The 1 present structure, which is of concrete, stone, and brick, has a fully finished basement besides two full stories and a finished third story over the center and larger portion of the building. The present laboratory accommodations for 16 investigators can be extended by conversion of other rooms into laboratories. A well-lighted library, chemical laboratory, photographic room, museum, tank and aquarium rooms are other useful features of the building.

The architect of the building is James M. White, professor of architecture and supervising architect of the University of Illinois, who freely gave his professional services to the national government.

EXPEDITIONS OF THE BISHOP MUSEUM

THREE parties of the Bayard Dominick Expedition from the Bishop Museum are now in the field. The Marquesas Island party consists of Dr. Edward S. Handy, ethnologist; Dr. Ralph Lauton, archeologist; Dr. Forest B. H. Brown, botanist. E. W. Gifford and Wm. C. McKern are conducting an ethnographic survey of the Tonga Islands. R. T. Aitken and John F. G. Stokes, ethnologists, are undertaking an anthropological study of the Austral Island group. Two additional botanists are to be appointed in October.

The scope of the cooperative work of the American Museum of Natural History and the Bishop Museum, under the direction of Dr. L. R. Sullivan, has been expanded to include a comprehensive anthropologic survey of the people of the Hawaiian Islands. It will include studies of the Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Koreans and Anglo-Saxons. Particular attention will be given to full blood and mixed blood Hawaiians and to skeletal remains in ancient burial caves.

It is announced that the Young Collection of Polynesian ethnological material, the result of twenty years' work in the society, Marquesas, Easter and Paumotu Islands by J. L. Young, has been obtained by the Bishop Museum.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

SIR F. W. DYSON, astronomer royal, Greenwich, has been elected an honorary member of the American Astronomical Society.

PROFESSOR T. D. A. COCKERELL, of the University of Colorado, has been elected an honorary fellow of the American Museum of Natural History in recognition of his distinguished services to science.

DR. WILLIAM MANSFIELD CLARK, physical and biological chemist at the Dairy Division, Bureau of Animal Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, has become head of the chemical division of the Hygienic Laboratory.

DR. AMADEUS W. GRABAU, for eighteen years professor of paleontology at Columbia University, has been called by the Chinese government to a professorship at the University of Peking. He also has been appointed a member of the Chinese Geological Survey. Dr. Grabau will remain for three years in China to build up geological research work for the Chinese government.

MR. JAMES T. NEWTON, commissioner of patents, has resigned, after thirty years of service in the Patent Office.

MR. LESLIE SPIER, assistant in anthropology in the American Museum, has been appointed associate curator of the museum of the department of anthropology in the University of California.

DR. RODNEY B. HARVEY, formerly plant physiologist in the Division of Plant Physiological Investigations, Bureau of Plant Industry, who resigned to accept the position of assistant professor of plant physiology in the University of Minnesota and assistant plant physiologist in the Minnesota Experiment Station, has been retained on the rolls of the bureau as collaborator under a cooperative arrangement.

MR. HOYT S. GALE, who recently returned from Bolivia, has resigned from the U. S. Geological Survey, to take up private work.

BENJAMIN RICHARD JACOBS has resigned from the Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, to become director of the

National Cereal Products Laboratories, with offices in Washington, D. C.

PROFESSOR HAROLD R. HAGAN has resigned as professor of zoology and entomology at the Utah Agricultural College.

DR. CHARLES E. SIMON, professor of clinical pathology at the University of Maryland, has severed his connection with that institution and has accepted the position of a lecturer at the School of Hygiene and Public Health of the Johns Hopkins University. He has also been appointed managing editor of the forthcoming American Journal of Hygiene, of which Dr. William H. Welch is the editor in chief.

THE Mary Kingsley medal has been conferred on Professor G. B. Grassi, professor of comparative anatomy at the University of Rome, for his research on the transmission of malaria by mosquitoes and the development of the hematozoa in the mosquito body.

