, professor of education; to allow him to devote himself to the supervision of the major research enterprise of the Graduate School of Education: "an investigation of the mental and physical development of school children by means of annually repeated measurements of several thousands of the same individuals from the time of their entrance into school to the time of the completion of their formal education."

Comfort Avery Adams, Abbott and James Lawrence professor of engineering; for research having for its objective the better understanding of the mechanism of the dielectric phenomena in solid dielectrics.

Albert Sauveur, Gordon McKay professor of metallurgy; to allow him to prosecute with greater speed and efficiency his metallurgical investigations, including the corrosion of iron and steel, the influence of casting conditions on the physical properties of iron and steel, and grain size of pure metals.

George Vibert Douglas, instructor in geology, to purchase a quartz spectrograph for determining the minor constituents of minerals, ores and rocks, and the composition of minute mineral grains too small to be analyzed in other ways.

Percy Williams Bridgman, professor of physics; for expenses in connection with his high pressure investigations.

Edwin Crawford Kemble, assistant professor of physics; to defray the expense of experimental investigation of the influence of a magnetic field on band spectra.

Richard Clarke Cabot, professor of clinical medicine and professor of social ethics; for two years, for a study, desired by the department of social ethics, of the results of the treatment of delinquents in Massachusetts.

William John Crozier, associate professor of general physiology; to conduct research to determine the physicochemical nature of the central nervous activities.

Samuel Randall Detwiler, assistant professor of zoology; to assist his researches in the field of Experimental Neurology.

George Howard Parker, professor of zoology and director of the zoological laboratory; to assist his research study in the nerve transmission of Physalia.

Edward Charles Jeffrey, professor of plant morphology; to assist in his study of trees in Australia and New Zealand.

William McDougall, professor of psychology; to assist his research on the transmission of acquired characters. Adelbert Fernald, instructor in orthodontia and curator of the dental museum; for two years, to assist in perfecting measuring instruments for ascertaining the natural development of normal bone growth in a child from birth to the twelfth or thirteenth year of age, so that a comparison of the normal average bone growth of a healthy child may be made with those which are abnormal.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. HARVEY CUSHING, professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School, will give the Cameron Prize lectures at the University of Edinburgh during the week of October 18. His subjects are: "The third circulation," "The glandula pituitaria as we now know it and intracranial tumors and the surgeon." Previous awards have been made as follows: 1889, Pasteur; 1890, Sir Joseph Lister; 1891, Professor David Ferrier; 1893, Professor V. A. H. Horsley; 1895, Professor Behring; 1896, Professor Macewen; 1897, Professor Thomas R. Fraser; 1898, Dr. Sydney Monckton Copeman; 1899, Major David Bruce; 1900, W. M. Haffkene; 1901, Patrick Manson; 1902, Major Ronald Ross; 1904, Professor Niels R. Finsen; 1910, Professor August Bier; 1911, Dr. Simon Flexner; 1914, Professor Paul Ehrlich; 1915, Sir Lauder Brunton; 1920, Sir Robert Jones; 1921, J. J. B. V. Bordet; 1922, Professor F. G. Hopkins; 1923, Professor J. J. R. Macleod.

ARRANGEMENTS have been made between The Bayer Company, Inc., and the Crop Protection Institute whereby Professor C. R. Orton, on leave of absence from the Pennsylvania State College, will devote one half of his time during the year closing July 1, 1926, to fundamental studies in the field of seed borne parasites. These investigations will include studies on the life history of certain parasites, but especially the methods whereby such organisms overseason upon or within seeds and the action of disinfectants upon them. The investigation will be carried out at The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Yonkers, New York, and the work will be under the direction of a special committee consisting of Dr. William Crocker, director of the institute; Professor M. T. Munn, of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, and Professor W. L. Burlison, of the University of Illinois.

DR. MAURICE C. HALL has been promoted to the position of chief of the zoological division of the Bureau of Animal Industry, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Dr. Brayton Howard Ransom.

DR. GILBERT H. CADY, head of the department of geology of the University of Arkansas, has been appointed senior geologist in charge of coal studies on the Illinois Geological Survey, to succeed Dr. H. E. Culver, who has accepted the headship of the department of geology at Washington State College, Pullman. Dr. Cady's appointment becomes effective on January 1, 1926.

A LUNCHEON in honor of Professor Alexander Findlay, of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, was recently held in the Harvard Club, Boston. Professor Lyman C. Newell, of Boston University, pre

sided, and speeches were made by Theodore W. Richards, head of the department of chemistry at Harvard University, and Dean Henry P. Talbot, for many years head of the department of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Findlay addressed the northeastern section of the American Chemical Society in the evening at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

CAPTAIN ROALD AMUNDSEN, the explorer, now lecturing in the United States, has been awarded the Livingstone gold medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, the highest award of the society, for his services to geographical exploration.

SIR ARBUTHNOT LANE has been appointed an honorary member of the Belgian Académie Royale de Médecine at Brussels.

A GOLD medal was recently presented by his friends and pupils to Professor R. Colella, of the chair of nervous and mental diseases at Palermo. He has recently published in a volume of 1,000 pages a compilation of the works that have issued from his service. DR. RICHARD WILLSTÄTTER, formerly professor of chemistry at Munich, has been awarded by the Zürich School of Technology an honorary doctorate of science.

