medicine" and "The electric theory of combustion."

DR. J. PAUL GOODE, professor of geography in the University of Chicago, gave an address before the general staff of the College of the Army at Washington, D. C., on November 12, on "The geographic and economic foundations of the world war."

PROFESSOR HAROLD HIBBERT, of Yale University, lectured before the Stamford Chemical Society on "The constitution of cellulose" on the evening of October 25.

DR. FREDERICK H. GETMAN lectured before the Rhode Island State College on November 18 and before the Rhode Island Section of the American Chemical Society at Providence, on November 19, taking as his subject "The relation between absorption and spectra and chemical constitution."

BARON GERARD DEGEER, professor of geology at the University of Stockholm, delivered two lectures at the University of Michigan on November 12. The topic of the lectures was "An autographic record of climate for the last ten thousands of years," in which lectures the methods of work and the applications to Sweden and America were discussed.

THE annual Huxley memorial lecture of the Royal Anthropological Institute was delivered by Dr. A. C. Haddon, in the lectureroom of the Royal Society on November 23, on "Migrations of Cultures in British New Guinea."

A MONUMENT has been erected at CasteraVerduzan, Gers, France, to the memory of the celebrated French surgeon and pathologist, Lannelongue, who died in 1911.

WE learn from Nature that the council of the British Association has agreed to the formation of a separate section of psychology, as recommended by the sections of physiology and educational science at Cardiff, and approved by the general committee. Consideration of the number and scope of the various sections is to be referred to a special committee. It has been decided to invite national Associations for the Advancement of Science

to send representatives to annual meetings of the British Association in future.

THE second International Congress of Comparative Pathology will be held at Rome in April, 1921. An organizing committee has been established under the presidency of Professor Perroncito, composed of Professors Ascoli, Golgi, Grassi, Lustig, Marchiafava, Paterno, Raffaele, Sanarelli, and Colonel Bertoletti. Among the subjects to be discussed are influenza in man and animals, foot-and-mouth disease, recent researches in sarcoma and carcinoma, rabies and antirabic vaccination, piroplasmosis, acari and scabies in man and animals, and phylloxera.

THE Upsilon Sigma Chapter of the Chi Phi medical fraternity has been installed at Columbia University. The installation ceremonies and a dinner of the fraternity were held recently at the Hotel Netherland in New York.

SINCE October the Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, has been recording on the chronograph the Arlington and Annapolis wireless time signals, together with the Observatory Riefler clock.

THE Smithsonian Institution, of which her father, Joseph Henry, was secretary for many years, is to be the ultimate beneficiary of the estate of Caroline Henry, according to the terms of her will, which has been filed for probate. An immediate bequest of $1,000 is made to the institution, together with several other bequests. The net income from the remaining estate is to be distributed among several beneficiaries upon whose death the estate is to go to the Smithsonian Institution.

Nature writes "the council of the British Association has recently had before it the suggestion made by Professor Herdman in his presidential address at Cardiff for a new Challenger expedition for the exploration of the great oceans of the globe with modern instruments and methods. It will be remembered that this proposal received the support of all the sections of the association by formal resolution, and the council was asked to appoint

An

a committee to take the necessary steps to urge its need upon the government and the nation. This committee has now been appointed, and the scientific world will follow its activities and their result with close attention. oceanographical expedition along the lines. contemplated, and equipped with the instruments which modern science can provide, would lead to a great increase of knowledge both for scientific study and for profitable development, and no nation could carry it out more appropriately than Great Britain in cooperation with our overseas Dominions. There will be an eclipse of the sun in September, 1922, with the line of totality crossing the Maldive Islands, and the expedition could very well include an astronomical party to observe it. It is believed that the Admirality is favorably disposed towards the scheme, and every scientific man hopes that the necessary support will be forthcoming to carry out the enterprise on a scale worthy of the British empire."

THE annual meeting of the British Medical Association will be held on July 19, and the scientific sections will meet on July 20, 21 and 22. The annual meeting in 1922 will be held in Glasgow, and the council has now decided to recommend to the Representative Body that the annual meeting in 1923 shall be held at Portsmouth, in response to an invitation of the Portsmouth Division.

THE Rockefeller Foundation announces the gift to the State of Louisiana of the Grand Chenier Wild Life Refuge, comprising about 35,000 acres, in Cameron and Vermillion laboratories, equipment, methods, publications. parishes. The tract was purchased from individual holders by the foundation in 1914, in order to preserve the wild life of the country and has since been under the supervision of the Department of Conservation of the State. A condition of the gift is that the tract shall remain as a perpetual wild-life preserve.

EDUCATIONAL NOTES AND NEWS THE two weeks' campaign for a $5,000,000 endowment fund for McGill University ended with the collection of $6,321,511.

DR. JOHN GABBERT BOWMAN, president of the University of Iowa from 1911 to 1914 has been elected chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh to succeed Dr. Samuel Black McCormick.