PROFESSOR J. B. FARMER, professor of botany in the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, has been appointed a member of the advisory council to the Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

MR. B. B. WOODWARD has retired from the British Museum (Natural History) but will complete his catalogue of the natural history library.

PROFESSOR HERBERT E. GREGORY, who by a cooperative agreement with Yale University is serving as director of the Bishop Museum. Honolulu, has returned to New Haven and will resume his university work for the first half of the present academic year.

DR. S. I. FRANZ, of George Washington University and the Government Hospital for the Insane, represented the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the recent Cardiff meeting of the British Association. The General Committee has resolved that national associations for the advancement of science shall in future be invited to send representatives to meetings of the British Association.

W. S. KEW, on leave of absence from the U. S. Geological Survey, has left California for private work in Sonora, Mexico.

L. W. STEPHENSON has returned from Mexico and is acting chief of the Coastal Plains section of the U. S. Geological Survey, during the absence of T. Wayland Vaughan who attended the Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference in August and is spending the rest of the summer in study and correlation of the marine Tertiary strata of the Pacific coast.

DR. F. W TRAPHAGEN, professor of metallurgy in the Dakota School of Mines, has returned to Rapid City, South Dakota, after spending the summer in metallurgical research work for the Denver Metals Co., at their plant at Utah Junction, Colo.

DR. LEWIS WM. FETZER has resigned as professor of physiology and pharmacology in the Baylor University College of Medicine, to take charge of the laboratories of St. Paul Sanitarium at Dallas, Texas.

A COMMITTEE was organized in 1910 to collect funds for a monument to Lombroso. The committee had concluded its task when the war broke out but the execution of the monument was deferred. The Journal of the American Medical Association states that the matter has been taken up again and it has been found that the funds collected are inadequate for the purpose now. So the committee appeals for more donations. They can be sent to Professor Enrico Ferri at Rome. sculptor is at work on the monument which will be unveiled at Verona in the spring of

1921.

The

ERIC DOOLITTLE, professor of astronomy in the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Flower Observatory died on September 21, from heart disease at the age of fifty years. Professor Doolittle succeeded his father the late Charles L. Doolittle in the directorship of the Flower Observatory in 1915.

SAMUEL SHELDON, for thirty-one years professor of physics and electrical engineering at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, died on September 4 at the age of fifty-eight years.

MR. ARTHUR JACKSON ELLIS, geologist in the Water Resources Branch of the U. S. Geological Survey, died on July 22, 1920.

THE death of Charles N. Forbes, for twelve years curator of botany on the staff of the Bishop Museum, occurred on August 8.

DR. GEORGE MOREWOOD LEFFERTS, a retired specialist in throat diseases, emeritus professor of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, where he was a member of the faculty from 1874 to 1904, died on September 21 at the age of seventy-four

years.

KARL HERMANN STRUVE, director of the Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory, and professor of astronomy in the Berlin University, died on August 12.

WE learn from The Observatory of the death of Mrs. Frametta Wilson, who was one of the five women pioneers admitted as fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1916, and was later elected a member of the council. Mrs. Wilson had been awarded the "Edward C. Pickering Astronomical Fellowship for Women" for the college year 1920-21 had been assigned by the Harvard College Observatory.

DR. J. PIERRE MORAT, formerly professor of physiology at the Lyons medical faculty, has died at the age of seventy-five years.

THE British Thomson-Houston Company has decided to establish two scholarships, one of which will be allotted to Cambridge. It proposes to select from the engineering graduates of that university who have worked with the firm for not less than six months a scholar who will be sent to their American associates, the General Electric Company. The company proposes to allow for the student's expenses for one year an equivalent of $1,800 dollars. After a year's study in America he will be expected to return to the British company.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, beginning with the autumn term, will offer in cooperation with Rutgers College and the State University of New Jersey a regular four years' course in agriculture leading to the degree of bachelor of science. The first two years will be given

chiefly at Columbia and the second two years at Rutgers. The student who completes the course will receive his degree from Rutgers College. The requirements for admission are the same as those for Columbia College. Students are urged to spend at least a year on a well organized farm before entering Columbia. Working on farms during summer vacations approximates satisfactory farm experience.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

THE first section of the new engineering shops which are being constructed at Camp Randall for the College of Engineering of the University of Wisconsin will be ready for occupancy about the first of the second semester. This building is the first step towards moving some of the engineering work to Camp Randall and it will relieve the overcrowded conditions resulting from the heavy enrollment in the College of Engineering since the close of the war.

DR. WILLIBALD WENIGER, formerly head of the department of physics, who left six years ago to engage in research work at the Nela Research laboratory of the National Electric Lamp Division of the General Electric Company, Cleveland, Ohio, has returned to his former position in the Oregon Agricultural College. At this institution Dr. Floyd E. Rowland, assistant professor of chemistry in the University of Kansas, has been appointed head of the department of chemical engineering, and Dr. Nathan Fasten, of the University of Washington, has been appointed associate professor of zoology. Dr. S. M. Zeller, assistant professor of plant pathology has been promoted to be associate professor in charge of orchard disease investigation.

DR. PHILIP HADLEY, formerly professor of bacteriology at the Rhode Island State College and biologist at the Agricultural Experiment Station, has received appointment on the faculty of the department of bacteriology and hygiene, school of medicine, University of Michigan.

DR. VERNON K. KRIEBLE, assistant professor of chemistry at McGill University, succeeds Dr. R. C. Riggs as Scoville professor of chemistry at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

ELECTRICITY AND GRAVITATION

THE action of gravitation on light is generally regarded as a continuous process but if we consider a ray of light as the limit of a chain of rectilinear rays for each of which the velocity has its upper limit value c, we can regard the gravitational action on the ray as built up of a succession of impulses, each of which changes the direction of the ray. To obtain a definite picture of this action, let us imagine the æther to be built up of electrical doublets travelling along straight lines with velocity c and sometimes colliding with one another. A collision in which the doublets break up and their constituents secure new partners leads to a temporary manifestation of free electric charge. For simplicity we shall suppose that this type of collision takes place only at points where matter is present and that such collisions occur continually so that the manifestation of free electric charge is permanent1 and approximately steady. At a point not occupied by matter a collision may be supposed to result simply in a change in the direction of motion of the doublets. It is possible, however, that collisions are all of the first type. The elementary type of electromagnetic field is one in which a doublet breaks up into positive and negative constituents which fly away in different directions with the velocity c. The field of an electric charge moving with a velocity less than c can apparently be built up from such elementary fields by superposition and so the assumption of the fundamental

1 We imagine one component of a doublet to be momentarily separated from its fellow, when another doubtlet comes along the lonely charge secures a new mate and leaves another charge all alone, this charge behaves in a similar manner when it encounters another doublet and so on. In what follows we really consider collisions between doublets and free electric charges.

character of the elementary field seems legiti

mate.

From the elementary fields it is possible to build up a type of field in which the electric charge associated with an electric pole fluctuates owing to the fact that the constituents of a doublet are in the neighbourhood of the pole at slightly different times. We shall assume that the electric action between two poles depends on the instantaneous values of the charges and shall endeavor to estimate the effect of the fluctuations. Let us assume that the total number of doublets which break up at an electric pole per unit time is proportional to the mass associated with the pole. This number will also be supposed to be the number of doublets which are created from the constituents of those which break up. Among the doublets which arrive at the second pole B there may be some that have come from A. Let us suppose in the first place that there is no gravitational shielding, then it seems reasonable to assume that the percentage of B's doublets which have come directly from A is proportional to the number which leave A and so is per unit time, proportional to the mass of A. The number of doublets which pass directly from A to B per unit time is thus proportional to the product of the masses of A and B. The doublets themselves will be supposed to be so small that the emission of the different doublets and the arrival of others may all be regarded as independent events. At an instant of time t when a doublet from A is arriving at B the charge on B may be then regarded as equal to e+f(t) when the charge on A at the earlier time t― (AB/c) was e-f(t). The function f(t) is supposed to have a mean value equal to zero so that e and e' may be regarded as the mean charges associated with A and B respectively. The above expressions for the charges are supposed to hold only for the very short periods of time when the particular doublet under consideration is in the neighborhoods of B and A, at other times the values of the charges are governed by the presence of other doublets.

