Ob

Surgery-President, Sir Berkeley Moynihan. stetrics and Gynecology-President, Lady Barrett. Pathology and Bacteriology-President, Professor J. C. G. Ledingham. Neurology and Psychological Medicine President, Sir Maurice Craig. Therapeutics (including Balneology and Radiotherapy)-President, Professor R. B. Wild. Laryngology, Otology and Rhinology-President, Mr. Arthur A. Cheatle.

IN connection with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and to meet the delegates to the International Astronomical Union, the Royal Society held a conversazione on July 23.

THE Academy of Sciences of Russia will celebrate its bi-centenary at Leningrad and Moscow between September 6 and 14 next. Foreign representatives are being invited.

THE Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau, England, will be amalgamated with the Imperial Institute as from July 1, 1925, and will thereafter be known as the Mineral Resources Department of the Imperial Institute.

DR. HERTZELL has founded at Bremen an institute for research on problems connected with radio and broadcasting. There are accommodations for twentyfive research workers. The main aim of the founder, who is an orthopedist, is to adapt loud speaking devices to medical diagnosis. He calls it the Institut für Radiokunde.

A GIFT has been made by M. Assan Fared Dina to the French Academy of Sciences of an astronomical library and one million francs for astronomical research.

has

THE late Sir David Salomons, under his will, left £5,000 to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, for extending the college buildings, and £1,000 in augmentation of the Salomons Scholarship Fund to enable the college to give this scholarship more frequently or for longer terms of tenure. To the Royal Institution he left his large magnet (designed by him and known as the Broomhill Magnet), and all the apparatus belonging to it, which enables the magnet to be used as a polariscope and for other purposes. Subject to his widow's interest, he left to the University of Cambridge all his scientific instruments and medical apparatus properly belonging to the workshops or laboratories and theater, his collection of crystals and other apparatus used for polariscope work, etc.

ELI LILLY & COMPANY, of Indianapolis, manufacturers of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, have given a fund of $1,200 a year for a period of five years to the

Indiana State University, for research work in this line, to be known as the Eli Lilly & Company fund of the Indiana University.

CHAPTERS of the Pi Mu Epsilon Mathematics Fra ternity were established at Hunter College, New York City, and Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., on May 30 and June 4, respectively.

AN X-ray diffraction equipment, by which the crystal structure of matter can be investigated, has been presented to Sir William Bragg of the Faraday Laboratory, of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, by the General Electric Company.

THE French Senate passed a bill on July 8 for the creation of an International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, which former Premier Herriot promised the League of Nations that France would undertake.

AT a recent meeting of persons interested in the Peking Union Medical College which is financed by the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, an organization called the Yu Wang Fu Association was formed. It was decided that the purpose of the association shall be, by frequent informal meetings, to stimulate good fellowship and to continue and increase interest in the welfare of the college in those who have at any time or in any capacity worked in Peking in connection with it, and have now entered other pursuits. Dr. Franklin C. McLean, the organizer and first director of the college, was elected president; Dr. E. V. Cowdry, secretary-treasurer, and Dr. A. B. Macallum, Dr. Charles Packard and Dr. Donald D. Van Slyke, members of the council. It is planned to establish branches of the association, of which New York is the headquarters, wherever such may be justified, but particularly in Chicago, San Francisco, London, Tokyo and Shanghai. It is proposed to hold the first meeting of the association at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on August 1, when an address will be delivered by the secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Edwin R. Embree. Those wishing to join the association are requested to communicate with Dr. E. V. Cowdry, at the Rockefeller Institute, 66th St. and Avenue A, New York, N. Y.

In accordance with the policy of the federal Bureau of Fisheries of cooperating with the states in fisheries conservation, a biological survey of the marine fisheries of Texas is to be initiated during the present month. The minimum qualification is an A.B. in zoology, and any one interested in securing an appointment should write directly to the Commissioner of Fisheries, Washington, D. C.

ます

THE American Institute of Chemical Engineers, meeting in Providence, adopted the report of the committee on chemical engineering education, recommending that the following fourteen schools be rated as giving satisfactory courses: the Armour Institute, the Carnegie Institute, the Case School of Applied Sciences, Columbia University, the Iowa State College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Ohio State University, the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Yale University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Universities of Cincinnati, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was voted to hold the next convention in December at Cincinnati. The summer session will be at Berlin, N. H.

A CORRESPONDENT writes: "An extended study of aviation hazards with particular reference to life insurance is being undertaken by Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, consulting statistician, in cooperation with the army and navy services, commercial organizations and air authorities both at home and abroad. The investigation will cover chiefly the post-war period, attempting to establish a trustworthy basis of determining the true hazard of flying and the trend towards greater safety in both military and commercial flying operations. The investigation is the direct result of the suggestion made by Major-General Patrick in his address before the Association of Life Insurance Presidents that the subject should receive more extended and critical consideration. Dr. Hoffman would be pleased to enter into correspondence with any one interested in the questions which will receive consideration. Inquiry should be addressed to him at his office at Wellesley Hills, Mass."

THE Department of Commerce announces that birth rates for 1924 were higher than for 1923 in sixteen of the twenty-five states for which figures for the two years are shown. The highest 1924 birth rate (31.9 per thousand population) was in the rural districts of North Carolina, and the lowest (14.9) in the rural dis tricts of Montana. Death rates for 1924 were lower than for 1923 in twenty-three of twenty-nine states shown for both years. Record low rates appear for Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. The states having higher death rates for 1924 than for 1923 are California, Florida, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina and Washington. The highest 1924 death rate (22.1 per thousand population) was in the urban districts of Mississippi, and the lowest (6.5) in the rural districts of Montana. Infant mortality rates for 1924 are generally lower than those for 1923; only three of the twenty-five states show higher rates in 1924. The highest 1924 infant mortality rate (121.6) was in the urban districts of South Carolina, and the lowest (51)

in the rural districts of Nebraska. Infant mortality rates are shown for both years for forty-four cities of 100,000 .population or more in 1920. For thirtysix of these cities the 1924 infant mortality rates are lower than those of the previous year. The highest 1924 rate (92) is for Trenton, N. J., and the lowest (45.3) for Seattle.

We learn from the Electrical World that in concert with the under secretary for technical education and the University of Lille, France, there has been founded in that city an electromechanical institute. It occupies the former building of the Institut des Arts et Métiers and thus has at its disposition an important equipment of machinery and tools. It also will be able to make use of the laboratories of the faculty of arts and sciences. Organized on entirely original lines, its program of instruction will be such that both the student and the industry will have advantages hitherto unknown in France. The instruction will supplement both ordinary engineering and electric science with a dual (or cooperative) course which will permit a student once enrolled to take charge of actual installations of electric power production or application. The length of this supplementary course is reduced to the minimum of six months for students already in possession of that general knowledge which would presumably permit their passing the ordinary mechanical examinations. Thus at a minimum expenditure of time and money they are fitted for immediate employment in the higher positions which at the present time it is difficult to All because of a dearth of competent men. Various electric companies are giving encouragement and financial assistance to the project, which within the course of the next few years may be expected to furnish to them the technical personnel which the continually increasing number of central and distributing

stations require.

UNDER the terms of an order issued with the approval of President Coolidge and effective July 1, supervision of lands bearing oil segregated for the use of the navy will be conducted in the future by the Geological Survey instead of the Bureau of Mines as formerly. A new organization unit, to be known as the "conservation branch," will absorb the functions heretofore exercised by the Bureau of Mines in naval oil reserve administration. The survey, through the branch just created, also will take over the proposed naval oil reserve in Northern Alaska, covering an area of 50,000 square miles. In his announcement on the "conservation branch," Secretary Work said that the new unit would have engineering control of all mineral leasing on the public domain as well as the classification of public lands.

THE Association to Aid Scientific Research by Women has renewed its support of the Zoological Station at Naples, suspended since 1917, and, for the season of 1925, has appointed Mrs. Mary Mitchell Moore (Bryn Mawr, '15), wife of Dr. William E. Moore, of Rutgers College, as its "scholar." The association contributed for nineteen years, beginning in 1898, to the support of the American Women's Table at Naples.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NOTES

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, St. Louis, has announced a gift of $1,000,000 from Charles Rebstock.

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, Jr., has contributed $1,000,000 for endowment of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

THE sum of $50,000 has been given to the Johns Hopkins University by James Speyer, of New York, to establish a lectureship fund to bring scientific men to the university from Germany.

A REGULAR four-year medical course, leading to the degree M.D., has been established by the University of Wisconsin. Hitherto the first two years only have been offered.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY has organized a school of engineering, combining the work of all its engineering departments in a four-year undergraduate course leading to the professional degree of engineer. The new school will begin functioning at the opening of the next college year in October. Professor Theodore J. Hoover, at present head of the department of mining and metallurgy at the university, is to be the dean.

DR. HELEN P. WOOLLEY, psychologist of the Merrill-Palmer School, Detroit, has been appointed director of the Institute of Child Welfare Research and professor of education, with a seat in the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University.

DR. E. F. MALONE has been appointed Francis Brunning professor of anatomy at the University of Cincinnati.

DR. HENRY BLUMBERG, of the University of Illinois, has been appointed professor of mathematics at the Ohio State University.

DR. EARL B. MCKINLEY, national research fellow in medicine with Professor Bordet at the University of Brussels, has been appointed as assistant professor of bacteriology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.

DR. THOMAS D. HowE, Ph. D. (Wisconsin, '25), has been appointed instructor in biology at the James Millikin University.

DR. IVAN C. HALL, professor of bacteriology in the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University, has become head of the department of bacteriology and public health in the new University of Colorado Medical School at Denver.

DR. WILLIAM W. CORT, associate professor of helminthology, department of medical zoology, School of Hygiene and Public Health, the Johns Hopkins University, has been promoted to a professorship of helminthology.

DR. ARTHUR W. WRIGHT, of the Boston City Hospital, Boston, has been appointed assistant professor of pathology at the Vanderbilt University Medical School at Nashville.

DR. HIBBERT WINSLOW HILL, London, Ont., has been appointed professor of bacteriology and professor of nursing and public health at the University of British Columbia, to succeed the late Dr. R. Mullin.

AT the University of Cambridge, D. Keilin, Magdalene College, has been appointed university lecturer in parasitology and J. A. Carroll, Sidney Sussex College, assistant director of the Solar Physics Observatory, has been appointed university lecturer in astrophysics.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

THE ART OF PLUVICULTURE

Ir is remarkable, when we consider the varied attempts in our country to grow rich without risk or effort, that one of the most certain enterprises of this sort has been almost completely overlooked by tradeschools, as well as by the argus-eyed press.

The professions of crystal-gazing, clairvoyance, kleptomania, and the like, receive due attention from the press, as well as by the police, all efforts to benefit humanity by these means being everywhere discouraged. The ancient arts of astrology and horoscopy, however, have their quarter-column in most of our leading papers, while the modern diversions of pluviculture, chiropractics and hormonism are everywhere treated with respect.

Of these none can be more scientific than is pluviculture or rainmaking, as it is commonly called. Yet nowhere so far as I have noticed is the method of operation made clear, nor the economic laws which make it, not only valuable to the farmers, but a sure thing in general. Even the astute Father Ricard goes on with his prophecies, apparently oblivious to the work of other scientists right within the range of his storms and sun spots.

For successful rain-making, it is necessary to find first a region in which rain is expected but has failed to come. The first element is then to find a few

hundred ranchers willing to give, let us say $8,000 to ensure a storm, worth easily let us say $50,000 to them.

The pluviculturist has next to build a modest shack or to set up a tent for his chemical operations. Next he prepares certain chemicals in accordance with a secret formula. These may cost $50 more or less, according to the likelihood of further demands for extension of his operations. What the formula is, naturally no one has explained. Let me suggest a formula of my own. Take first ten pounds of pulverized chlorate of potash, and an equal amount of granular cane sugar. Mix these carefully in a wooden tub and when ready pour over them a liter (or pint) of sulphuric acid (c. p.). This simple and inexpensive preparation will produce surprising results. These may be brilliantly enhanced by using a pound of magnesium ribbon, to one end of which a lighted match has been applied, the whole sent into the air by attachment to a sky-rocket. This is most effective towards night or after clouds begin to form. Then certain salts of strontium yielding red light, barium yielding green, and other salts yielding lights of different colors, should be set on fire. That this formula of mine has been used by any professional rain-maker, I do not know. I am sure that any pharmacist might furnish something equally good. Some also use an old-fashioned fanning mill to condense the air, but that is less impressive.

Now that the chemistry has been provided for, the most important point follows, the economics of the process. There is an international institution known as "Lloyds" which insures anybody against anything, after a study statistical or meteorological of the chances. It charges a modest premium which naturally varies with the probabilities. If you want a clear day for a picnic, or a football game, Lloyds will for a consideration insure you against rain. Lloyds do not control the weather, but while losing the premium charged you will receive enough to finance your pleasure or your sport next time. You can insure a base-ball player against striking out, or an airship from falling into the sea, in accordance with scientifically accepted probabilities. Every wellregulated stadium or other center of culture is a client of Lloyds.

There is one element of risk. Once in San Diego County and once again in Fresno County the rain came as a desolating deluge, doing much damage and relatively very little good. It is said that under these conditions the cautious pluviculturist saw fit to take no chances and never collected his fee.

It was Barnum, was it not, who stated the lesson to be drawn: "A sucker is born every hour." Herbert Spencer insisted that "to save men from the consequences of their folly would fill the world with fools."

