SALT REQUirements of REPRESENTATIVE

AGRICULTURAL PLANTS

THE Division of Biology of the National Research Council has organized a nation-wide cooperation among plant physiologists and agricultural chemists, concerning the general problem of the physiological requirements of certain representative agricultural plants. This project is in charge of a special committee consisting of B. E. Livingston (Johns Hopkins University), K. F. Kellerman (U. S. Department of Agriculture), and A. F. Woods (Maryland Agricultural College).

It is planned that the cooperation will carry out experimental work, by water and sand cultures, on wheat and soy bean, for a beginning. The first problem is to determine the best total concentrations and the best sets of salt proportions with 3-salt mixtures, each plant studied being considered in several phase of its development. For wheat these phases are: (1) the germination phase (till

plantlets are 4 cm. high), (2) the seedling phase (for 4 weeks following the germination phase), (3) the vegetative phase (from end of seedling phase to appearance of flowers), and (4) the reproductive phase (from end of vegetative phase to the ripening of grain). Each phase is to be treated separately, the plants having been grown with the best 3-salt solutions for the preceding phases, respectively. Twenty-one different sets of salt proportions are to be tested with each of the six types of possible 3-salt solutions.

It is hoped that these tests may be made by a large number of experimenters in different places, all using the same methods so that the results may be comparable, and that many different climatic complexes and seasons of the year may be thus included. The general problem falls naturally into convenient portions, so that any worker or group of workers may confine attention to a certain more or less restricted field. All seeds will be supplied from the same source. Of course each worker will publish his results as he may desire, with whatever interpretation may seem warranted. It is hoped that out of this cooperation may result a clear and definite advance in our knowledge of this aspect of nutritional physiology, which not only may be valuable in a scientific way but also may furnish valuable suggestions to those who are experimenting with the fertilizer treatment of crop plants in the field. It is suggested that the results of this correlated set of researches may become a definite national contribution to knowledge about one of the most important and fundamental of all physiological problems. The cooperation was planned in war-time, but is is as much needed in time of peace as in time of war, and it is being pushed forward with all reasonable haste.

The Special Committee on Salt Requirements of Representative Agricultural Plants has prepared a comprehensive plan for the project, which may be obtained on request, and has made arrangements for special lots of chemicals for this work, also for the special cork supports needed in water cultures. Correspondence regarding this project is earnestly

requested, and all experimenters in this field

are asked to join in this national undertaking in one way or another. Correspondence should be addressed to the chairman of the special committee, at the laboratory of plant physiology of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.

MEETING OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF MINING ENGINEERS

LESSONS learned from the war by the American mining world will be applied toward

greater progress in American mining at the one hundred and nineteenth meeting of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, which will be held here during the week of February 17. Prominent members of the Canadian Mining Institute, National Research Council, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers will join the American mining experts in their discussions.

At no period in the history of American mining have the problems of production, especially as to labor and scientific processes, been so momentous as to-day and at this meeting important readjustment plans will be presented. The program calls for ten business sessions, at which some forty subjects will be presented; a number of social features of a metropolitan kind, and an all-day excursion to the federal shipyard in Newark Bay where the first electric-welded ship is being built.

It is expected that this meeting of the institute will be attended by mining experts from every state in the union and from a number of foreign countries, who are identified with the most important mining operations now going on. Many of these men have in the past two years been serving the government in their respective fields.

At the joint session with the electrical engineers there will be six important papers on the subject of electric-welding. Some of these by officials of the National Research Council and Emergency Fleet Corporation, who have participated in the development of electric-welding which has made great strides forward in the war work of the last two years.

The institute meeting will open on Monday morning, February 17, Tuesday will be Canadian Mining Institute day and Wednesday will be featured by the session with the electrical engineers and the National Research Council session, followed by the annual banquent in the evening.

The officers of the American Institute of Mining Engineers are: Sidney J. Jennings, president; L. D. Ricketts, Philip N. Moore, past presidents; C. W. Goodale, first vice-presidents; George D. Barron, treasurer; Bradley Stoughton, secretary.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS EDWARD CHARLES PICKERING, professor of astronomy in Harvard University and director of the Harvard College Observatory, died on February 3 at the age of seventy-two years.

To oversee the opening of the port of Dantzig and to supervise relief work there Professors Alonzo Taylor, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Vernon L. Kellogg, of Stanford University, started on January 29 on a railroad journey across Germany. Drs. Taylor and Kellogg will, on their return, make a report on food conditions in Germany.

MAJOR C. E. MENDENHALL, professor of physics on leave of absence from the University of Wisconsin, has been appointed scientific attaché to the United States legation at London and will sail for England immediately.

DR. ALEXIS CARREL, who had been in charge of a field hospital in the Montdidier section, has returned to take up his work at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN M. T. FINNEY, of Baltimore, chief consulting surgeon of the American Expeditionary Forces, who sailed nineteen months ago for France as head of the Johns Hopkins Base Hospital Unit, returned to the United States on January 22.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL ALLERTON S. CUSHMAN, having received his honorable discharge from the Ordnance Department, U. S. A., where he has served for the past eighteen months, has returned to his former professional activities as head of the Institute of Industrial Research, Washington, D. C.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL J. H. HILDEBRAND has returned after an absence of a year in France to his position of professor of chemistry in the University of California. He has been recently Commandant of Hanlon Field, near Chaumont, which included the Experimental Field and the A. E. F. Gas Defense School of the Chemical Warfare Service.