The mean value of the electric force between A and B over a small period of time, which is

very large compared with the time during which a particular doublet is in the neighborhood of B, is proportional to ee'-k' where k2 is the mean value of the square of f(t) for all the doublets which pass from A to B and arrive at B in this interval. In accordance with our previous hypothesis it seems reasonable to conclude that k is proportional to the product of the masses of A and B.

If in the interval of time from t to t + dt, no doublets arrive at B while a doublet left A in the corresponding interval t- (AB/c) to t + dt — (AB/c) it is clear that the mean value of the electrical force between A and B in this interval depends on ee' and there is no gravitational action. Other cases may be considered in a similar way and it is clear that the gravitational action depends only on the doublets which go directly from A to B. The action of B on A depends likewise on the doublets which go directly from B to A.

The present theory indicates that there may be a slight screening effect when a third body C is interposed between two bodies A and B, for C may be supposed to receive some of the doublets which would ordinarily go directly from A to B or vice-versa. The recent work of Nipher and Majorana3 thus becomes of additional theoretical interest when it is considered in the light of the present theory.

Gravitational action may be slightly modified, too, by collisions between doublets travelling with velocity c. In this connection it may be worth while to point out that if P and Q are two doublets travelling along different straight lines with velocity c, then after a certain instant it is possible for a particle travelling with velocity c to meet first one doublet, say P, and then Q but not for such a particle to meet first Q and then P. A series of moving doublets may thus be arranged in a definite order; something which happens to one doublet may affect those which come later in the series but not those which come earlier. This result may have some connection with the damping of oscillations in the emission of

2 SCIENCE, September 21 (1917).

3 Phil. Mag., T. 39, May (1920), p. 488.

light. A more imperfect form of the present electrical theory of gravitation has already been published in Proc. London Math. Soc., T. 18 (1919), p. 95, and in the Messenger of Mathematics, T. 48, p. 55. The possibility of a connection with the work of Einstein and Majorana has not been pointed out previously. The present theory seems to be free from the objections raised against the older electrical thory of gravitation (see O. W. Richardson, "The Electron Theory of Matter," p. 596), there may, however, be some other fatal objections to it.

H. BATEMAN

PROTOZOA IN SAWDUST FOR CLASS WORK

IN studying the method of excreta disposal by compositing night-soil with sawdust, the chance observation was made that microscopic examination of old sawdust piles revealed the presence of Euglypha cysts. Samples of sawdust were used for experimental culture of hookworm eggs and it was observed that the cultures showed profuse contamination with amœba, flagellates, ciliates, and free living nematodes. Samples from old sawdust piles were then moistened and incubated with the result that numerous specimens of protozoa and free nematodes were found.

The sawdust used was chiefly from southern pine.

This note is published with the thought that it may be of practical service to teachers in providing material for class work.

U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE

C. W. STILES

CONCERNING DIASTROPHISM

Two papers have appeared during the current year which once again bring before American geologists the vexed question of systemic boundaries. In the first Böse1 concludes that the ammonites found at Tularosa, New Mexico, 200 feet above the base of the Abo sandstone, are of Carboniferous age. This inter

1 Böse, E., Am. Jour. Sci., Vol. 49, pp. 51-60, January, 1920.