APPOINTMENTS AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THE following promotions and appointments in the scientific departments are announced: George David Birkhoff, professor of mathemat

ics. A.B. (Harvard Univ.) 1905, A.M. (ibid.) 196, Ph.D. (Univ. of Chicago) 1907. Instructor in mathematics, 1907-09, University of Wisconsin; preceptor in mathematics, 1909-11, professor of mathematics, 1911-12, Princeton University; assistant professor of mathematics, 1912-19, Harvard University.

Cecil Kent Drinker, associate professor of applied physiology. S.B. (Haverford Coll.) 1909, M.D. (Univ. of Pennsylvania) 1913. Instructor in physiology, 1915-16, Johns Hopkins University; instructor in physiology, 1916-18, assistant professor of physiology, 1918-19, Harvard University.

Chester Laurens Dawes, assistant professor of electrical engineering. S.B. (Mass. Institute of Technology) 1909. Assistant in electrical engineering, 1911-12, instructor in electrical engineering, 1912-19, Harvard University; instructor in electrical engineering, 1916-19, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

William Caspar Graustein, assistant professor of mathematics. A.B. (Harvard Univ.) 1910, A.M. (ibid.) 1911, Ph.D. (Univ. of Bonn) 1913. Instructor in mathematics, 1913-14, 1919, Harvard University; instructor in mathematics, 1914-16, assistant professor of mathematics, 1916-19, Rice Institute, Texas.

Lincoln Ware Riddle, assistant professor of cryptogamic botany. A.B. (Harvard Univ.) 1902, A.M. (ibid.) 1905, Ph.D. (ibid.) 1906. Austin teaching fellow in botany, 1905-06, Harvard University; instructor in botany, 1906-09, associate professor of botany, 1909-18, professor of botany, 1918-19, Wellesley College.

Frederick Albert Saunders, assistant professor of physics. A.B. (Univ. of Toronto) 1895, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins Univ.) 1899. Instructor in physics, 1899-1901, Haverford College; instructor in physics, 1901-02, associate professor of physics, 1902-05, professor of physics, 1905-14, Syracuse University; professor of physics, 1914-19, Vassar College.

Bancroft Huntington Brown, A.M., instructor in mathematics.

Edward Smith Handy, A.B., Austin teaching fellow in anthropology.

Charles Andrew Rupp, Jr., instructor in mathematics.

Arthur Bliss Seymour, S.M., assistant in the cryptogamic herbarium.

Horace Greeley Perry, A.M., Austin teaching fellow in botany.

John Felt Cole, A.B., instructor in astronomy. McKeen Cattell, A.M., Austin teaching fellow in physiology.

Neal Tuttle, A.M., Austin teaching fellow in chemistry.

THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Ar the meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, which took place last week at Washington, the following officers were elected: Home Secretary: Dr. Charles Greely Abbot, assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Treasurer: Frederick L. Ransome, U. S. Geological Survey.

Members of the Council: Colonel John J. Carty, American Telephone and Telegraph Company; Dr. Henry H. Donaldson, Wistar Institute of Anatomy, University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Raymond Pearl, school of hygiene and public health, The Johns Hopkins University. Members were elected as follows:

Professor Joseph Barrell, geologist, Yale University,

Professor Gary Nathan Calkins, zoologist, Columbia University,

Professor Herbert D. Curtis, astronomer, Lick Observatory, University of California,

Gano Dunn, electrical engineer, New York City, Professor Lawrence J. Henderson, biologist, Harvard University,

Professor Reid Hunt, pharmacologist, Harvard University,

Professor Treat Baldwin Johnson, chemist, Yale University,

Professor W. J. V. Osterhout, botanist, Harvard University,

Dr. Frederick A. Seares, astronomer, Mount Wilson Observatory, Mount Wilson, California, Professor William A. Setchell, botanist, University of California,

Major General George O. Squier, electrical engineer, chief army signal officer, Washington, D. C., Professor Augustus Trowbridge, physicist, Princeton University,

Professor Oswald Veblen, mathematician, Princeton University,

Professor Ernest J. Wilczynski, mathematician, University of California,

Professor Edwin Bidwell Wilson, mathematical

physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At the annual dinner of the academy, the Henry Draper Gold Medal was awarded to Charles Fabry, professor of physics at the University of Marseilles, France, and the Alexander Agassiz Gold Medal, established through funds provided by Sir John Murray, was awarded to Prince Albert of Monaco.

