The zoological work referred to was a study of the local distribution of the genus Cyclops and resulted in the publication of what I am told is the best existing description of the members of this group which occur in the eastern United States.

On graduating from Haverford College in 1909 Spaeth obtained a teaching fellowship at Harvard and entered on a four-year period of graduate study in zoology, under the guidance of Professor G. H. Parker. It was at this time that I first knew him, for I was an undergraduate taking courses in which he was the "assistant." I remember clearly the enthusiasm with which one day he showed me the beautifully simple contrivances he had worked out in connection with his researches on the chromatophores of fish. It was this abundant enthusiasm which distinguished him not only as a teacher but in all the things to which he turned his attention. And it was this perhaps, together with a certain assurance which was part of it, which gave me at that time the feeling that Spaeth was one for whom the future held something special in store. And this feeling, I think, was shared by other and wiser heads than mine.

The physiology of the chromatophores of fishes was the subject of his doctor's dissertation and occupied him for several years after the termination of the period of his graduate study. This was work of the first quality: thorough, comprehensive, imaginative, critical, of fine experimental ingenuity, ranging in its scope from painstaking accumulation of quantitative data to broad speculation on the relationships of chromatophores and other types of contractile cells. For his earlier work in this field he was awarded the Walker Prize by the Boston Society of Natural History. It was characteristic that this investigation was a distinct departure from the traditions of the laboratory in which it was done a characteristic creditable to Spaeth and to that laboratory alike. At Woods Hole his attention had been drawn to the application of physical chemistry to biological problems, and he recognized clearly the fundamental nature of this method of attack. In his research he felt that his training in the physical sciences was deficient and extended his period of graduate study in order to ground himself thoroughly in these subjects. He concerned himself with the physical chemistry of protoplasm, utilizing his chromatophores as visible indicators of changes in the protoplasmic state. Höber's "Physikalische Chemie der Zelle und der Gewebe" became his handbook and long remained the most bethumbed book on his desk.

On being granted a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship by Harvard University in 1913 he spent the greater part of a year in Professor Höber's laboratory at

Kiel, and occupied for a shorter period the Smithsonian Table at the Naples Zoological Station. On August 18, 1913, he had been married to Edith Eleanor Taussig. Shortly after their return from Europe their son, Walter, was born.

In 1914-15 he was instructor in biology at Clark College and during the following two years served as an instructor in the Zoological Department at Yale. Following this he held briefly an assistantship in the Hygienic Laboratory of the United States Public Health Service at Washington. During the summers of this period he was engaged in teaching embryology and, later, physiology at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. His investigations at this time were concerned in rounding out his work on chromatophores and particularly in attempting to utilize this material in pharmacological assaying. Several ideas occupied him also which, although they apparently proved fruitless, were interesting in indicating the bold and ingenious nature of his thinking. One of these involved an attempt to detect the possible radioactive formation of copper, using the extraordinary sensitiveness of certain organisms to this element as an indicator of its presence. Another led him to seek for differences in the optical activity of substances in the right and left blastomeres of dividing eggs.

In 1919 Spaeth became connected with the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University as an associate in physiology. It was his purpose to concern himself with the problem of fatigue in its relation to industrial and public health and he entered on his new duties by preparing a characteristically thorough review of the literature on this subject. His experimental work took several directions, but involved him chiefly in an inquiry into the relation between fatigue and resistance to infection. His position naturally forced on him the obligation of the scientist to the community at large, and he spent considerable time acting as consultant on industrial hygiene, in popular writing and in the preparation of moving pictures of marine animals. All this was excellently done, yet in the end this period is something of a disappointment. periment of setting a man trained in the fundamentals of general science on the practical physiological problems of the moment had not proved the success that had been hoped for. Perhaps it was inevitable that investigations in these problems should lack the fine qualities of his earlier work on chromatophores. Perhaps the very versatility of Spaeth's mind and the enthusiastic interest with which he met each new contact led to a scattering of his endeavors. At all events the outcome was disappointing, and at the

