Physical and Cosmical Bearings and Development," on January 9.

ON December 16, Dr. George F. Kay, head of the department of geology of the State University of Iowa and state geologist of Iowa, delivered two lectures on "Pleistocene Geology" at the University of Toronto. On December 18, he spoke also to the members of the staff of instruction and graduate students of the department of geology at Columbia University, New York, on the subject "Recent Studies of the Pleistocene of Iowa."

PROFESSOR ALFRED O. GROSS, of Bowdoin College, gave an illustrated lecture before the Boston Society of Natural History on January 6 on "Glimpses of the Natural History of the Canal Zone, Panama."

DR. FREDERICK W. SEARS, of the New York State Department of Health, gave one of the De Lamar lectures at the School of Hygiene and Public Health, the Johns Hopkins University, on December 21 on "Some Problems in Rural Hygiene."

PROFESSOR WILLIAM B. SCOTT, professor of geology at Princeton University, read a paper on "The Isthmus of Panama as controlling the Animal Life of North and South America" before the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia on January 8.

PROFESSOR MAX BORN, of the University of Göttingen, is giving a series of five lectures on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the Jefferson Physical Laboratory at Harvard University. The last lecture of the series will be given on January 19 on the subject of "Developments of the Quantum Theory."

THE Council of the University of Paris has appointed M. Delacroix, professor of psychology in the faculty of letters, to be the Zaharoff lecturer at Oxford University for the ensuing academic year.

W. G. A. ORMSBY GORE gave his presidential address before the annual meeting of the Geographical Association, London, on January 7. His subject was "The Economic Geography of the British Empire."

DR. HENRY CRAIN TINKHAM, dean and professor of clinical surgery and applied anatomy at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, died on December 6, 1925, aged sixty-nine years.

NATHANIEL T. BACON, chemist and technical expert for the Solvay Process Co., died on January 3 in his ixty-eighth year.

DR. GEORG KLINGENBERG, well-known German economist and engineer, head of the Charlottenburg Hochschule and director of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft of Berlin, died on December 7.

A JOINT meeting of the American Physical Society

and the Optical Society of America will be held at McGill University, Montreal, on Friday and Saturday, February 26 and 27.

Ar the Rochester meeting of the American Astronomical Society it was decided to meet with the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the end of the year. The meeting in September will be at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, Nantucket.

THE twenty-first annual meeting of the American Association of Museums will be held in New York City from May 17 to May 20. These dates have been fixed in proper relation to the meetings in Washington of the Association of Art Museum Directors, which will take place on May 10 and 11, and of the American Federation of Arts, May 12 to 14.

THE annual meeting of the American Engineering Council was held in Washington for three days beginning Wednesday, January 13. The executive committee and the administrative board convened on the

opening day. The assembly of the council met January 14 and 15.

A COURSE of illustrated lectures has been prepared by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the auspices of the New England Association of Chemistry Teachers. The lectures will be held at the institute at 4.30 in the afternoon in accordance with the following schedule: January 6-"Atomic Structure," Professor W. C. Schumb; January 20— "X-Rays in Chemistry," Professor G. L. Clark; February 3-"Recent Developments in Radiation Chemistry," Dr. R. H. Gerke; February 17-"Valence," Professor Edward Mueller; March 3—"Colloid Chemistry," Professor D. A. MacInnes, continued on March 17; March 31-"Industrial Advances in Inorganic Chemistry," Professor J. W. Phelan; April 14-"New Uses of Carbon and Petroleum as Raw Material in the Chemical Industry," Professor J. F. Norris.

THE fourteenth annual meeting of the Oklahoma Academy of Science was held at the University of Oklahoma at Norman on November 27 and 28. This meeting was the first one held under the new plan inaugurated by the constitution adopted during the present year. About 150 were in attendance in the various sections. The address of the president, Homer L. Dodge, on "Research as a State Policy," was delivered at the annual dinner. Other addresses were made by Bradford E. Knapp, president of Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, and W. B. Bizzell, president of University of Oklahoma. There were ninety-five papers read before the scientific sessions of the four sections of the academy. Fifty-five new members were taken into the academy at the business

meeting and twelve were elected as fellows. Officers for 1926 are the following: President, J. H. Cloud, Stillwater; vice-president, Section A, L. B. Nice, Norman; vice-president, Section B, V. E. Monnett, Norman; vice-president, Section C, A. F. Reiter; vicepresident, Section D, J. R. Campbell, Stillwater; secretary-treasurer, A. Richards, Norman; assistant secretary-treasurer, Herbert Patterson, Stillwater.

