ing Professor W. J. Mead, of the department of geology, W. R. Appleby, of the school of mines, University of Minnesota; Professor W. H. Emmons, University of Minnesota; Frank Hutchinson, consulting engineer, Duluth, Minn.; L. D. Davenport, mining engineer, Hibbing, Minn.; and W. H. Graigo, mining engineer, recently of South Africa, of the University of Wisconsin, will go to China this summer as consulting experts for the South Manchuria Railway company. The party will sail from Seattle early in June and return in October. Professor Mead writes: The South Manchuria Railway company controls partly developed iron and coal deposits near Mukdan, South Manchuria. The iron deposits resemble geologically those of the Lake Superior region. The railway company has employed a group of technical men familiar with the Lake Superior iron mining industry to make a thorough investigation of the Manchurian deposits during the coming summer and to advise on the best methods of opening up and developing both the iron ore and the coal. EXPEDITION TO THE UPPER BASIN OF THE AMAZON AN expedition to the headwaters of the Amazon River, under the leadership of Dr. H. H. Rusby, dean of the school of pharmacy of Columbia University, will sail for Antofagasta, Chile, on June 1. The main object of the expedition, which is financed by the H. K. Mulford Company, is the collection of herbs. and plants likely to be of use in medicine, but studies will be made of the fauna and flora of the region. Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, statistician and vice-president of the Prudential Life Insurance Company, will accompany the expedition to make a study of health conditions with a view to the possibility of the acclimatization of white men in the region. Other members of the expedition are: Dr. William M. Mann, assistant entomologist of the Bureau of Entomology of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, in charge of entomology; Dr. Everett Pearson, University of Indiana, in charge of ichthyology; Dr. Orland E. White, of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, representing Har vard University, in charge of botany; and George S. McCarthy, of Woodbury, N. J., taxidermist. From Antofagasta, the expedition will travel by way of the Guggenheim mining properties to La Paz, Bolivia. From La Paz it will pass through unexplored territory, crossing the Andes at an elevation of more than 19,000 feet. Calomar will be used as a base for the expedition. SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS THE ROYAL SOCIETY on May 5 elected as foreign members Dr. Albert Calmette, of the Pasteur Institute; Dr. Henri Deslandres, of the Paris Observatory; Professor Albert Einstein, of the University of Berlin; Professor Albin Haller, of the University of Paris; Professor E. B. Wilson, of Columbia University, and Professor P. Zeeman, of the University of Amsterdam. PROFESSOR GEORGE C. WHIPPLE, of the Harvard Engineering School and the Harvard Technology School of Public Health, has been elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Sanitary Institute of Great Britain. DR. OTTO KLOTZ, director of the Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, has been elected president of Section III. (Mathematical, Physical and Chemical Sciences) of the Royal Society of Canada. THE following officers were elected at the annual meeting of the Kentucky Academy of Sciences on May 14: President, George D. Smith, Eastern Kentucky State Normal School, Richmond, Ky. Vice-president, Lucien Beckner, Winchester, Ky. Secretary, A. M. Peter, Experiment Station, Lexington, Ky. Treasurer, Chas. A. Shull, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky. Member of Publications Committee, D. W. Martin, Georgetown College, Georgetown, Ky. Representative in the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, A. M. Peter. DR. A. R. MANN, dean of the New York State Agricultural College at Cornell Uni versity, has declined the post of New York State Commissioner of Agriculture, to which he was recently appointed by the State Council of Farms and Markets. ROBERT C. DUNCAN, physicist at the Bureau of Standards, has resigned to accept a position as technicist for the Bureau of Ordnance, Navy Department. MR. B. H. RAWL, assistant chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, has resigned to take charge of the educational work of the California Central Creameries, with headquarters in San Francisco. DR. W. K. GREGORY sailed for Sydney, New South Wales, on May 31, to enlist the cooperation of Australian museums with the American Museum of Natural History and to secure material for the Australian Hall of the Museum. MR. W. L. G. JOERG, of the scientific staff of the American Geographical Society of New York and editor of its Research Series, left on May 21 on a six months' leave of absence for a trip to Europe on behalf of the society to study the present status and tendencies of geography in Europe and to establish closer relations with kindred workers and institutions. DR. H. H. WHETZEL, head of the department of plant pathology at Cornell University, has been granted sabbatical leave for the year 1921-22. He will sail on June 8 for Bermuda, where he is to be associated with the Department of Agriculture of the Islands in plant disease survey and research work. Dr. L. M. Massey will be acting head of the department in the absence of Professor Whetzel. A BOTANICAL garden, established as part of Albany's park development program in cooperation with the Albany College of Pharmacy, which will contain every plant grown in the state, is included in the new college plans. According to Dean Mansfield, the garden will be one of the most complete of its kind in the United States and will be arranged after the plan of the London and Paris botanical parks. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS OFFICIAL announcement is made in Yale Alumni Weekly of the construction in the immediate future of a new chemical laboratory by Yale University. It will be known as the Sterling Chemical Laboratory and will be constructed to accommodate all the undergraduate and graduate chemical activities of the university. At present the department of chemistry is occupying the two departmental laboratories, Kent and Sheffield, which are inadequate to meet the future growth of the department. A MEMORIAL has been presented to the council of the Senate of the University of Cambridge for a syndicate to be appointed to consider possible alterations in the Mathematical and Natural Sciences Triposes with the object of facilitating the acquisition by candidates in one subject of a knowledge of the other. PROFESSOR R. A. DUTCHER of the department of biochemistry will leave the University of Minnesota at the end of the school year to become head of the department of chemistry in the college of agriculture at Pennsylvania State College. PROFESSOR A. D. Ross, professor of mathematics and physics and formerly vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia, Perth, has been elected a member of the governing body of the university. It is proposed to appoint Professor H. Lamb, now in residence in the University of Cambridge, to an honorary university lectureship to be called the Rayleigh lectureship in mathematics. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE AURORA OF MAY 14, 1921 A VERY bright auroral display was observed here on the evening of May 14. The sky was overcast until 10 P.M. eastern standard time. As the clouds dissolved, the aurora was noted in spite of the bright moonlight. The focus of the display was near the zenith in the vicinity of the star Arcturus. From that point streamers radiated in all directions, constantly changing both in position and in intensity. Across these streamers, pale green pulsating clouds drifted, in general from north to south, but occasionally assuming a spiral form around the zenith. They attained their maximum brightness near the zenith where they were especially conspicuous on account of their almost instantaneous changes in intensity. Bright colors were not noticed during the evening, but after the moon set about midnight, pale reds and blues appeared on the edges of the streamers and clouds. The display continued at intervals throughout the night. It was not more conspicuous in the north than in other directions. The aurora was undoubtedly due to the very large group of sun-spots which had just passed the center of the sun's disk. MIDDLETOWN, CONN., May 15, 1921 FREDERICK SLOCUM AGAINST a clear, moonlit sky, a brilliant auroral display was observed at Ames, Iowa, between 8:30 and 10:30 P.M. on May 14. The arch which was visible throughout this time except at short intervals, formed in our magnetic north and extended about 15 degrees above the horizon. As the streamers, which were predominantly white, grew in number, in length and in extent along the horizon, they converged to a focus at a point somewhat variable in position but approximately 15° south and 5° west of the zenith, which point, the magnet zenith, became a center of radiation for the streamers. Abouth 15 minutes before the maximum development of the display, streamers of red were seen to rise from the horizon a few degreees south of east and to extend through the radiant center to the horizon about the same distance north of west, forming an arch along a magnetic parallel. The maximum degree of brilliancy was attained at 9:27, when the streamers from a large coronal area formed about the magnetic zenith extended to the horizon in all directions, lighting the entire heavens. The radial streamers were visible within a few degrees of the moon, which had just passed the first quarter. At this time a dark area a few degrees west of south on the horizon closely resembled an auroral arch, but a definite segment of a circle like that on the northern horizon could not be discerned. The shades, tints and hues, changeable and increasing from the beginning of the observation, now became more distinct and all of the primary colors appeared in varying degrees of intensity. Reappearing intermittently, the colors gradually faded away during the remaining hour of the display. DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY, IOWA STATE COLLEGE JOHN E. SMITH RUSSIAN GEOLOGISTS THE sad fate that has befallen many of the leading Russian geologists and mineralogists constitutes a gloomy chapter in the history of these sciences. From particulars gathered by Professor Sederholm, of Sweden,1 and confirmed by a personal letter of March 30, 1921, received from Dr. Cornelius Doelter of Vienna, the following data have been secured. Of some seventy Russian specialists in these fields eleven are dead. Of these, there died in Petrograd the well-known Professors Inostranzer, Fedorov (who died of hunger), Karakash, Derzhavin and Kasanski. Professor Sokolov died in Moscow. Professor Armasevski was shot in Kiev, as were Professors Samiatin and Mitkyevich in Petrograd. Stopnjevich died of smallpox and Snertkov of hunger-typhus. Baron Rebinder committed suicide, and it is reported that Faas is seriously ill. The president of the Petrograd Academy of Sciences, and former director of the Geological Institute, Alexander Karpinsky, the Nestor of Russian geologists, who is now eighty years old, lives with his three daughters, a son-in-law, and his grandchildren, in a cold kitchen, and suffers great deprivation be 1 Given by Professor Mohr in Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie, 