The ex

end of five years, when he should have felt that he the had found himself and his problem, he believed that he was in a cul de sac and was ready for a change. A year ago he was asked to take part in the reorganization of the medical school of the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Siam, and accepted the appointment as professor of physiology. The opportunity, which this position seemed to hold out, to take up again problems in physiological zoology was welcome and the prospects which the tropical environment of Bangkok offered were not distasteful to his adventurous nature. At the same time he felt keenly the obligations which he was assuming toward the Siamese university and devoted the entire summer to preparing himself in those aspects of medical physiology with which he had not previously had experience. The enthusiasm with which he came to look forward to going out to Siam was well justified. From boyhood his avocations had developed him into a skilled field naturalist. He was very fond of shooting and fishing and was one of those persons with the knack of finding game where no one else had thought to look for it. His physique was exceptional; he had been an excellent athlete and could come back from a long day's hunting without a sign of tiring. With his rather broad knowledge of zoology and physiology as a background for these proclivities it seemed fair to hope for original accomplishment from him in the tropics. And in addition there was little fear that the inertia which so often comes with life in warm climates would quell the exuberance of his energies.

In October he moved his family, which had been enlarged by the addition of a daughter the year before, to Bangkok. He was very happy there; perhaps more happy than he had been anywhere before. He liked the place and the climate. He made friends there, as he always did readily. He felt that the opportunities for research were exceptional and that everything was coming his way at last. He was planning to investigate the oestrous cycle in monkeys, and had received a grant from the National Research Council in support of this work. During the spring he made three expeditions into the jungle for the purpose of collecting material for his studies. On all these trips he suffered some hardships-was in fact lost in the jungle without food for thirty hours on one occasion-but felt no ill effects which he could not, in his vigorous way, disregard. Apparently his energy and self-confidence led him to neglect the necessary safeguards of his health and he had become worn down by his activities more than he realized. In June, while in the midst of preparing a report on his research work, he became ill. Septicemia, result

ing from the extension of an infection contracted on his first jungle expedition, had developed and in two weeks he was dead.

So ended the scientific career of Reynold Spaeth, before the promise of his early years could be fulfilled. But on another side he left a full achievement. For Spaeth developed richly the charms and virtues of his personality. He had a natural gift for entertainment: could sing and play and draw and mimic with a gentle humor which made him most engaging company. Eager, assured, a thoroughgoing individualist, with ready, witty tongue and quick insight he gave his mind openly to others, yet with a generosity and patent frankness which saved him from bitterness toward those he could not hold with. For one so prone to action his mind was philosophical and in a true sense religious. But most of all he had a zest for living. In the intensity with which he lived his life there was perhaps some recompense for its too short duration. For in the joy of life he never forgot the discipline of scholarship and was ever loyal to his scientific conscience.

ALFRED C. REDFIELD

SCIENTIFIC EVENTS

MEMORIAL TO VINAL NYE EDWARDS

ON September 1 there was unveiled at the Woods Hole Bureau of Fisheries a bronze tablet in memory of the late Vinal Nye Edwards. The Fisheries Service Bulletin states that Mr. Edwards was assoIciated with the bureau and the Woods Hole laboratory from 1882 up to the time of his death in 1919, a period of nearly forty-seven years. It was he who first showed Professor Spencer F. Baird the marine life of the Woods Hole region, and it is probable that Woods Hole was selected as the site for the first biological laboratory of the newly established Fish Commission mainly because of the information Mr. Edwards was able to give. He was engaged as collector for the laboratory during all his long term of service, and his intimate acquaintance with the life of the region proved an invaluable aid to the advancement of biological investigation.

The movement to erect a memorial to Vinal Edwards was initiated in July, and the response in the form of contributions and interest was so immediate and generous that an order was soon placed for the tablet. The arrangements were in charge of a committee of which Dr. Edwin Linton was chairman. Dr. Linton himself has been associated with the Woods Hole laboratory since its beginning and was intimately acquainted with Mr. Edwards. The other members of the committee were G. R. Hoffses, Dr.

Herbert Rand, Franklin Gifford, Alice Smith Cowdry, Dr. R. P. Bigelow and Dr. W. H. Rich.