NEW light on the lost history and science of the ancient Mayas will be sought by an expedition which will leave New Orleans on January 9, led by Gregory Mason, explorer and writer, and Dr. Herbert J. Spinden, assistant curator of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. At Belize, British Honduras, the party will leave the steamer to board a schooner for explorations along the east coast of the peninsula of Yucatan. At one anchorage after another the boat will be used as a base for investigations of the little known interior. Two other members of the party are Ludlow Griscom, assistant curator of birds at the American Museum of Natural History, and Ogden Trevor McClurg, of Chicago. Mr. McClurg, publisher and yachtsman, is familiar with Caribbean waters and has offered his services as navigator and hydrographer. The Mason-Spinden expedition will return to the United States in May.

A RUSSIAN expedition of exploration is to start shortly for the little known and remote desert island, Nicholas II Land, in the Arctic Ocean, recently rechristened Lenin Land. There are at least twenty

seven Russian scientific expeditions now exploring various parts of the Soviet's territory, working to add to our knowledge of geography, archeology, ethnology and other sciences.

DR. HUGO ECKNER has postponed his attempt to raise funds by popular subscription for building a super-Zeppelin for North Pole explorations, according to press dispatches. As a reason for the postponement Captain Eckner states that Germany's acute financial and economic situation does not warrant continuance of his efforts, which so far have raised only $300,000 out of $4,000,000 needed.

THE late Professor Edward S. Morse has bequeathed his library to the Imperial University of Tokio and his ethnological and zoological collections to the Peabody Museum, Salem. Bowdoin College will receive $1,000 and the Essex Institute, Salem, $5,000. ANNOUNCEMENT has been made of the completion of an endowment fund of $100,000 to insure the continued publication of the Bulletin and the monthly Transactions of the American Mathematical Society and a quarterly journal published by the society.

GEORGE H. WALKER, of Boston, Massachusetts, one

of the founders of the Walker Gordon Milk Company, has donated one thousand dollars to Iowa State College at Ames for the purpose of making a permanent investment, the annual returns from which are to be used as a prize for the student who shows the best knowledge and proficiency in the production of clean, pure milk.

A GIFT to Yale University from Charles Lathrop Pack, of Lakewood, N. J., of a demonstration forest for public education in forestry was announced by Yale University. The tract is located near Keene, N. H., and is adjacent to the forest land already owned by Yale, where experiments and research in the growth and production of white pine have been under way for several years. The new tract is directly on the trunk highway to the White Mountains. The prime purpose of the gift, according to Dean Graves, of the school of forestry in the university, is to carry on practical demonstrations of forestry which may serve as illustrations in educating people how forests may be scientifically handled. It will be a field museum with actual demonstrations of different methods of forestry that can readily be interpreted and understood by visitors.

ITHACA, N. Y., is going to turn 600 acres of unused land on the city watershed into a municipal forest. The planting of trees will begin next spring. Chairman William M. Driscoll, of the City Planning Commission, has placed an order for 10,000 white pine

seedlings, 10,000 Scotch pine transplants and 1,000 black locust seedlings with the Conservation Commission for spring delivery as the first step in the planting of the forest.

A PHYSICO-CHEMICAL institute, to serve as central laboratories for Spanish scientific work, is assured by a gift of $200,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation. The site of the building will be provided by the Spanish government. It probably will be near the Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. Spain at present is lacking in experimental laboratories and the few which do exist have very little modern equipment.

THROUGH the kindness of Dr. F. B. Sumner, the University of California has presented the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, with the stocks of four of Dr. Sumner's mutant strains of the deermouse, the mutants called albino, pallid, yellow and hairless, and also with small stocks of four Californian subspecies of the deer-mouse. Further study of the heredity of these forms is to be carried on at the museum of zoology by Dr. L. R. Dice. Dr. Sumner is continuing at La Jolla his studies of the wild races of Californian deer-mice, and is also working on a fifth mutant form.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NOTES

NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE has accepted a gift of $300,000, the largest single trust fund ever received by the university for educational purposes, from Henry and William J. Wollman, of New York.

AT the recent election in Louisville, the citizens voted about six to one to authorize the issue of

$1,000,000 in bonds for the University of Louisville,

and $5,000,000 for the public schools of that city. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY will receive $20,100 by a bequest in the will of the late Charles Allen Munn, formerly editor and publisher of the Scientific American.

THE board of trustees of the University of Tennessee ratified on December 14 the expenditure, of $280,000 for the construction of the first unit in the $1,000,000 program of expansion of the medical department of the university at Memphis.

DR. A. H. GIBSON, professor of engineering at the University of Manchester, has been elected dean of the faculty of science in the university.

DR. L. H. NEWMAN, formerly a fellow in medicine of the National Research Council under Professor Folin at the Harvard Medical School, has been appointed assistant professor of biochemistry at Howard University Medical School.

C. I. REED, former fellow in medicine of the National Research Council under Professor A. J. Carlson, University of Chicago, has been appointed as associate professor of physiology at Baylor University.

