gists and land surveyors. The proposed act calls for the registration of all members of these professions who practise their profession in the state of Wisconsin. It is understood, however, that only those persons whose practise of their profession involves the public health and safety will be affected by this law. In order to receive a certificate of registration an engineer or chemist must present evidence that he is fully qualified to practise his profession, and that he is of good character and repute, that he is at least twenty-five years of age and that he is a citizen of either the United States or Canada. The following— under the provisions of the proposed actwill be considered as evidence of the professional qualifications: 1. Ten or more years of active engagement in the profession. 2. Graduation, after a course of not less than four years, in chemistry, from a reputable college, and an additional four years of active engagement in the profession. The act provides for a board to apply the provisions of the act, for penalties in case of presentation of fraudulent evidence to obtain a certificate, and for penalties for those who practise fraud or deception in the practise of their profession.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

By the will of Daniel Baugh a legacy of $150,000 has been left to the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, to be used for the salary of the professor of anatomy and director of the Daniel Baugh Institute of Anatomy and Biology. J. Parsons Schaeffer, M.D., Ph.D., is the present occupant of these positions. Mr. Baugh was a trustee of the Jefferson Medical College and made generous gifts to it, including an institute of anatomy.

THE graduate school of Yale University has been authorized to confer the degree of doctor of philosophy for work in clinical medicine, and in pharmacology and toxicology.

THE University of Alabama, cooperating with the U. S. Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, has established a department of hygiene, with Dr. Hiram Byrd as director.

DR. ELIOT BLACKWELDER, of Denver, Colo., formerly associate professor of geology in the University of Wisconsin, has been appointed lecturer on geology at Harvard University.

DR. E. W. SCRIPTURE, formerly of Yale University and the medical school of Columbia University, has been appointed to the faculty of the University of Hamburg for the summer semester, where he will lecture on English philology and experimental phonetics.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE PREGLACIAL OUTLET OF LAKE ERIE

Two or three months ago an item went the rounds of the newspapers to the effect that in digging for the locks on the new Welland Canal, at Thorold, ten or twelve miles west of Niagara Falls, the workmen had uncovered evidence of the existence there of the longlooked-for preglacial outlet from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. Partly for the sake of verifying this, I chose to spend my vacation at St. Catharines, two or three miles north of Thorold. Thorold is on the brink of the escarpment of Niagara limestone overlooking the Ontario basin and 330 feet above the surface of the lake. St. Catharines is at the base of the escarpment, nearly down to the level of the lake. At Thorold, as well as at various other places along the escarpment, there is a slight incision made by a small stream which poured over the escarpment in preglacial times. But it does not extend far. What was shown in the excavation for the Welland Canal was simply the edge of the escarpment where it had been rounded off by glacial action without lowering it to any extent. It is interesting and important to note that the movement of ice was here from north to south, almost at right angles to the escarpment. The workmen reported that at a low level just north of the escarpment a great quantity of bowlders was found, which would seem to be something of the nature of a moraine. As the ice met and overcame the edge of the escarpment it was occasionally deflected into a minor incision, but after it mounted the escarpment a long level sur

face rock was exposed with beautiful parallel striation running north and south. The exposure, therefore, had nothing to do with the preglacial outlet, but it gave emphatic evidence that the ice movement was not in the direction of the axis of the lakes but directly across it, and hence could not be a means of eroding the lake basin.

The actual preglacial outlet of Lake Erie, however, emerges from the escarpment about three miles southwest of St. Catharines. This was discovered by Dr. J. W. Spencer and the evidence presented in great detail in his report published by the Canadian Survey in 1907,

on

The Evolution of the Falls of Niagara," a volume of 500 pages in which the facts relating to Niagara Falls and the glacial phenomena of the peninsula between the lakes are presented with great fullness and accuracy. I could do little more than follow in Dr. Spencer's footsteps with this book in hand, to test the evidence. The results of Spencer's investigations are very impressive as one goes over the field. At the point mentioned there is an embayment in the escarpment, two miles wide at the level of the Niagara limestone; and lower down at the level of the Clinton limestone or Medina sandstone, the gorge is a mile wide filled with glacial debris which has been penetrated by wells to a considerable distance below the level of Lake Ontario. The glacial filling in the gorge, which originally rose to the surface, has been much eroded by Twelve Mile Creek and its tributaries which penetrate it, giving rise to a region known as the "short hills."

Three or four miles above the mouth of the gorge the line of the outlet is covered by a remarkable deposit of superficial glacial debris known as Font Hill which is something like an immense drumlin or kame and rises at its sumit 300 feet above the level of the Niagara escarpment and extends in a northeast-southwest direction between three and four miles, being at its widest point about a mile wide. The material shows stratification on the sides, such as appears in eskers. This accumulation is unique, and rises up like a mountain peak out of the level plain which extends all

the way north to the Lake Erie basin. I will say nothing further about the theory of its origin at present; but will reserve what I have to say upon it for some future occasion when I may consider it in connection with some other unique glacial accumulations of that character in that region, notably, Berrymans Hill, about a mile west of Niagara Falls.

