upon individual efficiency, increased usefulness and the occurrence of vacancies in higher positions. For appointment to the Field Service the salary will be approximately the same. The duties in the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils will be to conduct research studies and technical investigations pertaining to fires in farm products, with special attention to spontaneous combustion and deterioration of hay, grain, cattle feeds and other agricultural products, and the development of methods for their control and prevention. Competitors will not be required to report for examination at any place, but will be rated on their education, training and experience, and a publication or thesis to be filed with the application.

Industrial and Enginering Chemistry reports that representatives from the Museum of the Peaceful Arts of New York City and from the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D. C., of which the National Museum of Engineering and Industry will be a part, recently attended a luncheon in connection with the annual meeting of the latter organization. The intimation was given that owing to changes which were contemplated in the plans of the Mall in Washington by the Commission of Fine Arts of that city, there possibly would be a change in the location of the site of the museum building on the Smithsonian grounds. At a subsequent meeting of the, commission attended by representatives of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum, a new site satisfactory to all the parties interested was agreed upon. At the meeting after the luncheon above referred to, officers and trustees for the current year were unanimously elected as follows: President, Thomas Ewing, former commissioner of patents; Secretary, Harrison W. Craver, director, United Engineering Societies Library; Trustees, L. P. Alford, B. C. Batcheller, George M. Bond, Nicholas F. Brady, Ericsson F. Bushnell, Fred H. Colvin, F. A. Halsey, Thomas T. Hoopes, D. C. Jackson, Joseph Keller, Fred R. Low, H. P. Merriam, H. F. J. Porter, Dr. M. I. Pupin, Dr. Elmer A. Sperry, Kirby Thomas and F. A. Waldron.

THE Associated Press reported on July 13 the lake of lava from Kilauea crater, which began an eruption on July 7, was at that time steadily building to new levels on the floor of the eight-mile-wide Halemaumau pit as the lava from the cones spreads in spirals about the hardening surface. The principal cone, as the tube of hardened lava about each center of eruption is called, is about fifty feet high. It is continually capped with a layer of rock which hardens from its molten state, except for the periodic outbreaks when the accumulated pressure from the subterranean forces thrusts itself through and sends out a fiery fountain. The flow of other fountains below

the surface of the lake which covers more than 100 acres on the floor of the Halemaumau pit can be plainly seen by the motion of the crust, which occasionally breaks to permit new flows to spread. R. M. Wilson, volcanologist, predicts that the lava lake will gradually rise until the fifty-foot cone is submerged, after which the flow of lava will continue beneath the surface. The flow yesterday was as strong as at any time since the eruption began.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NOTES

PLANS are in preparation for a laboratory of physics to be built for the Johns Hopkins University at a cost of $350,000.

THE Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University has received by the will of Chester W. Lyman, formerly president of the International Paper Company, the sum of $50,000, to be used in teaching hydraulic engineering and allied subjects.

DR. HARRY YANDELL BENEDICT, professor of applied mathematics and dean of the college of arts at the University of Texas, has been elected to succeeed Dr. Walter Splawn as president of the university.

DR. ROLLIN T. WOODYATT, of the University of Chicago, has been made chairman of the department of medicine.

PROFESSOR EDWIN D. STARBUCK has been appointed head of the department of philosophy at the State University of Iowa. Philosophy and psychology, which have existed as a single department, are now separated. Professor Starbuck has also been officially made director of the Institute of Character Research which has hitherto been known as the Research Station in Character Education. The institute has received a special appropriation from the state legislature.

DR. IRVING W. BAILEY, associate professor of forestry at Harvard University, has been appointed professor of plant anatomy.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE VARIABLE ECHOES PRODUCED BY THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL

On the evening of June 11 during a display of fireworks on the executive grounds in Washington, the writer's attention was drawn to the peculiar echoes produced by the scattering of sound waves against the outer and inner walls and the fluted columns of the Lincoln Memorial. In the accompanying diagram the direction of the sound waves, from a source

the point B a faint weird echo of high pitch began to be heard after each report of the exploding fireworks. As the observer continued towards the point C the intensity of the echo increased, its tone being of a shrill metallic quality, somewhat prolonged and resembling the sound produced by a file when drawn across the teeth of a saw. As one proceeded around the corner of the memorial towards the point D on the lower terrace the echo gradually changed to a lower pitch of more prolonged duration, the sound at this place resembling the sharp tearing noise produced by ripping a piece of cloth. As one passed onward towards the rear of the memorial the echo grew constantly fainter and ceased entirely at about the point E.

C. A. BROWNE

THE LUNELL HERBARIUM BOTANISTS interested in the taxonomy of the flowering plants have long been familiar with specimens collected by J. Lunell, of Leeds, North Dakota.

Born in one of the well-known castles of Sweden, in 1851, where his father was rector, Dr. Lunell emigrated to the United States at about 37 years of age, bringing with him the responsibility for a family of three children.

After a year devoted to the practice of medicine in St. Paul, he felt the irresistible call of the frontier and took up his work at Willow City, North Dakota, in 1889, at a time when cities were but names which expressed the hopefulness and ambition of those who were living in dugouts, sod houses or board and tar paper shelters. He remained there for about five years before taking up his permanent residence at Leeds, North Dakota. From the first moment of his arrival he began to collect and study the plants of the region. As a student, his leisure time had been devoted to the collection of plants, all of which were left behind when he came to the United States. Demands for the services of the one doctor often crowded out eating and sleep, but if the long outgoing journeys permitted no opportunities for delay, the return trips always afforded a means for noting and collecting plants of particular interest. It is a great misfortune that there were not more such men to study and preserve for future reference actual specimens of a flora which has now largely disappeared through the ravages of fire and the inroads of agriculture.

While Dr. Lunell is known widely to taxonomists through his collections, and his systematic botanical notes and papers, perhaps few are aware that he was a man of highly varied interests. Graduated from the University of Upsala, he read Latin, Greek and Hebrew as well as the modern languages. Before coming to America, in addition to the translation of technical writings, he had made some of the writings of Mark Twain, Marryat, Savarin and other French and Russian authors available to those whose reading was limited to the Swedish language. His volumes of classical music, well worn by use at his own piano, were about as numerous as the bound botanical works of his small library.

Since Dr. Lunell's death, at sixty-nine years of age, in 1920, his herbarium has been little used by botanists. It is unfortunate that there is not now more local interest in collections of the plants and animals of the various regions of the United States, but until such local interest exists, it is desirable that collections of this kind, made by those when fired with enthusiasm for scientific work, even under difficult conditions, be ultimately assembled in centers where they can be available to students.

Students of the flowering plants will be interested to know that the Lunell herbarium has been purchased by the board of regents of the University of Minnesota for the department of botany. In the course of a few months, the materials will be incorporated in the herbarium and there be available to students who may wish to use them.

J. ARTHUR HARRIS

INDEX KEWENSIS

I UNDERSTAND that it is not generally known that the sixth supplement of the Index Kewensis was published last year by the Clarendon Press. This includes references to the names and synonyms of genera and species of flowering plants which were published during the five years 1916-1920, and also includes many which had appeared in previous years in publications which, owing to the war, were not available at Kew.

The Index Kewensis is an indispensable work to all plant systematists, whether botanists or horticulturists, who desire to keep abreast of botanical nomenclature. The original index we owe to the generosity of Charles Darwin and six quinquennial supplements have now been published. Some idea of the labor involved in keeping up this record may be gathered from the fact that the sixth supplement recently published contains some 30,000 references.

With such increases in the number of new species and binomials, especially in such genera as Rosa, Rubus and Hieracium, the work of the systematist would be almost impossible without this periodic gathering together of the newly minted currencies in the world's botanical nomenclature.

As I have been informed that many sets of the Index Kewensis in botanical and horticultural libraries appear to be incomplete, and that in some cases supplements have been purchased for libraries which do not possess the original volumes, I have been asked to direct attention to the importance of the work. I would also point out that it is necessary, in order to keep abreast of botanical nomenclature, to possess all the supplements which have been published as well as the original index.