THE Cornell University board of trustees at its meeting on November 13, assigned professors to eight professorships which were established last June commemorating the service of Cornellians in the war. The assignments in science are Professor Ernest Merritt (physics), in arts and sciences; Professors S. S. Garrett and E. W. Schroder, in engineering; Professor W. D. Bancroft (physical chemistry), in the graduate school; Professor Sutherland Simpson (physiology) in the Ithaca division of the medical college.

AMONG recent appointments to the faculty of the college of arts and sciences of Tulane University are the following: Dr. D. S. Elliott, recently head of the department of physics in the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been elected to the professorship of physics. Dr. S. A. Mahood, chemist of the Forest Products Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin, has been elected to an associate professorship in chemistry. Dr. Herbert E. Buchanan, professor of mathematics in the University of Tennessee, has been elected to the chair of mathematics.

MR. J. W. BARTON, recently fellow in psychology in the University of Minnesota and formerly a member of the faculty of the University of Utah, has been elected associate professor of psychology in the school of education of the University of Wyoming.

R. J. GARBER, assistant professor of plant breeding at the University of Minnesota, has been appointed associate professor of agronomy and associate agronomist in the West Virginia University and Station.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE RECEDENT LAKE SHORES OF THE CRETACEOUS

LAST year while cycad hunting in the southern Black Hills, Mr. E. F. Arnold called my

attention to a remarkable reef of huge concretions in the Lakota of "Driftwood Cañon" several miles northerly through the "rim" from the Burlington dam. The forms simulated huge more or less globular cycads three or four feet through, and displayed much coarse radial structure, with more or less granular siliceous or even sandy, to partly limy texture. As an illustration of these forms, Plate 21 in "Lakes of North America," by I. C. Russell, showing an old lake Lahontan shore, would all but serve. Though knowing the Lakota of the Black Hills so widely, and never having noted anything similar before, I looked on the Driftwood reef as belonging to the domain of the purely inorganic.

Now, however, this phenomenon has come up in a much more tangible form. Early this year Mr. Jesse Simmons, a geologist of the Midwest Refining Company wrote me that he had observed innumerable cycad-like masses in the Lakota [Cloverly] of the Como anticline, about sixteen miles easterly from Medicine Bow, Wyoming. On reaching this point last August I found very striking conditions indeed. There is, fairly speaking, a reef of the calcareous concretionary forms, or tufaceous heads of finely radiate structure. This lies near the top of a sandy to conglomeratic rim 80 or more feet thick resting on the broadly exposed [Como of Marsh] Morrison. The reef stratum itself marks a change in sedimentation, being sandy, to shaly or slightly limy, with the concretions very definitely in the lower portion and varying from quite globular types one to two feet in diameter up to much larger more irregular shaped masses. While immediately within the reef occur numerous smoothed quartz pebbles from small up to several pounds weight. Of these many are simply smoothed or with a ground-glass surface, but many others are polished, and of the type known as "Dreikanter" with the desert "patina." Such are like, though in no way to be confused with the gastroliths of the Como or other Dinosaurians.

As showing in a most curious manner the course of events on this reef one of the concretions, a subspherical example one and one half

feet through which I packed and sent back to Yale, contains imbedded well toward its center one of the highly smoothed pebbles a half pound in weight. All round this pebble the radiate concretionary structure runs as uninterruptedly, the same as if no pebble were present. Evidently when these siliceous pebbles containing traces of fossils of some earlier geologic period were being smoothed by wind or wave or both, and when the masses of calcareous tufa were being deposited from more or less saturated waters, a wave cast that pebble on top of the first formed basal or squamous rosette. Then the tufaceous mass, with little increase of diameter, continued its growth and regularity of structure upward as before.

Of such tufa reefs as these, and such pebbly shore lines of the western Cretaceous, little is as yet known, and to my knowledge nothing has been reported hitherto. But inasmuch as the general facts seem to indicate conditions not unlike those found about such recedent lakes as Bonneville and Lahontan, it is hoped this preliminary note may call forth much further observation afield. If those who have perchance seen the tufa reefs, and especially the smoothed pebble beaches, would kindly report their observations I would esteem it a favor. It is not improbable that some considerable and synchronous lacustrine shore lines can be definitely located, a result which would be of the first geologic interest.

To what extent algal life has played a part in the growth of these tufas of more remote geologic time is not fully understood. In the case of all the finely radiate tufas there is less likelihood of substitution of any kind than in the coarser Thinolitic type of Lake Lahontan studied by E. S. Dana. It seems unlikely that the masses often of such striking regularity of form could result from purely inorganic

headed "Levulose Sirup," which contained one statement that I believe should be corrected. He states that of the four sugar products, glucose, sorghum, honey and maltose, "sorghum and honey are the only ones that compete with sugar in sweetness," and farther on in the article adds "of the two sweeter products, honey will probably of necessity always remain a luxury." It is this last statement to which I take exception.