15 Jan., 1921, No. 2, p. 60, from the Svenska Dagbladet. cause of the lack of necessaries of life, although his scholars, with touching zeal, bring everything they are able to secure. Professor Andrussov and the Academician Vernadsky were fortunate enough to make their way to South Russia, and it is stated that the latter seems to be in good circumstances, as he has founded a new academy of sciences in Kiev, and also a new university in Simferopol. About ten of these scientists fled across the frontier, and escaped to Finland or Poland, or even to America or Japan, and perhaps as many more are scattered through Siberia. From fifteen to twenty are probably in the Russian provinces, but only about ten are managing to exist in Petrograd. The famous mineralogist Fedorov, whose death from hunger we have noted, was the first to proclaim, at a meeting in St. Petersburg, in 1889, the great advantages that would result from the application of the principle of the theodolite to goniometrical researches. Four years later, in 1893, he published his classic work, "The theodolite method in mineralogy and petrography." 2 G. F. K. AND E. T. W. SCIENTIFIC BOOKS The Coccida. Tables for the Identification of the Sub-families and Some of the More Important Genera and Species, together with Discussions of their Anatomy and Life History. By ALEX. D. MACGILLIVRAY. Scarab Company, Urbana, Ill., 1921. Pp. viii+502. $6.00. Entomologists who have been acquainted with Dr. MacGillivray's thoroughgoing studies of the scale-insects have long awaited the appearance of this volume. The material was originally collected for the use of students in the identification of Coccids. Prepared in its first draft about fifteen years ago, it has been greatly extended, modified and revised as it was being tested out in laboratory and class work. 2 W. W. Nikitin, "La Méthode universelle de Fedorov," French transl. by Louis Duparc and Véra de Dervies, 2 vols. Geneva, Paris and Liège, 1914, Vol. I., p. 6. In no group of insects of equal importance is so much reliance in systematic work placed upon minute structural details. Many a would-be student of the group has been deterred by difficulties of preparation of material and by lack of a comprehensive discussion, in English, of the morphology. To such the volume will prove a veritable boon. A chapter is devoted to details of technique. In this are considered necessary equipment, tools, clarifying and the various stages in the making of permanent preparations. This is followed by a chapter on the external anatomy of the Coccide. The "great number of species and the dearth of usable characters, because of the simplification of their external form and structure, makes it necessary to employ every available structure." In spite of the lack of illustrations, the discussion and definition of these structures is clear-cut. Figures were omitted for pedagogical the Bureau of Soils, United States Department of Agriculture. The Macmillan Company, New York. 1920. Pp. xviii+399. Illustrations: 56 plates, general soil map of the Southern States (frontispiece), and four additional maps. This book departs from the usual trend of books on soils in that instead of dealing with the properties and nature of soils in general the author describes the origin, geographic distribution, physical characteristics, agricultural adaptations and management of all the important soils occuring in the area under discussion. The states included in the work are those lying south of the north boundaries of Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia, south of the Ohio River, and south and east of and including Missouri, Kansas and Texas. DEPARTMENT OF AGRONOMY, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY SPECIAL ARTICLES AN AGE COMPUTING DEVICE 1. In a recent issue of SCIENCE (1920, No. 1336, pp. 134-135), Dr. Slonaker describes a device for the simultaneous determination of the ages of two individuals at different times in their lives, involving the use of a calendar in which the days are numbered consecutively throughout the year. The present device obviates the need of the calendar and the need for resetting for dates in different years. As used with reference to human beings, two accessory scales aid in determining in years the age of an individual at different episodes in his life, when his present age and the years in which the episodes occurred are known, In the introduction the author explains the division of the country under consideration into soil provinces and subordinate soil regions, and describes the United States Bureau of Soils system of classification and nomenclature of soil series and types. The introduction further takes up the geographical distribution and in general the adaptation to different soils of the various crops grown in the South; and the influence of climate on soils and crops. and vice versa. The general geography, topography, geology and agriculture of each soil province and its subordinate soil regions are discussed, followed by detailed descriptions of the individual soils. These descriptions include the location, physical and frequently chemical characteristics, topography, drainage and crop adaptation of each soil, and methods of soil management and fertilization which actual farm practise and experimentation have proven to be most effective. Four appendixes include discussions of the meanings of terms used in soil classification, chemical analyses of representative southern soils, a bibliography of important publications on soils and related subjects, and statistics bearing on some of the important farm products of the southern states. The book is valuable not only to students and agricultural investigators but also to |