MAJOR J. H. MATHEWS, Ordnance Department, U. S. A., has been released from military service and has returned to the University of Wisconsin. Professor Mathews has been pro

moted to a full professorship, and has resumed his work in physical chemistry.

CAPTAIN R. H. WHEELER, professor of psychology in the University of Oregon, who has been conducting psychological tests in the army, has returned to take up his work at the university.

MAJOR MAURICE DAUFRESNE, the well-known French chemist is visiting the United States.

L. E. CALL, head of the department of agronomy in the Kansas State Agricultural College, is leaving for France, where he will have charge of the work in grain crops for soldiers taking work in agriculture.

PROFESSOR CHARLES E. MUNROE, of George Washington University, chairman of the Committee on Explosives of the National Research Council, visited Boston to make an investigation of the circumstances connected with the recent collapse of a huge molasses tank which caused the death of several people.

We learn from the Journal of the American Medical Association that Lieutenant Colonel H. Gideon Wells, Chicago, left the United States early in November as a member of the Balkan commission of the American Red Cross. The armistice and the cessation of hostilities made necessary a change in plans. He has now been detached from the position in connection with the commission to the Balkan states, and has been appointed commissioner representing the Red Cross in Roumania. He has organized a commission of sixty-eight persons to undertake general relief work instead of medical relief work alone, as there is a well developed medical profession in Roumania. The medical men of the party, aside from Lieutenant Colonel Wells, are Lieutenant Colonel Morley D. McNeal, of Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, and Major J. Breckenridge Bayne, Washington, D. C. The latter was two years in Roumania, kept there practically as a prisoner during the German occupation, although allowed to do medical work among the Roumanian people.

AT the annual meeting of the Association of of American State Geologists held in Baltimore, December 27-28, 1918, the following

officers were elected for the year 1919: W. O. Hotchkiss (Wisconsin), president; Edward B. Mathews (Maryland), member executive committee; Thomas L. Watson (Virginia), secretary. The association was addressed on December 28 by Messrs. George Otis Smith, director, United States Geological Survey; H. Foster Bain, assistant director, Bureau of Mines and Professor John C. Merriam, of the National Research Council. The following standing committees were appointed: Cooperative geological problems: H. A. Buehler (Missouri), chairman, J. M. Clarke (New York), J. A. Udden (Texas), and J. Hyde Pratt (North Carolina). Strengthening of State Surveys: H. B. Kümmel (New Jersey), chairman, H. E. Gregory (Connecticut), and W. H. Emmons (Minnesota). Topographic mapping: W. O. Hotchkiss (Wisconsin), chairman, F. W. DeWolf (Illinois), and R. C. Allen (Michigan.).

Owing

THE board of commissioners of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey at a meeting held in the office of Governor Philipp on January 16, 1919, elected President E. A. Birge, of the University of Wisconsin, as president of the board of commissioners. to his new duties Dr. Birge felt it incumbent upon him to resign from the position of director and superintendent of the survey, which position he has held since it was organized in 1897. W. O. Hotchkiss, who has been state geologist for the survey since 1909 was made director and superintendent in addition to holding his present position as state geologist.

PROFESSOR A. M. CHICKERING, of Albion College, Michigan, has recently been elected to the vice-presidency of the section of zoology of the Michigan Academy of Science, to fill out the unexpired term of Professor Leathers, of Olivet College.

W. M. SMALLWOOD, professor of comparative anatomy, Syracuse University, is spending the second semester on leave of absence at the University of Minnesota, working with Dean J. B. Johnston in comparative neurology.

PROFESSOR A. LAVERAN, a member of the Paris Academie de médecine since 1893, has

DR. GREGORY P. BAXTER, professor of chemistry at Harvard University, is giving at the Lowell Institute, Boston, a series of lectures on "Chemistry in the war.'

WILLIAM ERSKINE KELLICOTT, professor of biology at the College of the City of New York, died on January 29, at the age of forty years.

DR. BROWN AYRES, since 1904 president of the University of Tennessee and previously professor of physics and dean of the School of Technology of Tulane University, died on January 28, aged sixty-two years.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

A SCHOOL for social research in New York City has been organized to meet the needs of those interested in social, political, economic and educational problems. The school will open with a full program in October, 1919. In the meantime, lectures will be given from February 10 to May 3 by Professor Thorstein Veblin, James Harvey Robinson, Charles A. Beard and others.

DR. W. R. BLOOR, formerly assistant professor of biological chemistry at the Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass., has been appointed professor of biochemistry and head of the division of biochemistry and pharmacology at the University of California.

MR. C. S. MCKELLOGG, corporal in the Chemical Warfare Service, stationed at the American University, has been furloughed to the University of Mississippi as assistant professor of chemistry, where he is to have charge of the work in organic and physiological chemistry.