The program of the scientific sessions of the academy was printed in the issue of SCIENCE for last week.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

Ar the annual general meeting of the American Philosophical Society held on April 24, 25 and 26, the following were elected to membership: Robert Grant Aitken, Mount Hamilton, Cal.; Joseph Charles Arthur, Lafayette, Ind.; Edward W. Berry, Baltimore; James Henry Breasted, Chicago; Ulric Dahlgren, Princeton; William Curtis Farabee, Philadelphia; John Huston Finley, Albany, N. Y.; Stephen Alfred Forbes, Urbana, Ill.; Chevalier Jackson, Philadelphia; Dayton C. Miller, Cleveland; George D. Rosengarten, Philadelphia; Albert Sauveur, Cambridge, Mass.; William Albert Setchell, Berkeley, Cal.; Julius O. Stieglitz, Chicago; Ambrose Swasey, Cleveland.

COLONEL JOHN J. CARTY, chief engineer of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company, largely responsible for the communications of the American army during the war, has received the rank of commandant of the Legion of Honor.

Ar the meeting of the New York Section of the Society of Chemical Industry on April 18, portraits were unveiled by Dr. Charles F. Chandler, of J. B. F. Herreshoff and E. G. Acheson, Perkin Medalists of 1908 and 1910, respectively.

DR. ROBERT KIRKLAND NABOURS, professor of zoology and curator of the natural history museum at the Kansas State Agricultural College, was elected president of the Kansas Academy of Science at its fifty-first annual meeting. Dr. Bernard M. Allen, of the University of Kansas, was elected vice-president, and Dr. W. E. White, also of the university, secretary.

MR. JAMES W. MCGUIRE, of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, has been appointed a member of the U. S. Geographic Board.

DR. W. N. BERG, captain in the Sanitary Corps, stationed at Camp Lee, has received his discharge from the Army and has returned to the Bureau of Animal Industry.

AFTER thirty years' service as chairman of the department of chemistry at Northwestern University, Professor A. Van Eps Young has retired to his farm in North Carolina as professor emeritus.

DR. H. L. CURTIS, of the Bureau of Standards, has gone for a three months visit to European laboratories to obtain data on the progress of certain war problems.

MURRAY P. HOROWITZ, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been asked to go to Oklahoma, by the Oklahoma Tuberculosis Association, in order to conduct health surveys this summer. Together with the surveys which were completed last summer, the work will represent a state-wide health survey.

THE one hundred and thirteenth annual meeting of the Medical Society of the state of New York was held May 6 to 8, in Syracuse, under the presidency of Dr. Thomas H. Halsted, Syracuse.

THE Paris Academy of Medicine has elected as national associates: Dr. Yersin, director of the Pasteur Institute of Nha-Trang and Dr. Delagenière of Mans.

KING ALFONSO of Spain has signed a decree awarding the Great Cross of the Civilian Order of Alfonso XIII. to Mme Sklodowska

Curie, of the University of Paris.

AT the annual meeting of the Chemical Society, London, held on March 27, Sir James J. Dobbie was elected president in succession to Sir William J. Pope.

DR. L. A. BAUER sailed from Liverpool, April 12, for Cape Palmas, Liberia, where, assisted by Lieutenant H. F. Johnston, he will make magnetic and electric observations in connection with the solar eclipse of May 29 next. The duration of totality will be nearly 7 minutes at this station. Dr. Bauer expects

to return to London at the end of June. Lieutenant Johnston as soon as possible after the eclipse will rejoin the Carnegie, as second in command. During the war he was on duty with the Admiralty Compass Department at Slough, England.

THE Montyon prize ($500) has been awarded by the Paris Academy of Sciences to Drs. Henri Guillemard and André Labat, of Paris, for their researches on asphyxiating gases. THE Adams Prize of the University of Cambridge has been awarded to Professor J. W. Nicholson, F.R.S., for an essay on 66 'Diffraction."

ACCORDING to the Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences Dr. Olaf Andersen of the Mineralogical Institute, Kristiania, and Professor Sem Sealand, professor of physics and rector of the Technological Institute of Norway, at Trondhjem, have been visiting Washington.

DR. J. N. VAN DER VRIES has resigned his position as professor of mathematics at the University of Kansas to continue his work as secretary of the central district of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, with headquarters at Chicago.

PROFESSOR ARTHUR A. NEISH is giving before the Institute of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University four lectures on "Liquid air; chemistry and the war."

THE annual joint meeting of the University of Pennsylvania Chapters of the Sigma Xi and Phi Beta Kappa Societies was held on May 1. The address was by Dr. William E. Safford, economic botanist, U. S. Department of Agriculture, former governor of the island of Guam, Pacific ocean, on "Plants in the arts and industries of the ancient Americans."

THE Yale Medical Alumni Association Lecture for this year was given on April 4 by Dr. William Gilman Thompson, of New York, on the Functional restoration of the disabled soldier and civilian.

THE RAMSAY Memorial Committee has offered to the University of London a sum of not less than £25,000 towards the foundation of a

laboratory of chemical engineering at University College.

CHARLES BRINKERHOFF RICHARDS, for twentyfive years Higgins professor of mechanical engineering at Yale University, and for the last nine years emeritus professor, died on April 20, in his eighty-sixth year.

Nature records the deaths of Sir James MacKenzie Davidson, the distinguished ophthalmic surgeon and radiologist, and of Dr. William Allen Sturge, author of papers on prehistoric ethnology.

R. W. H. Row, lecturer in zoology at King's College, London, died on February 16, at the age of thirty-four years.

THE death is announced of Dr. K. H. v. Bardeleben, professor of anatomy at the University of Jena and author of a long series of works on anatomy and evolution at the age of sixty-nine years, and of Dr. R. Kobert, professor of pharmacology, physiologic chemistry and the history of medicine at the University of Rostock, an authority on materia medica and physiologic chemistry, aged sixtyfive years.

THE New England Federation of Natural History Societies held its annual meeting on April 25 and 26 in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This is a federation of some thirty societies of the New England states which has an annual gathering in Boston, at which the representatives of the different associations exchange experiences in matters of natural history. Delegates were present from Springfield, Mass.: Worcester, Mass.; Providence, R. I.; New Bedford, Mass.; Lawrence, Mass., and points in Maine and New Hampshire. There were exhibitions of various items in methods of handling speci

mens.

THE American Astronomical Society will hold its annual meeting in Ann Arbor from September 1 to 3. It is announced that there will be in attendance at the conference, representatives from the observatories of Greenwich, Oxford, Cambridge, Vienna and Potsdam.

EDUCATIONAL NOTES AND NEWS MR. AND MRS. William FitzhUGH have given $12,000 to the medical school of Stanford University for the purchase of one gram of radium, for use in the actinography department of the University Hospital. The net income is to be used for clinic beds for indigent patients, particularly for those who need either X-ray or radium treatment.

THEODORE HOOVER, consulting engineer, has been appointed professor of mining and metallurgy in Stanford University.

PROFESSOR W. LEE LEWIS, of Northwestern University, has been elected chairman of the department of chemistry to succeed Professor A. Van Eps Young, who has recently retired. Captain Lewis was in charge of Organic Research Unit No. 3 of the Offense Research Section, C. W. S. during 1918 and is at present assisting Colonel W. D. Bancroft in editing the researches of the American University Experiment Station.

DR. GEORGE W. WILSON, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, has been appointed head of the department of pathology, bacteriology and preventive medicine in the Loyola University School of Medicine, Chicago.

JULIAN G. LEACH, of the University of Minnesota, has been appointed assistant professor of botany in the Colorado Agricultural College.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE APROPOS OF THE PROPOSED HISTORICAL SCIENCE SECTION

IN the April 4 number of SCIENCE, page 331, Felix Neumann referred to a proposed "Historical Science" Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. If the feasibility of forming such a section is to be seriously considered during the meeting at St. Louis it would be of interest to know how the various sciences would probably be affected by this section. As regards mathematics, in particular, it is very difficult to say what is historical mathematics and what is non-historical mathematics.

As early as 1640 the famous French mathematician and philosopher R. Descartes wrote as follows:

I am accustomed to distinguish two things in the mathematics, the history and the science. By history I mean what is already discovered, and is committed to books. And by the science, the skill of resolving all questions.

Since the days of Descartes the amount of mathematics committed to books has increased a hundredfold and hence the history of mathematics up to the present time has outgrown the powers of a single man.

Successful mathematical investigators must perforce be mathematical historians as regards their fields of investigation. If these fields are extensive the successful investigators therein require an extensive historical knowledge. Such men are, however, not commonly known as mathematical historians but as mathematical investigators. The former term is usually reserved for those whose historical studies include details relating to the older developments, which usually have little contact with modern advances.

The historical mathematics which is of greatest interest to the investigator engaged in advancing mathematics is usually based on considerable technical knowledge and hence it would scarcely be treated in a section composed largely of non-mathematicians. On the other hand, the historical mathematics which is now commonly known as mathematical history has extensive contact with the history of other sciences and might profitably be treated in such a section. The fact that the proposed name "Historical Science" would be too comprehensive as regards mathematics can scarcely be regarded as a serious objection since the questions which would normally come before such a section would naturally be determined by its membership.

In a broad way it might perhaps be said that the mathematical history suitable for such a general section might include practically all the useful developments in this subject before the beginning of the eighteenth

century, a considerable part of the developments during the eighteenth century, and a very minor part of later developments. The unequal emphasis which such a section would thus place on the different chapters in the history of mathematics would be partly compensated by the fact that it would prepare the way for a more sympathetic attitude towards mathematical history in general.

If such a section is formed it should be understood that the more technical and perhaps the more important part of the history of science is of such a nature that it can be appreciated only by the specialists in the fields to which it relates. There is, however, a great need for work on intercommunicating roads in science and such a section might tend to improve these roads.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

G. A. MILLER

VITAMIN TESTS WITH CHICKS

OUR experience recently with the use of chicks for the purpose of demonstrating to classes in elementary physiology the rôle of vitamins in a diet has been so satisfactory that we thought it might be of interest to other teachers.

The day-old chick is so universally available, so easily reared, and its growth is so rapid that it makes an admirable laboratory animal for such a demonstration. Because of their hardiness Leghorn chicks were selected and divided into two groups of equal number and weight. Both the control group and the one to be tested (such chicks being easily marked with dye) were placed in the same large cage with free access to water, grit, shell, etc. Both groups were allowed to partake freely from food kept in a feeder. The food thus accessible consisted of either highly milled corn-meal, crumbs of unleavened white flour bread, or cakes baked from rice flour, or combinations of any or all of these. Changes were frequently made so that the chicks ate readily of the food furnished. In addition to this the normal or control group was fed once a day with small amounts of food containing vitamins.

After the second day the curve of the daily average weights showed a marked difference between the two groups. After approximately two weeks the one group began to exhibit the typical symptoms of lack of vitamins. Death occurs so promptly in the young chicks after the onset of symptoms that care must be taken to at once feed the ailing chicks with vitamin containing food. Small amounts of milk, scraped apple, lettuce, etc., sufficed to cause prompt recovery with marked acceleration in the rate of growth.

We of course recognize that no new results have been achieved but felt that the method of demonstration was worthy of note.

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

R. J. SEYMOUR, E. P. DURRANT

QUOTATIONS

THE BRITISH AIR-FORCE ESTIMATES AND AERONAUTICAL RESEARCH

THE development of military aviation has been one of the wonders of the war, but we have naturally been kept somewhat in the dark as to the exact extent of such development while the war was still in progress. The veil has now been lifted, and General Seely, in speaking on the Air Estimates in the House of Commons on March 13, has given us a striking summary of the progress made during the past four years. The fact that the expenditure on the Air Force has increased twohundred-fold since the outbreak of hostilities is a sufficient comment on the enormous advances that have taken place in the aeronautical world. General Seely states that if the armistice had not been signed, this year's esti mates would have reached the sum of £200,000,000-an amount which is practically four times our pre-war expenditure on the entire navy! Even with the signing of peace in sight the sum of £66,500,000 is asked for, in order to ensure the maintenance of the aerial supremacy which we have gained during the

war.

It is exceedingly gratifying to note that the true value of research is at last being appreciated, and the specific provision of £3,000,000