SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

The Bureau of Standards has purchased eight acres of land west of Connecticut Avenue and has let contracts for a new engineering laboratory, 175 by 350 feet and four stories in height. The new building and its equipment will cost in the neighborhood of $1,000,000, and will increase the capacity of the Bureau by 50 per cent. The Pittsburgh laboratory of the Bureau, including the work on glass and ceramics, will be transferred to Washington. It is expected that the new building will be occupied during the coming summer.

Mrs. E. H. HARRIMAN has turned over to the Carnegie Institution of Washington the Eugenics Record Office established by her at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, in 1910. Included in the gift are 80 acres of land, an office building, a large residence and the valuable records already compiled. Mrs. HARRIMAN also has created an endowment fund yielding an annual income of $12,000 for maintenance. of the work.

Mr. FREDERICK WEBB HODGE, since 1910 Ethnologist-in-charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, resigned on February 28, to accept a position with the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, in New York City. Dr. JESSE WALTER FEWKES, ethnologist on the Bureau's staff since 1895, has been appointed chief of the Bureau.

Dr. ROLLIN ARTHUR HARRIS, mathematician and physicist, who. had been employed in the Coast and Geodetic Survey for 28 years, died on January 20, at the age of 55. He was a member of the Philosophical Society, and one of the original members of the Academy. His work was concerned principally with the theory of functions as applied to geodesy and cartography, and with problems of tides and cotidal maps.

Dr. J. W. TURRENTINE, of the Bureau of Soils, is now in charge of the experimental kelp-potash plant of the Bureau, at Summerland, California. The plant has been in operation since late August, and is now marketing daily about $300 worth of materials produced incidentally in experimentation. While primarily experimental, it is built and equipped to make possible the obtaining of commercial data. It has a capacity of about 150 tons of raw kelp per day, and its equipment includes a self-propelling harvester; a pier with unloading device and conveyors; rotary kilns and furnaces for drying; retorts for destructive distillation; lixiviator; evaporator and crystallizer; centrifugal dryers; and the necessary incidental equipment. Dr. Turrentine has as his assistants Mr. E. B. SMITH, formerly of the office of Public

Roads, Mr. P. S. SHOAFF, formerly Chief Chemist of the Holly Sugar Corporation, and Dr. G. C. SPENCER, formerly of the Bureau of Chemistry, together with an operating force numbering forty-three.

Prof. C. C. NUTTING, a member of the ACADEMY, is organizing a party of naturalists, composed almost entirely of graduate students and instructors in zoology at the State University of Iowa, to carry on investigations regarding marine fauna in the vicinity of the islands of Barbados and Antigua, British West Indies. The party will sail about April 27 from New York and expects to return about August 1. The time will be divided between the islands of Barbados and Antigua, at both of which places the Colonial Governments have placed adequate quarters for the party. A well-equipped launch with excellent facilities for dredging down to 200 fathoms has been proffered by a Washington friend, who himself will be a member of the party.

In his preliminary trip to Barbados last summer Prof. Nutting found that the natives of these islands are quite expert in diving, and one of them was capable of bringing up specimens from a depth of 10 fathoms. It is the intention to make rather extensive use of native divers to procure specimens down to this depth.

The following persons have become members of the ACADEMY since the last issue of the JOURNAL: Miss FRANCES DENSMORE, Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution; Major WILLIAM MCPHERSON, War Department, 1800 Virginia Avenue; Dr. FRANCIS BRIGGS SILSBEE, Bureau of Standards.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF MEETINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND AFFILIATED SOCIETIES1

Tuesday, March 5: The Anthropological Society.

Tuesday, March 5: The Botanical Society, at the Cosmos Club, at 8 p. m.

Thursday, March 7: The Washington Academy of Sciences, at the Cosmos Club, 8:15 p. m. Program:

Col. C. F. LEE, of the British Aviation Mission: Aviation.

Saturday, March 9: The Biological Society, at the Cosmos Club, at 8 p. m.

Wednesday, March 13: The Geological Society, at the Cosmos Club, at 8 p. m.

Thursday, March 14: The Society of Foresters. Program:

E. H. CLAPP, H. S. BETTS, and ROLF THELEN: Forest products and the war.

Saturday, March 16: The Philosophical Society, at the Cosmos Club, at 8 p. m. Program:

J. H. DELLINGER," of the Bureau of Standards: The principles of electrical measurements at radio frequencies. (Illustrated)

P. D. MERICA, of the Bureau of Standards: Relative thermal expansivities of the constituents of brass. (Illustrated)

G. W. VINAL, of the Bureau of Standards: Some electrical properties of silver sulfide.

The programs of the meetings of the affiliated Societies will appear on this page if sent to the editors by the thirteenth and the twenty-seventh day of each month.