PROFESSOR EUGEN GOLDSTEIN, formerly physicist at the Berlin Observatory, recently celebrated his seventyfifth birthday.

C. WHITMAN CROSS and William H. Dall, senior geologists; John H. Renshaw, maker of shaded relief maps for the topographic branch, and George M. Wood, editor, all of the U. S. Geological Survey, retired from active service on July 1 on account of age.

DR. ALGERNON COOLIDGE, professor of laryngology at the Harvard Medical School, has resigned and will be made professor emeritus.

PROFESSOR F. J. MOORE, professor of organic chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has retired from active teaching but will continue his research work.

DR. FELIX LÖHNIS, head of the division of soil bacteriology of the United States Department of Agriculture for the past thirteen years, is returning to Germany to resume his former position at the University of Leipzig.

DR. JOHN E. ANDERSON, formerly of Yale University, has taken up his work as director of the Institute of Child Welfare of the University of Minnesota, recently established under a grant of $250,000 from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial.

DR. FRANCIS HARPER, instructor in zoology at Cor

nell University, has been appointed assistant curator of animals and fish in the Boston Museum of Natural History.

DR. CLARK WISSLER, professor of anthropology in the Yale Institute of Psychology, will leave soon for Hawaii and Australasia to visit scientific institutions and familiarize himself with the progress of anthropological research in those countries. He will be accompanied by Edwin R. Embree, of the Rockefeller Foundation.

DR. A. HRDLIČKA, who has spent the larger part of this year on a trip to India, Ceylon, Java, Australia and South Africa in the interest of researches on man's antiquity and evolution, has returned to Washington.

PAUL G. HOWES, curator of natural history at the Bruce Museum of Greenwich, Conn., will leave in December for a collecting trip on the Isle of Dominica. It is planned to establish a permanent laboratory and base for the exploration of the Leeward Islands.

DR. ERNST PRIBRAM, professor of general and experimental pathology in the University of Vienna, has arrived in the United States to spend a year at the Milwaukee Hospital studying cancer.

PROFESSOR OTTO RAHN, chemist and dairy specialist of the faculty of the University of Kiel, Germany, is giving a series of lectures at the Massachusetts Agricultural College on subjects relating to the dairy industry.

DR. BASIL GRAVES, London, is giving three courses of two weeks each in slit lamp microscopy of the eye at the New York University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College.

DR. FRANK BILLINGS laid the cornerstone of the Albert Billings Memorial Hospital at the University of Chicago on October 3. Dr. Max Mason, president of the university, presided at the ceremonies, and Dr. Henry A. Christian, professor of medicine in the Harvard University Medical School, delivered an address.

DR. LEWELLYS F. BARKER, of the Johns Hopkins University, delivered the Wesley M. Carpenter lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine on October 15, on "The management of neurotic patients."

DR. JOHN H. GIBBON, professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College, will give the annual "ether day" address at the Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16.

DR. E. H. VOLWILER, of the Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, will address the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society on October 23, on "Some

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applications of chemistry to medicine." Dr. Volwiler is retiring chairman of the section.

PROFESSOR E. H. BARTON, professor of physics in University College, Nottingham, England, died on September 23 at sixty-six years of age.

SIR WILLIAM SCHLICH, late inspector-general of forests in India and professor of forestry at the University of Oxford, died on September 28 at the age of eighty-five years.

PROFESSOR CHARLES VÉLAIN, the first occupant of the chair of physical geography in the faculty of sciences of the University of Paris and founder of the Revue annuelle de Géographie, recently died, aged eighty years.

PROFESSOR F. RANWEZ, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry in the University of Louvain and president of the International Congress of Pharmacy held at Brussels in 1897, has died, aged fifty-nine years.

DR. ERNST VON HAMMER, professor of geodesy and astronomy at the School of Technology at Stuttgart, has died, aged sixty-seven years.

THE regular monthly meeting of the American Section of the Society of Chemical Industry will be held on October 16, when Professor Bradley Stoughton, of the department of metallurgy, Lehigh University, will present a paper entitled "Light structural alloys," and Professor D. D. Jackson, of the department of chemical engineering, Columbia University, will present a report of the recently held annual meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry in England.

THE annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, of which Dr. Madison Bentley, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, is president, will be held in Ithaca during the Christmas holidays.

THE Harvard College Observatory will be open to the public from 7:30 P.M. to 9 P.M. on the dates given below. A short non-technical talk will be preceded, when the weather permits, by telescopic observation of celestial objects. Exhibits showing the work of the observatory will be explained by members of the staff. Tickets for the open nights must be obtained in advance by writing to the Harvard College Observatory. October 16-"The milky way," Professor Bailey; October 26-"The major planets," Professor L. A. Brigham, of Boston University; November 12— "Stellar evolution," Dr. Payne; November 24 "The star clouds of Magellan," Professor Shapley; December 9-"Variable stars," Professor S. D. Townley, of Stanford University.

HERBERT HOOVER, secretary of commerce, has announced that the fourth national radio conference will

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