DR. LÉON FREDERICQ, who was professor of physiology at Liége and later at Ghent, was imprisoned by the Germans because he refused

to continue his courses in Flemish after the Germans had taken the city and were trying to remodel the university to be a Flemish institution. The government of Belgium has now appointed Professor Frédericq lord rector of the university.

DR. JULES DUESBERG, will sever his connections as a member of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University and will sail for Belgium on February 12. Dr. Duesberg went to Baltimore in 1915. He is is a native of Liége and in 1911 was made professor of anatomy at Liége University, where he will now resume his work.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE ON MONKEYS TRAINED TO PICK COCO NUTS

READERS of the Sunday editions of some of our metropolitan papers may recall that in the fall, the season of cotton picking in the South, waggish space writers sometimes make the suggestion that monkeys be trained to do this work and that thereby the shortage of labor be relieved.

In this connection there have come under my notice during the past year accounts showing that in a far distant part of the world monkeys are trained to do service which, for want of a better descriptive title, may be called manual labor. The first of these is from the well-known woman traveller, Isabella Bird. In her interesting book "The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither" (1883) she writes on page 425:

an ape

A follower had brought a "baboon," or monkey trained to gather coconuts, a hideous beast on very long legs when on all fours, but capable of walking erect. They called him 8 "dog-faced baboon," but I think that they were wrong. . . . He is fierce, but likes or at all events obeys his owner, who held him with a rope fifty feet long. At present he is only half tame, and would go back to the jungle if liberated. He was sent up a coconut tree which was heavily loaded with nuts in various stages of ripeness and unripeness, going up in surly fashion, looking around at intervals and shaking his chain angrily. When he got to the top he shook the fronds and stalks, but no nuts fell, and he chose

a ripe one, and twisted it round and round till its tenacious fibers gave way, and then threw it down and began to descend, thinking he had done enough, but on being spoken to he went to work again with great vigor, picking out all the ripe nuts on the tree, twisted them all off, and then came down in a thoroughly bad, sulky temper. He was walking erect, and it seemed discourteous not to go and thank him for all his hard toil.

More to the point is the account given by Robert W. C. Shelford in his book "A Naturalist in Borneo " (London, 1916). This book is packed with interesting natural history data on a great variety of subjects gathered while he was curator of the museum founded by the great Rajah Brooke at Sarawak. On page 8, Shelford says:

Macacus nemestrinus, the pig-tailed Macaque or Brok of the Malays, is a highly intelligent animal, and the Malays train them to pick coconuts. The modus operandi is as follows: A cord is fastened round the monkey's waist, and it is led to the coconut palm which it rapidly climbs. It then lays hold of a nut, and if the owner judges the fruit to be ripe for plucking he shouts to the monkey, which then twists the nut round and round till the stalk is broken and lets it fall to the ground. If the monkey catches hold of an unripe fruit, the owner tugs the cord and the monkey tries another. I have seen a Brok act as a very efficient fruit-picker, although the use of the cord was dispensed with altogether, the monkey being guided by the tones and inflections of his master's voice.

GREENSBORO, N. C.

E. W. GUDGER

HAY-FEVER AND A NATIONAL FLOWER

The Independent recently conducted what might be called a popular voting contest in

order to ascertain the favorite candidate for a national flower. The result is published in the issue of that magazine for October 26, 1918, and can be summed up in the introductory words of the article:

We supposed that it would be merely a choice between the two leading candidates, the goldenrod and the columbine, but to our surprise three other flowers ran neck and neck with them: the sunflower, the clover and the daisy, while there were besides

a dozen also-rans. The candidates were so numerous and the votes so scattering that we must declare the election void.

In the same article, in commenting on the goldenrod, they say:

The hay-fever vote is something that every floral politician must consider, for it is undeniably influential. Still, the advocates of the goldenrod do not propose to toady to any such selfish inter

ests.

The writer sincerely hopes this is not an expression of the general opinion concerning the sufferers from the malady misnamed hayfever. Stories of the victims of this disease too often get into the funny papers in the same column with mother-in-law jokes-they both deserve to receive more consideration at the hands of the public at large.

Hollopeter1 states that hay-fever is largely due to the action of the pollen of the ragweed and of the goldenrod, the former being eightfive per cent. guilty while the latter is responsible for the remaining fifteen per cent., not taking account of some few cases probably caused by the pollen of other plants. This seems to reduce the harm done by the goldenrod to a small amount, but it must be remembered that almost all cases are irritated by the pollen of this plant whether or not it is the specific cause of the attack.

Between one and two per cent. of our adult population probably either has hay-fever or is liable to contract it if the proper conditions arise. The efficiency of the victims is reduced during the attack a great deal, in some cases even causing them to be confined to their homes for a month or six weeks every fall. It is true that on this point there is great variation, but all victims have a lowered vitality. Such a loss of time and efficiency is not only a detriment to the individual but is also a loss to the community. Why should we aid in the preservation and spread of a plant of such propensities, even if it is good to look upon? Rather it should be classed with the ragweed, and every effort should be made to stamp it out, at least in the neighborhoods of our cities.

1 Hollopeter, W. C., "Hay-fever, Its Prevention and Cure," New York, 1916.