as curator of collections Dr. Stanley C. Ball, professor of biology in the International Y. M. C. A. College, Springfield, Mass. Leaving Springfield in March Dr. Ball will visit museums in Albany, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, reaching Honolulu about May 1.

DR. RALPH C. RODGERS, previously in charge of the work in the physics of photography, at Cornell University, has been appointed assistant secretary of the illuminating engineering society.

THE board of trustees of the American Medical Association reelected the following members of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry: L. G. Rowntree, Rochester, Minn.; Torald Sollman, Cleveland, and Lafayette B. Mendel, New Haven; and to fill a vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Professor Henry Kraemer, Dr. Charles W. Edmunds, professor of therapeutics and materia medica, University of Michigan.

PROFESSOR DEXTER S. KIMBALL, of Cornell University, represented the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the federated American engineering societies at the annual convention of the Engineering Institute of Canada, at Toronto.

Ar the next meeting of the Canadian Research Council, to be held in Ottawa, February 19, an interim appointment of chairman will be made to succeed Dr. A. B. Macallum, who resigned to accept the chair of biochemistry in McGill University, Montreal. The appointment of a permanent chairman will depend on the action of the federal government.

DR. LYNDS JONES, of the department of zoology of Oberlin College, announces a special trip under the auspices of the summer school, through the northwest, terminating in the town of Mora, Washington, on the Pacific coast. A special study of insect, bird, plant and animal life will be made and attention will be given to topographical geology. The trip will probably be made by automobile and will be in the field for eight weeks.

DR. L. O. HOWARD, chief of the Bureau of Entomology, retiring president of the Ameri

can Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered an address on "How the government is fighting insects," before the Washington Academy of Sciences on February 17.

DR. A. N. RICHARDS, professor of pharmacology, University of Pensylvania, will deliver the seventh Harvey Society Lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine on Saturday evening, February 26. His subject will be "Kidney function."

DR. GEORGE THOMAS STEVENS, of New York City, author of contributions to opthalmology and neurology, died on January 30 at the age of eighty-eight years.

DR. HENRY HARRINGTON JANEWAY, of New York City, known for his work on cancer, attending surgeon to the Memorial Hospital, died on February 1, at the age of forty-seven years.

PROFESSOR HENRY MATTHEW STEPHENS, since 1899 professor of biology in Dickinson College, died on February 5, aged fifty-four years.

DR. LEOPOLD LANDAU, professor of surgery at Berlin, died on December 28, 1920, at the age of seventy-two years.

A REGULAR meeting of the American Physical Society will be held in Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University, New York, on Saturday, February 26, 1921. If the length of the program requires it, there will also be sessions on Friday, February 25. Other meetings for the current season are as follows: April 22-23, 1921, Washington; August 4, 5, 1921, Pacific Coast Section at Berkeley.

THE Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester, the oldest place of agricultural instruction in the British Empire, is threatened with extinction at the end of the year unless a minimum capital sum of £25,000 can be raised by private munificence to save it. The college, which was founded seventy-five years ago under the patronage of the Prince Consort, has since 1915 been occupied by a girls' school from the east coast, whose tenancy ends at Christmas. The Ministry of Agricul

ture are asking the governors to reopen the college for its originally intended purposes, and have promised, subject to certain conditions a small, annual grant towards its mainténance. The governors are anxious to take this course, they have considered and approved a curriculum of greater general utility and of a more practical character than that formerly pursued at the college, and have conditionally secured the services of a principal of exceptional qualifications. In an appeal issued on behalf of the governors, Lord Bledisloe (chairman) and Lord Bathurst (vice-chairman) urge that "6 never, in the best interests of British Agriculture, was there greater need than there is to-day for the practical training of our present and future landowners, estate agents and larger farmers in improved methods of agriculture, in the economic administration of rural estates, in practical forestry, or in local government."

WE learn from the Journal of the American Medical Association that the Academia de Ciencias Médicas of Havana has announced the following prizes for the year 1921: President Gutiérrez' prize, 400 pesos, for the best work on the necessity of a National Formulary; Gañongo prize, 200 pesos for the best work on any medical subject; Gordon prize (physiology), a gold medal, for the best work on correlation of the endocrine glands. The papers must be sent to the secretary of the academy (calle de Cuba, número 84-A) before March 31, 1921. They must be original, must not have been published before, and may be in Spanish, English or French.

NEW YEAR honors conferred in Great Britain on scientific men are recorded in Nature as follows: Privy Councillor: The Rev. Dr. Thomas Hamilton, for service to the cause of education in Ireland, first as President of Queen's College, Belfast, and afterwards as President and Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast. Knights: ProP. R. Scott Lang, for more than forty years Regius professor of mathematics in the University of St. Andrews; Mr. P. J. Michelli, secretary to the London School of Tropical

Medicine; Dr. S. S. Sprigge, editor of the Lancet; Professor James Walker, professor of chemistry, University of Edinburgh; and Dr. Dawson Williams, editor of the British Medical Journal. C.M.G.: Mr. I. B. Pole Evans, chief of the division of botany and plant pathology, Department of Agriculture, Union of South Africa. C.I.E.: Lieutenant-Colonel W. F. Harvey, director of the Central Research Institute, Kasauli, Punjab, and Dr. E. J. Butler, formerly Imperial Mycologist, Pusa. K.C.V.O.: Dr. F. S. Hewett.