Honey should not be considered a luxury. It is the form of sweet that was used long before cane sugar was ever thought of, and is in many places now a staple article of food. During the sugar shortage caused by the late war honey was used to a much greater extent than ever before in this country and thousands of families used honey almost exclusively in place of sugar. In addition, millions of pounds were exported. One reason that honey is often considered a luxury is because it is too frequently bought in such small quantities that the purchaser is paying far more for the container and the labor of putting the honey up in such form than he is for the honey itself. The writer knows a number of families who buy extracted honey regularly in 60 pound lots and consider it a staple article of food rather than a luxury. Enormous quantities of honey are used in baking in this country, both for home baking and by commercial baking firms, since honey possesses a number of advantages over sugar in baking. It is stated that the National Biscuit Company at one time bought seventy carloads of honey in one lot. Honey is also extensively used in the making of fine candies, high-grade ice cream and soft drinks.

It is a commendable thing to point out as Mr. Willaman has done, how a new industry may be developed, especially when the product of such industry is to be a food, yet it is unjust in pointing out such a possibility to make a statement which tends to foster a mistaken idea, entirely too prevalent already, about another food product, an idea that the beekeeping industry and all its sponsors are trying to eradicate. The beekeeping indus

try in this country is annually conserving millions upon millions of pounds of one of the finest food products existent that would otherwise be absolutely lost. Yet many times the amount saved is actually lost because this industry is not developed to such an extent as to take care of more than a small percentage of the possibilities. The complete development of this industry can come only when the people as a whole recognize honey as a staple article of food rather than as a luxury. M. C. TANQUARY

COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS

THE FLIGHT OF FIREFLIES AND THE FLASHING IMPULSE

FIREFLIES are wonderfully interesting creatures. There is something marvellous in the physiology of a lowly living mechanism that can transform chemical energy into luminous energy with such a nearly perfect radiant efficiency and with so little effort as do the fireflies. Theirs is a light without appreciable heating effects, because in some manner the energy of special chemical reactions taking place within their tissues, is transformed almost entirely into luminous energy.

If one observes fireflies1 closely it will be noted that their flight movements and flashing under certain conditions bear some relation to each other. During the day these insects seek concealment in the low herbage and grass. With the approach of evening they become active and just after sundown may be seen to arise in great numbers from the damp herbage, flashing leisurely from time to time. If the air is still and warm, it will be noted that as the creatures arise very slowly, each flash is attended by a sudden upward flight impulse which may even carry them almost straight upward several feet. Usually, however, they are propelled upward in a more or less curved path.

At this time the flight of the fireflies appears to be very weak, for they drift along aimlessly, and appear almost unable to keep clear of the herbage, often actually descending 1 These observations apply to the behavior of the species Photinus pyralis Linn.

as if to alight again. When it seems that they must inevitably terminate their flight and settle down upon the herbage, another flash renews and quickens the flight impulse and they arise precipitately, as if suddenly propelled upward by some energizing stimulus attending the flash.

This striking behavior may be observed almost any calm evening throughout the summer. It is particularly noticeable when the insects are arising from the herbage, and are just preparing to get fairly on the wing. What is the actual significance of this luminosity to the insects? In what manner does the flash stimulate momentarily the powers of upward flight? It would sometimes seem as if the energy-transformation attending the flash, actually aided them to get fairly on the wing, possibly also sustaining their flight in some

SPECIAL ARTICLES

FUNGICIDAL DUSTS FOR CONTROL OF SMUT

FOR more than a century efforts have been made to secure a perfect method of treating cereal seeds to destroy smut spores carried on their surfaces. Many fungicides have been tested and a number of standard formulas have been put forth as efficient. More recent investigations have demonstrated that none of the formulas involving dipping seed in solutions, fumigating with powerful gases or dissolving spores by various solvents, has proven completely successful. Reagents of sufficient strength to destroy the smut spores have proven to be injurious to the germination of the seed.

It has been demonstrated recently by the writers and by many other investigators, that the commonly accepted standard smut fungical formulas involving the use of bluestone and of formaldehyde, are frequently extremely injurious to the germination of the seed and the development of the seedlings. In arid and semi-arid wheat areas, formaldehyde frequently causes serious losses in seed

planted in dry soil. Bluestone, the preferred fungicide in such regions, causes serious losses in germination and delayed growth of seedlings. Threshing operations in semi-arid regions cause greater rupture to seed coats than occur in more humid regions, further increasing seed injury. To avoid these losses, it has been recommended that the bluestoned seed be dipped, after a short drain, in a lime solution to react with the copper and thus check the penetration of the copper sulphate in the seed germ as soon as it has destroyed the bunt spores adhering to the surface of seed. Unless the seed coats have been badly ruptured this formula is very effective but it has been found that the seed does not pass so freely through the drill and, in cold damp weather, the seed dries slowly due to the coating of lime and hence may cause fermentation or heating. To avoid these troubles experiments with bluestone used as a dust were undertaken. The partial success of flowers of sulphur in preventing bunt in California. and the reported success with copper carbonate by the Department of Agriculture of New South Wales, gave encouragement for attempting dust treatments.

Little Club wheat dusted with spores of bunt (Tilletia tritici) at the rate of 1 part of spores to 750 parts of seed by weight and treated according to standard formulas, gave the following results: