Paris, president of the Academy of Sciences and of Medicine.

DR. O. SCHULTZE, professor of anatomy and physiology in the University of Wurzburg, has died at the age of sixty-one years.

WILLIAM HODGSON ELLIS, former professor of applied chemistry and dean of the faculty of applied science at the University of Toronto, died on August 24, in his seventy-fifth year.

WILLIAM JAMES WILSON, for many years paleobotanist for the Canadian Geological Survey, died at Ottawa, on August 21, aged sixtynine years.

PROFESSOR H. D. FRARY, assistant professor of steam and gas engineering at the University of Wisconsin with his wife was drowned in August in the Wisconsin river at Kilbourn, while on a camping trip. Professor Frary had been on the university faculty during the past academic year and during the previous two years had been connected with the Forest Products laboratory. He was a graduate of the University of Minnesota and obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy at the University of Illinois in 1918.

THE sixth national exposition of chemical industries will be held in the Grand Central Palace during the week of September 20.

THE British government has provided a sum not exceeding £100,000 as a guarantee against loss resulting from the holding of a British Empire Exhibition in London next year. The grant is conditional on the provision of a further sum of £500,000 by the promoters of the enterprise.

THE Second International Congress of Comparative Pathology will be held in Rome in the spring of 1921 under the presidency of Professor Perroncito.

THE International Surgical Society at its recent general assembly, decided to hold its next international congress at London, July, 1923, under presidency of Professor Macewen of Glasgow.

Ir is stated in The Observatory that the late Mr. T. W. Backhouse has left his astronomical journals and drawings of Jupiter and

Mars to the British Astronomical Association. His trustees are to complete and publish his star maps for tracing meteor paths, and they have £700 left to them to cover the completion and publication of scientific calculations based on observations made by him in astronomy, meteorology, and other branches of science.

THE Academy of Medicine of Buenos Aires has decided to celebrate its first centenary in 1922 with a contest on medicine and allied sciences. Three prizes will be granted for the best papers presented; the first of 5,000 pesos and a gold medal, the second 3,000 pesos and a silver medal and the third 1,000 pesos and a diploma.

A SUM of 500,000 marks has been donated to the University of Heidelberg to found an institute for research on albumins. It is to be in charge of Professor Kossel, and to be affiliated with the Institute for Hygiene.

PROFESSOR J. IJIMA, of the University of Tokyo, has presented fifty Japanese birds to the University of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and Dr. William S. Kew, of the United States Geological Survey, has presented to the department of paleontology a collection of shells.

A REORGANIZATION of the division of entomology at the University of California is announced. The personnel of the division consists of eight members and will hereafter be known as the division of entomology and parasitology with Professor W. B. Herms as newly appointed head. Professor Herms will continue his activities in the field of parasitology, particularly medical entomology and ecology, while Professor C. W. Woodworth will devote his time largely, if not wholly, to research. The new organization of the division embraces three groups with Assistant Professor E. C. Van Dyke as chairman in supervision of activities in general entomology and taxonomy; Assistant Professor Essig, chairman in supervision of agricultural entomology, and Assistant Professor S. B Freeborn supervising activities in parasitology, particularly in relation to the animal industries. Dr. H. H. Sev

erin will continue investigating Eutetix tenella in relation to sugar beet blight, while Messrs. E. R. de Ong and G. A. Coleman will continue their activities in their respective fields, namely, university farm school and agriculture, respectively.

THE Olympia Agricultural Company, Ltd., is a British syndicate which has purchased agricultural estates aggregating 20,000 acres in the counties of Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Warwickshire and Wiltshire. The Experiment Station Record states that a research department has recently been organized under the direction of Dr. Charles Crowther, professor of agricultural chemistry in the University of Leeds and director of the institute for research in animal nutrition in that university. This department will exercise advisory functions in connection with the large scale farming operations of the company, and for some time its activities will consist mainly of experiments essential to the establishment of a sound basis for this advisory work, but it is announced that its primary object will be to conduct research in various branches of agricultural science and practise for the general welfare of British agriculture.

THE British Forestry Conference at the meeting held recently in London passed a resolution in favor of the formation of an Em

pire Forestry Association, for the promotion and development of public interest in forestry throughout the empire, and also created an interim committee to consider ways and means. The committee appointed has drawn up proposals for circulation to all parts of the empire, for the establishment of a governing council for the association, and for the formation of an interim executive committee. The committee held that in view of the vast area embraced, the association's activities, apart from occasional conferences, must take a literary form. Its principal medium of communication would probably consist of a journal, issued quarterly. A publication of this kind, dealing with the needs, problems and progress of forestry in all parts of the empire, should, it is felt, be of interest and practical value to foresters, students

of forestry and owners of woodlands, as well as the architects, engineers and traders interested in the distribution and use of timber.

PLANS of the State Forestry Department for extensive reforestation in the woods and on the waste lands of Pennsylvania this year will call for the largest amount of seeds ever used and efforts are being made to secure as much as possible from indigenous trees. This will be the first time this work has been undertaken on such an extensive scale. As this is a year of heavy seed bearing by most of the species of forest trees unusually large quantities of seed will be collected from the various State forests. Any seed not planted in the four state forest tree nurseries next spring will be held over for planting the year following in case it is a lean seed year. While most of the seed to be collected will be used to grow young forest trees for planting on state lands and on private timber lands, some from deciduous trees will produce shade trees for free distribution to cities and boroughs for municipal and educational plantings.