THE Journal of the American Medical Association states that its Paris exchanges for the last week in December were crowded with accounts of the elaborate festivities of the centenary of the Academy of Medicine. The entire issue of the Presse médicale for December 25 is devoted to an illustrated description, with the addresses delivered by Laveran, the present president of the academy, and others. The official delegates from other countries included sixteen from England, five from the United States; eleven from Belgium, including Bordet, Brachet and Willems; Arteaga, from Bolivia; O. de Oliveira, from Brazil; Córdova, Donoso, Orego and Sierra, from Chile; Esguerra and Machado from Colombia; Cueva and Villamar, from Ecuador; Nourgo and Nobles from Guatemala; Arce and Chutro, from Argentina; two delegates also from Peru; Silva, from Salvador; Carlos, Fonseca, Tijera, Rincones, Rísquez and Velásquez, from Venezuela; Ito and Tsuchiga from Japan; O. PeiHuan, from China; Robert from Siam, and Cassens from Haiti. Twenty-nine countries were represented in all. A medal to commemorate the occasion was struck. The president of the republic of France was present with two of his ministers and all the préfets of the département. The celebration concluded with a banquet and a reception at the Palais d'Orsay. Toasts were offered at the banquet by Cassens, for Haiti; Recasens, for Spain; van der Berg, for Holland; Cueva, for Ecuador; Kalliontzis, for Greece, and Lucatello, for Italy. Wright, of England, was seated at the right hand of the president of the academy.

WE learn from Nature that the British Air Ministry announces that the cabinet has approved, subject to parliamentary sanction, the grant of a sum for the direct assistance of civil aviation. During the financial year 1921-22 payments under this grant will be limited to a maximum sum of £60,000, and will be made to British companies operating on approved aerial routes. The routes at present approved are London to Paris, London to Brussels, and London to Amsterdam. Extensions to these

routes and additional routes, such as England

Scandinavia, on which the possibilities of a service employing flying boats or amphibian machines or a mixed service of sea and land aircraft can be demonstrated, may be approved.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

ANNOUNCEMENT has been made at Brown University of the completion of the Nathaniel French Davis Fund in honor of Professor Davis, now emeritus, who was for forty-one years a teacher of mathematics in the university. The fund amounts to ten thousand dollars and the income is to supplement the reg

ular library appropriations in purchasing mathematical books and periodicals for the mathematical seminary.

DR. VICTOR C. VAUGHAN, for thirty years dean of the University of Michigan Medical School, has resigned. Dr. Vaughan has been professor of hygiene and physiological chemistry since 1884.

Ar Colgate University, Associate Professor A. W. Smith has been made full professor and head of the department of mathematics as successor to Professor J. M. Taylor. Professor T. R. Aude, of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, has been appointed associate professor of mathematics.

DR. SOLON MARX WHITE, Minneapolis, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, has been appointed chief of the department of medicine to succeed Dr. Leonard G. Rowntree, now associated with the Mayo Clinic.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE ON THE OCCurrence of AËDES SOLLICITANS IN FRESH WATER POLLUTED BY ACID

WASTE

It is believed to be of interest to students of mosquitoes to report the occurrence of Aedes sollicitans, a salt marsh mosquito, in fresh water polluted by acid waste from a "guano factory." During October, 1920, while making investigations concerning fishes in relation to mosquito control at Savannah,

Georgia, in cooperation with the U. S. Public Health Service and the city of Savannah, the writer found mosquito larvæ in ditches which were so strongly polluted that all other animal life appeared to be extinct. The larvae were collected from time to time and reared to the adult stage. Dr. Bassett, bacteriologist for the city of Savannah, identified the species as Aedes sollicitans and this determination later was verified by Dr. Dyar, of the U. S. Bureau of Entomology.

The acid content of the water in the ditches where the pollution was greatest was not determined but a water sample taken downstream where the pollution had become greatly diluted and where Aëdes sollicitans was re

placed by Anopheles crucians and Culex sp.

was titrated by Dr. Bassett and found to contain 2.08 per cent. of free acid and a large amount of iron. It is quite probable that the water in portions of the ditches in which the larvæ of Aëdes sollicitans were common had an acid content of fully 3 per cent.

The larvæ occurred most frequently along the edges of the ditches among decaying vegetation and they displayed a stronger resistance to the toxicity of oil than Culex and Anopheles larvæ occurring in the more weakly polluted portions of the same ditches.

SAMUEL F. HILDEBRAND U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES, WASHINGTON, D. C.

THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

THE application made to the council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for the organization of a new Section to be devoted to the History of Science was de

nied by the council (October 17, 1920), but permission was granted for those interested in the History of Science to enter Section L on "Historical and Philological Sciences," a Section which had never been organized and existed only in name.