North of Font Hill, as has been said, there extends a level plain to Lake Erie and only fifteen or twenty feet above it. In this plain all preglacial channels are obliterated by the glacial deposits which form the surface; but Dr. Spencer had collected the record of wells all over the region, which show clearly that there is a continuous buried channel, about 200 feet deep, which emerges from Lake Erie just east of Lowbanks, about half way between the mouth of Grand River and the head of the Welland Canal at Port Colborne. There is, therefore, no doubt left that this "Erigan channel," as Dr. Spencer calls it, which emerges from the Niagara escarpment near St. Catharines is the real preglacial outlet to Lake Erie.

Dr. Spencer's investigations concerning the tributaries of this Erigan channel are also of special interest, and it was the facts, revealed by the well borings, concerning these that led to the real discovery. Chippewa River, which enters the Niagara just above the falls, rises twelve or fifteen miles west of the Erigan channel; but before it reaches the Niagara it crosses a buried channel which well borings show slopes from the Niagara River southwestward until it merges into the Erigan channel. Numerous other tributaries are found to do the same. Mr. Spencer's investigations deserve to be more widely disseminated to forestall the publishing of such items as that referred to at the beginning of this communication.

OBERLIN,

G. FREDERICK WRIGHT

RELATIVITY AND ESTIMATES OF STAR

DIAMETERS

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In reducing the measurements of the diameter of Betelgeuse

made with Michaelson's wonderful apparatus, no allowance appears to have been made for the effect of the gravitational bending of light. Obviously this would make the apparent angular diameter greater than the real, and a rough approximation shows that this gravitational effect may be of the same or an even larger order of magnitude than the observed angle.

Knowing the parallax and being able to make an approximate estimate of the density, the true diameter of Betelgeuse may be determined with fair accuracy. I have made a rough calculation and find that it is approximately only one fifth of the diameter given, but the calculation should be made by others better fitted than I am.

REGINALD A. FESSENDEN

THE CONSERVATION OF GAME AND FUR-
BEARING ANIMALS

THE New York State Conservation Commission issues The Conservationist. Among the many important communications in it, I wish to call especial attention to one, "New York's annual game dividend," written by Warwick S. Carpenter, secretary of the Conservation Commission.

On the basis of precise data the conclusion is reached that the game and fur-bearing animals of New York state, if capitalized, are worth not less than $53,000,000; they return an annual dividend of more than $3,200,000; and they cost the state for their protection and increase the nominal sum of $182,000. This cost of protection and increase is thus less than six per cent. of the annual dividend.

There is need for emphasizing the financial as well as the æsthetic and scientific sides of the conservation problem and these findings of Mr. Carpenter deserve wide publicity.

HENRY B. WARD

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

A Laboratory Manual of Anthropometry. By HARRIS H. WILDER, Ph.D., Professor of Zoology, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 200 pp., 43 illus., P. Blakiston's Son and Co., Phila., 1920.

In order that the records of each observer may be readily made use of by every other observer, it is imperative that series of measures be uniform and be taken in uniform ways. The matter of unification was first placed upon an international basis by the International Congress of Anthropologists held at Monaco in 1906. The unification process was carried still further at the Geneva Congress in 1912. There remain for consideration at some future Congress the general skeletal measures, exclusive of the cranium and lower jaw.

The work of the special International Commissions rightly forms the basis of Wilder's Laboratory Manual. However his statement on page vi of the Preface, that the periodicals in which the reports of the labors of the two Commissions "appeared were exclusively European," is incorrect; for a report from the reviewer's pen, of the work accomplished at Geneva, translated from the official copy of Dr. Rivet, chief recorder of the Commission, appeared both in SCIENCE1 and in the American Anthropologist for the year 1912.

To the measures accepted by international agreement, the author adds a convenient and useful list of general skeletal measures, as well as angles and indices. No mention is made of the Sphenomaxillary angle, which might well find a place even in an abridged manual. His enumeration of instruments and

description of the manner in which they are employed are done with a thorough knowledge of the difficulties which beset the beginner. The pages devoted to simple biometric methods were written for the special benefit of the student, whose chief interest is in morphological relations, and whose mathematical ability and training are not sufficient to enable him to follow abstruse biometric methods.

To the laboratory student of the subject, Wilder's Manual is recommended for its lucidity and conciseness, as well as for the author's ability to transmit a maximum amount of his own pervading enthusiasm for the subject by means of the printed page.

1 Vol. XXXVI., 603–608, November 1, 1912.

For good measure, two instructive appendices are added: A. Measures of Skulls of 93 Indians from Southern New England; B. Bodily Measures of 100 Female College Students. GEORGE GRANT MACCURDY

YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

THE PRODUCTION OF BIOLOGICAL STAINS IN AMERICA

BACTERIOLOGISTS, during the war time, were often hindered in important work, sometimes involving matters of health control, by the lack of dyes which they were accustomed to use for staining. Some laboratories were provided with a sufficient supply of Grübler stains to use all through the war and are only now running out of this supply; but others were early forced to buy stains of American manufacture. Some of the American stains were so poor as to be unhesitatingly condemned, others although enough for some purposes were not suitable for the particular objects, of bacteriologists, while others were so variable as to be unreliable.