Copies of the original index or of any of the six quinquennial supplements may be obtained from the secretary, The Clarendon Press.

ARTHUR W. HILL

THE USE OF THE GENERIC NAME

WILSONIA

IT has recently been called to the writer's attention that there exists a duplication of the generic name Wilsonia. Priority of use seems to rest with Bonaparte's genus of wood warblers described on page 23, "Geographic and Comparative List of Birds, 1823" (cited by Ridgway, page 703, United States National Museum Bulletin 50, Part 2). In 1873 Keyser applied the name to a brachiopod previously called Terebratula wilsoni Sowerby. Keyser's description may be found on page 502, Volume 23, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft, 1873. Rules of nomenclature, therefore, seem to demand that the name be reserved for the avian genus, and

A NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF
ANTHROPOLOGY

SEVERAL inexplicable errors occur in the opening paragraph of President Henry Fairfield Osborn's paper on "Recent Discoveries relating to the Origin and Antiquity of Man" (SCIENCE, 65 (1927), 481). The "renowned Hans Virchow" is represented as opposing "the recognition of the Neanderthal skull of 1846 with pathologic and theologic preconceptions." The great pathologist's name was not Hans, but Rudolf; the Neanderthal skull was not discovered until 1856;1 and any one acquainted with the psychology of that most tough-minded of scientists can only express a hope that all writers on the origin of man were as free from theological preconceptions as Virchow. It is true that theologically inclined writers were fond of citing Virchow's authority against Darwin, but his own position in the matter was skeptical to the point of negativism, not tinetured with any form of religious bias.

ROBERT H. LOWIE

PROFESSORSHIPS IN MEDICAL SCHOOLS IN the number of SCIENCE for July 15 I note in the delightful sketch of Dr. Franklin P. Mall, written by Dr. William T. Councilman, the statement that "all the teaching positions in medical schools throughout the country, with the exception of the chair of physiology at Harvard, were held by men who were active practitioners of medicine as well, and the professorial positions were regarded as valuable adjuncts to a medical practice."

The time referred to, I take it, is the early '80's. I would like to call attention to the fact that certainly since 1831 the occupants of the chair of anatomy in the school of medicine of the University of Pennsylvania have not been practitioners of medicine, and that certainly from 1818 and possibly earlier, this also holds true for the professors of chemistry in the same school. Certainly Leidy, who held the chair of anatomy from 1853 to 1891, and Theodore G. Wormley, who held the chair of chemistry and toxicology from 1877 to 1897, devoted their entire time to teaching and research.

WILLIAM PEPPER

1 H. F. Osborn, "Men of the Old Stone Age,'' 3rd edition 1918, 217.

QUOTATIONS

THE SOCIETY FOR EXPERIMENTAL

BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE

NEARLY a quarter of a century ago, on January 19, 1903, a small group of scientific investigators in New York met at the call of Professor Graham Lusk and the late Dr. S. J. Meltzer to consider the organization of active workers in experimental biology and medicine. This was the meeting that initiated the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine under the presidency of Dr. Meltzer. The main object of the organization was the cultivation of the experimental method of investigation in the sciences of experimental biology and medicine. Membership in the group was limited to persons who had completed some meritorious independent experimental research in that field of study. The programs, from the start, consisted in brief presentations of the essential features of experimental investigations, and frequently of demonstrations of actual experiments. The membership soon outgrew its confinement to "Greater New York" and spread throughout the country. One reason for the success that has attended the development of this society lies perhaps in the significant circumstance that it has aimed to bring together workers in many fields, such as physiology, biochemistry, biology, bacteriology, pharmacology and experimental medicine, at a time when rapidly developing specialization had already begun to segregate investigators into small groups. The new society thus represented a wholesome reintegrating force and provided a stimulus for the discussion of "borderline" and interrelated problems. It has become an influence tending to overcome the danger of narrowness in the present-day outlook on the natural sciences with which medicine is so closely bound up. Another early object of the society was the development of high standards of presentation and scientific criticism. Incidentally, not a few significant discoveries have been announced for the first time at its meetings. As might be expected, this movement was bound to be followed by similar endeavors elsewhere. Many of them have resulted in the organization of branches of the society. To-day ten branches are located all the way from New York to Peking; eight more are at present under contemplation. The contributions, in the form of brief, concise summaries, are embodied in the Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, which is available through subscription. This journal deserves the active support of members of the medical profession, who are likely to find it stimulating and informative. Published without special endowment and maintained by the contributions of scientific workers, it needs and enlists the help of those who can benefit by its program.-The Journal of the American Medical Association.

MUSCLE, YEAST AND CANCER CELLS

IN his comparative study on the carbohydrates and gaseous metabolism of isolated muscle, at rest and at work, Otto Meyerhof1.2 finally established beyond all doubt the doctrine that utilization of oxygen by muscle takes place normally, not during the act of contraction but rather during the periods of relaxation and rest immediately following. It was further shown that the energy required for contraction is directly derived from the breakdown of glycogen into lactic acid, whereas during the recovery period the oxidation involves a twofold action, the burning of one part of sugar, or its lactic acid equivalent, to carbon dioxide and water, while three to six times the amount of lactic acid is built back to glycogen. In other words, the immediate source of the energy for contraction is gotten by an anaerobic reaction, while the recovery from the contraction in its normal and most efficient manner is accomplished by an aerobic chain of reactions which culminates in the saving of a large part of the carbohydrate that had been split during the anaerobic phase or the contraction period. A further study revealed the fact that the processes found to hold for muscle in action also take place during periods of complete normal rest, although with much less intensity, so that the resting level of lactic acid concentration, from 0.015 to 0.03 per cent. of the muscle's weight, represents not only the residue of a previous recovery period but also the continuous balance sheet of a never-ceasing anoxidative carbohydrate splitting and an equally continuous oxidative removal of the split bodies by the twofold process of one part burned to carbon dioxide and water and from three to six parts built back to glycogen.

It is obvious that the anoxidative phase of these events is an expensive, prodigal one, but one apparently capable of yielding quickly and abundantly the free energy that is needed to enable the muscle cells to raise tension and to contract as quickly as they do; whereas the oxidative phase is one that not only frees the cells of the split products that accumulate during the anoxidative phase, clearing the decks for the next action, as it were, but does it in the manner of a salvager, rescuing at the same time as much of 1 Meyerhof, O., "Die Energie Umwandlungen im Muskel," Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol., 182: 232, 284 and 185: 11, 1920; 188: 114, and 191: 125, 1921; 195: 22, 1922; Meyerhof, Lohmann, u. Meier, "Synthese des Kohlehydrats im Muskel,'' Biochem. Zeitschr., 157: 459,

1925.

2 Hill, A. V., u. Meyerhof, O., "Über die Vorgänge bei der Muskelkontraktion," Ergeb. d. Physiol., 22: 299, 1923. (This joint review should be consulted for earlier literature and contributary evidence.)

the material as may be for future use. It will be noted that the breathing of the muscle cells is bound up with the aerobic phase only. Since the anaerobic splitting depends upon the action of ferments, this phase has been referred to as the phase of fermentative breakdown; the aerobic is often referred to as simply the respiratory phase.

With this cycle of alternating fermentative breakdown and respiratory recovery established for the skeletal muscle cell, the question arose as to whether the phenomena involved represented properties peculiar only to muscle or whether they were properties of other living cells as well.

Since the work of Pasteur the so-called anaerobic character of certain organisms has been known. Certain varieties of the yeast plant thrive amazingly well in the absence of air. Indeed the bottom wirts of the highly cultivated beer and vinous yeasts have been regarded as utilizing no oxygen whatever. The energy for growth in these cases is obviously derived from the anoxidative splitting of higher carbon compounds to carbon compounds of lesser complexity. On the other hand, yeasts such as the press-yeast, bakers' yeast and the wild yeasts continue to grow in the presence of oxygen, although their fermentation capacity at the same time is reduced. The problem of the part played by oxygen in the growth and fermentative action of yeast therefore had been recognized and studied not only by the more modern students of fermentation but also by Pasteur. But as Meyerhof points out, a definitive answer to the question could not have been obtained by the use of the cruder methods these workers had at their disposal; an employment of the more modern methods of micro-analysis such as were used in the study of muscle metabolism, however, ought to yield a less conflicting body of data. Such an application Meyerhof and his associates have now made to the study of a number of various fermentation bacteria.

In these studies it is shown that even in the cases of the so-called anaerobic forms there is an actual utilization of oxygen, although small in amount, whenever this gas is admitted to the wirt in proper media. But however small or large the amount of oxygen utilization is, whether the form studied is of the "aerobic" press-yeast or bakers' yeast, or whether the form is of the "anaerobic" races, for example, the bottom wirt of beer and vinous yeasts, the same two processes of metabolism found for muscle

3 Meyerhof, O., "Über den Einfluss des Sauerstoffs auf die alkoholische Gärung der Hefe," Biochem. Zeitschr., 162: 43, 1925; and Die Naturwissenschaften, Jahrg. 14, p. 1175 (Dec.), 1926; also, Meyerhof und Finkle, "Über Berziehungen des Sauerstoffs zur bakterialen Milchsäuregärung," Chem. d. Zelle u. Gewebe, 12: 157, 1926.

cells are here also found. One process, the anoxidative, concerns itself with the fermentative breakdown of carbohydrate into ethyl alcohol, pyruvinic acid, acetaldehyde, lactic acid, acetic acid, etc., the other process, the oxidative, concerns itself with the complete oxidation of a part of the carbohydrate and the rescuing of another part from the fermentative breakdown. But more than this, when the ratio of the total number of molecules of split products removed to the number of molecules oxidized is determined for the various forms of bacteria, the oxidative quotient, as it is called, is shown to be of the same magnitudes as were found in the case of muscle, that is, between 3 and 6. In other words, for every molecule of carbohydrate oxidized to carbon dioxide and water 3 to 6 molecules are rescued from the fermentative breakdown. This, then, explains why the amount of fermentation products is less when oxygen is admitted to fermenting yeasts, and at the same time demonstrates that fermentation bacteria are only different from muscle in their metabolism chiefly in that the two major processes of metabolism have each undergone transformation (Umstimmung), the fermentative process having been greatly augmented, the oxidative salvaging process having been greatly depressed or partly lost.

As to how this transformation may have come about has been largely answered by both O. Warburg and O. Meyerhof and their associates in a series of independent studies. It was found by the latter1 that so little as .0002 normal hydrocyanic acid present in the media of aerobic races of yeast reduced their oxidative power nearly 90 per cent., but their anoxidative fermentative power only as little as 10 per cent., and that by successive cultures these yeasts so transformed would produce permanent anaerobic strains of the plants. On the other hand, by treating anaerobic races with substances that stimulate their breathing capacity, permanent strains of aerobic plants could be cultivated. With increased utilization of oxygen increased salvage of carbohydrate was ensured and thus a corresponding decrease in the apparent fermentative splitting resulted.

Preceding and contemporary with these investigations on yeast two series of studies, one by O. Meyerhof and his coworkers, the other by O. Warburg

5

+ Meyerhof, O., "Über den Einfluss des Sauerstoffs auf die alkoholische Gärung der Hefe," Die Naturwissenschaften, Jahrg. 13, p. 980 (Dec. 4), 1925; "Über den Zusammenhang der Spaltungsvorgänge mit der Atmung in der Zelle,'' Ber. d. deutschen chem. Gesellsch., Jahrg. 58, p. 991, May, 1925.

5 Meyerhof u. Lohmann, "Über Atmung und Kohlehydratsumsatz tierischer Gewebe," Biochem. Zeitschr., 171: 381, 421, 1926; R. Takane, ibid., 171: 403, 1926.