The special committee appointed by the president of the association for the organization of a History of Science Section, recommended, on December 16, 1920, that the words "and philological" be dropped. This recommendation was likewise rejected by the council. It is clear, therefore, (1) that the council does not deem it wise to admit a separate section on the History of Science and (2) that the organization effected in Chicago on December 29, 1920, will not meet the needs of the increasing number of men interested in the History of Science, since, at any time, those representing "Philological Sciences" and the "Historical Sciences" (whatever that term may mean), may step in and give rise to a heterogeneous, incoherent group of workers, having no interests in common. If representatives of the "Philological Sciences" and "Historical Sciences" do not appear, then Section L constitutes in reality the very kind of organization which the council decreed should not be admitted as a Section.

In the judgment of the present writer, the dignified and logical procedure for those interested in the History of Science is, therefore, to withdraw altogether from organized historical work in connection with the American Association for the Advancement of Science until such time when the council and general session will be ready to welcome them into the association as a separate Section.

These experiments proved very conclusively that photographs from the air, using present-day equip ment, are of little practical value to the hydrographer (p. 575).

Those interested in the study of underwater features may be interested in the opposite view published in Comptes Rendus.2 Objects in French water were photographed to a maximum depth of 17 m. and several points of rock were revealed by the photographs which had escaped detection by other methods. ("Plusieurs têtes de roche qui avaient échappé aux levés détaillés et trés exacts de ces parages ont été ainsi révélées par la photographie.") Specific instances are given where points of rock dangerous to shipping, not indicated on the hydrographic charts, were discovered by means of the photographs.

Perhaps the statement that photographs taken from the air are of little practical value is more conclusive than was intended.

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

WILLIS T. LEE

SOIL COLOR STANDARDS

In order that there may be uniformity in the designation of the color of soils it is proposed that a set of color standards be prepared in which those colors which occur in soils and subsoils may be represented. Such a set of standard colors would be of great value to soil survey workers and would certainly lead to a better understanding of the descriptions of soils from the various regions of the United States and of the earth as a whole.

In order that such a set of color standards might be published representative soils from all parts of the United States would need to be examined. No doubt the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture could lead in the work and by consultation with various State Soil Surveys and with the Soil Surveys of other nations standardize the colors and publish reproductions of them as Robert Ridgway did in his "Color Standard and Color Nomenclature" (published by 2 Tome 169, 27 October, 1919.

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

The Letters of William James. Edited by his son, HENRY JAMES. Two volumes, xx + 348 and xiii +382, The Atlantic Monthly Press, Boston, 1920. $10.00.

William James was one of the half dozen greatest Americans of his generation; he was also a past master of writing. Every one with intellectual interests will wish to read his letters. They will be well rewarded, whether they seek better acquaintance with a great man, or literature itself, or stimuli to reflections upon the conditions of scholarly and scientific work in America.

The most notable fact about James himself which the letters reveal and emphasize is that he was from youth a philosopher and moralist, tremendously interested in the world as a whole and in its deeper meanings. Painting, natural history and medicine, each for a brief time, and psychology for almost a score of years, restrained him from the study of fundamental questions and sweeping statements which really had his life-long allegiance. At the age of twenty-six, while studying medicine and expecting to earn his living by practising it, and while gaining considerable acquaintance with the best work of the time in physiology and psychology, he was reading Hegel and writing that Kant's "Kritik" "strikes me so far as almost the sturdiest and honestest piece of work I ever saw." In the partial list of his readings during the half year after he took his M.D. philosophy and religion outweighed science and medicine nearly ten to

one.

In respect to the actual working of James's

intellect, the letters probably do not add much to what the shrewd reader would infer from the "Principles of Psychology," the "Varieties of Religious Experience," "Pragmatism" and other writings. The letters show brilliantly the extreme fertility of mind, the receptivity to facts, theories and viewpoints of all sorts, the impulsive reaction to approve and make the best out of every man's offering, the intuitive sense of causes and consequences, and the perfect candor and directness. They do not show so well the sheer mastery in observing and organizing the facts of human nature and behavior, the final recognitions of truth and value, and the persistent refusal to tolerate inadequacies or imperfections by which James worked his way to them.

As literature the letters have the verve, the magic gift of epithet and the utter sincerity which, writing or speaking, James never lacked. His caricature, or possibly characterization, of the university professor will be often quoted:

-a being whose duty is to know everything, and have his own opinion about everything, connected with his Fach. . . . has the most prodigious faculty of appropriating and preserving knowledge, and as for opinions, he takes au grand sérieux his duties there. He says of each possible subject, "Here I must have an opinion. Let's see! What shall it be? How many possible opinions are there? three? four? Yes! just four! Shall I take one of these? It will seem more original to take a higher position, a sort of Vermittelungsansicht between them all. That I will do, etc., etc." So he acquires a complete assortment of opinions of his own; and, as his memory is so good, he seldom forgets which they are! But this is not reprehensible; it is admirable-from the professorial point of view.

He tells his little daughter of a big mastiff:

The ears and face are black, his eyes are yellow, his paws are magnificent, his tail keeps wagging all the time, and he makes on me the impression of an angel hid in a cloud. He longs to do good.

Of the subtleties in the theme and treatment of his brother's latest novels he writes:

You know how opposed your whole "third manner'' of execution is to the literary ideals which