Now that the war is over, biological scientists and their supply houses are faced with the problem whether to urge the importation again of German stains (which can now be done only with special permit) or to encourage the establishment of an American source of supply. As scientists we have no objection to the use of German-made materials, and if no other solution of the problem can be found we will be willing enough to consider the Grübler stains standard again, as soon as they can be freely obtained. From the standpoint of national independence, however, it seems well first to see what American producers can do for us in this line, especially when it is considered that certain stains are important to public health and that we ought to be able to count on an uninterrupted supply if there should ever be a new national emergency when importation would become impossible.

The Committee on Bacteriological Technic was asked by the Society of American Bacteriologists to look up the matter, to see

whether reliable stains can be obtained in this country and further to see what can be done to protect bacteriologists against the unsatisfactory stains that are put upon the market. Upon looking into the situation we find that all the bacteriological dyes, and nearly the whole list of biological anilins are produced in America in reliable form. The chief difficulty is that there are too many competitors in the field for such a small line of business. Grübler apparently examined all the available textile dyes and determined which were useful to biologists, standardizing them so that the stains bearing his name were uniform. Then he sold them at a high percentage profit, but a perfectly legitimate profit, considering the labor he saved biologists by the study he gave the subject. A number of American concerns, attracted by the great difference between the cost of crude dyes and the price of biological stains, have thought to realize quite a profit from the business, and have begun the "manufacture and standardization" of biological dyes-often to their own discomfiture, but always to the discomfiture of the users of the stains. For a while there was success for all, because a scientist would give any firm a single test; but the result was a needless duplication of dyes of the same name, sometimes alike, but often different, and also the introduction of new names for old dyes. Although some of these concerns are now going out of business, the confusion still remains.

Gradually the users, or at least the distributors, have been learning which houses are manufacturing the most satisfactory stains, and the less reliable manufacturers have been forced out of the business. But the present situation is such that the future importation of German stains is no longer regarded as impossible. Fearing competition from abroad as well as from the unreliable concerns at home, some of the best producers of biological stains are becoming discouraged and are abandoning the effort to increase their line. Under these circumstances the only way to assure the continued domestic

production of stains is through the cooperation of scientists. After determining some one reliable line of stains we should make this line standard as the Grübler stains were once, and discourage the entrance of new manufacturers into this rather limited field. The line selected as standard need not be all the output of any one laboratory; but the production of any one stain in several different laboratories is an unnecessary waste of effort. All the distributors of stains are anxious to avoid this sort of duplication, and whenever one has been approached in the matter, most hearty cooperation has been assured us.

To carry out this program means considerable preliminary work to determine which of the domestic sources of each stain is the most reliable. Although we have considerable light on this subject already, and can in many cases make private suggestions of possible value to purchasers, we have not as yet the data necessary for making any official statement. We are now planning a series of tests of the most important bacteriological dyes in a considerable number of different laboratories, the outcome of which may determine our future action in the matter. As a society of bacteriologists we are of course primarily interested in the most commonly used bacterial stains, such as fuchsin, methylen blue, the gentian violet group, and the prepared blood stains. Secondarily, however, we are interested in securing the cooperation of other biologists in an attempt to standardize eventually the whole field.

This article is being written in the hopes of securing this cooperation. We wish to invite other biologists as individuals and through their organizations to work with us in the matter. Any one interested in our purpose is urged to communicate with the committee.

H. J. CONN, Chairman, Committee on Bacteriological Technic, of the Society of American Bacteriologists AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION,

GENEVA, N. Y.,

March 1, 1921

SPECIAL ARTICLES

THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATIC ATOM

In attempting recently, to derive the conditions which determine the stability of chemical molecules I was impressed by the importance of the part played by Coulomb's law of inverse square forces between charged particles. In fact, by considering a static arrangement of electrons according to the models which I proposed two years ago, and calculating the total potential energy by Coulomb's law, I have found it possible not only to determine the relative stability of various substances but to calculate with reasonable accuracy the heats of formation of compounds even of widely varying types.

In all such calculations, however, it is necessary to assume that the electrons are kept from falling into the nucleus by some undetermined force, for Coulomb's law alone can not account for this. According to Bohr's theory of atomic structure, the requisite repulsive force is nothing more than centrifugal force due to rotation of the electrons about the nucleus. This theory has been so remarkably successful in accounting for the spectra of hydrogen and helium that the fundamental assumption of movement about the nucleus has seemed justified, notwithstanding the fact that this violates all our classical laws regarding the radiation of energy from accelerated electrons.

From the chemical point of view it is a matter of comparative indifference what the cause of the repulsive force is, so long as it exists. I therefore endeavored to find what law of repulsive force between electrons and positive nuclei would produce an effect equivalent to the centrifugal force of Bohr's theory.

According to Bohr the average kinetic energy in any atom or molecule is half as great as the average potential energy, but opposite in sign. I therefore now assume that this energy, which Bohr called kinetic, is another form of potential energy dependent upon certain quantum changes in the electron.