DR. JOSEPH K. BREITENBECHER, formerly professor of zoology at the University of Oklahoma, has been appointed to the teaching staff of McGill University.

DR. MAX MØLLER, of the University of Copenhagen, has arrived in Bangkok, Siam, to take the post of visiting professor of chemistry at the Chulalongkorn University under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation.

PROFESSOR LOTHAR SCHRUTKA, of the Brünn Technical School, has been appointed professor of mathematics at the Technical School at Vienna.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE SIMPLIFIED LITERATURE CITATIONS

IN the issue of SCIENCE for November 6, 1925, Dean E. D. Merrill, of the University of California,

makes "an appeal for simplified literature citations." His appeal is based on substantial grounds as judged by current practice and it should meet with a cordial response from writers, editors and publishers.

In referring to the method of citing literature used by the Journal of Agricultural Research, however, it would have been fairer to that publication had he chosen a more recent issue to exemplify his point.

Beginning with the issue of No. 1, Volume 28, April

5, 1924, the journal adopted its present simplified form of citations. Examination of that form will show that the simplifying process has been carried even further than Dean Merrill recommends.

Is there sufficient justification for the time-consuming process of verifying the exact number of each type of illustration? Innumerable difficulties arise when checking the plates, figures, maps, charts, diagrams and portraits, particularly in foreign publications. Why not use the present Journal of Agricultural Research style and simply state, "Illus."? Or perhaps all reference to illustrations might well be omitted, as is now done in some publications.

Furthermore, so much difficulty was formerly encountered in bold-facing the volume number and having it appear correctly in type that the system was abandoned in favor of the much simpler method now used in the journal. Surely it is unnecessary to go to the trouble of bold-facing the volume number, if this form is used. No confusion is caused by this method and simplicity favors it.

OFFICE OF PUBLICATIONS,

M. C. MERRILL

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

ODDLY enough, on the same day that the writer read the letter, "An appeal for simplified literature citations" by E. D. Merrill in SCIENCE for November 6, he had already encountered similar difficulties,, and had even thought of writing something on the subject.

Such difficulties, small in themselves, but typical of many experiences, will serve to emphasize the need of a uniform, and in some cases, more convenient form of citing references.

It is a regulation of this institute that references shall be presented in the same form as used in Chemical Abstracts. In consulting an English publication, and quoting a paper that included a bibliography, the question at once arose as to whether the references were in the proper form. The translation of one style to another should certainly not be necessary, nor should the question ever arise to change one's train of thought, for the loss is not merely the few seconds or minutes required in comparing each refer

ence, but the time wasted in picking up the thread and resuming work.

By way of suggestion, the form used in print should be reproducible in handwriting or on the typewriter without confusion. The system of citations employed by Chemical Abstracts is probably the most carefully worked out of any in use, and is rapidly becoming recognized as a model. It employs bold-faced figures for volume numbers, which are preferable to either Roman numerals or ordinary figures. For example:

J. Am. Chem. Soc. 47, 1445-7 (1925).

In manuscripts for printing, bold-faced type is indicated by underlining with a wavy line. Since the typewriter has no such character, editors understand what is meant if volume numbers are underlined. If there is danger of confusing the volume and page numbers the same thing can be done in handwriting. Setting off the year in parentheses avoids any danger of confusing it with page numbers.

It is to be hoped that enough interest will be manifested in this present rather aggravating situation to result in a uniform international system.

CHAS. F. GOLDTHWAIT MELLON INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

DEAN E. D. MERRILL'S recent appeal in SCIENCE for "simplified literature citations" merits consideration, and there will doubtless be general approval of the purpose he has in mind. However, there is something to be said, at least for abstract journals and other publications dealing mainly with current literature, in using in citations the periodical number in addition to the other data. Its inclusion takes some space and adds to the complexity of the title, but librarians and others seem to regard it as very valuable and helpful. It is a particular convenience in handling references in current or unbound periodicals, and while not indispensable, the thirty-five years' experience with Experiment Station Record indicates that it is well worth the space it occupies. Facility and accuracy in the handling of references are surely relevant considerations in making citations, and their promotion may be as desirable as an extreme of brevity.

cently when starting out on a drive of some 220 miles I decided to make a careful count of all the birds of this species both dead and alive that were to be seen along the road. Leaving Iowa City the second day of August I drove through a section of Iowa where the red-headed woodpeckers are probably more numerous than in any other part of their range. During the first part of this trip no dead woodpeckers were seen, while over 100 live birds were recorded. On the last 120 miles of the trip, however, twenty-one dead woodpeckers were observed as well as eighty-two that were alive.

Excepting in cases where the woodpeckers were too badly mangled, an examination of the crops and stomachs was made. As a result of this examination I found that without exception they contained such food as bread crumbs, sweet corn, bits of doughnuts and pieces of apple. The stomach contents would seem to indicate that these birds are in part attracted to the street by waste from the lunch baskets of passing tourists and by chance garbage that has been carelessly thrown into the street. This would suggest to those who would save the woodpecker the desirability of not throwing any lunch or other food along the right-of-way.