A SECOND edition of the Index Generalis of universities, university colleges, libraries, scientific institutes, museums, observatories, learned societies, etc., is being prepared. Particulars are accepted from all nationalities, and should be addressed to Professor R. de Montessus de Ballore, 56, Rue de Vaugirard, Paris (VIo).

THE birth rate for the metropolitan area of Sydney, N. S. W., for 1919 was the lowest on record, being 14 per cent. below the average for the previous five years. The rate is equivalent to 23.05 per 1,000 of population. The decline in the birth rate since 1914 has been 5 per 1,000, but probably not all the decline can be attributed to the war, as the rate, after increasing from 1903 to 1912, declined slightly from 1912 to 1914. Illegitimate children numbered 7.41 per cent. of the total births, equivalent to 1.71 per 100 of population.

IT is stated in the Experiment Station Record that the government of Argentina has recently offered additional scholarships in the agricultural schools of Casilda, Tucuman, Cordoba and Mendoza to young men of Peru

desiring to follow up their studies in Argentina. The municipal council of Buenos Aires, on December 22, 1919, passed an ordinance providing for the establishment of a practical school of aviculture in connection with the zoological garden. During the apprentice period pupils will be required to give their services to the school gratuitously. On the completion of the course a diploma as practical aviculturist will be given. In the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture a department of cattle and meat inspection has been established to study contagious cattle diseases and their remedies, and to inspect cattle and meat products intended for export to countries which demand certificates of inspection. A law of November 5, 1919, grants a subsidy of about $10,000 for the establishment of a course in agriculture and industries in the University of Nariño. The Department of Agriculture of Cuba has decided to establish a bureau of commercial information in European and American countries for the purpose of establishing cordial commercial relations between Cuba and the other countries. The first bureau will be established in France.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

Ar a meeting of Messrs. Brunner, Mond, and Co., at Liverpool, on August 4, a resolution to authorize the directors to distribute to universities or other scientific institutions in the United Kingdom for the furtherance of scientific education and research, $500,000 out of the investment surplus reserve account was passed.

THE University of Tennessee College of Medicine will erect a pathologic laboratory building to cost $75,000 near the Memphis General Hospital. This is in accordance with a contract between the university and the Memphis General Hospital by which the school has entire control of the teaching facilities in the hospital for a period of twenty years and the school will nominate the medical, surgical and laboratory staffs of the hospital.

DR. GILBERT H. CADY, who has been connected with the Geological Survey of Illinois for several years and who has recently returned from a year spent in mining interests in the far east, has accepted the position of professor of geology and head of the department in the University of Arkansas. He also becomes state geologist of Arkansas.

AT Northwestern University Miss Margaret Fuller, M.A., Chicago, has been appointed instructor in geology and Mr. Thomas Lloyd Gledhill, M.A., Toronto, has been appointed instructor in mineralogy and geology.

F. A. VARRELMAN, acting professor of botany at Occidental College, Los Angeles, during 1919-20 has accepted a professorship at the State Normal School, Silver City, New Mexico. Dr. F. A. Smiley will reassume the work in this department at Occidental College, having been at the University of California during the past year.

O. A. Haugen, formerly instructor at the University of Wisconsin is returning this fall as assistant professor of chemical engineering. He is at present connected with the Carborundrum company at Niagara Falls.

DR. ENGLISH BAGBY has been appointed instructor in psychology at Yale University.

DR. W. N. HAWORTH has been appointed to the chair of organic chemistry at Armstrong College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in succession to Professor S. Smiles.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE OBLIGATION OF THE INVESTIGATOR TO THE LIBRARY

THE dependence of the present-day investigator upon institutional libraries is almost absolute. Necessarily so, as only a very exoeptional person can own, or provide room for, a library complete enough to cover the range of his professional interests. Even if he owned the books he could not care for them and do anything else. Except in his own. special field, no investigator will attempt to compete with the skilled bibliographers of our better libraries, and even in his own field he is apt to appear at a disadvantage. One

of the most careful workers of my acquaintance recently located, after much search, the title of a somewhat obscure work on stomata, only to find, shortly after, that the book was plainly catalogued under the heading STOMATA in the library of the institution in which he was at work.

The work of the librarian is important to the investigator not only in making the results of previous researches available now, but in the attempt to insure present results being available in the future. If the results of the investigations of to-day are anywhere available to succeeding generations it will be in the larger libraries where the publications containing them are being carefully collected and catalogued. We have heard much recently about cooperation among investigators, its desirability, its difficulty, and its disadvantages, and the means by which its undesirable features may be avoided and its disadvantages and difficulties lessened. Might not brief consideration well be given to cooperation between the investigator and the most important of his co-laborers, a cooperation which can have neither difficulties nor disadvantages?