For this reason perhaps the press discourages crystal-gazing and applauds the pluviculturist. DAVID STARR JORDAN

A ROOT ROT OF ALFALFA

MANY fields of alfalfa throughout the state of Colorado during the past year have exhibited a dying out due to a root rot.

The disease first manifests itself on plants three or more years old as a flagging of the shoots in the spring. These shoots remain wilted for some time, irrespective of moisture conditions, and eventually die and are not replaced. Sections of roots of affected plants reveal a plugging of the vascular system with

a yellow substance giving a characteristic test for wound gum. This plugging is progressive.

The diseased roots on the average are able to transport but one fourth the amount of water carried by healthy roots, as determined by pumping water through lengths of diseased and healthy roots.

It is interesting to note that diseased roots contain little if any stored starch, while healthy roots are rich in that substance. The result of this lack of food supply is poor growth in the spring and a progressive weakened condition. Isolations from deep-seated diseased tissue constantly yield a fluorescent bacterium. Inoculations with this organism by root-cutting and injection into the roots cause discolorations and plugging of the vascular system identical with field symptoms. Check inoculations with water, physiological salt solution and other bacterial organisms isolated from rotted crowns failed to react in this way..

L. W. DURRELL W. G. SACKETT

COLORADO AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION

THE DEFINITION OF LOESS THE excellent summary with reference to the "Origin of the loess of the Palouse Region, Washington," given in SCIENCE of May the first, 1925, page 469, raises again the question of the proper use of the term loess. Is a deposit in a lake properly a loess?

As Grabau1 briefly describes recent deposits of loess, they are chiefly wind laid deposits, may contain beds laid down in shallow water and may even contain beds of sand and gravel washed in by streams. He uses the term silt2 in describing the size of the particles apparently as the word is used in soil surveys.

The present writer believes it is time to use the name loess with a definite meaning: a wind-laid deposit of loosely arranged, angular particles of calcareous silt loam typically intermediate in fineness between sand and clay, of uniform mechanical composition, often with color changes revealing faint lamination, and with a tendency to break off in vertical slabs. This accords with the general use of the term. With the loess may be associated sheets of gravel which are not loess, but water laid. With it may also be associated beds of water-laid silt with shells of fresh-water molluscs. With it also may be associated a glacial boulder, but this boulder, though on the loess and surrounded by loess, is not loessial.

Failure to make such distinctions has been the occasion of misunderstandings in the past. The loess

1 A. W. Grabau, "Principles of Stratigraphy," pp. 565-568.

2 Idem., p. 565.

3 Varied from Grabau, idem, p. 565.

along Missouri River was in the early days thought to be a lake deposit. Later it was recognized as a wind-laid deposit with all the peculiarities of such a deposit. Later still, patches of silt laid down elsewhere in sheets of water in loessial areas and containing fresh-water instead of air-breathing molluscs were spoken of as if loess. It is well to distinguish between these classes of deposits and to use distinctive terms.

In describing any deposit we may recognize the source from which the material was derived, but the later deposit does not retain as its name the name of the material from which it was derived. A bed of sea sand is a marine deposit of sand regardless of the crystalline rock from 'which the sand was originally derived, and it is a marine deposit regardless of the agencies of river action that may have been involved in transportation. The fine deposits laid down by the wind are loess, regardless of the source of the material from which that loess was derived. It may have come from weathering of ancient rock, it may have come from soil or from alluvium along a recent river, but when laid down by the wind it is loess. When washed out later and laid down in water by a river it becomes a river silt (alluvium if on a flood plain). When laid down in the quiet waters of a lake it becomes a lake silt, along with such portions. as may have been transported to that lake by streams, whatever the source of that fine material. Often onemay be uncertain as to whether a given bed is a true loess. Then suitable terms should be used and the bed described accordingly.

If the term loess is thus confined to fine wind-laid .deposits, as described, the term will have a definite meaning, which will accord with the general significance of the term.

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, MORGANTOWN, W. Va.

JOHN L. TILTON

QUOTATIONS

WHAT IS REASON FOR?

ABOUT sixty years ago Huxley made his famous answer to a precursor of Mr. Bryan. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, had appeared before the British Association for the Advancement of Science and in the manner of Mr. Bryan congratulated himself that he was not descended from a monkey. Darwin himself was absent on account of illness, but Huxley was in the hall, and when Wilberforce had finished he rose and said in substance the following:

If I had to choose, I would prefer to be a descendant of a humble monkey rather than of a man who employs. his knowledge and eloquence in misrepresentation of those who are wearing out their lives in the search for truth.