The tablet occupies a place in the main hall of the laboratory building. On it are inscribed the dates of Mr. Edwards's birth and death and the following words:

This memorial to Vinal Nye Edwards is erected by his friends as a mark of their esteem, in recognition of his gifts as a naturalist and of his services to science.

The exercises were held on the lawn between the laboratory and the residence buildings and were well attended by the residents of Woods Hole and associates of the Marine Biological Laboratory as well as by the staff of the Bureau of Fisheries. The presentation address was made by Dr. Linton, who quoted from the many laudatory letters received from wellknown American biologists who had known and worked with Vinal Edwards. The speech of acceptance was made by Lewis Radcliffe, deputy commissioner, and the unveiling was by Madison Edwards, a brother of Vinal Edwards.

A CALIFORNIA OIL WELL

DR. FREDERICK P. VICKERY, of the Southern Branch of the University of California, writes that on September 25 the Miley Oil Company's No. 6 well, located at Athens, Los Angeles County, California, reached the climax of a career of record breaking by becoming a producing well at a depth of 7,591 feet.

Some of the records established by this well are as follows: (1) Depth 7,591 feet. The deepest hole ever drilled, as well as (2) deepest oil well in the world. (3) Landed 434-inch, No. 15, casing at 7,591 feet. The longest string of pipe ever set. (4) Cemented 44 through perforations at 7,305. The deepest cement job ever attempted. (5) Took formation cores from depth of 7,570 feet and recovered perfect samples of good oil sand.

The well was drilled with rotary tools in a total of 230 working days, an average of 33 feet per day. The total cost of drilling, including labor, material and overhead, was $164,000, or $21.60 per foot.

The following casing was set:

151⁄2-inch, No. 70, cemented at 988 feet. 814-inch, No. 36, cemented at 5,289 feet. 44-inch, No. 15, landed at 7,591 feet and cemented through perforations at 7,305 feet.

The well is producing about 150 barrels of 37° Be gravity oil per day with 20 per cent. of salt water. A gas lift is used to make the well flow, as pumping was considered impracticable on account of the depth.

THE FIELD MUSEUM EXPEDITION TO
MADAGASCAR

A TWO-YEAR expedition to Madagascar, in search of the origins of the races now inhabiting the island, was started on October 15 by Ralph Linton, assistant curator of ethnology of the Field Museum of Natural History. He will work among the descendants of the Fatimite Caliphs who were driven out of Arabia and Egypt in the eighth century, and will also attempt to prove by an exploration of the entire island that it holds many of the oldest features of Malayan culture.

The peoples of Madagascar have long furnished a problem for ethnologists and archeologists. They are of mixed cultures, inclusive of three apparently main elements-Bantu negroes from Africa; the Hovas of Malay stock and a fringe of Arabs all along the coasts, the descendants of the Fatimite Caliphs. These three elements are sub-divided into fifteen or more main tribes which, in turn, are divided again into smaller partially distinctive groups. There are also hints of a pygmy element among the populations.

Mr. Linton, in his two-year stay, will explore the entire island, living with the tribes and making collections of their culture, ceremonials and domestic life which, when made the subject of scientific study, will show the history of the people despite their mixed bloods. The most extensive research will be made among the southern tribes who, despite the advanced stage of French activity on some parts of the island, are almost unknown to white men.

The natives of the island are expert in metal, textile and pottery making, and have for many centuries worked the gold mined on the island. A silk producing moth, unlike the Asiatic worm, is also cultivated. Beautiful cloth and baskets are woven from raffia, a fiber.

Mr. Linton will sail from New York and go first to London. He will spend two weeks in England, visiting and studying the Madagascar material in museums. He will also spend three weeks in similar work in France, sailing from Marseilles on December 10, and arriving in Tamatave, Madagascar, on January 7. Antananarivo, the capital of the island, will be used as the base for the expedition, which will immediately start work in a radius of that city.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. F. HENRY SMITH, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Virginia, celebrated his ninety-sixth birthday on October 14.

THE well-known histologist, Professor Camillo Golgi, of Pavia, recently celebrated his eighty-second birthday.