Those of us who are much in the field, perhaps, appreciate more keenly than those who are always in touch with their homes the special advantages of the public library. In these days of closed bars and crowded hotels the one place where the stranger is sure of a welcome is the public library. And, speak ing seriously, the importance and influence in small communities of libraries as well stocked and well conducted as those of Poughkeepsie, New York, and Riverside, California, for example is hard to estimate. Now that Mr. Carnegie has provided these institutions all over the country with suitable buildings, in his commendable effort to die poor, why should not the investigator, who must die poor anyway, look to their contents?

The smaller public libraries need help especially in this particular. The almost overwhelming demand on these libraries for fiction, especially recent fiction, should not be permitted to exclude scientific material from

their shelves. If the results of our labors, or the methods, or even the activities themselves, are to be made known to the reading public, as much of our literature as possible must be made available in public libraries. Every public library should have at least SCIENCE and the Scientific Monthly. If you find a library that lacks them, urge the authorities to subscribe, and if they lack the funds, give them your own set.

The investigator has, moreover, an obligation to the college library, the library of the college from which he graduated perhaps, or the one nearest his home. Other alumni will care for other interests, the pious for the erection of a new chapel, the more worldly minded for the gymnasium, but the library is too often left to shift for itself, and provided with insufficient funds. This applies particularly to the smaller colleges of course, but it is indeed a rare university library to which the average investigator can not add some volume in the course of ten years' work, and that volume will on the whole be much more useful and safer in a good library than in a private study or laboratory.

From the standpoint of self-interest as well as of common honesty, however, the first duty of the investigator is to the reference libraries, whether general libraries like the John Crerar Library and those of our leading universities, or libraries covering special fields such as the Lloyd Library or those connected with our large botanic gardens. If an investigator accepts the hospitality and uses the facilities of the Library of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, or that of Stanford University, and one is made quite at home in both without introduction, it seems no more than fair that these libraries be supplied in return with as complete a set as possible of his own publications if they lie within the field of interest of the library. I am reliably informed that this practise is by no means general. Comparatively few of the investigators of my acquaintance take the trouble to send reprints of their publications even to the Library of Congress.

That these papers are usually published in

standard periodicals, of which complete sets are supposedly available in these libraries does not cover the case. The United States at least is afflicted with several scientific periodicals of avowedly general nature, and some of the special journals have a none too stable editorial policy. Some of these special journals moreover still further complicate bibliographical work by permitting the publication of abstracts of work which at some time may be judged worthy of adequate publication, thus cluttering their indices beyond the point of convenience if not utility.

If then our libraries, even our special libraries, are to approximate completeness in their indices of current published scientific material they should have the assistance of the investigators themselves, at least to the extent of supplying them with such articles as are reprinted for private circulation. It is an almost universal custom for investigators to distribute reprints of their own papers among their colleagues. To add to these private mailing lists the names of the fifty leading libraries of this and other countries would mean some trouble and some slight expense. The time and cost thus involved would however be a very small fraction indeed of that expended in the prosecution and publication of the work and the insurance thus purchased that the papers would be cared for and made more available to this and succeeding generations would be well worth the investment.

NEIL E. STEVENS

BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, WASHINGTON, D. C.

THE FUR SEALS

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In an interesting and suggestive article on the "Rescued Fur Seal Industry" in SCIENCE for July 23, Mr. W. T. Hornaday states that "man's so-called management (of the herd) lies solely in the use of the seal killer's club and the skinning knife." This is not quite the whole truth, for while the behavior of individual animals in feeding, breeding, or migration is beyond human control, man can do something to in

crease the numbers. In the nineties, most of the young seals lying on sandy "rookeries " were killed by the hookworm (Uncinaria lucasi). Those on the rocks were virtually immune and as the shrinkage of the herd, before its rescue took them practically all off the sands, no wormy pups" are lately reported. In 1897, the Commission of that year gather up and mostly burned-12,000" pups that had been weakened by the hookworm and then trampled by the bulls. In that year we had several sandy patches in Zapadni rookery covered by rocks, and we suggested fencing the animals away from the great sand flat of Tolstoi. To cover or fence up sandy areas is a possible factor of "management."

Another is the extirpation of the "idle bulls" which surround the rookeries and raid the harems, killing many females and young. Ninety per cent. or more of the males of this polygamous species are wholly superfluous. In the recent absurdly neediess "five years closed season" these have accumulated to the danger point. I am told that an order has now been given for the shooting of 7,000 of them.

The protection of the females from killing on land and sea may be also regarded as a phase of "management."

Whether other islands could be stocked from the Pribilofs has never been tested. On these islands there is ample breeding space for millions more, and there is no evidence of food shortage outside.

DAVID STARR JORDAN

A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE GERMINATION OF UROPHLYCTIS ALFALFE

RESTING spores from decaying galls of alfalfa crown-wart have been observed to germinate in water cultures. The globose resting spores, depressed on one side, are 38-42 by 30 microns in diameter. They produce from one to fifteen or more zoosporangia which escape through irregular fissures in the brown walls. The zoosporangia vary in diameter from 10 to 40 microns. Zoospores leave the sporangia through short tubes projecting about 2 microns from the hyaline wall, with