The red-head is a fearless bird. He will remain in the path of an approaching car until it is close upon him. Then the clumsiness of his feet that were intended for clinging to the side of a tree prevent him from making the quick get-a-way that saves the lives of many of the other species of birds that feed in similar manner. Moreover, the telephone and telegraph poles along the way, affording as they do excellent perching and nesting places, no doubt attract the woodpeckers to the highway.

I believe that the reason that no dead woodpeckers were found on the first one hundred miles of the trip, although one hundred live birds were seen, is due to the fact that much of this part of the road was a detour and so not extensively used by tourists. This would eliminate the waste from lunches, and so offer no inducement to the birds to go into the street.

Four weeks later on my return trip over the same road I found comparatively few woodpeckers, noting only twelve live birds and five dead ones. The scarcity of woodpeckers at this time may be accounted for by the fact that these birds, changing their diets as they do with the seasons, are much more likely to be found in the hardwood groves than in the open during the month of September.

One can not tell with any surety whether the dead birds seen on the highway were killed on one day or on three days. Neither can one say that because

he found twenty dead birds in traveling over a certain one hundred miles that he would find ten times that number if he traveled one thousand miles. The red-headed woodpecker is considered a common bird throughout its range, but its preference for certain localities within this range makes it exceedingly numerous in some places, while there may be miles and miles of country round about where it is scarcely

ever seen.

Generally speaking, the red-headed woodpecker seems to be the only species of wild life that is killed in any great numbers by the automobile. Despite the mishaps to individuals, the species as a whole seems to be holding its own and is to-day, without doubt, one of the most numerous of our native birds. In addition to the twenty-one dead woodpeckers I also noted the numbers of all other killed animals along the road, the following list being the result of my observation:

Chickens

suggested to me by the Rev. W. E. Waldeland, who found a similar collection in his own automobile. I am further indebted to him for the following notes which he kindly made for my use.

We have just returned from a 2,000 mile auto trip through Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. On this trip we saw less than a dozen red-headed woodpeckers killed by cars, and we saw but few other killed wild animals. The total of all species will not exceed fifty. Wild life seems to be more fortunate in this matter than the farmer's chickens.

30

In addition to the preceding list I might add the dead insects that were taken from the back of my car radiator and the catch pan below, although they were accumulated in a much longer run than the 220 miles to which I have here referred. Fully one pint was removed, in which motley collection I was able to recognize twenty grasshoppers, seventeen cabbage butterflies, sixteen botflies, fourteen honey-bees and parts of many house flies, moths and beetles. These insects were the residue accumulation of about two thousand miles of travel; many more, of course, had disintegrated or fallen out along the way. One pint is, I believe, a fair estimate of the quantity of insects killed by a car of average size in traveling two thousand miles. Larger cars, traveling at a higher rate of speed, would kill many more, while smaller cars would run correspondingly under this amount.

Incidentally it may be of interest to estimate the size of a pile of insects that would be killed by all the cars of this country in driving two thousand miles. Allowing one pint to be a fair average for one car, the eighteen million cars now in use would make a killing which would be thirty feet square and as high as the Woolworth building.

Investigating the contents of my car radiator was

DATE OF CHANNEL TRENCHING IN THE

SOUTHWEST

THE article by Kirk Bryan on the "Date of Channel Trenching (Arroyo Cutting) in the Arid Southwest," in a recent issue of SCIENCE1 was of considerable interest to me. The conditions mentioned as occurring in Gila Valley were of special interest since I came to that valley in February, 1900, and remained a resident for 23 years. As a large part of that period was spent in the Forest Service, I became an observer and student of erosion, grazing and the effect of the elements on the earth's surface.

The first herd of cattle was driven into the watershed of Gila River by Z. C. Prina in 1884, and located on Bonito Creek some 18 or 20 miles north of Solomonsville. Mr. Prina became a prominent citizen of Arizona, well known as a reliable and level-headed man of honor. I can testify to these qualities of my own knowledge. Mr. Prina described the country as consisting of fields of waving grass in 1884. The Gila River was a very small stream confined in a narrow shallow channel the banks of which were lined with willows, brush and sod grasses. The news of the presence of abundant feed and no cattle spread rapidly eastward and in the next two years thousands of head of cattle were brought in. Gila River remained within its banks until 1896, when, according to Mr. Prina, a flood topped the banks, 12 years after the introduction of cattle. Floods, thereafter, were an annual occurrence but as late as 1900, when I arrived in the valley, it required no effort to toss a stone across the river channel from bank to bank. During the drought, 1 SCIENCE, Vol. LXII, pp. 338-344, October 16, 1925.