THE government of France has conferred the cross of the Legion of Honor, officer grade, on Dr. Charles L. Parsons, secretary of the American Chemical Society, and transmitted it to him through the French Ambassador at Washington.

DR. THOMAS BARBOUR, curator in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, was recently elected corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London and also of the Netherland Zoological Society of Amsterdam.

DR. E. L. STEVENSON, of New York, has returned from a six months' trip abroad, during which time he gave two lectures before the International Geographical Congress, which met in Cairo, Egypt, last April. On this occasion Dr. Stevenson had conferred upon him by the Egyptian government its highest decoration-grand officer of the order of the Nile.

THE Elia de Cyon prize of the Academy of Sciences at Bologna has been awarded this year to Professor H. Fredericq, of Liége, for his works on "The humoral mechanism of the action of various heart remedies in coldblooded animals.” The second prize was given to Dr. L. Lotti for his research on "The vasomotor reflexes in young infants and the new-born."

DR. J. F. F. BABINSKI, of Paris, has been appointed honorary professor of neurology at the University of Vilna.

DR. ROBERT J. ANDERSON, chief of the nonferrous metals section at the Pittsburgh station of the U. S. Bureau of Mines from 1919 to 1924, has been awarded the William H. McFadden gold medal of the American Foundrymen's Association, in recognition "of his notable and distinguished achievements in the nonferrous casting industry and of his scientific contributions to the metallurgy of aluminium."

On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday Professor Max Askanazy, director of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy at Geneva, was the recipient of a special number of the Revue médicale de la Suisse romande containing fourteen original articles dealing with pathology.

DR. PAUL GISVIUS, professor of agriculture at the University of Giessen, retired on October 1.

DR. CHARLES H. MAYO, of Rochester, Minn., president of the American College of Surgeons, will preside at the meeting of the society in Philadelphia on October 26, and will induct into office his successor, Dr. Rudolph Matas, of New Orleans.

DR. M. I. PUPIN, professor of electro-mechanics at Columbia University and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is a member of the committee in charge of the observance

of American Education week in New York. It is planned to have a series of conferences and an educational exhibition at the armory at Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, opening on November 19.

PROFESSOR FRED R. FAIRCHILD, of Yale University, has been asked by the United States government to head a committee to inquire into and make a report on forest taxation in the countries of the world. With Professor Fairchild will be a group of forest and tax experts being organized by the U. S. Bureau of Forestry.

C. F. CURTISS, dean of the department of agriculture at Iowa State College and director of the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, has been named head of a committee from the cornbelt area to work with the state and federal authorities in finding ways to combat the European corn borer. The committee was selected following conferences in the borer infested regions of Ohio, Michigan and Ontario, Canada. Others who will work with Dean Curtiss are: C. V. Truax, Ohio state secretary of agriculture; F. W. Willits, Pennsylvania state secretary of agriculture; Dr. C. E. Woodbury, of the American Canners' Association; Dean W. C. Coffey, University of Minnesota; Dean L. E. Call, Kansas State Agricultural College; Dean H. W. Mumford, University of Illinois, and Dean E. A. Burnett, University of Nebraska.

DR. GEORGE CHRISTOPHER CLAYTON, M.P., and Professor Henry Cort Harold Carpenter, F.R.S., have been appointed members of the advisory council to the British Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

DR. E. D. BALL, director of scientific work in the United States Department of Agriculture, has been appointed associate entomologist of the Florida State Plant Board.

DR. WILLIAM B. WHERRY, professor of bacteriology at the University of Cincinnati, has been appointed a member of the Cincinnati Board of Health to succeed the late Dr. Edward Walker.

DR. ELMER A. HARRINGTON, formerly head of the department of physics at the Massachusetts Agricultural College and during the past year special investigator on X-ray methods at Harvard University, has been appointed research associate on the Portland Cement Association fellowship staff at the Bureau of Standards.

PROFESSOR HENRY F. JUDKINS, head of the department of dairy manufactures at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, has been granted a leave of absence to go to Springfield to be production manager for the Eastern Dairy Association.

DR. GILBERT H. GROSVENOR, president of the National Geographic Society, has returned after three months in Europe. He will go to Santa Fé, N. M., to join Neil M. Judd, who is completing five years' work as head of the Pueblo Bonito Expedition.

DR. GEORGE GRANT MACCURDY, of Yale University, director of the American School of Prehistoric Re

search, has returned to the United States. During the summer he visited, with sixteen students, seventyseven prehistoric sites in England, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium.

DR. H. MOLLET and several other Swiss scientists left on October 7 for Sumatra, for the purpose of observing the eclipse of the sun on January 14 on behalf of the Berne Astronomical Institute.

DR. PIERRE JANET, professor of psycho-pathology in the Collège de France, is visiting the United States, following an official mission to Mexico. During the past week Dr. Janet gave a number of lectures and clinics in Philadelphia.

SIR WILLIAM ARBUTHNOT LANE, the distinguished British surgeon, sailed on October 14 on the liner Majestic to attend the meetings of the American College of Surgeons in Philadelphia.

PROFESSOR NAKEDATO, director of the Tokio Observatory, has arrived in Moscow to visit the observatory of Moscow University.

PROFESSOR CALVIN H. KAUFFMAN, of the department of botany of the University of Michigan, has been granted sabbatical leave for the first semester of the academic year 1925-26, and expects to devote that period to field study in the Pacific Coast States.

MRS. MARGARET H. Moss, of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, is coming to Wellesley College as an exchange professor in botany. Miss Alice M. Ottley, associate professor of botany in the college, will take her place in South Africa.

DR. SIMON FLEXNER, director of the laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and Dr. Wm. H. Welch, director of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, were speakers at the semi-centennial exercises of the founding of Vanderbilt University which took place on October 15 and 16.

WE learn from Nature that in honor of the founder of the British Science Guild, Sir Norman Lockyer, the council has established an annual Norman Lockyer lecture, one of the objects of which is to direct the attention of the public to the influence of science upon human progress. The first lecture will be given by Sir Oliver Lodge, on November 16, upon the subject of "The link between matter and matter."

THE Harveian Oration will be delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on October 19, by Sir Frederick Mott, M.D., F.R.S., on "The progressive developments of Harvey's doctrine of Omne vivum ex ovo."

AN edition of the complete works of Dr. William S. Halsted, late professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University, is under way, edited by Dr. Walter C. Burket, Evanston, Ill., in two volumes. As an introduction to the edition, a biographic sketch of Dr. Halsted is being written by Dr. William H. Welch, director of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene, who is the oldest living associate of Dr. Halsted. Dr. Halsted was associated with the Johns Hopkins University from 1881 until his death in September, 1922.

THE memory of André Parmentier, horticulturist and founder of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, was honored on October 17 at the unveiling of a tablet within the garden near the entrance at Eastern Parkway and the Brooklyn Museum. Dr. C. Stuart Gager, director of the garden, accepted the bronze plate bearing an account of Parmentier's purchase of the land one hundred years ago. Johnston Mali, Belgian Consul in New York, presented the tablet in behalf of the Parmentier-Bayer Centenary Committee.

ARRANGEMENTS are in progress by the Italian Associazione Nazionale Industrie Elettriche to celebrate in a suitable manner the centenary of the death of Alessandro Volta, which took place near Como on March 5, 1827.

DR. FRANCKE HUNTINGTON BOSWORTH, emeritus professor of laryngology at the University and Bellevue Medical College, New York City, died on October 17, in his eighty-third year.

DR. E. J. BABCOCK, professor of chemical metallurgy and dean of the college of engineering at the University of North Dakota, died on September 3, aged sixty years.

PROFESSOR HAROLD MAXWELL LEFROY, of the Imperial College of Science, London, died on October 14 from the effects of poisonous gases upon which he was experimenting.

PROFESSOR EDWIN HENRY BARTON, F.R.S., dean of the faculty of pure science in the University College of Nottingham, died on September 23, at the age of sixty-seven years.

WITOLD CERASKI, emeritus professor of the university and former director of the Observatory of Moscow, Russia, has died at the age of seventy-six years. He was much interested in celestial photography and